Dr. Fred Singer spoke at Heartland Institute's 10th Climate Change Conference in DC
By Nancy Thorner -
On Monday, June 15, four days before the Vatican planned to release Pope Francis' encyclical (a papal declaration detailing the church's views on a subject), an Italian magazine, L'Espresso, posted the 192-page Italian language document. In the draft version the earthly head of the Catholic Church called global warming "one of the principal challenges now facing humanity."
The pope further blamed climate change on human activity and calls on readers to pursue "changes in styles of life, of production, and consumption, to combat global warming, or, at least, the human causes that produce and exacerbate it."
The encyclical, titled "Laudato Si, On the care of the common home,” comes ahead of a major December international climate conference in Paris to develop a new international climate change agreement that will cover all countries. The agreement is to be adopted at the December Paris climate conference and implemented in 2020 and will take the form of a protocol, a legal instrument or 'an agreed outcome with legal force', and will be applicable to all parties.
Strongly recommended at the recent ICCC-10 conference in Washington, D.C., is that a secession clause (freedom clause) be included in the protocol, such as in the Kyoto Protocol, Article 27:
"At any time after three years from the date on which this Protocol has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Protocol by giving written notification to the Depositary."
Predictions and claims not realized
U.N. Scientists have been warning that temperature increases should be limited to 2-degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst of global warming. This 2-degree Celsius threshold goal will be pursued at the upcoming UN December climate conference. However, the threshold is now being challenged by the International Energy Agency who on June 15 said that greenhouse gas cuts proposed by some of the world’s biggest economies won’t be enough to stop global temperatures from rising beyond the important 2-degree Celsius threshold. Based on plans introduced so far by this nation and other countries, the proposed measures to be taken would still result in a temperature increase of 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.
Based on hypocrisies and contradicted by many scientists who believe man has little control over the climate which is influenced mostly by natural causes, would it be either wise or feasible to pursue a more aggressive strategy to further reduce emissions by increasing energy efficiency, moving away from coal-fired power plants, and investing in renewable energy under an assumption only that such action would curtail future temperature rises that are deemed catastrophic? It would certainly wreak havoc on the economy of this nation. Then too, there are renounced scientists who foresee a global cooling cycle in keeping with their current observations.
Consider this flashback report from June 12, 2008 -- ABC's '08 prediction for June, 2015:
"New York City underwater? Gas over $9 a gallon? A carton of milk costs almost $13? Welcome to June 12, 2015. Or at least that was the wildly-inaccurate version of 2015 predicted by ABC News exactly seven years ago. Appearing on 'Good Morning America' in 2008, Bob Woodruff hyped Earth 2100, a special that pushed apocalyptic predictions of the then-futuristic 2015."
And what about TIME magazine predicting global cooling in its June 24, 1974 issue!
Dr. Fred Singer notes past cycles of warming and cooling
Fred Singer, Ph.D., an atmospheric and space physicist, as well as a distinguished speaker and scientist known and honored throughout the world, appeared in the first panel of ICCC-10 on Friday, June 11. His topic: "Saving Humanity from Catastrophic Global Cooling." Cited was how Major Ice Ages appear in 100,000 year cycles and had very serious consequences, while Little Ice Ages occur every 1,000 to 1,500 years. Singer believes we are approaching another Little Ice Age. From a slide in Singer's presentation:
1. Major glaciations (Milankowitch) -- 20 during last 3 million years, on 100K-yr. time-scale, astronomical, timing: eccentricity_100K; obliquity_41K; precession_21K-years. Quite severe; can wipe out civilization.
2. "Little" ice ages (Dansgaar-Oeschger-Bond), every ~1000-1500 years, solar-caused (?). Not as severe, but highly damaging.
Dr. Singer suggested the following remedies to combat a possible approaching Little Ice Age. From a Slide in Singer's presentation:
1. To prevent formation of Major Glaciation, locate the 'Trigger' -- persistent snow field that survives the summer at ~65N -- and spread soot to melt it (using solar heat).
2. To cancel the cooling phase of D-O-B cycle (Dansgaard-Oeschger-Bond) use GH effect of Artificial cirrus to warm sfc: spray water mist into cold tropopause to create ice particles absorb/re-emit IR.
Proposed by Dr. Fred Singer was the establishment of an international project to run tests relative to what seems to point toward a future global cooling cycle.
Wanting to learn more about past cycles of warming and cooling, Larry Bell's book, "Scared Witless, Prophets and Profits of Climate Doom", included in my ICCC-10 conference handout bag, led me to discover that although temperatures have been generally mild over the past 500 years, significant fluctuations are normal. As recently as 1,000 years ago (during the "Medieval Warm Period"), Icelandic Vikings were raising cattle, sheep and goats in grasslands on Greenland's southwestern coast. Around 1200 the temperatures began to drop and Norse settlements were abandoned by about 1350. By the middle of the 16th century, although there were notable year-to-year fluctuation, temperatures dropped dramatically. Called the Little Ice Age it dominated the weather the next 150 years or more. Food shortages killed millions in Europe between 1690 and 1700. It was during the end of the Little Ice Age that Washington's troops in 1777 experienced a brutal winter at Valley Forge.
