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
Rereke Whakaaro (02:40:45) :
But I am also wondering if this is somebody hedging their bets, prior to the Copenhagen meeting.
I’m sure of it, and I’m also sure that this kind of thing will increase.
william (06:46:11) :
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.
————–
I think technically he’s 1 for 2. He didn’t invent the internet, but he sure as hell invented global warming.
“…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’….”
I think these words will come back to haunt Piers in a few years time. The sun is the only driver of our climate, with the land, sea,and the atmosphere just containing mechanisms which provide us with the conditions to sustain life.
I feel sure that with the vast and unprecedented array of scientific instruments pointing at our current quiet sun, the mysterious link will soon be found.
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.’
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).
The solar wind and spot activity is the lowest measured in over 50 years and Dr Piers Forster see’s no change in solar output for at least 40 years, therefore it’s not the sun! and why only 40 years? a short climate cycle is nearly 60 years long as has been known for over 200 years. Is this another worthless Nobel Prize?
Professor Don Easterbrook says the oceans are the cause of heating and cooling and not the sun. Just where can energy in the oceans come from? and it’s very little geothermal, a lot less then 2 %.
Just because they can’t figure out the manner of it, does not mean it is not the sun.
The hydrosphere and atmosphere is a heat engine that the sun powers.
Come on people look at all the clues and not just the ones of your pet theory. The people that post on this site are the most knowageble in this field in the world and actually talk to each other. Figure it out together.
Richard Heg (10:29:49) :
I’ve just had a look at that article. Basically Black is saying that the BBC isn’t biased and presents all points of view. And he backs that up by illustrating the article with Mann’s hockey stick.
If you are saying the greenland ice cap has existed for a long time, you are correct but there is a lot of historical evidence that at the time of the Vikings the coastal areas were much more moderate than in modern time, (ie green), they supported large sheep herds, and archeological digs show areas that were habitable then that are not habitable now (ie it is cooler now than in the recent past). Ice cores drilled in 1992-93 show that the climate cooled significantly where the vikings lived around 1350.
There were certainly other issues involved in the survival of the Greenland viking colonies, but climate cooling and increased sea ice significantly changed their culture.
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/12/18/greenland-is-as-warm-as-today-as-in-prior-eras/
Larry
Jimmy Haigh (11:48:02) :
Not just hockey stick but also an iceberg with an upset looking polar bear on it. Oh and protesters with banners saying “save the climate” what does that even mean?
Computer models….didnt a leading scientist say not long ago that computermodels cant even predict how an egg soufle(spelling?) will behave in an oven.So how the hell can they predict climate.Are the met office and the IPCC good at making soufle,s.I bet there not.
“Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity”
Here is what the BBC reported just over 11 years ago:
“Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/56456.stm
Since then it changed its mind to follow pro AGW beliefs and now seems to be questioning it again.
From the article: “In the freezing foothills of Montana, a distinctly bitter blast of revolution hangs in the air.”
Here’s what it looks like today in those foothills between Browning and East Glacier, Montana on US 2. http://rwis.mdt.mt.gov/scanweb/swframe.asp?Pageid=Camera&Units=English&Groupid=629000&Siteid=629002&Senid=255&WxId=6292&DisplayClass=Java&SenType=All;&SenStatus=&Camera=1
So Richard Black claims that the BBC has no bias in its reporting of “climate change”. Who does he think he is trying to kid?
Anyone who wants to test the BBC’s bias can follow the following links:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/
These pages are mainly devoted to the ‘science’ of climate change (ie. The theory of global warming). There is a tiny section devoted to climate sceptics. They even have a few links to climate sceptic sites but are they the most useful for giving the sceptic point of view? Certainly no link to WUWT!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/guides/457000/457037/html/default.stm
These pages are all about the ‘evidence’ for climate change. There is even a graph with a hockey stick.
Don’t believe any of Richard Black’s attempts to portray the BBC as neutral and just reporting the ‘facts’. 95% or more (OK, that’s not scientific but it’s meant to indicate the level of intensity) of BBC reporting is pro-global warming. This is hardly surprising, given the bias of the pages linked to above.
They reported in all seriousness the publicity stunt of sending Ban Ki-Moon to the Arctic to observe the melting Arctic ice at the time of the year when the ice is always at its lowest extent. Did the BBC point this out? Nope. The BBC also reported the almost suicidal expedition to measure Arctic ice in terms which expressed total belief in the organisers’ claims of what the expedition was supposed to achieve. No room for any scepticism there.
Have any of the BBC news programmes (thank goodness the BBC still calls them programmes, not ‘shows’) ever reported key findings such as the McIntyre researches? Nope. How many climate sceptics will be interviewed during the Copenhagen meetings? Don’t hold your breath. In fact, when WAS the last time a climate sceptic was interviewed on the BBC?
A nice ploy used by the BBC is to tell us what ‘scientists’ have discovered. (As in: “Scientists have discovered that the problem is worse than was previously thought.”) This gives the impression that whatever has been claimed by a few scientists is to be seen as representing the views of all scientists.
I think that Richard Black will have to try a lot harder if he wants to convince us that the BBC lacks bias on this issue at least.
I don’t know if we can blow these statistics out of proportion. It may just be a temporary short-term trend like they say and that global warming will “reassert itself” at some point in the near future. The thing about statistics like these is that I have to question their validity simply due to the fact they contradict everything I saw in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth.
jon (07:54:22) :
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.
