The Global Cooling Myth

An honest man never disappoints. You are a wise man, of that I am sure.

February 26, 2008 12:55 PM
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.

That seems to say it all.

www.dailytech.com...

Well, like people have been saying already there is not enough data to support either theory. We cannot take a mere 100 years of weather data and determine that the earth is warming or cooling. If you look throughout the life of the earth you will find much warmer and much cooler temps. Who is to say what is normal or average for the earth? It's all about at what temp will mankind most thrive. I for one though do not believe in man made global warming and that these green house gases do not have the devastating effect that Al Gore and his cronies predict.

[edit on 2-3-2008 by bakednutz]

REDNECK, that bit about chaotic weather anomilies otherwise known as weather....that gave me a chuckle he he.....as for the rest of your post I salute you! I started on the other side of the fence and can now see me climbing over.
Oh, and of course it was Noah, silly silly me, no,really I knew that,I did, I did

To profemeritus, just wandering, if one years cooling, wipes out a hundred years worth of warming, well....what happens the next year and the next if it keeps up that??? What I'm saying is this years cooling weather balances it out, then next years would....ya know what I mean?

cheers

[edit on 2-3-2008 by skribal]

Originally posted by skribal
To profemeritus, just wandering, if one years cooling, wipes out a hundred years worth of warming, well....what happens the next year and the next if it keeps up that??? What I'm saying is this years cooling weather balances it out, then next years would....ya know what I mean?

cheers

Well, it's quite interesting that this thread's OP was focusing on an issue that has been misrepresented by the obscurantists for years. The idea that there was some sort of scientific consensus in the 1970s that global cooling and an ice-age was what the near future held, when in fact very few papers were published on this issue and it was a minority position hyped by the media.

And so we eventually move to an article from dailytech, a well-known media rag that spreads obscurantist screeds. In this article we also have another misrepresentation (link to another dailytech article), this time related to the position of Kenneth Tapping and the current solar conditions. And as you point out, using a single year which has shown cooling mediated by La Nina conditions. But anyway, what did Kenneth Tapping have to say about all the septic rags using him:

The article is rubbish.

I believe that global climate change is the biggest problem facing us today. As yet we have no idea of exactly how serious it can get or where the tipping point may be.

The lateness of the start of the solar activity cycle is not yet enough to be something to worry about. However, even if we were to go into another minimum, and the Sun dims for a few decades, as it did during the Maunder Minimum, it could reduce the problem for a while, but things will come back worse when the cycle starts again.

blog.rightsideup.org...

So the article does say it all - some things never change.

reply to post by skribal

To profemeritus, just wandering, if one years cooling, wipes out a hundred years worth of warming, well....what happens the next year and the next if it keeps up that??? What I'm saying is this years cooling weather balances it out, then next years would....ya know what I mean?

Absolutely not. What I am saying is that anyone can use any statistic they chose to prove or disprove a point. The earth has been going through global changes for billions of years. We are looking at the last century and trying to draw conclusions. There are so many theories out there now, and to prove or disprove them from an empirical point of view, is impossible, given the time frame of a human life span.

One thing to remember is that the MSM tends to pick up and report mostly on quotes that agree with its agenda. Al Gore knows that , and has used that fact to promote "his" theory" and win himself a Nobel Prize.

The article that I quoted in a previous post points out that, in their opinion, solar factors are much more contributive to temperatures on earth, than man-made carbon dioxide.

I personally agree with that, although, just as with anything else, each person can decide what he or she believes. Given the fact that we are talking about a small slice of time, from a cosmic point of view, it would be next to impossible to PROVE or DISPROVE anyone's opinion today.

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
The article that I quoted in a previous post points out that, in their opinion, solar factors are much more contributive to temperatures on earth, than man-made carbon dioxide.

But where is the evidence of this? For the last 50-60 years solar activity has essentially been going nowhere, and possibly even falling. Yet we have seen ever increasing temperatures.

The article you used also misrepresents the opinion of the solar scientist cited (Kenneth Tapping - his response to all these denialist articles is in my post above). Solar scientists like Foukal, Solanki, Frohlich, and Lockwood etc accept that for the last few decades, solar activity can't account for the warming, and some like Leif Svaalgard now go further and suggest it has been having little influence for 400 years.

So, where is the evidence? If solar activity is stable or falling, how can it account for warming?

