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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

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A second Little Ice Age uncovered

The uncertainty of science: New data, compiled from tree rings in Russia, suggests that a previously undetected little ice age occurred in the 6th and 7th centuries, caused by a combination of volcanoes and low sunspot counts.

This cold spell would have preceded the Medieval Warm Period centered around 1000 AD that was followed by the already known Little Ice Age centered around 1600 AD. Note that no fossil fuel regulations or carbon taxes were used in creating this cold period. Note also this description of the consequences of that cold period:

The poor climate may been one of many factors contributing to societal changes of the era, including widespread crop failures and famines in Central Asia that may have triggered migrations from the area to China and Eastern Europe, thus helping spread an episode of plague (depicted in this 15th century painting) that originated there.

Famine and plague, caused by extreme cold, illustrating starkly that cooling is a far greater threat to human survival than climate warming. Meanwhile, the Medieval Warm Period saw a flourishing of American Indian culture in the American southwest.

I have always wondered why our modern climate doom-sayers fear warming so much, when there is no data to justify that fear, and plenty of data to suggest otherwise.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

12 comments

  • Keith

    I don’t think that “modern climate doom-sayers fear warming”.

    They are only on this bandwagon because it appears to be profitable for them – Al Gore, for example.

  • steve mackelprang

    Read the books “Ecoscience” by John P Holdren (Obama’s science adviser) Paul R Ehrlich and Anne H Ehrlich, and “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich and you will see exactly what is going on, after all these are the architects of the movement.

  • Phil Berardelli

    That’s an excellent point, Bob. I have been saying for years that the real danger to humanity, if and when it arrives, will be cooling. Think about the last ice age, the 20th in a cycle of glaciation that has run, roughly, every 100,000 years, including about 90,000 years of ice and 10,000 of interglacial. During that lengthy period, ice sheets built up over the northern hemisphere as far south as New York and Pennsylvania. The sheets were a mile thick in some places. The current Great Lakes are composed of meltwater from that period. The land bridge that developed across the Bering Strait, because sea level had dropped at least 100 meters, allowed Asians to migrate into North and South America and become Native Americans (thus the ancestors of everyone living in the western hemisphere started out as immigrants).

    It’s now been about 11,000 years since the last ice age ended, so we’re due for the next one. What would happen to civilization — all of which has emerged during the current interglacial — if the next ice age begins? The prospect should send shivers up the spines of anyone clear-eyed enough to recognize the consequences.

    We’re in an awful situation. Opportunists, misguided activists and willfully ignorant laypeople aggressively disparage anyone who properly doubts the lack of real science supporting the concept of anthropomorphic global warming. Equally misguided governments attempt to sanction the use of fossil fuels, which will be critical for warmth when the cooling begins. It’s as though rational thought has disappeared from public discourse, while a true catastrophe looms for the human race. God help us.

  • Cotour

    As a technical point related to your statement:

    “(thus the ancestors of everyone living in the western hemisphere started out as immigrants).”

    The word that applies is Migrant:

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/migrant

    People who wondered across the Bering Straights were migrating into a land mass with no borders, country’s, governments etc. Your statement validates the term “Undocumented immigrant” (I do not know if that was your intent) when what is actually meant is “illegal immigrant”.

    Birds, fish, butterflies and animals migrate, modern human beings immigrate from one country to another based in law not right.

  • Edward

    Cotour,
    I read those definitions differently. Migrant is someone/animal that moves from area to area to find work or food. Immigrant is one who moves to stay. The people who crossed the Bearing Straights were not temporary residents, as migrant farm workers or grazing buffalo are, but were finding new living space.

    http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/immigrant
    Full Definition of immigrant
    : one that immigrates: as
    a : a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence
    b : a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown

    On the main point, since there was a little ice age about 700 AD, and a larger little ice age started around 1400 AD, perhaps a pattern is emerging (cycling of the sun?), and we should be expecting another little ice age this century.

    One thing that I have noticed is that the usual temperature pattern for interglacial periods, as determined from the Vostok and EPICA Antarctic ice cores, shows that usually the temperature peaks and then immediately begins to fall, but the current interglacial period has remained relatively steady at the higher temperature. This is probably a good thing for us, as it allowed humanity time to settle down and stop migrating, develop agricultural techniques that helped us to thrive, develop science and engineering as well as their methods, and to better understand the world around us as opposed to believing that we were at the mercy of angry or whimsical gods (it sure can seem that way, at times). Either we were lucky to get such steady temperatures or the gods were kind to us this interglacial period.

    https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png

    As I like to say, we are due for another ice age (glacial period) any millennium, now.

  • Cotour

    Phil inappropriately mixes contexts here IMO and gives political meaning where non applies. The Migration of humans into a an “empty” land mass along with other animals is a different context as opposed to the context that La Raza uses it for political reasons which is to redefine our words and intents, as is the practice of the leftist. The modern interpretation and context of Immigrant, whether legal or illegal is a legal term. The Migration of humans 30,000 years ago as a function of their wonder lust and whether a citizen of one country is allowed legally into the borders of another country has a distinct different meaning / context.

    Migrants 30,000 years ago were not subject to established laws of the land, because there were none. People today who would like to migrate to America, or any other country for that matter are subject to law. Lets not empower people who are attempting to subvert our country and its laws. Unless that it how Phil meant it which I do not agree with or support.

