Global Warming: Fact or Fiction?

Global Warming: Fact or Fiction? Is global warming taking place? Are humans the cause of it? Lately these questions are being asked more and more by people who believe that the earth's climate is growing steadily warmer at an alarming rate. Our planet's ever-changing climate has captured the attention of those who would have us agree that without drastic modification of our behavior, we will ultimately destroy the world in which we live.However, these activists are using scare tactics based upon inadequate information acquired from unreliable sources to promote their agenda, and this theory of human-caused global warming is refuted by science and logic. The popular belief that global warming is the effect of human activity is erroneous and unsupported by scientific evidence. Environmental activists believe that our burning of fossil fuels and increased output of carbon dioxide or â€Å"greenhouse† gases have aided the apparently human-provoked global warming process.However, a ccording to the National Center for Policy Analysis, human-produced carbon dioxide could have only played a small role in this warming. H. Sterling Burnett states that the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has only increased twenty-eight percent over the past 150 years, and most of this increase took place before the year 1940, which is prior to most human-emitted carbon dioxide. Burnett goes on to say that poll results show â€Å"only 17 percent of the members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society think that the warming of the 20th century has been a result of greenhouse gas emissions. Some U. S. climatologists believe that the apparent warming trend we have been experiencing over the past few years may be in part due to improper placements of weather surface stations. These stations, sited in various locations all over the United States, serve to collect data concerning our climate. Although strict guidelines govern where these stations shoul d be located, Surface Stations. org, a website dedicated to surveying the stations, shows that our nation's surface stations are not meeting these requirements.This website displays photographs of surface stations that are positioned beside airport runways, large industrial areas, and sewage treatment plants; all of which distort temperature readings. One station in Forest Grove, Oregon, is placed directly behind an air conditioning unit, which continually blows hot air onto the surface station meter. I think everyone would agree that this causes the station's temperature readings to increase. Laurie David, writer and global warming activist, argues that