AN ESSAY ABOUT THE GLOBAL WARMING/CLIMATE CHANGE FRENZY
Every few months some agency of the United States Government, the United Nations Intergovernmental on Climate Change or a professional organization issues another report on climate change/global warming. All of these reports have two things in common: they predict severe consequences as a result of climate change and they place the blame on the activities of our civilization’s use of fossil fuels. This Essay is written as a climate skeptic’s response to those documents which are always given widespread coverage in the national media.
AN ESSAY ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
By John Coleman
Written in November 2014
American Meteorological Society Professional Meteorologist for many years
Awarded the AMS Award as Broadcast Meteorologist of the Year
First Weathercaster on ABC’s Good Morning America
Founder of The Weather Channel.
Weather forecaster for over 60 years
“Climate Change is happening.” You bet it is. The climate of planet Earth has been constantly changing for as long as we have any records. Look at the chart below.
This chart of data obtained from Ice Cores collected near the South Pole displays the longest known record of the climate of Earth. It goes back 400,000 years. Just look as the continuous pattern of changes ranging from very large to rather small. The four big dips are Ice Ages and the four big peaks are what we know as Interglacial Periods. The ice ages are very hostile to human life. It is during the warm periods that life flourishes. We are very lucky to be living our lives during one of the warmer periods of Earth’s history. Clearly the civilized activities of mankind including the burning of fossil fuels had nothing to do with these historic changes, large and small. After all, our modern times are covered by the last little squiggle on the right hand side of the chart. Can you look at this chart and identify Earth’s normal climate? Certainly we can compute the average, but is average the same as normal? I don’t think so.
Now let’s look at a chart of the last 11,000 years since the last Ice Age ended and we moved into the Interglacial Period. This is the period in which civilization has developed and flourished. The most difficult time was the little Ice Age from about 1550 to about 1800. Look at the tiny, little warm period on the extreme right hand side of the chart. It is during this period that our civilization began to make extensive use of fossil fuels for heating, cooling, electrical generation and to power internal combustion and eventually jet engines. Please note that this current warm spell looks no different than the others during the last 11,000 years.
Here is a chart of this last 1,000 years.
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