From Volume 38, Issue 38 of EIR Online, Published September 30, 2011

Ibero-American News Digest

No Man-Made Climate Change, Argentine Scientists Show

Sept. 19 (EIRNS)—Directly taking on the genocidal lunatics of the environmentalist movement, who say human beings and their carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming, a group of Argentine scientists is asserting that it is the Sun—not man—that is responsible for climate change, and that this has been the case for tens of thousands of years.

Scientists from the Argentine Oceanographic Institute (IADO) and the Geological Institute of the South (Ingeosur) collected data from an estuary in the city of Bahiá Blanca, in the province of Buenos Aires, at a depth of 15 meters, which they say contradict several studies and forecasts made by radical environmentalist groups. "We intended to prove a theory that opposes several [environmentalist] dogmas," says Dr. Eduardo Gómez, IADO's deputy director.

The studies, performed over two decades, show that climate change isn't a simple anomaly, but rather has always existed, as verified in geological records corresponding to the last 10,000 years. The data show that during that period, there have been oscillations in average sea level caused by alternating periods of freezing and melting, due to global climate change, and that these variations are uncontrollable.

Unlike radical environmentalists who propose killing people as a means of controlling global warming, Dr. Gómez explained that his studies imply that changes in human activity cannot stop global warming, which will reach its maximum point in 600 years. "It's clear to us that at least over the past 10,000 years, the Sun determined—and determines—global temperatures on Earth; climate change obeys natural cycles, and the evidence of same is beneath the sea where variations in sea level produced by fluctuation in solar activity, can be found. When the sea level dropped, it was cold, and when it rose, it was hot."

The Argentine scientists used carbon-14 dating to determine the age of sedimentary deposits and also conducted paleo-environmental studies of microfossils. These analyses indicated the existence of many different sea levels, well below today's level, spaced out over time. "These studies show that global temperature changes always existed, including during historical eras: there are clear indications that approximately 1,000 years ago, the Vikings colonized Greenland during a period of heat, when there was less ice on the surface of the Earth than today," Gomez said.

"Man's action on the planet is important," Gomez said. "But in this case, it's not a determining factor for changing the climate on a planetary scale, because this doesn't depend on human activity, but rather on the Sun."

Nuclear Technology Aids Guatemalan Agriculture

Sept. 26 (EIRNS)—The United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), together with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is using a nuclear application known as sterile insect technology to assist Guatemala in ridding its crucial northern agricultural region of the Mediterranean fruit fly, as well as native fruit flies.

Both varieties of fruit flies have wreaked havoc in this region over the past several years, destroying such key export products as tomatoes, bell peppers, and papayas.

According to Jesús Reyes Flores, an entomologist at the FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, sterile insect technology consists of "rearing massive quantities of the same pest, sterilizing it by irradiation through a simple radiation device that otherwise causes no harm to the insect. The male insects are fed and later systematically freed in the fields, where they then mate with the pest insects present in the field, producing no progeny so that after the continuous release over several years, the pest disappears."

The successful application of this technology in the region bordering Mexico has allowed Guatemala to quadruple sales of tomatoes in 2010, to $10 million, up from $2.5 million in 2007. Export income from bell peppers almost tripled to $3.2 million in 2010, while papaya sales doubled, also to $3.2 million for 2010.

The IAEA also reported that pest control and canning and packing jobs increased in this Central American country, once the fruit fly population was eradicated.

SAC-D/Aquarius Satellite Fully Operational

Sept. 26 (EIRNS)—The SAC-D/Aquarius satellite, a joint project of NASA and Argentina's space agency CONAE, is now fully operational and has begun to measure the salinity of the Earth's oceans from its perch in near-polar orbit.

The satellite was launched June 10 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. NASA's Aquarius instrument's space observations of the oceans' salinity, at the surface, is a key variable in satellite studies of Earth. Variations in salinity influence the oceans' deep circulation, outline the path freshwater takes around the Earth, and help drive Earth's climate.

CONAE reports that in addition to the Aquarius instrument, the Argentine-Canadian NIRST infrared camera is functioning properly, as is the Italian ROSA instrument, and several others contributed by the French and Brazilian space agencies.

Gary Lagerloef, of the Seattle-based Earth & Space Research, noted that with all aspects of the SAC-D/Aquarius satellite fully operational, "this marks the end of the long odyssey to design, build and launch this mission, and the start of a new journey of scientific exploration."

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