Monday, October 12, 2009

As Global Warming Continues, Montanans Prepare for Frostbite

Currently, the top two headlines on the Drudge Report read as follows...

BBC:What Happened to Global Warming...
Montana Cold Breaks Record...

Now, I have to point out that I was pretty excited to click on a link on the Drudge Report and be re-directed to "Montana's News Station," but I was more excited when I realized that, whereas I could be hunkered down trying to keep warm back at home in the States, I currently live in a city that posted almost 80 degree weather today! Now, 80 degrees in October is not out of the question in Montana, but to be able to count on warm days all week, midway through October, is something that I'm not quite used to yet. I'm working on being comfortable with this...

Which, in some random way, leads me to my next point. The article from the BBC begs the question that I've been asking myself for a few months now; "What happened to global warming?" We haven't heard much about it in the news recently, which either reflects poorly on the media for neglecting such a global problem, or reflects poorly on the scientists who purport the truth of this apocalyptic trend.

One segment of the story, in particular, stood out to me...

In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.
What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.
To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.
Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.
But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.
So what can we expect in the next few years?


Quite frankly, this seems like the typical scientific ploy - if the numbers don't add up, just change them...or say that "there will be periods of cooling before things begin to heat up again..."

I would recommend reading the whole article, there is some interesting discussion on the effect of Ocean warming and cooling on global temperatures.

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