Apr 06 2007
Climatic Hysterics
The climate propaganda media is in full swing using half truths and misdirection to create mythical pending disasters. For example, the worst case scenario now coming out of the UN climate circus for temperatures to rise are:
Global average temperatures have increased by 0.74°C over the last 100 years, with the trend over the last 50 years standing at twice the average (1.3 °C per decade).
Global average temperature will likely increase by a further 1.8-4.0°C this century.The 4°C rise is the total worst case, and that upper limit has been the number falling each time the science comes out. So the lower limit is under 2°C with an average of around 3°C. So look at this bit of hysterics from the NY Times:
The panel said the long-term outlook for all regions was for trouble should temperatures rise 3 to 5 degrees fahrenheit or so, with consequences ranging from the likely extinction of perhaps a fourth of the world’s species to eventual inundation of coasts and islands inhabited by hundreds of millions of people.
To achieve sufficient doom and gloom the Chicken Littles had to move the projection almost outside that they themselves predict (with no history of being accurate). The cries of the coming carnage are not even based on their own baseline numbers. How typical.
Here is a little exercise for you. Go here. Play around with the graphs a little but make sure to plot annual mean temp from, say, 1930 to 1985 with the “base” values set the same … 1930 and 1985.
You should see a cooling trend of 0.18 degrees per decade or nearly 2 degrees per century. Now the years from 1930 to 1985 is when the world industrialized and man made CO2 emissions were rising tremendously relative to the previous periods. In other words, the annual CO2 emissions in 1985 were many times more than in 1930. Probably more than a couple of orders of magnitude larger.
We did go into a warming period after that which ended sometime around 2000. That is about the time we started hearing about “hockey sticks”.
Now if you plot from 1998 to 2006 (last year that data are available since 2007 is not finished yet) what do you find? From 1998 to 2006 we have been in a rather significant COOLING trend. Every significant in fact. The trend is 0.46 degrees of COOLING per decade or 4.6 degrees of COOLING per century. And it is looking so far that US temperatures will cool more in 2007.
If the “hockey team” is correct with their exponential explosion of rising temperatures, this shouldn’t happen.
Now, lets plot the “latest three month period” which DOES cover data from2007 and plot from 1998 to 2007, January through March temperatures. What do we see? An accelerated COOLING trend.
January through March average temperatures in the US from 1998 to 2007 are cooling at a rate of 1.4 degrees per decade .. or 14 degrees per century. If that rate of cooling keeps up, Chicago will be under a mile of ice by the end of the century.
This global warming is going to freeze us right out of the upper midwest if it keeps up at this pace.
I thnk you might be able to see the graph I got from a Jan-Mar plot of average US temps from 1998 to 2007 at this URL. It is pretty significant and shows average US winter temperatures falling fairly significantly since 1998.
And the legend (which does not show if you simply look at the graph URL) says:
Most Recent 3-Month Period (Jan – Mar) 1998 – 2007 Average = 38.11 degF
Most Recent 3-Month Period (Jan – Mar) 1998 – 2007 Trend = -1.40 degF / Decade
Sorry to hog so much in the comments here but I just found another interesting point. Jan-Mar temperatures have been in an overall cooling trend since 1990. This is significant to me because greenhouse warming would be most significant in winter. It would act to raise annual temperatures by acting as an insulating blanket and preventing it from getting as cold so it would have its most impact in moderating winter temperatures and not so much in increasing high temperatures in summer. Greenhouse warming would be felt mostly in increasing low temps and winter temps (when there is less sun to warm, the greenhouse slows the cooling or radiation of heat into space).
So overall, we have been in a winter cooling trend since 1990. I would expect to see a warming trend over that long of a period (18 samples … 18 years) if the “global warming” fanatics are correct.