Warming might be on hold, study finds

Michael Reilly
MSNBC
Mon, 02 Mar 2009 04:28 UTC

For those who have endured this winter's frigid temperatures and today's heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.

But climate is known to be variable - a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.

Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."

Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a "super El Nino event." It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.

How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.

The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science - identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snow storm) from human-induced change.

But just what's causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun's energy than usual back out into space.

"It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970's was due to a free variation in climate," Isaac Held of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Princeton, New Jersey wrote in an email to Discovery News. "Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again."

Swanson thinks the trend could continue for up to 30 years. But he warned that it's just a hiccup, and that humans' penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.

"When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming," Swanson said. "Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."

Source: Discovery Channel

Comment: The strength of the global warming psychology jumps out at the reader in this article. Buried within the text is the point that the planet is in a cooling phase.

But the behavioral reinforcement (mind training) of the global warming meme is so strong that the scientists and journalists can not even hear the absurdity in their own words.

But climate is known to be variable - a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is cooling.

But climate is known to be variable - a hot summer, or a few strung together doesn't mean the planet is warming.

Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

The greenhouse gas model has failed.

"This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950," Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one."

The current cooling does have a cause. The scientists just don't understand climate the way they assume they do. The current climate models have failed.

The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science - identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snow storm) from human-induced change.

From human-induced change??? The 1930s were some of the warmest years on record.

James Hansen of NASA GISS:
The U.S. has warmed during the past century, but the warming hardly exceeds year-to-year variability. Indeed, in the U.S. the warmest decade was the 1930s and the warmest year was 1934.

The Medieval Warm Period was warmer. How can the scientists model all the dozens of warming and cooling cycles in the past without invoking CO2 and human-induced change? Why is the current warming and now cooling cycle different and only because of CO2 and human-induced change? Nonsense.

But just what's causing the cooling is a mystery. Sinking water currents in the north Atlantic Ocean could be sucking heat down into the depths. Or an overabundance of tropical clouds may be reflecting more of the sun's energy than usual back out into space.

The current climate models have failed. For all their science and models and mathematical algorithms, now they haven't got a clue as to what is going on. That should provide the reader with a lot of confidence.

"It is possible that a fraction of the most recent rapid warming since the 1970's was due to a free variation in climate,"

"Suggesting that the warming might possibly slow down or even stagnate for a few years before rapid warming commences again."

he warned that it's just a hiccup, and that humans' penchant for spewing greenhouse gases will certainly come back to haunt us.

"When the climate kicks back out of this state, we'll have explosive warming,"

"Thirty years of greenhouse gas radiative forcing will still be there and then bang, the warming will return and be very aggressive."

The disconnect is amazing!