Global Warming - A Stroll Through the European Countryside

Al Gore and the True Global Warming Believers, and the Skeptics

A stroll upwards through the Alps discloses many changes. Glaciers have retreated farther than ever before. The tree line is 300 meters higher than previously.

In Estonia, cereal crops are raised where previously the growing season was much too short.

In England vineyards are flourishing, and there is talk that English wine will soon challenge French.

Yes, the world was a different place a thousand years ago during the Medieval Warm Period. (For the whole story, read the Freeman article, "Unprecedented Global Warming?" linked here, written by Michael Heberling)

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Medieval Warm Period is that Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” finds its existence an inconvenient truth. The science Al Gore calls on to prove man-caused Global Warming doesn’t reflect the Medieval Warm Period. In fact, some of the scientists say their research into tree rings and ice cores shows absolutely that there was no Medieval Warm Period.

It reminds me of a story about a man who was surprised by his wife while he was making love to another woman. “What you goin’ to believe?” he cried. “Your loving husband, or your lyin’ eyes?”

Al’s scientists pose the same question. “What you going to believe? All that archeological junk laying around, or my super scientific studies, which prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the tree line couldn’t have been 300 meters higher than it is today, the glaciers couldn’t have been smaller than they are today, that Estonians couldn’t have raised cereal crops where they can barely raise them now, and the English couldn’t have had lush vineyards where they’re struggling today to reintroduce grape vines.

Guess what? Archeologists have found conclusive evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. If you have lingering doubts, go to Iceland and Greenland. There you will find such evidence of previous Global Warming as ruins of ancient farms that are covered with ice today. The effects of the Little Ice Age which followed the Medieval Warm Period haven’t been reversed by the current period of warming.

Inconveniently for Al and his Global Warming hoards of “scientists,” there is ample widespread evidence of the Medieval Warm Period. Further, it is obvious that natural climate forces, not man, caused warming then, and the hundreds of times before when the earth was warmer than it is today.

Nature also has caused Global Cooling many times before, and scientists who study long-term climate trends, rather than the climate panic du jour, are convinced we are on the verge of another glacial, or cooling, period.

As far as carbon dioxide being the causative factor for warming, scientific studies demonstrate that increased carbon dioxide followed the warming and was a result of it, rather than its cause.

Of course, carbon dioxide is a small factor in the composition of greenhouse gases. Water vapor and clouds have five or six times the impact of carbon dioxide. In terms of total carbon dioxide produced, Nature produces 97% (180 billion tons), and man only 3% (6 billion tons) per year. And since carbon dioxide is only roughly 15% of greenhouse gases, the man-made portion is an insignificant 0.45%. Read that once again carefully. Man only affects less than one-half of one percent of total greenhouse gases.

If Global Warming Panic is not science, what is it?

It’s simply the last best chance for the Left to seize control over all aspects of personal and economic activity.

With Communism dead, and Socialism dying, Environmentalism is their last gasp at world control. If it doesn’t work, the Left will be stuck with Capitalism and democracy. All of their Utopian dreams will be dashed on rocks of personal freedom and liberty.

That defines the Left’s scariest nightmare.


The following is included in the "Testimony of Prof. S. Fred Singer, President, The Science & Environmental Policy Project, before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Climate Change, July 18, 2000.



1. There is no Appreciable Climate Warming
Contrary to the conventional wisdom and the predictions of computer models, the Earth's climate has not warmed appreciably in the past two decades, and probably not since about 1940. The evidence is overwhelming:
a) Satellite data show no appreciable warming of the global atmosphere since 1979. In fact, if one ignores the unusual El Nino year of 1998, one sees a cooling trend.
b) Radiosonde data from balloons released regularly around the world confirm the satellite data in every respect. This fact has been confirmed in a recent report of the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences [1].
c) The well-controlled and reliable thermometer record of surface temperatures for the continental United States shows no appreciable warming since about 1940. [See figure] The same is true for Western Europe. These results are in sharp contrast to the GLOBAL instrumental surface record, which shows substantial warming, mainly in NW Siberia and subpolar Alaska and Canada.
d) But tree-ring records for Siberia and Alaska and published ice-core records that I have examined show NO warming since 1940. In fact, many show a cooling trend.

Conclusion: The post-1980 global warming trend from surface thermometers is not credible. The absence of such warming would do away with the widely touted "hockey stick" graph (with its "unusual" temperature rise in the past 100 years) [see figure]; it was shown here on May 17 as purported proof that the 20th century is the warmest in 1000 years.


The "hockey stick" graph, which labors mightily to avoid showing the Medieval Warm Period.

From Harvard: "20th Century Climate Not So Hot"

A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.

Inconvenient truths, indeed!

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