Re: When London is submerged and New York is awash...

From: Guy Macon (_see.web.page__at__www.guymacon.com_)
Date: 01/15/05 

Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 20:17:17 +0000

John Larkin wrote:
>
>Winfield Hill wrote:
>
>> "When London is submerged and New York awash, we may look back on 2004
>> as the year when the water started rising. Observations collected from
>> both North and South Poles show that the world's ice sheets and glaciers
>> are disintegrating faster than anyone thought possible."
>
>It has occurred to me that the proponents of catastrophic global
>warming are natural pessimists; in other times, they would be
>predicting the Apocalypse, the End of Days, great pestilences, and the
>other classic (and mythical) catastrophes.

They *did*.

Take a look at the following. It's all there; the Ominous
signs, the Evidence Accumulating Massively, the Unanimous
Meteorologists citing NOAA Data, the small changes in
temperature being highly misleading to the layman, the
Pessimistic Climatologists...

-----------------------------------------------------------

Newsweek
April 28, 1975

The Cooling World

There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns
have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may
portend a drastic decline in food production-- with serious
political implications for just about every nation on Earth.
The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only
10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact
are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the
U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally
self-sufficient tropical areas -- parts of India, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia -- where the growing
season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun
to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are
hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have
seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since
1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production
estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same
time, the average temperature around the equator has risen
by a fraction of a degree -- a fraction that in some areas
can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most
devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148
twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a
billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent
the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's
weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent
of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local
weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the
view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity
for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as
profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting
famines could be catastrophic. "A major climatic change
would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide
scale," warns a recent report by the National Academy of
Sciences, "because the global patterns of food production
and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on
the climate of the present century."

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a
drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the
Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to
George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos
indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere
snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released
last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of
sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S.
diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature
and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the
University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average
temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven
degrees lower than during its warmest eras -- and that the
present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the
way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as
a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought
bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America
between 1600 and 1900 -- years when the Thames used to freeze
so solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when
iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New
York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages
remains a mystery. "Our knowledge of the mechanisms of
climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,"
concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. "Not only
are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but
in many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key
questions."

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term
results of the return to the norm of the last century. They
begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that
produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper
atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds
over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way
causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as
droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed
monsoons and even local temperature increases -- all of which
have a direct impact on food supplies.

"The world's food-producing system," warns Dr. James D.
McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental
Assessment, "is much more sensitive to the weather variable
than it was even five years ago." Furthermore, the growth of
world population and creation of new national boundaries
make it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from
their devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will
take any positive action to compensate for the climatic
change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some
of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting
the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or
diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater
than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that
government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the
simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the
variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections
of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the
more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic
change once the results become grim reality.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Sound familiar?

(Where *was* Winfield Hill in 1975?) :)

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