LET’S JUST TALK ABOUT THE WEATHER, SHALL WE?

The snow is melting away as I write this. It began melting yesterday. On Friday, Northeast Georgia got hit with the odd snowstorm. I use the word “odd” because, in most years, we never see snow. This year we’ve seen a dusting or two and that couple of inches that is just melting off. It’s been an unusually wet winter. Actually, fall and summer were pretty wet, too. Georgia has gone from water shortages and drought to floods and ground so saturated even relatively minor rainfalls are causes for flash flood warnings and rivers and streams rising to or above flood stage. This is all in less than a year. Sharon was just checking the forecast and we may wind up with another inch or two of snowfall starting tonight and into tomorrow. I’m no meteorologist, but I’ve always been interested in weather, read books and articles about meteorology, done some serious research in association with our writing. And, the climate is changing.

But, that is normal. Earth’s climate is not static. Go driving in Wisconsin sometime and check out the terrain. You’ll see things called “terminal moraines,” little ridges and hills that were formed where the advancing glaciers of the last true Ice Age stopped. We used to live in Chicago, in the suburb of Oak Park. We checked a map showing the southernmost boundary of the Ice Age “Lake Chicago,” a sort of Lake Michigan on steroids. If we’d lived in Oak Park in those days, we could have walked to the beach which was only about a mile away, according to that map.

When the Earth warmed up after that last great Ice Age, it wasn’t because there were too many cars emitting too much pollution, nor were those great factories that didn’t exist belching too much smoke into the atmosphere. No, it was just because the climate of our planet is cyclical. Why? I have no idea. Maybe God just wanted it that way, or maybe the very cycles of our planet’s climate keep it from ever getting so hot or so cold that it would be uninhabitable. Solar cycles have to do with Earth’s climate, of course, and I’d really love for one of the “mankind is destroying the planet” fanatics to explain exactly how we are affecting the Sun.

What man does on the surface of the Earth certainly has some effect. If we are in a cycle of global warming, our greenhouse gas emissions may well be hastening it along – but, cycles are still natural and I’m becoming more and more convinced that a suspicion I’ve harbored for quite some time is proving out.

As I say in our forthcoming book, SURVIVE! THE DISASTER, CRISIS AND EMERGENCY HANDBOOK, “With the melt-off of cubic mile after cubic mile of fresh-water Arctic Sea ice and Greenland glacier comes the very real potential for radical cooling of the British Isles and much of Western Europe, due to a slowdown or shutdown of the Gulf Stream.

“The Gulf Stream is actually a two-way ‘street,’ part of which is called the North Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – NAMOC, for short. The Gulf Stream brings warm waters up from the Caribbean, which allows England, Scotland, Wales, the Irelands and Western Europe to have temperate climates. This two way-street, however, can be closed for repairs when the temperature and salinity of the interchange location in the North Atlantic are altered. For the Gulf Stream to work and the warm current to come north, a returning current of salt water must travel back. An oversimplification, perhaps, but if traffic in one direction is reduced or stopped, traffic in both directions are affected. If the circulation is seriously altered, the British Isles and Western Europe will have drastically colder winters at best. At worst, the Northern Hemisphere could experience a return to glaciation and a new Ice Age – minus the cute animated animals. The ultimate irony would be that global warming – whatever the cause and extent – causes global cooling.”

In the light of Climategate and faked or unsubstantiated research being used as the basis for much of the “fact” proving the profound effect humanity is having on global warming, perhaps those climate authorities who are warning that we are entering into a period of global cooling and a possible mini-Ice Age will be given more credence.

It is not a bad idea to study the Earth’s weather systems, certainly. But, spending money to study something called “global warming” is rather like measuring a man for a pine box before putting him on trial for a hanging offense – outcome is assumed to be assured. People like the guy who lives in The White House and his minions and the world government crowd at the United Nations want to “prove” that mankind is ruining the planet, this as justification for more regulation, more taxes, more restrictions and fewer freedoms. If the facts don’t agree with the hoped for outcome, it matters not at all. Can you say, “Ulterior motive?”