There are a lot of folks who malign folks like me by using the word "deniers" – trying to tie us to and attempt to make an equivalence to Holocaust deniers. They think that by using that ad hominem attack that they will win the day. By shutting down dissent, or calling for shunning of those presenting the opposite view – if you can’t win, shut ’em up philosophy!
Umm, so how do they expect to shut these folks up- National Geographic? I slyly put to you that these folks have credibility – lots of it. So, what’s up?
Earth’s polar temperature has swung wildly—by as much as 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit)—over the last 800,000 years, an Antarctic ice core has revealed. In 2004 scientists led by Jean Jouzel of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences (LSCE) in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, pulled up the final chunk of ice core from a drill hole in the center of Antarctica.
Right now, the global warming folks are all up in arms over 1.6 degrees F. – only 6%, blaming most of it on humans.
Er, how are they going to ‘splain this one?
The new climate record covers an additional cycle of glacial change, amounting to 11 cycles in total, lead author Jouzel said.
Plugging the data from the entire core into an atmospheric model, the scientists were able to reconstruct a reliable temperature record for the past 800,000 years.
In today’s online journal Science, the team showed that the coldest period occurred around 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum, when the ice sheets were at their peak.
It was about 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) colder than today. (Related: "Antarctica’s Atmosphere Warming Dramatically, Study Finds" [March 30, 2006].)
Meanwhile, the warmest period was during the last interglacial period, which is an interval of warmer global average temperature that separates ice ages. At that time, around 130,000 years ago, it was a balmy 4.5 degrees Celsius (8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than today.
So who’s your friend – Al Gore or National Geographic? Betcha the latter has a lot more PhD power than the former…..
