Global cooling

[Kat Kanning]

This one's for Lloyd:

http://www.fmnn.com/Analysis/160/2864/2005-11-09.asp?wid=160&nid=2864
IT?S GETTING COLDER, NOT WARMER

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

In 1922, the poet Robert Frost wrote, ?Some say the world will end in fire,/some say in ice ./ From what I?ve tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire,/ but if it had to perish twice ,/ I think that for destruction ice /is also great/ and would suffice .? The likelihood, the science, points to ice.

The weather has been on everyone?s mind of late. First it was Katrina, followed by Rita, and then Wilma wondering about in a fashion that defied the ability of the most sophisticated computers of the US Weather Service to predict. Typically, the perpetrators of scare campaigns were quick to announce that the number and ferocity of these and other hurricanes this passed season was due to ?global warming.?

This is as false as the theory of global warming. Climatologists agree the hurricanes were due to the Atlantic Ocean Conveyer, a system that determines whether the ocean is warmer or cooler, moving large currents around. It is, like most things in Nature, a regular cycle, one that produced many storms in the 1940s and 50s, then eased off until the 70s and 80s, and has now returned.

It is well known that, of the course of billions of years, the earth has gone through warming and cooling cycles. From 1850 to 1950, the Earth gained about one degree Fahrenheit in warmth. It has been warmer in the past such as during the millions of years that dinosaurs existed. The earth, however, is not showing signs of significant warming. The Ice Shelf in Greenland and Antarctic is actually getting thicker and, in 2004, the temperature in the Artic grew noticeably cooler.

This is not something to be ignored because the earth has been in an interglacial period between ice ages that lasts about 11,200 years and we are due another ice age any day now.

Just as there is nothing mankind can do to prevent a bogus global warming, there is likely nothing we can do to avoid the very real prospect of the next ice age. When it comes it will be extinction time for people, plants and animals north of the Equator. That?s the way it was the last time. Indeed, in the course of its five billion years, the earth has experienced such extinctions on a regular basis.

While the environmentalists have flooded the classrooms and media of America with endless nonsense about global warming, the fact is that the schedules, i.e. the movement of the earth around the sun, galactic timetables, and ways in which the earth and our solar system function are well known to scientists who study these things and, frankly, none if it bodes well for the human race and other critters.

At least, that is the conclusion of Robert W. Felix, the author of ?Not by Fire, But by Ice: The Next Ice age Now? ($15.95, Sugarhouse Publishing, Bellevue, WA). Piling scientific fact upon fact, Felix notes that, ?We?re beginning to realize that earth is a violent and dangerous place to live. We?re beginning to realize that mass extinctions have been the rule, rather than the exception for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on earth.?

There?s environmental propaganda and then there is hard, cold science. No pun intended. Here?s what Felix writes:

?Then, about 11,500 years ago, the ice age ended. And it ended fast. As the world grew warmer, tropical animals moved back into Europe, and the barren tundra filled with trees once again?It was a global sweep of death?mass extinction?destroying not only the mammoth, but some 75% of all of America?s larger mammals. But why only the big ones? And why so fast??

It hardly does justice to Felix and his book to try to encapsulate his view that a predictable reversal of the magnetic poles will act as a trigger for the next ice age and it is not the much ballyhooed global warming that troubles Felix, but evidence that vast, unseen, underwater volcanic warming of the earth?s oceans will bring about the next ice age. As the oceans warm, evaporation increases, which leads to more precipitation and when the excess precipitation begins falling as snow, it portends a new ice age.

?There is a cycle,? says Felix, ?a cycle that includes orogenesis (creation of mountains), seismic activity, sea level changes, black shale deposition, volcanism, extinctions, seafloor spreading and magnetic reversals.? (To learn more, visit www.iceagenow.com)

Science is a wonderful thing. It gathers huge quantities of facts, organizes, tests and analyzes them. It is science that has given us an understanding of gravity, our solar system, the human genome, and everything else that has influenced and advanced our lives. Felix has peered into the past and into the future to warn us that all to bundle up.

