What If Global Warming Is Real?

The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report in 2007 which said that “up to 40 percent of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation.”  The report made other claims to support the fact that global warming was a real threat.

It turned out that some of the data was faked. The news gave global warming refuseniks another chance to challenge whether global warming was real. High temperatures, they said, were simply a part of long cycles in which temperatures rise and fall over centuries-long patterns.

The wheat crop in China threatens to cut that availability of the grain in the People’s Republic this year. The drought is that severe. Russia had similar problems last year. US crops in the Midwest and South are being damaged by rain, cold and dry weather. The weather is cold enough in Mexico to cut crop production there as well.

The earth has gone through severe weather cycles over the last year. The polar ice cap has continued to melt. Scientists claim that record cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere is being caused by cold water moving south from the melting Arctic. When the polar region gets small enough, the waters off the UK, Europe, Canada, and the US will warm again.

La Nina, a cooling of the surface temperatures of the tropical Pacific Ocean, is supposed to cause a great deal of the US cold weather and snow this year. The water in the Pacific is as cool now as it is the North Atlantic. What will happen when El Nino, the warming cycle, returns?

None of the long-term weather changes and their causes matter much now. There is a shortage of wheat. Agricultural commodities prices are rising. There is no system among the world’s largest nations to share crop yields to fight imbalances in food stores. There should be just as there is an emerging  solution to prevent a repeat of the credit crisis. A solution to global warming patterns is years or decades off if there is anything to solve at all. In the meantime, it is better to have a program to distribute crops that a science report on centuries-long trends

Food prices have risen relentlessly over the last few months. People will starve or reach the point where they can barely afford food. For them it does not matter if global warming is real or it isn’t.

Douglas A. McIntyre