The year 2007 saw a number of weather incidents which startled the world, including snow in Baghdad, winter storms which stranded millions of Chinese during the Chinese New Year, record snow falls in the North America, China, and Siberia, and a recent thickening of the ice packs.
And now the data is in for 2007 from all four of the world's major sources of climate tracking (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS). The worldwide temperature drop from 2006 to 2007 was 0.65 - 0.75 centigrade. Apparently, that is the largest single year drop since record keeping began and enough to wipe out all of the global warming that has occurred since the late 19th century.
For my .02 worth, I've long had a gut feeling that solar activity, or perhaps changes in heat coming from the core of the earth, would overwhelm any climate change effects from human activity. All one has to do is think of what the atmospheric conditions are like on other planets to see how huge of a role the Sun plays in our fragile and pathetic existence.
One person I know wrote me back:
Interesting year-to-year change, which will, depending upon the point of view of the specific advocate, will be:
1. Shouted from the highest hilltops, or
2. Ignored; critiqued as improper, unreliable, and the product of puppets of the oil cartels; belittled as meaningless and unimportant; and rebutted with countless stories of the "local" impacts of global warming.
In truth, this is interesting, but it is kinda like charting the times posted by the competitors in the Olympic Marathon between for the third 100 meters of the race and using that to attempt to predict the winner.
Let's face it, we simply do not know a whole lot about short-term, by which I mean periods of hundreds of years) climate change on Earth, despite the
large number of people who appear to be saying that they do.
Another wrote to me saying:
I've seen quite a few folks agree with you on that - ie. that the human effect on climate change is small.
Another wrote:
No. They have already changed the banner from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change."
It's the same way with pollution. No matter what we do to improve air quality, "Experts" will continue to claim pollution is worsening. It's called Political Science.
Sigh... I can only see the arguments getting fiercer if the world actually does enter an era where the earth starts cooling.
Wizard
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at March 24, 2008 06:23 AM