Daniel Stout

International Relations
Semester Paper
Global Warming findings:
Why the United States is justified for its inaction on global warming issues.

The USA is ignorant and oblivious to the consequences on people all around the world.

Comments like this come pouring out of Europe and the world as they are starting to believe, as

the British government has, that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism. As we watch

and listen to President Bush’s speeches, he doesn’t seem to acknowledge the rest of the worlds

plea to do something about warming by reducing Carbon Dioxide emissions. Will Bush take

action? I mean lets be honest, he won’t, but is his stance on this issue justified? Simple answer,

yes. Human caused global warming just isn’t a threat. In this note we will discuss why global

warming isn’t human caused, CO2 warming will be checked back by natural causes, global

warming is a hippie conspiracy and finally, why increased CO2 will help battle resource wars.

CO2 Doesn’t Equate to Global Warming

When we look to the website “Google News” any day of the week we are all but

guaranteed to see yet another article about how global warming is destroying the world.

Recently, the articles talk about the artic and how the artic is melting. It proves to the skeptics

that warming is occurring. Just as Ace Ventura, Pet detective says, “Oh how fiction can be fun.”

The truth of the matter is that there are multiple pieces of evidence that prove why artic warming

isn’t a concern. How CO2 just doesn’t affect the climate. How the sun plays games with us and

how geologic data that will truly dissolve any idea that global warming is human caused.

The fundamental thesis behind the “human caused global warming” is that through the

burning of fossil fuels, humans are emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. While

the CO2 is in the atmosphere it acts as a blanket in which it doesn’t allow heating mechanisms
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from the sun to return to space after it is reflected off of earth. This blanket effect is supposedly

going to cause all the disasters such as massive sea level rise, the spread of infectious disease,

and the loss of biodiversity that hippies claim will occur.

Let’s first look at the artic example. This argument is based on the theory that human

induced global warming is causing the artic ice caps and icebergs to melt. History sides with

inaction on global warming issues, here is why. The articles you see on Google about arctic

warming cite a report “Impacts of a Warming Arctic.” While this sounds all fine and good, a

close examination of this report unravels a couple of things, as Steven Milloy articulates,

“The graph shows that Arctic temperatures fluctuate naturally in regular cycles that

are roughly 40 years long. The Arctic seems currently to be undergoing a warming

phase — similar to one experienced between 1920-1950 — which will likely be

followed by a cooling phase — similar to the one experienced between 1950-1990.

The report’s claim that increased manmade emissions of greenhouse gases are

causing Arctic temperatures to rise is debunked by the same graph, which indicates

that the near surface Arctic air temperature was higher around 1940 than now,

despite all the greenhouse gas emissions since that time.”

Global warming is natural. Milloy cites the exact report that all the Google articles are

using to prove their argument to actually debunk the theory. The same article goes on to talk

about how there are natural fluctuations in temperature over the arctic. These temperature

swings routinely go as drastic as 3 degrees Celsius, and in fact the actual report cites at best a

0.6 degree Celsius increase because of CO2. This just isn’t enough to prove that the current

warming that is occurring over the arctic isn’t part of the 40 year swing phases.

Yes, CO2 isn’t affecting the arctic, but it is also not affecting any other part of the

world. We look to the composite of the atmosphere to understand why. According to Robert
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H. Essenhigh, the ratio of CO2 to water vapor is a ratio of 30 to 1, and in the top limit is closer

to 100 to 1. Now you might be saying, “So what, what does water vapor have to do with

anything?” Pretty simply put, everything. The whole reason we are alive on this planet and

there is life is because we have some warming. Water vapor provides 95% of this warming

(Singer, 99). There are many different greenhouse gases, and CO2 with the others compose a

mere 5% of the warming on earth. Ultimately it means that CO2 just can’t play a big enough

role in the atmosphere to actually raise temperatures -- its just noise in the air.

