Saturday, February 09, 2008

Warmer and richer or poorer and colder

The AGW alarmists never give us the alternative position to global warming ie what happens if they are wrong or their proposals trigger global cooling? Being hot is an irritant for most, but we can learn to live with the consequences. Yes, some foods will change and yes there will be big impact on the way we live, but consider the alternatives.

EU Referendum has an interesting post looking at the cold weather that is being experienced around the world:

Tucked away now – because it is so common – the news of the global freeze continues to come in, the latest from Milwaukee in the American mid-west, where residents are rushing to finish digging out from this week's snowstorm, before the next batch of snow arrives – expected over the weekend.

So far, the major snowstorm has forced hundreds of schools and businesses to close and grounding hundreds of flights as snow piled more than 20 inches deep in some areas. Governor Jim Doyle called a state of emergency late Wednesday, sending National Guard troops to help about 500 vehicles stuck in a traffic jam behind semitrailer trucks blocking Interstate 90 south of Madison.
...
The worst hit parts of the China – the provinces of Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Guizhou – include important farming regions where winter crops are now destroyed. The impact on fresh vegetables and on fruit in some places has been catastrophic.

The Ministry of Agriculture has reported the loss of 14.4 million poultry, 870,000 pigs, 450,000 sheep and 85,000 cattle, that either froze to death or died from lack of food and water due to transportation hold-ups. The disaster, now being described as China's "Katrina" has smashed a hole in the government price controls imposed just weeks ago. According to he National Reform and Development Commission the price of vegetables in 36 cities rose by 30 percent between 25-30 January.(my emphasis)
That shows the impact of cold weather and a frightening prospect it is. Just in case you are wondering what a shortage of food can do remember MI5's controversial "4 meals away from riots" maxim:
MODERN civilisation may not be quite as safe as we thought. Britain’s security services have been privately warning their staff that western societies are just 48 hours from anarchy.
MI5’s maxim is that society is “four meals away from anarchy”. In other words, the security agency believes that Britain could be quickly reduced to large-scale disorder, including looting and rioting in the event of a catastrophe that stops the supply of food.
But going back to the original story there is one paragraph that raises the ever growing concerns amongst many "skeptics", and that is that (anthropogenic) global warming is wrong and in our desire to believe Gore et al and allow politicians and other assorted control freaks to dictate how we live, we are missing the real story and that we are heading for a cold period:
Interestingly, in Canada, we are told that, back in 1991 before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined. And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.
The sun has always been the elephant in the corner of the AGW debate. No matter how much they shout and scream at us about CO2 and carbon foot prints, the biggest driver of the earth's climate is the sun. It doesn't have to change much to have a huge affect on us. As climate-skeptic points out in one of his posts, ignoring the sun in the global warming debate is like walking in to a hot room and asking people to turn off their mobile phones, whilst ignoring the radiators.

I'll go back to the EU Referendum story and use their final paragraph to finish:
Given the devastating effects even short periods of intense cold can produce, bringing one country to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, we had better hope these scientists' worries [about global cooling] are unfounded. If they are not, the "warmists" are going to have some explaining to do, as they will have been crying "dog", while the wolf is at the back door.

1 comment:

al fin said...

Quite frightening. I try to be an optimist, but if weather does get colder for any period of time, food production and distribution will suffer.

With emphasis on reducing carbon emissions, it may become difficult to heat all the homes.

Cold and hungry. Not a good way to live.