By Brian Carnell

Thursday, June 21, 2001

Science Daily recently reported on a "viewpoint" published in the American Chemical Society's Chemical Innovation by Robert Essenhigh, the E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering, that illustrates just how much debate there is about the global warming hypothesis.

Essenhigh suggests that rather than increase levels of manmade CO2 and other greenhouse gases causing an increase in global temperatures, that increases in world temperatures may be causing increases in atmosphere CO2.

Essenhigh writes,

Many scientists who have tried to mathematically determine the relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature would appear to have vastly underestimated the significance of water in the atmosphere as a radiation-absorbing gas. If you ignore the water, you're going to get the wrong answer.

Essenhigh hypothesizes that the world is simply at the peak of a natural warming point which has resulted in more water vapor and hence more CO2.

I am not endorsing Essenhigh's views but relay them merely to point out that what we don't know about global climate change is far greater than what we do know at this point.

Source:

Global warming natural, may end within 20 years, says Ohio State University researcher. Science Daily, June 15, 2001.

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