Warming over, Ice age on its way

[Cigarmark]

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, February 25, 2008

• Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.
According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.
Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."
He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.
It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

[TripleF]

True, true......I thought I had to put a long sleeve t-shirt on a couple more times than I am used to in the Florida winter this year....

Great article. Thanks!

[WyoBob]

Originally Posted by fishforfree

True, true......I thought I had to put a long sleeve t-shirt on a couple more times than I am used to in the Florida winter this year....

Great article. Thanks!

I've got some ice fishing stuff I could sell ya

WyoBob

[Blueface]

Great article on a great topic of debate.

Going to be 88 today in South Florida.

[rumballs]

Not a very good article when you consider how selective it is in what it reports from the NCDC report which is here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/...jan/jan08.html

Originally Posted by Cigarmark

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

As the first paragraph of the report says (emphasis added):

Originally Posted by NCDC report

The contiguous U.S. temperature during January 2008 was near average, according to an analysis by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville NC. Temperatures across much of the western U.S. were cooler than average, while temperatures were warmer than average in the Northeast, which had its 20th warmest January on record. An active pattern brought heavy rain and snow to the West and helped ease drought conditions in parts of the region, but 26% of the nation remained in some stage of drought. The global average surface temperature in January was the 31st warmest on record, based on preliminary data.

They also decided to mention China:

Originally Posted by Cigarmark

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century.

But left out Australia:

Originally Posted by NCDC report

it was the warmest January on record in Australia

Originally Posted by Cigarmark

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

Even more than that, they're not talking about one winter, they're talking about one month...
The report for December of 2007 says:

Originally Posted by NCDC report

The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. in December 2007 was near the 20th century mean, while the global surface temperature was 13th warmest in the 128-year record.

and doesn't contain any cold extremes that can be singled out.

I couldn't find anything at the NCDC site about February, and since the article only briefly mentioned it it seems they just threw that in to add weight to their claims.

[raisin]

From DailyKos:

One of the interesting consequences of climate change is greater precipitation from wetter, more intense weather systems. The local result might mean excess snow fall in normally drier and warmer climes.

Register -- China is experiencing its worst winter in more than 100 years. If the IPCC is right, we can expect increased weather variability. In fact, one author recently said that the term "climate change" does not correctly describe the shifts brought about by global warming. "Climate weirdness" is a much more accurate term.

But take a look at how the anti-science brigade spins it and admire the sheer intellectual dishonesty on display, starting with the headline:

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 ... [a few short grafs later] ... The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850.

Note the double standard: A 100 year warming trend verified in everything from commercial shipping records to pristine ice cores can be waved away with the implication that record keeping was less comprehensive and thus less reliable before 1972. But the accuracy and quality of seasonal variances and sun spot records beginning in 1350, made in part by a handful of Chinese astrologers and Bedouin tribesmen centuries before the invention of the modern solar telescope, are indisputable. And if you think that's funny, the article also notes that despite alarmist's 'shrieking' over empirical observations such as the recent record busting ice melt in the Arctic, the ice is back! Gosh, who could have predicted The Ice Would Return to the North Pole in February?

This is what passes for a science article in today's mainstream conservative media. But it's part of a tragic pattern that's all too familiar. One not confined to science or conservative rags (If only it were!). Tripe like this is grist for our Idiocracy to be passed back and forth among conservative circles, gaining half-witted followers and losing detail like a game of telegraph in a Kindergarten class, until it ultimately leaks in some form into conventional media wisdom. How long before the anti-science lobby enlists the media in hope of discrediting climate science, by citing that very headline to imply how looney those silly scientists were for warning of a looming ice age in 2008? Not long I bet.

That pattern has become pervasive, it now reaches into our most prestigious news venues and nothing, not even the inevitable loss of credibility that invariably follows, seems to stop it. Over and over the traditional media is burnt to a crisp by reporting uncritically what right-wing sources tell them. Or the editors simply turn over their editorial page to hyper-partisan shills with an almost flawless track record of being dead wrong. And so we're treated to an endless procession of erroneous reporting; they 'know' where the weapons of mass destruction are; no one could have 'predicted' the levees would fail; the White House had 'nothing' to do with Valeria Plame being exposed and anyone who did will be fired; the surge is working; and on and on and on.

The GOP PR gurus have learned they can simply FAX their talking points to a wide-eyed media who will stamp them with the seal of legitimate journalism. No matter how embarrassing it is for the news organization in question when the facts come out, and in spite of some damn fine independent reporting here and there, too many stenographers pretending to be reporters dutifully go back for a second and third helping of fresh, steaming wingnut bullshit. And too many editors let them slide time and time again. At what point does the media cease being a victim, and begin to share culpability for the consequences?

