The Other Big Meltdown

Global warming? 2008 will be cooler than was 2007, which was cooler than 2006. It has been 10 years now since the most recent temperature peak--even according to Dr Hansen's GISSTEMP.

As a minimum, shouldn't the temperture be going up if there is global warming?

Using scare tactics to secure funding for your project might be good politics, but it is intellectually dishonest and bad for scientific integrity. Popular Science can do better than this.

Another global warming scare article. I'm curious, was that picture of the glacier calving taken in July or August when that's NORMAL? It LOOKS sensational though. The message in your article is clearly, "Reduce CO2 Now." Global Warming is shifting into high gear! High gear? The Earth's temperature has NOT risen since 1998. The almighty computer models are spectacularly wrong year after year. No matter, its just "forgotten" by the media as the next shrieking calamitous claim is announced, and so on. It's understandable that certain people would exaggerate and outright lie about the manufactured crisis that is "manmade climate change." I understand devout socialists trying to reduce fossil fuel use, I understand unethical scientists hyping a faux problem to keep the research grants coming. What I don't understand is the inexplicable lack of intellectual curiousity or honesty exhibited by numerous science magazines. How many times must the computer climate models be wrong before we stop worshipping them? They can't even accurately portray PAST climate! If you want to understand the real drivers of climate then research the Maunder and Dalton Minimums and the PDO. The amount of manmade CO2 in the atmosphere is miniscule and inconsequentual to climate change. The geologic record shows CO2 rises AFTER temperature change with an approximate 700 year lag. CO2 DOES NOT drive temperature, its the other way around. I know Al Gore, with his 3 or 4 college science classes and a solid C average seems like the second coming of Einstein but stop doing a disservice to your readers. EDUCATE the public don't try to indoctrinate them. CLIMATE CHANGE, what a terrible thought! Tell me ONE time in the history of the Earth that the climate was static and WASN'T changing. This concept is so ridiculous. This is the work of a cult of liars and fools.

"Predict the unpredictable"? Real science does not attempt to do that. Real science continues to collect data, examine the facts and debate them. Popsci has yet to publish (with any degree of balance) the findings and discussions of the many scientists who reject manmade global warming and who feel we are entering into a cool period. Instead Popsci appears to be on the same 'gloom and doom' bandwagon that the media is on. Present both sides of the issue. Show some good honest debate. Afterall, thats what science is all about. Otherwise the magazine shoud be called "Popular Belief" and not "Popular Science"

Since you don't cite your sources of information, there's no disputing your comments. I heard the President of the United States say 'global warming is a fact' the other day. Ditto for the President-elect. W duped? Say it ain't so!

Yes, George W. caved in too soon. I hope Sarah Palin is a stronger personality because this is a winning issue. If there is going to be a "sudden on-set" anything it will be global cooling, maybe even another Little Ice Age.

Check out worldclimatereport.com for another view of basically the same facts. You decide yourself who is cherry-picking their anecdotal evidence, ignoring facts they don't like, arguing against straw men, and generally failing to be fair and balanced.

Europe is warmer in the summer lately for the same reason that the Arctic Ocean meltback has been pronounced in recent years, the effect of ocean currents. But the oceans have been cooling in the equatorial regions and that will show up in the micro climates of the northern hemisphere land masses whose western faces enjoy warmth brought by ocean currents in due time.

In short, the government has found another way to get the gullible masses to pay higher taxes.

Wow, after my last post I found out that some really, really cold weather is about to blast Europe.

Thanks Popsci for posting these comments. At least this is a place where the debate can begin and where those with conflicting views can present their arguments. Maybe in the not so distant future Popsci will print some articles from Dr. Fred Singer (Nasa Scientist) and John Coleman (meteorologist and founder of the Weather Channel). There are many, many more I can list here. I am more a fan of debate than anything else. Moreover, educating the masses on ALL of the facts of climate change is much better than "cherry picking" data (such as focusing on the ice melt in the Artic when most of rest of world is experiencing cooling) which is what our elite media does.

It is funny how you see tons of research going into predicting Global Warming and tons of research going into showing the symptoms, but you never hear about research into the cause.

If Global Warming exists and if it is caused by man we need to take initiatives to fix the problem.

On the other hand if Global Warming exists but is in fact a natural cycle, then we need to stay out of it and let the Earth do it's thing.

We have too many people looking at the symptoms and not nearly enough looking at the cause.

It's a little ironic that people like Mike, who supported Mrs. "ABORTION IS EVIL, GOD CREATED THE EARTH IN 7 DAYS!" Palin, are trying to talk science.

