Slarty's World

I am at a point where I am unclear about what to think about global warming. A year ago, I would have said that it is clear that global warming is a legit worry and that we should be taking action. Some action, as an insurance policy against human doom. To be clear, this is a human issue to me. The planet will survive – it is not going anywhere.

The debate goes on in and in the US, in particular, it has become such a political hot-potato that people’s view’s are so polar that I think that science and reasonableness has been thrown out the window. Al Gore won a peace prize ( a political animal in itself) for his work in promoting global warming. In his movie, he spends considerable time with this monstrous CO2/Temperature graph. Gore uses this graph to make the point that CO2 in the atmosphere is an indicator of future changes in global temperature – because if you look historically, the temperature graph matches (with a bit of a lag) the CO2 level graph over the past 600,000 years. Basically, if CO2 goes up, the overall earth temperature goes up. He then shows that his model shows the CO2 levels are going to go through the roof in the next 50 years – indicating that global temperature will go through the roof.

I would be interested in what peoples thoughts are on this argument. Over the next week or so, I am going to do some reading and try to make up my mind on if this particular argument hold water. If it does, I will post reasons why I think this, if not, I will post reasons why not and propose a new argument. I figure by the end of summer, I will have put this issue to bed. And by this, I mean global warming.