[opinionator]

Every leftist's dream: Global warming as a justification for genocide.

[piperpilot]

The Little Ice Age was featured on The History Channel last week and the theory THC presented was the exact opposite. The documentary said that the Little Ice Age caused the Black Plague because the temperature decrease in Europe forced people and disease-carrying rats indoors to escape the cold. According to THC, the Little Ice Age didn't end until the mid-19th century. It was still going on in the 1700s and accounted for the problems Washington had crossing the Delaware River. Normally there are not ice flows in the river, but there were then. Very interesting documentary, which, as I understood it, posited that there are always cyclical fluctuations in temperature :. all the global warming hype is just that.

[VeritatisSplendor]

So the reforestation of the eastern US, and the planting of trees on the prairie is going to cool things off.

Mrs VS

[SunkenCiv]

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 by Brian M. Fagan Paperback

[pp 208-216] "On June 23, 1988, climatologist James Hansen testified before a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a day when the temperature in Washington D.C. reached a sweltering 38C... Hansen had impressive data from 2,000 weather stations... which documented not only a century-long warming trend but a sharp resumption of warming after the early 1970s... Hansen flatly proclaimed that the earth was warming on a permanent basis because of humanity's promiscuous use of fossil fuels [sic]... Recently, James Hansen and a group of his colleagues have argued that the rapid warming of recent decades has in fact been driven by non-CO2 gases such as chlorofluorocarbons. Fossil fuel [sic] burning CO2 and aerosols have both positive and negative climatic forcing effects, which tend to cancel each other out. Hansen and his team point out that the growth rate of non-CO2 gases has declined over the past decade and could be reduced even further. This, combined with a slowing of black carbon and CO2 emissions, could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming. Much more research is needed to confirm this hypothesis."

[Pilsner]

Hmmm. Extra trees cause global cooling. I just read a story a while back that all the reforrestation of North Aerica is adding to global warming because the trees tend to be darker colors that absorb sunlight and radiate it back out as heat, while farm land and grasses tend to be lighter colors that reflect more sunlight back into space. Just like walking barefoot on a street in the summer. The white line is cooler than the black pavement.

I don't know which theory is right. I do know that 95% + of the folks who write these articles start with the conclusion and look for theories that make the facts lead to that conclusion.

[norwaypinesavage]

Since there are more trees in the US now than there were at the time of the American Revolution, that must mean we're experiencing global cooling now, right?

[mtg]

I don't know... I think science is getting to scientific for me. I think I'll do a study that links poor bad mitton players with global warming and have it published. I could use the bucks.

[Old Professer]

I am sure they adjusted for this:

"The new method of paleoelevation involves counting the stomata on leaves of plants going back as far as 65 million years ago. Stomata are minute openings on the surface of leaves through which plants absorb gases, including carbon dioxide, which plants need for photosynthesis. Anyone who has climbed a mountain knows that the air gets "thinner" as you climb higher. As with oxygen, carbon dioxide is less concentrated at higher elevations. Therefore, the higher the elevation, the more stomata per square inch of leaf surface a plant would need to survive. By simply counting the number of fossil stomata, Dr. McElwain can estimate how much carbon dioxide was in the air when the fossil leaf developed. From that, she can estimate the elevation at which the fossil plant once lived.

Dr. McElwain used historical and modern collections of California Black Oak (Quercus kelloggii) leaves for her study because the California Black Oak grows at an unusually wide range of elevations from 200 to 8,000 feet (60 to 2,440 meters). The historical leaves were collected by botanists in the 1930s and stored within herbarium collections of the Field Museum and the University of California, Berkeley."

[Always Right]

Dr Tim Lenton, an environmental scientist from the University of East Anglia, UK, said: "It is a nice study and the carbon dioxide changes could certainly be a contributory factor, but I think they are too modest to explain all the climate change seen."

A gross understatement to say the least. The global warming wackos insist that CO2 is the main driving force to the climate, but the 4.5 billion year history of the earth does not bear that out. CO2 is a minor player.