IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) made a surprise announcement this past week that is putting advocates of global warming on the proverbial “hot seat.”
A new study published in the Journal of Glaciology on October 29th and authored by scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and other agencies shows that ice in Antarctica grew by a net 112 billion tons of ice per year from 1992 to 2001 and by a net of 82 billion tons per year between 2002 and 2008. It continues to grow today.
This directly contradicts claims from the United Nation’s Intergovernmental on Climate Change (IPCC) and those of many other authorities on global warming that the ice has been shrinking and threatening to raise sea water levels (which also have not risen precipitously).
For the last decade, computer models have predicted that carbon produced by humanity has reached levels that would increase the greenhouse effect, trapping more heat in our atmosphere than occurs normally. The greenhouse effect is the process by which our atmosphere collects and captures solar radiation allowing for hospitable temperatures necessary to sustain life on the Earth. Without it, our planet would be just another frozen ice ball circling the Sun.
Global warming theory projects that excess carbon dioxide put into our atmosphere by human activity, including the use of fossil fuels, will when a certain level is reached, cause the planet to warm and change our climate. Among the predicted effects are the increase in global temperatures, melting of the polar ice caps, increased severity in weather activity, and the raising of sea water levels potentially inundating existing dry land across the globe.
This has been the theory for over 20 years now and 90 percent of the computer models used to predict these occurrences have consistently assured us that this is happening.
Unfortunately for the models, it apparently isn’t. The IPCC has admitted that there has been no apparent warming for the last 15 years, defying the computer simulations that predicted unfettered warming as atmospheric carbon has continue to increase dramatically. The only recent counter perspective to these observations were presented in a study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where the agency admitted to adjusting reported temperature levels. (This study is now under investigation by Congress, but NOAA is refusing to turn over their data for review.)
But, even if the temperature data from NOAA is correct, and dozens of others are wrong, according to the theory the effects of the increases in CO2 should be creating the projected changes predicted by the climate change models. As NASA has shown conclusively, Antarctic ice continues to grow. Arctic ice is growing as well. The last decade of North American Hurricane seasons have been the quietist in years. And while California continues to deal with an ongoing drought, it is little more severe than previous drought conditions the state enters every two decades assisted by nonexistent forest management policies in the state.
This all begs the question: How long can alarmist rhetoric in support of climate change theory continue before the public begins to doubt it? Not long according to National Polling. According to the Pew Center, concern for climate change has been steadily declining since 1997.
Apparently, having scientists, politicians, and the media focus on apocalyptic catastrophes that failed to take place like Al Gore’s prediction that the ice caps would be gone two years ago, and the major movie flops like Water World have taken their toll on public perception.
The public is in for even bigger surprises as states like California go it alone on unmanageable green energy requirements that will dramatically increase energy and consumer product costs for California residents just as their low-carbon mandates have done for gasoline.
So while climate change is real because no one actually believes that climate does not change, skepticism about the actual effect of humans in a global weather system continues to grow as does the social and economic costs of battling the purported danger.
Planet Earth has over history witnessed far colder and hotter climates than the planet is currently experiencing. Expensive solar panels and windmills aren’t likely to change that reality.
Even NASA can no longer ignore the science.
