Fifty Shades Of Climate Change - Do We Know The Whole Story About What Is Causing Climate Change?
Could there be more to the climate change debate than what we are being told?
Is climate change really caused by human activity or is it just a cycle the Earth normally goes through?
After studying both sides of the issue I'm still not 100% convinced of the pros and cons of the debate.
There's no denying we have had some effect on the environment, some good and some bad, but do the things we do actually change the climate or is there something else going on that we are not privy to?
Is human activity the primary cause of climate change?
Both sides of the debate do agree on a few things, mainly that the earth temperature has increased about 1.4°F since the early 20th century and that atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane have increased measurably.
Before you take a defensive position on either side of the debate, take some time to consider that perhaps the entire debate is being manufactured to sway our opinions in the direction of a predetermined agenda planned by those in power.
Just think about this for a minute before reacting.
If you were so rich that you could influence public policy within governments to further your causes and enterprises, what better way to avoid blowback to your unpopular agendas than to control and weaponize the weather?
For starters, the weather is a global phenomenon and effects everyone on the planet. There is no escape from the weather regardless of your religion, economic status, or your politics. The use of the weather as a weapon offers plausible deniability that you had anything to do with it.
Extreme weather events are considered an "act of God" and no one can be held accountable for the damages it may cause. Droughts and floods have economic consequences for whole countries and a weaponized weather system could not only be used against nations that don't do our bidding, but we can then go into the affected countries with financial aid that puts them in our pocket. These loans are never intended to be repaid, in fact, it is given purposely to countries we know cannot pay back the loans and we require those countries to stake their natural resources as collateral.
This gives the loaning country access to the indebted nation's resources they would not have otherwise had a claim on without invading the country. Going in and taking their resources would be seen as an aggressive, unpopular move by the people. But to go in and give them aid after a "natural" disaster is seen as heroic and benevolent.
Getting access to natural resources is only the front-end reward though. The real game plan would be to create a consensus that it is human activity causing these extreme weather events. This may be true but perhaps not from the human activity we are being led to believe.
What could the hidden agenda behind the global climate change crisis be?
Carbon tax
According to the Carbon Tax Center:
A carbon tax is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas). More to the point: a carbon tax is the core policy for reducing and eventually eliminating the use of fossil fuels whose combustion is destabilizing and destroying our climate.
A carbon tax is a way — the only way — to make users of carbon fuels pay for the climate damage caused by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If set high enough, it becomes a powerful monetary disincentive that motivates switches to clean energy across the economy, simply by making it more economically rewarding to move to non-carbon fuels and energy efficiency. carbontax.org
Imagine, once again, that you were rich enough to influence policies within a government. Why stop at one government? Why not influence the policies of all governments across the globe? A global carbon tax would set the precedent to controlling and taxing people globally and would act as a foot in the door to future laws giving you more control.
On the surface, a global carbon tax to incentivize businesses to reduce their carbon emissions sounds like a good idea. Everyone can get behind a move that would clean up our air and water and reduce pollution, right?
Scratch beneath the surface and you'll soon see that contrary to giving companies an economic incentive to go green, the policy is actually allowing the largest corporations to continue polluting while claiming they are environmentally responsible.
In an ideal scenario, this is how it's supposed to work:
A community in a developing country works with an NGO or developer to design a plan to protect a large swathe of forest and thus prevent the release of the harmful chemical compound into the atmosphere. Then, it can get the emissions reductions certified by a third-party auditor and sell the resulting carbon credits to corporations in developed countries interested in reducing their own carbon footprints. credit
However, the corporation that buys the carbon credits now can say they are "going green" while not reducing their carbon footprint themselves. They basically got some poor third-world country to stop producing so they can continue to pollute as they always have and still claim to be reducing their carbon footprint.
In effect, this is just the cost of doing business for a big corporation but doesn't really reduce pollution. It only prevents some poorer countries from catching up in productivity to industrialized countries, effectively slowing down competitors in emerging and established markets.
In some cases, the population of the third-world country has no knowledge of this exchange. They only know that the law now says they cannot grow crops like they have done for generations.
This is a scam of epic proportions and the costs are already shifted to the people, not the corporations. Even though it is being presented as a tax on corporations those costs are already bourn by citizens lacking political representation and the debate is being framed as a social issue that is the direct result of our activities on the planet.
Every car driven, every crop grown, or just to live and breath will one day be a taxable event. That may be the real agenda behind the whole debate. And to resist would be to be going against the welfare of the planet.
