The global warming debate hotting up again but it's moot

'Harold Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, has resigned from the American Physical Society. His reason for resigning his long standing membership of this scientific club is the fact that they adhere to the global warming theory without giving doubters the chance to remonstrate. "Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life," he writes in his resignation letter.

Reading the comments underneath the article on the Telegraph.co.uk site which reports on this, nicely illustrates the division of opinion on this subject. Is the earth's warming caused by us humans or is it just part of the natural cycle it has been going through for billions of years? Is the earth warming up? Is it linked to the sun's activity? If so, why is it warming up while the sun seems less active? Do money matters influence the results of research into this issue? Is there a big global warming conspiracy going on? The comments go every which way but agreement is not to be found.

It may be a waste of energy to find answers to the questions and resolving the controversies. If the earth is warming up because we pump out too much CO2 in our quest for a comfortable living, then we are in a heap of trouble because there is no way we are going to change the lifestyles of billions of people overnight - and 'in the long run' is too late if the global warming theories are correct. And if the earth is warming up because it is part of its natural cycle of climatic change we are equally in a heap of trouble but there may not be much we can do about it. 

Conclusive proof either way is still a long way away. But why wait until our esteemed scientific collective settles its bickering and arrives at a consensus? Fossil fuels are running out - or at least the exploitation of them is becoming less economically viable by the minute. Demand for energy is rising with new economies adding massive amounts of people wanting to spend their new found wealth on electrical-power-hungry gadgets. And the production of energy is far from being a clean industry anyway, quite apart from belching out CO2, the gas that gets the blame for causing global warming.

So the whole global warming discussion is moot. We need to change our ways no matter what. We need to find methods of clean energy production, we need to cut our energy needs and we need to harness our population growth. The earth - warm or cold - can only sustain a certain amount of us and our waste and we as a species are putting demands on her she can't sustain even if you take CO2 production out of the equation. "The times they are a-changin'," Bob Dylan sang. They are, they must!