Do We Know The Complete Story On Global Climate Change?
The tourism industry has been beleaguered by the outpouring of scientific research regarding its contribution to global warming. Hundreds of websites, including the United Nations Environmental Programme’s (UNEP) Climate Neutral Network website, have cropped up across the globe telling us to “offset” our carbon footprints, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, etc. (In fact, Brian Mullis from Sustainable Travel International joined me back in 2006 to co-author a piece on this subject as it relates to Relief VolunTourism.) But when I came across some promising research this past week on Galactic Cosmic Rays, offering a contrary opinion, I must say, I felt a bit relieved.
[The idea of solar rays having an impact on Global Climate Change was first posited by Eigil Friis-Christensen and Knud Lassen in an article entitled "Length of the Solar Cycle: An Indicator of Solar Activity Closely Associated with Climate" in the November 1991 issue of Science and more recently (1998) by Henrik Svensmark in a piece entitled "Influence of Cosmic Rays on Earth's Climate," in Physical Review Letters, volume 81, number 22.]
On the “Watts Up With That?” Blog, you can read this very interesting piece entitled “Message in the CLOUD for Warmists: The End Is Near?” Anthony Watts delivers some of the latest findings of Jasper Kirkby of CERN: European Organization for Nuclear Research, via a set of slides and selected commentary from Kirkby’s recent presentation. The talk of cosmic rays, clouds, and meteorological insights may be a bit much for folks; but to be able to read something that moves us away from a polarized view of Global Climate Change (GCC) - “it’s the inhabitants’ fault!”, well, this is inspiring.
Just as the debate about VolunTourism cannot be held as black & white, see this post from “Tales From The Hood” and this piece from the recent issue of The VolunTourist Newsletter as examples, it seems that the debate on GCC might be worthy of a little more deliberation before we risk profound disenchantment. If we reduce our emissions and cap & trade our carbon and the planet continues to heat up, what then?
Reducing emissions is still a noble path, of course, and given all the presently-held scientific evidence, perhaps it can be called “THE” noble path. Nevertheless, I find it refreshing and exhilarating that there are folks out there - Friis-Christensen, Lassen, Svensmark, Kirkby, and the ones at CERN - who are willing to ask the hard questions and test out hypotheses which may be unpopular and quickly discredited - something I can definitely relate to!
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