Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Global Warming Pivots and becomes Global Cooling

It is funny when experts can turn on a dime. Here's a Daily Mail article noting that experts, including an IPCC member, are now talking about a thirty year period of 'global cooling'. I find this funny because it appears magically right after a massive cold spell hit North America, Europe, and Asia. It is 'as if' the experts realized that their story of global warming wouldn't hold water why people shivered in the cold, so in order to stay in front of the pitchfork and torch mob, they are now 'predicting' global cooling. Here are the key bits:
Britain's big freeze is the start of a worldwide trend towards colder weather that seriously challenges global warming theories, eminent scientists claimed yesterday.

The world has entered a 'cold mode' which is likely to bring a global dip in temperatures which will last for 20 to 30 years, they say.

Summers and winters will all be cooler than in recent years, and the changes will mean that global warming will be 'paused' or even reversed, it was claimed.

...

And now oceanic cycles have switched to a 'cold mode', where data shows that the amount of Arctic summer sea ice has increased by more than a quarter since 2007.

The research has been carried out by eminent climate scientists, including Professor Mojib Latif. He is a leading member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He and his colleagues predicted the cooling trend in a 2008 paper, and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva in September.
The timing of the article is suspect. But it probably says more about the media than the science. From what I can tell a number of scientists have become disenchanted with the extremism of the 'global warming' crowd. Saner heads recognize that climate change is complex and is nowhere near being unraveled and understood. There is a growing appreciation of elements other than greenhouse gases as drivers of the climate. The above research points to the effect of multidecadal oscillations in ocean currents.

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