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This past weekend there was a lot of huff and puff about Global Warming. If one is to read past blogs here, one will find out clearly my opinions about this topic. Right now it seems there is a lot of panic about Global Warming. Is Greenland going to be twenty feet underwater? Will you be able to scuba dive in New York City soon? Well, honestly, unless some dramatic earthquake sinks New York, it�s not going to happen.

Am I irresponsible to suggest this? Am I belittling a real threat? I really don�t believe that I am. First of all, they have been talking about Global Warming literally for years. Amazingly, as talk in the mainstream media and elsewhere ramped up last week, all of the talk came in the wake of storms that have frozen citrus crops in California, doing billions of dollars of damage.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16671785/site/newsweek/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16677104/

Last week, some of the articles I came across (linked above)involved talk of a new alliance between �scientists� and �evangelicals.� And not just any scientists, but "elite" scientists. (They are scientific nobility as you know since they subscribe to belief in "Global Warming"). As is common in the mainstream media, not much attention is paid to anything more than blanket terms, though a great deal can be written about any of those terms. Many real scientists (to use my own blanket term) aren�t buying the Global Warming threat as did politician turned environmental guru Al Gore in his film �An Inconvenient Truth.� An opponent of Global Warming, Bjorn Lomborg who worked for Denmark�s National Environment Assessment Institute has taken issue with Gore in that the threat is not as imminently serious as it is being made.

Check out Lomborg�s bio, and then see his somewhat recent interview about Global Warming, discussing some of the issues involving the environment that he thinks are more serious:

http://www.lomborg.com/biograph.htm
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=112806D

Another well-known who has a beef with the whole Global Warming thing is none other than Michael Crichton. Some may not take him seriously as he is a popular author, but in spite of him providing the source material of much entertainment from Jurassic Park to E.R., he does have a serious scientific and medical background. Check out:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=316580&page=1

To be honest, we really ought to be aware of the fact that the issue is probably a lot more complex than anyone realizes. Volcanoes can put a huge amount of products into the air in just a single eruption, affecting the environment more dramatically than we seem to do. Major events such as the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Phillipines are examples of this (other times, volcanoes and other geothermal activities are emitting "pollution" contstantly, but in smaller quantities). Interestingly, it has been documented that a summer in which a major eruption of Pinatubo occurred was measurably cooler. If you are skeptical that it affected life in the U.S. fine, but the summer I experienced for myself in northern Indiana actually was cooler than typical. Notice the effect was not warming but cooling.

Wanting to know more about the facts, I looked up some articles on volcanic aerosols; there is much information that was interesting in them. Actually, humans are somehow attributed as putting more sulphur (a source of pollution) into the troposphere (the atmosphere nearest the ground) than volcanoes. If the number is anywhere near accurate, that was a surprise to me. However, one thing that human sources of sulphur cannot do is throw significant amounts of this material into the much higher stratosphere, where it might have more of an effect on meteorological conditions. For example, a factory throws pollution into an area nearer the ground (it�s certainly not good for us when we think of cases of asthma), however, it isn�t going to have the same kind of effect that a volcano does at its generally higher elevation throwing material much higher into the atmosphere where it has the potential to do more damage. Volcanoes also throw this material out at a much higher temperature, which may also effect the way it effects the earth as well. The truth is, the verdict is still out on the true effects, and there is much that we just don't know. Its more complex than it is being made out to be, and there are many, many factors involved. Serious volcanic aerosol info. at the click of a mouse:
http://www.earth.ox.ac.uk/~tamsinm/VEA.pdf
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1997/of97-262/of97-262.html

Here�s another one. Did you know that water vapor is considered a greenhouse gas? To verify, feel free to check out the following article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas

Hmm. Let�s see. The majority of the earth is covered with water, and the sun is constantly, cyclically causing that water to evaporate. Obviously, I don�t think we can ever outpace the oceans for the amount of water vapor being put into the air. Interestingly, if more water vapor is put in the air, this will probably result in more precipitation. On the American continent for example, what happens is that water vapor moving from the Pacific has to cross over the Rockies as it heads east. The result? Ironically, snow! (Sometimes lots of it).

One article about the Greenhouse effect (linked below) mentioned that a runaway greenhouse effect may have occurred on Venus. In other words, two issues here. First of all, the key word is "may." This is a very iffy "may" since the pursuit of knowledge about the atmosphere of Venus in the past is a highly speculative endeavor. Secondly, if the key planet in question was Mars here, we might have something to worry about, but just so you know, last time I checked Venus was a lot closer to the SUN than we are!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect

The reality is that Global Warming really isn�t as serious as it is being made out to be. I have already heard commercials put out by �evangelicals� about the social concern of a Global Warming catastrophe. In all honesty, I think the whole Henny Penny controversy is truly irresponsible. The truth is, is that as usual the media is in the business of stirring up hype and panic. Hype and panic make for �exciting� headlines. It�s just that many people buy into much that is sold as truth when it really is not. I�m more interested in truth.

Taking care of the environment is NOT at all a bad thing. It won't hurt us to make sure that the environment is healthier to live in, but be aware of the economic and true environmental implications of these policies (note Lomborg's interview that the globe being a little bit warmer actually can translate into some good things in terms of less human mortality-unless of course you are an animal rights activist who believes fewer humans is a good thing). If you disagree, you know where to respond. �Cal Samuel August

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