Is he right? I hope not, but the science he cites, plus the climate worldwide seems to suggest he is.

Alan Caruba writes a weekly commentary, ?Warning Signs?, posted on the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center, www.anxietycenter.com.

[Caleb]

So ...

Is anyone else but me in favor of moving the Free State Project to Belize? 

Caleb

[Lloyd Danforth]

Thanks Kat.

I would suggest that anyone planing on living in the future read:

'Why Geograph matters'  by Harm de Blij, Oxford University Press, September 2005

[SWilliams]

http://www.iceagenow.com

Imma thinking it starts on Dec 22, 2012- that's when the Mayan calendar ends...

[Fluff and Stuff]

Thanks Kat.

I would suggest that anyone planing on living in the future read:

'Why Geograph matters'? by Harm de Blij, Oxford University Press, September 2005

What if we don't plan on living in the future?

[FSPinNY]

I'm thinking of fairly high ground, not in the way of a river or water flow.

Brian

[polyanarch]

I plan on living in the now.  Tomorrow never comes.

[Kat Kanning]

Tell that to little orphan Annie.

[Pat K]

LOL

[Kat Kanning]

GLOBAL COOLING?
Coldest December
since late 1800s?
Meteorologist's claim comes on heels of climate-warming summit in Canada
Posted: December 13, 2005
9:42 p.m. Eastern


? 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

A weather expert says December 2005 is on pace to become one of the 10 coldest in more than 100 years, despite claims at a global conference on climate change this week that the Earth is getting warmer.

Joe Bastardi, senior meteorologist with Accuweather.com, says present weather patterns across the country show below-normal temperatures in the single digits, with still colder air forecast in the coming weeks.

All told, he said, "the current look and pace may bring December 2005 in as a top 10 month for cold Decembers nationwide since the late 1800s."

Some examples of the abnormally cold temps include: Omaha, Neb., (17.5 degrees below normal); Indianapolis, Ind., (14.1 degrees below normal); Chicago, Ill., (13.9 degrees below normal); and Denver, Colo., (11.9 degrees below normal).

"The cold is widespread, with below-normal temperatures recorded from eastern Washington and Oregon south into Texas and into the Northeast," said the weather service.

And it could get worse. Accuweather.com "is forecasting another week of unseasonably cold weather, with the potential for another major snowstorm developing on Wednesday."

While the current weather pattern may be considered anecdotal by some, it is timely nonetheless, as it comes on the heels of a United Nations-sponsored event in which most of the more than 150 nations participating claimed the world is getting warmer ? a phenomenon most blamed on the United States.

Washington was the most frequent target of criticism over the course of the two-week summit in Montreal, Canada, where participants blamed the U.S. for being the world's largest contributor of harmful atmospheric emissions some experts say are increasing, on average, global temperatures.

One such critic is former President Bill Clinton, who called the Bush administration "flat wrong" for saying enforcement of a global emissions-reduction treaty ? the so-called Kyoto Protocols, after the city in Japan where they were negotiated ? would harm the U.S. economy.

Clinton said global warming has been proven by mounting evidence of melting ice caps, retreating glaciers and rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

"We are uncertain about how deep and the time of arrival of the consequences, but we are quite clear that they will not be good," he said in a speech that reportedly upset U.S. delegates to the conference.

Others aren't so sure.

State climatologist George Taylor of Oregon told the Washington Post recent data suggesting the Earth could warm from 2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 are "mighty preliminary."

"I just don't trust it," he said.

Special offers:

Avoid the crowds ? finish shopping from home at WND's Christmas Store!

More great Christmas ideas from WND

Previous stories:

'Global warming' hype reaches fever pitch

Whites more to blame for 'global warming'?

Study: 'Global warming' claims overheated?

Pollution fights 'global warming'?

Limbaugh excoriates Bush on global warming

'Black' hurricane names brewing swirl of dissent

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47887

[Lloyd Danforth]

COOL!

[Kat Kanning]

Downright chilly.

