History and Trends, Global Warming

ABC's '08 prediction for June, 2015:  

"New York City underwater?  Gas over $9 a gallon?  A carton of milk costs almost $13?  Welcome to June 12, 2015.  Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago.  Appearing on 'Good Morning America' in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015." 

And what about TIME magazine predicting global cooling in its June 24, 1974 issue!       

Dr. Fred Singer notes past cycles of warming and cooling

Fred Singer, Ph.D., an atmospheric and space physicist, as well as a distinguished speaker and scientist known and honored throughout the world, appeared in the first panel of ICCC-10 on Friday, June 11.  His topic:  "Saving Humanity from Catastrophic Global Cooling."  Cited was how Major Ice Ages appear in 100,000 year cycles and had very serious consequences, while Little Ice Ages occur every 1,000 to 1,500 years.  Singer believes we are approaching another Little Ice Age.  From a slide in Singer's presentation: 

1.  Major glaciations (Milankowitch) -- 20 during last 3 million years, on 100K-yr. time-scale, astronomical, timing:  eccentricity_100K; obliquity_41K; precession_21K-years.  Quite severe; can wipe out civilization.

2.  "Little" ice ages (Dansgaar-Oeschger-Bond), every ~1000-1500 years, solar-caused (?).  Not as severe, but highly damaging.

Dr. Singer suggested the following remedies to combat a possible approaching Little Ice Age.  From a Slide in Singer's presentation: 

1. To prevent formation of Major Glaciation, locate the 'Trigger' -- persistent snow field that survives the summer at ~65N -- and spread soot to melt it (using solar heat).

2. To cancel the cooling phase of D-O-B cycle (Dansgaard-Oeschger-Bond) use GH effect of Artificial cirrus to warm sfc:  spray water mist into cold tropopause to create ice particles absorb/re-emit IR.  

Proposed by Dr. Fred Singer was the establishment of an international project to run tests relative to what seems to point toward a future global cooling cycle.

Wanting to learn more about past cycles of warming and cooling, Larry Bell's book, "Scared Witless, Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom", included in my ICCC-10 conference handout bag, led me to discover that although temperatures have been generally mild over the past 500 years, significant fluctuations are normal.  As recently as 1,000 years ago (during the "Medieval Warm Period"), Icelandic Vikings were raising cattle, sheep and goats in grasslands on Greenland's southwestern coast.  Around 1200 the temperatures began to drop and Norse settlements were abandoned by about 1350.  By the middle of the 16th century, although there were notable year-to-year fluctuation, temperatures dropped dramatically. Called the Little Ice Age it dominated the weather the next 150 years or more.  Food shortages killed millions in Europe between 1690 and 1700.  It was during the end of the Little Ice Age that Washington's troops in 1777 experienced a brutal winter at Valley Forge.

Observe here Frost Fairs on the Thames in England. One fair of several built on the frozen Thames in London during severe winters lasted from December 1683 until 4th February 1684.  During the same period the dikes froze in Holland, unheard of today, making ice skating possible. 

Now consider the past 20th century. There were two distinct periods of warming.  The first occurred between 1900 and 1945.  The second, following a slight cool-down, began quite abruptly in 1975.  Remember the Time magazine cover? This second period of warming rose at a constant rate until 1998, and then stopped and began falling again after reaching a high or 1.16 degrees F above the average global mean.  Of significance, and at the same time bewildering to global warming alarmists, is that the temperature has remained steady for the past 18 years and 4 months to be exact, while human carbon dioxide emissions over that period represent 25 percent of all emissions since the dawn of the industrial Revolution, which began 150 years ago. 

Dr. Willie Soon presents the Sun-Climate connection

While Dr. Fred Singer believes we are approaching another Little Ice Age because of natural weather cycles that have occurred with regularity in the past, astrophysicist and geoscientist Dr. Willie Soon, Ph.D. in his presentation as a distinguished member of the 1st panel on Thursday morning on June 11, spoke about the sun as the ultimate factor in causing change of terrestrial climate.  For at a small but measurable level, the sun varies, just as most stars do.  Centuries of observation and most recent research strongly suggest that our climate is modulated in important ways by the sun's variability.  Dr. Soon described his "12-day journey of sunspots" -- May 5 - 17, 2015 -- during which only very small sunspots could be found.   

"Unstoppable Solar Cycles (The Real Story of Greenland) was produced by Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean & Environment, who like Dr. Soon was a conference speaker.  View here on youtube. A free handout, "Unstoppable Solar Cycles" was produced by Free to Choose Network, a not-for-profit educational corporation and has a running time of 10:39.  The excellent presentation explains why the current warming and cooling trends are natural -- the result of solar cycles, and therefore unstoppable. Greenland was much warmer at the height of the last natural warming cycle than it is today and elsewhere.  

Coming of a new Little Ice Age?

Could a quiescent sun portend a new little ice age and a chilly era for humanity and agriculture as expressed by Dr. Soon?   A member of Panel 5 on Thursday, June 11th, Paul Driessen thinks so.  Driessen is a senior policy advisor with the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, both non-profit policy institutes.  Although Driessen did not address Dr. Soon's Sun/Climate connection in his panel presentation, he did mirror Soon's premise in an article published in “Reality News Media”, May 24th, 2015, Vol. 6, No. 5, "The Iceman Cometh."   In his article Paul Dreissen notes that there are virtually no sunspots darkening the blinding yellow orb.  Not since 1906 has there been a solar cycle with fewer sunspots.  The downward trend in solar sunspot cycles began over 20 years ago when the Earth stopped warming.  Driessen further writes: 

"If it continues for a couple more cycles, Earth could be entering another "grand minimum," an extended period of low solar activity.  That would mean less incoming solar radiation, which could have a marked cooling.  Low solar activity was present during the 70-year "Maunder Minimum" (1645-1715) and the 40-year "Dalton Minimum" (1790-1830), which brought even colder global temperature to what was referred to previously as the "Little Ice Age."

What would be the impact of a couple of degrees colder weather?  Although it would create adverse consequences for habitats, wildlife, agriculture, and humanity, worst of all cold kills.  Although modern homes and buildings with affordable heat make it easy to survive even brutal winters in comfort, carbon taxes, restrictions on coal and natural gas, renewable energy mandates and other ill-conceived programs will cause electricity and home heating prices to soar above what they presently are making them unaffordable. Thousands would die from hypothermia. 

What about the impact of slightly warming weather? According to Dennis Avery "Two thousand years of published human histories say that warm periods were good for people. It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease."

Costs and benefits of intended regulations are being ignored

Might 2016 be the Political Tipping Point?! (Reproduced from a conference slide): 

• The next President could permanently implement EPA Climate regulations.

• The next President could attempt to adhere U.S. to new UN Climate Treaty.

• The GOP needs candidate who will stand up to the global warming establishment.

• Action Items include:  Defunding EPA, defunding UN IPCC, No UN climate treaty in December.

Common sense dictates that federal agencies must assess both the costs and the benefits of the intended regulations, and recognizing that some costs and benefits are difficult to quantify, propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that the benefits of the intended regulation justify the cost. 

Common sense, however, does not prevail in an atmosphere where the Obama administration has unconditionally accepted the reports of the UN IPCC calling for drastic actions to save the planet, which in so doing would greatly affect the present living standard of the American people and this nation's economy, under the guise to prevent an improbable likelihood that a catastrophe global warming will happen in the future if not attended to now.