A Conservative's view on Global Warming.

This might be a heavy subject for EBW, but I'm tired of hearing liberals paraphrase what Conservatives claim about Global Warming so I'd like to clear the air, shall I say?

1. We realize the temperatures are warming up and are not claiming the atmosphere is getting colder or staying the same.

2. We recogonize that CO2 has an involvement in those temperatures.

3. We know that CO2 levels have increased over the last 100 years by about 35% based on the ice core samples taken at the poles.

4. We know the ice caps are receding.

5. We know that the sea levels have rose slightly.

Now here are some other facts that is not widely known by most liberals and probably a decent amount of conservatives:

1. Temperatures measured before 1975 are not accurate enough or cover a wide enough area to detect the subtle changes in temperature that we are talking about.  Now we have satelites.  Before that we used thermometers scattered around land masses at ground level, weather balloons, and before that, we are literally measuring tree rings and water levels.

2. CO2 coincides with temperature changes historically, but as a positive feedback, meaning that temperature changes tend to be first caused by something else and CO2 just exasperates the problem.  At no time in history can we look back and say CO2 caused that ice age or warm period.  CO2 levels ALWAYS followed temperature changes.

3. The IPCC report has failed every time to predict the temperature changes we have seen.  According to the IPCC we should have seen warming over the last 10 years but instead temperatures have stabilized.

4. At no time in history has temperatures been stable.  We are exiting an ice age that lasted a short time.  If climate didn't change, we might still be seeing strange things like glaciers in Yosemite and the ice caps below the Bering Straight.  If you live anywhere north of Memphis, you'd be under 200 feet of ice.

5. Sea levels rose, but by way less than what most scientist predicted.

6. We have very little information on how much clouds have an effect on climate.  Ever been outside on a hot sunny day when a cloud passes over?  It gets much cooler.  We are still compling cloud cover trends to see if cloud cover has changed.

7. CO2 makes up an extrodinarily small amount of our atmosphere, measured in parts per billion. (400:1,000,000,000)

8. The most effective greenhouse gas is water vapor, and it is measured in percent, or parts per 100. (2:100)

9. Ice caps have been receding for about 100,000 years.  Temperature changes today will take decades to penetrate the ice.

These are a few of the things I could think of at the moment, but my mind at 1:30 a.m. isn't what is in the day.

Politics should have nothing to do with Global Warming.  We have a few years worth of really good data and we can't make predictions for 100 years yet, let alone 10.  If you are going to argue about Global Warming I suggest you read at least some of the IPCC reports, and compare graphs from last years with graphs from the first report and notice the estimates have been off each year, always predicting higher temperatures than what was recorded.

Uploaded 08/29/2008
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