This is happening as we speak and people are buying goods from corporations claiming to be a green company who have not gone green at all and only shifted the cost of their pollution to another part of the world.
This is only the beginning too. Everything that lives on the planet creates carbon just by being alive. With every breath you take you are creating carbon dioxide. Will there come a day of laws being passed requiring every breathing citizen to pay a carbon tax?
If so would you pay it? Perhaps you would if you believed that human activity is the cause of all these extreme weather events that are happening around the globe. In fact, you may even demand that something is done about it.
Which brings us back to the global climate crisis.
If you could weaponize the weather to create extreme weather events on a global scale and leverage those events to put countries with resources you covet in debt to you and also convince the world that they are the cause of these events. then people affected by these extreme weather events would willingly pay for a tax that sounds like a solution to these problems.
Anyone disagreeing would be demonized and portrayed as a "climate change denier". Trying to attribute the climate changes to a "weather weapon" would sound like you're crazy and would make it easy to discredit you and there are plenty of scientific "facts" pointing to real data that the weather is actually changing.
Is it crazy to think that the government has weaponized the weather?
Is there any evidence they even tried to do so?
Yes, there is.
Weaponizing the weather is nothing new. The U.S. used cloud seeding in Vietnam to try to create flooding to slow enemy troop movements and more recently the secretive Alaskan facility, HAARP, short for High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, is an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
If they can indeed control the weather and are using it to create extreme weather events across the globe, it would make sense to deny not only the existence of such a device but to deny that climate change itself exists.
Why? Divide and conquer works perfectly with a problem, reaction, solution strategy. Covertly causing global climate events that devastate economies would soon have the global population demanding something be done about it and if you have all the money you would be able to offer aid to those affected leveraging your wealth into more global control of resources while maintaining plausible deniability you had anything to do with it.
Instead of being seen as an oppressor with all the resistance that comes with it, you would be a savior and the changes you implement would be welcomed. People would line up to pay carbon taxes and buy goods from companies that are supposedly green.
No one would line up to pay a global tax unless they are convinced it was absolutely necessary to save us from global catastrophe.
Climate change proponents fearing that the global ocean conveyor belt could possibly shut down and throw the earth into an unstoppable imbalance that threatens all life on earth poses a threat large enough to get everyone's attention. But is it true?
Below are the pros and cons of the climate change debate according to ClimateChange.ProCon.org. When reading it though, keep in mind that scientists can be bought as well as whole governments.
Big tobacco and the pharmaceutical industry are good examples of industries that have paid scientists to get results in favor of their agendas and there is no reason to believe that buying scientists to support findings in your favor has fallen out of favor.
Pharmaceutical companies knowingly produce "medicine" that kills a percentage of those who take it and price their products to factor in the costs of possible future litigation from the victims chaulking it up to a cost of doing business.
Big oil denies climate change but I wouldn't discount the idea that they are denying climate change on purpose so that the people fight back, unknowingly playing right into their hands and their future plans to implement a global carbon tax.
That said, I do believe the less we depend on oil and the more we can develop alternatives the better off we will be.
In any case, once money is to be made on either side of the issue it becomes difficult to know what the truth really is but my hunch is it is a divide and conquer tactic and the real cause of climate change may not even be part of the debate.
The Pros And Cons Of Climate Change
Pro 1
Overwhelming scientific consensus says human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The 2010 Anderegg study found that 97-98% of climate researchers publishing most actively in their field agree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. The study also found that the expertise of researchers unconvinced of human-caused climate change is "substantially below" that of researchers who agree that human activity is primarily responsible for climate change. The 2013 Cook review of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found that only 78 studies (0.7%) explicitly rejected the position that humans are responsible for global warming. A separate review of 13,950 peer-reviewed studies on climate change found only 24 that rejected human-caused global warming. A survey by German Scientists Bray and Von Storch found that 83.5% of climate scientists believe human activity is causing "most of recent" global climate change. A separate survey in 2011 also found that 84% of earth, space, atmospheric, oceanic, and hydrological scientists surveyed said that human-induced global warming is occurring.
Pro 2
Rising levels of human-produced gases released into the atmosphere create a greenhouse effect that traps heat and causes global warming. As sunlight hits the earth, some of the warmth is absorbed by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (NO2). These gases trap heat and cause the planet to warm through a process called the greenhouse effect. Since 1751 about 337 billion metric tons of CO2 have been released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production, increasing atmospheric CO2 from the pre-industrial level of about 280 ppm (parts per million), to a high of 400 ppm in 2013. Methane, which is increasing in the atmosphere due to agriculture and fossil fuel production, traps 84 times as much heat as CO2 for the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, and is responsible for about one-fifth of global warming since 1750. Nitrous oxide, primarily released through agricultural practices, traps 300 times as much heat as CO2. [Over the 20th century, as the concentrations of CO2, CH4, and NO2 increased in the atmosphere, the earth warmed by approximately 1.4°F.
