Posted on 03/01/2008 9:54:29 PM PST by swampdweller
March 1) - The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.
It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment.
“Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way,” read a blog post and news release on Wednesday from Marc Morano, the communications director for the Republican minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
---This photo was taken in South Africa---
So what is happening?
According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Niño pattern.
If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.
Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.
“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.
“Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Niña event is over,” he said.
But the warming isn't unusual either -- the planet has always fluctuated in temperature.
My Lord pissed on the Earth and he said it was ‘cool’.
Global Warming causes global warming, unless it is causing global cooling. It causes more severe storms, unless it doesn’t. It will cause sea levels to rise, or to fall. Etc. One this is certain — It’s Bush’s fault.
I read. A lot.
***Global Warming or Cooling???***
Doesn’t matter, it’s still our fault. No matter what, we are at fault. It’s all our doing, we are destroying the earth. Even if we were never created, it is still our fault. The last Ice Age was our fault, and the warming trend that ended it was our fault, even though were weren’t there yet. IT’S ALL OUR FAULT. There, I’ve got THAT off my chest :>)
Massively ignorant folks at the 'Slimes think that the job of a scientist is to stake out a position and defend it. How do these boffos remember to eat and breathe?
I’m in upstate NY. 18 degrees below zero the other day and 20” new snow.
One of my kids had to do a paper on global cooling late 80s - early 90s.
Wait until the experts hone in on the Maunder Minimum and declare a “consensus” on global cooling. I guess the science will be settled, right AlGore?
Socialist directive: “Let’s hurry up and get control before it becomes obvious, even to idiots, that manmade Global Warming is a crock.”
They have already changed the lingo... and you’d better catch up! Cause if we don’t we will be trying to defeat something they have already given up on and moved on.
It is now called “Global Climate CHANGE”.
True story!
Doesn’t matter if it is too hot or too cold one day or the next... BLAME MANKIND and AMERICA for the (Say it now) Global Climate Change.
The funny thing is... this is pretty much admitting that Global Warming is BUST... but they hope to make this “change” in the lingo permanent and to blind side us while we continue to try and fight the few remaining global warming nuts.
Our kids are being taught GCC right now in schools.
So, get with it peeps!
Hah! You should write for the NY Times.
And, we have a "virtual fence" on our Southern border.
It's called {said very slowly} Seasons
Hey Siberian Psycho — I’m guessing by the pic that those in Siberia do not buy into global warming!
Interesting that the Earth possibly warming .5 to 1 degree over the next 50 to 100 years is an emergency that requires immediate action and a global redistribution of wealth, but when the Earth actually cools .65C ~ .75C in one year, that’s “not very unusual”.
And if it's truly “not very unusual” then a warm up of the same magnitude is also “not very unusual” or else the Earth would be in a constant cooling state.
No, but they all have a good laugh about it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.