30 Jan 09 – (Excerpts) After the wet and cold centuries of the
Little Ice Age,
the world's climate recuperated some warmth, but did not replicate the
period known as the Middle Age Warm Period, when the margins of
Greenland were green and England had vineyards.
Climate began to cool again after World War II, for
about 30 years. This is
undisputed. The cooling occurred at a time when emissions of C02 were
sharply from the reconstruction effort and from unprecedented
Itis important to realize that.
By 1978 it had started to warm again… But two
decades later, after the
temperature peaked in 1998 under the influence of El Nino, climate
warming for eight years; and in 2007 entered a cooling phase... it is
to note that this new cooling period is occurring concurrently with an
acceleration in CO2 emissions, caused by the emergence of two industrial
giants: China and India.
To anyone analyzing this data with common sense, it
is obvious that factors
other than CO2 emissions are ruling the climate… Al Gore … simply
to say that for the past 420,000 years that he cited as an example,
CO2 levels in the atmosphere always followed increases in global
by at least 800 years. It means that CO2 can't possibly be the cause of
So, if it's not CO2, what is it that makes the
world's temperature periodically
rise and fall? The obvious answer is the sun, and sea currents in a
It has been observed that ice ages last about
100,000 years, and warm
interglacials only 12,000. And within these warm periods, variations in
activity cause shorter periods of less-pronounced warming and cooling.
There is no way to know for sure if the present
cooling period will last several
decades or 100,000 years. Russian scientists have just warned that a
ice age is not to be ruled out, as about 12,000 years have elapsed since
of the last one.
Entering a new ice age would be a disaster for
humanity: billions of people
could die from lack of food, from the cold, and from the collapse of the
economy, social strife, war, etc.
And if what's ahead of us is only a little ice age,
the consequences would still
be pretty dire. World food reserves are already low, and we can barely
the current population of the planet. Surfaces of arable land used for
and biomass are increasing. Cool and wet summers would cause crop
as they did in the Little Ice Age (as a result, starving Parisians had
taken to the
streets, soon sending their king to the guillotine). Winter frost would
its share of misery, destroying fruits and vegetables on a large scale.
As I’ve been saying all along: I
think we’ll be fighting in the
streets for food long before we’re covered by ice.
See entire article:
David J. Bellamy is a professor at three British universities and an
several conservation organizations. Mark Duchamp, a retired businessman,
has investigated global-warming theory and written more than 100