So, one might ask, why is the earth warming? Why are ice caps melting? My answer

is simple. It’s nature doing its thing and has nothing to do with CO2 emissions. Consider for

a moment that the sun goes through cycles. These cycles will emit more or less energy than

before. This fluctuation in cycles according to William D. Balgord, are the cause of global

warming and not CO2. Balgord goes on to contend that there has never been a direct causal

relationship with CO2 increases and temperature increases. In fact, Balgord contends that

according to geologic information, increases in CO2 have occurred AFTER, not before

temperature increases.

Natural Checks

So what the global warming proponents would say is the ideas presented above don’t

argue against the fact that CO2 creates a warming effect. I would say that might be true, but

the feedback cycles (discussed more below in the hippie conspiracy) are going to lean my way.

We’ll talk about several specific different negative feedbacks that prevent CO2 from heating

the atmosphere: first, plant sequestration; second, volcanoes; third, phytoplankton, and lastly

clouds.
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In elementary school, or at least middle school, we learned there was a process in

which plants participated. Plants would “breathe in” CO2 and “breathe out” Oxygen. This

process was used in order for the plants to gather the nutrients and ensured the plant to stay

alive and keep growing. There is something more fundamental to these plants. Plants also

store a lot of the CO2 they absorb into the ground. When the CO2 is in the ground it stays

there until it’s extracted by some sort of event like tilling of farm lands. Needless to say, this

process by which the plant stores CO2 in the ground is what is commonly called a carbon sink.

Carbon sinks play a vital role in the way the atmosphere is composed. As increased amounts of

CO2 go into the air, it helps plant growth because it allows for the plants to have better

photorespiration. (Smil 90. Isdo 89,97). This process ensures that the plants grow bigger and

stronger. As CO2 increases plant growth it also does something else. It increases the

sequestration or the intensity of the carbon sink. (Idso 89). So as CO2 increases in the air,

plants make sure more carbon goes into the ground ensuring the atmosphere never goes out of

balance. This process is vital because with plants increasing the amount of sequestration of

CO2 it ensures that plants will by themselves offset the effects of CO2 (Food and Agriculture

Organization of the United Nations, 00).

Volcanoes are kind of scary. They splurge ash and lava all around and totally mess

things up. Just like any natural phenomenon in the world, volcanoes can’t be all bad. It’s true,

they do have a good side. When volcanoes erupt they emit ash and SO2 into the air. This

event has a net cooling effect which will offset CO2 warming (Singer 99). The ash will lie in

the lower levels of the atmosphere and for a short time reflect warming causing agents back

into space. More importantly, the SO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere will play a role in

keeping global warming in check (Kiehl 99).

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Phytoplankton. No everyday normal Joe is going to know what phytoplankton is

unless they remember the movie, Finding Nemo. Regardless, phytoplankton play a role in the

way the earth warms. Plankton fight CO2 induced global warming by producing what is

called dimethyl sulfide, or DMS. DMS goes into the atmosphere where it is oxidized and in

turn creates thicker and additional clouds which reflect warming agents into space (Idso 97).

There is yet another way that plankton fight global warming. When plankton are out in

the ocean they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. When the plankton dies, it sinks to the

bottom of the ocean where the CO2 becomes stored (Singer 99).

We admitted earlier that the world was warming, but that it just wasn’t due to CO2

emissions but actually sun fluctuations. With the increase in temperature that is occurring, the

earth will do something spectacular. It will increase the amount of water that gets evaporated.

You might say, “So what, water is increased in the atmosphere.” Well, that means that clouds

are going to be more prevalent in the sky. According to Sherwood B. Idso, when clouds

increase 20-25 percent it’s enough to totally negate CO2 emissions because of the ability

clouds have to reflect warming agents back into space.

Hippie Conspiracy

Here an article. There an article. One after another there seems to be articles talking

about how horrible global warming is and how it’s going to ruin everything. Yet the hippies

couldn’t be farther from the truth. Not only for the reasons above, but simply put, it’s a hippie

conspiracy. Further investigation discovers how crazy the assumptions proponents of CO2

reductions are making.

