Climate change bad 3 gw real/Anthro 4 Warming is Real 5 Warming Bad Impacts 9

Warming is natural-water vapor

In fact, the recent climate developments are not something unusual; they reflect a natural course of planetary events. From time immemorial, alternate warm and cold cycles have followed each other, with a periodicity ranging from tens of millions to several years. The cycles were most probably dependent on the extraterrestrial changes occurring in the Sun and in the Sun’s neighborhood. Short term changes—those occurring in a few years—are caused by terrestrial factors such as large volcanic explosions, which inject dust into the stratosphere, and the phenomenon of El Niño, which depends on the variations in oceanic currents. Thermal energy produced by natural radionuclides that are present in the 1-kilometer-thick layer of the Earth’s crust, contributed about 117 kilojoules per year per square meter of the primitive Earth. As a result of the decay of these long-lived radionuclides, their annual contribution is now only 33.4 kilojoules per square meter.10 This nuclear heat, however, plays a minor role among the terrestrial factors, in comparison with the “greenhouse effects” caused by absorption by some atmospheric gases of the solar radiation reflected from the surface of the Earth. Without the greenhouse effect, the average near-surface air temperature would be –18°C, and not +15°C, as it is now. The most impor- tant among these “greenhouse gases” is water vapor, which is responsible for about 96 to 99 percent of the greenhouse effect. Among the other greenhouse gases (CO2 , CH4 , CFCs, N2O, and O3 ), the most important is CO2 , which contributes only 3 percent to the total greenhouse effect.11, 12 The manmade CO2 contribution to this effect may be about 0.05 to 0.25 percent.13.

Warming is natural

Climate change isn’t anthropogenic—it’s a result of natural cycles

Thomas Cheney (letter, March 4 issue) challenged me to provide a coherent alternative theory for global warming. I'm happy to oblige. (Bracketed numbers refer to online citations.) In 1984 the Dansgaard-Oeschger temperature cycle (1,500-plus years) which could not be caused by any terrestrial agent was noticed. Cycle shifts were abrupt, sometimes gaining half of their change in only a decade. (1)¶ Dozens of papers confirmed this cycle (at 1470-plus years) and determined it must have a solar cause. (2, 3, 4, 5)¶ But there is no 1,470 year solar cycle. There are, however, the 87-year Gleisberg and 210-year DeVries-Suess cycles of sunspot activity. Seven of the 210 year cycles and 17 of the 87 year cycles operating together produce an erratic 1,470-year solar cycle. (6)¶ How could sunspots affect our climate? Henrik Svensmark postulated that sunspots are associated with the suns magnetic field and it, together with solar flares, modulates galactic cosmic ray input to the atmosphere which may cause variations in the nucleation of low level clouds, affecting their reflectivity. (7)¶ Incontrovertible evidence of a link between cosmic rays and terrestrial temperature variability was discovered in 2001. (8)¶ In August, 2011 CERN released results of its first study, confirming the theory. (9)¶ Evidence of the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle has been found going back a million years and accounts for the climate variations of the past 2,000 years including the Roman Warming, the Dark Ages cooling, the Medieval Climate Optimum, the Little Ice Age, and now the modern warming.¶ Projected forward this pattern suggests we are about 160 years into the next warming phase with a few centuries to go which will be followed by several centuries of cooling.¶ In 2003, Russian scientists Klyashtorin and Lyubishin identified a recurring 60-year cycle of warming and cooling (most likely related to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) superimposed on Dansgaard-Oeschger, subsequently confirmed by other studies. (10, 11, 12)¶ This cycle accounts for the warming and cooling pattern of the last 150 years of temperature records including cooling 1882 to 1910, warming 1910 to 1944, cooling 1944 to 1975, and warming 1975 to 2001.¶ Projected forward, this suggests we are on the cusp of a slight 30-year cooling after which the warming will resume.¶ The studies briefly described here account for all past as well as current climate changes either of which the anthropogenic CO2 hypothesis absolutely cannot do.