[Kat Kanning]

Glad we have all these experts out there to clear things up.


World is at its hottest since prehistory, say scientists
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Published: 18 December 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article333840.ece
The world is now hotter than at any stage since prehistoric times, a top climatologist announced last week. His startling conclusion comes as Nasa reported that 2005 has been the hottest year ever recorded.

Dr Michael Coughlan, head of the National Climate Centre at the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology, said: "One probably has to go back into prehistoric times - and way back in them - to be seeing these sorts of temperatures."

Top British climatologists agree privately but are cautious of saying so in public because, naturally, no measurements were taken of temperatures then.

Dr Coughlan is supported by research that shows carbon dioxide levels in the air - the main cause of global warming - are higher now than at any time in the past hundreds of thousands of years.

Scientists in Bern, Switzerland, and Oregon in the United States analysed levels of the gas in tiny air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice during the past 650,000 years. They found current levels were 27 per cent greater than the highest level over that period.

Professor Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientist, has said the last time levels of the gas were that high was 60 million years ago. And that was during a period of rapid warming in the Palaeocene epoch, which caused a massive reduction in life on Earth.

Meanwhile, top climatological bodies around the world report that 2005 is vying with 1998 as the warmest year on record. Nasa says it just beats it, while the Met Office says it is just behind it, and the US government's National Climatic Data Centre says the two years are statistically indistinguishable.

Whichever is right, 2005 has been a remarkable year, for 1998 was made much hotter by a strong El Ni?o, the warm Pacific current that strongly affects weather around the globe.

Last June, September and October were all logged as the warmest ever, world-wide. The past 10 years are all in the warmest 10 ever recorded, apart from 1996 whose place is taken by 1990.

This year Arctic sea ice dropped to its smallest ever extent, the Atlantic suffered a record hurricane season and an unprecedented drought reduced the flow of the Amazon to its lowest ever level. Canada and Australia had their hottest ever weather this year, while India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria suffered heatwaves touching 50C.

The world is now hotter than at any stage since prehistoric times, a top climatologist announced last week. His startling conclusion comes as Nasa reported that 2005 has been the hottest year ever recorded.

Dr Michael Coughlan, head of the National Climate Centre at the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology, said: "One probably has to go back into prehistoric times - and way back in them - to be seeing these sorts of temperatures."

Top British climatologists agree privately but are cautious of saying so in public because, naturally, no measurements were taken of temperatures then.

Dr Coughlan is supported by research that shows carbon dioxide levels in the air - the main cause of global warming - are higher now than at any time in the past hundreds of thousands of years.

Scientists in Bern, Switzerland, and Oregon in the United States analysed levels of the gas in tiny air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice during the past 650,000 years. They found current levels were 27 per cent greater than the highest level over that period.

Professor Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientist, has said the last time levels of the gas were that high was 60 million years ago. And that was during a period of rapid warming in the Palaeocene epoch, which caused a massive reduction in life on Earth.

Meanwhile, top climatological bodies around the world report that 2005 is vying with 1998 as the warmest year on record. Nasa says it just beats it, while the Met Office says it is just behind it, and the US government's National Climatic Data Centre says the two years are statistically indistinguishable.

Whichever is right, 2005 has been a remarkable year, for 1998 was made much hotter by a strong El Ni?o, the warm Pacific current that strongly affects weather around the globe.

Last June, September and October were all logged as the warmest ever, world-wide. The past 10 years are all in the warmest 10 ever recorded, apart from 1996 whose place is taken by 1990.

This year Arctic sea ice dropped to its smallest ever extent, the Atlantic suffered a record hurricane season and an unprecedented drought reduced the flow of the Amazon to its lowest ever level. Canada and Australia had their hottest ever weather this year, while India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria suffered heatwaves touching 50C.

[Russell Kanning]

It feels like it is getting colder to me.

