Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?

[John Galt]

Boston Globe
JEFF JACOBY

Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?
January 6, 2008
THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.

In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.

Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.

University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.

Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.

Now all of these may be short-lived weather anomalies, mere blips in the path of the global climatic warming that Al Gore and a host of alarmists proclaim the deadliest threat we face. But what if the frigid conditions that have caused so much distress in recent months signal an impending era of global cooling?

"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots!" advises Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and senior scientist at Moscow's Shirshov Institute of Oceanography. "The latest data . . . say that earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012."

Sorokhtin dismisses the conventional global warming theory that greenhouse gases, especially human-emitted carbon dioxide, is causing the earth to grow hotter. Like a number of other scientists, he points to solar activity - sunspots and solar flares, which wax and wane over time - as having the greatest effect on climate.

"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.

Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.

Yet so relentlessly has the alarmist scenario been hyped, and so disdainfully have dissenting views been dismissed, that millions of people assume Gore must be right when he insists: "The debate in the scientific community is over."

But it isn't. Just last month, more than 100 scientists signed a strongly worded open letter pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Because slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development, they warned, "the current UN approach of CO2 reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it."

Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.

[Dardedar]

John Galt needs to start providing links to the articles he posts.

First one is free:

Boston Globe

Now some roast:

Jacoby, the author of the article says:

"the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007,"

DAR
What he didn't quote from the article:

"...there is a 60% chance that the average surface temperature will match or exceed the current record from 1998."

Then he gives a few colder than average examples, a snow storm in New Hampshire and the fact that the "Canadian government" is forcasting a cold winter. Oh my.

He then quotes a non-climatologist (that Sorokhtin buffoon) who opines: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change,..."

Except the sun hasn't been changing it's output lately and we still observe the undeniable fact that: "11 of the last 12 years rank among the warmest since record keeping began in 1850."

It looks like this Galt:




Jacoby then claims: "...more than 100 scientists signed a strongly worded open letter pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it."

That's the latest denier position, admit the warming (because it is rather undeniable) but say we shouldn't do anything about it. Note, this is not as foolish as Galt who denies global warming by claiming it is a hoax.

I looked at the list of "scientists." Would any one be surprised if I pointed out that vast majority of them are not experts on the subject of climatology and are not climatolgists. In fact, when I search the list for the word "climatologist" it comes up only four times. Imagine that. One of those is a hydro-climatologist and another is a paleo-climatologist. So counting those boys that gives a total of four, out of one hundred. Very impressive.

Instead we find:

"Frank Milne, PhD, Professor, Dept. of Economics, Queen's University"

This is a "scientist" one should look to as an expert on the subject of the earth's climate? I don't think so.

Then there are the usual clowns I am well familiar with and have roasted repeatedly on this forum, Timothy Patterson, Tim Ball, Ian Plimer, Ross McKitrick (economist), Ian D. Clark, Fred Singer etc.

So we know you can cut and paste unlinked junk Mr. Galt, but can you think? Can you defend any of the claims in the material you put up?

Waiting...

Darrel.

[Dardedar]

Britain's weather office: 2008 likely to be among 10 hottest years since 1850

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER Associated Press Writer
Friday, January 4, 2008

LONDON (AP) — This year is forecast to be among the top 10 hottest years on record, Britain's weather office said Thursday, despite a strong cooling effect predicted from the tropical weather phenomenon known as La Nina.

The global surface temperature in 2008 will rise 0.67 degrees above what climate scientists call the long-term average of 57.2 degrees, the Met Office said. The average is derived by calculating the mean of surface temperatures registered globally between 1961 and 1990.

That would be enough to have it rank among the hottest years on record, although the Met Office said would be unlikely to beat the current warmest year of 1998, which was 0.94 degrees above the long-term average.

The Met Office said a powerful La Nina, the name given to the upwelling of large areas of cold water in the tropical Pacific Ocean, would probably keep 2008's temperature from breaking the global record. But it said the underlying trend of higher and higher temperatures, which scientists say indicates global warming, was likely to continue.

"Phenomena such as El Nino and La Nina have a significant influence on global surface temperature and the current strong La Nina will act to limit temperatures in 2008," said Chris Folland, a climate scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Center in Exeter, southwest England. "Sharply renewed warming is likely once La Nina declines."

The Met Office said the world's hottest years on record were 1995, 1997, 1998, and every year since 2000. Its global temperature records stretch back to 1850.

LINK

DAR
Bold mine.