The article printed in the October 17, 2014 Peninsula News Review by Tom Fletcher on particulate matter in the Earth’s atmosphere, while accurate to some extent, has completely missed some very important points.
Although there has been an “apparent slowing” of global warming attributable to our continued use of fossil fuel use and presumably too from some natural contributions such as volcanic eruptions overall the slowing, indeed even a complete lack of warming, must be from an altogether different cause.
There has according to a number of climatologists been no warming of our planet for more than 15 years. Careful analysis of reliable data has arrived at this conclusion. There are also a number of other important indicators to noted, including arctic sea ice extent, that is now showing definite signs of recovering from very low geographical amounts.
The past few winters are again showing increased arctic sea ice coverage. What must be kept in mind, is that much of the concern was based upon a monitoring program set up since the mid to late 1970s. During most all of this time arctic sea ice coverage has been quite low.
However, not that long ago in the late 1920s and early 1930s, similar low ice cover was also documented. And too, much further back in time, during an interval called the Medieval Warm Period (1200 - 1400 A.D. approximately), ice extent was considerably less than the two more recent intervals noted above.
The implications are obvious, that both during the 1920s to 1930s, and even more so during the Medieval Warm Period, man had little or no affect upon the climate during and a number of somewhat dependent factors such as arctic sea ice extent. And still arctic sea ice reached very low levels. This raises the question, what could have been responsible. The answer, is our sun.
Quite small variation in solar output and receipt here on Earth, leads to a chain of other factors that can and do cause significant climate changes on Earth.
These important aspects are largely being ignored by the still majority of scientists, on a subject that should still be debated vigorously.
Rod Chilton, Saanichton