Phil Chapman is a geophysicist and astronautical engineer who lives in San Francisco. He was the first Australian to become a NASA astronaut. He is also part of the “tiny minority” of flat-earth, knuckledragging, mouthbreathing deniers of The World According to Gorp.

Phil’s piece in The Australian looks at the lack of recent sunspot activity, and draws a plausible correlation to global cooling, resulting in a coming ice age. Great read. Hope it’s not too scary for the chicken littles.

THE scariest photo I have seen on the internet is www.spaceweather.com, where you will find a real-time image of the sun from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, located in deep space at the equilibrium point between solar and terrestrial gravity.

What is scary about the picture is that there is only one tiny sunspot.

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.

All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.

There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.

It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.

This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.

It didn’t happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.

The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth’s climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.

Northern winters became ferocious: in particular, the rout of Napoleon’s Grand Army during the retreat from Moscow in 1812 was at least partly due to the lack of sunspots.

That the rapid temperature decline in 2007 coincided with the failure of cycle No.24 to begin on schedule is not proof of a causal connection but it is cause for concern.

It is time to put aside the global warming dogma, at least to begin contingency planning about what to do if we are moving into another little ice age, similar to the one that lasted from 1100 to 1850.

Read more: “Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh”

See Also: “Nobody Listening to The Goracle”

from junkscience.com

“Once upon a time the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to individuals who dedicated their lives to the betterment of humanity. They focused on real world issues and championed real world solutions. In 1952, Dr. Albert Schweitzer won the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work. Dr. Schweitzer founded a hospital in French Equatorial Africa. He would later expand the facility and by the 1960’s the hospital would serve more than 500 patients at any one time.

In 1964, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. won the award for his leadership during America’s civil rights movement. Between 1957 and 1968 Dr. King had traveled more than 6 million miles and spoke more than 2,500 times as he advocated equal rights for all people.

In 1986, Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel received the award for his human rights activities. He is the founding president of the Universal Academy of Cultures, in Paris, and chairman of the Eli Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, an organization he and his wife established to combat intolerance and injustice.

Things have changed.” (Joe Bell, Opinion Editorials)

Updated and Bumped
Momentum is building. Google hits 1,680,000 entries for the phrase “the greatest campaign finance scandal in American history.” Hillary Rodham Clinton is now at the top of the heap. Keep it going folks!
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“the+greatest+campaign+finance+scandal+in+American+history”

“the greatest campaign finance scandal in American history”

Now that this phrase has been published by a respected member of the MSM, and, as such, is now in the LexusNexis search database, it seems appropriate to associate that phrase with the person to whom it refers: Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I received a ping from FReeper “Spirit of Allegiance” this morning which pointed to an article which featured our pal, “Dougfromupland.”

The article was in the San Francisco Chronicle’s on line edition. Here is the introductory paragraph of the article about “the greatest campaign finance scandal in American history.”

In his other life, Douglas Cogan, 59, is a San Bernardino County commercial real estate broker. But for years, the conservative Republican has spent thousands of hours painstakingly researching what he calls “the greatest campaign finance scandal in American history” by a woman he calls one of the most dangerous political figures the country has ever seen - Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Since it appears that Google has enabled “google-bombing” again, I thought it might be interesting to get the phrase, “the greatest campaign finance scandal in American history,” permanently associated with Hillary Rodham Clinton. That is the purpose of this post. And, if any of you bloggers out there want to join in, just copy+paste this post at your blog, or pass it along in the comments section of your favorite blogs. The more the merrier. I’m going to track-post it to Linkfests, and post it at FR and Hannity. I’ll also activate every tag I have ever used to associate it with this post. Heh.
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Read the rest of this entry »

Scientists at the University of Hull are working on an improved treatment for a debilitating flesh-eating disease which appears to be on the rise due to ………………………………………………………………

wait for it…………………………………………………………………………………….

GLOBAL WARMING !!!!!!!

Leishmaniasis, a flesh-eating disease, is expected to increase dramatically if global warming trends continue.

Should global warming continue to ravage our planet at current rates, the numbers of people suffering Leishmaniasis, a flesh-eating and sometimes fatal disease will increase dramatically, experts warn. Leishmaniasis is caused by a parasite transmitted via sand fly bites usually found only in tropical climates. Rising temperatures will increase the number of countries the sand fly colonises, moving further north and through Europe.

Due to travel and tourism, nations affected are already on the increase. Military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are also exposed to the conditions associated with contracting Leishmaniasis.

We’re Doooooooooomed!

UPDATE: CDT sends this shocking photo: Global Warming Causes Zombies!

Comment posted by nuke
at 8/8/2007 12:10:53 PM

that would be…”pen name”
??? ?????

Comment posted by no2liberals
at 8/8/2007 12:08:31 PM

So that’s why Halliburton won the bid on a no-bid contract for those massive metal cylinders, buried deep in the caprock of West Texas. It all becomes so clear.
Thanks, Swampie.

Comment posted by nuke
at 8/8/2007 10:29:31 AM

Just part of the plan, Swampwoman. Just part of the plan. You see, by controlling the oxygen supply, Bushco will be in a position to manufacture another “crisis” and declare martial law. That way they will never have to give up power. At least, that’s how Lord Rove explained it to me.

Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 8/8/2007 10:25:07 AM

“More than 300 million years ago, there was 31 to 35 percent oxygen in the air,” Dr. Kaiser said. “That means that the respiratory systems of the insects could be smaller and still deliver enough oxygen to meet their demands, allowing the creatures to grow much larger.”

OHMYGAWD! Bush stole our oxygen!

Comment posted by SwampWoman
at 8/8/2007 9:06:08 AM

I would say algore has the greatest motivation so that he can save his carbon credits gig.

Perhaps the UN can form another false “consensus”.

Comment posted by no2liberals
at 8/8/2007 4:46:54 AM

I wonder what will be the greatest motivating factor for participants, the cash or saving algore?
Perhaps we should start a pool, as to how many entrants there will be.