I intended to launch a giant rant last week about global warming. Instead I actually found it easier and more entertaining to just ask a few questions and then sit back and watch everybody else go at it. But I’d still like to bring up one point:
“How can anybody say with any proof or certainty that we humans are responsible for the current climate change if nobody can explain why far more dramatic climate shifts have occurred prior to our burning of fossil fuels?”
The entire hubbub right now is over a rate of temperature change of a degree or two over the next century, a millimeter per year of sea level rise, and mountain glaciers retreating in the northern hemisphere. Eight thousand years ago temperatures rose 20 to 30 degrees, sea level rose 300 to 400 feet, and the northern ice cap retreated thousands of miles! By any measure this climate shift was orders of magnitude greater than we are currently experiencing, and yet there were no cars, coal fired power plants, or gas stoves.
You can’t deny that half our continent was recently covered in a mile thick blanket of ice. We were in the grips of the current ice age. There were icebergs off Spain, glaciers in Arizona and New Mexico, the British Isles weren’t isles, Florida was twice as big, Long Island and the Midwest were the dumping ground for pulverized rock from Canada, and the fjords of Norway, Alaska, (not to mention Yosemite Valley) were giant rivers of ice. What brought us out of the ice age? Not fossil fuels. We and Neanderthals only burned a little wood.
Some of us are certain that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is the only possible culprit for the current climate change. I’ve heard said, “Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, we are exacerbating the greenhouse effect, we are destroying the planet, so we’ve got to drive hybrids, plant trees, and turn down the thermostat before it’s too late…yadda yadda yadda…” But consider this: Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas, maybe 5% of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor is the major greenhouse gas, comprising 80%, 90%, maybe 95% (depending on whom you believe). I ask you this, “Is it not easier to imagine a natural cycle such as a subtle fluctuation in atmospheric water vapor, a small change in the distribution of tropical heat by ocean currents, or a slight change of weather patterns being the source of our current climate change?” Why just focus on one parameter, carbon dioxide emissions, and declare it proof and case closed that we are responsible? Isn’t it reasonable to assume something natural could be changing our climate just as it has before without our help?
I submit that we should consider being happy the climate is as warm at it is now. The normal climate for the last three million years has been much colder. We are currently enjoying an interglacial period within a major ice age. The pattern the last few million years has been repeating cycles of perhaps 100,000 years of glacial advance followed by 10 or 20 thousand years of decent weather like we’re having now. Again I ask, “what warmed us up so much 8000 years ago?”
We like to think of ourselves as rulers of the earth, but if you consider the impacts of routine geologic processes such as volcanic eruptions, meteorite impacts, continental collisions, and (yes) climate change, we become little more than insects on the earth. My fellow woodworkers, I plead with you to reconsider the hysteria over global warming. We’ve got plenty to eat, good friends, outdoor comfort (at least during the winter here in Florida), and plenty of wood for entertaining ourselves.
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Originally Posted by Ed Garrett
