When the Vikings settled Greenland in the 900′s, they established dairy farms; you can see the ruins even now, below the glacial ice. Some of those structures are being revealed even now, as the Greenland ice retreats. Lief Erikson established settlements on the North American continent, and called it “Vinland” for the grape vines that grew there. We now know that those settlements were in Nova Scotia, a place not recently known for its wines.

The scientists who wrote the IPCC report didn’t include the scary numbers like a 2-meter rise in sea levels; that’s because they didn’t predict that. A 10 CENTI-meter (3 inch) rise in global sea levels was the most probable number. That wasn’t scary enough for the politicians, who made it more a novel than a report.

History tells us that in addition to the annual cycle of the seasons, there’s a millennium-long cycle of warming and cooling. Rome and the Vikings enjoyed moderate temperatures; the Middle Ages and the 1500s were pretty chilly. Toss in a couple of big “Nuclear Winter”-sized volcanoes – like Krakatoa or Mount St. Helens every few centuries – and we really CAN’T predict with much certainty what the weather will bring. But I’d bet good money against Florida disappearing beneath the waves in my lifetime or yours.

Will it happen? Sure. It nearly happened today, as a matter of fact. A Tunguska-sized asteroid missed Earth by 1.5 lunar distances just this evening. In cosmic distances, that’s like a bullet that trims your sideburns but doesn’t break the skin. We’ve been hit before; we’ll be hit again. When it does, all the global-warming exaggerations in the world will seem like a mother’s kiss on a baby’s cheek.

Asteroid impacts have wiped out 90% of all life on earth at least twice. 13,000 years ago, an asteroid hit Canada and sterilized most of North America. If the 1908 Tunguska asteroid had hit 4 hours earlier or later, it would have blasted Paris or Tokyo instead of Siberia. We need to get a portion of humanity OFF of this rock, and not keep all of our eggs in one planetary basket. Because if we all STAY here, we’ll all DIE here.

And it won’t be caused by “global warming”.

For example: in Roman Britain, it was warm enough to grow wine grapes, but that hasn’t been true recently. On the other hand, Gen. George Washington’s troops dragged cannon across the frozen Hudson River during the Revolution. The Hudson has rarely frozen over the last century.

Pournelle’s reading suggests that the climate gradually warms over centuries, and then cools quickly over a few decades.

The one thing that we can be sure of is that the climate is cyclical, and that Chicken Little-ish panic about how “The Sky Is Falling!” is generally unwarranted.

John, the Russian scientist’s data could be right but his conclusions are wrong. Short term temperature comparisons are flawed since they basically compare long term climate change to short term weather variability.

There is a good article about this at RealClimate.org

There is a good article about this at RealClimate.org. I hope you read it, Teach.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/

So let’s see on one hand we have a “Russian scientist” on the other we have the world’s largest society of Earth and space scientists representing 50,000 scientists. This is really confusing isn’t it Teach ??
OK let’s try to simplify it. Which is the biggest number: 50,000 ? or 1 ?
Teach the number of scientists who do not agree with the theory of global climate change seems to be just about the same number of scientists that agree with the theories of science that are stated ion the bible. Theories like God created all of the animals on one day, day #6. And that the entire earth was covered by a flood the same one that made the Grand Canyon.

There’s an excellent article at RealClimate.org about this:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/