The auditorium of the Reichardt building was the setting last Thursday for a presentation by Alaska's most respected skeptic on global warming, Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, adding more ammunition to a current debate filled with propaganda and vitriol from both sides.

In the presentation: a mixture of data sets, satellite images, and straight-forward examples to buttress his argument, the soft-spoken Akasofu picked apart many conclusions that have been brought forward by the scientific community regarding this politically-charged topic.

The lecture began with various graphs showing that the Earth's average surface temperature has been rising since the beginning of the industrial age, however, this information was put into perspective by historical climate data.

For example, an episode of climatic warming roughly one thousand years ago, known as the Medieval warm period, showed average global temperatures to be slightly higher than today—roughly seven-tenths of a degree Celsius. This difference between today's global average and the temperature one thousand years previous is roughly the same difference in temperatures between the beginning of the industrial age and today. From this data comparison, it was Akasofu's conclusion that the current warming trend falls within natural fluctuations.

Using a larger window to chart temperature changes, data shows that since the last ice age, or glaciation in geological terms, he showed average temperatures have oscillated wildly between periods of warmer and cooler climates than exist today. During these last 10,000 years, human populations and activities have had basically no impact on the general picture of global climate.

When data from the previous interglacial period (a geological term for the generally warm times between ice age events) is brought into the equation and compared with current conditions, it is apparent that the last interglacial was noticeably warmer than our current period. This lends some credence to the proposition that the warming trend the Earth is currently undergoing is part of a natural process or processes that are not properly understood.

"Before we fully understand the natural processes that are at work, it is difficult to make the assumption that human activities are responsible for the current warming," said Akasofu.

This lack of understanding of climatic processes has led to a dearth of conflicting information that has been released by the scientific community, often supplemented by computer models that show the Earth's global temperature in a runaway mode exacerbated by human activities. These models often have the data inputs of rising carbon dioxide levels from the burning of fossil fuels in industrial activities and applications.

"This issue of using carbon dioxide levels tied to temperature as an input in the computer model skews the results of the computer model," stated Akasofu.

This is a common problem with computer models, regardless of the application, because the computer does not understand the whole system involved, it can only model something based on the inputs given.

Akasofu used a puzzle to explain this quandary of climate scientists and brought up the solutions that are often used when dealing with a confusing and often contradictory data set. Some scientists are apt to completely dismiss conflicting data, others try to massage the numbers of the contradictory data to make it match up to their theories, and still others take a closer look at the data that doesn't fit their theories and re-evaluate their assumptions.

When asked what he got from the lecture, sophomore student Luke Sizemore said, "it seems that more study is needed before we can assume human activity is the primary factor in climate change. It is rather apparent from this lecture that the term 'global warming' is a political issue and that 'climate change' is always happening."