Global Warming has stopped!

www.newstatesman.com...

Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?

Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.

With only few days remaining in 2007, the indications are the global temperature for this year is the same as that for 2006 – there has been no warming over the 12 months.

But is this just a blip in the ever upward trend you may ask? No.

The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased.

Yes! We did it! We beat Global Warming!

Now we might be able to work on getting modern technology to 3rd World countries, where the average life span is 20-30 years less than the modern world. Maybe now Envirowhackos will stop blocking the 300 hydro-electic Dams needed to get fresh water and electricity to the people of the 3rd world, so they can also prosper under modern technology! The days of dirt poor, diseased ravaged third world countries now might have a chance to prosper! Now that Global Warming has stopped! (Like it ever existed in the 1st place)

Climate is measured over periods of 30 years to eliminate small ups and downs caused by natural variability - some, including myself and other GW sceptics, argue 30 years is too small a period and it should be measured over longer timescales. So arguing that a 7 year period determines climatic trends is clearly complete bunkum (and clearly the author of the article hasn't bothered to do any research into climatology )

When it comes to climate, you can believe the politicians and the media. Or you can believe the climatologists.

If global temps in 2080 are lower than they were in 1980, and there's been downward trend for much of the 21st century, then we may say that GW has been reversed

Graph

Your source says:

The period 1980-98 was one of rapid warming – a temperature increase of about 0.5 degrees C (CO2 rose from 340ppm to 370ppm). But since then the global temperature has been flat

Yet a graph of the 5 year average shows that this is completely false. Although the rate of change has decelerated slightly, a strong upward trend remains. In fact, historically speaking, a flat line would be wierd too, even if there was one. Look at the 5 year averages on the graph I provided. There have always been periodic dips in the average due to natural variability. These have disappeared in the last 13 years due to acceleration.

Anti-warming propaganda focuses in on the outlier year of 1998 because it makes the recent numbers look less impressive, but the big picture remains quite clear, and I will happily bet you that we will set at least one new record in the next 5 years.


If you want to argue for modern technology, let's introduce that modern technology to first world countries.

And when I say modern technology, I don't mean setting stuff on fire. Fire is not modern technology. The Chinese were drilling for and burning natural gas 2000 years ago. The Internal Combustion Engine is a child of the 1700s and has existed more or less as we know it for 150 years, no matter how much corn you try to shove in the fuel tank for the benefit of ADM.

60 years into the fission age, and less than 30 away from commerical fusion, there is absolutely no reason that there should be a single coal-fired plant still operating in the United States.

Much less is there any reason I should be driving around the same technology that my great grandfather was tearing apart and improving on in his barn way back in the early 30s, much less paying 3.20 a gallon to do so, when we've got electric technology that would kill internal combustion (and the oil industry, and our friends in Saudi Arabia) tomorrow if it weren't for the fact that no serious automaker is building it on an appropriate scale, and even have our choice of running it either on battery power or sans battery with a proton exchange membrane fuel cell.
(You know, hydrogen, that stuff that every single person in America has pumped to virtually every room in their home dirt cheap, but can't do anything with because there's no gain in electrolyzing the water when you're using expensive, limited, and dangerous fossil fuels to generate the power for the operation. That stuff that republicans ignore because they'd rather run their cars on low-grade bourbon so that they can funnel tax dollars to agro-giants pushing a boondoggle with no future? I assume you've heard of it.)


You're dang right about it being time to interpret the global warming data and proliferate technology accordingly Mr Conservative. Now if you wouldn't mind taking that message back to the party, I'd really appreciate it.