Posted on 07/13/2004 8:18:23 AM PDT by presidio9
Once we admit that volcano activity, sun activity, the magnetic field, and space weather all play a role...the bubble is burst. It is difficult to play the global warming game unless you come up with a pausiable reason for the little freeze in the 1400s, which none of the Crackpots have yet to define. Most want to utilze volcano activity...but you can't explain almost 200 years of extremely cold weather in that fashion. Everytime NPR puts these guys on...I start laughing when they state their background. None are historians or weather experts...they call themselves envirnomental climate experts...which doesn't say anything much.
mark
Oh, well . . .
You are mostly correct. However, the magnetic north pole does drift just a bit over time. You can get correction factors for compass readings on highly detailed maps, and you will see that those factors vary just a bit over time. But certainly not "radically" or "suddenly"
To even think that humans can have any lasting impact on the earth is the height of vanity. The earth was here before us, and the earth will be here after us. Humans are only a blip on the screen. Human capability for abstract thought does not change the fact that humans are weak, soft, temporary skin bags of protoplasm that will die and decay.
By the way, I want a brand new tent. Mine is getting pretty battered and weather beaten.
One plausible theory links this period of cooler global temperatures to reduced solar activity. There were three notable periods when sunspots were at a minimum between 1400 and 1850 -- the third minimum is called the "Maunder minimum", but I can't remember the names of the previous ones, which were not as long. Also, in the 1450s, the island of Kuwae in the Pacific had an extremly large eruption (Crater Lake - Mazama scale) that likely led to cooling for at least a decade and perhaps a bit longer.
Mann renames them "Bush's faults"...
Don't forget that heat makes things expand - that's why the days are longer in the summer.
P.S. Broken hockey stick? Duck tape can fix that.
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba478/
NATIONAL CENTER FOR POLICY ANALYSIS
Breaking the “Hockey Stick”
Brief Analysis
No. 478
Monday, July 12, 2004
by David R. Legates
The "experts" are often wrong. In the late 1950's, the Geology profession thought that those who believed in Continental Drift were tinfoil idiots and nutcases.
Droughts go with Ice Age temperatures -- the water vapor in the air is reduced by being locked up as ice.
Impressive.....the NCPA isn't some low-grade organization.
The earth is primarily a water planet. The vast majority of energetic input occurs from infrared light emitted by the sun that ends up being absorbed by the earths oceans and earths atmosphere. What happens on land or in man made vehicles has at best a minor affect on this planetary system. There are also probably time lags in cause and effect. So you cannot look at what is happening in nature now and assume that current energetic input has created the present day situation. For example, we just past the longest day of the summer up here around 32 degress north. The two hottest months of the year here occur after the days start getting shorter.
Your link doesn't say the magnetic pole has moved from the vicinity of the geographic pole. Do you understand latitiude and longitude?
"I have a National Geographic map of the world from 1981 (showing the Soviet Union, for instance) which indicates the magnetic north pole at 100.5 W long, 76.5 N lat. A more recent 2000 map from the same source shows the magnetic north pole at 105 W, 79.5 N---a shift of about 250 miles in 20 years."
The original 1981 posistion he mentions, 76.5 N, is over 800 nautical miles south of the geographic pole. Yes, the magnetic pole moves, no, since it's its discovery, it has never been close to the geographic pole. Please look up the definition of the word "variation" as it applies to magnetic compasses.
Tell that to the mammoths. Our ancestors killed off many of the pleistocene megafauna species 11,000 years ago. Of course, this doesn't say anything about climate change.
If memory serves, the total greenhouse effect (which is normal) is about 100 degrees, and most of that is due to water vapor. So the Earth would be much colder without the greenhouse effect. Now CO2 is responsible only for about 1 or 2 percent of this. So if the CO2 increases by 50%, it would be reasonable to conclude that a degree or 2 of warming is possible. These numbers are rough, my memory is porous, but I think this is the basic idea.
That's actually a positive about nuclear energy. Humans have destroyed so many species on Earth, but now we will be creating new species through genetic mutation to replace them. Or at least, that's what Fox Mulder mused at the end of an old X-Files episode.
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