Man has been altering the climate since he became agriculturally oriented thousands of years ago and when he started to build cities. Many trees were cut down to provide room for crops, thereby altering albedo, surface roughness, and moisture availability. Building of cities caused additional changes with the existence of urban heat islands. Large dams were built creating new lakes. And the extensive use of energy, including the emission of particulates and carbon dioxide, has made additional changes to the atmosphere. Temperature changes over the globe have occurred during the last 25,000 years, and they certainly weren’t caused by Man. But the current question is whether we need to upend our economy to forestall catastrophic changes that are foretold in the models.

The temperatures have been rising over the past century, generally in 30-year periods, with interruptions. Currently we appear to be in an interruption with no temperature increase in the past 15 years, even with increasing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. I don’t see any difference in the temperature increases of the past century that would make the increase in the latter 30 years to be exclusively identified with increasing carbon dioxide.

The idea that Man can adjust the carbon dioxide to set a temperature of the earth seems to be beyond the current understanding of climate. There are many things that will influence climate. Externally they include solar outputs and orbital changes. However, internally there are many features that need to be considered. The first is how clouds will affect the climate though the albedo changes and whether its feedback will be positive or negative. A recent proposal is that clouds through the albedo are really the thermostat of the climate. The role of the oceans need to be taken into account for transfers of heat, such as proposed for the deep oceans, or in natural oscillations that move large quantities of heat such as ENSO or the North Atlantic Oscillation.

In particular, the theory of AGW needs revision.   The magnitude of the global warming is largely unknown after numerous ‘revisions’ of the data. The models used around the world are consistently showing overwarming. The increased presence of extreme weather is not supported by the data. The application of the theory needs to follows the rules of the scientific method. Climate theory cannot be exempted from verification because most of the work is funded by governments.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a hot political issue in many parts of the world and the possible solutions are heavily political. There is a continuing concerted effect by the governments to demonstrate to the world that global warming is due to emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels and will cause a number of cataclysmic effects. The Global Warming debate has entered the political arena and politicians like the solutions in that the government may raise large sums of money implementing changes. And in many respects, it has taken the form of a religion in which “This is the way to save the planet.”

Any major change in the global economies aimed at affecting climate will probably have little effect on the climate, but will impose an unneeded expense on the poor and in many parts of the world the poor will be denied electricity. There is certainly not enough evidence that would require the energy supply using carbon to be shut down with a resultant change in the way Man lives within the next 20 years.