A couple of tid-bits for the DEVOUT global warmers!
- The world has been warming since approximately 1650 when it reached its latest low and almost dipped into a modern Ice Age. This episode is well-recorded and notable for its misery as crop yields declined, economic activity contracted, and people were generally extremely cold. On the lighter side... you could ice skate on the Thames. But all in all, not a good trend...
- The world is now the same temperature as it was in 1000 A.D. We've basically climbed out of the trough that we descended into for 650 years and now enjoy the same general climate as feudal rulers and Vikings a millennium ago. ("Beautiful day wouldn't you say Erik? This is pillaging weather Gefhert - pass me that mace!")
- Theoretically, there is some incredibly complex formula that explains weather, temperature and climate. We will probably never comprehend it in any great detail in the lifetimes of any of us. If ever.
- Since we've only been in the carbon footprint game for a short period, there are obviously other big levers which control climate, (as evidenced by the repeated warming and cooling of the planet -- the majority of which preceded humans entirely).
- If you were omniscient and could see this formula, there would probably be a legitimate factor in the equation representing human emission of CO2 through industrial processes and agriculture. It is quite possible that this factor is a very minor influence on the equation as a whole.
- It is our influence on this possibly trivial climatic input that is being debated.
Remember, there are always pluses and minuses to everything. As the article says (and have seen elsewhere), for every additional death from heat stroke, there will be less deaths from cold (and currently, the latter > the former).
Remember, too, the "sane" projections are that there may be an additional rise of a foot or so in sea levels, meaning that we're all gonna die! Problem is, we are a very adaptable species - we've already coped with this "dire problem" - sea levels have risen about a foot over the last hundred years or so.
So, this is a problem....how?
I'm fond of saying that it is easier to warm up than it is to cool off. However, I may have to eat my words! Actually, THIS may be a problem - and if true, will have FAR more serious consequences than a 2-4 degrees of warming....
Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming, the average temperature on Earth has remained steady or slowly declined during the past decade, despite the continued increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, and now the global temperature is falling precipitously.
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007. This is the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and it puts us back where we were in 1930. If the temperature does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over.
There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence that 2007 was exceptionally cold. It snowed in Baghdad for the first time in centuries, the winter in China was simply terrible and the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the austral winter was the greatest on record since James Cook discovered the place in 1770.
It is generally not possible to draw conclusions about climatic trends from events in a single year, so I would normally dismiss this cold snap as transient, pending what happens in the next few years.
This is where SOHO comes in. The sunspot number follows a cycle of somewhat variable length, averaging 11 years. The most recent minimum was in March last year. The new cycle, No.24, was supposed to start soon after that, with a gradual build-up in sunspot numbers.
It didn't happen. The first sunspot appeared in January this year and lasted only two days. A tiny spot appeared last Monday but vanished within 24 hours. Another little spot appeared this Monday. Pray that there will be many more, and soon.
The reason this matters is that there is a close correlation between variations in the sunspot cycle and Earth's climate. The previous time a cycle was delayed like this was in the Dalton Minimum, an especially cold period that lasted several decades from 1790.