Okay let me define steady… Basically as far as output goes over the last 50 years the sun has not varied by more then .1% ( this is based on Leif Svalgaard’s posts ) so in noting that the total energy output of the sun has not varied over the last 50 years it truly calls into question the suns role in causing temperature fluctuations. ( on a climatic scale )
Since the temperature of the earth has supposedly changed over the last 100 years by .2% this calls into serious question the suns role in causing that change.
Now that is not to say that there are not any number of other problems that need to be addressed in just the raw data alone. The point I was trying to make before is that based on all available data the temperature variation that exists is minuscule and has as of yet anything to truly correlate to. ( the sun just being one object that cannot be solely responsible as our understanding to date of temperature fluctuations as neither can CO2 and the HYPOTHETICAL feedback effects )
I wish more articles would call into question the idea of the feedback loops since that is where almost all of the ‘warming’ takes place. CO2 causes global warming as a CATALYST and nothing more according to all the literature I have really read on this subject.
This article was at best a weak attempt to question Global Warming by raising an issue of “where has the warming been for a decade” but rather then actually get real answers it allowed a global warming proponent to simply shrug and say it is being masked right now? HOW IS IT ABLE TO BE MASKED?????? Natural fluctuations? I thought all of those had been thrown out as even existing by the IPCC!!!!
Cooling detected on global warming fears, Australia. (News report extract) :
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26202152-11949,00.html
BTW, it looks like the official snow ski season was closed rather prematurely this year, and Melbourne’s water reserves are already better than last year..… only a few short bursts of spring so far.
Patrick Davis (21:53:46) :
The real reason Monty Python ended?
Life became more surreal than the sketches 😉
DaveE.
RR Kampen (01:13:04) :
Nemetz, Greenland never was green. How come this myth is so tough??
Because we have their written records and their teeth and bones that all show them raising and eating land ruminants (i.e. grass eaters) on the green fields near their homes (i.e. not under the old ice cap). We have their abandoned homes with barns and facilities for ruminant animals and we have the remains of said animals in their trash heaps.
It is hard to have grass grazing animals and not have green grass.
The whole place was not green, but the part where they lived was.
Over time, as the ice and snows returned, they could no longer graze animals nor save enough hay for them for the winter; and their diet shifted to more fish. (Again, evidenced by their bones and teeth). Finally, the ice returned to the seas and the fish left. Then the people left or died.
There is a lesson here. A very important lesson.
When it is warmer, life thrives (both human and other).
When it is icy, things die.
Warm is good.
Ice is bad.
Cold is not good for animals, children, and other living things.
Burn more oil and coal: Do it for the children…
From: gary gulrud (08:16:40) :
… 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.
Okay, let’s kill this myth (and the associated Everyone thought the Earth was Flat” myth too)
Scholastics did not debate this. Protestants invented it. Please see…
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/medmyths.html
Sigh…
I would go for champagne socialism more than anything else. Very difficult for any Government to force the BBC one way or another.
Also, will Cameron be able to replace the individuals responsible for their idiotic AGW position..
That assumes that he would want to. Watching a potential next Prime Minister apologise to “greens” for turning up to a meeting in a car really does send a message.
The message I got though was “don’t vote for me, I have no spine”. Quite why our politicians don’t get the message that if we had wanted national policy set by “greens” we would have voted for them is beyond me. You can be sure that none of them will be around taking any responsibility for the results of current UK (non-existent) energy policy though.
Bob, isn’t surface energy in the oceans energy that is entering atmosphere and so leaving?
>>But I am also wondering if this is somebody hedging their bets,
>>prior to the Copenhagen meeting.
You bet – especially if the conference takes place during a howling blizzard. Bit stupid of them, to have the conference in winter, or perhaps they were so blinded by their own propaganda they all thought they should take their sun-cream and beach towels.
.
>>Jimbo (13:04:01) :
Yes, interesting BBC comment from yesteryear – climate change caused by the Sun.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/56456.stm
Quote:
Using ancient tree rings, they show that 17 out of 19 warm spells in the last 10,000 years coincided with peaks in solar activity.
Endquote
I thought that Leif et al claim the Sun’s output is more or less constant. Make up your minds chaps.
.
If I can see that increases in global temperature are much more pronounced at higher latitudes, particularly in the Arctic, and that these increases are stronger at certain times of the year, namely Dec/Jan and around the equinoxes, I would be interested as to what effect these changes have on PDO and ENSO, as opposed to how PDO affects global temperature.
Here’s another example of the BBC’s unbiased reporting of climate change:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8307272.stm
It’s all about ice-free summers in the Arctic and how that wonderful Caitlin expedition has advanced the science.
Innocentiousxii … so why is the current (and past) sleep like state of the sun correlated with low temperatures on earth?
Additionally, among the written records are records of wheat and flax shipments from Greenland to Iceland and Denmark over a period of about 150 years. The colonists produced enough surplus to be able to trade it for things they could not build/obtain in Greenland.
The colony had been economically viable enough that when the western Greenland settlement “disappeared”, the King of Denmark sent an expedition to find out what happened.
Why is it these facts are so hard to understand?
Re: JLKrueger (07:22:14) :
Why is it these facts are so hard to understand?
Because they are disputed.
Because there never were more than two small settlements on the southwestern tip of Greenland, which had a very hard time surviving (partly because for some reason the Vikings didn’t learn anything from the local Inuit specialists). In this area it could still be possible to culture some grains of wheat, by the way, but I wouldn’t bet on making a living from it (as the Inuit never, but never! did).
Trade between Vikings and Inuit for some reason was nil. Other trade can never have been much (why trade with far off Europe instead of with the locals?).
Because the ice sheet isn’t a couple hundred years old, but a couple hundred thousands.
Is there some source online ref the written docs on shipments you refer to?