[Kat Kanning]

 Global Cooling: Fear the Ice

by Bill Walker
by Bill Walker

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The Ice Ages are not over. We?re still feeling the effects of the one that receded 12,000 years ago. I grew up on a farm in central Ohio, right on the terminal moraine. I spent my formative years toting glacier-dumped rocks from newly plowed fields, to put on the piles of rocks from the efforts of the previous century?s farm boys. So I have been meditating on the evils of Global Cooling since I was six or seven years old.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Global Cooling was all the fashion. Newsweek warned of it. Popular books warned of the return of the ice. Aircraft contrails, dust and sulfates from coal power plants, volcanoes, desertification, solar variation, galactic dust clouds, fires from global nuclear war (has everyone really forgotten Nuclear Winter? Or is that meme still happily cohabitating with Global Warming in millions of muddled minds?), etc., would all combine to freeze the Earth. No political careers were built on fears of a milder Earth.

Fashions change. As Michael Crichton points out in State of Fear, one year it suddenly became unfashionable to look at cooling factors in the Earth?s climate. Today?s academic climatologists are forced to publish within the paradigm that the Earth is warming, that this trend will continue regardless of natural events, and that warming is bad. Major media is even more constrained; Newsweek is not running any stories on the cooling effects of aircraft contrails or the dust clouds from the nomads who yearly expand the Sahara Desert.

The Earth may well have warmed a tenth of a degree or two, if you pick the right starting and ending year; climate fluctuates for many reasons. But the other package-deal premises of the Global Warming meme are completely without scientific basis. There is no scientific reason to believe that the minuscule greenhouse effect from 20th century fossil fuel burning can overcome the sun-shrouding effects of a major volcano or asteroid hit. We know that either of these types of events is going to happen sometime; we just don?t know when (maybe 2036, if you?re the betting sort). And either one will pitch the Earth right back into an Ice Age.

Ice ages are not fun. Even minor cooling events are hard on agricultural civilizations. (You may think you?re living in a silicon civilization, but a few months with no sunlight will radically change your food vs. RAM preferences). Yes, if we were all living in concrete domes with home Mr. Fusion units, maybe Ice Ages would just be long periods of good skiing. But for now, we still depend on solar power for our food.

In the April of 1815, the Indonesian volcano Tambora erupted and spewed over a million tonnes of sun-darkening dust. 1816 was the "year without a summer"; the northern United States suffered crop failures and frost damage. The year 535 was even worse, bringing a literal Dark Age to Europe and freezing the crops of millions. These famines were caused by relatively tiny events, nothing like the Yellowstone eruptions or the Chicxulub asteroid impact. Major events would shut off outdoor agriculture for years. Of course we can always use growlights, right? Sure? if you use all the electricity on the planet for artificial lights, you should be able to grow about as much food as the farms of? Rhode Island. Everyone else will starve (well, except for the Mormons, of course). And maybe a few cannibals.

During major Ice Ages, most of the world?s ecosystems were displaced. There were no California redwood forests in the Ice Age; they are a recent development nurtured by the (natural) post-Ice Age global warming. 18,000 years ago, deserts and ice sheets covered most of the world. There is absolutely no scientific reason to think that it won?t happen again.

There is also no reason to think that there won?t be inconvenient short-term warming effects. But we can?t predict them; we can?t predict the weather ten days in advance, let alone predict all volcanoes, ocean currents, hydrates, asteroids, interstellar dust clouds, nuclear wars, solar cycles, etc. etc.

The Kyoto Treaty and other "anti-Global-Warming" efforts are not scientific guarantees of "better" (better for whom? I live in Minnesota!) climate. They are just sacrifices to the thunder gods, in the hopes that they will grant us an unchanging world. That ain?t gonna happen. The one sure climate prediction is that climate will fluctuate.

Ironically, so far government interference with the energy markets has increased Global Warming. The antinuclear movement in the US alone has caused the burning of 400 million tons more coal. Was this a good thing? We don?t really know, but the evidence is that the CO2 released from fossil fuel burning is wonderful for ecosystems.

