Last updated at 7:21 PM on 13th October 2009
In the freezing foothills of Montana, a distinctly bitter blast of revolution hangs in the air.
And while the residents of the icy city of Missoula can stave off the -10C chill with thermals and fires, there may be no easy remedy for the wintry snap’s repercussions.
The temperature has shattered a 36-year record. Further into the heartlands of America, the city of Billings registered -12C on Sunday, breaking the 1959 barrier of -5C.
Closer to home, Austria is today seeing its earliest snowfall in history with 30 to 40 centimetres already predicted in the mountains.
Such dramatic falls in temperatures provide superficial evidence for those who doubt that the world is threatened by climate change.
But most pertinent of all, of course, are the growing volume of statistics.
According to the National Climatic Data Centre, Earth’s hottest recorded year was 1998.
If you put the same question to NASA, scientists will say it was 1934, followed by 1998. The next three runner-ups are 1921, 2006 and 1931.
Which all blows a rather large hole in the argument that the earth is hurtling towards an inescapable heat death prompted by man’s abuse of the environment.
Indeed, some experts believe we should forget global warming and turn our attention to an entirely differently phenomenon – global cooling.
The evidence for both remains inconclusive, which is unlikely to help the legions of world leaders meeting in Copenhagen in December to negotiate a new climate change deal.
There is no doubt the amount of man-made carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for heating up the planet, has increased phenomenally over the last 100 years.
For the final few decades of the 20th century and as the atmosphere’s composition changed, scientists recorded the planet was warming rapidly and made a positive correlation between the two.
But then something went wrong. Rather then continuing to soar, the Earth’s temperature appeared to stabilise, smashing all conventional predictions.
The development seemed to support the view of climate change cynics who claimed global warming was simply a natural cycle and not caused by man.
Some doubters believe that the increase was actually down to the amount of energy from the Sun, which provides 98 per cent of the Earth’s warmth.
Sun or sea? The importance of the ocean’s cooling and warming cycles are now under serious consideration as a key factor in global temperatures
Previously, the fluctuating amount of radiation given out by the sun was thought to play a large role in the climate.
But Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, who was part of the team to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change, studied solar output – the heat leaving the sun’s surface – and cosmic ray intensity over the last 40 years, and compared those figures with global average surface temperature.
He told the BBC: ‘Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity.’
Scientists have intensified the search for alternative explanations
Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University believes the key to the connumdrum may be the temperature of the world’s seas.
Figures show the Pacific Ocean has been cooling over the last few years, and Easterbrook’s research shows a correlation between this and global temperatures.
He says the oceans have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically, known as Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).
And after a 30-year heating cycle in the 1980s and 1990s, pushing temperatures above average, we are now moving into a cooler period.
Professor Easterbrook said: ‘In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.
‘The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling.’
In Alberta, Canada (above), temperatures dropped to -16C on Monday, breaking the day’s previous record, from 1928, by about three degrees
His figures show that the global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.
Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), stressed the impact of the ocean currents in the North Atlantic – a phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Atlantic Meridional Oscillation.
He believes we may be in a period of cooling – but that it will be temporary before global warming reasserts itself.
He said the NAO may have been responsible for some of the rapid rise in temperatures of the last three decades.
‘But how much? The jury is still out,’ he said.
So is the sun really going down on global warming?
The Met Office is not convinced.
They incorporate solar and oceanic cycles into their models, and they say that – even if there are periods of slower warming, or temporary cooling, the long-term trend in global temperatures is still on the up.
h/t to a jones
Read the article at the Daily Mail here
Indeed, the whole statement is idiotic, because if there’s some kind of natural cycle here, it’s OBVIOUSLY going to get warmer once it’s finished getting cooler!
The “long-term trend in global temperatures” will always be going up or down until it reverses…
Irrespective of whether or not the ~60-year post-LIA climate cycle is caused by the PDO (with which it correlates) or variations in the length of the Schwabe sunspot cycle (with which it also correlates)… Every 30 years or so, just as the PDO is shifting gears, the media and the Chicken Littles of the scientific community begin to raise hysterical warnings about imminent ice ages or catastrophic warming.
Prior to 1988, it wasn’t such a big deal… There were about 8 climatologists in the world (sarcasm). No one really paid attention to them. Back then the gov’t was wise enough to know that even if the warnings were valid, there wasn’t very much that the gov’t could do about it. And… Most geologists and meteorologists said that the impending ice age and/or catastrophic warming was just part of the Earth’s natural climate and weather cycles.
