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Despite all the efforts to terrify us about global warming, by the way, the fact remains that the Earth’s temperature, to the extent it can even be reliably measured, has gone up only about one degree Celsius over the past hundred years, and sea levels have risen about three inches, which appears to be about the same amount they rose the previous century despite increasing industrial activity since then — and in any case, leaving people plenty of time to move a few inches farther away from the shore if necessary.
It's been warmer than today's climate in the past, much warmer. It has been colder than this climate in the past, much colder. We know this for a fact. We know that this happens with or without our activities. ... So why do we insist that we are the ones causing it when for over half a million years it happened several times and we’ve only had this supposedly evil earth killing CO2 belching technology a mere speck of that time? Because, many believe global warming is real and there are people in our political world who want the masses to hand over power over their lives to them, so they say "let us handle it". To make that transition easier, they trot out this false premise, that we are totally responsible for natural occurrences in the long span of our planetary history.
What, then, of human activities? Is humankind itself hastening its own end? Man has, for instance, been burning carbon-containing fuel — wood, coal, oil, gas — at a steadily accelerating rate. All these fuels form carbon dioxide. Some is absorbed by plants and the oceans but not as fast as it is produced. This means the carbon dioxide content of the air is going up — slightly but nevertheless up. Carbon dioxide retains heat, and even a small rise means a warming of the Earth's atmosphere. This may result in the melting of the polar ice caps with unusual speed, flooding the world before we have learned climate control. In reverse, our industrial civilization is making our atmosphere dustier so that it reflects more sunlight away and cools the Earth slightly — thus making possible a glacial advance in a few centuries, also before we have learned climate control.
At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels. By that time, there will be a serious additional impediment for the radiation leaving the earth. Our planet will get a little warmer. It is hard to say whether it will be 2 degrees Fahrenheit or only one or 5.
But when the temperature does rise by a few degrees over the whole globe, there is a possibility that the icecaps will start melting and the level of the oceans will begin to rise. Well, I don’t know whether they will cover the Empire State Building or not, but anyone can calculate it by looking at the map and noting that the icecaps over Greenland and over Antarctica are perhaps five thousand feet thick.
The hypothesis that human emissions of CO2 can create global warming can be tested by measurement. … No warming has occured since 1998. … During that time atmospheric CO2 has increased. … The test of the hypothesis above shows that there is no relationship between measured temperature and CO2 emissions. The hypothesis fails.
So what's easier to believe as the cause of climate change? That a trace gas called CO2 that has increased on earth from about 280 PPM to 380 PPM in the last 100 years is the cause, or that the giant nuclear fireball a thousand times bigger than earth a mere 8 light-minutes away has been getting more active during the same period is the reason?
Our contemporary problem is that human actions since the Industrial Revolution have been changing the composition of the atmosphere the scientific community has been concerned for several decades. By the 1950s it was suggested that the rate of burning fuels such as coal could be changing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
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