February 2010 #2

GLOBAL WARMING AND GLOBAL COOLING                       

      Several months ago I recommended a book “THE COOLING; HAS THE NEXT ICE AGE BEGUN? CAN WE SURVIVE IT?” by Lowell Ponte, published by Prentice-Hall in 1976. I read the book in 1976 when I purchased it and again in 2009. My interest in climatic change was initiated when I received a photo copy of an article that appeared in the May 1974 issue of Fortune magazine. I recommend the book as a source of information that will help further your understanding of our climate. Unfortunately the article from Fortune magazine is not available on the internet so you will have to find a book store that deals in old magazine to see if they have a copy. As the debate has been going on for many years I have maintained one position, the earth is cooling, based upon the information I have read in each of these publications. However, the cooling we are experiencing in the northern hemisphere is not happening in the southern hemisphere. Why?

      The answer is the Earth is doing both; always has and always will. While we living in the northern hemisphere are experiencing the coldest snowiest winter in years the southern hemisphere is seeing extreme heat; Rio, Australia to name two locations. The reason I believe has to do with the cool air mass traveling south from the North Pole. As the air mass pushes south less heat reaches the Arctic. Some of the heat is manifest as ice and snow. The balance of the heat is deflected back towards its origination point “the equator”.  This means the lower latitudes of the Earth are subject to receiving the heat concentrated that would have been distributed over a larger area so the smaller land mass area now getting the heat gets hotter. Also, the southern hemisphere is mostly water and water is the best absorber of the radiant heat coming from the sun so the southern hemisphere is warmer than the northern hemisphere. If as I believe the climatic change, cooling, occurring on Earth is factual in a century or two the survivors will be living in Australia and New Zealand. The ice age will only cover the land masses of the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere should be a very comfortable place to live.
    
     As for the cooling that is taking place in the northern hemisphere, it has to do with the snow fall that is covering more and more of the northern hemisphere each winter. The past 4 winters to include the current one have been successively colder each year. Moist air traveling north from the Pacific Ocean is encountering cold air as it travels to the North Pole. This moist air can only get so far before it becomes either snow or rain. During the winter months it is obviously snow. The snow fall has been stretching farther south covering more of the Earth’s surface. The air moving south is cold and since it is flowing over the snow covered surface of the Earth it stays cold. The farther south this cold air mass moves the greater the probability of snow in the southern regions of the Earth. I for one was not surprised when a foot of snow fell on Dallas, TX.

     The sun is now showing definite signs of its rise in the sky. In years past the sun’s rays would be absorbed by the earth (dark ground) which would in turn via radiant heat, heat the air. This year the sun’s rays are hitting the white surface of the Earth, which is snow. Those rays are being reflected back into space. Therefore, spring will come a little later since the snow will have to be melted before the Earth’s surface can absorb the radiant heat to heat the air that surrounds us. At some point the snow will not be melted so the air will not warm as much as before and next winter will come earlier than the previous winter. A friend of mine who summers in Sioux Falls, S.D. told me the summer of 2009 had temperatures averaging 24 degrees below normal. He has lived in Sioux Falls most of his life and he is now in his 70’s.

     As far as I am concerned the big hullabaloo about global warming now known as climate change has to do with a method for governments to extract money from us. Don’t be surprised if next winter comes a little earlier and lasts a little longer. Considering how poor the economy is; people driving less, buying cars that get better gas mileage, factories working less so they consume less energy so as a whole we in the USA are adding less exhaust from all different machines to the atmosphere. Also, all of the less fortunate countries whose economy is far below ours are also burning less fuel putting even less exhaust into the atmosphere. I trust you get the point.

     So pack your bags and learn to speak Aussie or Kiwi.

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