IN the last decade humanity has become aware and concerned over global warming. We believe that the warming is due to the generation of heat from all kinds of human activities.

The worlds’ population has increased tremendously. Every one of us gives off heat. We need to cook food and warm ourselves in winter. We burn fuel for our engines and power generation, producing heat.

We cut down our forests and we experience huge forest fires. All combustion processes produce heat and carbon dioxide. Our expanding settlement involve cutting down trees which reduces heat and the conversion of CO2 to Oxygen.

All these things contribute to global warming. But we must not forget that planet earth has been going through many changes in its millions of years of existence.

We know that the earth was once populated by dinosaurs, living in forests of trees. We know that the dinosaurs had disappeared along with the trees. We believe the trees had undergone some kind of physical and chemical process and have been converted to liquid, solid and gaseous hydrocarbons. As petroleum, we have mined and burned the hydrocarbons to produce energy.

Then there were the ice ages when the earth was covered with ice. Nothing could grow. There could be no living creatures, no men nor animals nor trees.

Then the ice thawed and huge oceans covered the planet. From the bottom of the oceans the earth emerged to form huge land masses, slowly shaping into the continents that we are familiar with today.

A very long time ago life began to appear on our planet. Eventually, primitive men appeared. They evolved until modern men peopled the earth.

Through all these periods the world experienced big changes in temperature. For the past maybe 100,000 years the temperature became suitable for life. Plants, animals and men thrived. The earth moved, rotating every 24 hours, tilting so that the north and the south become alternately cold or warm, while the equatorial area stayed warm as the sun shines over the tropics throughout the year.

The rise in temperature we are experiencing now is part of the changes the planet goes through. It may get worse. We need to prepare for this change. We must expect more natural disasters.