We're in the most significant period of global cooling since 1950...

[run_to_win]

Sorry to start yet another thread on this but the most recent global warming thread was locked. 

Where's global warming?
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | March 8, 2009

SUPPOSE the climate landscape in recent weeks looked something like this:

Half the country was experiencing its mildest winter in years, with no sign of snow in many Northern states. Most of the Great Lakes were ice-free. Not a single Canadian province had had a white Christmas. There was a new study discussing a mysterious surge in global temperatures - a warming trend more intense than computer models had predicted. Other scientists admitted that, because of a bug in satellite sensors, they had been vastly overestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice.

If all that were happening on the climate-change front, do you think you'd be hearing about it on the news? Seeing it on Page 1 of your daily paper? Would politicians be exclaiming that global warming was even more of a crisis than they'd thought? Would environmentalists be skewering global-warming "deniers" for clinging to their skepticism despite the growing case against it?

No doubt.

But it isn't such hints of a planetary warming trend that have been piling up in profusion lately. Just the opposite.

The United States has shivered through an unusually severe winter, with snow falling in such unlikely destinations as New Orleans, Las Vegas, Alabama, and Georgia. On Dec. 25, every Canadian province woke up to a white Christmas, something that hadn't happened in 37 years. Earlier this year, Europe was gripped by such a killing cold wave that trains were shut down in the French Riviera and chimpanzees in the Rome Zoo had to be plied with hot tea. Last week, satellite data showed three of the Great Lakes - Erie, Superior, and Huron - almost completely frozen over. In Washington, D.C., what was supposed to be a massive rally against global warming was upstaged by the heaviest snowfall of the season, which paralyzed the capital.

Meanwhile, the National Snow and Ice Data Center has acknowledged that due to a satellite sensor malfunction, it had been underestimating the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles - an area the size of Spain. In a new study, University of Wisconsin researchers Kyle Swanson and Anastasios Tsonis conclude that global warming could be going into a decades-long remission. The current global cooling "is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Swanson told Discovery News. Yes, global cooling: 2008 was the coolest year of the past decade - global temperatures have not exceeded the record high measured in 1998, notwithstanding the carbon-dioxide that human beings continue to pump into the atmosphere.

None of this proves conclusively that a period of planetary cooling is irrevocably underway, or that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are not the main driver of global temperatures, or that concerns about a hotter world are overblown. Individual weather episodes, it always bears repeating, are not the same as broad climate trends.

But considering how much attention would have been lavished on a comparable run of hot weather or on a warming trend that was plainly accelerating, shouldn't the recent cold phenomena and the absence of any global warming during the past 10 years be getting a little more notice? Isn't it possible that the most apocalyptic voices of global-warming alarmism might not be the only ones worth listening to?

There is no shame in conceding that science still has a long way to go before it fully understands the immense complexity of the Earth's ever-changing climate(s). It would be shameful not to concede it. The climate models on which so much global-warming alarmism rests "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in," says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist. "The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand."

But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed-minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those aren't the tools we need.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/08/wheres_global_warming/

I still don't have a dog in this fight. 

Some recent data is not supporting the global warming theory.  Temperatures have not exceeded the records set in 1998.  2008 was the coolest year in the past decade. 

Can global warming experience a 10 year plateau or will we see a return of the "coming ice age" theories from the 1970s?

[fyo]

The next 10 years are, apparently, going to be cool as well, so you'll have a decade to keep repeating this stuff.

We're in a cooling cycle right now.

One other point: I find it slightly annoying that they don't quote a source for the "haven't seen warmer temperatures than 1998" claim. All the sources I've seen have 2004 as the warmest (although, to be fair, 1998 was a HUGE spike... 1999 and 2000 were quite cold and it wasn't until 2002 that the 1998 level was reached again).

One final point: I'm tired of all the news articles citing "unusually severe winter" and other such "folksy" stuff. We're talking about an increase in average global temperatures of about 2 FAHRENHEIT over the past 100 years! This isn't something you can observe by looking out your window - at least not initially. It's incredibly annoying when the media try to dumb things down by making these completely irrelevant "connections" (and they do it both ways - cooler or warmer). It's just plain wrong and people are smart enough to realize it's wrong and that realization causes them to believe that the whole global warming claim is wrong. Right or wrong, the two things are NOT connected.

