"Global warming is over — at least for a few decades," Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University.

Are You Ready For Global Cooling?

IBID Editorial (5/21/10)

Climate Science: Noted scientists at a Chicago climate conference declare that global warming is not only dead, but that the planet faces a big chill for decades to come. What about those frozen wind turbines?

It's not exactly Copenhagen or Kyoto, but the 700 scientists attending the fourth International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by the Heartland Institute, had some chilling news of their own in the most liberal sense.

"Global warming is over — at least for a few decades," Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told the gathering. "However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for greater concern."

Editor's note: a 3 degree increase in temp averages occurs mostly at night and does nothing but increase the growing season A cooling temp average of 3 degrees can result in a 10% loss in food production - a 5 or 6 degree cooling trend wold be a agricultural disaster - but of course, we can prevent this just as easy as we can prevent global warming. While you are out there shopping for ammo, buy a heavy coat or three --- jds

Easterbrook and 74 other presenters at the conference said what everyone already knows, having shoveled record amounts of global warming off our sidewalks and driveways last winter.

We don't need computer models to tell us, baby, it's getting cold outside. Of course, the doomsayers will claim that global warming causes global warming. Right.

"Rather than global warming at a rate of about 1 (degree) Fahrenheit per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030," Easterbrook said.

He spoke of natural cycles that have been occurring since the discovery of fire and mankind's first carbon emissions, long before the invention of the wheel and the SUV.

Easterbrook and the other scientists reported on sudden and natural climate fluctuations documented in the geologic record, all before 1945. Two big climate changes occurred in the past 15,000 years, and another 60 smaller changes in the last 5,000 years.

Another presenter, James M. Taylor, an environmental policy expert and a fellow at the Heartland Institute, said that global cooling is happening now.

He pointed to data provided by the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab showing snow records from the last 10 years exceeding the records set in the 1960s and 1970s.

Based on new analysis of ice cores from Greenland to Antarctica, Easterbrook said global temperatures rose and fell from 9 to 15 degrees in a single century or less, a natural phenomenon he called "astonishing."

We see a bit of irony in an early February report that 11, 115-foot-tall wind turbines installed to provide power to 11 Minnesota towns were not functioning because they couldn't handle the record cold temperatures of a harsh winter.