As developing nations move closer and closer to implementing limits on greenhouse gas emissions in order to (PICK ONE: (1) avoid global meltdown; or (2) permit the Environmental Defense Fund et al. to dictate global economic policy), the scientific evidence moves farther and farther away from justifying such limits. (Not that it was ever real close to start with!)
Although all agree that the earth has been warming for at least the last 100 years or more, there is dispute as to what is causing this warming. The global warming alarmists blame it on greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Others raise the possibility, if not likelihood, of natural variability in climate. After all, most of this century's warming occurred before the vast majority of greenhouse gases were emitted. (An effect-and-cause relationship?)
Now, Lloyd Keigwin, a researcher from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has found evidence that the earth is in a natural warming trend.
Keigwin concluded that although sea surface temperature (SST) in the northern Saragasso Sea is now about 1 degree centigrade warmer than 400 years ago during the Little Ice Age, it is about 1 degree cooler than about 1,000 years ago during the Medieval Warm Period. Keigwin's conclusions are based on his study of sediment accumulation in the Saragasso Sea.
In Keigwin's own words
at least some of the warming since the Little Ice Age appears to be part of a natural oscillation.
Now what could have warmed the earth so much during the time of William the Conqueror, the Norman who defeated the English in 1066 at the Battle of Hastings?
Eleventh century society burned no gasoline. There were no electric power plants to burn coal. No chemical plants emitted volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Airplanes, reputed to emit as much of the greenhouse gases as the eighth most polluting nation, were still 900 years away from being invented.
Could 11th centuty warming simply have been due to — gulp! — natural climate variation? If so, then what about 20th century warming?
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