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MAKING CENTS OUT OF THE NEWS
Blog #01
(January 5th, 2012)
“Cooling It” on Global Warming
By Tom McAllister, CFP®
Last month at a meeting held in the beautiful warm city of Durban, South Africa, the coalition of countries concerned about global warming fell apart. Canada, of all previously committed green countries, withdrew from the Kyoto Accord of 1996. This was a proposed agreement between a majority of countries in the world which the Clinton administration originally signed, but which the United States Senate never took up for ratification. Its key flaw was the failure to include China, India, and a raft of other heavily polluting countries. The agreement would have crippled many U.S. manufacturers, who have already cleaned up their act, while doing nothing at a;; about the really bad guys.
I’ve been to mainland China a half a dozen times, and the pollution there is worse than I remember here in America during and right after World War II. At that time most people and almost all industry and business burned coal. A dark grey pall hung over most cities of any size, and visibility often was just a few miles. That is how it still is in much of China now.
It’s been puzzlement to me, this ferocious debate over climate change and global warming. Led by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and a number of “scientists,” a variety of alarmists have been calling for a number of highly expensive “cures” for the global warming problem.
I remain skeptical – does no one recall this same crowd, thirty years ago, being equally concerned about the global climate cooling? Discovery of so-called scientific studies has served only to deepen my doubts. No climatologists I know of (you know, the kind who have doctorates in weather), has ever accepted the theory. New facts I found just about scuttle the expectation of global warming bringing calamities to my descendants.
Allow me to assure you – I have no doubt the earth is, in fact, warming and that it has been doing so for many decades. I accept, too, the claim that these temperature changes are excessive compared to those in prior periods on record. Going far back, I realize that at one point the southern edge of the glaciers in North America covered my home here in central Indiana, ending about 40-50 miles south of where I sit composing this blog. That was the great ice age, and it formed the topography of our continent.
An article in a recent issue of Forbes magazine (12/5/11) by Dr. James Taylor explains in detail why current climate commentary is misleading. The entire recorded history of global temperatures spans only some 130 years. The “Little Ice Age” began in the 1300s and ended around 1900, or just a few years after global temperature records began to be kept. These temperatures have risen since then, but are still below average on an historic basis! Climate data from a variety of studies, including ice cones drilled from the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets; show that average global temperatures over the past 10,000 years (roughly the known life of the human race) have been warmer on average than they are today!
Dr. Taylor points out in his article that warmer global temperatures have always been better for human civilization than colder ones. The Little Ice Age featured plagues, crop failures, famines, extreme weather, and human population contractions. By contrast, during the past century, as global temperatures were increasing, forests have expanded, deserts have retreated, soil moisture has improved, crops have flourished, and extreme weather events such as hurricanes and tornados have become less frequent.
The twenty-four hour news channels and the internet have directed us to a fear that cataclysm is inevitable. Real world experience says otherwise. Civilization thrived during warmer periods than this in the past, and higher temperatures did not trigger the so-called “tripping posts” to send our planet into climate-based catastrophe. Therefore we have little reason to believe our present moderately warming earth is poised on the precipice of disaster.
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