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."
It’s a socialist scheme for control, pure and simple.
Must not have gotten the memo. It was never called “global warming” silly. But “climate change”.
But a few years of warming more than 8 years ago means that GW DOES exist?
Sorry, can't have it both ways.
If Al Gore had any integrity, he would return his Nobel prize.
If a scientist is “mystified” by empirical data, he’s not really speaking as a scientist.
News Flash: Yes Virgina, the weather changes.
GW and CO2 as a pollutant; two flimflams.
Ya got no evidence of that, bucko. And your climate models don't work neither. The hoax is over.
Global warming is true!! It gets warm in the summer months in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres...very odd. Right now it is warm in Brazil and I bet in July it will be hotter than heck in Houston....GUARANTEED!
Now can I have a trillion dollars?
you are way too optimistic...this hoax is far from over
only in Zimbabwe dollars
I agree but this exercise is not about the environment or the vanity of anthropogenic global warming. It is about establishing a new tax stream in cap and trade. The global warming scam is about money and government control and nothing else. Comrade Zero is simply using the useful idiot who believe this crap to gain even more power for the State.
Thinking about either sets my molars to grinding.
This is a repeat of a previous reply.
I had a very interesting conversation with my brother over the weekend. Now, he’s a big California liberal, and always very ahead-of-the-curve on all things political. He always seems to know what is going to be happening next in progressive political circles.
We’ve gone at it hammer-and-tong over AGW over the years. He was always a true believer, and I have always been a skeptic, since the 1980s, when I was sitting around the Math Department at Berkeley talking about environmental models and how they could be massively powerful tools for manipulating public policy.
Anyway, my brother was going on about how he wants to buy a Chevy Volt when they come out, and how he thinks the plug-in hybrid will be a revolutionary product. I decided to needle him gently about how the Volt will actually have a larger carbon footprint than a conventional car of similar size if the electricity used to charge it comes from a coal-fired power plant.
He blithely replied that all that carbon stuff was nonsense, and he was really concerned about reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. So if he could run his car off of domestic coal, he was all for that, because this would mean that we would not longer have to support military adventures around the World to secure oil supplies.
Well, I about dropped my beer. A averred that kicking terrorist butt was a good thing in and of itself, and let it go at that.
So, my big prediction is that the Left is going to give up on this AGW business by the end of the year. We are about to experience a “Two Legs Better” moment, where the narrative will suddenly change.
I think people are seeing the writing on the wall and beginning to back away slowly from AGW. They can only ignore the data for so long before the models must be abandoned.
I think the Russian data transcription “error” right before Election Day and the ice sensor “error” right before Inauguration are the last gasps.
Thinking about either sets my molars to grinding.
“....only in Zimbabwe dollars....”
Which is .32 cents....
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