Warming to Climate Change (I)

ANOTHER EVIDENCE of God's existence is the apparently built-in need mankind feels to seek a "higher power." But with the traditional God effectively dismissed by a modern secular society, a vacuum has been created, abhorred by nature. Enter the new god (a dismally ineffective and wholly uninspiring god): the god of Global Climate Change.

The GCC god, however, is still a woefully traditional god who demands unquestioning obedience of its believers. "The debate is over," says the Al Gore, High Priest of GCC, and everyone must bend the knee or be labeled a "denier" and a heretic.

In order to be considered orthodox, one must also know the core doctrines of the Church of GCC (formerly the Church of Global Warming), the chief doctrine of which, the one worshipped in the sanctum sanctorum of the GCC Temple, is that the earth is warming and mankind is to blame.

The genius of many frauds is to link a truth with a falsehood in order to legitimize the latter. The earth is likely warming just now, but is it really mankind's fault or just the cyclical ebb and flow of temperature?

The High Priest, in his gospel Earth in the Balance, asserts that carbon dioxide levels are dangerously high, a large contributor to global warming, and that mankind is the culprit. But before we are baptized into the religion and forced to live in caves and hunt saber-tooth tigers for dinner, let's examine more closely this article of faith.

The truth is, greenhouse gases are a small part of the earth's atmosphere but are critical to making the planet hospitable. Without them, the earth and the moon would be twins. Mankind adds to the level of greenhouse gases by burning fossil fuels and deforestation. High Priests in the Church of GCC believe this has caused the present warming trend. But has it?

Greenhouse gases form less than 2% of the earth's atmosphere. The rest is made up of nitrogen, oxygen, argon, etc. And CO2 and other trace gases are only 5% of the greenhouse gases. The other 95% is water vapor. Humans contribute less than 4% of the annual CO2 emissions; the other 96% comes from nature. And so humans add about one-quarter of one percent to the total greenhouse effect. Almost 5% is attributable to oceans, volcanoes, decaying plants, and animal activity. The other 95% is merely water vapor (clouds and rain).

One of the hallmarks of a "true" religion is its permanence. Truth is not usually a flavor of the month. So how have CO2 levels changed over time? Are the levels today higher than in the past? Well, 600 million years ago, during the Cambrian Period, atmospheric CO2 was in excess of 7,000 parts per million. What is it today? .03ppm. Indeed, it has been steadily declining during the entire span of life on earth.

During the age of the dinosaurs, the average temperature was about 18 degrees F warmer than today. As recently as 20 million years ago, the temperature was about the same as during the Cambrian Period, 600 million years ago. It simply tracks up and down within a 20 degree range, even as CO2 levels steadily declined over the same period of time. Therefore, there is no relationship between CO2 levels and temperature.

The earth is a giant analog clock, the hands continually re-tracing their paths across recurrent cycles of heating and cooling. Over the last 400,000 years, there have been five major warming phases, followed by lesser warming and cooling periods. Various ice ages generally last about 100,000 years, interrupted by warming periods lasting about 10,000 years. We are currently at the tail end of a warming period.

What comes next? Why Global Cooling, of course. Get out your parka!

NEXT: Following the second hand into the present... and future.