Can You Trust Global Warming Statistics?

Henry Gregory
Henry Gregory, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Dec 23, 2008 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."
We've all seen the eco-fundamentalists talking about their global warming statistics. They claim the news is dire and we'll soon be drowned by the melting polar ice caps. Many of these people point to statistics published by NASA (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp) as a clear indication that the earth is in a man-made upward temperature spiral that will eventually make the planet uninhabitable.

The pundits relying on these global warming statistics generally point out that the year 1998 is the warmest year (in the United States) in the past hundred years. At least this is what was believed in 2005. More recently, NASA has realized they made an error in their original published findings and the year 1934 was actually warmer than 1998. This hasn't led global warming enthusiasts from pointing to the old information.

There is a growing faction of people who feel like those screaming the dangers of global warming are actually knowingly or otherwise paving the way for additional hidden taxes in the form of 'carbon credits'. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_conspiracy_theory, there are many motives for people to put forth global warming statistics that paint the bleakest possible picture.

While it is considered a conspiracy theory by most, those publishing global warming statistics certainly have motive for allowing flawed data to enter their findings. Scientists are notorious for selecting the statistics that support the position of those who support the scientists. In this case, that means the government. With the US median household income at $48000/year in 2006 according to Wikipedia, which translates to about $7000 for someone filing as the Head of Household per http://www.irs.gov/formspubs/article/0,,id=150856,00.html (or about 14%, not counting any state taxes). With the already high taxes and the strong resistance to any raising of these taxes, the government is turning to miscellaneous fees to increase revenues without technically increasing taxes.

With global warming statistics backing their decision, lawmakers are pushing the concept of selling 'carbon credits' to those who do business that produces carbon emissions. While this seems a good solution that places financial responsibility on those creating pollution, 2 questions remain for those who are skeptical:

1) What are the limits of the laws? Since every living animal produces some amount of carbon dioxide(including humans), will there come a day when we pay a tax literally for breathing?

2) How are the revenues from these carbon taxes going to be used to reverse global warming? Skeptics point out that the global warming statistics measure a climate change, but opinion is mixed as to how much of man's activity is responsible for this change; because of this, there is no clear course of action to slow global warming.

While global warming statistics sometimes imply dire things ahead, discovering the truth behind the causes of climate change is a challenge that your government may not want you to undertake.

Published by Henry Gregory

Born, and grew up in Georgia. Lived all over the world. Came back to Georgia.   View profile

9 Comments

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  • uhmmmmmmmm 12/16/2009

    yrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr lamee,eeeee

  • Deniers 11/27/2009

    My mother, like many others of her day, denied that smoking really caused lung cancer. She died in 1996 of lung cancer. Yes, many said during the extreme cold snaps of the late 1970's that another ice age was coming. The popular press said it was coming. Scientists were denying those statements saying that world was actually getting warmer. When ferns grew in Antartica, the midwest was under s shallow sea and Florida didn't exist.

  • flopping golf 11/2/2009

    im ben russell im gay and kiss guys hahahahahahahaha.

  • yellow bird 11/2/2009

    i do not agree with african safari. i like regular hamburgers not cheeseburgers

  • old gregg 11/2/2009

    baileys mmm. creamy

  • african safari 11/2/2009

    i like cheeseburgers

  • Henry Gregory 4/10/2009

    I agree Ben. I don't think anybody thinks it's a bad idea to conserve and do what we can to minimize the damage we cause our environment. It's just that when you get shouted down for questioning the "party line", I always get the impression that somebody has conflicting interests (the truth, protecting the people VS grant money, and carbon taxes).

  • ben-continue 4/10/2009

    been doing nothing but going up. Therefore he predicts that the market will keep going up. Would you put your money down with him?? I won't because he does not have enough data to support his theory.

  • Ben 4/10/2009

    ok, help me out here -- We know that when the earth was warm, ferns grew in Antarctica, and when it was cold, half of Europe was under ice. -- It swung from one end to the other all by it self over millions of years. Now we try to predict the trend of the temperature change by looking at the temperature record of merely 100 years. --PLEeeeASE tell me that's not what all they have.-- THE DATA IS STATISTICALY MEANINGLESS. 100 years worth of data is simply not enough to prove anything. This is not hard stuff, this is Statistic 101. I'm not a scientist, but I do remember a few things from college. I also remember when I was in grade school, they said it was cooling, and the next ice age was coming, so that cuts the meaningless data down to 30 years. Am I the only one who notices this? Can somebody explain to me how they reached the global warming conclusion STATISTICALLY? It's like the stock market, which swings up and down over 100 years. Now somebody comes along and claims that he's bee

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