Predictions are risky ventures; rational human beings avoid making them. More often than not they tend to come back and bite you.
With that admonition in mind, and with trembling hands on the keyboard, I will throw caution to the winds and while admittedly looking through the glass darkly, tell you what I think will happen in 2008.
2008 will be the year when Al Gore and his forecasts of an approaching inferno will be thoroughly discredited, not by the constantly growing legion of global warming skeptics, but by none other than Mother Nature herself.
The lady has already set the stage here in the waning days of 2007 by plunging much of the Northern Hemisphere into the deep freezer. Blizzards, ice storms, and near hurricane force winds have swept across much of the world, snowfalls reaching record depths, and all of this days before winter was officially ushered in. I think we can accept these omens as portents of what is to come in the months ahead.
Remember, the Gorenator and his co-conspirators have been assuring us that the polar regions, where the frigid winds that roar southward are born, are in the process of heating up. They tell us that the ice and snow packs are rapidly melting, glaziers are retreating, and that their computer models are proving that global warming is real and a deadly threat to all mankind.
As I have written numerous times, warmed up polar regions simply can't produce the record low temperatures and blinding blizzards we have experienced in recent years. If Mr. Gore is correct we should be sunning ourselves in balmy winter breezes, not digging out from under 14 feet of snow as parts of New York experienced last year in a single snow storm.
In case you haven't noticed, a small but growing number of climate experts have been predicting global cooling instead of toeing the financially rewarding global warming line. To back up their contention they point to scientifically demonstrated facts such as changes in solar behaviors, rather than computer models.
For a long time I have been insisting that if the past is prologue, the world is heading into a new ice age. Keep in mind that over the past millions of years, there have been a regular series of ice ages — about 90,000 years of glaciation followed by between 10,000 and 12,000 years of interglacial climates, such as the one we've been enjoying.
It's been about 12,000 years since the last ice age ended. If Mother Nature sticks to the schedule she adhered to for millions of years, the ice man indeed cometh.
Mr. Gore assures us that the increase of CO2 levels is causing the planet to heat up, when the fact is that every time those levels have risen above 300 ppm an ice age has been ushered in. Every time! That appears to be an immutable law of nature; has Al Gore managed to repeal it? Those levels have now soared past 400 ppm and are still rising.
In my 1997 11-part series published on Wednesday on the Web (http://pvbr.com — check it out) I laid out the case for a new ice age aborning. Among the facts cited in that series of reports were the sort of events that preceded the onset of ice ages — in a word incredible violence — monster storms, destructive tectonic events such as huge volcanic eruptions, and all sorts of climatic disasters.
I think we're just about there and that this year the violence will be revved up substantially.
I hope I'm wrong, but I think we're about to endure the very worst winter in memory. Last year's 14 foot snowfall may be dwarfed this year by as much as 20 feet. Why? Well those record rainfalls we saw last summer, over 20 inches of rain in one storm in a number of places, give adequate warning of what can happen in wintertime when precipitation falls as snow — 20 inches of rain equals 20 feet of snow.
Capice?
That's why I think that Al Gore will be trading in his Nobel Peace prize for a dunce cap this year.
Phil Brennan is a veteran journalist and World War II Marine who writes for Newsmax.com. He is editor and publisher of Wednesday on the Web (http://www..pvbr.com) and was Washington columnist for National Review magazine in the 1960s. He also served as a staff aide for the House Republican Policy Committee and helped handle the Washington public relations operation for the Alaska Statehood Committee which won statehood for Alaska. He is also a trustee of the Lincoln Heritage Institute and a member of the Association For Intelligence Officers.
He can be reached at pvb@pvbr.com.
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