The article below, by Village News publisher Julie Reeder, appeared on September 27, 2019 athttps://www.villagenews.com/story/2019/09/26/national/another-point-of-view-is-global-warming-worth-the-anxiety-on-our-young-people/57690.html
The response by Teresa Platt, which follows the original article, was published on October 11, 2019 athttps://www.villagenews.com/story/2019/10/10/opinion/re-another-point-of-view-is-global-warming-worth-the-anxiety-on-our-young-people-village-news-92619/57892.html
There are many scientists who have a healthy, science-based skepticism regarding climate change and who don’t believe it’s responsible to create such social anxiety in our young people and that it is less about science and more about ideology. Global warming is the biggest public policy issue of our generation, and there are those who want to spend possibly hundreds of trillions of tax dollars to fight it.
How many degrees are we talking about?
Just how much global warming are we talking about? According to NASA and NOAA, the Earth’s global temperature increase since 1880 is about 2 degrees F, or 1 degree Celsius. And that’s not a constant. That average fluctuates from year to year with some years being cooler and some being warmer. Also, there have been centuries prior that have been much warmer and much cooler. The earth’s temperature fluctuates.
The Earth is greener than it’s been in at least 20 years.
The world is literally greener than it was 20 years ago, and data from NASA satellites has revealed a counterintuitive source for much of this new foliage. A new study on NASA’s website shows that China and India are leading the increase in greening on land. The study shows it’s partly the result from ambitious tree-planting programs in China and intensive agriculture in both countries.
Ranga Myneni of Boston University and colleagues first detected the greening phenomenon in satellite data from the mid-1990s, but they did not know whether human activity was a chief cause. They set out to track the total amount of Earth’s land area covered by vegetation and how it changed over time.
The research team found that global green leaf area has increased by 5% since the early 2000s, an area equivalent to all of the Amazon rainforests. At least 25% of that gain came in China. Overall, one-third of Earth’s vegetated lands are greening, while 5% are growing browner. The study was published Feb. 11, 2019, in the journal Nature Sustainability, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144540/china-and-india-lead-the-way-in-greening.
Other scientists, such as geologist Gregory Wrightstone, author of a new book “Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know,” points to a greener earth because of higher carbon emissions, which plants feed on, causing plant growth at a greater rate. This growth, in turn, cleans our air, creates oxygen and helps to more effectively feed the world. Also, according to Wrightstone, this additional greening causes greater moisture in the air through transpiration, also aiding in the growth of plants and trees. Wrightstone said that this greening is partly the result of fossil fuel emissions and that, in fact, the earth can handle six times more carbon dioxide emissions than there is right now.
Consider the Amazon rain forest fires.
Many young people, as well as world leaders, have been very upset about the Amazon fires. NASA also keeps track of fires worldwide. According to NASA, Amazon fires happen every year, and the fires on the entire Earth are at an average rate this year. The globe actually has fewer fires worldwide these days, in contrast to previous decades, as per http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/gistemp-warming-trends-greater-than-data-uncertain.
Almost 27 years after the United Nations adopted the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, many scientists now said there is no crisis caused by climate change and it’s actually a deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
Wrightstone said the rise of civilizations has happened with the warming temperatures facilitating crop growth, etc. and the fall of some civilizations have happened during cooling periods. He believes we are actually in a carbon deficit right now.
However, carbon dioxide emissions in the states have declined 14% since 2005, while in the same time period, the rest of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 56%.
However, instead of being held as a shining example, the United States has been criticized by the nations joining the global climate summit. Could it be because the Paris Agreement requires developed countries to pay $100 billion each year? To some this requirement is the real reason to not look at all the science and proves that “the United Nations’ goal is to transfer money and power from the democracy countries to the United Nations,” he said.
According to Wrightstone, we should be communicating to young people that life is better than it’s ever been before. Earth is thriving, prospering, greening and benefiting from that growth. We have longer life expectancies; our food production is outpacing population growth. Air is getting cleaner. Our water is cleaner. Droughts and fires are in decline. Humanity and the earth are thriving and prospering which is in contrast to what we are being told and we just don’t see it. There’s an unrelenting barrage day after day of incorrect information that fits political ideologies and narratives, but it just isn’t correct science.