ABE:

Although the rarity of the current episode of high average sunspot numbers may indicate that the Sun has contributed to the unusual climate change during the twentieth century, we point out that solar variability is unlikely to have been the dominant cause of the strong warming during the past three decades.

Solanki, Usoskin et al.2004

Variations in the Sun’s total energy output (luminosity) are caused by changing dark (sunspot) and bright structures on the solar disk during the 11-year sunspot cycle. The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years. In this Review, we show that detailed analysis of these small output variations has greatly advanced our understanding of solar luminosity change, and this new understanding indicates that brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century. Additional climate forcing by changes in the Sun’s output of ultraviolet light, and of magnetized plasmas, cannot be ruled out. The suggested mechanisms are, however, too complex to evaluate meaningfully at present.

Foukal, Frohlich et al., 2006

There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth’s pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth’s climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.

Lockwood & Frohlich, 2007

This comparison shows without requiring any recourse to modeling that since roughly 1970 the solar influence on climate (through the channels considered here) cannot have been dominant. In particular, the Sun cannot have contributed more than 30% to the steep temperature increase that has taken place since then, irrespective of which of the three considered channels is the dominant one determining Sun-climate interactions: tropospheric heating caused by changes in total solar irradiance, stratospheric chemistry influenced by changes in the solar UV spectrum, or cloud coverage affected by the cosmic ray flux.

Solanki & Krivova, 2003

And the Svaalgard study is very new, and should be published some time this year.

[edit on 2-3-2008 by melatonin]

reply to post by melatonin

I notice in your signature that you quote Poincare. That is interesting, given the following quote

Hallmark of Chaos - sensitive dependence on initial conditions - in his own words:

If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of that same universe at a succeeding moment. but even if it were the case that the natural laws had no longer any secret for us, we could still only know the initial situation approximately. If that enabled us to predict the succeeding situation with the same approximation, that is all we require, and we should say that the phenomenon had been predicted, that it is governed by laws. But it is not always so; it may happen that small differences in the initial conditions produce very great ones in the final phenomena. A small error in the former will produce an enormous error in the latter. Prediction becomes impossible, and we have the fortuitous phenomenon. - in a 1903 essay "Science and Method"

Note the last line. Given what we have to work with in terms of variability and data, I would suggest that Poincare's conclusion applies. Prediction becomes impossible.

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
I notice in your signature that you quote Poincare. That is interesting, given the following quote

Note the last line. Given what we have to work with in terms of variability and data, I would suggest that Poincare's conclusion applies. Prediction becomes impossible.

Yet, we have been able to do so. You appear to take a very negative fatalistic view of science. It was climate science understanding the nature of GHG-induced warming that predicted excess warming in the arctic, changes in day-night temps, more warming in winter, cooling in the stratosphere, etc etc.

All have been validated. If you are talking about getting a 100% correct value for future temperatures, then, yeah. We might not be able to achieve this, yet we can give likely ranges accepting a degree of uncertainty.

reply to post by melatonin

All have been validated.

That is my point. All has NOT been validated. As we speak,

In the late summer and early fall of 2007, there were a number of alarming media reports about the arctic sea ice melting. Additionally, there were predictions that it would not recover to its previous levels.

But, we have this graph charting the rise and fall of arctic sea ice for the last 365 days, notice that the arctic sea ice is right back where it started at in February 2007.

From the University of Illinois Cryosphere Today:

from:
wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com...

For every "Fact" that you cite, I can cite one that contradicts it.

You appear to take a very negative fatalistic view of science.

Actually, I only have a negative view of "pop science", also known as "politically correct science" or the "Science of Al Gore, that Nobel Prize winner" (Oh, his Nobel Prize was NOT in Science?)

All one needs to do, to see how science erred, is to look at it's storied past. It is littered with failures and mistakes that were, at the time, taken as gospel. Scientists always dismiss such failures by saying that, yes, in the past, science made mistakes, but "this time we got it right"- yes, until some other scientist proves you wrong.

[edit on 2-3-2008 by ProfEmeritus]

I think the whole thing is a scare tactic; to encourage the take over,
by the one world government. Like so much of their science, it can't
be falsified by failing predictions. They just keep changing the theories
for ever. So they fit all and any evidence and observations.

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
That is my point. All has NOT been validated. As we speak,

Yeah, ice melted in the summer and then reformed in the winter. Completely irrelevant. It does it every year.

Actually, I only have a negative view of "pop science", also known as "politically correct science" or the "Science of Al Gore, that Nobel Prize winner" (Oh, his Nobel Prize was NOT in Science?)