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One might ask, “What is the motivation?” This answer is two fold. The first part

being the environmentalist themselves and the second is the media. An environmentalist by

definition is madly in love with the environment and is always trying to protect it. Ask a

hippie what is the number one cause of environmental degradation and the answer will more

than likely by economic growth because of its clearing of forests, building of houses, moving

animals out of their habitats, and pollution. In order for the environmentalist to stop economic

growth, they devised the position of global warming. Stopping the use of fossil fuels and their

emittance of CO2 would absolutely destroy the countries economic growth, thereby attaining

the environmentalist’s goals (Jones 97).

The second part is the media. Let’s think about the media. They are always out to sell

as many copies of newspapers/magazines etc. In order to attain these sales they need good

stories. What makes a good story? Laura Jones contends that articles are trying to attain four

goals: 1) make things simple, 2) make things variable, 3) make things easy to read, and 4)

make things sensational. The problem is that these rules have been applied to global warming

articles throughout the ideas inception and Jones contends that “those rules are in direct

conflict with good scientific reporting.” The more the media gets involved and the more the

media continues to feed people this conspiracy, the more the world will reprimand the United

States for inaction on global warming issues.

The method of the data collection is also another problem tied directly to the media

conspiracy of global warming. You have to remember most, if not all, of these reports that are

coming out now about CO2 and warming haven’t found causation, only correlations. Future

models on the other hand, which talk about all the gloom and doom of the future are based

upon computer models which describe what would happen as CO2 levels increase and
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temperature increases. The problem with these models is that they are poorly constructed.

Many of them forget or ignore negative feedbacks (Singer 99). The models also use past

correlations and observations in order to predict future scenarios. With that being said

wouldn’t it be important for the computer models to have the right information from the past…

one would think. But computer models have actually been using incorrect statistics. Most

models assume that there has been an increase in CO2 by one percent every year, but in reality

there has only been a 0.4 increase in CO2 per year (Murray 04). This large discrepancy will

result in scenarios that will not occur in real life because they just aren’t plausible.

The second part that must be recognized is that climate models depend a great deal on

what’s called a “water vapor feedback.” This feedback would occur because increased

evaporation caused by increased temperatures from CO2 emissions would cause the main

warming agent to increase which in turn would increase evaporation again, increasing

temperature, increasing evaporation, etc...etc. The fundamental problem with this scenario is

that their models misrepresent the way the clouds would react. Also, the main reason that

evaporation would continue to spin out of control is that surface temperature would keep

increasing, which is the cause of evaporation. But according to MIT Center for Global

Climate Science, the increase in clouds and convection will cause the water vapor to increase

to the very heights of the atmosphere. It will prevent the surface from the warming that would

lead to the runaway effect that proponents of global warming contend.

Ultimately the discovery of their conspiracy is very damning to their argumentation. It

proves that there are alternative motives rooted in the environmentalist desire to limit the use

of fossil fuels. This alternative motive has allowed them to come up and use extremely sketchy

science in order to create huge Hollywood style impacts to scare people into acting to reduce
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the use of fossil fuels. We need to be wary of what the hippies tell us, we need to ensure that

we examine the facts of the situation, and ultimately do some research before you hug a tree.

Resource Wars

The population is increasing and countries are developing. Resources are going to

start to be scarce. The main resource that I identify as becoming the cause of wars is food, or

agricultural land. According to Marlo Lewis, Jr, CO2 increases have caused increases in crop

production. Valcave Smil articulates that CO2 helps plants grow and that the increase in CO2

in the air will help provide food for the world. Smil says that 12 out of the 15 leading crops in

the world are C3 plants and that C3 plants benefit the most from massive increases in CO2.

This benefit should be on the level of 30 percent increases according to Smil. The increase in

CO2 would also according to Smil

“…increase both the optimum and upper temperature range for

photosynthesis, substantially improved symbiotic fixation of nitrogen in

leguminous plants, increased resistance to lower temperatures and air

pollution and a better tolerance of soil and water salinity…”

There is another aspect of crop production that would benefit from a doubling of CO2

in the air. As CO2 increases so does the strength and the speed of which plants grow (Idso

89). With the increase in the speed of plant growth, it means that there can be more crops

grown in a single season, just another way that CO2 helps agriculture.