Since 1988, universities have been minting climatology PhD’s faster than law degrees and Al Gore became a rock star of science. Al Gore and some of the vastly expanded population of climatologists convinced many of our politicians that the Earth’s climate was changing in a way that it never had before… And it was all due to the burning of fossil fuels. So… The geologists would now be ignored because they often made their livings finding fossil fuels; and the meteorologists would also be ignored because weather has nothing to do with climate.
If we economically survive long enough to see the early 21st century cooling trend fully supplant the late 20th century warming trend, it will be very fascinating to see how Al Gore and the Hansen/Mann/Schmidt branch of the climate science community explain the expanding ice caps, falling sea levels and decline in agricultural output that will occur over the next 20-30 years.
Al Gore intimated that he was instremental in helping to create the internet. That did not turn out to be true. Al has also gone a long way to creating the AGW myth. It looks like old Al is 0 for 2.
Bob, the jet stream runs right over the top of the PDO. Given that, what information are you using to state that the PDO has no influence on global temperatures. NOAA has developed statistical information on how land masses East of that area react to PDO conditions and use that information in its broad regional forecasts. Why would they do that if there is no correlation?
The problem is the phrase “global warming” has been phased out for several years now since it started to become clear that there is no such thing. The spin is all “climate change” – that amorphous term that politicos are latching on to, so that they can impose the same old carbon control nonsense, but under a different, fuzzier banner. They won’t go down without a fight.
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1908-2008 was O.0075C/year [over 100 years
OBSERVED RATE OF CLIMATE CHANGE 1999-2009 was 0.0072C/year [over last 10 years]
While it is true that the temperature anomalies have had short term [ about 5 months] rise during 2009, the decadal level trend of the global temperature anomalies has been declining per least square trend lines since 2001 at -0.009 C/year [ over the last 8.6 years]
With all of the September 2009 SST’s declining except South Atlantic SST, AMO declining again for two months in a row and NAO negative , the cooler weather is likely to continue .
Pamala,
I think what Bob is getting at is it does not seem that the PDO can explain Climate Change. I do not think Bob was trying to infer that it cannot influence weather.
Here is the problem I have with this article… It is no more informed then a AGW article is. Look the main problem with ‘AGW’ is that Carbon Dioxide does not fit. The main problem with saying ti is the Sun or the PDO is that those don’t fit either. There has been no real increase in the suns output. there has been no real increase as far as I can tell based on the numbers I have seen of Cosmic Rays. Basically it is really hard to see an increase in temperature coming from an external source at this point.
The reason that AGW does not fit is not because an increase in Carbon Dioxide won’t add a little heat tot he atmosphere. Rather it is the amount of heat that they claim it will cause to add. By increasing Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere there will be a small amount of warming caused by it. The problem I have is when it gets above really more then half a degree of warming. Which can only be accounted for by feedback effects which HAVE to be programmed into the simulations they run.
So I am sad about this article, in several places it gets it right by talking to one of the scientists ( who is pro AGW ) where the scientist agrees it cannot be the sun or Cosmic rays. But goes no further then that. No model predicted that there would be a stabilization of temperatures for a decade. I wish he had asked the scientists about that instead… So why has there not been any warming? The sun is steady, CO2 is rising? Where are the feedbacks? Which is really the question. Who cares if over the last 100 years it is up… The question is WHY is it not rising now. To which I have not heard any pro AGW person adequately explain, they simply say “aw well just you wait”.
As skeptics we cannot simply disagree with AGW and embrace bad theories that try to explain what is occurring. At this point in time I have not seen any explanation that is right. Not to say that I don’t enjoy learning on this right which I have because of most of you. SO thanks and lets keep looking for the explanation. Lets make sure we do not become what the pro AGW are, attached to only the explanation we like best.
If anyone can point me to information that shows any part of this post is wrong please do so. I would love to better understand something that I may have missed.
It’s entirely possible that the media sees the writing on the wall: Labour to lose the election.
They probably want to curry some favour with the next occupiers of 10 Downing Street.
My wife informs me it snowed in Munich today – shame Copenhagen isn’t away from the coast, it would be fun to see them discussing GW up to their backsides in snow and ice. Next times they will do it in Singapore, just to prove it’s still warm(er).
Its intresting to see all these articles coming from the BBC story and we do have to remember this is the daily mail and it doesnt have much respect from the people who dont read it in fact most non readers will outright dismiss it.
It has also always suprised me that newpapers have been pushing the AGW lets face it surely there days would be numbered as newspapers are a pretty inefficiant way of circulating the news and with falling salles because nobody want to pay for yesterdays news when we can get todays on the internet and countless news channels.
