Are humans responsible for the destruction of their habitat known as Mother Nature? Human-made pollution is evident; from litter in local streams to plumes of carbon dense smoke billowing out of power plants, it has become apparent sustainability is not a priority. In addition, our resources are being used and abused much faster than the earth can replenish and recover. Recently, this abuse of Mother Nature has become a topic of great interest. Known as the “green movement,” advocates stress awareness of waste and pollution and its effect on the environment. The most publicized consequence of our non-earth friendly actions is global warming. This theory is blindly adopted with little scientific evidence because it justifies the worlds’ need to “go green.” When the overwhelming facts concerning greenhouse gasses, and the sheer amount of waste humans produce is taken into account, there is no wonder global warming is justified in peoples’ minds. Although human induced global warming is a popular theory, it is misleading because climate change has occurred throughout history, our most recent period of warming ended over ten years ago, and the earth is currently in a state of cooling.
Climate change is nothing new. In the life span of the earth, a climate where humans could and have inhabited the planet are mere smudges on its climate time-line. Starting with the big bang over 13.7 billion years ago, the earth has experienced cycles of hot flashes and freezing spells (Sorokhtin, Chilingar, and Khilyuk, 2007, p. 2). As recently as 650 million years ago the earth was frozen solid. This period of 10 million years is known as “snowball earth”. After this period, volcanoes began to erupt producing greenhouse gasses which warmed the earth. Over the next 400 million years, global temperatures rose and fell allowing for small life forms to succeed. Plants, cold-blooded animals, and insects did well during this time (Hulme, 2009). Then, quite suddenly, there...