When You`re Hot, You`re Hot!

Back in the days of Jimmy Carter and killer rabbits, the doomsayers were telling us that the Earth was slipping into a new ice age, and that we were all going to die. They used thermometer readings which showed a slight cooling of the Earth, coupled with some unusually cold winters, to claim that chicken little was right and the sky was indeed falling. Survivalist ran for their bunkers while academics ordered extra elbow patches for their sweaters and bemoaned a culture which was unwilling to accept socialism to save the world. Stragely enough, the `80`s put an end to the Global Cooling talk. The same doomsayers found a new hobby; global warming.

Once again, the sky is falling and we are all going to die. We have heard this repeatedly for the last twenty years, and from the same people who promised glaciers and Igloos. The same acedemics are removing their sweaters and bemoaning a culture which refuses to adopt socialism to save the world. We have been treated to a series of idiotic, hysterical ideas. We have been told we must adopt Kyoto to keep the planet from overheating. We simply must live poorer. We must cut back, sacrifice, use less, yada, yada, yada (isn`t this amazingly similar to the crazy ideas of the `70`s; the Club of Rome study and Limits to Growth where we were told we would have to cut back, sacrifice, use less, yada, yada, yada.)

But what is really going on with global warming? There is a great deal of disagreement between data compiled from actual measurements of sea temperatures, and those taken by satellites of the atmosphere. Go to http://techcentralstation.com/120304F.html to read all about it.

What kind of warming are we talking about here? We are talking about a rise in the last thirty years of about .08* across the globe! Eight Tenths of One degree! This falls easily within the normal variation of temperature, and makes a mockery of the insane, desperate attempts to control the Greenhouse Effect. People need to take a deep breath and look at the normal ebb and flow of climate.

The Earth`s climate changes all of the time because the Earth is not a static thing, and neither is the Sun. Our atmosphere is renewed all of the time by volcanic eruptions (and we should be very grateful-no vulcanism is part of why Mars has such a thin atmosphere!) and it has changed enormously through the Eons. Originally it was contained large quantities of Methane and CO2. During the Jurassic period the atmosphere was thicker and contained more oxygen than it does now, allowing land animals to grow to a much larger size. There were no ice-caps during the Jurassic, and we have found tropical plant fossils in Antarctica frozen under the ice. We know all about the Ice Ages, which were interspersed with interglacial periods (we are currently in an ice age). In the historic era we have clear examples of random climate change. During the Middle Ages wine grapes grew in Britain and Olive trees grew in Germany because the temperature was 6-8 degrees warmer. This was the Mideval Warming Period. This was followed by the Little Ice Age between 1645 and 1715 in which temperatures dropped to a couple of degrees below current levels, and the British had to settle for French wine and the Germans gave up olives. In the last hundred years we went from a warm period during the 1890`s to cooler periods following a cyclical pattern.

We have been in a (slight) warming pattern, and now the sky is falling! Isn`t it strange that now, in our post-industrial era, that we have upset the delicate balance of the Earth`s atmosphere, and are going to burn to a crisp. Isn`t it strange that this is all because of industry, and we are going to have to give up much of this industry and return to the life of frolicking among the daisies in our homespun clothes and low energy lifestyles?

The eruption of one volcano gives off more greenhouse gas than is released through emissions in an entire year. This whole argument is fecetious; we simply aren`t putting that much stuff out to effect the climate.

There is something that most enviro-nuts have chosen to forget-the Sun is also not a static thing. Our Sun is unique. It is not part of a binary system. It is a yellow dwarf, spectral class G2 and is quite stable for a smaller star. Quite stable, but not truly stable. Sol is not a flare sun, but it becomes active periodically. This increase in activity is evident by an increase in sunspots. Sunspots are cool patches on the sun. When the sun becomes more active it developes more sunspots.

The fusion process of our Sun is not fully understood. One theory suggests that fusion stops inside of the sun periodically. The Sun is a hot ball of gas, with fusion occuring in the center of the ball because of the immense pressure and high temperatures. When the hydrogen inside the sun goes into fusion mode, it expands the ball of gas outward, reducing pressure. This in turn may shut the fusion process down, and the Sun still radiates energy because of gravitational contraction until the fusion process begins again. Heavy sunspot activity means the Sun is in one of its warm, fusion periods. We have been in a period of heavy sunspot activity.

In short, any minor increase in temperature we see today is caused by increased solar activity. This accounts for the discrepency in the data refered to in the Techcentral article I linked. If CO2 emissions were causing global warming we would see a rise in temperature in the upper atmosphere first, followed by the Oceans last. That this situation is reversed strongly suggests that this phonomenon is caused by the sun; we are seeing a rise in the Oceans first which would catch and hold increased radiation while the atmosphere is quicker to relinquish any extra heat. This also explains why we see a hole in the ozone layer at the poles, and why we see more effects of global warming at the poles. The sun is putting out more than light, it is putting out subatomic particles in a steady stream (called the solar wind). The Earth`s magnetic field catches these particles (protecting us from a dangerous dose) and whirls them to the poles, where they touch down. It should be obvious why the ozone layer has is damaged at the poles. The ozone is being hit by electrically charged particles at very high speeds.

Why, then, should we rush frantically into the Kyoto quagmire? We don`t even understand the data we have been getting. Global Warming gurus keep adjusting their model to ``prove`` that Man is destroying the environment. We simply have no reason to believe that this is the case.

Rush Limbaugh argues that Man can`t cause any serious upheaval; Rush is wrong on this one (this falls into the documented 4%). There have been cases in the past where societies have destroyed their environments. The natives of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) cut down all of their trees to move those damn big heads, and then killed each other fighting over the food that remained. The Mayans were forced to move because they exhausted the land, North Africa turned to entirely to desert as a result of overgrazing etc. We know of several enormous cataclysms which wiped out whole civilizations. The Celts had a civilization coexisting with the early Mesopotamian, but some environmental cataclysm destroyed it (study of treerings show that for two years Ireland was in near total darkness; after this period the Celt civilization disappears and is replaced by a much more primitive one.) We can put ourselves permanently out of business.

It is much more likely, however, that we will destroy our spirit and our wealth through the draconian measures the socialist climate change people advocate. The real horror would be to adopt the madness of Kyoto to fight the windmill of global warming when the sun is the real culprit. We can`t change the sun. We must not rush headlong into the abyss of environmental shadows.