IS GLOBAL WARMING REALLY REAL?

Pretty much since I can remember and I’m sure you all can attest to this, but I have heard or been warned about the effects of global warming and how it will ultimately be earth’s downfall. Taking a closer look, that may not necessarily be the case.

The Human Effect - , significant rise in

temperature over the past 250 years, as well as the brief

and sporadic (but sometimes intense) cold spells, can

be explained by a combination of volcanoes and human

greenhouse gas emissions. Volcanoes are important; they

are the one natural factor that can sway temperature. But

their effect is temporary.

Most people who deny that human activity is warming the planet just dismiss a massive body of scientific evidence as a big hoax.

But there’s a more sophisticated set of climate “skeptics” who make arguments that, at least to the lay ear, sound like they’re grounded in scientific evidence. And because most of us lack the background to evaluate their claims, they can muddy the waters around an issue that’s been settled in the scientific community.

“The thing to remember here is that scientists aren’t idiots,” says Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University and winner of this year’s Louis J. Battan Author’s Award from the American Meteorological Society.

Dessler was responding to a study conducted by Anthony Watts, a former TV weatherman and prominent climate denier, for the Heartland Institute, which has received funding from the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil.

In 2009, Watts claimed that 90 percent of the stations used to monitor the earth’s surface temperature were positioned in places where they were prone to artificially inflated readings — near heat sources, for example.

“This was a big issue maybe four or five years ago,” says Dessler. “In fact, this was the issue the skeptics were touting. But if you look at the peer-reviewed literature, this was stuff that was answered years ago.

Another way we can tell that the Earth has been warming is by seeing the thermometer records from all over the world over the past century and a half. The Earth’s average temperature has risen more then 1 degree Fahrenheit and over twice that in parts of the arctic. Now this doesn’t mean that temperatures haven’t differed among regions of the globe or different seasons just for being in different parts of the world but if you average out the temperatures over the course of a year, you can easily see the temperatures creeping up.

NIKOLASS