Garbanzo Toons

A Couple of Articles on "Climate Change"

This one is from the Detroit Free Press.

EINSIEDELN, Switzerland -- A librarian at a 10th-Century monastery leads a visitor beneath the vaulted ceilings of the archive past the skulls of two former abbots.

He pushes aside medieval ledgers of indulgences and absolutions, pulls out one of 13 bound diaries inscribed from 1671 to 1704 and starts to read about the weather.

"Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze," says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and so-called weatherman of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery. "Since I've been an ordained priest, the sacrament has never frozen in the chalice."

"But on Jan. 13 it got even worse, and one could say it has never been so cold in human memory," he adds.

Diaries of day-to-day weather details from the age before 19th-Century standardized thermometers are proving of great value to scientists who study today's climate.

Historical accounts once were largely ignored, as they were thought to be fraught with inaccuracy or were simply inaccessible or illegible.

But the booming interest in climate change has transformed the study of ancient weather records from what was once a "wallflower science," said Christian Pfister, a climate historian at the University of Bern.

To the Free Press, this supports the global warming hypothesis. They don't stop to ask why the Earth has been steadily warming for the past 500 years (or if it has been steadily warming) long before coal burning factories or SUVs were around. They also don't go back any farther than is convenient for their pet theory, for example, back to the time when Greenland was actually green. They demand scientific accuracy as long as that accuracy doesn't disprove their current hysteria.

Then there is this one from National Geographic by way of The People's Cube (the most insanely funny site on the web).

Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory.

Earth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.

In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.

"The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun's heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.

Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.

"Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance," Abdussamatov said.

By studying fluctuations in the warmth of the sun, Abdussamatov believes he can see a pattern that fits with the ups and downs in climate we see on Earth and Mars.

The true believers have their doubts. There simply must be other explanations. And if they can't find them, they will create them.

On the other hand, good science is not about consensus (ask Galileo) as Al Gore and his climate change hysterics claim. It's about debate and testing hypotheses. It's also about honesty, which seems to be in short supply amongst those who claim that the debate is over.

Labels: environment, global warming

posted by Harry @ 6:41 PM