Global Warming, the myth?

I feel it is time to take this debate now, to explain myself, argue my point and elaborate how I think: I don't believe in global warming! Or rather that global warming is due to human activity.

a. I don't believe that human activity affects the weather on a global scale. I find it narcissistic to believe that we can, no matter how much we try, affect something that big. I find the arguments of proof of this to be lacking; mainly the statistics of temperature change. The thing is that we only have widespread reliable measurements since the late 19th century, i.e. less than 150 years. And the temperature of the earth is something that varies on a geological and astronomical scale, i.e. in periods of thousands or even millions of years. People today often speak of how weird the weather is and that each year has some extreme; last year for example it was the coldest winter in like ever and this year it was the warmest winter in like the same ever. For me this is definitely true, I have in my lifetime never experienced a colder winter than last year and neither have I experienced a more temperate winter than this year.

But I’m only 30 years old and I remember when I was young how people talked about the wicked winter of 1979 when snow piled up so high you could ride your sledding from the rooftops of Bjärred (in Southern Sweden). Not to speak of the winter of 1658 (often spoken of as the little ice-age) when it was so cold that the Swedish armies of Karl X could walk over the straits between Scania and Denmark and took the Danish king Frederik III by surprise.

b. And then there is the supposed relation between human activity and geological activity. I’m talking about how some people draw parallels between pollution, global warming and earth quakes. How people as soon as there is news of a natural disaster comments that there are more natural disasters these days. The hint is actually in the name, they are natural! I found it ridiculous and again extremely narcissistic that someone could believe that we humans could actually affect how the continental platforms move. And I shouldn’t even have to argue that even on as short a period of time as a hundred years the average frequency of earth quakes of various powers is followed pretty accurately. And again these are geological effects which should be viewed in periods of hundreds of thousands of years rather than decades. The only thing that is more frequent is the information we get about these disasters.

c. Notice that I’ve completely left out the fact that the ice around the poles of the earth are melting. That is because I don’t see any proof of the relation between the melting of the global icecaps and human activity. Earth is getting warmer though; there is no doubt of that. The changes to the sea-ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic region affects mainly the local fauna which is not really noticed by us unless you watch nature shows. But the indirect effect of melting sea-ice is that it accelerates the warming; ice is white and reflects sunlight while water is dark and absorbs it, basically creating a vicious circle where the more ice that melts the warmer it will get and the more ice will melt.

Directly worse for us is the melting of the land-ice in these regions. Most prominent is the land-ice of Greenland which all in all would raise the sea level of the world seas by over 7m (which would probably put my family home underwater!). And this is nothing compared to the ice sheet on the Antarctic continent which is ten times as much as the Greenland ice sheet. The Greenland ice sheet is melting/flowing into the sea at a fairly fast rate, but this process will still take hundreds of years, by which time the trend might have changed (in either direction).

Another secondary effect of the melting ice is changes to the ocean currents. The only reason the area I live in, and actually most of Europe, is at all habitable is because of the Atlantic Gulfstream. Sweden is actually so far north that it far north the American border, way into Canada by comparison, or similarly in Russian Siberia, areas that are nearly completely inhabitable. Not to speak of the Swedish capital Stockholm which is already on level with the Northwest Territories in Canada, Alaska and, well still Siberia. And Europe is still habitable even far North of Stockholm and people live far into to Arctic Circle. Southern Europe is also affected; take Madrid for example, which is on the same Latitude as both Beijing and New York, both cities with cold winters (I’ve been in Beijing when the temperature was below -20 centigrade), while Madrid very rarely have temperatures below 0 (average temperature in Madrid in December and January is just below 10 centigrade).

So back to that secondary effect, how the warming up of the polar caps and the melting ice (both sea-ice and land-ice) could potentially change the ocean currents over time. This is also very much a geological phenomenon and will most likely be a gradual change over hundreds or even thousands of years, but even small changes to these currents can cause great changes to the local climate in some parts of the world, like for example here in Sweden.

d. Having said this I still believe pollution is bad and that we should be more environmentally concerned than we are. Pollution is bad and the way I see it there are more direct effects than global warming. For example there are local health problems; I’ve noticed while living in severely polluted areas that people seem sicker, they age faster and feel worse. There could of course be other factors to this, like overwork and stress, which seems to be coinciding with pollution more often than not.

I have a personal experience however; I seem to have contracted an allergy to some kind of pollution. I noticed a couple of years ago that I had a constant cough and runny nose that I at the time blamed on a cold. After seeing a doctor who stated that I did not have a cold, that it was probably an allergy and gave me antihistamines. The drugs worked and I got better. Now that is not much of an argument that it was caused by pollution, that argument is that while I needed to take the drugs daily while living in a polluted there is no effect at all where I’m living now. This could of course also be attributed to other factors.

My main argument is then that pollution feels bad. After living in an extremely polluted area for nearly a year, where the local geography and climate made it even worse, I could feel the harsh treatment of my throat and lungs and there were few things I craved more than fresh clean air.

Even in places that are not considered comparably polluted you can feel a difference. For example while going on skiing trips to northern Sweden the air feels cleaner than it does at home in the South. The South of Sweden is still like a polished white surface compared to the sooth-black air many other places in the world.

e. I don’t believe in global warming but I do believe in local warming; I have lived in a big city where in the city itself the temperature very rarely drops below 0 degrees centigrade, outside the city, only a couple of tens of kilometers, however the temperature seems to be several degrees lower. And this corresponds to historical readings, where only a few decades before it used to be that cold where the city is too.

Another very obvious effect of pollution is sooth. When you have to wash of a thick layer of sooth from your balcony at least once per month there is obviously a problem.

f. Having said all this I think there are things we can do about it. For example when it is cold in warm places (does that make sense?) it tends to “feel” much colder. I’ve discussed this with local people and argued that where I come from it is much colder but I will still be warmer, for which I’m always (yes always, every single time) counted with that we have central heating systems. Actually, we don’t. Apartment complexes often have, but not always. We do have heating though. But, to be honest I had eating in those warm places that were cold too. The difference is not about heating, it is about insulation. Warming up places with heat pumps, infrared heaters or various other heaters doesn’t help much if you don’t have any insulation to speak of. I still don’t understand the idea to build huge buildings without any insulation, sure it is more expensive to build but you must make up for that in reduced heating, and cooling, costs. Yes, cooling costs too. When the outdoors temperature is 35 centigrade and the humidity over 98% every single household will start blasting their air conditioners, and with poor insulation a lot of this cooling goes to waste. The best way to be warm is to stay warm, not to heat up.

Like I said in the beginning, I don’t believe in global warming from human activity. Earth is getting slightly warmer though and the polar caps are melting. And pollution is still bad and we should do all we can to not waste energy or materials.