Saturday, January 31, 2009

Al Gore is a Climate Change Denier

It’s strange to be called a global warming denier, when I’m a climate change believer. I think man-caused global warming activists are the ones in denial – in denial of natural climate change.

It is ridiculous to think that our current climate is stable, or that we must or even are capable of maintaining it in its current state, or changing it for better or worse.

Only 18,000 years ago, so much water was trapped in ice sheets over the northern hemisphere that sea levels were over 400 feet lower. From Gualala it would have been a six-mile hike to the Pacific shore, and from San Francisco you would have to walk over 27 miles, past the horizon and the Farallon Islands, to reach the beach.

However, about 125,000 years ago sea levels were about 25 feet higher than today, and ocean temperatures averaged almost four degrees Fahrenheit warmer. Northern hemisphere winters were generally warmer and wetter than now. Trees grew as far north as the southern portion of Baffin Island, several hundred miles north of the current tree line in the Nunavik region of Quebec. Similarly in Europe, forests grew in Norway well above the Arctic Circle, where they don’t now.

In more recent years – in fact, less than 1,000 years ago – the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. Al Gore’s claim our warm weather is “unprecedented” only holds if you define weather as not including the three warmer periods of the Holocene, which began 10,000 years ago and continues today. The Holocene is an interglacial period in our current ice age, and when it ends soon (in geological terms), our climate will be once again very cold.

Less than 1,000 years ago it was so warm that vineyards flourished in England, where they don’t now. The British say the way to make a small fortune is to have a large one and invest it in vineyards in England.

Al Gore makes fools of many, convincing them that our global warming is unprecedented, but you can’t fool Mother Nature.

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