"Arctic sea ice hits low" (1)

That headline, along with the  record  temperatures of the Summer of 2012,  confirms  the claim of Global Warming .  But is the burning of fossil fuels  (coal, oil and natural gas)  responsible?

1. Carbon dioxide    (CO2) levels continue to rise. (2)

Studies of  air bubbles in permafrost indicate that  until about  1750  CO2 levels in the atmosphere were  stable  at about 280 molecules  per million  molecules of air. Today  the comparable figure is  380 .  In 2006 alone, about 29 billion tons of CO2 were emitted, about half of which  was  retained by the atmosphere.

2.  Less heat is radiating into space.

Satellite data confirms that the amount of heat reflected into space is declining, so  the earth is accumulating heat.  Most of this heat  has been warming the oceans, which is why  arctic ice is melting.  Moreover,  both land and water absorb more of the sun's heat than does ice  (since white reflects light), so that  melting of glaciers  increases global warming, which in turn will melt more ice.  This  resonance effect  could lead to "runaway warming."

3. Air temperatures are rising.

NASA date confirms that the past decade is the warmest on record. 

4. Effects of warming are mixed. 

On one hand, the polar bear may  become extinct in our lifetimes due to warming of  the Arctic Ocean.  Deserts and  tropical rain forests will get even hotter, and thus even less suitable for human habitation.  But  warming will improve living and farming conditions in  northern areas such as Canada, Russia and  Wisconsin.  If more people move from the Sunbelt to Wisconsin to escape the heat,  property values in Milwaukee will rise as our winters become more tolerable.

5. Emission curbs will be ineffective.

Environmentalists  urge  reduction in  carbon emissions to stop the warming effect.  The trouble is that right now we don't have the alternate energy sources to replace burning of fossil fuels, and  people will resist  reducing their energy consumption.  Although reducing air pollution is still a good idea  because of health considerations,  even drastic reductions in  energy use will have   (at most)  only marginal effects on world temperatures.  The economic growth of large countries like China and India  will undermine any effort to curb emissions enough to prevent  runaway warming.

6. We need a "Global Cooling Project"

If human activity has had the unintended effect of raising global temperatures,  could human effort  also  cool the globe?  For example, would it be possible to generate   huge artificial clouds  that  would block a good deal of sunlight, and thus reduce temperatures at sea level?   We need a  concentrated worldwide  effort to research and develop  an effective  global cooling strategy within the next few years.  A  large cash prize should be offered to the  firm or  government team  that  devises and verifies   the best   practical cooling  strategy;  the top climatologists, physicists and chemists in the world should be encouraged to join one of these teams.   The  team with the best proven  strategy should be awarded a multi-year contract to implement the plan on a global scale.

Although some countries would benefit from global warming, at least in the short run,  I believe that most  (if not all)  industrialized nations would agree that runaway warming would be disastrous for the world as a whole, and would  join  a worldwide effort to develop and deploy a  cooling strategy.  Only the United Nations  or  a similar  multli-national  agency, could muster the funds  and  power to  create and control a technology powerful enough to reverse the warming trend.  (This effort would require  yielding some national sovereignty to an international body and also higher taxes, so the Republicans will probably filibuster against American participation.)

Humanity is apparently the only species  in the history of the universe to have any measurable effect on the climate of its home planet.   There is no limit on human innovation, so there is no reason that  we cannot meet this challenge.

Gerald S Glazer

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(1)  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel , August 29, 2012, page 6A (from NY Times)

(2) Website "Skepticalscience.com"