I’ve been thinking about this whole concept on and off for a while now. It seemed to me, especially with a fairly adept academic knowledge of science (at least compared to the Joe Everyman), that the whole idea that humans themselves being responsible for the rising global temperature seemed too convenient to be entirely true. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for green fuel and so forth, since there is no denying that coal, oil and gas resources are finite, but I say ‘too convenient’ for two primary reasons.

The first of these is that the topic is a powerful political weapon, as it presents the wielder in an overwhelmingly positive light (assuming they carry out their promises) because it is saturated with positive morality and ethics. The fact is that this if often used for popularity rather than what is should justifiably be used for, but every time the public buy into it, and the whole process continues. Also, any science where any opposition is immediately rebuked and labelled and gas-guzzling heretic should be be supported in my opinion, since it undermines the concept of hypothesis in scienctific progress.

Obviously, this first proposal is a not a striking conclusion, but that is why I believe my second reason is the most important. Humanity, as a whole, likes to believe that we are in control of our surroundings, or at least that we have a say in the changing shape of the planet we live on. We sculpt it and pretty much ravage it for all it’s natural resources, but to be honest, to believe that we have any influence on such a literally massive attribute of the planet as climate change is simply egotistical. We need to step back from the shell we encase our invincible little species in and look at this objectively before we get wrapped up in it (Oh wait, too late). It is a known fact that the amount of CO2 our factories and power plants produce per annum still pales drastically in comparison to the amount released by nature i.e. Volcanoes, respiration of all living things, and especially the sea (I’ll get to that later). In fact, did you know that CO2 still only makes up about 0.2% of our air. This excess CO2 produced is dissolved in the sea anyway, and this where the crux of the argument comes from.

The whole backbone of the greenhouse gases argument comes from the fact that ‘excess CO2 gas is causing temperatures to rise’. Wrong. What happens if we got this the wrong way round? The truth is, and the evidence for this is taught at A Level, the Earth’s temperature rising is what CAUSES CO2 levels to rise in the air. So what is causing the Earth to warm up? Well what keeps Earth warm in the first place? The Sun of course, and you must remember that the Sun itself does not remain stationary: it in fact wobbles. One of the tried and tested laws of forces (such as gravity) is that if Object A exerts a force on Object B, then Object B also exerts a force on Object A. This happens with the Sun and all the objects that orbit around: the reason it doesn’t just fly off is because it is so massive that the forces only accumulate to a long-winded series of wobbles. This can lead to the Sun moving further from us for a number of years, even centuries. Ever heard of an Ice Age? In fact, the Earth itself is just coming out of an Ice Age. My maths teacher is a fairly old wizard of sorts, and he was telling us how when he was our age, the general public thought the world was going to freeze. Temperatures plummetted between 1945 and 1975, just when industry was reviving and rising CO2 levels should have caused the temprature to go up, according to the Greenhouse Gases theory.

Meteorological studies have been made highlighting that solar activity is responsible for a large number of atmospherical changes, even to the existence of cloud formations. In fact, a system was produced by a good old English professor (whose name escapes me at this time) that predicted weather using Solar activity: it is still more accurate than current methods, having been developed in the 80’s. So why does an increase in temperature cause CO2 levels to rise? Simple: there is an unbelieveable amount of CO2 gas dissolved in the oceans of the Earth, and when the temperature rises, the CO2 becomes less soluble and escapes. The opposite happens in the Earth cools, and this is how the Earth maintains CO2 levels, not us. The Earth is warming up all on it’s own anyway, and there is nothing we can do about it, because this is a natural cycle that it is selfish to think that we can impact.

The only possible advantage for the Earth itself of the whole Global Warming hoo-hah is that, theoretically, more money is invested in research into greener sources of energy. Hopefully this does not include attempting to generate evidence for this concept, but anything can happen with politics involved.

So where does this leave us?

The fact is that there is no evidence of the ‘Greenhouse Effect’ occuring that cannot be explained using this hypothesis, but the action that needs to be taken now is more so concerned with the ‘Fuel Crisis’ more than anything. If sensationalism is what sells, lets focus on the need for green fuels, not because it is destroying the Earth, which it is now apparent that is not, but because the fossil fuels we use at the moment are finite, and the lifestyle we enjoy needs to be maintained for future generations.

If you have made it this far by skipping the bulk of the article, please at least read this paragraph, or read this article and it’s comments, because this is a very serious issue.

My only wish when writing this article is to inform of the other side of the story that is so often covered up by the media and politicians since it just doesn’t sell. I just hope that this message can be passed onto those who matter and are brave enough to oppose general consensus so that the emphasis is on the correct needs of our modern world, not the generated, hyped ‘truth’ that has been imprinted into our psyche.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 12:48 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

« Words, Games and Oval Balls A Difficult Decision »