TOTAL LICENSING
• 30 million years ago: Antarctica separates from and the independent temperature readings of benevolent support from
South America and the Southern Ocean is born. satellites and balloons, which show little trend. the USA, it showed
Shortly after, glaciers start to expand in Antarctica. Note: Source: I. Mikkelsen, N. and A. Kuijpers. The worldwide threats could
• 5 million years ago: Modern climate begins to climate system and Climate Variations, “Natural Climate be batted in this as in
develop as the separation of continents produces Variations in a Geological Perspective,” Geological other areas like Malaria
the great oceanic temperature conveyor in the Survey of Denmark and Greenland, 2001. and HIV. It was a success
North Atlantic. Northern Hemisphere cooling leads WEATHER IS IMPORTANT for medical professions
to more glaciers and ice sheets. From the beginning of the publication of the Farmers’ and the World Health
Almanacs, agriculture was interested in learning Organization.
THE MORE RECENT YEARS more about the weather that, after all, controlled the (P) In contrast to this,
• 110,000 years ago: Fairly sudden shift to time of the year for sowing and the time for reaping. American action, after the
much-colder-than-present glacial conditions, over This knowledge ahead of changing conditions would global conferences on greenhouse gas in Rio and Kyoto
perhaps four hundred years – or even less. determine years of want and years of plenty. did not provide support or such leadership.
Northern forests retreat south, ice sheets begin to There had been hunger years and floods set down in
take over much of the Northern Hemisphere. Trees chronicles and history. Increasingly historians connected WHY AND WHEN DID THE FIRST SERIOUS SIGNS
give way to grass, and then to deserts, as more events with weather conditions. OF PUBLIC CONCERN ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING
water is frozen in ice sheets instead of falling as • How could Vikings have settled in Labrador and EMERGE AND BEGIN TO BECOME CONCERN FOR
rain on vegetation. how had they called Newfoundland “Vinland”. DEBATE?
• 60,000 to 55,000 years ago: In-between phase, Because grapes grew there?
partial melting of glaciers. • How could Roman authors write of a frozen Tiber P: The Italian National Research Council says Venice’s
• 30,000 years ago: Last Ice Age: This reached its River? sea level with its priceless architectural treasures is
coldest point 21,000 – 17,000 years ago. Deserts Why did the first Bubonic Plague come out of Africa victim to a relative rise of 23 centimeters between
and semi-deserts take over much of the global or the Middle East to kill 200,000 citizens of the 1897 and 1983.
land area. Sea levels four hundred feet lower than Byzantine Empire. Byzantine historian, Cyril Mango, N: 12 Centimeters, however, are ascribed to the soft soil
today. blames “a famine caused by the lack of sunlight”. The sinking due to the weight of buildings and bridges and
• 14,000 years ago: sudden warming, raising Earth plague was called Justinian’s Plague and was seen as a the increased weight of mass tourism.
temperatures to roughly present levels. Forests punishment for the Romans who wanted to re-conquer (P) The computer allows the construction of ever more
begin to spread and the ice sheets to retreat. Sea the now barbarian tribe-ruled Italian peninsula from sophisticated models that feed theories, observations
levels begin to rise. Constantinople. Possibly these few examples out of and statistical projections into the battle.
• 12,500 years ago: The Younger Dryas. After many might be called anecdotal but with increasing N: The “realists” stress that such complicated
only 1,500 years of recovery from the Ice Age, the advances in science, the economic needs of growing phenomena influenced by sun, by difficult to observe
Earth was suddenly plunged back into a new, populations, weather and its prognostication had upper air temperature, by individual widely different
short-lived ice age. The dramatic cooling seems become a topic of increased research and scientific national radio sondes and diverse non-standardized
to have occurred within one hundred years or less. interest. No longer was it accepted as a given. instrumentation through time, and many such other
Another 1,000 years or so of ice age follows before Ships, later airplanes, needed to know about the in factors make models predisposed to many errors.
