July 9, 2007
IF JUST A FEW BUTTERFLY-BALLOTING OLD JEWISH LADIES IN FLORIDA...:
Canadian climatologist says sun causing global warming (Dennis T. Avery, July 9, 2007, Enter Stage Right)
Another scientist has added his voice to the Global Warming debate. Canadian climatologist Tim Patterson says the sun drives the earth's climate changes—and Earth's current global warming is a direct result of a long, moderate 1,500-year cycle in the sun's irradiance.Patterson says he learned of the 1,500-year climate cycle while studying cycles in fish numbers on Canada's West Coast. Since the Canadian West had no long-term written fishery records, Patterson's research team drilled sediment cores in the deep local fjords to get 5,000-year climate profiles from the mud. The mud showed the past climate conditions: Warm summers left layers thick with one-celled fossils and fish scales. Cold, wet periods showed dark sediments, mostly dirt washed from the surrounding land.
Patterson's fishing profiles clearly revealed the sun's 87 and 210-year solar cycles—and the longer, 1500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles found since the 1980s in ice cores, tree rings, and fossil pollen.
"Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators is not unique," says the climatologist from Carleton University. "Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change."
..had voted for Al Gore instead of Pat Buchanan, he'd have extinguished the Sun by now. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 9, 2007 10:01 AM
As President, Al Gore would have done no more to attack "global warming" then Pres. Bush has done. This whole hysteria of the past 2 years (before that it was much, much more marginalized) is because he had to find something to do with himself and so made his silly movie, and the media siezed on it as another way to attack Pres. Bush. For all sorts of political & economic reasons nothing much is actually going to seriously change (although the things that will get done, for political reasons, are likely to be really stupid & bad, i.e., ethanol), so it's a real good thing that there's absolutely no threat.
Posted by: b at July 9, 2007 11:26 AMWhen I was in elementary school in the late 80's and early 90's I recall being bombarded with several scare stories. Acid rain, the rainforests were almost gone, the ozone layer was going to completely dissappear and the ice caps would melt, deficits, and America was on the decline and Japan was going to surpass us and buy out most of the country. As soon as a Democrat became President all of those things went away faster than you can say Slick Willie. So no, if Al Gore had become President global warming would not be considered a major problem.
Posted by: andrew at July 9, 2007 11:50 AMAndrew, I was in grammar school in the middle 40's and have seen that list ebb and flow like the tides depending on which team has the White House.
Posted by: erp at July 9, 2007 12:27 PMRemember the "population bomb"? The coming ice age? Nuclear winter?
For amusement value, read old mid-70s SF novels--one of the default assumptions was that government-mandated population controls--necessary to keep us from outstripping the soylent green supply--would limit the number of children that could be born. A critical plot point in Ringworld and other fine books.
Posted by: Mike Morley at July 9, 2007 2:13 PMMy highschool put posters in the hallway listing all the commodities that would run out in so-many years (according to the Club of Rome): oil in 15, zinc in 10, silver in 12, uranium in 20, etc. At the bottom it read: "Only you can change the future."
Posted by: Gideon at July 9, 2007 2:46 PMOn a hot day like today, extinguishing the Sun sounds like a good idea.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at July 9, 2007 4:09 PMGore may not be able to extinguish the sun, but from the looks of him, he may be able to do the next best thing -- provide enough shade to cool us all off.
Posted by: erp at July 9, 2007 4:25 PM