You all realize climate really CAN'T be measured on a year to year basis? You realize that this year's temperature is still among the highest temperatures we've EVER recorded? Minor fluctuations should be expected, since we're only examining the WEATHER on a year to year basis. Ever heard of the La Nina effect? Yeah.

The vast majority of the scientific community supports the idea that humans are contributing to climate change. They have the data. The brightest minds in the world are ALL in support of this, with the exception of a few (and PopSci has no obligation to waste time and space on a tiny fringe group with no credibility). Who am I to believe? The experts and what the data points at? Or a bunch of random conservo-crackpots on the internet who don't have any qualifications whatsoever? The only thing you people are capable of typing out is "it's a conspiracy" whenever conflicting evidence comes out, that somehow the wider scientific community is pure evil and trying to do this all for greed. Pleaaase.

Do you ever wonder why people like Met069 have to insult and hate on every one who has a point that differs from their own? Instead of looking at actual scientific data, they make their point by name calling. They don't want to see the evidence, they just want to spead fear to get their point across. I supprised Met069 didn't say that we all work for the oil company. And we are not a tiny fringe group, more people believe that GW does NOT exist than those who do. Also there are a great many scientist (who don't work for the oil companys) that even sign a pettition to that fact. go here http://www.oism.org/pproject/ and read it. But you won't, your mind has been made up. I used to believe like you, I was brainwashed by the schools that we are killing the planet. Except when they tried to brainwash me it was with global cooling. Look how quickly they changed their mind (or thier plan) just so they could gain more control and raise taxes.

The last two year have cooled means that global warming is not happening? Where the heck do you get your data. 2008 will still go on record as the ninth hottest year since records were kept. Also, any one year does not mean a change, you have to look at the overall trend, which over the last fifty years has been an increase of the average temperature.

As to "new" talking about global cooling, it was never really predicted. There were a couple of flawed papers that talked about it back in the 70's, the media pounced on them and people thought there was global cooling occurring. In the meantime the evidence was already starting to accumalate for global warming. So there was never really a global cooling scare.

I've looked at some of the so called literature on the so called "deniers" that say the global warming predictions are wrong. If you really look at the research, then you find out that their arguments are flawed, such as saying that the current warming trend is due to natural causes, like solar radiation. Please do your research, I have spent many days looking at the actual literature, not what someone spouts on a web site.

I simply think that the people who deny global warming love their lifestyle so much that they refuse to take responsibility for their own actions which would involve accepting the guilty feelings and changing their lifestyle to minimize impact. Which is always a good idea, whether or not there is global warming. If you do already, then kudos to you.

We could ask you the same question jward23. Where do you get your info. Probably from pro global warming sources. Oh and by the way wikipedia doesn't count as a source. All of the GOVERNMENT sources that I have kept up with say the temps have steadily decreased over the last 10 years. The hottest year on record hasn't even been in the last 50 years. It peaked sometime in the 40's.

The average global temperature has risen over the last 20-30 years. The average global temperature has fallen over the last couple years.

The result is a net increase though. That is fact. I was looking at the graphs yesterday.

Does that mean that we are experiencing global warming? Over the last 20-30 years the answer has to be yes. Does that mean that humans caused the problem? No.

The reality is that people who are against global warming will look at the last couple years and say "Hah! The temperature is going down." People who support global warming will look at it and say "Yeah but the general trend is still up. You can't just look at a couple of years and call it a trend."

But the fact is that when it comes to climate you can't even look at 20-30 years and call it a trend. Climate can change on the order of hundreds or thousands of years. Just look at the ice ages. They didn't last 20-30 years. If we had all been born during an ice age and things started to warm up would we assume that something had gone horribly wrong? Probably. But we would be wrong.

My point is that we spend too much time debating whether climate change exists or not. Let's just forget about it and agree that climate does change. Now let's start trying to figure out why? Is it natural? Is it unnatural? How can we tell the difference? These are the questions we should be asking.

Eggman, the reason we need more than a rule of thumb here is this: I suspect it is generally correct that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that is found in trace amounts in our atmosphere and it is even possible that doubling this trace amount could slightly nudge climate.

I also strongly believe that other climate in-puts exist which are much more powerful and very poorly understood. If we suppose, for a moment, that cycles of sun spots are the 800-lb gorilla when it comes to climate cooling, then we have to ask ourselves: do we really want to burden ourselves with a lot of very expensive and intrusive laws and regulations to fight global warming when maybe what we should be doing is fighting global cooling?