there is another sudden shift back to climate advance. Weather balloons began to appear. No longer (P) The greenhouse gas warming partisans stress
warming. was it sufficient to observe arriving clouds or watch the disasters to happen and urgency and have in recent
• 11,500 years ago: The present interglacial period, weather vane on the church steeple. Increasingly, the times certainly made unanticipated progress in
the Holocene begins. The planet warms from ice now more educated man had to know in advance! dominating the debate over the last few years.
age to nearly present world temperatures in less
than one hundred years. Half of the warming may HOW DID CONCERN BEGIN LET US LOOK AT A FEW OF THE MANY
have occurred in fifteen years. Ice sheets melted, • Climate scientists of the National Academy of ISSUES
sea levels rose again, and forests expanded. Trees Sciences first warned that uncontrolled greenhouse
replaced grass and grass replaced deserts. gas emissions might raise global temperatures GREENLAND AND ANTARCTICA
• 9,000 to 5,000 years ago: “Climate Optimum”, 10 deg. Fahrenheit and lead to a rise in sea levels (P) IPPC: The third assessment report of the U.N.
warmer and wetter than the Earth’s present estimated at 20 feet. The questions surfaced and Intergovernmental panel on climate change predicted
climate. The Saharan and Arabian deserts debates began – however government took no in 2001 that sea level rise caused by warming water
became wetter, supporting hunting, herding, and official position nor took any action. Concern brings in the oceans will rise 12-36 inches by 2100 and
some agriculture. action. that very little of this comes from the melting of the
• The 1,500 Year Cycle: It is observed that through • 1992: 20,000 environmental activists to organize Arctic and Antarctic ice sheet. Yet the December 2007
at least the last one million years, and the an earth summer. “Green” parties had been Arctic climate impact assessment (from Arctic nations)
recent ice ages, a 1,500 year warm-cold cycle has organized in Europe in response to observable warned of a feedback loop (when warming melts
been superimposed over the longer, stronger ice wholesale dying off of trees. highly reflective white ice and snow, and replaces it by
ages and interglacial phases. dark blue sea or dark lands, the surface absorbs more
THE OZONE HOLE
sunlight and thereby more solar energy which goes into
RECENT EARTH CLIMATE
In 1974 the same organization warned that
warming instead of evaporation). So observed melting
• 600 TO 200 B.C.: Unnamed cold period that
chlorofluorocarbons were destroying the earth’s
is much faster than the models predicted. It is said that
preceded the Roman Warming.
protective ozone layer. By 1985 they observed a hole
within a century, An ice-free arctic summer is a real
• 200 B.C. to about A.D. 600: Roman Warming
in the ozone shield over Antarctica. Richard Benedick of
possibility and the eventual complete melting of the
• 600 to 900: Dark Ages cold period
President Reagan’s administration and chief delegate
Greenland ice sheet would contribute to a 20 degree
• 900 to 1300: Medieval Warming or Little Climate
to Montreal explained later in a 2005 Senate hearing
rise in sea level. Added to this, the west Antarctic ice
Optimum
that totally unforeseen effects could occur when growth
sheet could spawn a 20-40” rise. Into this scenario, by
• 1300 to 1850: Little Ice Age (two-stage).
rates of concentration crossed a certain threshold.
year 2100, 400 million people would be exposed to
In consequence, under US leadership, the Montreal
rising seas. New Orleans, the Florida Keys, the North
MODERN CLIMATE
protocol was negotiated by 1987. Believe it or not,
Carolina coast, and much other land would need to
• 1850 TO 1940: Warming, especially between
the USA voluntarily outlawed aerosol as propellants in
be protected or abandoned. What would happen to
1920 and 1940.
spray cans. Montreal mandated a 50% cut of CFC’s
insurance companies in this scenario? Washington, NY,
• 1940 to 1975: Cooling trend.
for 1999 and by 1988, only one year later, the EEC
Boston? All would be flooded. This all only in the USA,
• 1976 to 1978: Sudden warming spurt.
and the USA plus 28 other countries had ratified the
ignoring other overseas threats.
• 1979 to present: a large disparity between surface
protocol. Technology transfer and financial help to poor
(N) These predictions are sensational, media driven.
thermometers, which show a fairly strong warming
countries followed in further amendments with the
Sensationalist exposes attract research dollars! Warmer
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