Date sent: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 08:19:29 -0400 (EDT) From: "Philip V. Brennan Jr." To: "'C-news@world.std.com'" Subject: C-NEWS: Globalwarming or Globaloney, Part six from Wednesday on the Web Send reply to: "Philip V. Brennan Jr." Parts one through six now avialble by e-mail from pvbr@gate.net Part seven is now online in this week's issue of Wednesday on the Web at http://www.pacg.com/pvbr/ ------ GLOBAL WARMING OR GLOBALONEY? By Phil Brennan PART SIX SUMMING UP Driven into a state of near panic, the world's governments are proposing to spend trillions of dollars and impose draconian regulations upon all of us in an all-out, Tower-of -Babel effort to counteract the perceived threat of Global Warming. (See C. Grady Drago's chilling article in this issue on the so-called Biodiversity Treaty now high on the Clinton Administration's agenda). The rising level of atmospheric CO2, we are told, is creating a dangerous level of global warming. Further, the increase in CO2 levels is the result of man's activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and the harvesting of lumber. Man must therefor be prevented from doing any further harm to the environment as the world embarks on a crash program to lower the levels of greenhouse gases. As we wrote at the outset, it is getting warmer -- in certain parts of the globe. It is also getting colder in others. But those who view this as a symptom of a catastrophe in the making -- a catastrophe that involves withering heat around the earth, the melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps, a resultant rise in sea level and the inundation of vast areas of coastline, are, as Dr. David Zink put it, looking at merely one part of the problem. They fail to understand that what they see is a cause, and are therefor blind to its ultimate result. They are like the four blind men who each feel a different part of an elephant and then attempt to describe the entire beast on the basis of their limited experience with small parts of it. It is our contention that the facts point to an entirely different situation -- the pending arrival of a new ice age and the inevitable catastrophe such an eventuality entails. The evidence that the current interglacial is ending is clear for anyone willing to ignore the current wisdom and look carefully at it: * Research has shown that there has been an ice age every 100,000 years, followed by a warming period that lasts for 10,000 to 12,000 years. The last ice age ended about 10,800 years ago. "Most people who worry about global warming assume that the earth's temperature right now is ecologically ideal and that any significant warming would be harmful if not disastrous. Scientists who take the longer view know otherwise. " wrote Kent Jeffreys of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the National Center for Policy Analysis' Policy Report #96. * In the past two to three million years the earth's temperature has gone through at least 17 climate circles, with ice ages typically lasting about 100,000 interrupted by warming periods lasting about 10,000 years. * Since by some calculations the current warm period is about 13,000 years old, the next ice age is overdue." Jeffreys notes the fact that back in the 1970s: "Many scientists warned of a coming ice age, and with good reason. Although there has been a slight increase in average temperatures during the twentieth century, many regions of the globe have experienced sustained cooling trends." * The record speaks for itself. In the history of the Earth, ice ages are the norm. They occur regularly as clockwork and as such, must be regarded as immutable laws of nature. It would be sheer folly to believe that this law has somehow been repealed. * We are now between 10,800 and 13,000 years removed from the end of the last ice age. Is it not prudent to expect the onset of another ice age? * Studies have show that when atmospheric levels of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) -- the principal greenhouse gas -- exceeded 290 parts per million (ppm), the last ice age began. The current levels of CO2 exceed 362 ppm. Studies of data collected from ocean bottom samples 200 miles off the coast of Ecuador by Nickolas Shackleton and associates at Britain's Cambridge University provided CO2 readings for the past 130,000 years, a period covering the last interglacial, the ice age that followed, and the current interglacial. These data confirmed the rise of CO2 levels that preceded the last ice age, and the point at which the process became inevitable. * Ice ages are nature's way of rejuvenating the earth after soils have been depleted of their vital nutrients. During glacial periods, as the glaciers slowly cover large sections of the earth over tens of thousands of years, they grind the rocks in their path into a fine dust. This rock dust is then carried by wind and water over many widespread areas of the globe. Because rocks are