It's Big, Its Bright.... Its the Sun!!!

I promised yesterday to discuss in more detail the natural causes that can drastically change the temperature here on earth. In my previous article I talked a little bit about volcanoes, but today I want to talk about that big ball of incandescent gas known as our sun.

Let me start by making a simple observation. The surface temperature on Venus can reach 900 degrees F. Surface temperatures on the Earth typically top out around 130 degrees F. And Pluto, poor Pluto comes in around -378 F. Like its not bad enough that it recently lost its "planet" status, but its also freaking cold there. So what can we make of this data? Well, for sure you don't want to live on Venus or Pluto. More importantly though, it appears that there is a correlation between the planets distance from the Sun and its surface temperature. The closer you get to the Sun, the hotter it gets; the farther away you go, the colder it gets.

It turns out that there are quite a few scientists these days that are looking into the Sun's role in heating and cooling our planet. Rather than trying to rehash everything that they are saying, I'll let you read it in their own words....

• Solar Activity Diminishes; Researchers Predict Another Ice Age
• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml
• http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/16/120003.shtml
  

This seems to make sense, right? According to scientists there have been four major Ice Ages throughout Earth's history. In order for one ice age to end and another begin, it implies that the Earth warmed by some significant amount. Now let me make two observations. Were the American dinosaurs driving SUVs, or the Chinese cavemen burning millions of tons of coal and other fossil fuels? Not likely. So its pretty clear it wasn't man-made warming and had to be something else that ended those ice ages. And second, its pretty obvious that the Earth's temperature fluctuates over time. Why are we so arrogant these days to think that the temperature of the 20th Century is the ideal temperature? And why is even the slightest bit of warming cause for such alarm? Its not, but I guess when billions of dollars and political power is at stake