04-24-2008, 06:05 PM
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Meow.
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Tacoma, WA USA
Gender: 
Posts: 198
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Which is it? Global warming or global cooling? Ice age?
World might be heading towards Ice Age- Global Warming-Earth-The Economic Times
Quote:
CANBERRA: Scientists have warned that the world might once again be heading towards an Ice Age, with global warming approaching a possible end.
Evidence in support of this theory has come from pictures obtained from the US Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which showed no spots on the sun, thus determining that sunspot activity has not resumed after hitting an 11-year low in March last year.
A sunspot is a region on the sun that is cooler than the rest and appears dark.
Some scientists believe a strong solar magnetic field, when there is plenty of sunspot activity, protects the earth from cosmic rays, cutting cloud formation, but that when the field is weak - during low sunspot activity - the rays can penetrate into the lower atmosphere and cloud cover increases, cooling the surface.
According to Australian astronaut and geophysicist Phil Chapman, this might have caused the world to cool quickly between January last year and January this year, by about 0.7C.
"This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record, and it puts us back to where we were in 1930," said Dr Chapman.
"If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over," he added.
Dr Chapman has proposed preventive, or delaying, moves to slow the cooling, such as bulldozing Siberian and Canadian snow to make it dirty and less reflective.
"My guess is that the odds are now at least 50:50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades," he said
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I'm wondering how this whole thing is going to pan out for environmentalists? Is Al Gore right or is he wrong? What are we up against? Was the whole global warming thing actually myth?
Here's another article Ice age claim angers scientists - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Quote:
It might be an unpopular view but Dr Phil Chapman is sticking to it. The geophysicist and former NASA astronaut says figures from four separate agencies show the global temperature dropped noticeably during 2007 and that the globe could now be returning to an ice age.
"All the people who monitor the world's global temperature say that the temperature fell by something like 0.7 degrees Centigrade," he told PM.
"We're talking about a very large drop that cancels out all the increase since 1930.
"If this continues, then global warming will have to be, we'll have to admit that it's over."
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And here's a link to a whole bunch of articles:
- Google News
What does this mean now? The study of this has just become interesting. 
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