Global Warming
Growing Cold

One of the controversial portions of the Obama Budget is the “cap and trade” for carbon emissions. Regardless of how that is to work, the entire process is built upon the idea of global warming from man made emissions of greenhouse gases. Although the Taliban of global warming is ferocious in holding on to the gw orthodoxy, cracks are beginning to show. Skeptics are being heard in public.

In September Brazil experienced on of their latest winter snowfalls and their coldest September in a century. Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart pointed out that extreme cold and snowfall occurs in Brazil from la Ninas as well as periods of solar inactivity. August 2008 was the first month since 1913 with NO sunspot activity was recorded. Dr. Hackbart believes it “is no coincidence” that lack of solar activity enhanced the cold. So, one could ask, was unending solar activity of the past 70 years be the basis of temperature increase?

Other voices now heard include Don Easterbrook, a geologist from Western Washington University, confirms Hackbart through studying warming and cooling of the earth over the past four centuries. He believes that there is almost a exact correlation between solar activity and climate change and is convinced that we are in for 30 years of global cooling. Analytical chemist Michael J. Myers calls man made global warming “junk science” declaring that worldwide CO2 emissions on a yearly basis only equals about 0.0168% of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. Craig Loehle an American scientist who conducts modeling on climate change, confirmed earlier findings of the Medieval Warm Period that disputes the hockey stick idea of recent only global temperature increase. Studies of physical phenomena have confirmed that the period from 800 to 1300 AD was unusually warm, especially in Northern Europe.

But perhaps the biggest blow to gw was the paper of David Douglas and John Christy. For almost 30 years Christy has monitored the daily temperature readings of NASA’s 8 weather satellites. The authors conclude that manmade emissions may have a slight impact, the global temperature variations in global temperatures since 1978…cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide.” In using data from their paper, it appears that all the temperature increases of the past 30 years have be neutralized by the falling temperatures of the last 4! Not what the gw crowd wants to hear.

But, the gw crowd is not silenced by this flattening temperature issue. They acknowledge that there is no answer to the apparent cooling. Kyle Swanson of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is nevertheless undaunted by the thesis that man made gw is a problem. What is causing the cooling is a mystery and Swanson thinks it may continue for up to 30 years. Yet, he says it’s just a hiccup and "When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming. Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."

What the gw forces reason is that all this gw is being stored up, although not reflected in our current climate. And, the day is coming when it will all be unleashed upon the earth with a rapid temperature climb that will bring the devastation promised with the inexorable march of temperatures upward that is no longer present! Wow. Sounds like something for the SciFi channel. This is what mother would say is “having your cake and eating it too.” If temperatures rise…we were right; if temperatures fall…we are still right…just wait and see. Is this a position upon which to erect public policy?

We may look back on 2008 as a watershed year in the gw debate. The consensus of gw may have finally been exposed for what is wasn’t…a consensus. Much of the dogma of gw advanced out of fear of opposition to the political correctness of the notion of man made gw. Many respectable scientists are now coming forward to question a theory based on computer modeling and now without proof of its ongoing nature. From a political standpoint, the costly “cap and trade” carbon tax needed to save the planet may not have the stamina to carry the day. Why should costly government policy be based on faulty science from incorrect premises?

The world wide financial crisis is also a problem for gw advocates. There is no reason to enter into expensive and costly programs at a time when people cannot afford them. Withdrawal from a foreign oil addiction is a worthy goal for national security purposes…we should not be enriching our enemies by buying their oil. But, to tie that together with gw to race to unproven technologies that can only supply a fraction of the energy we need is just ludicrous. In the US we will be generating electricity with coal and powering our motor vehicles with oil based products for years to come, no matter the initiatives adopted. Yes, we can and should look to alternative energy, but over a 30 year not 10 year period. And, if we have a 30 year cold snap, we may all conclude that gw has grown cold. Except, that is, for the gws [global warming storage] guys of whom there will be few, if any, left [no pun intended!].