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Additional Text on Global Warming - 4/28/08 
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  SANDBOX stuff is NOT edited. This is copy/paste only.  -Maren
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2 Bombers sent stuff on Global Warming
Ray Wells ('54)
John Allen ('66)
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>>From: Ray Wells ('54)

Re: Global Warming for the Sandbox

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

February 07, 2008

Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's
mythical 'consensus.' Scientists worried about a new ice age
seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV -
the sun.


Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was 
in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released 
a study using data that went back centuries that showed that
global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists
are seeking additional funding for more and better 'eyes' with
which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's
climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet
combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming. Kenneth
Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's
National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for
evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in
this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of
increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known
as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of
centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of
sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the
sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold
that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of
warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during 
that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in
Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far
this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another
year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic
cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe
weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope
that he calls a 'stethoscope for the sun.' But he and his
colleagues need better equipment.

In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been
conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the
next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's
emissions more rapidly and accurately.

As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the
Earth's climate over time has been the sun.

For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar
Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more
brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree
Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of 
the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton
University, says that 'CO2 variations show little correlation
with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time
scales.'

Rather, he says, 'I and the first-class scientists I work with
are consistently finding excellent correlations between the
regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not
surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of
energy on this planet.'

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: 'Solar scientists
predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest
Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to
unusually cool conditions on Earth.'

'Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had
before, and it most likely will again,' Patterson says '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.'

In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made 
some waves - and not a few enemies in the global warming
'community' - by predicting that the sun would reach a peak 
of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by
'dramatic changes' in temperatures.

A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical
data and came to a similar conclusion.

'The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible 
to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and 
the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the
correlation existing by chance were one in 100,' according to
Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that 'try as we might, we simply could not find
any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption
and changes in global temperatures.'

The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power
plants and factories, 'there would not be much effect on
temperatures.'

But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun,
not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.

-Ray Wells ('54)
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>>From: John Allen ('66)

Re: GLOBAL WARMING

Have you ever sat down and thought seriously about how much
money this horse manure called GLOBAL WARMING is needlessly
costing our country and the world economy?? The thing that
worries me most isn't so much that the Democrat Party is led, 
in large part, by people like Gore, Pelosi, the Clintons, Harry
Reid, Obama, etc, who are, by their intrinsically sleazy nature,
willing to play fast and loose with the truth in such blatant
and detectable ways. It is that there are so many of the
electorate who are not only willing, but seemingly EAGER to
forgive, completely ignore, and/or even support their career-
aggrandizing political crap. In the long run, I predict that
Global Warming will be FAR more expensive even than our
excursion in Iraq, and for what; a dollop of social acceptance
over a double latte mochachino or glass of white wine? 

Thirty-three years ago, all the so-called experts were equally
convinced it was GLOBAL COOLING that would be the end of us, but
in 1975 they didn't have access to ANY cable news networks (much
less four) that broadcast 24/7 and therefore have much more time
on the airwaves than news to fill it. That excess time is now
being filled with every federal grant-seeking scientist, hack
politician (a couple of Republicans included), and Hollywood
celebrity who has his or her respective need to keep a face 
in the public eye. Et Voila....the Global Warming crisis!!! 
This "news" is no more credible or broadcast-worthy than the
unbelievable amount of time spent covering earth-shaking topics
like Anna Nicole Smith or Space Cadet Spears and her promiscuous
little sister. If an idle mind is truly the devil's workshop,
then Cable News necessarily owns the hottest desk in Hell.

-John Allen ('66)
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