Post by unk on May 15, 2007 13:17:49 GMT -5
Global Cooling Kills Thousands
Dennis Avery
'Global cooling' has killed thousands of people during the past couple of weeks. In a foretaste of the next Little Ice Age, thousands of elderly and street people died of cold in frigid Western Europe and hundreds in the supposedly milder climate of northern India.
British authorities estimate that an additional 2,500 deaths, nationwide, from this last cold spell. An elderly British couple was found dead in the home they had occupied for 64 years after their gas was shut off for nonpayment of a $225 bill. Older people tend to occupy the oldest homes, which are the hardest to heat. Cold and damp also aggravate old forks' circulatory diseases that can lead to strokes and heart attacks, and to respiratory deaths from bronchitis and pneumonia.
Temperatures in India's Bihar State fell as low as 39 degrees Fahrenheit, causing hundreds of deaths among people lacking warm clothing and/or good insulation. Indian authorities burned thousands of street bonfires for the homeless. One rickshaw driver complained that the cold had driven most of his customers indoors, so he couldn't even keep warm by pedaling.
It is a reminder that?despite all the hoopla on global warming?the earth's icy ages are much more terrible for mankind than the warm periods. Human death rates are far higher in the cold periods, with more and fiercer storms driven by a bigger temperature differential between the Arctic and the equator. The world only escaped from the last Little Ice Age about 1850, after roughly 550 years of chilling weather, floods, and blizzards. Sea ice actually brought seal-hunting Eskimos in kayaks as far south as the British Isles.
Glaciers, ice cores, and tree rings tell us the global climate was also cold during the Dark Ages from about 600 to 900 AD, and during a pre-Roman cooling before the year 200 BC.
The last global warming period before this one occurred between 900 and 1300 AD, when it was somewhat warmer than today, according to the tree rings and ice cores. People were so grateful for the warmth they called it The Little Climate Optimum, and built tall Gothic cathedrals to celebrate their deliverance from cold and damp.
Researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory say the world's warming and cooling phases are part of a long-term cycle that averages about 1500 years (give or take 500 years).
Seabed cores from the bottom of the North Atlantic show the cycle in iceberg debris?pieces of rock ground from Canada and Iceland by glaciers and rafted out to sea. Every 1500 years or so, says Lamont-Doherty's Dr. Gerard Bond (Science, Nov. 21, 2001) there has been a sudden surge of iceberg debris, reflecting a sudden drop in Northern Hemisphere temperatures. Dr. Bond has found nine global warmings and nine global coolings in the last 12,000 years. Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic fell by 3.5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit during the cold periods.
Surprisingly, seabed cores show the 1500-year cycles have been even more dramatic off the coast of West Africa than in the sub-Arctic. Dr. Peter deMenocal, also of Lamont-Doherty, says that ocean temperatures off Africa drop even more abruptly than in the North Atlantic, with changes of 8 to 14 degrees F (Science, June 23, 2000). Plankton fossils and African dust in the seabed tell us that Africa's climate has turned abruptly in the past from very wet to very dry in time spans of a few decades. When the sea-surface temperatures off West Africa drop sharply, Africa's rainfall almost ceases. The African continent then becomes colder and dryer, and stays that way for centuries. Then the climate snaps back again, quickly, bringing such heavy rains that large lakes form in the Sahara.
The two proxy studies, and hundreds of other proxy studies done around the globe (glacier advances, abandoned villages high in the mountains, pollen and insect fossils, etc.), strongly confirm past climate cycles.
Bond and deMenocal agree that the massive weather pattern demonstrated in their seabed studies seems linked to a cycle in the sun's magnetic activity?which is partly reflected in sunspots. Solar activity has been stronger during the world's warming since 1850, indicating that today's warmer temperatures are a natural phenomenon to which we must adapt. Let's enjoy the warming while it lasts.
Dennis Avery
'Global cooling' has killed thousands of people during the past couple of weeks. In a foretaste of the next Little Ice Age, thousands of elderly and street people died of cold in frigid Western Europe and hundreds in the supposedly milder climate of northern India.
British authorities estimate that an additional 2,500 deaths, nationwide, from this last cold spell. An elderly British couple was found dead in the home they had occupied for 64 years after their gas was shut off for nonpayment of a $225 bill. Older people tend to occupy the oldest homes, which are the hardest to heat. Cold and damp also aggravate old forks' circulatory diseases that can lead to strokes and heart attacks, and to respiratory deaths from bronchitis and pneumonia.
Temperatures in India's Bihar State fell as low as 39 degrees Fahrenheit, causing hundreds of deaths among people lacking warm clothing and/or good insulation. Indian authorities burned thousands of street bonfires for the homeless. One rickshaw driver complained that the cold had driven most of his customers indoors, so he couldn't even keep warm by pedaling.
It is a reminder that?despite all the hoopla on global warming?the earth's icy ages are much more terrible for mankind than the warm periods. Human death rates are far higher in the cold periods, with more and fiercer storms driven by a bigger temperature differential between the Arctic and the equator. The world only escaped from the last Little Ice Age about 1850, after roughly 550 years of chilling weather, floods, and blizzards. Sea ice actually brought seal-hunting Eskimos in kayaks as far south as the British Isles.
Glaciers, ice cores, and tree rings tell us the global climate was also cold during the Dark Ages from about 600 to 900 AD, and during a pre-Roman cooling before the year 200 BC.
The last global warming period before this one occurred between 900 and 1300 AD, when it was somewhat warmer than today, according to the tree rings and ice cores. People were so grateful for the warmth they called it The Little Climate Optimum, and built tall Gothic cathedrals to celebrate their deliverance from cold and damp.
Researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory say the world's warming and cooling phases are part of a long-term cycle that averages about 1500 years (give or take 500 years).
Seabed cores from the bottom of the North Atlantic show the cycle in iceberg debris?pieces of rock ground from Canada and Iceland by glaciers and rafted out to sea. Every 1500 years or so, says Lamont-Doherty's Dr. Gerard Bond (Science, Nov. 21, 2001) there has been a sudden surge of iceberg debris, reflecting a sudden drop in Northern Hemisphere temperatures. Dr. Bond has found nine global warmings and nine global coolings in the last 12,000 years. Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic fell by 3.5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit during the cold periods.
Surprisingly, seabed cores show the 1500-year cycles have been even more dramatic off the coast of West Africa than in the sub-Arctic. Dr. Peter deMenocal, also of Lamont-Doherty, says that ocean temperatures off Africa drop even more abruptly than in the North Atlantic, with changes of 8 to 14 degrees F (Science, June 23, 2000). Plankton fossils and African dust in the seabed tell us that Africa's climate has turned abruptly in the past from very wet to very dry in time spans of a few decades. When the sea-surface temperatures off West Africa drop sharply, Africa's rainfall almost ceases. The African continent then becomes colder and dryer, and stays that way for centuries. Then the climate snaps back again, quickly, bringing such heavy rains that large lakes form in the Sahara.
The two proxy studies, and hundreds of other proxy studies done around the globe (glacier advances, abandoned villages high in the mountains, pollen and insect fossils, etc.), strongly confirm past climate cycles.
Bond and deMenocal agree that the massive weather pattern demonstrated in their seabed studies seems linked to a cycle in the sun's magnetic activity?which is partly reflected in sunspots. Solar activity has been stronger during the world's warming since 1850, indicating that today's warmer temperatures are a natural phenomenon to which we must adapt. Let's enjoy the warming while it lasts.
