Is 'global cooling' happening?
by Dr David Whitehouse
Today, the world is warmer than it has been since we started making reasonably accurate measurements about 150 years ago. It has been warming since the Victorian times, off and on, with a few periods of no change. Over this time, it has become about 0.7 degrees C warmer. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that mankind's influence on our climate became apparent around 1960 - and that, since 1980, the global temperature has risen by 0.4 degrees C; mostly due to mankind.
While we do live in the warmest decade since proper measurements began our temperatures do not seem to be unprecedented. There is good evidence that 1,000 years ago the medieval climatic optimum was just as warm, if not warmer. Before that the Roman warm period, and the Bronze Age warm period might have been just as hot. What is different today is that as a result of industrialisation, mankind is pumping 90 million tonnes of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere every 24 hours, but calculating the effect of it is difficult.
Despite what you might read, forecasting the extent of global warming in the future is an uncertain task. Greenhouse gasses trap more heat from the sun, so the world will warm. But by how much is a matter of speculation. This is a mainstream scientific issue, not an extreme position. Climatologists are uncertain about what they call the earth's sensitivity to greenhouse gasses. Do they have a big effect, or a small one? And what is the contribution made by so-called feedback mechanisms in our climatic system - do they make the situation better or worse?
Then there is the interplay of short-term natural climatic cycles called decadal variations - that are atmospheric, oceanic and solar cycles. Finally there are longer, millennial effects to account for as well. Climate scientists take a long view of things. Thirty years is enough, they say, to get away from the effects of weather variations and see what long term changes are happening. Over the past 30 years, the world has warmed. But it has not warmed at all since 2001. Although only a decade in length, scientists are puzzled why - as greenhouse gasses increase - the temperature has not. It may be a temporary blip, or possibly an indication that we do not fully understand what is going on.
The sun is, by far, the biggest energy source for our climate and scientists know that changes in its activity can cause climatic effects. Such was the case in the 17th century when a prolonged period of no sunspots corresponded to a cold spell called the Little Ice Age. It was the same at the beginning of the 19th century. Recently, after two hundred years of increasing activity our sun has once again gone into a quiet spell. It might mean that it has a cooling effect on the earth in decades to come. Predictions from climate models suggest that man-made warming will be much larger though. That is, of course, if the climate computer models are correct. For a subject that is often dealt with using slogans, pamphlets and newspaper headlines - climate change is actually a complex issue.
The earth's climate system involves the absorption of over a hundred petawatts - that is more than a hundred million times the energy of a nuclear power station - of energy from the Sun. It goes into the atmosphere, oceans and land. The atmosphere and oceans are moving, constantly exchanging energy and the atmosphere moves over a variable land surface heating and cooling as it does. Never before have scientists attempted to simulate such a complex system as the earth's climate in a computer. What has emerged, an ever-warming world, might be right. Or it may not. If the current temperature standstill does not change soon, nature may be telling us that we have got it wrong.
Dr David Whitehouse is science adviser to the Global Warming Policy Foundation think-tank
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It is possible global cooling could mask the impact of our global warming for a while. Perhaps, it will get really cold and kill us all off before we can cause more human-inflicted damage.
Al - UK
We need Dr Whithouse's balanced views down in Australia, right now. There is a divisive push for taxing CO2. Doubters of the tax have been lumped into the same basket as doubters of the theory of anthropogenic warming. The media is polarised as is the population. Yours is the voice of open-minded reason, we don't get enough of it.
Stewie - Perth, Western Australia
In the last 150 years, there have been small changes like the cooling between 1940-1978 - which I notice you have not mentioned. Climate scientists have grossly overestimated the warming effect of carbon dioxide.
They have not taken into account things like ocean cycles such as the 30-year cycle PDO and how the sea, which is a giant heat storage unit, realises this heat. They have not considered the effects of the sun.
There is no such thing as the solar constant. There is always going to be some variation in the sun's output. A small change means a big change on earth. We may now be entering a maunder mininium type event.
Anonymous
Global warming. What a joke. Yes, the sun does it and man cannot even if he wanted to. Man does pollute his environment - chemicals, GMO, chemtrails - watch your morning skies, weather modification projects, HAARP, nuclear and other industry and cars etc.
But in spite of all that, he does not cause global warming. There is no global warming; the truth is - there is global cooling. It is a criminal deception of population by the "elite" for the purpose of global "green" or "carbon" taxation with all its consequences for all of us - except for the criminally mega-rich cartel.
More CO2 will produce a greener earth, more rain and less wilderness - which in turn will produce more oxygen for us to breath. Everything is perfectly balanced in the nature, except in the heads of the "elite", who think that the earth belongs only to them. Watch the alternative media and say goodbye to the official, "free", the elite-owned mainstream media. Only then, your eyes will be opened and you will know the truth.
Goodman - Walsall
The LA Times featured cold fusion in 1989, before its debunking. Environmentalists were aghast.
NikFromNYC
Dr David - thanks for very balanced article. It is expected that decisions by global community are based on scientific proof, which would require replication of evidence before its acceptance.
It is sensless to push through the AGW without any evidence. On the contrary, it is increasingly being established that there are more factors affecting the climate - CBR, earths magnetic steel core etc.
Also, as in some reports, CO2 life is shorter than that in IPCC model. All this only demostrates that we are on a scientific wild-goose chase. Goodman - Walsall : I too seem to arrive at similar conclusions.
JAK - Qatar
While talking about global warming, there are many aspects which we forget or sometimes we avoid talking about.
MrGreen - Mumbai India Greenomics
We are seeing luring propaganda songs from the american coal and oil propaganda industry.
NASA 2011: "Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 - and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase
"The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January–May 2011 was the 12th warmest on record. The year-to-date period was 0.48°C (0.86°F) warmer than the 20th century average. The May, March–May, and year-to-date (January–May) worldwide ocean surface temperatures all ranked as the 11th warmest such periods on record".
And 1998 was a particularly warm year with unusual solar sunspot activity and a very strong El Nino. Since 2003 the solar sunspot activity has been unusually low. Without the antropogenically enhanced greenhouse effect we should have experienced a clear cooling worldwide. Nevertheless, several of the years after 1998 have been just as warm.
It is not very scientific to "cherrypick" an unusual year, compare it to more normal years and make categorical conclusions. If you consider that the global economic turnover of coal, oil and gas products amounts to more than a hundred billion dollars per day - it is understandable that the handful of people making their profits from this turnover are reluctant to see it go.
They speculate on the astronomical profits they will gain in a peak-oil situation, as long as there are no real alternatives to fossil fuels. They also have considerable power to keep the fossil-fuel paradigm going, even if this is not in the interest of the people of the world in general.
This handful of super-rich people finances lobby groups, spin-doctors, so-called sceptics and other "errand-boys", think-tanks, PR-enterprises and media empires to manipulate public opinions, politicians, financial institutions and research institutions to delay or stop development of alternatives - environmentally friendly energy sources.
Sven Ake Bjorke - UIA Norway
I believe Theodor Landscheidt's scientific predicitons demonstrated that the sun will enter a low activity centered around 2020-2030, so we may expect a cooling effect beginning 2016 - and ending around 2035. It could be very very bad for agriculture.
Cristian Muresanu - Romania