composed of minerals, this mixture of dust from many types of rocks remineralizes many of the earth's forests, rejuvenating them. As they thrive and spread, they consume the excess carbon dioxide, and nature's greenhouse effect subsides, shutting off the wind and evaporation engine that built up the glaciers. In 1979, Genevieve Woillard, a pollen specialist in France, concluded from detailed studies that the shift from a warm, interglacial climate to ice age conditions at the beginning of the last ice age, some 100,000 years ago, took "less than 20 years." Her observations of the decline of European forests led her to conclude we may be in a similar period of rapid climatic change. Late in interglacial periods , soil minerals are eroded or leached away, the earth's vegetation loses these essential nutrients and dies off significantly. Carbon is meanwhile returned to the atmosphere where it becomes carbon dioxide, creating a greenhouse effect, with all its climatic consequences. * The health of the Earth's Plant life has declined drastically. Ecological studies show that forests are dying out or being destroyed by an increasing number of forest fires at at alarming rate all across the globe. All over the world, plant life is being attacked by pests and disease that healthy plant life would be able to resist. In a report published by the World Resources Institute, Jonathon Lash, president of the group, listed 76 countries comprising almost all the nations of Europe and East Africa and all of North Africa and the Middle East as having completely lost all of their original forests or were left with forests so small they can no longer support the diversified plant and animal life they once sheltered. According to Interior Secretary Bruce Babbit, the year 1996 was one of the worst years ever for forest fires In that year there were 96,000 forest fires burning more than six million acres nationwide. * Increased levels of atmospheric CO2 cause excessive warming in the tropics and subtropics, which in turn triggers the onset of ice ages. Writing in a July, 1990 issue of the Christian Science Monitor, the late Norman Cousins explained the process: "Far less familiar to the public are arguments about a serious earth cooling. Scientists calling attention to this danger don't necessarily argue against the effects of CFC's and carbon dioxide. More insistent, they say, is the danger of a rapid cooling produced by a buildup of billions of tons of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. They assert that the same greenhouse effect that produces a temperature increase in the equatorial regions also sucks moisture from the tropics. The moisture condenses into snow at the two Poles and adds to the vast burden of ice cooling the polar oceans. The mass quantities of cold air are then distributed by oceans and wind over the entire globe. "Thus, the same increase of solar radiation that causes regional warming is believed to have the ultimate effect of producing an ice age." * The polar ice packs are growing, year by year. Recent studies predict even faster growth, especially in the Antarctic. An article in this month's issue of Nature predicts drastic growth of the polar ice caps. Moreover, in a study published in the International Journal of Climatology, Polar Snow Cover Changes and Global Warming, researchers H. Ye and J. R. Maher estimated the amount of water released by melting of glaciers would end up as snow at the poles. They predict a small net increase of snow in the Northern Hemisphere but forecast a huge increase in the Antarctic amounting to as much as 10 additional inches of snow per year. "The accumulation would be most noticeable in the south polar region and the total accumulation of water in the snow cover could result in a removal of about 900 x 1012 litres of water from the ocean yearly ... and result in thicker ice caps, especially in Antarctica and central to northern Greenland," they wrote. * Increased snow and ice cover at the poles results in increased volcanism which in turn adds more CO2 to the atmosphere and creates layers of volcanic dust which blocks out sunlight at the poles, adding even more ice cover, Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, in "Secret of the Soil," (Harper and Row, 1989, write that "ice and snow, accumulating at the Poles, press down on the planet, causing it to bulge at the seams like a balloon. This triggers the pre-stressed earthquake faults into slipping. Hence earthquakes. It also causes volcanism -- potentially even more dangerous -- by squeezing the molten magma and causing eruptions. The colder it gets and the more snow presses down on the Poles, the more magma is compressed, and volcanoes act up." Next Week: The Greenhouse Effect And Politics ------- To subscribe to c-news, send the message SUBSCRIBE C-NEWS, or the message UNSUBSCRIBE C-NEWS to unsubscribe, to majordomo@world.std.com. Contact owner-c-news@world.std.com if you have questions.