The fact is that the earth is warming. Glaciers are melting, and most importantly, the earth’s weather patterns are beginning to change. Northwest United States, which in some parts had over 150 glaciers in the early 1910s, now has less than 40. Some areas of the Arctic ocean that had been impassable now can be transited from the Atlantic to the Pacific. So much of the Arctic is melting that Polar bears can no longer move from one area to another in the Summer because of so much open ocean.
The “greenhouse effect” which is when certain gases trap heat into the atmosphere is not a new phenomenon. And that is important. We have known about this effect for about 200 years. But it was really not a problem until recently. But we have been studying the effects of gases on the environment for a solid 100 years plus, so atmospheric scientists have understood the process for a long time. It is important to point out that while the cause may be global warming, the effect is merely a change in the climate pattern, not necessarily warming in all parts of the globe.
In recent decades. the stability of the climate that had been in place for about a thousand years began slowly to change. Scientists who noticed this also knew that the range of temperatures had become very narrow, as opposed to those times long ago when, for example, large ice sheets covered the American Continent. As the temperatures continued to rise, even before the average person could have recognized it, scientists studying the matter realized that the single difference was the tremendous increase in carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide in the air coincided with the rapid increase in global temperature.
Scientists began to study the matter and determined that, if this rise continued at a pace that normally would take tens of thousands of years, and was happening in mere decades, something was causing it and that something, at this point and after much global scientific inquiry, can only be the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
As cynical as it sound, considering we are talking about some very serious consequences, we do have people around the world but particularly in the United States who are so selfish that they literally do not care what happens to their fellow man or to their own children. People like Rush Limbaugh, in order to support the point of view of his associates in big oil and coal and in the Republican Party who pander to these groups, lies every day about global warming. It is harsh to say someone reaching supposedly millions of people a day actually “lies” to them about such important matters, but there is no other way to say it. It is reprehensible.
Many people have read that of the years with the highest record temperatures, eleven of them have occurred in the last 12 years. It is, however, much more impressive to see the results of global warming on a chart. When you do, you will see the climate going along at a relatively modest climb over time, but then shooting straight up in the last ten years.
Certainly one can understand how climatologists, working in very small percentages of an increase, say, for example, the modest 5 degrees of increase over the entire time since the end