Oh but we aren’t done. Idso also contends that as CO2 increases rooting patterns of the

plant change. These changes cause the roots to go in a more downward pattern. You might be
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saying, “so what,” but it means that there is less competition over nutrients in the soil among

the plants. This ultimately means that more plants can grow at a time.

Something that might seem bizarre but is actually true that will help increase plant

production is the increase in earthworms. Increased CO2 in the air increases plant production

as discussed above. This increase in production also promotes and allows for higher

earthworm activity and populations because of the availability of organic material (Idso 89).

This is a good thing, a really good thing. Earthworms are hard little workers. Earthworms

mitigate harmful effects of the soil, increase aeration because of the tunnels they build,

enhancement of soil water uptake because the tunnels that are built by the worms allow the

crops to increase their depth of root exploration even more getting to nutrients far below the

surface, and create a more nutrient filled soil (Idso 89). All of this adds up to one thing, CO2

ensures that earthworms can help crops reach maximum production.

Another way CO2 helps is by increasing the fungi that attaches to crops. Many people

think fungi could ruin the crops, but Idso contends that these fungi will protect the plant from

nematodes and disease. This protection can play a role in increased crop production along

with the fungi’s ability to help the plant absorb water and nutrients (Idso 89). Idso also

contends that this Fungi can ultimately

“results in “growth stimulation, improved survival and drought

tolerance to the host plant.”

This increase in crop production would be world wide as CO2 doesn’t stay regionally.

As the CO2 travels throughout the world, it would help the crops around the world. This will

be critical in preventing or at least minimizing the fighting that will occur over food which will
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be necessary in order to avoid a nuclear war (Mandelbaum 95). Think about it this way, we

are still animals. We need food to eat. If we don’t have food to eat, we will do anything to

gain the ability to eat, even break taboos like the nuclear taboo that says we shouldn’t use

nuclear weapons.

Conclusion

The United States is under constant scrutiny for its inaction on global warming issues

and its unwillingness to ratify the Kyoto Protocol concerning global warming. It should be

clear that the United States’ stance on this issue is neither unwarranted nor unsubstantiated.

Every time we hear another congressperson or senator babble on and on about how global

warming is a huge threat and action must be taken, think back to this note. Think back to the

credibility of the arguments they are making, think back to the way nature will check any

harms that could occur from global warming, and think about how CO2 could be the key in

preventing massive wars over crop land and food. Cause when a person thinks about all those

things, it becomes clear that inaction is better than action, and we shouldn’t allow fossil fuel

usage to be reduced. Write your congressperson, write your senator, take a stand to prevent

policies that will try to reduce consumption of fossil fuels, it may be critical to avoid an

ensuing nuclear war.

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Works Cited

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Carbon Sequestration Options Under
the Clean Development Mechanism to Address Land Degradation. World Soil Resources
Reports 2000

Iain Murray. The One-Percent Solution, CEI / EU Reporter Online. November 03, 2004
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=823 (accessed 11/03/04)

Jeffery Kiehl, Science, Feb 26, 1999.

Laura Jones, Global Warming: The Science and the Politics. 1997

Marlo Lewis, Jr.. Carbon dioxide is your friend, Washington Times / CEI. October 06, 2004

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=790 (accessed 11/03/04)

Michael Mandelbaum, Lessons of the Next Nuclear war, Foreign Affairs, March/April 1995

MIT Center for Global Climate Science. No Date Given. http://web.mit.edu/cgcs/www/clouds.html

(accessed 9/12/04)
Robert H. Essenhigh, Carbon Dioxide doesn’t affect global warming, Columbus Dispatch
(Ohio). October 7, 2000

S. Fred Singer, Hot Talk, Cold Science; Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate. 1999

Sherwood Idso, Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Earth in Transition, 1989

Sherwood B. Idso, Global Warming: The Science and the Politics. 1997

Vaclave Smil, Planetary Warming: Realities and Responses, Population and Development
Review, Vol 16, No. 1 (March 1990)

William Balgord, Models give us Flawed Global Warming Forecast, Wisconsin State Journal.
September 2, 2001
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