As we hit springtime in the northern hemisphere and fall in the southern it is a good time to assess this year’s actual climate results against the dire predictions of the man-made global warming alarmists. This post has a lot of graphs from NOAA and NASA which show that the 2007-2008 period is clearly bucking the predictions coming from the UN’s IPCC predictions on man-made global warming. And while one year does not a trend make, the fact is even the worst case extrapolations would severely undermine the alarmists on global warming, and there are plausible scenarios which would destroy their claims.

Let’s begin with the latest global temperature charts and see what is transpiring (click image to expand):

What we can see in this chart is a receding temperature in the last few years with spikes of warm years. The alarmists want to claim the colder years are the exception to the trend, but if you look at the last decade you see a hill being formed in the data, and we are on the down side of that hill. Now it is very interesting that these charts begin at the end of the “Little Ice Age” that occurred between the 16th century and the 19th century.

The truth is it could still be receding to this day, but we don’t have accurate enough measurements to know for sure what the global climate was prior to the 1500s. What is clear is the massive warming we have been warned about amounts to nothing more than 0.5°C, which is darn close to the error bars in the measurement of global climate accuracy. This means, given the uncertainty in knowing the exact global temperature statistically these could all be the same temperature.

Anyway, I would not repeat the same wild-eyed exaggeration that the alarmists have succumbed in predicting the end of the Earth, but I will note that there is a possibility that the Earth is cooling down from a recent peak. Even if temperatures bounced around the same level as they are now it would undermine the claims of the alarmists. If the downward trend clearly evident in the data was to continue, it would destroy their claims and establish the alarmists have zero credibility on the matter.

And this is not the only data showing the same trend. Look at the Sea and Land Surface Temperature (verses the entire atmospheric column):

Note how the southern hemisphere is seeing a much lower rise than the northern hemisphere. C02 disperses, as all gases do, to equilibrium in the atmosphere. One would not expect to see variations north and south if the driver was C02. What is different between the two hemispheres is the ratio of land and ocean, which could be why one hemisphere is cooler than the other. Granted, the differences are negligible, each showing around a 0.5°C rise which appears to be subsiding. But it is interesting nonetheless.

Let’s look at one more well abused indicator of global warming – sea ice extent. One would think the world is melting like an ice cube on asphalt in the summer sun. But the data shows something much less dramatic. First the northern hemisphere:

I would ignore the straight dashed line because that is someone’s theory that the sea ice is on a steady decline. It is just as plausible the data fits a sinusoidal curve with ups and downs. The point is the sea is ice increased dramatically over the last 2 years, and the data is only good back to 1980 – clearly too short a time to determine a downward trend verses a normal global cycle. Whatever the truth, the curve is heading back to the 0% change line. One more year of data will be key in deciding on whether to dump the straight line and put a sine wave curve in its place.

Now look at the southern hemisphere data:

Contrary to the global alarmist theories sea ice extent in the southern hemisphere has been in the increase, which is why I seriously doubt the use of a straight line model for this phenomena. There was a brief drop two cycles ago, but it was the exception to the trend and the last two years have shown stunning increases in the sea ice extent, with this last year 30% above the normal line.

The point of all this is models are not reality. And we have a few more years of watching to see if there is a serious global warming concern. And even if one showed up we still need to confirm C02 emissions are a sufficient factor so that reducing them would have an impact. For all we know the current C02 levels are just making plants healthier and happier. We just don’t know. The full data set for the charts I used can be found here, with many more that show the same thing – global warming seems to have suspended itself even though C02 levels have continued to rise.