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