I am an agnostic re the theory exposed in this thread ― i.e., that we are at the beginning of a phase of global cooling that is succeeding the recent period of global warming; however, it is something to keep in mind as the next five years come and go.

From Watts Up With That?


Contrary to Archibald's thesis (I haven't yet read the book, but on the basis of publicity about it), I do not think the sun alone is necessarily the primary cause of global warming; furthermore, neither do I think carbon dioxide is.

I think that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and multiple related phenomena (as explained by Roy Spencer in The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists) all play major roles ― more so than CO2 ― in global warming and climate change.

Among other reasons, the fact that climate has always changed, with periodic highs and lows in temperature, prior to the modern era, makes me inclined to doubt that human activity has been a sufficient contributor to global warming and climate change to warrant the current political war against relatively inexpensive carbon-based fuel ― the reduction of which will be economically catastrophic for poor people the world over, on the one hand, and insufficient to significantly influence the natural variations of climate, on the other hand.

C02, as essential to life as is oxygen, is a boon rather a bane to mankind. That the U.S. Supreme Court could have been persuaded to declare CO2 ― without which there would be no vegetation on earth, and which is benignly exhaled by all animal (including human) life ― a pollutant to be regulated by the EPA is evidence of a loss of sanity at the highest levels of leadership in the current era, and evidence of an inclination to accept, aid, and warrant totalitarian control all human activity.