What on earth is the Greenhouse Effect or Why Global Warming isn't happening

    Since carbon dioxide contributes to the greenhouse effect, if the greenhouse gas concentration was significantly lower, earth would be colder. If the concentration of greenhouse gas were much greater, the greenhouse effect would warm the earth up too much, causing problems with the ecological balance. This is what some environmentalists have termed global warming.

    Now despite the fact that you usually hear the terms “Global Warming” and “Greenhouse Effect” side by side, please realize that they are two completely different things. The greenhouse effect is a very beneficial physical process for us. Indeed, without it, life could not exist!

    Global Warming, however, is the result of too much Greenhouse effect. In other words, while the greenhouse effect is a good thing, Global Warming is too much of a good thing!

    If data seem to indicate that global warming is not happening, and if scientists agree that it has been much warmer in the past than it is now, why does the media seen to say that global warming is happening? There are a few possible reasons.

1.                  Most people who talk about the earth’s ecosystems really do not understand them very well. Thus, they tend to use their own personal experiences and attempt to relate those experiences to the earth as a whole. For example, a large ice sheet in the Antarctic Peninsula, the Larsen B ice shelf, has experienced a remarkable decline in size over the past few years. The problem is that the west Antarctic ice sheet has been thickening over the past few years. Thus, while the Antarctic Peninsula is getting warmer, the western part of the Antarctic is getting cooler. It turns out that Antarctica has actually been cooling since the 1960s. Does that mean global cooling is happening? Of course not! It just means that when you talk about global warming, you must consider the entire earth, not just one part of it.

2.      Another problem is that people who have a political agenda to push can often distort the facts in order to make their point more persuasive.

3.      Finally, to believe that global warming is occurring, you are forced to rely on the least reliable data and ignore the most reliable data. That is not good scientific practice. The best scientific conclusion to make, then, is that global warming is not happening, at least not in any significant way.

 (c) 2/4/12