    Full Definition of migrant
    : one that migrates: as
    a : a person who moves regularly in order to find work especially in harvesting crops
    b : an animal that shifts from one habitat to another

    Full Definition of immigrant
    : one that immigrates: as
    a : a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence
    b : a plant or animal that becomes established in an area where it was previously unknown

    Full Definition of immigrate
    im·mi·grat·edim·mi·grat·ing
    intransitive verb
    : to enter and usually become established; especially : to come into a country of which one is not a native for permanent residence

    Examples of migrate
    He migrates from New York to Florida each winter.
    Thousands of workers migrate to this area each summer.
    The whales migrate between their feeding ground in the north and their breeding ground in the Caribbean.
    They followed the migrating herds of buffalo across the plains.

    Full Definition of legal
    1: of or relating to law
    2a : deriving authority from or founded on law : de jure
    b : having a formal status derived from law often without a basis in actual fact : titular
    c : established by law; especially : statutory
    3: conforming to or permitted by law or established rules
    4: recognized or made effective by a court of law as distinguished from a court of equity
    5: of, relating to, or having the characteristics of the profession of law or of one of its members

  • Cotour

    To my point:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/thailand/12149720/Master-forger-arrested-in-Thailand-over-fake-passports-for-migrants-to-Europe.html

    Modern people would like to “Migrate” from one place to another but legal systems prevent or hamper them. Migrating 30,000 years ago into a land mass with no people, no problem, no law.

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “The modern interpretation and context of Immigrant, whether legal or illegal is a legal term.”

    Now we are quibbling about the definitions of words, using something other than the established dictionary definition. This makes discussions difficult as we can never figure out anyone’s point. Plus we get into long quibbles about definitions and forget what we were talking about (what was that, anyway?).

    However, I am in agreement with Robert that cooling is worse than warming. I do not think it a coincidence that the beginning of the Dark Ages correspond with this newly discovered little ice age or that the industrial age corresponds with the end of the latest little ice age. Cooler temperatures make agriculture more difficult, which means more people and acreage are needed to do the farming and fewer people are available to perform the other niceties of civilization. Warmer temperatures allow for an abundance of food, ease of farming, and enough people with enough spare time on their hands to figure out how to mass produce spacecraft and return their launchers to the launch pad for reuse.

  • Cotour

    Edward, you illustrate my point perfectly. The liberal strategy of redefining words or terms such as “illegal immigrant” and recasting it as “undocumented immigrant” softens and makes it palatable, there is a nuance, context is important here. From my point of view if we are talking about time before humans inhabited North America “immigrant” has a different technical meaning for me as compared to when we are talking about a legal term regarding people and the borders of country’s that they live within.

    The extension of that brand of thinking is that there are in fact no borders that separate country’s and people. Do you agree with that?

    While we are on the subject of words, meanings and manipulations lets talk about “Global warming”, Climate change”, Climate chaos” etc. These manipulations are all about misdirection and purposeful confusion the same as this immigrant definition issue. Lets try to understand when words that we in general agree on are used to divide and conquer.

    If you like check out this Burt Rutan video, he is a bit of a climate issue expert of sorts, its his hobby.

    https://youtu.be/jPP7P43wulg

  • Edward

    Cotour wrote: “The liberal strategy of redefining words or terms”

    Yes, but I am the one who would rather use the non-redefined definition.

    Cotour wrote: “Do you agree with that?”

    Without borders, you have no jurisdictions in which different rules or laws apply. What is good for the city slicker is not necessarily good for the dairy farmer, and what is good for the desert dweller is not necessarily good for the one who lives in a flood zone. So, no. I do not agree that there are or should be no borders.

    However, the existence or lack of existence of borders has nothing to do with the definitions that we have been discussing. Including borders and jurisdictions only falls under the spell of those who define misdemeanant immigrants* as only looking for a better life at someone else’s expense as an acceptable behavior.

    As for global warming alarmists, they are attempting to manipulate the rest of us into giving up individual responsibility and political power. Even the alarmists do not believe the hooey they spout; they do not believe that the planet needs saving. Otherwise they would give up powered transportation and all other forms of power use in order to save the planet from their own immediate needs –as well as stop the burning down of the Amazon forest. It does not matter whether they alarm us about warming, cooling (as they did in the 1960s and 1970s), or merely natural climate change, they insist that we cede our individual political power to them so that they can treat us as children who are unable to make adult decisions about our lives. Of course, because they do not believe in the problems they are raising the alarm about, they have no intention of using their acquired power to save the planet, just to gratify themselves with all that new power.

    * My more politically correct and legally accurate phrase for illegal immigrants, because advocates for criminal behavior insist that a person cannot be illegal, despite the fact that the word illegal is an adjective modifying the word “immigrant,” not describing the human who is the immigrant. Some people can be such simpletons, and I consider the advocates for criminal behavior to be among them.

  • Cotour

    The germane point is that you may not want to redefine words, but other people do want to redefine words for a particular purpose and they are convincing lots and lots of other people to agree with them.

    This is what we are dealing with, from Rules for Radicals, there are solid reasons that words are redefined:

    7. Tactics

    Always remember the first rule of power tactics (pps.127-134):

    1. “Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.”

    2. “Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear and retreat…. [and] the collapse of communication.

    3. “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)

    4. “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”

    5. “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.”

    6. “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.”

    7. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time….”

    8. “Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.”

    9. “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.”

    10. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign.”

    11. “If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside… every positive has its negative.”

    12. “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.”

    13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and ‘frozen.’…
    “…any target can always say, ‘Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?’ When your ‘freeze the target,’ you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments…. Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the ‘others’ come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target…’

  • Edward

    Cotour,
    In our discussion with each other, are we using the redefined words or the dictionary definitions of the words?

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