Global warming has quickly become one of the most heated issues in America (pun intended). Rising temperatures and melting icebergs are indisputable evidence that the Earth is warming, but is this global heat wave a man-made crisis or just overblown hype?
Climate change skeptics come in many forms. But when they are challenged to produce evidence, they tend to ignore empirical, peer-reviewed scientific studies and cite skewed reports written by economists who measure everything in dollars and cents -- like the ones who sit on the boards of directors of our respective opponents on this website: the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) and the Heartland Institute.
Similar think tanks, like the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, have worked furiously to compile unsubstantiated reports in vain attempts to debunk the scientific consensus. Skeptics also represent industry, like big coal. And they are politicians, like U.S. Sens. McConnell, Stevens, and Inhofe, who take their talking points and monetary contributions from these people.
The reason skeptics are so vocal in their opposition is that climate change is a crisis that inconveniences them. Global warming solutions do not abide by their core beliefs that all problems magically disappear through short-term profit margin indicators. The planet's climate just doesn't work that way.
The fact is that spewing trillions of tons of carbon dioxide gas into the air is not normal. CO2 has an atmospheric lifespan of a century. Atmospheric CO2 levels have risen from 280 parts per million in volume in the 19 th century to the current level of 385 parts per million. Stock exchange numbers are not a basis for addressing this crisis.
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