The Reality of Anthropogenic Climate Change

Humans have had a huge impact on the Earth, and it’s silly to say otherwise. You can literally see the impact from space, especially at night. Further, we are responsible for the extinction of a large number of animals, both recently and in the past. We have polluted — and cleaned up — the great lakes and the Hudson River, and there are many other places around the globe that are now terribly polluted. Air quality in most of the major cities of the United States used to be terrible, and now the air above them is mostly clear. We used to hear about the dangers of acid rain all the time, but when was the last time you even heard the term? Yet, China is now facing the same air pollution problems over its cities. We have over-fished our oceans, cleared out large swathes of rain forest, and caused deserts to expand.

So there should be no question that our burning of hydrocarbons, creating large quantities of carbon dioxide, has contributed to global warming. Annually, we release far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than do all the world’s active volcanoes, and a good eruption will certainly cause atmospheric disruption.

If we use linear models, things look desperate. Temperatures are predicted to continue to rise. Seas are predicted to rise. Droughts are predicted to spread. However, none of these linear models have ever worked out. Predictions of ice ages and mass starvation in the 1970s never happened. Quite the contrary: now we’re worried about greenhouse warming, and we now have more people than ever…