Global warming explained? Or is it?

Science and statistics can prove anything

We all know the film that former vice president Al Gore made, that inconvenient truth? Remember that? I do. I remember that it stamped the word “urgent” on the worlds Global warming agenda. It seems that since that time this has disappeared somewhat from the eye of the media. There was some controversie over the research done for the film and the scientists who participated in it. Then there was “What the bleep do we know” and the world shifted it's focus again, trying to disprove the enormous claims made in that movie. Unsuccesfully so far, but give a statistician enough time and a pencil and they can prove and disprove anything. Science is at best a fair stab at a description of reality, but most often a woefully incomplete look at some details of said reality and the whole scientific method is choosing to exclude certain measurements that would disprove your theory and to search for that which is within the “variance”. Give a statisticien a bell curve and he's happy for hours...

The mystery of climate control

So, well science isn't really my cup of tea, my vision of reality includes feelings and intuïtions, learning and discovering from a place of joyful not knowing. The joy of discovery is mine. From that place I studied the Global Warming theory in the movie, in particular the bit about the earth's airconditioning system.

I'n fascinated with how airconditioning works though. I can understand a motor generating heat, through the burning of energy. I mean that's in broad strokes how our body works: Energy in, a bit of pumping around and burning it up, your body retains it's temperature even in sub-zero weather. But how do you get a thing to cool, weather it be a fridge or airconditioning. The film explained it to me on a very large scale. Honestly I don't know if it's the same way a traditional office airconditioning works, but here's what I've come to understand about the process.

What I think I understand

The sun heats the earth. (fuel in) Heat rises (pumping action). Cold drops! This was a surprise to me cold seeks the lower altitudes, I mean, it seems kind of logical now that I know it, but to me this was the key bit of information I was lacking. So there's a motion, both of the heat and the cold and in the Earth's oceans, this happens in a way that causes the colder water to go to the deepest oceans that just happen to be in the tropical region. My inquisitive mind here thinks: Is it an accident that the deepest oceans are tropical, or is this caused by the migration of vast bodies of water? Either way, the cold water then slowly heats up, because it's in contact with the hotter water at the surface and the hotter water cools down, cooling the earth in this whole process. This is why the temperature on earth supports life in the far reaches of the planet, though admittedly some have to wear heavy fur coats to stand the cold. This is how the movie explained the Earth's Airconditioning System. So now I want to know for sure if this is how a regular airconditioning works as well.

So here's my question

Did I understand this correctly? Or can someone enlighten me?