Is the planet getting warmer? It better be or we're in a lot of trouble. There are more people, more heated and cooled homes and structures, and more vehicles and paved surfaces. If the planet isn't getting warmer, we're in deep doo-doo. We're consuming three times the BTU's we did in 1950. Each BTU is the amount of heat needed to raise one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit. Imagine you walked into a structure in 1950 and they had one ten thousand BTU heating running flat out all the time. You took the temperature fo the structure and left. You came back today and found three ten thousand BTU heaters running flat out all the time and the temperature is now warmer. Would you be shocked and surprised? No. You'd expect it.
Each human being is a 98.6 degree (give or take a bit) radiator radiating heat out into the atmosphere. Get a bunch of people together in a small room with little to no air circulation and watch the temperature of the room rise. This is normal. More people equal more heat. More heated and cooled buildings equal more heat. More BTU consumption equals more heat. More paved surfaces equal more heat.
Let's go back to the structure that's now consuming three times the BTU's it did in 1950. For most of us, it's pretty apparent why the building is now warmer. For a CO2 being solely responsible proponent, they'd look to the ceiling and roof and wonder what changes had been done to trap in the heat. Well, none. We're just making a lot more heat. You don't have to trap it in. We're just churning out a lot more than we ever did before. It's not like heat shoots into outer space at the speed of light. No, it meanders it's way up and out into space giving up heat along the way. Heat more meanders than races anywhere. Start a fire in your fireplace and sit all the way across the room. How long does it take for you to feel the heat? Is it instant? No. It takes a few minutes for you to feel the heat.
Does global warming/climate change (when exactly was the climate ever stable?) cause forest fires, tornadoes, hurricanes etc? Not really. They've always been around. People have short memories. Hurricane Hazel devastated NJ in 1954. When Super Storm Sandy hit people said those storms would be routine. They aren't.
The "Oh we're all doomed!" crowd are more than a little insane. We've been pumping trillions of gallons of water a year from underground aquifers and into the oceans. Why aren't we all drowning? Because the Earth is a lot more sponge-like than many like to think. When rising seawater hits dry land it doesn't just sit atop the land. It gets pulled down by gravity and keeps getting pulled down by gravity until there's no place left to go. There it pools and forms an aquifer. The water displaces the land above it causing the land to rise. If the ice caps melt (and some evidence now says they're actually growing and not shrinking) the Earth will absorb much of, if not most of the water with little to no trouble.
Everyone just needs to chill out and relax. The worst-case scenario for warming has NJ reaching the ungodly average temps seen in Louisiana and Louisiana reaching the ungodly temps seen in Hawaii and Florida. God knows no one could possibly survive such extreme temperatures, except for the millions who live there now.
The world isn't ending in ten to twelve years. We're not all going to be consumed in massive balls of flame. We're not all going to drown. Just chill out and relax a bit. Lots of kids are scared to death these days from adults telling them the world is ending. It isn't ending.
Fly!!! Eagles!!! Fly!!!
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