Global Warming or Global Cooling

Back in June prior to the G8 Summit here in Scotland, our church held a forum called 'The Great G8 Debate'. The two debates were on the topics that would head the list of discussion with the G8 leaders: African debt relief and Global warming. The only problem is that the idea of a debate was nothing of the sort. They had six people on the global warming panel and they all agreed with eachother that global warming doom and gloom was immanent and it was all the fault of the US.

After everyone in the audience voiced their opinion which was in line with the panel, I felt compelled to give my opinion and it wasn't recieved too well. I went on to tell the moderator that they were unecessarily promoting fear and much of their theories were based purely on speculation. I shared with them a couple of false doom and gloom climate stories that never came to fruition while the moderators face turned a deep color red. One of the things I shared was a story that came out in Newsweek magazine in the 70's about climate change. I happened to find this article last week after those sincere but misguided evangelicals signed on to their global warming agreement.

Here's the article:

There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production– with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth….
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree – a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. “A major climatic change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale,” warns a recent report by the National Academy of Sciences, “because the global patterns of food production and population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present century.”

Sounds pretty convincing that we are headed toward catastrophic ends due to Global Warming but the title of this story was, 'The Cooling World'. Some of you may remember that the major climate change concern back then was the new ice age.

Here's the whole article: http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:GLpEOpTbAakJ:www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm+%22global+cooling%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1

More later, Liam wants to do some Narnia surfing.