Its almost in someways that the BBC has opened a gate and now everyone is coming out so to speak.
The question in my mind is why did the BBC let there story publish so close to copenhagen when all the prior evidence suggests that they really are not intrested in this side of the argument, you only have to look at the patching together of obamas inauguration speach to see which side of the fence they are on.
Innocentious … the sun is not “steady” and I really don’t think we know enough about it (limited data, solar wind effects etc. etc.) to ignore it’s effect on our climate.
Bob,
With regard to Pacific Ocean Heat Content:
The graph you linked includes the famous data splice in 2003 when ARGO was brought on line. There is no clear evidence, that I know of, that Pacific OHC has increased since that time. Further, removing the step change from the graph at that crucial juncture gives a very different impression: flat (or nearly) values for ~15 years.
Regards
“the PDO has no influence on global temperatures”?
I’m beginning to think of ‘global temperatures’ in the same vein as ‘number of angels able to dance at one time on the head of a pin’.
Lies, damned lies, and, well you knows the rest.
Al Gore is a baby boomer from the “New Age” era, which originated back in the 1960’s, in the so called beginning of the “Age of Aquarius”, submerged in psychodelic dreams of fantasy. Global warming cult has became one more of this pagan cults, so it is perfectly explainable if we consider this salad of beliefs, from Castaneda’s “Teachings of Don Juan”, Aldous Huxley’s “A brave New World”, to Timothy Leary…
All just a “bad trip”, very but very far away from reason and common sense.
Science Policy and the History of Climate Change
http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=4858
An interesting read.
From ARISTOTLE to JAMES HANSEN
“noaaprogrammer (22:55:33) :
Gordon Ford (20:55:31) :
“Bret (20:24:36) :
And one question. Where does the other 2% come from (”the Sun, which provides 98 per cent of the Earth’s warmth.”)?”
The other 2% comes from radioactive decay in the earth’s crust and core.
So if Dr. Piers Forster’s statement that “Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity” is true, then the heat from the Earth’s core and crust is causing all the climate variation during this time?!”
For all practical purposes the heat flux from the earth’s radioactive decay is constant.
Long term?
in billions of years, one thing is certain, sun will gobble up its planet including earth, that will be the true global warming
>>“the PDO has no influence on global temperatures”?
The PDO can only influence global temperatures on a temporary basis. It has only so much energy that it can take or give to the climate, before it runs out. Five years, max?
The source of the PDO’s energy is the Sun, which is why we need to look closer at how the Sun ‘charges up’ any increased temperatures in the oceans. Cloud cover would be one logical variable.
.
Harold Ambler: You wrote, “There is no clear evidence, that I know of, that Pacific OHC has increased since that time. ”
Do you have a source? A graph of Pacific Ocean OHC, please?
“For all practical purposes the heat flux from the earth’s radioactive decay is constant.”
Interesting statement.
All underwater black smokers, volcanoes and sea-floor forming are known and measured?
Pamela Grey: You wrote and asked, “NOAA has developed statistical information on how land masses East of that area react to PDO conditions and use that information in its broad regional forecasts. Why would they do that if there is no correlation?”
Western North America is not the globe. The U.S. statistics fail to consider the opposite effect that’s taking place in the Western Pacific and its influence on Eastern Asia.
A positive PDO is represented by the Eastern North Pacific being warmer than the Western and Central North Pacific. The SST anomalies of the North Pacific, North of 20N, can be greater than (less than) the global mean, which adds to (subtracts from) measured global temperture, but just as long as the Eastern North Pacific is warmer than the Western and Central North Pacific, the PDO is positive. The PDO is not a measure of the SST of the North Pacific. The PDO only indicates a pattern.
In other words, the SST of the North Pacific is a component of global SST and global surface temperature, while the PDO is not.
Hi Bob.
Like I said, I’m looking at your graph, the one with ARGO data spliced in after 2003.
I don’t see a rise since the ARGO data have been entered into the record, and subtracting the dubious step change I don’t see a rise since the mid-1990s.
Help!
From Richard Black at the BBC
“Biases, U-turns, and the BBC’s climate coverage”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/10/climate_issue.html
“According to the National Climatic Data Centre, Earth’s hottest recorded year was 1998.
If you put the same question to NASA, scientists will say it was 1934”
~snip~
1934 is only the warmest year on record for the US, not the entire Earth.
Harold Ambler: You wrote, “I don’t see a rise since the ARGO data have been entered into the record, and subtracting the dubious step change I don’t see a rise since the mid-1990s.”
Regardless, do you see a drop, a cooling, as mentioned in the article?