By Thomas Krehbiel

This got my attention: NASA puts its weight behind warming signs. But despite NASA's confirmation that the ice caps are melting, I still remain skeptical about the whole issue of global warming. That is to say, I remain skeptical about the causes and effects of global warming. I guess there's enough evidence now to say that the globe is, in fact, warming up, but I haven't yet seen any evidence to prove that this warmup is anything but a natural phenomenon. We only have climate data from like the last 200 years, and good climate data for only like the last 50 years, and that's a pretty small sample on which to base a conclusion.

NASA didn't go so far as to specify a cause for global warming in its press release, but one of the NASA officials did mention that it was probably caused by manmade emissions. I have trouble believing that. Wikipedia says that 9-26% of the so-called "greenhouse gases" are made up of carbon dioxide. Fossil fuel exhaust eventually becomes carbon dioxide, but then so does human exhalation. So if carbon dioxide levels are increasing more than normal (whatever "normal" is), one could attribute it to increasing human population just as much as automobile exhaust. Actually, that makes better sense since newer cars have better and better mufflers, whereas newer humans have the same old lungs.