Is it hot in here or is it me?

It does seem hot this summer. Does this mean Al Gore is right? As a kid I read all those stories about mammoths and cave men during the Ice Age. Seems like I remember the Great Lakes were formed by glaciers that melted from that same Ice Age.

The Ice Age I am talking about is the Wisconsin glaciation that occurred about 10,000 years ago. As a result, the polar Ice Caps expanded to cover much of the northern hemisphere. Scientist are convinced that there have been at least four recordable periods in which an Ice Age existed on earth. There also seems to be quite a bit speculation regarding why these occurred. It is safe to say the earth cooled and the ice expanded but nobody is clear about why the earth cooled. Does this mean they are sure about global warming but undecided about global cooling?

In my view all of these cooling and warming periods occurred long before we had SUVs. It is hard for me to accept that man's impact on earth has anything to do with documented histories of Ice Ages and cyclic warming. There is one theory that man has prevented the return of yet a fifth ice age as a result of global agriculture and burning fossil fuels. In Michael Crichton's book "State of Fear" he discusses some of these so called facts.

One such fact is that the warmest year on record was 1998. When these temperatures are discussed they are always compared to historical temperatures taken since the late 1900s. Stop and think for a minute about the guy who was keeping these records in 1885. Was he or she a scientist? Did record keeping amount to recording statistics or did they just wonder how hot it was that day. My guess it was similar to the way my dad read the thermometer on the side of our garage. Oh, it's about 90 out.

Today tracking temperature is in fact a science and it is more accurate then it was when I was a kid, not to mention the way it was in 1885. Still with all these techniques we have discovered that the real hottest year on record was 1934. Turns out people like Al Gore had this all wrong.

Ya, it has been a hot summer but nothing like it was in the 30's when people would go to sleep in the park at night to avoid the heat in their homes. Yes burning oil and coal can heat up the earth but my SUV did not cause the dust bowl and drought in the Midwest during the depression. If global warming is true, we know it has been getting warmer for the last 10,000 years, what caused the ice ages? There must be a cycle here and global cooling could be just around the corner.