The Truth about Global Warming, Climate Change, or Whatever they call it this week...

Picture this if you will.

For a number of years, human society has watched as they've slowly hunted animals to extinction. Animals that once roamed the earth in hundreds of thousands now number perhaps in the dozens, if not less. Lately it hasn't been as cool outside when the local Tom, Dick, and Harrys go out to provide for their families. The polar ice caps are melting. Glaciers like the ones in Greenland are receding. The earth is changing! And it must be the fault of mankind! By gosh it must be the eternal fault of those creatures, Homo Sapiens, those darned people who run around hunting and slaughtering animals left and right and driving them to extinction, who practice slash and burn agriculture, who obviously pillage the land and destroy it. Golly yes, it must be. Especially since this scene I'm describing was 10,000 years ago towards the end of the last Ice Age that mankind witnessed. The animals that were hunted to extinction while climate change also thinned their numbers? The Wooly Mammoth, Mastodons, Smilodon (Known as the Sabre Tooth Tiger), and other prehistoric creatures that were hunted for food, tools, shelter, and clothing as well as hunted (in the case of the large cats) for purposes of competition for food.

So what are we to do? Who are we to blame for this catastrophic climate change? Buses and cars? There wouldn't be any of those for another 9900 years. Ah! Fossil Fuel Burning like coal and oil! Not for another 9400 years or so. (Though some archaeological evidence places burning of coal at around the Dark Ages, close to 500 AD).

So what could have caused it? Where should the blame lie? Well let's look at the effect, known as The Greenhouse Effect, which caused this gradual heating of the world's climate. Listed, by abundance, are the top Greenhouse Gases that force heat to be contained within Earth's atmosphere rather than escaping.

1.) Water Vapor (Anywhere water boils or is evaporated, there is water vapor. Whenever it's humid out? That's water vapor.)

2.) Carbon Dioxide (Every non-plant species in the world gives off some measure of Carbon Dioxide waste. It's called respiration, and it occurs on the celullar level as well as the macro-organism level)

3.) Methane (Every time someone or some animal passes gas or excretes solid waste? It's Methane. Decomposing matter that smells like rotten eggs? Methane. This simple compound of NH4 is an entirely natural gas, also given off by sea vents where the Earth's Crust is expanding and shifting beneath the ocean floor)

4.) Nitrous Oxide (While you may giggle at Laughing Gas, it's number 4 on the list of most abundant greenhouse gases, and one of only two that is man-made)

5.) Ozone (O3 is the way to be! We like our Ozone layer right? And guess what? Every time you go outside during a lightning storm and smell that heavy coppery scent on the air? That's ozone! Another nature made compound)

6.) Lastly, CFC's (Chlorofluorocarbons, those things that make your hairspray shoot out of that pressurized bottle, make the pesticides fire out of that can of RAID, and when company comes over, it pumps the fragrance out of that can of air freshener. The only other manmade compound on this list of greenhouse gases) (N.B. - CFC's were banned by many countries including Norway and the USA starting as early as 1978)

Now let's look at the evidence for Earth's climate change in a logical manner. Please do your best to follow me through this?

CFC's were created only as early as the 1920's and N2O (Nitrous Oxide) as early as 1775. Now we KNOW for a fact that prehistoric man did not have cars and factories to increase the amount of Carbon Dioxide, Methane, and Water Vapor in the world. So barring manufactured sources of these gases, the only recourse we have is to look at the natural sources for greenhouse gases. Swamps, plants, animals, oceans, lightning storms, volcanos, sea vents, and other such phenomenon all cause and contribute to greenhouse gases. Those natural causes, 10,000 years ago, caused the end of the most recent Ice Age.

So what about today? Obviously with our industrial technology, CFC's and Nitrous Oxide must be the most highly effective greenhouse gases, right? Wrong. No matter how hard Mankind tries, you just cannot improve on Mother Nature herself.

Water Vapor accounts for up to 70% of the Greenhouse Effect. Carbon Dioxide? Up to 26%. Methane? Anywhere from 4-9%, and Ozone, anywhere from 3-7%. That means that CFC's and Nitrous Oxide must count for less than a bare few percent of the Greenhouse Effect.

So we have evidence that natural Greenhouse Gases are the cause of Climate Change. We have evidence that many of these natural Greenhouse Gases are caused by the life cycles of living organisms (Methane, Carbon Dioxide, Water Vapor).

So please someone tell me why Farmers should have to pay money for violating the Clean Air Act when their cows and pigs decide to let one rip or make a pie in the middle of a field? If we are to do our best to 'crack down' on Methane and Carbon Dioxide emissions, let's start corking the pie holes of a few politicians. After all, Democrat or Republican, I think we can all agree that they're the biggest organic sources of hot air in the world.