What's the Problem? Global Warming is Really Cool.

Please excuse the painful play on words in the title of this post. I'm a big fan of the movement around Global Climate Change right now and if nothing else it should help the US and other industrial powers stop polluting the world for the rest of civilization.

Let it increase the prices we pay for energy. We'll deal. The price we pay for almost anything these days is really not the real "price" in terms of global impact so an increase in prices is reality and the right thing to do. Over time if the demand for clean energy increases as it should the prices will come back down through innovation and the proper global sourcing of effort.

Anyway, my brother-in-law sent me a link to this article today and I found it very interesting.

What if global-warming fears are overblown?

This is the first decent scientific argument I've seen against global warming, or at least against the urgency that the current movement around Global Climate Change is professing. I love a good counterpoint to get me thinking and this one impressed me.

It raises a great question... is our strategy for measuring global temperatures flawed? It claims that over time (let's say the last 100 years) temperature sensors have gone from being located in more rural areas to more urban areas where higher heat near the sensors is now caused by the mass of materials that are common in urban environments. Furthermore it defends this position by stating that by far the greatest increases in temperature occur in readings taken at night which under his theory makes sense because large buildings and concrete in urban environments hold heat over from the day into the night.

In addition to this argument the article also states that the volume of new ice forming in the Southern Hemisphere greatly exceeds the volume of ice melting in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that the total amount of ice on earth is actually currently increasing although we are most often shown pictures of receding glaciers throughout Europe and Alaska.

Furthermore, the scientist pushing all of these positions claims to have never taken a single dollar from corporations or the oil industry. Very interesting. Either this scientist is really on to something or he just knows how to perfectly craft a counter-argument that is very difficult to disprove. He was certainly the President of his debate club in college. Or maybe Al Gore stole his wife.