"Michael Harper"  wrote in message 
news:RaudnV9fwbJgPV7YnZ2dnUVZ_rylnZ2d{at}comcast.com...
> Okay, for those who haven't read it, I suggest you go out and hunt up a 
> copy
> of Fallen Angels by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn. Try to
> ignore the sound of grinding axes and pay attention to the actual 
> scientific
> aspects of the book.
>
> The premise is simple. The environmentalists win, the air is cleaned up, 
> and
> because the sun is in a Maunder Minimum cycle, putting out less heat than
> normal, we are now in the middle of an ice age. Sheet glaciers are down 
> into
> the northern tier of states, and the government won't let anybody do
> anything to stop it.
>
> In the middle of this, you have two astronauts from the orbital habitats
> Peace and Freedom who crash in Wisconsin. They're rescued by science 
> fiction
> fans who take them to Edwards AFB and the last functional rocket. With the
> government just a step or two behind them.
>
> Parts of this are accurate. The sun does go into cycles, fusion stops, the
> mass contracts, fusion starts, the mass expands. When solar fusion stops, 
> so
> does neutrino emission. When it restarts, we have neutrinos.
>
> Punching a hole in the ozone layer has more to do with chlorofluorocarbons
> than SSRBs and rocket fuel.
>
> To the folks who rant about global warming, yes, it's a bad thing. But we
> caused it, and it's not something we can clean up in a week. We have to do
> something, but I can tell you that the sea levels will rise more than a
> little bit before we get global warming under control. Better start 
> building
> levees.
>
Analog ran a good science fact article recently on this topic. For every 
scientist that states that we're creating global warming, there is another 
who claims that it's a natural process, and that we're cycling just like the 
Earth would normally. After all, we have more visible land right now than, 
with one exception, just about every other time in the history of the 
planet. We've had long periods with no ice caps at all in the past. There is 
also a theory that the decline of wood fires as heating methods has reduced 
the amount of fine particulate matter in the atmosphere, resulting in less 
of a pseudo-nuclear winter situation, which also accounts for more heat 
overall.

With a winter here in Texas that is far colder than any I've seen in the 
last ten years, I'm having a hard time right now putting much stock in the 
whole global warming thing, but that's probably just situational.
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32