Pro 3
The rise in atmospheric CO2 over the last century was clearly caused by human activity, as it occurred at a rate much faster than natural climate changes could produce. Over the past 650,000 years, atmospheric CO2 levels did not rise above 300 ppm until the mid-20th century. Atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen from about 317 ppm in 1958 to 400 ppm in 2013. CO2 levels are estimated to reach 450 ppm by the year 2040. According to the Scripps Institution of Oceanology, the "extreme speed at which carbon dioxide concentrations are increasing is unprecedented. An increase of 10 parts per million might have needed 1,000 years or more to come to pass during ancient climate change events." Some climate models predict that by the end of the 21st century an additional 5°F-10°F of warming will occur.
Pro 4
The specific type of CO2 that is increasing in earth's atmosphere can be directly connected to human activity. CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal can be differentiated in the atmosphere from natural CO2 due to its specific isotopic ratio. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 20th century measurements of CO2 isotope ratios in the atmosphere confirm that rising CO2 levels are the result of human activity, not natural processes such as ocean outgassing, volcanic activity, or release from other "carbon sinks." [102] US greenhouse gas emissions from human activities in 2012 totaled 6.5 million metric tons, [19] which is equivalent to about 78.3 billion shipping containers filled with greenhouse gases.
Pro 5
Average temperatures on earth have increased at a rate far faster than can be explained by natural climate changes. A 2008 study compared data from tree rings, ice cores, and corals over the past millennium with recent temperature records. The study created the famous "hockey stick" graph, showing that the rise in earth's temperature over the preceding decade had occurred at a rate faster than any warming period over the last 1,700 years. In 2012 the Berkeley scientists found that the average temperature of the earth’s land increased 2.5°F over 250 years (1750-2000), with 1.5°F of that increase in the last 50 years. Lead researcher Richard A. Muller, PhD, said "it appears likely that essentially all of this increase [in temperature] results from the human emission of greenhouse gases." In 2013, a surface temperature study published in Science found that global warming over the past 100 years has proceeded at a rate faster than at any time in the past 11,300 years. According to the IPCC’s 2014 Synthesis Report, human actions are "extremely likely" (95-100% confidence) to have been the main cause of 20th century global warming, and the surface temperature warming since the 1950s is "unprecedented over decades to millennia."
Pro 6
Natural changes in the sun's activity cannot explain 20th century global warming. According to a Dec. 2013 study in Nature Geoscience, the sun has had only a "minor effect" on the Northern Hemisphere climate over the past 1,000 years, and global warming from human-produced greenhouse gases has been the primary cause of climate change since 1900. Another 2013 study found that solar activity could not have contributed to more than 10% of the observed global warming over the 20th century. Measurements in the upper atmosphere from 1979-2009 show the sun's energy has gone up and down in cycles, with no net increase. According to a 2013 IPCC report, there is "high confidence" (8 out of 10 chance) that changes in the sun's radiation could not have caused the increase in the earth's surface temperature from 1986-2008. Although warming is occurring in the lower atmosphere (troposphere), the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) is actually cooling. If the sun were driving global warming, there would be warming in the stratosphere also, not cooling.
Pro 7
Global warming caused by human-produced greenhouse gases is causing the Arctic ice cap to melt at an increasing rate. From 1953–2006, Arctic sea ice declined 7.8% per decade. Between 1979 and 2006, the decline was 9.1% each decade. As of 2014, Arctic sea ice was being lost at a rate of 13.3% per decade. As the Arctic ice cover continues to decrease, the amount of the sun’s heat reflected by the ice back into space also decreases. This positive-feedback loop amplifies global warming at a rate even faster than previous climate models had predicted. Some studies predict the Arctic could become nearly ice free sometime between 2020-2060.
