The myth of global cooling?
Global warming was a Planetary Emergency. Will this current global cooling merit its own emergency declaration, or is it just a passing thing?
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on…
The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time…it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists…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.
We’ve discussed this cooling and its potential causes previously. If it continues, it is only a matter of time until the global huckster community does a 180 and finds a way to blame this too on human activity, exploiting this new form of “climate change” as an excuse for more taxation and regulation.
February 28th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Back in the ’70s, they already did this once. Back then it was pollution that was blocking the Sun. From the 90s onward, Global Warming was caused by CO2. They can’t very blame the same CO2 for both cooling and warming?
February 28th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
On the other hand, there’s this report:
I am, in fact, a global-warming skeptic, but I’m not a global-warming denier. Ditto for global cooling. Basic research is needed, and development of reversible climate-engineering technology is needed.
Dinocrat writes:
I too have recently noticed the usage of “climate change” in places where “global warming” would once have been written.
Climate change is a legitimate concern for an advanced planetary civilization, but I’m not sure which is the greater danger: climate change itself or its political misuse as a pretext for a power grab.
February 28th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
‘Climate Change’ is NOT a new phrase, nor a new bugaboo. The Newsweek article about ‘Global Cooling’ in 1975 used it. The hysterics have been using ‘Climate Change’ for over 30 years, first regarding ‘Global Cooling’ and now regarding ‘Global Warming’. The more things change…
February 29th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Hubris, thy name is man . . . .
The development of reversible climate-engineering technology?
We should not be basing public policy on science fiction.
Or potentially opening Pandora’s Box — even wider — to unknown calamities of our own making.
Frankly, a few extra blankets or space heaters will be sufficient to keep us warm for centuries and centuries to come.
What we *do* need, however, is as much abundant, efficient energy as possible. Energy is, literally, what drives human civilization.
March 4th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
I expect what we are looking at is the result of the internet focus on the physical locations of the various temperature measuring apparatus. After looking at a number of pictures of where the thermometers were located (in relation to air conditioning coils, pavement, etc) I suspect the weather stations have re-located their measuring equipment to better capture what is actually happening out there.
The drop in temperature simply is the politically induced error into the system that is now being taken out.