Alarmists Still Heated Even As World Cools
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted
Tuesday, November 04, 2008 4:20 PM PT
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=310695037962525
Climate Change: It's been a bad year
for global warming alarmists. Record cold periods and snowfalls are
occurring around the globe. The hell that the radicals have
promised is freezing over.
As the British House of Commons debated a climate-change bill
that pledged the United Kingdom to reduce its carbon dioxide
emissions by 80% by 2050, London was hit by its first October snow
since 1922.
Apparently Mother Nature wasn't paying attention. The British
people, however, are paying attention — to reality. A poll found
that 60% of them doubt the claims that global warming is both
man-made and urgent.
Elsewhere, the Swiss lowlands last month received the most snow
for any October since records began. Zurich got 20 centimeters,
breaking the record of 14 centimeters set in 1939. Ocala, Fla.,
experienced its second-lowest October temperature since 1850.
October temperatures fell to record lows in Oregon as well. On
Oct. 10, Boise, Idaho, got the earliest snow in its history — 1.7
inches. That beat the old record by seven-tenths of an inch and one
day on the calendar.
In the Southern Hemisphere, where winter was winding down,
Durban, South Africa, had its coldest September night in history in
the middle of the month. Some regions of the country had unusual
late-winter snows. A month earlier, New Zealand officials reported
that Mount Ruapehu had its largest snow base ever.
At the top of the world, the International Arctic Research
Center reported last month, there was 29% more Arctic sea ice this
year than last.
None of this matters, of course, to the warming zealots. It
doesn't matter if it's too dry or too wet, too hot or too cold. All
of it, they say, is caused by global warming.
We believe, however, as do many reputable scientists, that the
warming and cooling of the Earth is a natural phenomenon dictated
by forces beyond our control, from ocean currents to solar
activity.
The latest warming trend, which appears to have ended in 1998,
is the result of the end of the Little Ice Age, which extended from
roughly the 16th century to the 19th. During that period, Muir
Glacier in Alaska filled Glacier Bay. In fact, when the first
Russian explorers arrived in Alaska in the 1740s, there was no
Glacier Bay — just a wall of ice where the entrance would be.
As the Earth warmed, long before SUVs roamed the globe, Alaska's
glaciers also warmed and began to recede, starting in the 1800s.
All that may be changing. During the winter and summer of
2007-2008, unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by
unusually cold temperatures in June, July and August.
"In June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in
Prince William Sound," says U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist
Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of
new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July."
It was the worst summer he'd seen in two decades.
As the Anchorage Daily News reports, "Never before in the
history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau
Icefield witnessed the kind if snow buildup that came this year. It
was similar on a lot of other glaciers too."
It's been "a long time on most glaciers," Molnia says, "where
they've actually had positive mass balance." In other words, more
snow is falling in the winter than melts in the summer, making the
glaciers thicker in the middle.
Glaciers can appear to be shrinking even as they are growing.
Photos taken from ships can record receding edges even as mass is
building inland. When they get thick enough, the weight forces the
glacier to advance.
The U.S. may owe its ascension to a global power on the global
warming that began with the end of the Little Ice Age, which almost
doomed the American Revolution. George Washington's famous winter
at Valley Forge was part of that natural phenomenon.
As the climate warmed from 1800 to 1900, the U.S. tripled in
size, spreading westward to straddle a continent. The population of
the windy and very cold trading post known as Chicago grew from
4,000 in 1800 to 1.5 million by 1900, sitting on a great lake
carved by glaciers long since receded.
Due to a decline in solar activity and other factors, the Earth
is cooling and has been since 1998. And a peer-reviewed study
published in April by Nature predicts the world will continue
cooling at least through 2015.
Now, if only we could get the warming alarmists to face facts
and cool it as well.