COLDEST EARTH IN 12 YEARS!  Where’s Global Warming?

Don’t expect to hear this News in the mainstream media or “scientists” whose livelihood depends on a gloom and doom warming scenario.  But, the planet is not doing what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned us about – in fact the opposite is happening.  Remember the story early this Summer about the British Kayaker who was going to witness the complete melting of the North Pole?  The story made CNN Headline news but guess what – no retraction, no update when the North Pole didn’t melt.  In fact, Ice coverage at the North Pole is now +31.3% more than last year and NASA’s satellite imagery shows it’s not much different than 29 years ago when NASA first started taking pictures of the North Pole (see Ice coverage from Oct 1979 vs Last Year’s minimum and Oct 2008 great expansion). Also recall that last year was the real start of a pattern shift with the Northern Hemisphere having the most snowfall in over 30 years (bet you didn’t hear that in the news).

If we had pictures from 1000 years ago during the medieval warm period it may very well have looked like 2007, maybe even worse. Now didn’t Al Gore use Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as an example of more and stronger hurricanes are going to be the norm in his documentary Inconvenient Truth?  Well, here’s an inconvenient fact according to Florida State University which tracks Accumulate Cyclone Energy (ACE) and Tropical Cyclone Days which is now at the lowest levels (340) since you guessed it 1977 (31 years ago).  The ACE index has steadily declined since the peak in 1992 when the index was at 880.  2004 was 2nd most active hurricane year at 782. So, the data clearly doesn’t suggest more hurricanes, in fact much less on a global scale.  A bit amusing how Al Gore used a cherry picker in his movie as clearly he cherry picks the data to make his case as does the media who thrives on gloom and doom and rarely gives all the facts.  Below is what the science and data is really telling us or visit the FSU site www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/ for more information.

So the North Pole ice is expanding faster than we’ve seen in decades, the Southern Hemisphere ice coverage is as big as it’s been in decades (very normal), the planet is the coolest in 12 years and there has been no warming trend since 1998 when the global temperature peaked at +0.6C above average according to the UK Met Hadley Center, So far in 2008 we’re trending +0.3C above average with some months actually trending below average as was the case in January 2008. Recall that some scientists and radio shows went too far to say that global warming was over in January this year as the Earth was technically “normal”.  One month is weather but a decade IS CLIMATE!  Over this 12 year period (clearly not short term weather but climate) CO2 has steadily gone up +14.7% since 1979 and up +5.3% in the past 10 years.  CO2 is up, but the planet is cooler? Brings into question whether mad-made CO2 is as important a factor as IPCC and alarmists are making it out to be.  A pollutant if made by man but natural if made by a dead tree but either way not likely to be the end of mankind or the world as we know it (CO2 is 5th most important gas in our atmosphere representing less than 0.038% of the total atmosphere).  We may welcome a little CO2 after this Fall-Winter!

While weather is not long term climate there have been signs of big changes globally the past few years.  Recall that China last year had the coldest/snowiest winter in 800 years; record late freezes in California and the Southeast US the past couple years; Brazil coldest/snowiest late Winter (Sep 2008) in 100+ years, Last year Argentina had the coldest Winter in 100 years.  Record 100+ year snowfall in the Midwest/New England last year.  Remember Lake Okeechobee in Florida was the poster child of climate change as the lake was nearly 5 feet below normal – today it’s 100% back to normal in just one year.

So, what’s causing the big changes?  Most likely two things that the IPCC discounts because they are not fully understood 1) The Pacific Decadal Oscillation Cycle – PDO and 2) The Phases of the Sun. The PDO is simply a long-term Pacific Ocean temperature cycle of about 32 years that goes from warm Ocean phases (as has been the case for the past 32 years from the middle 1970s to 2007) and then into cold phases which started last year and has strengthened to the coldest levels in 50 years.  IPCC will argue that it was a coincident that the last time the PDO was negative (cold phase from the early 1940s to the middle 1970s) that the globe had really cold and snowy years with a general global cooling trend or lack of any sustained warming trend despite CO2 going up over 8% from the 40s to the 70s.  The graphic below shows departure from average Ocean temperatures with a colder than average Pacific Ocean especially in the Eastern Pacific, around Antarctica, across the Mediterranean and even around the Northwest Atlantic.  This is one cause of the cooler trends here on Earth.  Bottom line fact, warm Oceans = warm Planet; cold Oceans = cold Planet.

The second is the sun.  The sun goes through a regular 11-year solar cycles of weak inactive periods (no sun spots) and very active periods (a lot of hot sun spots).  The current cycle 23 minimum has been unusually long, longest in over 100 years with no sunspots. The minimum phase of the sun brings less solar radiation to Earth keeping the planet cooler, especially when the Oceans are also cooler.

So retailers like Diesel that run alarmist ads with NYC under water and sunbathers on the rooftops in Winter better keep a few coats on the shelves this Winter and maybe for a lot of Winters to come! Smart companies like Wal-Mart, SCJohnson and many others are focusing on reducing packaging so we don’t fill up our landfills, using methane gas from landfills to reduce our dependence on foreign oil to run factories, putting in sky lights in retail stores to reduce energy bills or motion sensors in lighted grocery displays that only come on when a customer is in the area.  Being good stewards of the planet – very important – believing everything you hear from the media – run for the hills! Anyone who says “the debate is over” or “global warming scientists are in 100% consensus agreement” is not coming from a true scientist as Science is not about consensus it’s about studying the facts toward a systematic knowledge of the truth as everything else is just a hypothesis.  Giving only part of the story is a political agenda not science.  Climate change is a hypothesis and the debate and study should continue as the media and the “consensus scientists” do NOT have all the FINAL answers – we learn new things everyday – maybe they will too! Climate is always changing as it has for a billion years and will continue to do so with humans or without humans for the next billion years.