GLOBAL WARMING CAUSES DROUGHT IN LYNCHBURG

I knew it would happen sometime, but I didn't know it would happen in my hometown.

The current drought the southeastern US is experiencing right now has been blamed on global warming. In yesterday's Lynchburg News and Advance, one Michael Tabony has connected the two in question form, in a letter to the editor. The blame of course, is placed squarely on atmospheric CO2, and ultimately, of course, on American-style capitalism. Mr. Tabony does not explain the mechanics of how such a phenomenon could occur.

In elementary school, we were taught that warm air causes evaporation, and we know that the Earth indeed has warmed almost a degree in the last 100 years. No one disputes that this has caused more, not less, evaporation into the atmosphere. Seventy percent of the surface of our planet is comprised of water, so theoretically and in practice, there simply will be more water to fall from the sky. Some areas can experience drought when others experience more precipitation, global air flows will rule here no matter which way the thermometer is headed. It would be far easier to convince me that the temperature rise could cause a flood, than cause a drought.

Carbon Dioxide actually aids plant growth by making it utilize water more efficiently, and thus can be a good thing for our planet and its people, as pointed out by Bjorn Lomborg, and others. The Global Warming hysteria progresses unimpeded; I guess I shouldn't be surprised the local paper would print such counter-intuitive, un-provable balderdash.

WORLD-RENOWNED METEOROLOGIST: GORE'S THEORY "RIDICULOUS"

From the Sydney Morning Herald.

October 14, 2007


ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".

Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.

His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.

"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

At his first appearance since the award was announced in Oslo, Mr Gore said: "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing."

Mr Gore shared the Nobel prize with the United Nations climate panel for their work in helping to galvanise international action against global warming.

But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.

However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.

"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.

During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.

He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.

"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said.

He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.

"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

Dr. Gray's pronouncements were reported on Fox News this morning also. I don't know what this means, except coupled with recent announcements that ice core samples clearly show that carbon dioxide increases FOLLOW temperature increases by some 800 years, it causes me to conclude that the science is definitely not settled on this issue, and it is entirely possible that SOMEBODY has an agenda here, for wanting to perpetrate such a hoax.