Pro 8
Sea levels are rising at an unprecedented rate due to global warming. As human-produced greenhouse gases warm the planet, sea levels are rising due to thermal expansion of warming ocean waters as well as melt water from receding glaciers and the polar ice cap. According to the IPCC, there has been a "substantial" human contribution to the global mean sea-level rise since the 1970s, and there is "high confidence" (8 out of 10 chance) that the rate of sea-level rise over the last half century has accelerated faster than it has over the previous 2,000 years. A 2006 study found that "significant acceleration" of sea-level rise occurred from 1870 to 2004. Between 1961 and 2003 global sea levels rose 8 inches. An Oct. 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the rate of sea level rise over the past century is unprecedented over the last 6,000 years. A separate Oct. 2014 study said that the global sea level is likely to rise 31 inches by 2100, with a worst case scenario rise of 6 feet. Climate Central predicts that 147 to 216 million people live in areas that will be below sea level or regular flood areas by the end of the century if human-produced greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate.
Pro 9
Ocean acidity levels are increasing at an unprecedented rate that can only be explained by human activity. As excess human-produced CO2 in the atmosphere is absorbed by the oceans, the acidity level of the water increases. Acidity levels in the oceans are 25-30% higher than prior to human fossil fuel use. According to a 2014 US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, oceans have absorbed about 30% of the CO2 emitted by humans over the past 200 years, and ocean acidity could rise approximately 100-200 percent above preindustrial levels by 2100. According to a 2013 report from the World Meteorological Organization, the current acceleration in the rate of ocean acidification "appears unprecedented" over the last 300 million years. High ocean acidity levels threaten marine species, and slows the growth of coral reefs. According to a 2014 report by the Convention on Biological Diversity, "it is now nearly inevitable" that within 50-100 years continued human produced CO2 emissions will increase ocean acidity to levels that "will have widespread impacts, mostly deleterious, on marine organisms and ecosystems."
Pro 10
Ocean temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate due to global warming, and are causing additional climate changes. The IPCC stated in a 2013 report that due to human-caused global warming, it is "virtually certain" (99-100% probability) that the upper ocean warmed between 1971 and 2010. An Oct. 2014 Nature Climate Change study said that the oceans are the "dominant reservoir of heat uptake in the climate system." A separate Oct. 2014 study found that the oceans absorb more than 90% of the heat generated by human-caused global warming. Since 1970 the upper ocean (above 700 meters) has been warming 24-55% faster than previous studies had predicted. A May 2013 study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that between 1958-2009 the rates of warming in the lower ocean (below 700m) "appear to be unprecedented." According to an Oct. 2013 study, the middle depths of the Pacific Ocean have warmed "15 times faster in the last 60 years than they did during apparent natural warming cycles in the previous 10,000." Warmer ocean waters can harm coral reefs and impact many species including krill, which are vital to the marine food chain and which reproduce significantly less in warmer water. Warming oceans also contribute to sea level rise due to thermal expansion, and warmer ocean waters can add to the intensity of storm systems.
Pro 11
Glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates due to global warming, causing additional climate changes. About a quarter of the globe's glacial loss from 1851-2010, and approximately two thirds of glacial loss between 1991-2010, is attributable directly to global warming caused by human-produced greenhouse gases. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, global warming from human-produced greenhouse gases is a primary cause of the "unprecedented" retreat of glaciers around the world since the early 20th century. Since 1980 glaciers worldwide have lost nearly 40 feet (12 meters) in average thickness. According to a 2013 IPCC report, "glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide" over the prior two decades, and there is "high confidence" (about an 8 out of 10 chance) that Northern Hemisphere spring snow continues to decrease. If the glaciers forming the Greenland ice sheet were to melt entirely, global sea levels could increase by up to 20 feet. Melting glaciers also change the climate of the surrounding region. With the loss of summer glacial melt water, the temperatures in rivers and lakes increase. According to the US Geological Service, this disruption can include the "extinction of temperature sensitive aquatic species."
Pro 12
Human-caused global warming is changing weather systems and making heat waves and droughts more intense and more frequent. The May 2014 National Climate Assessment report said human-caused climate changes, such as increased heat waves and drought, "are visible in every state." A Sep. 2014 American Meteorological Society study found that human-caused climate change "greatly increased" (up to 10 times) the risk for extreme heat waves in 2013. According to an Aug. 2012 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, there is a "high degree of confidence" that the Texas and Oklahoma heat waves and drought of 2011, and heat waves and drought in Moscow in 2010, "were a consequence of global warming" and that "extreme anomalies" in weather are becoming more common as a direct consequence of human-caused climate change. A 2015 study found that globally, 75% of extremely hot days are attributable to warming caused by human activity.