Originally Posted by raisin

From DailyKos:

One of the interesting consequences of climate change is greater precipitation from wetter, more intense weather systems. The local result might mean excess snow fall in normally drier and warmer climes.

Register -- China is experiencing its worst winter in more than 100 years. If the IPCC is right, we can expect increased weather variability. In fact, one author recently said that the term "climate change" does not correctly describe the shifts brought about by global warming. "Climate weirdness" is a much more accurate term.

But take a look at how the anti-science brigade spins it and admire the sheer intellectual dishonesty on display, starting with the headline:

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 ... [a few short grafs later] ... The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850.

Note the double standard: A 100 year warming trend verified in everything from commercial shipping records to pristine ice cores can be waved away with the implication that record keeping was less comprehensive and thus less reliable before 1972. But the accuracy and quality of seasonal variances and sun spot records beginning in 1350, made in part by a handful of Chinese astrologers and Bedouin tribesmen centuries before the invention of the modern solar telescope, are indisputable. And if you think that's funny, the article also notes that despite alarmist's 'shrieking' over empirical observations such as the recent record busting ice melt in the Arctic, the ice is back! Gosh, who could have predicted The Ice Would Return to the North Pole in February?

This is what passes for a science article in today's mainstream conservative media. But it's part of a tragic pattern that's all too familiar. One not confined to science or conservative rags (If only it were!). Tripe like this is grist for our Idiocracy to be passed back and forth among conservative circles, gaining half-witted followers and losing detail like a game of telegraph in a Kindergarten class, until it ultimately leaks in some form into conventional media wisdom. How long before the anti-science lobby enlists the media in hope of discrediting climate science, by citing that very headline to imply how looney those silly scientists were for warning of a looming ice age in 2008? Not long I bet.

That pattern has become pervasive, it now reaches into our most prestigious news venues and nothing, not even the inevitable loss of credibility that invariably follows, seems to stop it. Over and over the traditional media is burnt to a crisp by reporting uncritically what right-wing sources tell them. Or the editors simply turn over their editorial page to hyper-partisan shills with an almost flawless track record of being dead wrong. And so we're treated to an endless procession of erroneous reporting; they 'know' where the weapons of mass destruction are; no one could have 'predicted' the levees would fail; the White House had 'nothing' to do with Valeria Plame being exposed and anyone who did will be fired; the surge is working; and on and on and on.

The GOP PR gurus have learned they can simply FAX their talking points to a wide-eyed media who will stamp them with the seal of legitimate journalism. No matter how embarrassing it is for the news organization in question when the facts come out, and in spite of some damn fine independent reporting here and there, too many stenographers pretending to be reporters dutifully go back for a second and third helping of fresh, steaming wingnut bullshit. And too many editors let them slide time and time again. At what point does the media cease being a victim, and begin to share culpability for the consequences?

Alright, you had me at least reading your comments, until you decided this was a purely GOP political issue.

You are not furthering the debate with this wingnut bullshit, you are just being politically insulting. I would simply point out that the same wingnut bullshit can be applied to the other party's leadership.

Keep this about facts, or keep the wingnut bullshit comments off the board.

[raisin]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5568979.html

Further proof that global warming is a wingnut scam...

[Corona Gigante]

eh... uh!

[raisin]

Originally Posted by SvilleKid

Alright, you had me at least reading your comments, until you decided this was a purely GOP political issue.

You are not furthering the debate with this wingnut bullshit, you are just being politically insulting. I would simply point out that the same wingnut bullshit can be applied to the other party's leadership.

Keep this about facts, or keep the wingnut bullshit comments off the board.

Saying it three times does not make it true...

[Blueface]

How the heck did this evolve to a political thread?
Oh, that is right, it took one post.

Amazing!

Originally Posted by raisin

Saying it three times does not make it true...

Am I missing something? I am simply quoting you.

Are you making this a personal attack? My request wasn't personal at all. It was you words, and a simple request to keep this about facts, and not about attacking specific political ideologies.

[rumballs]

Originally Posted by Blueface

How the heck did this evolve to a political thread?
Oh, that is right, it took one post.

Just a reminder to all - let's try to stick to facts and commentary on the original article, and avoid political generalizations.

If this turns into political bickering it will be closed.

[raisin]

it was taken from a webblog.

[SmokeyTheKid]

I wouldn't say this is a political issue. I know plenty of Republicans who are fully aware of climate change and our impact on it. It's unfair to paint all GOPers as ignorants who plug their ears and cover their eyes and insist the world is flat and the center of the universe. It's not true, it's small and very vocal minority. Based purely on personal experience, I'd say most informed Republicans accept the data, which takes a whale of an effort to discount. For that vocal few who insists on ignoring the apparent ... there's really no point in arguing with them.

At this point, by and large, it's not really a matter of whether one believes in climate change and our role in it, it's a matter of whether one is willing to do something about it.