Geophysicist David Denning wrote an article for the Washington Times entitled a "Year of Global Cooling". Anthony Watts of copied the article here adding photos and links
Keeping in mind that the weather in one year does not constitute a trend here are some highlights:
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 north-eastern 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.
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exreme 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.
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The New Statesman, no less, this week publishes a piece by sensible David Whitehouse which says flatly:… The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.
Going much further:
In the Russia Information Agency "Novosti" “Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute” predicts A Cold Spell Soon to Replace Global Warming
Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reason—solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.
Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer [I pulled the quote from the article and added it 7/4/2008.]
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I read a very negative comment in a blog that there was no “General Circulation Model” for the Atmosphere that had been independently validated. The GCM is what one would plug the data into to produce worldwide climate estimates. So I did some investigating. Here s a good history of GCM’s. Note the explanation for the last few years is a lot less detailed than the earlier years. Certainly the original statement I read is much over stated but still it seems the state of the GCM is less than I would have expected to support enforcing mandatory policies.
Also Freeman Dyson a dean of the scientific community is less than impressed
My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
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However in 2007 there has been a major dump of hot air into the atmosphere, Al Gore's documentary film: “An Inconvenient Truth”
My posts on it are at Warmmonger Considered for Peace Prize. and A Very Inconvient Court Ruling
. . . [E]rror four is substantive. A central claim to (at least the popular versions) Global Warming theory is that CO2 rises precede and cause temperature rises, thus current man made rises in CO2 levels will warm the earth to the point it is uninhabital.
"‘Error': Direct coincidence between rise in CO2 in the atmosphere and in temperature, by reference to two graphs.
Error 4. In scenes 8 and 9, Mr Gore shows two graphs relating to a period of 650,000 years, one showing rise in CO2 and one showing rise in temperature, and asserts (by ridiculing the opposite view) that they show an exact fit. Although there is general scientific agreement that there is a connection, the two graphs do not establish what Mr Gore asserts.
There are differences between methods used to produce the data, but general scientific agreement is that temperatures rise 1500 to 2000 years before the rise in CO2. "
When I took research methodology the instructor was quite insistent that
If ‘A’ comes before ‘B’
Then either
‘A’ causes ‘B’ or
Both are caused by a third factor or
There is no cause and effect relation between them
But never does 'B' cause 'A.'
More on Gore from High School Student Kristin Byrnes.
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Antohnoy Watts of Watts Up With That is conducting an audit US Surface weather stations that provide information to the USHCN (U.S. Historical Climatology Network) to see if they are providing accurate data. He is recording the results at Surface Stations.org.
He summarized the results here and provides a nice graphic.
[Update 11/23/2009:
See the latest update 5/31/09 (858 of 1221 (78%) complete. 10% in CRN ratings 1and 2. ]
CRN3, CRN4, and CRN5 all have a greater margin of error that what is proposed as the amount of man made Global warming in the last century. That is 87% of the stations surved so far. Of course that is not a random sample and may change as other stations are surveyed. Most of the stations that did not meet standards had problems that cause overreporting of temperature.
An example is the station at Detroit Lakes MN. This is the station whose unusual data led to the discovery of “Y2K” error (now corrected) in the way data was processed. It is located near an air conditioner that dischares hot air close enough to the station to effect readings.
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So Hank, what do you know about Global warming?
Does Climate change? Of Course. It has for millennia, usually in regular cycles.
Is the Climate getting warmer? It has been since the end of the mini ice age in the middle of the Nineteenth Century.
How much warming is there? On the high side of the regular cycle.
Are we going to go into a cooling cycle in the near future? I do not know, it is a distinct possibility.
Is there going to be additional warming? I do not know.
Is man made Global Warming a threat?
I do not know, but the
Rush to
is not justified on the evidence.
My Environment posts
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