Posted on 03/03/2009 8:07:50 AM PST by GOPGuide
For those who have endured this winter's frigid temperatures and today's heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.
But climate is known to be variable -- a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.
Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.
"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."
Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a "super El Nino event." It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.
How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.
The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science -- identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snowstorm) from human-induced change.
But just what's causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun's energy than usual back out into space.
"It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970's was due to a free variation in climate," Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. "Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again."
Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it's just a hiccup, and that humans' penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.
"When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming," Swanson said. "Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."
These “scientists” are coming up with as many reasons to explain the current cold snap as medieval astronomers did to explain why Galileo’s telescope showed movement of the planets that couldn’t be explained with the earth being the center of the universe. The answer is the same as it was back then —the SUN!!
As I told a person who was crestfallen when I stated that the earth has COOLED over the last ten years:
“Don’t worry, the true goals remain the same. Whether it’s global warming, the coming ice age, overpopulation, or some other impending disaster, someone will be able to use it to advance the cause of global socialism.”
>> Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists.
A concise 6-word summary of why nobody should’ve bought into “global warming” in the first place. Scientists haven’t a clue about how climate works, much less how the exhaust from my Jeep might affect it. The system is simply too complex for even the greatest human minds.
SnakeDoc
Absolutely amazing. What a religion GW must be, to cause "scientists" to throw out contrary data?
So, to recap...
Temps go up = Global Warming
Temps stay the same = Global Warming
Temps go down = Wait for Global Warming
Earth Science isn’t science its fudging the facts to fit into your preconceived story.
Low sunspot activity, but that would mean that human activity has nothing to do with climate change.
Can't quite swallow that bitter pill, can ya?
“Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it’s just a hiccup, and that humans’ penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.”
This is merely a weak attempt to move the goal posts. A fall-back plan to extend the charade for a generation.
They are committed to global warming. It has put the profession of “weather man” on the front burner, given them fame fortune, and led to huge commitments of research grants.
Does anyone imagine that this growing profession wants to shrink bank again and become a few guys on the radio who tell you whether or not to carry an umbrella to work? What would happen to all those expanding departments of meteorological science at our universities? What would happen to the climatologists at NASA?
What, divert a huge part of NASA’s budget to telling people whether or not to put on their raincoats when they leave for the train station? No more end of the world stuff? No more prime time news?
The guy who comes up with the mathematical model that blames global cooling on excess western consumerism will be the next AlGore.
Seeing a chart of all the satellites and space debris in orbit, it's hard not to think it might have some effect on something. Hey, I think that makes me an expert!
OK I'll bite. Be where? By what law of physics can this "waxy build up" theory be defended as anything but utter superstition? Where's the heat in the meantime - in the great computer model in the sky?
Au contrair! Kyle just hasn't identified the cause, and likely never will. Something as complex as climate will always have un-understood components to it.
"But just what's causing the cooling is a mystery."
Socialists have ignored the data on capitalism for 200 years. Read the latest budget. They can ignore reality indefinitely, and they will.
The only question before the house is when the rest of us finally get around to ignoring them.
Scientists don’t understand long-term temperature trends.
But we better close all coal-fired power plants, give Algore as many awards as we can think of, and establish a global carbon trading scheme anyway.
I’ve wondered if temperature trends show cooling: will we build as many coal-fired power plants as we can, make people buy SUVs and make CFL/LED lightbulbs illegal? Instead of “going green”, will the new trend be to “go brown”?
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