Brookhaven Courier

Issue date: 4/2/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Chris Vivero

Global warming and weather change patterns are two topics presently being argued. Gerald Bartz, Brookhaven College instructional learning lab coordinator offers his perspective on these issues.

Bartz, who has degrees in chemistry and geology, spent 10 years researching alternative energy resources and performing environmental remediation.

What are your views on global warming?

There seems to be two views on global warming.

First there are the shrill alarmist cries of Al Gore who views the warming as an anomalous event, which he attributes to man's burning of fossil fuels.

Gore erroneously states that the recent temperatures are the highest in the past millennium.

This statement contradicts a National Academies report that today's current highs are similar to those during the medieval warm period of the 1600s.

Gore also warns, "Unless we act boldly, our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes." One of Gore's predicted catastrophes was to be caused by a sea level rise of up to 20 feet, which inundates parts of New York and Florida.

The speed and magnitude of the Gore sea level rise is much greater than the slow maximum sea level rise of 23 centimeters projected in a February 2007 report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that studies global warming.

I share a second viewpoint on global warming.

Unlike Mr. Gore's viewpoint, the second viewpoint recognizes that the earth has experienced climate swings throughout its history.

During a recent meeting of the Geological Society of America, Dr. D. J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, presented data showing 10 large temperature swing trends during the past 15,000 years.

Easterbrook commented that these shifts were up to "20 times greater than the warming in the past century." These recent climate shifts are independent of man's burning of fossil fuels.

Do you believe weather patterns are changing in the world?

Yes, I believe the weather patterns are changing. Geologic literature documents that the dynamic numerous processes such as plate tectonics, super volcano eruptions, massive outflows of lava, extraterrestrial sources such as the cretaceous asteroid, which contributed greatly to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the activity of our sun can change weather patterns.

Continued...

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