Wednesday, July 2, 2008

GARY STEVENS WRITES ON GLOBAL WARMING

Bruce, The Global Warming Issueby Gary Stevens This is a response to KFALLS Ranching/Grazing News submission to the website. KFALLS writes, "This summer may see first ice-free North Pole. There's a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will be ice-free this summer, which would be a first in recorded history." This may actually happen. If it does, it will be a part of a larger trend of cooling/warming cycles. Recorded history covers the last 5000 years, out of several billion years. To help visualize this: if the entire existence of the Earth, up to today, is represented as a line a mile long, recorded history would be the last 1/16 inch. This is an insignificant amount of time, in the overall scheme of things. "Global Warming" is a theory, not a fact.Here are some facts: Over the eons of time that the Earth has existed, there have been countless ice ages and warming trends, as well as highly toxic atmospheres and major geographical shifts. The Earth is, and always has been, in a state of continuous change. The last notable cool down was at the time of the founding of this country. Crops in Europe were decimated by the cold. New York Harbor was frozen solid. The last major ice age was 30,000 years ago, about the time the desert southwest was settled by brave people traversing the Bering Sea ice from northern Asia. During this time, New Mexico was experiencing constant freezing temperatures. Between these cool times, there have been warm periods. The point is: the Earth's environment goes through repeating cycles of cooler and warmer trends, as well as other natural phenomenon. The current warming trend may be influenced by our activity, to a small degree. More than likely, it is a part of a general warming trend, nudged along by our activity. This trend will, no doubt, reverse sometime in the future, as it always has. Most of the global warming in the past century occurred before 1940, before CO2 emissions could have been a major factor. Temperatures actually fell between 1940 and 1970, even as CO2 levels increased. Antarctica, as a whole, is getting colder, and the ice is getting thicker, although the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica has been melting for the past 6,000 years. Greenland might lose its ice pack in the next thousand years. Temperature readings from reporting stations outside the U.S. are poorly maintained and staffed; those in the U.S., which are more accurate, show little or no warming trend. Temperature sensors on satellites report much less of a warming trend in the upper atmosphere than is reported by temperature sensors on the ground. The "theory" of global warming predicts the upper atmosphere should warm first. Data from weather balloons agree with the satellites. No one can predict if global warming will result in more clouds, or fewer clouds, yet cloud cover plays a major role in global temperature changes. Sea levels have been rising at the rate of four to eight inches per hundred years for the past 6,000 years. This is nothing new. Gary Stevens Organ, New Mexico

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