Expert: Tom Whiting - 5/10/2008

Question
Identify some sources for finding the data necessary to calculate the quantities that you think are benificial to the problelm solving strategy.  Average distance from the surface of the earth.  The average distance from the center of the earth. Surface area of sphere generated.  This pertains to the ozone layer and the greenhouse gases.d

Answer
Hi Dolores,
Sorry to ruin your liberal/strictly political...for getting lots of taxpayer funding only..."party", but it's the reverse the past year; global cooling, at the fastest rate ever seen, 0.7 degrees C decrease in global temperatures!! See
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23583376-7583,00.html

The scariest picture on the internet is NO sunspots, at
http://www.spaceweather.com

Worst winter in 100 years in China, Snow for the first time ever
in Baghdad and Athens; record snowfall in May in South Dakota and
the Black Hills?

Can you say "Maunder Minimum" and subsequent European "Little
Ice Age" from 1645-1715 AD., with nearly zero sunspots?  You'd better
pray the next solar sunspot cycle starts real soon, or you'd better invest in a pair of mukluks and full parka, ala Eskimoes.
Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA
USA

FOLLOW UP:
Oh, and by the way, there is no 'Ozone Layer'...ozone molecules O3,
form and dissipate continuously throughout the stratosphere.  They
don't all get together one day, and say, "Hey, let's all meet
tomorrow at 65,000 feet and form a thin layer"!  ;-)
So it's not....a "layer".

And if you take a Historical Geology 101 course, you'll find that back in the Triassic and Jurassic periods, this planet had an average
global temperature of 80 degrees F (compared to our 59 today)...vegetation from pole to pole, (read that...lots of food), the oxygen content was 35%, and the carbon dioxide content ranged from 2-5%!  2-5%, not the puny 0.03% of today!  (And we're worried that it might go to 0.04% by 2050?) That's...insane.  
And this planet did just fine like that, for some 50 million years, thank you.  
Was the Florida peninsula a shallow sea?  Of course, nearly the entire state is underlain with Oolitic limestone (read that...sea shells) because FLA has spent 90% of this planet's 4.6 Billion year old history, underwater.  Did species like the Polar Bear become extinct? Sure; Hey it's adapt, or die...it's been that way for the last 3 billion years for all lifeforms on this planet.  Ask any trilobite or T-Rex you see walking around.  Are Ice Ages hard on life?  Sure, ask any Wooly Mammoth, Sabre-toothed Cat, or Neanderthal you see walking around.  This planet is just
naturally attempting to give us some "insurance distance" from the next Ice age, and that is all.
So should we spent some 300 quadrillion dollars over the next 50 years counteracting so-called... "Global Warming"?  That borders on....insanity. Clear Skies,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA USA

FOLLOW UP:
Just released by the National Climatic Center...the United States
for April 2008....coldest month of April in 114 Years!! And I don't
expect May is going to be much warmer as we've still got snow falling
in parts of the Western states. And we're still getting freeze warnings in Northern PA...in mid-May!
Tom