I would maintain that global cooling is a much more immediate and serious problem for humanity and many species than the gradual warming we experienced from about 1940 up to 1998. Poor Seattle has been tied in a knot the last week by "Snowmageddon" and we now live in tangible fear that "Snowpocalypse" is on the way.

The new Democrat administration plans to selectively hand out subsidies and prizes to "green industries" whether they are based on market-tested ideas or not. I think an economic recovery would be much better served by de-stigmatizing coal. The USA is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have known forever how to convert coal to natural gas and we (well, Shell Oil) knows how to convert natural gas to liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel. Going the latter route would save a trillion dollars in existing vehicle and machinery assets in our nation and would end all dependence on foreign oil, even oil from Canada and Mexico, if we wished to do that.

The idea the 'government' is going to 'fix' a climate no one has yet proven anything about is so silly it would be funny if it wasn't another pathetic excuse to give a body that can't even keep it's bridges standing any faith that they can 'control' the climate. Hell, they can't balance a budget and are basically know nothings that do know an opportunity when they see one. And Al Gore is the perfect pitch man for what is a scam. Even if there is global warming it's a scam, because they couldn't do anyting about it even if they intended too. Making money off of 'carbon credits' is Als real motivation and his own life style shows how much he cares about you or the environment. And they don't intend to actually do anything about it because they know damn well they can't. Maybe tell YOU to turn down your thermostat and ride a bus, but will they? Of course not. Read just the reviews of a book called 'Al Gore, a users manual before you try telling me he's anything other than the lying snake he's been his entire adult life. When he asked the people in his own state for the presidency, they said No Thanks Al. They know more about him than his fan club members. And with Popular 'Science' jumping on the bandwagon they have just added insult to injury. Just their cheerleading for each and every expensive, usually ineffective military technology has made me long suspicious of their objectivety, but this takes the cake. It's cute that the people stocking up on sub block 1000 have nothing more than names to call us 'deniers' (how holocaustic of them). Cheap name calling because nobody understands or can control the climate. And of all the crap we pour into the air they pick harmless old CO2 as the big villian. I'm no scientist, nor are any other posts I've read but I have enough common sense to see the feet of clay of that boogyman.

I hate citing studies and reports because so many are seriously flawed. I generally believe IPCC raw data, but you have to disregard all their commentary. The right-wing climate source is worldclimatereport.com which basically uses the same reputable data sources that all responsible people use, such as IPCC data and major studies funded by governments.

What the folks at worldclimatereport.com claim is that there has been no increase in average global temps since 1998. Arguably, there has been minor cooling. It is inarguable that no global warming model exists which can explain this holiday from warming that has been going on.

Antarctica is certainly not melting. It can be debated whether Greenland is experiencing a net loss of ice or not, for there is evidence that huge amounts of replacement ice are beefing up the glaciers.

The Arctic ocean in the summer has been the best evidence of global warming available, but that effect may have been a fluke due to vast amounts of dust from China dirtying the Arctic ice and causing it to melt more quickly, as well as the last multi-decadal oceanic oscillation, which is now changing in both the Pacific and the Atlantic, promising much colder temps in Alaska and Europe.

Mike Cook, you are just re-affirming what I am trying to say. You said "I also strongly believe that other climate in-puts exist which are much more powerful and very poorly understood."

I am saying that we need to spend more time figuring out what is causing climate change before we start trying to fix it. As you say, there are a lot of powerful factors that we don't understand. These can include volcanic activity, sunspots and more.

What if we spend billions trying to reduce Greenhouse emissions only to find out the culprit is sunspots or volcanoes?

Or what if we spend billions reducing emissions all the while cutting down forests only to discover that deforestation was the cause?

Or what if it really is just a natural cycle and in a few years/decades/centuries it all reverses?

I believe that most people just accept the idea that Greenhouse Gases are the problem and no one is bothering to question that.

People once believed that when a person was sick it was because they had too much blood so they would bleed them in order to correct the problem. It was a long time before anyone questioned this logic and in the meantime how many people paid the price?

Global Warming is real. Face it. Stop laying around saying the temperature has not risen in years, and go green, its the least you can do people!!

Given the rising CO2 level in the air we breath, given the dropping oil reserves, given the dropping coal reserves, and given the dropping natural gas reserves, we cannot ignore the fact that a pending energy crisis is coming. Given the drop in rain fall, given the drop in water tables, given the drop in level of water in the Great Lakes, I figure we cannot ignore the fact that Global Warming is happening. Both problems, pending energy crisis and rising CO2 levels have the same solution, investing in renewable energy sources while we still have time.

Ellen