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Another point of view to consider.
Scientist: Earth Cooling, Not Warming
A San Francisco-based scientist says that current solar activity strongly indicates that the earth is on the verge of a new ice age.
"Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh,"
warns Phil Chapman writing in The Australian. Chapman is a geophysicist
and astronautical engineer
who was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut.
"The scariest photo I have seen . . . is at www.spaceweather.com,
where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric
Observatory [SOHO], located in deep space at the equilibrium point between
solar and terrestrial gravity," Chapman wrote, adding ominously that
"what is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot."
"This is where SOHO comes in," he explained. "The
sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11
years. The most
recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No. 24, was supposed
to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers."
That, he writes did not happen. "The first sunspot appeared
in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last
Monday but
vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray
that there will be many more, and soon."
Why? According to Chapman "there is a close correlation
between variations in the sunspot cycle and earth's climate. The previous
time a cycle was
delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that
lasted several decades from 1790. Northern winters became ferocious:
in particular, the rout of Napoleon's Grand Army during the retreat from
Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots."
Although the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with
the failure of cycle No. 24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal
connection,
Chapman warns that it is cause for concern.
"Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global
warming," he explains, "the average temperature on earth has remained
steady or slowly
declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric
concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature
is falling precipitously.
"All four agencies that track earth's temperature [the
Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for
Space Studies in
New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing
Systems Inc in California] report that it cooled by about 0.7 C
in 2007." This, he says is "the fastest temperature change in
the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the
temperature
does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over."
Moreover, he says, there is also plenty of anecdotal evidence
that 2007 was exceptionally cold, noting that it snowed in Baghdad for the
first time
in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of
Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since
James
Cook discovered the place in 1770.
Chapman wrote that the global warming dogma should be put
aside, "at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if
we are moving into
another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850."
How bad could a new little ice age be? "Much worse than
the previous one and much more harmful than anything warming may do. There
are many
more people now, and we have become dependent on a few temperate agricultural
areas, especially in the U.S. and Canada." Global warming, he
added, "would increase agricultural output, but global cooling will
decrease it. Millions will starve if we do nothing to prepare for it [such
as planning
changes in agriculture to compensate], and millions more will die from cold-related
diseases."
And grim as that outlook is, Chapman predicts that there is
also another possibility, remote but much more serious — the Greenland
and Antarctic
ice cores and other evidence show that for the past several million years,
severe glaciation has almost always afflicted our planet and under normal
conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5
km of ice.
This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years.
The present interglacial period we have enjoyed throughout
recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so
an ice age
is overdue. And glaciation can occur quickly: The required decline in global
temperature is about 12 C and it can happen in 20 years.
His conclusions: "The next descent into an ice age is
inevitable but may not happen for another 1,000 years. On the other hand,
it must be noted
that the cooling in 2007 was even faster than in typical glacial transitions.
If it continued for 20 years, the temperature would be 14 C cooler in 2027."
By then, he writes, "most of the advanced nations would
have ceased to exist, vanishing under the ice, and the rest of the world
would be faced
with a catastrophe beyond imagining."
"All those urging action to curb global warming need
to take off the blinders and give some thought to what we should do if we
are facing global
cooling instead," he writes. "It will be difficult for people
to face the truth when their reputations, careers, government grants or
hopes for social
change depend on global warming, but the fate of civilisation may be at
stake."
© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
| "I
passionately believe that the perceptive few who see the ultimate disaster
ahead, must band together now to warn the slumbering many. Such corrective measures as exist, must be put into effect immediately." Jacques Cousteau - Global Explorer |

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