How to Deal With Global Cooling and the New Ice Age?

[Bill Call]

New research in climate science is turning up some unsettling and unexpected results. The planet will soon be facing a dangerous period of global cooling.

While a slightly warmer planet would expand available farm land, lengthen growing periods and provide most of the Earth with longer summers and warmer winters global cooling would have a devastating impact on our ability to grow food and keep warm.

See:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/fina ... db11f4&p=4

[ryan costa]

So far the trend in Global Warming has been Droughts and Heatwaves interspersed with flooding rains and erratic cold spells. I'm not sure what grows well in these conditions. Maybe Kudzu and Malaria.

But that is ok: the measured changes in average temperature still inform obtuse skepticism.

[Bill Call]

Maybe Kudzu and Malaria.

But that is ok: the measured changes in average temperature still inform obtuse skepticism.

One of the canards used by the Green Shirts is that global warming will cause an increase in malaria. There are only two things wrong with that belief:

1. Malaria used to be prevalent in Europe and is not strictly a tropical disease.

2. The increase in malaria deaths during the last 40 years has nothing to do with the weather. The 40 million who died from malaria during the last 40 years died because of the banning of DDT.

[ryan costa]

There are plenty of other tropical and sub-tropical parasites.

Mosquitoes eventually develop resistance to DDT, or are will become replaced by another insect with a resistance to DDT.



While moderate initial uses of DDT to reduce transmission of Malaria via Mosquitoes may be adequate, it will eventually require greater doses. This in turn will mess up the food chains, so you end up with a temporary population boost of people relatively free from malaria. However within a generation or so they end up with a famine caused by collapse of fisheries and agriculture: There's nothing more for them to do than die or fight over food and then die.

Considering the relative overpopulation of Asia and Africa's consistent inability to cope with population growth, what is the point of wiping out Malaria?

[Stephen Eisel]

For the sake of argument, lets say the earth is 4.5 billion years old and that mankind has been keeping weather stats for 200 years.. What do we really know? Yes, I am aware that geologist, tree rings, etc can tell us some info about past weather patterns but it is limited info..

[Bill Call]

What do we really know? Yes, I am aware that geologist, tree rings, etc can tell us some info about past weather patterns but it is limited info..

We know that the Earth has warmed slightly over the last 100 years, that most of than warming occurred before 1940, the the Earth was warmer in the past and that the rate of warming during the last ten years has declined.

Efforts to regulate energy usage and to limit economic growth based on a belief that we can fine tune the temperature of the Earth 100 years into the future are a dangerous fantasy.

On the other hand, the sooner we develop and use renewable non-carbon based energy the better off we will be for reasons having nothing to do with global warming.

Even if we cannot agree on the problem perhaps we can agree on the solution.

[ryan costa]

longer summers and milder winters do not increase the growing season if those summers are full of droughts and sudden destructive heat waves or floods. It hasn't helped the growing seasons of most of Africa or Bangladesh well.

The priority for limiting fossil fuel consumption isn't to combat global warming, it is to combat our own "oil addiction". Consider the 600 odd billion dollars we've spent directly on Iraq to be a subsidy to U.S.motorists and McMansion air conditioning, and Wal-Mart's warehouse on wheels distribution system.

An economic policy tying economic "growth" to unrestricted fossil fuel usage is a dead end. This much is apparent this far into our second Middle East Oil War in 17 years.


However, the science behind global climate change is valid. So far the effects of global warming have been mitigated by melting polar caps. When there are no permanent caps to melt, global warming will accelerate immensely.

It is precisely because of our records of climate change in the past that make the case for human influence on global climate change in the present. We have pretty accurate records of carbon levels and climate states in the past. It is understood that CO2 levels affected climate directly; climate did not affect CO2 levels directly. We've gotten pretty good at Science and Engineering over the last 150 years. With basic chemistry we no almost exactly how much CO2 we put into the atmosphere by how much oil, gas, coal, and wood we burn. The conclusive evidence is this is a significant addition.


Temperature variance increases drastically outstrip average temperature and average temperature increases. For now on everyone who shrugs off Climate Change with mentions of average temperature increase gets 3 additional days in Purgatory.