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As we all have heard, global warming is upon us. Is it a natural event or an unnatural one? By unnatural I mean are the causes of global warming supplied by man? Our planet has gone through stages of warming and cooling for thousands of years past and it is expected to do so for the foreseeable future. Scientists are aware of this. A good source of weather conditions past is common artwork. Some paintings show ice and winter conditions where today there is none The earth itself supplies clues to climates gone by with different layers in the strata.

So why is today so unique? It is unique because ever since the advent of fossil fuel burning our atmosphere as been forced to absorb it's byproducts. Scientists suspect that even if global warming is natural, that is, caused by nature in the natural cycle of things, we have added to its severity by what we do. There are natural causes for global warming going on right now in the form of volcanic activity. The Pacific rim is full of volcanoes spewing out their hot gases into the air.

So how much hotter will the Earth get by the end of this century if we do nothing to curb global warming? Scientists predict that it could get nine degrees hotter. Nine degrees doesn't sound like much, but look what happened in 2003. There were 20,000 deaths in Europe from extreme heat waves, can you imagine what it would have been like if those temperatures were at least nine degrees hotter or more? Hurricanes seem to be growing stronger and many attribute this to global warming. The storms pick up more energy from the heat. In the past 40 years or so, storms have been increasing in ferocity. During the same period of time, ocean temperatures have also increased. Is this just a coincidence? It sure doesn't look like it.

One way to determine what the climate was like in the past is to examine the cores of trees. Trees are good indicators of heat and precipitation. So what have scientists found when they examined these tree rings? They have found massive changes in temperature. These changes are greater than any found previously since the recording of weather. Are these changes taking place because we are dumping millions of tons of chemicals into the air we breathe or because nature is heating up the Earth? The truth is we don't know for sure. We have strong suspicions that we are at least helping the temperature to rise by what we are doing, but we don't fully understand the mechanics of the Earth as pertains to temperature increases. Having said this, it doesn't take a genius to know that we have only one atmosphere and if we ruin it, we are in trouble. You wouldn't put poison in a glass of water and then drink it, would you? So why are we putting the same poisons into our air and then breathing them in?

I guess we could answer this question very easily, profit. Almost everything we do is driven by profit first and safety second. Global warming could become more dangerous than we ever suspected. The Earth could shift on its axes and parts of our planet could become uninhabitable. Many places where people now live could be put under water, while others subject to either freezing cold or searing heat. Our atmosphere has been filled with debris before. This has been natural gases and particles caused by volcanoes, meteors and the such. It is suspected that this may have caused the ice ages on Earth and even killed off the dinosaurs, so this would be nothing new, except it is getting warmer not colder at the moment. When the last ice age came, it only took about one hundred years to create it and it lasted for over 1,000 years. How long would it take to create a torrid temperature zone and how long would that last?

There is one thing about nature that can not be denied. Nature has a way of getting rid of excess. It is almost as if Nature was some sort of super computer that recognizes when there are too many of one species. It seems that it then finds a way to kill off some of them. Could this be nature reacting to over population? Wouldn't that be something, all these scientists thinking we are causing, or at least helping, global warming when it really is a device to trim the population?

If it was up to me, I would be putting natural alternatives to fossil fuel into place in all the factories, cars, and homes of this country. Of course I would probably be assassinated by someone from big oil. The truth is that while we don't have one solution to the fossil fuel problem we have many alternatives that could be combined to do away with the problem. I am not even talking atomic energy here folks because it is even more polluting than anything else. What I am talking about are fuel cells, wave machines, wind machines, solar power, water power and even collecting lightning if it could be figured out. Fuel cells are really coming along and right now they offer low emissions and are capable of supplying enough power to power a home with ease. Fuel cells still use fossil fuel but emissions are very low. They are 70% efficient while a central plant is only 35% efficient.

With all the water in this country it is easy to generate power from turbines in dams. Our massive coastlines are perfect for wave machines that would easily generate electricity. Solar power is different. In some areas it would be ideal, those areas are the ones that are hot and sunny, while it would not be as efficient in areas such as the northeast. But even in these areas, solar power could be used to supplement some other form of power. There are just so many things we can do to get rid of those heavy emissions.

So what is the bottom line here? It is this, if global warming is a natural thing and we don't realize it, there will be no way of stopping it. If global warming is caused by us or even accelerated by us, we might be able to stop it or at least slow it down.