Gore is just one dude running around trying to save the world, whilst feeding his ego.

So what?

All one needs to do, to see how science erred, is to look at it's storied past. It is littered with failures and mistakes that were, at the time, taken as gospel. Scientists always dismiss such failures by saying that, yes, in the past, science made mistakes, but "this time we got it right"- yes, until some other scientist proves you wrong.

Yeah, fatalistic - 'some things were wrong in the past, therefore its all useless I tell you, damn useless. Get me the tarot cards'. However, you were pretty happy to depend on some denialist rag for your science when it fit your preconceptions. Cool.

reply to post by melatonin

However, you were pretty happy to depend on some denialist rag for your science when it fit your preconceptions.

All the article did was list the temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) that published the results. Go to those tracking sites and check out the data yourself.

You decide what is considered "some denialist rag". I think it is YOU that has no understanding of the scientific method. You just gave your OPINION of a media outlet. Perhaps you forgot what your own signature says. Let me remind you:

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance." Henri Poincare

QED

Ok, profermrititus, melatonin, chill!


You are both correct! The facts speak for themselves on both sides, this is really all we do know.As I have now learnt. How ever there IS escalating changes happening right now, this is undeniable, the seasons themselves still come and go, yes weather can change in a chaotic manner and this is why it's called weather ( for want of a better word, weather does sound better then chaos! hmmm....I'll just go check the chaos!..I wonder what the chaos is today?!)
Time will tell, as it allways has, maybe if we all joined forces we could corrolate all this data a bit better. Because, in my mind, whatever is happening in the big picture, it's right there in front of our noses, and something stinks.
All I really can say with any authority, is that our winters have become much much milder and warmer in the last ten years to the previous ten, and our summers are getting really hot. The sun now burns my skin much quicker than it used to.
I'm not kidding when I say that it actually hurts to go out in the sun, now. Maybe I'm just getting old, but the incidence of skin cancer IS much more prevalant then it used to be, especially in younger people.When I was a kid sun -burn was the reason to stay out of the sun in the middle of the day, and you didn't realise how burnt you had gotten till the night, now it actually hurts to be out in the sun, for a longer period of time, in the middle of the day.
We used to have a contest to see when the break of the season would happen,meaning when the opening rains would come, one bloke i know used to get it right every year, they just don't do that anymore because even if you study the long range forecasts, even if you look at all the "data" from previous years, it rains when it wants to, not seemingly when it should.
Things are changing I suppose, is all we really know.
cheers


edit: this is just my little opinion!

[edit on 2-3-2008 by skribal]

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
All the article did was list the temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) that published the results. Go to those tracking sites and check out the data yourself.

I don't have an issue with that data at all. I never made a squeek about it. My issue is where they have misrepresented the claims of Kenneth Tapping.

It is only a very short term span, moderated by a La Nina event which has induced a degree of cooling. So, it's no big issue in reality.

You decide what is considered "some denialist rag". I think it is YOU that has no understanding of the scientific method. You just gave your OPINION of a media outlet. Perhaps you forgot what your own signature says. Let me remind you:

It is a denialist rag. The Kenneth Tapping misrepresentation has been bouncing around the deniosphere for a while now. As soon as the first article came to light, he made his true position known, clearly stating they had misrepresented him.

Yet here the articles are, still bouncing around. It even made the Telegraph in the UK this week. Another rag that give space to the likes of Monckton and Carter.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance." Henri Poincare

QED

Uhm, yeah.

Originally posted by skribal
Ok, profermrititus, melatonin, chill!

Heh, cool as a cucumber.

[edit on 2-3-2008 by melatonin]

reply to post by skribal

You're right.
It's the old saying "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it."

I wonder if we could have a real global effect on the weather. It think that is the issue. Those that feel that we can, are upset about it. Those that think that we can't, just want to go on to some issue where we can perhaps have an effect- like learning to settle differences with words, rather than with guns and bombs.

At least we weren't hurling bombs at each other. LOL!

Both of you have a nice day.
Peace.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


agreed!
speaking of bombs and guns though, I might just move away from the weather for a while, (actually I rather liked rednecks description...chaos!) because with the things going on in the world at the moment,well, it's getting hard to keep up with it all. When the world calms down, militarily speaking, I might get back to my weather/chaos paranoia!! at least the weather will still be there!! one way or the other.....
later..