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Are Humans Driving Earth's Current Temperature Trend?
Reference
Khilyuk, L.F. and Chilingar, G.V. 2006. On global forces of nature driving the Earth's climate. Are humans involved? Environmental Geology 50: 899-910.

What was done
Noting that "identification and understanding of global forces of nature driving the Earth's climate is crucial for developing [an] adequate relationship between people and nature, and for developing and implementing a sound course of action aimed at survival and welfare of the human race," especially "in the light of present-day public debates on causes and ways of mitigation of the current global atmospheric warming," the authors "identify and describe the following global forces of nature driving the Earth's climate: (1) solar radiation as a dominant external energy supplier to the Earth, (2) outgassing as a major supplier of gases to the World Ocean and the atmosphere, and, possibly, (3) microbial activities generating and consuming atmospheric gases at the interface of lithosphere and atmosphere."

What was learned
After providing quantitative estimates of the scope and extent of these major forces on earth's climate - not only here but in two earlier studies as well (Khilyuk and Chilingar (2003, 2004) - the two researchers from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (USA) conclude that "the theory of currently observed global atmospheric warming as a result of increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide emission is a myth," and that it has "proved to be an enduring one."

What it means
The take-home message of Khilyuk and Chilingar's analysis, as they describe it, is that "any attempts to mitigate undesirable climatic changes using restrictive regulations are condemned to failure, because the global natural forces are at least 4-5 orders of magnitude greater than available human controls." What is more, they indicate that "application of these controls will lead to catastrophic economic consequences," noting that "since its inception in February 2005, the Kyoto Protocol has cost about $50 billion supposedly averting about 0.0005°C of warming by the year 2050," and that "the Kyoto Protocol is a good example of how to achieve the minimum results with the maximum efforts (and sacrifices)." This being the case, they conclude that "attempts to alter the occurring global climatic changes have to be abandoned as meaningless and harmful," and that in their place the "moral and professional obligation of all responsible scientists and politicians is to minimize potential human misery resulting from oncoming global climatic change," hopefully by more immediate, rational and cost-effective means.

References
Khilyuk, L.F. and Chilingar, G.V. 2003. Global warming: are we confusing cause and effect? Energy Sources 25: 357-370.

Khilyuk, L.F. and Chilingar, G.V. 2004. Global warming and long-term changes: a progress report. Environmental Geology 46: 970-979.

Reviewed 29 November 2006