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No evidence of man-made global warming?

If mankind were ever to face what one recent author has called “The Uninhabitable Earth,” deniers of manmade climate change would likely say: “The Earth died a natural death. Climate has always changed in cycles because of natural causes, and that is all that is happening today.” As one commentator put it, “That’s like finding a dead body with a knife in its back and concluding that it died of natural causes because people died of natural causes in the past.” The question here isn’t whether the Earth has experienced similarly warm and even warmer temperatures in the past caused exclusively by natural forces. It has.

The question is, rather, what is the most determinative cause of global warming now? On the basis of decades of research worldwide, climate scientists have overwhelmingly shown that the usual suspects, natural forces, are not the dominant driver of current global warming and do not explain most observed global warming. They have provided empirical and circumstantial evidence from the “DNA” of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere that the current warming cycle is caused predominantly by an overabundance of greenhouse gases.

Climatologists have ruled out natural causes as the predominate cause of global warming. For instance, is the culprit the Earth’s orbit? No, the Earth’s cycle is not the prime driver. The Earth is going through a relatively cool orbital phase and the Earth’s warming period is happening despite this cool orbital phase. NASA, for example, reports empirical observations that prove that “the influence of orbital changes on global temperatures over 125 years is negligible.”

Is the culprit the sun’s energy output? No, the sun’s energy has decreased since the 1980s but the Earth keeps warming faster than before. Though it’s true that “over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the number of sunspots,” at its LISRID site, the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics presents a summary of empirical data demonstrating that “over the last 35 years, the sun has shown a cooling trend; however, global temperatures continue to increase.”

Is the culprit volcanic eruptions? The U. S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) provides empirical evidence that “the burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 34 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year worldwide. But fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes. So, volcanic CO2 discharges could be considered only a bit player in contributing to the recent changes observed in the concentration of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.”

Reviews of peer-reviewed papers on natural forces provide similar empirical evidence about other natural warming drivers for those willing to go to the bother of a little study. Deforestation has a slight warming effect; ozone pollution has a minimal effect; sulfate aerosols from coal mining have a modest cooling effect of global temperatures. All possible known natural causes of current increasing average atmospheric and oceanic temperatures have been systematically and scientifically measured and eliminated as causes.

In addition, climate science provides empirical evidence that man’s activities leading to excessive CO2 in the atmosphere today is the cause of global warming and not the result of global warming. There are many lines of evidence affirming man’s contributions to climate change which are empirical and circumstantial. They include a combination of recorded observations and measurements as well as circumstantial evidence, all considered as scientific as DNA and fingerprints are in forensics.

Chemists can tell the difference between CO2 released naturally by plants and animals and CO2 from burning fossil fuels. And while only a tiny percent of the worlds’ atmosphere is made up of manmade CO2, it can ultimately turn as deadly as a trace of cyanide in a gallon of water. The troubling and rapid increase in this minute fraction has occurred over the last 250 years, the era during which fossil-fuel burning really took off.

Based on Antarctic ice core data, we know that changes in CO2 follow changes in temperatures from about 600 to 1000 years. Mainstream climatologists explain that “as ocean temperatures rise, oceans release CO2 into the atmosphere. In turn, this release amplifies the warming trend, leading to yet more CO2 being released. In other words, increasing CO2 levels become both the cause and effect of further warming

No scientific body of national or international scientists rejects the findings of human-induced effects on climate change. No scientific body of national or international standing … maintains a formal opinion explicitly denying any of the following main points:

“1. The Earth’s climate system is unequivocally warming. 2. These changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. 3. This warming is predominantly caused by humans. 4. This warming mainly arises from increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. 4. Natural change has had little effect on this phenomenon. 5. Increasing magnitudes of [global] warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts.”

This statement has the publicly expressed support of every survey of active climate researchers and what is found in climatological literature. It has the support of every national and international academy and association of science, every physical and chemical society, every meteorological and oceanic society, every biological and life sciences organization, and every health organization that has addressed the subject. A dozen or so scientific organizations including the American Meteorological Society have explicitly used the term “scientific consensus” in referring to the points listed above. I tend to trust their view because it is based on the research, conclusions and findings of active peer-reviewed and published climate experts.

If one could present a fact-based case against the evidence of manmade global warming it would be a great service to the scientific community. But to state that there is no evidence of such is pure folly and cannot be taken seriously.

The world is not dying of natural causes. It is being murdered.

TIM MANNELLO

Williamsport

Submitted via email

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