Pro 13
Dramatic changes in precipitation, such as heavier storms and less snow, are another sign that humans are causing global climate change. As human-produced greenhouse gases heat the planet, increased humidity (water vapor in the atmosphere) results. Water vapor is itself a greenhouse gas. In a process known as a positive feedback loop, more warming causes more humidity which causes even more warming. Higher humidity levels also cause changes in precipitation. According to a 2013 report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the recorded changes in precipitation over land and oceans "are unlikely to arise purely due to natural climate variability." Higher temperatures from global warming are also causing some mountainous areas to receive rain rather than snow. According to researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, up to 60% of the changes in river flow, winter air temperature, and snow pack in the western United States (1950-1999) were human-induced. Since 1991, heavy precipitation events have been 30% above the 1901-1960 average in the Northeast, Midwest, and upper Great Plains regions. A 2015 study found that global warming caused by human actions has increased extreme precipitation events by 18% across the globe, and that if temperatures continue to rise an increase of 40% can be expected.
Pro 14
Permafrost is melting at unprecedented rates due to global warming, causing further climate changes. According to a 2013 IPCC report there is "high confidence" (about an 8 out of 10 chance) that anthropogenic global warming is causing permafrost, a subsurface layer of frozen soil, to melt in high-latitude regions and in high-elevation regions. As permafrost melts it releases methane, a greenhouse gas that absorbs 84 times more heat than CO2 for the first 20 years it is in the atmosphere, creating even more global warming in a positive feedback loop. By the end of the 21st century, warming temperatures in the Arctic will cause a 30%-70% decline in permafrost. According to a 2012 report, as human-caused global warming continues, Arctic air temperatures are expected to increase at twice the global rate, increasing the rate of permafrost melt, changing the local hydrology, and impacting critical habitat for native species and migratory birds. According to the 2014 National Climate Assessment, some climate models suggest that near-surface permafrost will be "lost entirely" from large parts of Alaska by the end of the 21st century. credit
Con 1
More than one thousand scientists disagree that human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change. In 2010 Climate Depot released a report featuring more than 1,000 scientists, several of them former UN IPCC scientists, who disagreed that humans are primarily responsible for global climate change. The Cook review of 11,944 peer-reviewed studies found 66.4% of the studies had no stated position on anthropogenic global warming, and while 32.6% of the studies implied or stated that humans are contributing to climate change, only 65 papers (0.5%) explicitly stated "that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming." A 2012 Purdue University survey found that 47% of climatologists challenge the idea that humans are primarily responsible for climate change and instead believe that climate change is caused by an equal combination of humans and the environment (37%), mostly by the environment (5%), or that there’s not enough information to say (5%). In 2014 a group of 15 scientists dismissed the US National Climate Assessment as a "masterpiece of marketing," that was "grossly flawed," and called the NCA’s assertion of human-caused climate change "NOT true."
Con 2
Earth's climate has always warmed and cooled, and the 20th century rise in global temperature is within the bounds of natural temperature fluctuations over the past 3,000 years. Although the planet has warmed 1-1.4°F over the 20th century, it is within the +/- 5°F range of the past 3,000 years. A 2003 study by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found that "many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climatic period of the last millennium." A 2005 study published in Nature found that "high temperatures - similar to those observed in the twentieth century before 1990 - occurred around AD 1000 to 1100" in the Northern Hemisphere. A 2013 study published in Boreas found that summer temperatures during the Roman Empire and Medieval periods were "consistently higher" than temperatures during the 20th century. According to a 2010 study in the Chinese Science Bulletin, the recent global warming period of the 20th century is the result of a natural 21-year temperature oscillation, and will give way to a "new cool period in the 2030s."
Con 3
Rising levels of atmospheric CO2 do not necessarily cause global warming, which contradicts the core thesis of human-caused climate change. Earth's climate record shows that warming has preceded, not followed, a rise in CO2. According to a 2003 study published in Science, measurements of ice core samples show that over the last four climactic cycles (past 240,000 years), periods of natural global warming preceded global increases in CO2. In 2010 the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study of the earth's climate 460-445 million years ago which found that an intense period of glaciation, not warming, occurred when CO2 levels were 5 times higher than they are today. According to ecologist and former Director of Greenpeace International Patrick Moore, PhD, "there is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between CO2 and global temperature through the millennia."