During the last Ice Age, CO2 levels fell to less than half of the modern level. They had recovered to .028% by the late 1800s. All our fossil fuel burning has raised the CO2 to a whopping? .038%. But we still have a long way to go to get back to Jurassic levels. Back in the good ol? days, when the ecosystem was really seething with life, the atmosphere was .3% CO2, about eight times greater than today.

These high CO2 levels made life very easy for plants with the original "C3" photosynthetic system. In addition to their direct CO2 fertilization effect, higher CO2 levels also help in droughts. With enough CO2, C3 plants can close their "stomata" (pores) more, and lose less water.

As CO2 levels fell during the Age of Mammals (and Ice Ages), "C4" plants (e.g., grasses) have tended to gain on older C3 species. Today, it is estimated that the optimum CO2 levels for agricultural productivity in C3 plants (which include wheat and other important crops) would be at least .070%. So we have to at least double the amount of fossil fuel that we have already burned? or more, if we increase the area of Earth that is hospitable to plant life.

Much of the world is desert even today. In fact, there is less total life in the sea than on the much smaller land area of our planet. Most of the ocean is "desert," in the sense of having very low densities of life. This is because most of the ocean suffers from a severe mineral deficiency. Iron is the limiting factor on ocean life over most of the world ocean. A tiny amount of iron will cause a huge increase in plankton growth. If the oceans were privatized, sea farmers would fertilize with iron?. And then we would really need to burn more fossil fuel to supply enough CO2. Fortunately, there is plenty left.

To Stop Global Warming

If one were really afraid of Global Warming, one would support:

   1. Nuclear power
   2. Privatization of lakes, rivers and oceans
   3. Privatization of the world?s deserts, most of which would actually support CO2-absorbing crops if there were secure private property rights
   4. Elimination of the FAA (aircraft contrails do have the net effect of cooling the planet)

Has anyone noticed any "Anti-Global-Warming" groups that support nuclear power? Private property rights in the Third World deserts? Ocean farms?

Neither have I. Maybe that means that they aren?t really worried about stopping Global Warming so much as they are about stopping Global Free Enterprise?

The fact is that we don?t know whether the world will cool or warm. If you feel yourself believing confidently in Global Warming, remember that you would have believed in Global Cooling just as strongly in 1975.

If Global Warming Happens

If the good ol? boys that control the world?s governments (and fossil fuel companies, and "environmental" organizations) continue to slow down the adoption of nuclear power, then the CO2 levels will continue their slow rise. CO2 will never be the most important greenhouse gas (the main greenhouse gas on this planet is the sinister pollutant dihydrogen monoxide. DHMO, as it is commonly known, causes 95% of the greenhouse warming effect. Government water projects in the US have contributed to higher DHMO levels, and thus to Global Warming.)

However, CO2 levels might cause a slight warming over the next thousand years. (Or they might not; we don?t know whether they will overcome other factors). The terrible results of this would be that Minnesota, Siberia, Canada, and other real estate would become "SantaMonicaformed," so that people from California could live there. This would of course cause the collapse of real estate prices in California.

The other effects of a mild warming would be pretty benign. Both agriculture and wild ecosystems would be more productive. Rainfall would increase. Sea levels would rise, but the centers of the continents would be more livable. (And people have been building dikes for centuries. If the sea goes up a few feet, New York could just build dikes like the Dutch. Just don?t put the Corps of Engineers in charge of watching them?).

If Global Cooling Happens

Global Cooling, unlike warming, can happen as suddenly as the collapse of the California real estate market. If a large asteroid or volcano strikes, there will be no growing season in that hemisphere that year. Personally, I plan to stock up on these, just in case. (I?m already fully prepared if Global Warming hits Minnesota? I?ll just take off one of my parkas).

Whether the Earth warms or cools, the only way to produce the wealth and technology to adapt to changing climate is through the free market. Shutting down the economy through treaties and regulations is a guarantee that we won?t have the resources to handle Nature?s little surprises.

December 28, 2005

Bill Walker [send him mail] works in HIV and gene therapy research in Rochester, Minnesota.