We are all told constantly about the effects of Global Warming and the catastrophe that lies ahead if we do not do something now.  Any arguments the skeptics have made, have come with harsh criticism and seldom gets printed.  Even Al Gore called skeptics a well funded denying machine.  This, however, does not debate the points being made; it only silences them.

So lets get critical here.  The most important question of all is Global Warming real?  That depends on your definition of Global Warming, if you take the literal term as to mean the globe is warming, from 1850 to 1998 it does appear to be warming so yes.  If you mean Human Caused, well that'll take a little more work to answer. 

Global Warming is hardly a theory, it is more of an observation.  If the global climate is getting warmer it is called global warming, it the global climate is getting colder it is called global cooling.  Anthropogenic global warming on the other hand is the theory of global warming caused by human beings through the emission of greenhouse gases through personal and industrial means rather than natural. 

First lets look at a graph a good many of us are used to seeing.  It's the graph that shows global warming.  This graph is the one that most "stop the global warming" campaigners are going to show you.  The problem with this graph is it is truly too short of a time period to gather any kind of a trend.  The fact that it starts in 1850 which is the end of a time period called the little ice age tends to be the biggest problem.  If the temperatures were at an uncharacteristically low period for the Holocene Period what other way would the temperature be expected to go?  Though most rationalize using this time period because it was the start of the Industrial Revolution. 

We currently live in the Holocene Epoch, which is an interglacial period (in between ice ages).  Since the rapid warming starting back around 11,000 years ago, the temperatures have changed only moderately since.  Even the time period called the little ice age, was only a small change considering how much colder it was during a full fledged Ice Age. This graph is a representation of the Holocene period's temperature.  What is interesting about this graph however is that it appears, over a longer period of time, that we are actually cooling.

So lets review so far what we know.  If we look at the trend for 150 years or since the industrial age it appears that the climate is warming.  If we look at the climate since the start of the Holocene epoch it appears the climate is cooling.  I show you this first, to bring you to this point:  That much of what we believe comes from the perspective in which we choose to see things.  When we broaden our view the image may change.

Lets broaden our view a little bit more and while we are at it lets go ahead and get into the anthropogenic global warming debate as well.  This graph shows the last 400,000 years of Earth's climate history and also shows the CO2 history as well.  This graph may very well be the best graph to use when determining if there is a possibility this is natural or not.  It also tells a very telling story about CO2 and it's relationship to Temperature.

First thing to notice in this graph is that the temperature has a tendency to spike every 60,000 to 100,000 years.  In between those spikes are very long periods of extreme cold.  The Holocene Epoch has been going on for the last 40,000 years and has been the most stable climate period in the last 400,000 years of the Earth's history.  The next thing I notice is that at the peak of every interglacial period the CO2 emissions peak between 280 and 300 PPM.  The next thing I notice is that before the industrial age, CO2 always followed warming and reduced with cooling.  In fact in this graph, now used by the UN's IPCC in no other time has CO2 ever lead, at any point, the warming process.  So the conclusion we can make safely here is that CO2 was the effect of past warming and not the cause.  If you noticed that you'll also notice that while CO2 has continued to rise the temperature has not. 

The Anthropogenic Global Warming theory relies on the idea that pollution and CO2 build up to cause an increase in the green house effect which thereby makes for warmer temperatures outside the norm.  After looking at several graphs I have come to realize, however, that there is no such thing as norm in global temperatures and because CO2 has never preceded warming in the past, and because temperatures do not seem to be continuing to rise even though CO2 has continued to rise, makes it impossible for me to affirm the belief that current CO2 levels are driving the temperatures upward.

The study of climate is still in its infancy, and there is a great deal that is still very uncertain.  It is important that we remain leery of any conclusion given by climatologists that sound more than extremely certain.  In 2004 the IPCC's lead author, Dr Trenberth, made a public statement that suggested that Hurricane numbers and intensity would increase with global warming.  In 2008, however, the NOAA stated that there is no direct correlation between any one hurricane and global warming.  Every year it seems like a new theory in this debate is replacing an old one as it is proven incorrect.

There are many more arguments to this debate that I have spent a great deal of time studying, but will reserve those for a later date.  I, by no means, deny the concept that we are in a sense, stewards of the earth and should do our part to take care of it, but at the same time no good will come if major changes are attempted now before the technology is capable of keeping up with it.  It is also important to note that all scientists get paid and there is no difference between a scientist being paid by a politician, environmental agency (i.e. Greenpeace),bureaucrat, or fossil fuel industry; each group has their own agenda and all scientists no full well who they work for.  All science in this area is tainted to that extent as there is a lack of disinterested people to both fund and study.