What Happened To Global Warming?

[bonnie]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson

Climate correspondent, BBC News

Planet Earth (Nasa)

Average temperatures have not increased for over a decade

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

The Sun (BBC)

Recent research has ruled out solar influences on temperature increases

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth's great heat stores.

Pacific ocean (BBC)

In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."

So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is evidence that they have been right all along.

They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.

But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.

The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.

In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.

What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.

To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.

Iceberg melting (BBC)

The UK Met Office says that warming is set to resume

Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.

But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.

[Tom Wetmore]

The data if anyone cares to consider it - http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

[bonnie]

The data if anyone cares to consider it - http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/

Not going to bother to look it up but isn't Nasa the org that had to admit that a man named Jim Hansen had falsified data to have it read as he wanted?

[Ted Oplinger]

...I'm not going to bother...because...bla-bla and bla!

Never let the {falsified} facts get in the way of a predestined mind!

Fixed it for you, CoAspen...

From my perspective, Hansen has lost his credibility the same way some "Creation scientists" have: by taking small points and extrapolating them far beyond what can be validated scientifically, all the while leaving out inconvenient data.

I find it very humorous - and sad - to see those who belittle these Creation scientists as frauds, turn and give glowing accolades and accordances of prestige and intelligence to these global warming frauds for doing the exact same kind of "science".

[bonnie]

...I'm not going to bother...because...bla-bla and bla!

Never let the facts get in the way of a predestined mind!

No I am not going to bother. I first have to have faith in those providing the data before I believe the data.

I will believe more data when like minded "experts" quit telling me of the dicovery of the "missing link" or when they acknowledge those things I know to be true instead of denying.

I am one of those silly people that believe the bible is true. Dumb things like creation,the flood,miraculous birth,death and resurrection of Christ.

I do not believe the earth is about to face massive destruction because of global warming.

You are free to go back to the 19th century and the carbon footprints you left then.

I don't now anymore than I believed the data and the hype in the 70's that we had a decade left. Our the fact that oil reserves would soon be depleted.

It is a little odd that we have not had any warming in the past few years but we are cautioned by 2030 it will be warming again.

Probably will have another climate change and another and another. Has been so for thousands of years

[phkrause]

Good post Bonnie. I see that all other things like global warming, no oil in a few years etc., change every few months or years. But my Bible never changes. I agree with you, I think I'll stick to the Bible and its principles and logic, rather than scientists and any other so called experts, that change on a dime, every time the wind blows in a different direction. And that's not saying that there claims have no merit, just that I believe they say what certain people want them to, or just like spinning it to acommadate (sp) whom ever.

pk