Speak On, Oh Learned Voices!

I press on in an effort to inject a measure of intelligence into a topic that, of late, has long been devoid.

One of the pillars for man-made global warming proponents is that human behavior is the largest contributor of atmospheric greenhouse gases (read "carbon dioxide") which in turn causes an increase in global temperature (read "insane").

It won't take a gladiator with Sampson-like strength to knock this one down, folks.

What GW alarmists often overlook is the influence the sun has on our earth and its atmosphere. It does not take a doctorate in atmospheric science to grasp the role of the sun in our seasons. Heck, most of us learned about the seasons by age 8. For those of you who were sick that year, the northern hemisphere is hotter in the summer due to direct sun angles and is conversely affected in the winter due to indirect sun angles. The same thing is true for the southern hemisphere just during opposite times of the year.

FACT: The sun is the biggest driving force on the earth's weather and climate.

Yet, when looking for reasons as to an apparently "shocking" rise in global temperature, Al Gore and the like ignore the sun's increased brightness and overall output while pointing the finger directly at rich, white, Christian nations because, after all, they are the obvious culprits.

Those damn SUVs!

Well, one of the 400 scientists from the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee's recent climate report thinks otherwise.

[The following is a direct quote from the above report]

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, professor in the department of Earth Sciences at Carleton University in Ottawa converted from believer in CO2's driving the climate change to a skeptic. "I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change," Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007.
Patterson said his "conversion" happened following his research on "the nature
of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific." "[My conversion from
believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results
began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research
Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle
investigator)," Patterson explained. "Over the course of about a year, I
switched allegiances," he wrote. "As the proxy results began to come in, we were
astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of
cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles. About that time,
[geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to
how solar signals could be amplified and control climate," Patterson noted.
Patterson says his conversion "probably cost me a lot of grant money. However,
as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not where activists want me
to go." Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to
climate skeptics. "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion [about climate change]. I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority," Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warming of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting sometime," Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. "I think the proof in the pudding, based on what [media and governments] are saying, [is] we're about three quarters of the way [to disaster] with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. "The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."

I am not proposing that solar output is the only factor in global climate change. I am suggesting, however, that much more evidence points to this possible answer than any of anthropogenic global warming. This is one of the many reasons why discussion must not be cut off.

Time must be spent pouring over the growing mountains of facts before fortunes are spent curbing something that is likely beyond our control.

I urge you to read more about the possible role our sun plays on climate.

This is just a place to start.