In the past 152 years, the average temperature worldwide has risen by a little over 1ºC. This may not seem like a large amount, but it has caused other problems. The ice caps are melting, causing sea level to rise. It is predicted that if the world continues to warm at this rate for another 300 years, most of Southern England will be entirely underwater. While flooding London may not seem a bad idea, it means that hundreds of thousands – even millions – of people will be left homeless. At least – this is what we are told.
The media constantly presents an image of our world groaning under too much pollution, too many cars and too many people. We are always being told to recycle and to walk everywhere we can. While I am not saying that we should go and cut down the rainforests and give up using our legs as a form of transport, I do not believe that we have been given all of the resources needed to make an informed decision on whether or not we have any effect on global warming.
There have been many ice ages throughout history; the oldest one that modern technology can trace occurred 2300 million years ago. The technical term for these is ‘glacials’, and the periods between ice ages are know as ‘interglacials’. Many meteorologists believe that we are currently experiencing an interglacial. They are not sure why, but believe it to be the result of the earth tilting on its axis as it orbits the sun. This tilting is very slow, but can bring the earth closer to the sun, resulting in an interglacial, or further away from the sun, resulting in a glacial. This would mean that global warming is a perfectly natural phenomenon, and the earth has been changing temperature ever since it was first formed. This would mean that global warming is entirely beyond our control, and the minute amounts of carbon dioxide that we emit have little, if any, effect on the world’s temperature.
The data that supports the theory of man causing global warming is also very unreliable. We do not yet know if sunspots have any effect on our world’s temperature, but until we discount every single variable, we cannot possibly assume that man is causing global warming by using his car to get to work. It may be many years until we have sufficient scientific evidence to discover the effects that all of the different variables have on our world’s climate.
Some scientists also suggest that we are worrying unnecessarily. Although the temperature has risen over the past century, research in Iceland and Greenland shows that in past interglacials the temperature has risen as rapidly as 7ºC in 7 years. This research also provides evidence of huge amounts of global warming over 1000 years ago – 900 years before cars, the Industrial Revolution and planes, which are all supposed to be today’s main contributors to carbon dioxide levels.
As I said previously, we are constantly being urged to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions. Treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol aim to help countries reduce their carbon dioxide levels and thus reduce global warming. However, nature pollutes itself more than humans pollute the world. In 1980 Mount St Helen’s erupted, releasing 910 000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is as much as all of the United Kingdom produces in one year! Fossil fuels are also cited as being the major culprits of global warming. However, termites produce 2 times the amount of carbon dioxide that is released by burning fossil fuels each year. Volcanoes are constantly erupting, and animals contribute huge amount of carbon dioxide every single year. Against such staggering statistics, it does not seem likely that mankind is solely responsible for the warming of our climate.
Scientific models are often used to predict what the world’s temperature will be in another 100 years or so. However, these are often hopelessly inaccurate – global temperature has increased by less than half the amount that was predicted a few years ago. So many variables must be taken into consideration when predicting the climate that it is almost impossible to be correct. After all, if we cannot even predict next week’s weather correctly, what is the possibility of us predicting next millennium’s weather correctly? Temperature readings taken on the earth’s surface are also very inaccurate, due to the ‘urban heat island’ effect. Large cities, for example London, generate huge amounts of heat that influence the land many miles away. This makes almost any temperature reading inaccurate, leading to incorrect predictions for our planet’s future. This has also led to some people questioning the very existence of global warming, as some parts of the world have actually cooled in recent decades. North America is getting colder every year, and so some scientists have hypothesised that global warming is merely a political scapegoat for natural phenomenon, as it means that the politician can appear to have some degree of control over a natural disaster.
We must also consider the fact that without global warming we would probably not exist. When the earth was first formed, it was merely boiling hot lava. However, as this cooled carbon dioxide was given off, along with water vapour. The water vapour condensed on the now solid rock, and carbon dioxide dissolved into it, giving off oxygen. Over a huge period, an atmosphere was created, which allowed evolution to occur, eventually leading to the birth of the modern man. Without the warming and cooling of earth’s atmosphere we would not exist, and so global warming may just be a natural method of sustaining life on this planet.
As you can see, the evidence against man’s contribution to global warming is overwhelming. Therefore, I ask you – next time you see a news report on how cars are causing the icecap to melt, think twice about what they are saying. Most people have been given a very one-sided view of global warming and refuse to accept the possibility that it is merely the result of earth tilting on its axis or of volcanic eruptions and sunspots. I hope that you have the scope of imagination to reject the narrow-minded view, and make your own decision as to whether man has any effect on global warming.
Thank you.
Bibliography
· www.wrongscience.com
· Geography A Level by Kris Spencer and Garret Nagle
· Environmental Geography by Keith Grimwade
· A Level Geography notes (relative’s own) and Degree Level Geography notes (courtesy of Nottingham University)
· Deutschland Hier und Jetzt by Gisele Schladebach
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