ARE YOU READY FOR GLOBAL COOLING?
May 24, 2010
It's not exactly Copenhagen or Kyoto, but the 700 scientists attending the fourth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, had some chilling news of their own, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).
"Global warming is over -- at least for a few decades," Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told the gathering. "However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for greater concern."
According to Easterbrook:
- Rather than global warming at a rate of about 1 (degree) Fahrenheit per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030.
- These natural cycles have been occurring since the discovery of fire and mankind's first carbon emissions, long before the invention of the wheel and the SUV.
Easterbrook and the other scientists reported on sudden and natural climate fluctuations documented in the geologic record, all before 1945. Two big climate changes occurred in the past 15,000 years, and another 60 smaller changes in the last 5,000 years.
Another presenter, James M. Taylor, an environmental policy expert and a fellow at the Heartland Institute, said that global cooling is happening now. He pointed to data provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab showing snow records from the last 10 years exceeding the records set in the 1960s and 1970s.
Based on new analysis of ice cores from Greenland to Antarctica, global temperatures rose and fell from 9 to 15 degrees in a single century or less, a natural phenomenon Easterbrook called "astonishing."
Source: Editorial, "Are You Ready For Global Cooling?" Investor's Business Daily, May 21, 2010.
Browse more articles on Environment Issues