Global Warming: Fact or Fiction....
That was the topic of a fascinating lecture I attended last night. The speaker was Dr. David Dallmeyer, geologist and climatologist, from the University of Georgia. David started off his hour and a half talk with the statement, "There is global warming, fact. We are polluting the atmosphere, fact." This had the mostly conservative oil business crowd nervous about the remainder of the talk, until Dr. Dallmeyer continued, "these are facts, but we still have no real idea whether or how much the two are related".
David has studied the global warming trend with the eye of a geologist's big picture ...long term. He had some fascinating data that put earth's climatological history in perspective. The amount of data put together over the last decade is staggering and largely glossed over by the more rabid of environmental movement whose view is that man alone is causing negative climate change.
As most people realize the earth's climate has seen drastic changes before man appeared on the scene. These wanderings of the climate are caused by such things as continental drift, the wobbling of the earth, sunspots and the earth's varying orbital path around the sun. They have profound implications for our climate. What David brought home to me however was that, except probably for continental drift, the other major variables are well documented and fairly predictable.
The data that has been gleaned from deep well ice cores in Greenland and the Antarctic, which are based on carbon dioxide, methane and heat values, are remarkably similar in showing that for at least the last half million years a cycle of cooling and warming has occured regularly on about a 140,000 year time period. Based on this data we are approaching the warmest period of that cycle. So, indeed, there is global warming, but given the record David suggests that perhaps we should be more concerned about global cooling.
I was somewhat disappointed that David did not delve into data on how man's recent [geologically speaking] activities will affect the natural cycle. However I don't fault him for this, he's a scientist and this speculation would be out of the scope of his expertise. He did comment though that carbon dioxide levels are currently higher than at any period he had studied and this concerned him. I enjoyed hearing from an impartial scientist and being updated on the facts some of which are summarized here.
That was the topic of a fascinating lecture I attended last night. The speaker was Dr. David Dallmeyer, geologist and climatologist, from the University of Georgia. David started off his hour and a half talk with the statement, "There is global warming, fact. We are polluting the atmosphere, fact." This had the mostly conservative oil business crowd nervous about the remainder of the talk, until Dr. Dallmeyer continued, "these are facts, but we still have no real idea whether or how much the two are related".
David has studied the global warming trend with the eye of a geologist's big picture ...long term. He had some fascinating data that put earth's climatological history in perspective. The amount of data put together over the last decade is staggering and largely glossed over by the more rabid of environmental movement whose view is that man alone is causing negative climate change.
As most people realize the earth's climate has seen drastic changes before man appeared on the scene. These wanderings of the climate are caused by such things as continental drift, the wobbling of the earth, sunspots and the earth's varying orbital path around the sun. They have profound implications for our climate. What David brought home to me however was that, except probably for continental drift, the other major variables are well documented and fairly predictable.
The data that has been gleaned from deep well ice cores in Greenland and the Antarctic, which are based on carbon dioxide, methane and heat values, are remarkably similar in showing that for at least the last half million years a cycle of cooling and warming has occured regularly on about a 140,000 year time period. Based on this data we are approaching the warmest period of that cycle. So, indeed, there is global warming, but given the record David suggests that perhaps we should be more concerned about global cooling.
I was somewhat disappointed that David did not delve into data on how man's recent [geologically speaking] activities will affect the natural cycle. However I don't fault him for this, he's a scientist and this speculation would be out of the scope of his expertise. He did comment though that carbon dioxide levels are currently higher than at any period he had studied and this concerned him. I enjoyed hearing from an impartial scientist and being updated on the facts some of which are summarized here.