Con 4
Human-produced CO2 is re-absorbed by oceans, forests, and other "carbon sinks," negating any climate changes. According to a 2011 study published in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science, many climate models that predict additional global warming to occur from CO2 emissions "exaggerate positive feedbacks and even show positive feedbacks when actual feedbacks are negative." About 50% of the CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities has already been re-absorbed by the earth’s carbon sinks. From 2002-2011, 26% of human-caused CO2 emissions were absorbed specifically by the world’s oceans. A 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found evidence that forests are increasing their growth rates in response to elevated levels of CO2, which will in turn, lower atmospheric CO2 levels in a negative feedback. According to an Aug. 2012 study in Nature, the rate of global carbon uptake by the earth's carbon sinks, such as its forests and oceans, doubled from 1960-2010 and continues to increase.
Con 5
CO2 is already saturated in earth’s atmosphere, and more CO2, manmade or natural, will have little impact on climate. As CO2 levels in the atmosphere rise, the amount of additional warming caused by the increased concentration becomes less and less pronounced. According to Senate testimony by William Happer, PhD, Professor of Physics at Princeton University, "[a]dditional increments of CO2 will cause relatively less direct warming because we already have so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it has blocked most of the infrared radiation that it can. The technical jargon for this is that the CO2 absorption band is nearly 'saturated' at current CO2 levels." According to the Heartland Institute's 2013 Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report, "it is likely rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations will have little impact on future climate."
Con 6
Global warming and cooling are primarily caused by fluctuations in the sun's heat (solar forcing), not by human activity. Over the past 10,000 years, solar minima (reduced sun spot activity) have been "accompanied by sharp climate changes." Between 1900 and 2000 solar irradiance increased 0.19%, and correlated with the rise in US surface temperatures over the 20th century. According to a 2007 study published in Energy & Environment, "variations in solar activity and not the burning of fossil fuels are the direct cause of the observed multiyear variations in climatic responses." In a 2012 study by Willie Soon, PhD, Physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a strong correlation between solar radiation and temperatures in the Arctic over the past 130 years was identified. According to a 2012 study published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, "up to 70% of the observed post-1850 climate change and warming could be associated to multiple solar cycles."
Con 7
The rate of global warming has slowed over the last decade even though atmospheric CO2 continues to increase. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognized a slowdown in global warming over the past 15 years in its 2013 report. According to the Heartland Institute's 2013 NIPCC report, the earth "has not warmed significantly for the past 16 years despite an 8% increase in atmospheric CO2." In Aug. 2014 a study in the Open Journal of Statistics analyzed surface temperature records and satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere and confirmed that this slowdown in global warming has occurred. According to Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Richard Lindzen, PhD, the IPCC's "excuse for the absence of warming over the past 17 years is that the heat is hiding in the deep ocean. However, this is simply an admission that the [climate] models fail to simulate the exchanges of heat between the surface layers and the deeper oceans"
Con 8
Sea levels have been steadily rising for thousands of years, and the increase has nothing to do with humans. A 2014 report by the Global Warming Policy Foundation found that a slow global sea level rise has been ongoing for the last 10,000 years. When the earth began coming out of the Pleistocene Ice Age 18,000 years ago, sea levels were about 400 feet lower than they are today and have been steadily rising ever since. According to Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Judith Curry, PhD "it is clear that natural variability has dominated sea level rise during the 20th century, with changes in ocean heat content and changes in precipitation patterns." Freeman Dyson, Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, has stated that there is "no evidence" that rising sea levels are due to anthropogenic climate change.
Con 9
The acidity levels of the oceans are within past natural levels, and the current rise in acidity is a natural fluctuation, not the result of human caused climate change. The pH of average ocean surface water is 8.1 and has only decreased 0.1 since the beginning of the industrial revolution (neutral is pH 7, acid is below pH 7). In 2010 Science published a study of ocean acidity levels over the past 15 million years, finding that the "samples record surface seawater pH values that are within the range observed in the oceans today." Increased atmospheric CO2 absorbed by the oceans results in higher rates of photosynthesis and faster growth of ocean plants and phytoplankton, which increases pH levels keeping the water alkaline, not acidic. According to a 2010 paper by the Science and Public Policy Institute, "our harmless emissions of trifling quantities of carbon dioxide cannot possibly acidify the oceans."
Con 10
Predictions of accelerating human-caused climate change are based upon computerized climate models that are inadequate and incorrect. Climate models have been unable to simulate major known features of past climate such as the ice ages or the very warm climates of the Miocene, Eocene, and Cretaceous periods. If models cannot replicate past climate changes they should not be trusted to predict future climate changes. A 2011 Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Science study using observational data rather than computer climate models concluded that "the models are exaggerating climate sensitivity" and overestimate how fast the earth will warm as CO2 levels increase. Two other studies using observational data found that IPCC projections of future global warming are too high. In a 2014 article, climatologist and former NASA scientist Roy Spencer, PhD, concluded that 95% of climate models have "over-forecast the warming trend since 1979." According to Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Winnipeg, Tim Ball, PhD, "IPCC computer climate models are the vehicles of deception… [T]hey create the results they are designed to produce."
