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When I was in high school in the mid 1950's the concern of the environmental movement wasn't about "global warming" it was about "global cooling."
It wasn't but 10-15 years later that the issue changed to "global warming" and about that time the environmentalists announced they were working on a computer program to run on a supercomputer that would process and analyze weather data from all around and would then prove that 'global warming" was indeed real and would tell us how fast it was happening.
I remember thinking at the time that there might be a couple of flaws in the "global warming" concept. If you will recall your high school physics you will remember that the warmer a body is as compared to its surroundings more units of heat are lost to its surroundings per unit of time. That is a law of physics and even the environmentalists can't change it. It also means that even if there was a small warming of the earth it would be losing heat into space at a faster rate. In other words a sort of heat regulation system is naturally in effect. What about greenhouse gasses? Okay, so the atmosphere is warmer. If that is the case then the atmosphere itself is losing heat into space at a faster rate. Same balancing effect.
Also, due to gravity, the earth attracts and collects dust from space which adds to the total mass of the earth. Again, remembering our high school physics we can recall that pressure produces heat and that greater pressure produces greater heat. Then, according to physics, the earth should be slowly heating up due solely to its gaining mass from acquired space dust. While the fact that the earth is gaining mass is not questioned, the amount and rate is. Estimates range from 40,000 metric tons per year (121 tons/day), to from 39,000 tons to 700,000 tons PER DAY. Whatever the true numbers are over eons of time the amount must be unimaginable in human terms.
Further, it is likely that over time spans far, far beyond humans ability to remember or make accurate determinations, on a scale of tens of thousands of years, what either is or is not happening (warming or cooling) has probably happened many, many times before and in those terms is really nothing new at all.
Now back to the supercomputer story. I have searched and searched for verification of what I am about to relate without success. Nevertheless it still bears repeating because of its importance to the subject. Shortly after the environmentalists announced that their supercomputer had verified the existence of global warming an article appeared in a science magazine (Popular Science or one of its cousins I think) that said the computer had been rigged to indicate the existence of global warming even if it did not exist. Seems that when they first ran the program the computer just showed zeros in its output. Thinking there was some sort of malfunction in the system they checked and rechecked only to realize the system was operating perfectly. It was just saying there was no no change.... no global warming.
Mercy! We can't have that now can we? We know (better than the computer does) that global warming DOES exist. What to do? The answer is that they modified the computer program internally to indicate the existence of global warming using the same data that had previously shown none, and that's what the environmentalists have pointed to ever since.
Even if global warming really does exist those who were willing to falsify data to make their point have made their assertions questionable. Accurate information would have been really important but in their hurry to prove a point what they really did was to place the rest of us in a position of not knowing whether to trust them or not. How sad!
NOTE: if anyone knows where to find confirmation for this computer story please contact us.
And one more thing. It is probably true that global warming does in fact exist, BUT, that humankind isn't the cause.
SEE:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
(that's all on one line with no spaces)