It's getting hot in here (Please keep on all your clothes)

Global Warming

*Frightened Oohs and Aahs please*

You may not be able to spell out the definition of just what global warming is, but more than likely you have heard of the term, and you may enough to know that Former Vice President Al Gore is a big name crusader for the cause. So just what is global warming? Global warming in dummy terms is the increase in the average temperature of the earth. Ok and? What it so bad about that, no more cold winters! Except that the projected continued increase of the earth's temperature comes with some dire predictions of impending doom, (dramatic, I know.) Here are the proposed 5 deadliest effects of global warming...

5. Spread of disease
As northern countries warm, disease carrying insects migrate north, bringing plague and disease with them.

4.Warmer waters and more hurricanes.
As the temperature of rises, so will the probability of more frequent and stronger hurricanes.

3.Increased probability and intensity of droughts and heat waves.
Get ready to sweat to death.

2.Economic consequences.
Umm, hurricanes can cause billions of dollars in damages, and it takes money to recover, repair and rebuild after one. Diseases cost money to treat. Expect us to be in an even bigger recession than we are now.

1.Polar ice caps melting.
Which will result in rising sea levels, the global ecosystem being thrown out of balance, and alot of homeless polar bears.

Ok so now that we know of our impending doom, what is the cause of it? In a nutshell, while there are several causes of global warming it is said that human pollution is one of the biggest contributing factors. Pollution comes in different forms. Mining coal and oil along with burning fossil fuels that give off a greenhouse gas called CO2 is one form of pollution. Other man-made causes have been connected to global warming such as the increase of population which means more people breathing out CO2, more animals to feed the increasing population such as cows whose manure give off methane, and more cars which mean more pollution. While some would call global warming a theory, others call it a proven set of facts. So is global warming really happening or not? Which side of the debate are you on? I by no means am a scientist, (unless you count the awesome science experiment I did in the fourth grade demonstrating how oil and water do not mix), yet nonetheless would like to propose a theory to be considered:

Global warming is not caused by man, but is natural.

I believe that it is supposed to happen. Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for natural mechanisms of warming..it has simply been assumed that global warming is manmade.Research the Medieval warm period. It was a time of warm climate in the North Atlantic Region that lasted from AD 800-1300. It was possibly related to other warm and cool anomalies around the world during that time. It was then followed by a cooler period termed the Little Ice Age. That is evidence that indicates our climate has gone through climate changes and warming periods before. Shall we attribute that warming period to the CO2 emissions from the knights chariots? (A joke,calm down!) Also did you know that a 1997 Gallop Poll of prominent North American climatologists showed that 83 percent of them disagreed with the man-made global warming theory? Some may discredit that citing that the poll occured over 10 years ago and now beliefs have shifted as we have come to learn more about global warmng. Yet, as recent as 2008 there is satellite and model evidence against substantial manmade climate change. Additionally, a Ohio State University researcher that extensively researched global warming predicts that global warming is a natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years.-Science Daily. Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes the current warming trend is the result of natural variability, where a planet goes through phases of warming and cooling and the human contribution to it is minimal. -CNN.com. Interesting stuff.  Do you agree or disagree? What do you think about my proposal?