The Coming Paradigm Shift on Climate: Evidence suggests that Nature rules the climate – not Man.

American Thinker ^ | 03/27/2014 | S. Fred Singer

[SeekAndFind]

The just-published NIPCC reports may lead to a paradigm shift about what or who causes current climate changes. All the evidence suggests that Nature rules the climate – not Man.

Watch for it: We may be on the threshold of a tipping point in climate history. No, I’m not talking about a tipping point in the sense that the Earth will be covered with ice or become hellishly hot. I’m talking about a tipping point in our views of what controls the climate -- whether it’s mainly humans or whether it’s mainly natural. It makes an enormous difference in climate policy: Do we try to mitigate, at huge cost, or do we merely adapt to natural changes -- as our ancestors did for many millennia?

Such tipping points occur quite frequently in science. I have personally witnessed two paradigm shifts where world scientific opinion changed rapidly -- almost overnight. One was in Cosmology, where the “Steady State” theory of the Universe was replaced by the “Big Bang.” This shift was confirmed by the discovery of the “microwave background radiation,” which has already garnered Nobel prizes, and will likely get more.

The other major shift occurred in Continental Drift. After being denounced by the Science Establishment, the hypothesis of Alfred Wegener, initially based on approximate relations between South America and Africa, was dramatically confirmed by the discovery of “sea-floor spreading.”

These shifts were possible because there were no commercial or financial interests -- and they did not involve the public and politicians. But climate is a different animal: The financial stakes are huge -- in the trillions of dollars, and affect energy policy, and indeed the economic wellbeing of every inhabitant of the developed and developing world.

[dangerdoc]

You could but where would the fun be in that.

[left that other site]

Some of the “Chicken Little” scenarios from the last century:

1. The Coming Ice Age
2. The hole in the Ozone Layer
3. Nothing will ever grow again in that place(Hiroshima, Bikini, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl)
4. Acid Rain
5. Ozone
6. El Nino
7. La Nina
8. Overpopulation
9. Globull warming

Now the threats of these have been abandoned in favor of convincing people that we are all descended from Ancient Aliens who mated with Freemasons,while burying gold in remote locations of north America using Interstellar technology and Druidic Spells while contemplating a marriage between Jesus and Mary Magdeline resulting in offspring who became Templars.

[Zeneta]

Add,

DDT

[left that other site]

Oh My! I forgot that one.

You Are SO Right!

[zeugma]

The climate is changing. And the fascinating thing about the climate is that there are cycles within cycles within even longer cycles. My guess is that we are gradually, longer term, trending warmer, but may be entering an intermediate colder cycle. But I don’t know.

Agreed about the cyclical nature of it all. Personally, I lean towards it trending colder (another Ice Age in the future). Problem is, we really just do not know. The Lord does, and He ain't tellin'. Ultimately, an ice age like the last cycle would be absolutely devastating to mankind. We'd survive, but we sure as hell wouldn't have much, if anything in many of the northern states. Sure as hell wouldn't be growing crops on a mile-high sheet of ice.

Warming is ultimately beneficial to mankind, as you have longer growing seasons. Massive desalination projects might be able to assist some areas that would be adversely affected by drought if we really wanted it. We have the technology. Some of that tech could very well be solar. (solar concentrators powering evaporative captures).

I'm hoping for heat, but my naturally pessimistic nature is expecting cold.

[henkster]

During the last ice age, the Sahara was a grassy steppe, much like Ukraine today. We could all move there. The Russians will.

As the ice sheets retreated, the Sahara dried out, the hunter-gatherers of the Eastern Sahara migrated into the Nile Valley, settled down, and as they say, the rest is history.

The reason I think the longer-term trend is toward a warmer world is that in terms of the geologic history of the earth, it is estimated that permanent ice has existed about 5% of the time. The earth’s natural condition is warmer than today. However, I can also agree with you that we are headed to a colder “ice age” period, as that is the intermediate cycle. The short term cycles are the 20-year warmer/cooler cycles. We are definitely coming out of a 20 year warm cycle, but are now headed into a 20 year cool cycle.