Con 11
Glaciers have been growing and receding for thousands of years due to natural causes, not human activity. The IPCC predicted that Himalayan glaciers would likely melt away by 2035, a prediction they disavowed in 2010. In 2014 a study of study of 2,181 Himalayan glaciers from 2000-2011 showed that 86.6% of the glaciers were not receding. According to a 2013 study of ice cores published in Nature Geoscience, the current melting of glaciers in Western Antarctica is due to "atmospheric circulation changes" that have "caused rapid warming over the West Antarctic Ice Sheet" and cannot be directly attributed to human caused climate change. According to one of the study authors, "[i]f we could look back at this region of Antarctica in the 1940s and 1830s, we would find that the regional climate would look a lot like it does today, and I think we also would find the glaciers retreating much as they are today." According to Christian Schlüchter, Professor of Geology at the University of Bern, 4,000 year old tree remains have been found beneath retreating glaciers in the Swiss Alps, indicating that they were previously glacier-free. According to Schlüchter, the current retreat of glaciers in the Alps began in the mid-19th century, before large amounts of human caused CO2 had entered the atmosphere.
Con 12
Deep ocean currents, not human activity, are a primary driver of natural climate warming and cooling cycles. Changes in ocean currents are primarily responsible for the melting Greenland ice sheet, Arctic sea ice, and Arctic permafrost. Over the 20th century there have been two Arctic warming periods with a cooling period (1940-1970) in between. According to a 2009 study in Geophysical Research Letters, natural shifts in the ocean currents are the major cause of these climate changes, not human-generated greenhouse gases. According to William Gray, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, most of the climate changes over the last century are natural and "due to multi-decadal and multi-century changes in deep global ocean currents." Global cooling from 1940 to the 1970s, and warming from the 1970s to 2008, coincided with fluctuations in ocean currents and cloud cover driven by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) - a naturally occurring rearrangement in atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. [123] According to a 2014 article by Don Easterbrook, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University, the "PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977."
Con 13
Increased hurricane activity and other extreme weather events are a result of natural weather patterns, not human-caused climate change. According to a 2013 report from the Tropical Meteorology Project at Colorado State University, the increase in human-produced CO2 over the past century has had "little or no significant effect" on global tropical cyclone activity. The report further states that specific hurricanes, including Sandy, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and Ike, were not a direct consequence of human-caused global warming. Between 1995-2015 increased hurricane activity (including Katrina) was recorded, however, according to the NOAA, it was not the result of human-induced climate change; it was the result of cyclical tropical cyclone patterns, driven primarily by natural ocean currents. Many types of recorded extreme weather events over the past half-century have actually become less frequent and less severe. Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Judith Curry, PhD, states that she is "unconvinced by any of the arguments that I have seen that attributes a single extreme weather event, a cluster of extreme weather events, or statistics of extreme weather events" to human-caused climate change. Richard Lindzen, PhD, Emeritus Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also states that there is a lack of evidence connecting extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, or floods, to human-caused global warming. credit
Curiously, there is no mention of the effects on the climate caused by geoengineering although technically this would be considered human activity even though it is covert.
If the government admitted to geoengineering the weather they would not be able to shift the blame of these weather anomalies to the activities of the population making it unlikely to be able to roll out a carbon tax on everyone.
I saw that documentary DiCaprio made and he now works for and is one of the poster children of the UN, an organization that according to the US constitution is unconstitutional.
I'm not denying that there is some truth to climate change but merely pointing out that we may not know the whole truth and that the status quo is going to engineer and mobilize public opinion to push their agenda.
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I think the @originalworks bot needs some work still. https://climatechange.procon.org/
Whats wrong with the bot? He cited his source when he said:
Fair enough. My bad. I was skimming and missed the reference. Just saw a huge slab that had been cribbed from elsewhere. Apologies.
It happens. Take care.
You have won an @OriginalWorks resteem contest!
Thanks a lot. I've been seeing this PriginalWorks popping up from time to time. Looks like a cool initiative for finding good content. Very cool and you have a new follower. Thanks again.
Excellent post!
