Global Cooling

[kfrost06]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/...NTARY/10575140

Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.

Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.

South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.

Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.

Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared. In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.

In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.

Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952. The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.

Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri are just emerging from a destructive ice storm that left at least 36 people dead and a million without electric power. People worldwide are being reminded of what used to be common sense: Cold temperatures are inimical to human welfare and warm weather is beneficial. Left in the dark and cold, Oklahomans rushed out to buy electric generators powered by gasoline, not solar cells. No one seemed particularly concerned about the welfare of polar bears, penguins or walruses. Fossil fuels don't seem so awful when you're in the cold and dark.

If you think any of the preceding facts can falsify global warming, you're hopelessly naive. Nothing creates cognitive dissonance in the mind of a true believer. In 2005, a Canadian Greenpeace representative explained “global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter.” In other words, all weather variations are evidence for global warming. I can't make this stuff up.

Global warming has long since passed from scientific hypothesis to the realm of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo

[Kärnfysikern]

Europe is unusualy warm and america unusualy cold this winter. Isnt it because of La nina?

Calling AGW pseudo science is b.s

[kfrost06]

Europe is unusualy warm and america unusualy cold this winter. Isnt it because of La nina?

Calling AGW pseudo science is b.s

let me confuse you with the facts...

Global warming sceptics buoyed by record cold

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...6/eaice126.xml

Global warming sceptics are pointing to recent record cold temperatures in parts of North America and Asia and the return of Arctic Sea ice to suggest fears about climate change may be overblown.

According to the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the average temperature of the global land surface in January 2008 was below the 20th century mean (-0.02°F/-0.01°C) for the first time since 1982.

Although some areas of the Northern Hemisphere experienced record cold, other areas experienced recorded above average temperatures
Temperatures were also colder than average across large swathes of central Asia, the Middle East, the western US, western Alaska and southeastern China.

The NCDC reported that the cold conditions were associated with "the largest January snow cover extent on record for the Eurasian continent and for the Northern Hemisphere".

In some parts of China and central Asia, snow fell for the first time in living memory, the NCDC noted.

"For the contiguous United States, the average temperature was 30.5°F (-0.83°C) for January, which was 0.3°F (0.2°C) below the 20th century mean and the 49th coolest January on record, based on preliminary data".

advertisement
Much of North America was also hit by the heaviest snowfall since the 1960s.

Meanwhile, the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre found the January 2008 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, while below the 1979-2000 mean, was greater than the previous four years.

And the January 2008 Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent was significantly above the 1979-2000 mean, ranking as the largest sea ice extent in January over the 30-year historical period.

Generally there were cooler-than-average conditions in the southern oceans and in Niño regions, where the average temperature decreased markedly in January.

Canada's National Post reported that there were so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec that the property market has suffered because buyers did not want to go out. And in the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in 1950.

Asked about the Arctic ice cover, Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, told the Post the Arctic winter had been so severe, the ice has not only recovered but was actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than the same time last year.

"OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades," writes Lorne Gunter in the National Post.

"But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature."

He also quotes Kenneth Tapping, of Canada's National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun and is convinced the Earth is destined for a long period of severely cold weather if solar activity does not pick up soon.

"The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850," Gunter writes.

"It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too."

Other figures from the NCDC, however, show that during January 2008, Europe, northern Asia and most of Australia experienced above average temperatures. According to the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM), temperatures were 3-4°C (5-7°F) above average across large areas of Western and Central Australia and as a whole, the country had its warmest January on record.

Sea surface temperatures were also warmer than average in the Atlantic, Indian, and the northwestern Pacific oceans.

[kfrost06]

Do you think the la nina is causing return of Arctic Sea ice?

[kfrost06]

Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, claimed in 2004, global warming poses "a far greater threat to the world than international terrorism", warning that by the end of this century the only habitable continent left will be Antarctica.

So should we start buying real estate in the Artic?

Canada's National Post reported that there were so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec that the property market has suffered because buyers did not want to go out. And in the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in 1950.

[kfrost06]

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

For global wordwide temperature chart:
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature...ticle10866.htm

[Kärnfysikern]

Well I have gone through most of the arguments on both sides. Se this thread
http://forums.steroid.com/showthread.php?t=324810

I am no atmospheric scientists so I dont have any answere for you. But you dont "debunk" global warming by pointing towards one extrem year just like you cant say its proof of global warming of one year happens to be absurdly hot. If we now during the following 10 years se a trend of the ice sheet growing then that would be proof against AGW. But the trend so far is warming atmosphere and shrinking ice sheet.

The one thing that makes me "belive" in the warnings is that the overwhelming ammount of publications in research journals on atmospheric science ect backs up AGW. As a layman in that field I have to respect what the majority of scientists working on the issue state. Now you can pull some link to a list of x number of scientists belives this and that or a bunch of newsarticles about some scientist that thinks its all a conspiracy or whatever, but at the end of the day is the published research that counts and nothing else. If the sceptics are so sure it should be a piece of cake to show. Listenting to the news on AGW is like listening to the news on nuclear energy. 99% bullshit and 1% missconceptions. Would you get realiable physics news from the newspapers?

You can go to www.sciencedirect.com and search for global warming and se how many hits that dispute the proposed mechanisms of AGW.

I can give you this, there are plenty of question marks left as I wrote in the thread I linked to. Climate science is a evolving and quite young field of science and lots of new things will be found. So I think the hype is a bit extreme and we should wait for more data before considering carbon taxes ect. I wouldnt be suprised if the climate models has to be modified alot to take into account cloud formation and possibly some as of yet unknown feedback mechanism that boosts the effect of solar activity. But to claim that AGW is pseudo science is complete bullshit.

[Kärnfysikern]

The most interesting thing is that IF the sun has a larger impact than the climate models predict then we will se a cooling over the coming 10 years. So nature will convincingly show what is right and wrong. Thats why I want to wait before any measure to combat AGW is taken. The sun has been unusualy active during a very long period but its going to drop now.

[AaronJM1984]

Global warming was created so the treehuggers have something to discuss!!
j/k lol

[SMCengineer]

This should be interesting to watch: http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/newyork08.cfm. I think Glenn Beck will be covering it, but he's most likely the only one who will.

[shifty_git]

Europe is unusualy warm and america unusualy cold this winter. Isnt it because of La nina?

Calling AGW pseudo science is b.s

Do you think the la nina is causing return of Arctic Sea ice?

Totally agree La nina has A LOT to do with it.. The science behind the plot of 'The day after tomorrow' is spot on... a few deg difference will effect sea current, evaporation, clouds and airstreams.. all resulting in weather patterns we are not used 2, some of them severe.

Its been a bery random winter here in the uk.. some nights warm enought to go out in a shirt, the next freeing cold and windy.. seasons mean nothing anymore.