Global cooling back again?

Just saw this, and thought it was pretty funny, you know, given how back in the 50's there was something of a panic about this, and then global warming somehow became absolute "fact" and now we're back to cooling again.

You'd think mother Earth was going through menopause.

So I'm curious to see what everyone's take on this is.

I remember reading something Gech wrote about how everyone who actually deals with the Earth on a professional basis basically thought global warming was a pile of shit.

I pretty much fell in line with that opinion. So I welcome this news as vindication.

DailyTech - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

Quote:

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

This clearly means Al Gore is wrong. America, start your engines.

All of them. Especially the big ones.

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Don't you know it's no longer 'Global Warming'? But 'Climate Change'? Come on people get with the political correct rhetoric here!

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by guyinrubbersuit

Don't you know it's no longer 'Global Warming'? But 'Climate Change'? Come on people get with the political correct rhetoric here!

Might as well just take it one step further and call it:

Spoiler:

Weather!
*gasp*

I really like how this whole nonsense about 'climate change' is effectively no different from primitive tribes who thought the gods were angry at them because the weather felt inconsistent with what the prominent generation remembered, except instead of ripping out hearts, the trendy thing to do is rip out catalytic converters.

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News flash: When the globe warms, that doesn't mean everywhere gets warmer. The weather as a whole just gets more extreme - higher highs, lower lows, and increased turbulence. Large-scale trends are not predictors for individual events. Surprise, surprise.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I don't care what you call it, global warming, global cooling, just as long as there is a gratuitous ripping of catalytic converters.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Arainach

News flash: When the globe warms, that doesn't mean everywhere gets warmer. The weather as a whole just gets more extreme - higher highs, lower lows, and increased turbulence. Large-scale trends are not predictors for individual events. Surprise, surprise.

Except for that whole discussion on reduced solar activity, but hey, I'm totally sure the sun has been dramatically impacted by the Earth's environment.

Also large scale trends and individual events, I'm glad we agree on something. Except an individual event is all the data supporting global warming amounts to in the scope of geological history.

FELIPE NO

Seriously though, just a one year gathering of data is not enough to determine if the earth is truly cooling. For one, wasn't the year before pretty much the hottest on record or pretty close to it? And what about this year? There have a record amount of tornadoes in the Midwest which is unheard of during the winter months.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Psh -- the temperature of Earth has barely risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last 100 years.

Only in the most technical sense is Earth warming.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Yes, one degree Farenheit won't make much of a difference. Spoken like a true engineer!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Avalokiteshvara

Except for that whole discussion on reduced solar activity, but hey, I'm totally sure the sun has been dramatically impacted by the Earth's environment.

The popular climate change discussion is about what effects does man's activity have on the environment. The discussion that is happening here is that cancer doesn't matter, because a man with cancer has been killed by a car accident.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Well, whether the world generally heats up or cools down, both is a departure from the weather we're used to. Generally, our attempts to fix global warming, or to not fix it, doesn't seem to have a significant. After all, the sun throws more energy onto the atmosphere than all of us combined, you can't expect our actions > sun, right?

However, I think erratic weather patterns generally make life difficult for everyone, so we technically should do what we can to save our own butts. Whether we have to warm up the world or cool it it secondary to our survival.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

No one's talking about our actions affecting the sun. That would be idiotic.

How ya doing, buddy?

i know, what i'm saying is, our effect on the planet is unlikely to be more significant the sun's impact on us.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

You don't think that depleting the ozone, our protection from the sun, could negatively affect us?

FELIPE NO

I think it does. Only that, our actions still pales in comparison to the sun's effects on us. We shouldn't contribute to our own doom, however by letting the ozone deplete from whatever we do.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I feel reassured that the end of the world will always have an element of uncertainty.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I love it when the ozone layer is brought up in discussions about the climate and global warming. It's a sure sign that no one in the thread knows anything whatsoever about what they're talking about.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I love it when RABicle enters a thread to denounce every poster due to the presence of one. It's a sure sign he's about to get his ass kicked for trolling and worthlessness.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Where have all the sunspots gone?

I think "Climate Change" can happen a lot faster than people think it can... hot or cold, either way.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I see dailytech updated with a graphic.

Wow so it was still colder on a more regular basis 15 years ago? And the line of best fit still goes steadily upwards. I guess this one cold year makes everything a-ok now. Thank you right wing pundits, let's continue the harmless activities of deforestation and pumping harmful gases into the atmosphere.

I was speaking idiomatically.

In Canada he have had a colder then avarage winter, when this was announced people where claiming that global warming is false and we have nothing to worry about. They forget that the earth goes through temerature faze that can lead to hotter or colder then avarage seasons.

Last year in Newfoundland we did not get any snow till close to the end of January, this year we had 5 storms before Christmas hit, next year could be all rain for all we know.

Bottem line is... global warming is still happening, don't let the recent cold weather fool you, cuz when the hot summer hits, people will be changing their minds.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Yeah the otehr day here it was fucken 41°C (you do the conversion) at 4 in th afternoon. Stepping outside my lecture theatre was like getting punched in the face. Keep in mind that Summer is now over.

And didn't most of the global cooling hysteria in the 60s turn out to be cooling as a result of nuclear fallout?

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by RABicle

And didn't most of the global cooling hysteria in the 60s turn out to be cooling as a result of nuclear fallout?

You just lost claim to be indignant.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

This reminds me of another debate going on, ID versus evolution.

"O there's no complete explanation for how the eyeball evolved so it must've been created, thus debunking a mountain of research in evolutions favor because it can't fully explain every step of the eye-creation process"

translates into

"O there's no complete explanation for why the earth would cool this year so it must be nothing to worry about, thus debunking a mountain of research in global warming's favor because it can't fully explain every step of this year's cooling."

Not to say global warming is as established a theory as evolution, but I find the similarities amusing.

Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell - New York Times

Quote:

If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.

Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.

“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.

“Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Niña event is over,” he said.

Originally Posted by Night Phoenix

Psh -- the temperature of Earth has barely risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last 100 years.

Apparently you have no idea how short of a time 100 years is.

Jam it back in, in the dark.