Some places get cooler, some get warmer. And what we end up with is global warming? Puhleeze!

IF, and it’s a big if, we believe the surface temp record, then it hasn’t warmed at all since the 1930s, we’re simply returning to that temp level.

http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=275526219598836

has received $720,000 from none other than George Soros’s Open Society Institute, under the “politicization of science” (/sarc) project.

He also championed global cooling in 1973 (I’m sure you knew that)
http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290

“The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in ‘the next 50 years’ fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun’s rays that the Earth’s average temperature could fall by six degrees.

“Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, ‘could be sufficient to trigger an ice age.’

“Aiding Rasool’s research, the Post reported, was a ‘computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen,’ who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.”

So, emissions can either cool or warm us, depending on how Hansen’s model plays out that day. Brilliant.

Meanwhile, scientists of many nations are about to meet and consider the merits of Gregory Benford’s proposal to cool the earth by dumping a bargeful of iron filings in the ocean to stimulate plankton growth — an idea first proposed in Reason.

Naturally Greenpeace is opposed — because it would prove to everyone that their whole agenda is unnecessary.

(If this is tried and does work, then in a few years when they’re predicting ice ages again, I sure hope we’ll find some equally quick way to warm the earth!)

The worst thing about a democratic form of government is that it enables these Chicken Littles to waste everybody’s time.

The schools ought to be training kids to realize that the media are always going to be saying there’s an emergency — it sells papers and TV ads — and similarly, busybody politicians are always going to be saying there’s an emergency, because emergencies, real or imaginary, are the health of the State.

a great deal of the warming trend currently debated has to do with the choice of the starting point around 1850. this choice has more to do with the spread of reliable thermometers than with and good scientific rationale. it also happened to coincide with the deep part of the so called “little ice age” which was the coldest period in the last 9000 years. is using that point to anchor a mere 150 years of data reasonable? probably not. it skews the results significantly.

we are now approximately 1 degree below the levels of medieval times, a generally prosperous time when civilization progressed rapidly due, at least in part, to agricultural plenty and a stable climate. the same was true of the roman warming of 200bc to 600ad, which had similar temperatures. neither one attained the high temperatures of the Holocene maximum (when the arctic was 5 degrees C warmer than currently), which persisted for 3000 years.

there is conspicuous evidence that the “unprecedented shrinkage of glaciers” on Greenland and in Europe has ample precedent within fairly recent periods. how else can one explain the ruins of Viking villages emerging from beneath the Greenland ice sheets as they pull back around the edges of the landmass? surely no one is arguing that the Vikings built churches in ice caves… there are many analogous finds in Europe where farms and mines have been emerging from the ice around the edges of some retreating glaciers.

if we go back further, the downtrend in temperature becomes more pronounced. 5 million year temperature is in a clear downtrend. the same is true of 65 million year temperature. paleoclimatologists speak of a “gradually intensifying ice age”. the antarctic reglaciated about 13 million years ago. ice at the poles deepens ice ages. so the ice age deepens.

looked at in a truly long timeframe of 550 million years, we are currently experience temperatures within the lowest 5% of all those experienced since the emergence of multi-cellular life on earth.

and we are worried about it getting too hot?

we are at a temperature cooler than that experienced by the medieval kings and roman emperors. it is much cooler than the 3000 year climate optimum that saw the emergence of civilization as we think of it. many historians have argued that the higher temperatures were what allowed this to happen.

many of those proclaiming the urgency of the need to address current warming seem to believe that climate never changed before we started messing with it 150 years ago. nothing unusual is going on here. climate is constantly in flux. we are well within historical patterns here. wine was grown in london. northern greenland was covered in boreal forest.

surely, we must have something more important to worry about.