Global warming will be a key feature on the agenda of the up-coming G-8 summit meeting in Germany and hot-headed Greens will be turning up the heat, chanting the gospel according to Al Gore. They will be arguing that the greenhouse effect (carbon dioxide) is due to irresponsible human activity, irrespective of the fact that measurements confirm that during the post-war period, when factories were functioning flat out, emitting enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the planet actually cooled down and didn't begin to warm up until around 1975.

Interestingly, there was a significant decline in solar activity during that period which could well have influenced the alteration of the climate, but the global warmers tend to ignore that angle preferring to blame mankind for today's rise in temperature. One can wonder how they square the circle with their "higher the carbon dioxide rate, greater the temperature" factoid when scientists examining ice cores found that carbon dioxide was often greater during cooling periods of the planet?

If you listen to alarmist Al Gore, the future is all gloom and doom, but in actual fact it will be more like a boon to blooming. The greenhouse effect means biodiversity; evolutionary biology confirms that more species of plants and animals will profit from the warming then they ever would from global cooling.

In the past more extensive climatic changes took place than now and nearly all plant and animal species survived. Plants, insects and animals are very adaptable and only a few are restricted to strict climate conditions. The plight of the polar bear is an example of an inaccurate scientific conclusion. They do not risking dying of hunger because their environment is warming (polar bears survive in zoos far warmer) they face starvation because of men killing off their primary diet, the seals. Thousands upon thousands of seals are slaughtered every year in the northern hemisphere.

Then you have the pathogen phobia. Witness the malaria alert whereby people believe the disease will spread because of an increase in warming. The fact is malaria is not exclusively a tropical disease, during the Middle Ages it was rampant all over Europe and thousands of people died because of it. The disease was eventually managed through better hygiene, quarantine, medication and the draining of swamps (today's sacred "wetlands").

Before one can evaluate anything, one should factor in the empirical evidence before coming to a conclusion. For example, some scientists honestly believe global warming is caused by bovine flatulence (no snickering). If that were the case, why wouldn't there have been global warming when those massive herds of bison swarmed over the mid-west plains? And going back even further, would the same scientists conclude that during the era of the giant dinosaurs their voluminous farts actually heated up the globe? 

"The impact on temperature per unit carbon dioxide goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is not directly related to the emissions rate or even CO2 levels, which is what the legislation is hitting on, but rather to the impact of these gases on the greenhouse effect. The real signature of greenhouse warming is not surface temperature but temperature in the middle of the troposphere, about five kilometers. And that is going up even slower than the temperature at the surface."