On October 5, 2007, the New York Yankees took on the Cleveland Indians in a Divisional Series match up. The Yanks had Andy Pettitte, one of the world's best big game pitchers on the mound. At least they had him in there for over six innings before turning the ball over to their outstanding rookie middle relief man, Joba Chamberlain.
Chamberlain, as he had done so many times during the year, put the Indians down quickly in the seventh to help Pettitte and the Yankees escape a jam and hold onto their 1-0 lead in the contest.
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But then came the eighth inning. Chamberlain went out there and started swatting away. No – he wasn't batting.
Rather, he was swatting away the insects. There were so many it was absurd. Never before could anyone remember such a thing occurring. Swarms of midges, no doubt brought on by the unusual heat in Cleveland, relegated Chamberlain to half the pitcher he usually is. Though he wouldn't admit it, it was the bugs that caused him to give up the tying run to his adversaries.
The Indians won the game in extra innings. However, that's not what this article is about. Here's the thing: Most people, Al Gore especially, would have you believe that the strange heat we're experiencing right now is due to the growth of greenhouse gasses.
There are certainly some scientists that agree with this as well.
That said, there are other scientists who are simply not on board. Although absolutely no one can deny that it is unusually hot in some areas of the United States right now, are we overestimating the overall heat some?
NASA says yes
According to a WorldNetDaily article, since water vapor is the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, it is often utilized to measure the effects of earth warming. Interestingly, a NASA study back in 2004 conducted by the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate indicated an increase in water vapor that was not as high as climate-forecasting computer models have assumed.
In other words, researchers that believe we are feeling record breaking, once-in-a-lifetime heat, oftentimes measure water vapor in the air to show it. According to the aforementioned researchers, computers that had been forecasting future temperatures by the amount of water vapor were, well, wrong. There simply isn't as much water vapor out there as we all thought.
Still, we are experiencing record-breaking heat, right?
Not necessarily, even if it's been about as hot as any of us can remember.
A recent article in Science written by Gerd Burger of Berlin's Institut für Meteorologie took a closer look at the work of Osborn and Briffa, two researchers whose work has lent major reinforcement to the theory that the earth's current warming has been extreme and not cyclical.
Simply put, the results of Burger's work raise some serious questions about the claim that the 20th century has been unusually warm (as many researchers have been indicating). In this article, Burger states that Osborn and Briffa "did not apply the appropriate statistical tests that link the proxy records to observational data, and as such, Osborn and Briffa did not properly quantify the statistical uncertainties in their analyses."
Yeah, we don't know what that means either. But keep reading to find out.
After repeating the analyses appropriately, he concluded that, "as a result, the 'highly significant' occurrences of positive anomalies during the 20th century disappear." Further, he notes that, "the 95th percentile is exceeded mostly in the early 20th century, but also about the year 1000."
Said another way, this planet has been real hot before and the 20th century isn't really any different. Thus, we may not be in as much trouble as was originally thought. Still, it is awfully hot, isn't it? That simply can't be denied.
So if it isn't greenhouse gasses that are causing swarms of bugs to interrupt America's favorite pastime, what is causing the heat?
No one knows for sure. But here's a theory that's gaining some steam.
The Sun is Heating Up
In September of 2005, NASA reported that Mars Orbiters were giving them some strange information. Namely, these orbiters were telling them that deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the Mars South Pole had shrunk for three straight years, indicating an interesting climate change. Now even the staunchest proponents of the greenhouse gasses/ global warming scenarios must admit this.
Earth emissions likely have nothing to do with that.
In fact, the Martian South polar ice cap has been shrinking since 1999 at a prodigious rate according to Michael Malin, Principal Investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera. "The images documenting changes from 1999 to 2005 suggest the Martian climate is presently warmer and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or even centuries ago."
So is that it? Is global warming simply due to some kind of solar cycle where the sun gets warmer? Depends on whom you talk to.
Back in 2005, Sallie Baliunas, Ph.D., Astrophysicist and Chair of the Science Advisory Board at George C. Marshall Institute in Washington, D.C did not feel that the sun was the be-all-end-all. "The (earth's) surface temperature seems to have risen a little more dramatically than the sun has in recent decades," she said. "So, in terms of a straightforward link between the two, an association between the Sun and Earth, it looks like the Sun has not been the cause of most of the late 20th Century warming. (However) it could have made a contribution."
Now here's the other side of the story. According to WorldNetDaily, Danish researchers Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen contend that the sun still appears to be the main agent in global climate change. This, of course, contradicts the findings of a well-publicized and recent UK study indicating that greenhouse gasses are the culprit. These researchers, however, believe that the UK study wrongly relied on surface air temperature to make its claims, which is something, that "does not respond to the solar cycle."
By the way, there's more reinforcement for this sun is simply getting hotter idea. A recent study led by Southern California geologist Lowell Stott, concluded that deep-sea temperatures rose 1,300 years before the rise in atmospheric CO2 before the last ice age ended. In other words, this study ruled out the premise that greenhouse gasses were the main agent that brought the earth out of the last ice age.
"There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change," said Stott. "You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages."
So what is the answer?
Here's a fact: We don't know. That said, the information in this article and the countless references below seem to prove one thing. Greenhouse gasses by themselves do not seem to explain the recent heat wave on our planet. Further, the sun does seem to be getting hotter (or at least more of its heat is getting to the planets around it).
Very different than the popular opinion out there, no? Hopefully, we can uncover the truth here before it's too late.
Editor's Note: A Real Inconvenient Truth
John Stossel, of ABC's 20/20, writes:
"The most impressive demonstration in Gore's movie is that big graph of temperature and carbon dioxide levels stretching back 650,000 years. Carbon dioxide is thought to amplify temperature increases, but his graph seemed to show clear cause and effect: When carbon dioxide levels rose, so did temperature. It suggested that carbon levels controlled temperature. But a real inconvenient truth is that the carbon increase came after temperatures rose, usually hundreds of years later. Temperature went up first."
So, we're back to the Sun. Looking at the data and what scientists have said about the energy output from the Sun, it seems likely that in the past first the temperature of the Sun goes up, and then greenhouse levels rose.
In the end, greenhouse levels may be rising, due to the industrialization of Planet Earth, but it's probably not what's heating up the planet.
God is.
The Book of Revelation
If you've been following our other articles, you know that I believe that events from the Book of Revelation are starting to unfold, and that God's wrath on the nations could begin at any time, which is the period commonly known as the Tribulation. One thing that occurs during this period of wrath, is that God makes the Sun burn hotter, as reported near the end of this paragraph:
Revelation 6:14-17 - Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, "Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?"
And I said to him, "Sir, you know."
So he said to me, "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them. They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat; for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."