Observe here Frost Fairs on the Thames in England. One fair of several built on the frozen Thames in London during severe winters lasted from December 1683 until 4th February 1684. During the same period the dikes froze in Holland, unheard of today, making ice skating possible.
Now consider the past 20th century. There were two distinct periods of warming. The first occurred between 1900 and 1945. The second, following a slight cool-down, began quite abruptly in 1975. Remember the Time magazine cover? This second period of warming rose at a constant rate until 1998, and then stopped and began falling again after reaching a high or 1.16 degrees F above the average global mean. Of significance, and at the same time bewildering to global warming alarmists, is that the temperature has remained steady for the past 18 years and 4 months to be exact, while human carbon dioxide emissions over that period represent 25 percent of all emissions since the dawn of the industrial Revolution, which began 150 years ago.
Dr. Willie Soon presents the Sun-Climate connection
While Dr. Fred Singer believes we are approaching another Little Ice Age because of natural weather cycles that have occurred with regularity in the past, astrophysicist and geoscientist Dr. Willie Soon, Ph.D. in his presentation as a distinguished member of the 1st panel on Thursday morning on June 11, spoke about the sun as the ultimate factor in causing change of terrestrial climate. For at a small but measurable level, the sun varies, just as most stars do. Centuries of observation and most recent research strongly suggest that our climate is modulated in important ways by the sun's variability. Dr. Soon described his "12-day journey of sunspots" -- May 5 - 17, 2015 -- during which only very small sunspots could be found.
"Unstoppable Solar Cycles (The Real Story of Greenland) was produced by Dr. Willie Soon and Dr. David Legates, a professor of climatology at the University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean & Environment, who like Dr. Soon was a conference speaker. View here on youtube. A free handout, "Unstoppable Solar Cycles" was produced by Free to Choose Network, a not-for-profit educational corporation and has a running time of 10:39. The excellent presentation explains why the current warming and cooling trends are natural -- the result of solar cycles, and therefore unstoppable. Greenland was much warmer at the height of the last natural warming cycle than it is today and elsewhere.
Coming of a new Little Ice Age?
Could a quiescent sun portend a new little ice age and a chilly era for humanity and agriculture as expressed by Dr. Soon? A member of Panel 5 on Thursday, June 11th, Paul Driessen thinks so. Driessen is a senior policy advisor with the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow and Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, both non-profit policy institutes. Although Driessen did not address Dr. Soon's Sun/Climate connection in his panel presentation, he did mirror Soon's premise in an article published in “Reality News Media”, May 24th, 2015, Vol. 6, No. 5, "The Iceman Cometh." In his article Paul Dreissen notes that there are virtually no sunspots darkening the blinding yellow orb. Not since 1906 has there been a solar cycle with fewer sunspots. The downward trend in solar sunspot cycles began over 20 years ago when the Earth stopped warming. Driessen further writes:
"If it continues for a couple more cycles, Earth could be entering another "grand minimum," an extended period of low solar activity. That would mean less incoming solar radiation, which could have a marked cooling. Low solar activity was present during the 70-year "Maunder Minimum" (1645-1715) and the 40-year "Dalton Minimum" (1790-1830), which brought even colder global temperature to what was referred to previously as the "Little Ice Age."
What would be the impact of a couple of degrees colder weather? Although it would create adverse consequences for habitats, wildlife, agriculture, and humanity, worst of all cold kills. Although modern homes and buildings with affordable heat make it easy to survive even brutal winters in comfort, carbon taxes, restrictions on coal and natural gas, renewable energy mandates and other ill-conceived programs will cause electricity and home heating prices to soar above what they presently are making them unaffordable. Thousands would die from hypothermia.
What about the impact of slightly warming weather? According to Dennis Avery "Two thousand years of published human histories say that warm periods were good for people. It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease."
Costs and benefits of intended regulations are being ignored
Might 2016 be the Political Tipping Point?! (Reproduced from a conference slide):
- The next President could permanently implement EPA Climate regulations.
- The next President could attempt to adhere U.S. to new UN Climate Treaty.
- The GOP needs candidate who will stand up to the global warming establishment.
- Action Items include: Defunding EPA, defunding UN IPCC, No UN climate treaty in December.
Common sense dictates that federal agencies must assess both the costs and the benefits of the intended regulations, and recognizing that some costs and benefits are difficult to quantify, propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that the benefits of the intended regulation justify the cost.
Common sense, however, does not prevail in an atmosphere where the Obama administration has unconditionally accepted the reports of the UN IPCC calling for drastic actions to save the planet, which in so doing would greatly affect the present living standard of the American people and this nation's economy, under the guise to prevent an improbable likelihood that a catastrophe global warming will happen in the future if not attended to now.
Article 1: "Heartland Institute Honors Sen. Inhofe for Challenging Climate Change Myths"
