Thursday, June 21, 2007
Canadian Professor: Prepare for Global Cooling
Don't blame rising levels of carbon dioxide (C02) for whatever global warming is now taking place; put the blame on "old sol" — the sun may be getting ready to put the world into the deep freezer.
So say a growing number of scientists who have studied the effect of the sun on the earth's climate and concluded that the only thing scientists understand about climate change is that it is always changing.
"Climate stability has never been a feature of planet earth,” explains R. Timothy Patterson professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University in an article in the Financial Post.
"The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3 C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thousand-year-long ‘Younger Dryas’ cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6 C in a decade — 100 times faster than the past century's.”
Dr. Patterson insists that even though advocates of the global warming theory such as Al Gore are insisting that the "the science is settled," that is far from being the case.
"The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all," Patterson wrote." Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of 'stopping global climate change.'”
He cited the assertion by Canadian parliament member Ralph Goodale that parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world.” Patterson observed that it "would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade."
Patterson explained that an extensive scientific project he conducted for his government regarding the health of the Canadian fishing industry yielded results that concerned not just the condition of the native fishery, but how solar activity regulates climate.
The research that involved taking core samples of mud at the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords used sophisticated technology that enabled him and his team to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud. "Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons,” he explained.
Briefly, the research showed "a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called proxies ),” a find, he wrote, that is not unique since 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: a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators.
Among his conclusions:
"I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.”
In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental Researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
"Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today, and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry, and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.”
"In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet."
"Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the little ice age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.”
Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, a prolific researcher and one of Israel's top young scientists who was cited by Patterson, no longer accepts the logic of man-made global warming. "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming,” Shariv wrote. "But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media."
According to Dr. Shariv there is no concrete evidence — only speculation — that manmade greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence.
"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he states, adding that the sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate — nor will cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.
Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Shaviv states.
Finally, an article formally located at climatecentral.org, now found at iceagenow.com, states that should solar activity take a dive tomorrow, the temperatures would cool significantly.
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again,” the article avers. "In fact, we should be more afraid of a cooling trend because of a solar minimum that will peak in 2030 that could be fairly large. As we saw from a minor solar minimum in the mid 1900s, the earth suddenly started to cool. If we were to have even a medium sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had.”
Don't blame rising levels of carbon dioxide (C02) for whatever global warming is now taking place; put the blame on "old sol" — the sun may be getting ready to put the world into the deep freezer.
So say a growing number of scientists who have studied the effect of the sun on the earth's climate and concluded that the only thing scientists understand about climate change is that it is always changing.
"Climate stability has never been a feature of planet earth,” explains R. Timothy Patterson professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University in an article in the Financial Post.
"The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3 C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thousand-year-long ‘Younger Dryas’ cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6 C in a decade — 100 times faster than the past century's.”
Dr. Patterson insists that even though advocates of the global warming theory such as Al Gore are insisting that the "the science is settled," that is far from being the case.
"The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all," Patterson wrote." Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of 'stopping global climate change.'”
He cited the assertion by Canadian parliament member Ralph Goodale that parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world.” Patterson observed that it "would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade."
Patterson explained that an extensive scientific project he conducted for his government regarding the health of the Canadian fishing industry yielded results that concerned not just the condition of the native fishery, but how solar activity regulates climate.
The research that involved taking core samples of mud at the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords used sophisticated technology that enabled him and his team to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud. "Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons,” he explained.
Briefly, the research showed "a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called proxies ),” a find, he wrote, that is not unique since 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: a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators.
Among his conclusions:
"I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.”
In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental Researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
"Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today, and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry, and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.”
"In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet."
"Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the little ice age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.”
Astrophysicist Nir Shariv, a prolific researcher and one of Israel's top young scientists who was cited by Patterson, no longer accepts the logic of man-made global warming. "Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming,” Shariv wrote. "But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media."
According to Dr. Shariv there is no concrete evidence — only speculation — that manmade greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence.
"Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming," he states, adding that the sun's strong role indicates that greenhouse gases can't have much of an influence on the climate — nor will cutbacks in future C02 emissions will matter much in terms of the climate.
Even doubling the amount of CO2 by 2100, "will not dramatically increase the global temperature," Shaviv states.
Finally, an article formally located at climatecentral.org, now found at iceagenow.com, states that should solar activity take a dive tomorrow, the temperatures would cool significantly.
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again,” the article avers. "In fact, we should be more afraid of a cooling trend because of a solar minimum that will peak in 2030 that could be fairly large. As we saw from a minor solar minimum in the mid 1900s, the earth suddenly started to cool. If we were to have even a medium sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had.”