Right from the beginning, for me, quite some time ago, I said the issue should be framed as general pollution and lifestyle. I know I can't breathe this CO2 pollution (and many other pollutant particles) in this city air. I stay inside a lot.
Pragmatically, I think we should all err on the side of caution; which would mean we should conserve (be conservative) which well explains why corrupt corporations needed to destroy authentic conservation/conservative and come up with a new(and toxic) version of conservatism. But liberalism can't and won't do anything about our terible choices because it doesn't want to restrict anyones behavior. It's called a double-bind.
No matter, the eco-modernists have a plan and they are ideologically obssessed enough to see it through.
It's like they are trying to create fear of everything including the climate. Racing towards armageddon at breakneck speed and dividing the debate right down the middle of common sense.
The end result is a divided and easily controls population modeled right out of Owell's 1984.
You make a good point in that this issue isn't neceassarily compartmentalized and unconnected to metaphysics or the nature of reality. Things are certainly surreal.......
Equally, Brave New World, too, in that the liberalism I was mentioning has helped create a culture of amoral narcissism with all its concomitant Somas. A part of why this was done,IMO, was so a global system of debt and usury could be set-up; which leads right back to the C.C./pollution issue: the economics of such systems is fast hitting a crisis point of sustainability(see the bucko vigilante on that issue, too).....
Who is the bucko vigilante?
Steemits very own: https://steemit.com/money/@dollarvigilante/luke-rudkowski-sheds-light-on-suspicious-actions-of-google-and-domineering-media
Oh, you meant @dollarvigilante. Of course, I know who that is even before Steemit.
Interesting, climate change is definitly something I want to be aware of
Thanks 4 share
I am not sure if all these floods are "God" making but I sure do hope they are. Because if this is done by few individuals in order to control the world than we have a huge problem.
If those people can truly control the weather and create hurricanes and tornadoes than we are dealing with people who have no heart and soul. Because that is the only way I can make sense of it. They create storms which cause death and destruction without seconds thoughts. If weather control weapons do exist then it is a perfect weapon because you can always blame "God" for creating these storms and get away with pretty much anything.
I don't know what is the case. I did do some research on HAARP installations around the world but it was years back. It is a scary thing to think about if someone is using it to control the world and not actually help people with it.
Great post. Interesting subject indeed. Have a great day my friend. :)
They are changing the weather alright and unfortunately, we are dealing with people with no heart or soul. Here is a documentary about it.
thats great!
Will watch it when I grab some time. Our problems are not inventions such as HAARP but people like this using it. Because HAARP I am sure can be used to create rain in the desert areas. And to stop world hunger as we can make infertile grounds fertile again. But instead, these individuals use to create nothing but destruction with it. That is the sad truth here. @luzcypher :)
You're right. We invent something so powerful and use it to control people instead of empowering them and that has been the historical trend as far as I can see. That's why we cannot look to those in power to change the world. We must create a new world that empowers people and makes the status quo obsolete.
You'll definitely wanna check out this video.
This sounds like alarmist dribble. I can't believe Nature published it.
Umm what? It's the Corbett report
Yes, and I like his stuff. But he is talking about a post published in Nature magazine, a weekly multidisciplinary journal that usually fact checks what it publishes. In this case, they did not fact check the sources which is unusual for them.
In this video, he is basically pointing out how full of crap the article is.
Oh shit my bad it was the wrong video lol
This is the one I wanted to share.
This is a good video and shows how easy it is to fool people by frightening them.
The same thing is done by organizations like Homeland Security that passed laws like the Patriot Act after 911. Fear seems to open up the national pocket book.
Between Fiscal Year 2001-2016, homeland security appropriations are estimated to be $548 billion higher than they would have been otherwise. That's a lot of money to spend considering terrorism has not killed that many people relative to other causes of death.
Maybe we should make lawnmowers illegal.
Yup, they do the same thing here in Canada with things like bill C51.
Careful, you sound like an islawnaphobist :p
Uh gotcha.
HAARP, because America is behind everything that is a conspiracy ;) haha.
I personally think it's 50/50 that humans and also just the earth/atmosphere etc in general has the decay of the climate.
Everything naturally dies and we don't notice all the really minor changes, but add in the way some things are done by us humans and you start noticing it adds little bits extra, then we notice and people instantly claim it is just because of us.
In any case, the planet will be fine. It's humans that need saving.
hell ya!
We will soon follow in the footsteps of Mars
Reminds me of this song by Porno For Pyros called Pets. When the Martians take over humans will make great pets.
))))))) goood.