SOTT: Sunspots and the great cooling ahead
July 18, 2013 | Jeffrey Folks | American Thinker
Presumably, even among the ill-informed ideologues at the White House,
there are a few who have heard of sunspots. There may even be one who
knows, as most informed persons do, of the correlation between sunspot
activity and the earth's climate. But apparently no one has bothered to
inform the president.
When sunspot activity is high, as it was during the 1990s and early
2000s, temperatures tend to be high as well. When it is low, as it is
now, temperatures fall. And because sunspot activity occurs in
decades-long cycles, the unusually cold winter and spring of 2012 may be
just the beginning. As a Barron's article recently noted, current sunspot activity is now the least it has been in a century.
What this means is that the era of global cooling has begun. In the
northern hemisphere, three out of the four last winters and springs have
been unusually cold. This spring was so cold in East Asia that China
was forced to import millions of tons of grain and soybeans from the U.S. and other suppliers.
The environmental elitists in Manhattan and Laguna
Beach may not be greatly inconvenienced by cold winters, but ordinary
people have to eat, too, and food exhausts a much greater share of their
income. For the world's poor, a cold year means the difference between
eating and going hungry, or between heating one's home and shivering all
winter. Or as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes put it (while living
through the thick of the Little Ice Age himself), it's the difference
between a life that is warm and comfortable and one that is "nasty,
brutish, and short." Because climate alarmists are focused on global
warming when they should be concerned with cooling, life for the world's
poor is likely to be just that.
That is because shortages inevitably result from global cooling. As
supplies of foodstuffs and energy become constrained due to cold, damp
growing seasons and the need for more heating, a global bidding war
arises in which the poor lose out. The environmental elitists will not
suffer -- they'll pay more as they roll their overladen buggies out of
the local Costco, but what the heck? They can bask in the illusion that
they are saving the earth.
But the poor in Mexico and India and here in American will suffer as
their lives are shortened by malnutrition and disease. With astounding
arrogance, President Obama in his latest budget promises tens of
billions more to fund clean energy scams for his billionaire buddies.
But has he ever considered, even for one moment, the suffering he has
inflicted on the poor by distorting global food and energy markets?
Every year, nearly half of the U.S. corn crop goes up in smoke, burned
as corn ethanol, while children in Guatemala lie listlessly in the dust,
their bellies swollen with starvation. The president is not there at
their side, either literally or figuratively. He is too busy playing
golf or vacationing at the billionaire beach houses on Martha's Vineyard
or Oahu.
There will be more hungry children once global cooling arrives in
earnest. Ocean currents and other influences on the climate undergo
natural periods of alteration. Inevitably, natural forces such as those
which have increased global temperatures over previous decades will
shift from warming to cooling. When this natural alteration coincides
with decreased sunspot activity, as is happening at present, the result
is extreme cooling. And history has shown that periods of global cooling
last for decades, if not for centuries.
While these facts are well known to climatologists, the White House
continues to pretend ignorance. Indeed, two weeks ago, the president
unveiled a major initiative designed to cool
the planet at the very moment when the planet is cooling all on its
own. It is fortunate that this foolish plan to lower temperatures by
reducing carbon emissions will not work. U.S. carbon emissions are now
at the lowest point since 1992, and yet Obama says temperatures have
been rising. So how, exactly, has the lowering of U.S. carbon emissions
changed the climate?
Just because the president's climate initiative will not work, however,
this does not mean that it is harmless. It will continue to harm the
world's poor, and every other consumer, by raising the prices of food
and fuel. And it will divert capital from the private sector, where it
would create prosperity and thus leave us better prepared to face
whatever climate issues lie ahead.
As Bjorn Lomborg argues in Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming,
government spending designed to control the climate would be better
spent on real issues of hunger and disease. Or, I would argue, those
funds would be best left in the hands of taxpayers. Most taxpayers would
invest in businesses that produce jobs and increase prosperity --
including among the world's poor. And most would also donate to churches
and charities that make the world a better place for all. But when that
money is squandered on Solyndra, it can never be invested, never
produce profits, and never rescue the world's poor. Instead, it goes
into the pockets of Obama's billionaire buddies.
What America is facing with global cooling is year after year of crop
failure, higher heating bills, and general inflation (as the effects of
higher food and fuel prices ripple through the economy). The best way to
prepare for this crisis is to unleash the powerful forces of the free
market, thus creating prosperity for all and putting our nation in the
position to prosper no matter what.
Instead of preparing for the climate crisis ahead, Obama kowtows to
coastal environmentalists in return for donations. In doing so, he shows
a complete lack of concern for the poor in this country and abroad --
those who will suffer the most in the bidding war for food and energy
once the effects of the Great Cooling are felt. As the climate cools,
hundreds of millions in America and abroad will lack the resources to
feed themselves or heat their homes.
By then, of course, Obama will already have left office and will
presumably be sunning himself on some balmy Hawaiian beach. He will not
have to suffer from the effects of his policies, but those who do should
not forget that it was this president who squandered our chances of
preparing for the Great Cooling. More than anything, Obama's legacy may
be that he was the fool who believed, or pretended to believe, that
closing a few power plants would cool the planet just when the planet
was already in the process of cooling. He is the one who looked in the
rearview mirror and prepared for global warming just as he was about to
crash head-on into the exact opposite.
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