[jtex316]

Cooling my ass - it was hot as shit outside today.

[YoFuggedaboutit]

Cooling my ass - it was hot as shit outside today.

It dropped into the 20's this past winter here in Orlando, Jtex... not once but SEVERAL TIMES. 

I've never seen it get this cool here before... or when I lived in GA for that matter.  Weather that cold can seriously damage the citrus crop that is so vital to the state's revenue

[Frimp]

Hot in South Florida? OMG!!!

[Spider-Dan]

Yes, 2008 was the coolest year of the last decade.  It was also the ninth hottest year recorded since 1880.  Break out your parkas and kerosene heaters!

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.txt

NASA must be in on this global warming scam, because their data says that the nine hottest years on record have all occurred since 1998.

P.S. The topic is false.  We had a 0.18 degree drop from 2007-2008; 1973-1974, 1981-1982, 1983-1984, 1991-1992, and 1998-1999 were all bigger drops.

[Dphins4me]

  The point that has yet to be proven IMO.  Is global warming man made or simply another cycle the earth has went through many times?

[Spider-Dan]

Any person that denies that the earth is actually getting warmer is an outright nut; they belong in the same box as the people who think that the Grand Canyon was made in a couple thousand years.  Look at the chart I posted.

The only real debate is whether or not the warming is natural, or man-made.

[MaineDolFan]

All I want to know, as I fire up my snowblower for the 4th time in the past 5 days, is where are my palm trees?

Global warming my ass.  The world may be getting hotter but that seems to be skipping Maine.

I want some palm trees.

[Fau Teixeira]

Any person that denies that the earth is actually getting warmer is an outright nut; they belong in the same box as the people who think that the Grand Canyon was made in a couple thousand years.  Look at the chart I posted.

The only real debate is whether or not the warming is natural, or man-made.

anyone who blindly trusts what information they're being fed about a potential trillion dollar industry is the actual nut i think

here's a bunch more "nut jobs" who happen to have PhDs all agreeing with "nutty" studies and facts and such

http://www.petitionproject.org/

[bsmooth]

It is snowing in western wash right now.

[Fau Teixeira]

you know i think in the larger sense of how the media and popular opinion works ..facts and studies and actual application of scientific principles is pretty meaningless .. i think in the end it boils down to this ..

if people feel like they're hotter than usual .. then they'll support a global warming theory .. no matter how wong it is .. and the politicians will ride the public sentiment and there you have flawed policies meant to pander to public opinion and TV shows or movies meant to pander to the public to get ratings and sell tickets. If people feel like it's getting cooler .. then there's not a damn thing the algores of the world can do to make people give a rats ass.

i think that's how we're gonna see it play out.

[Phishfan]

anyone who blindly trusts what information they're being fed about a potential trillion dollar industry is the actual nut i think

here's a bunch more "nut jobs" who happen to have PhDs all agreeing with "nutty" studies and facts and such

http://www.petitionproject.org/

This has nothing to do with Dan's statement. These people do not refute the warming of the Earth according to what I see in the link. They refute the manmade aspect of it which he admits is up for debate.

[Fau Teixeira]

This has nothing to do with Dan's statement. These people do not refute the warming of the Earth according to what I see in the link. They refute the manmade aspect of it which he admits is up for debate.

well in that case ..  .. oops dan

but the link is still valid information

[Spider-Dan]

anyone who blindly trusts what information they're being fed about a potential trillion dollar industry is the actual nut i think

Which trillion dollar industry?  NASA?  Did you even read the link I provided?

I continue to be amazed that you play the potential trillion dollar green industry card, yet have no problem ignoring the already existing trillion dollar fossil fuel industry.

here's a bunch more "nut jobs" who happen to have PhDs all agreeing with "nutty" studies and facts and such

http://www.petitionproject.org/

As Dave said, your link says nothing as to whether or not the Earth is actually warming.  You made precisely the mistake that many others are making; you confused debate on the cause of the Earth's warming with debate on whether or not it is actually occurring.