This story from the Discovery Channel, not exactly known for its global warming skepticism, is not only talking about the lack of warming over the last 8 years but is pointing to research claiming that we are in for a for a 30 year break from climate catastrophe. Fear not, it is only a short break, disaster is simply delayed not averted. Such a prediction is not hard to make. The earth has been going through 20 to 30 year periods of warming and cooling for at least the last 100 years. So to predict that we are now about to enter a 30 year cooling period with warming resuming after that is simply to look back at the last century of climate change and to say that the up and down temperature trends will continue. Anyway, here’s what the DC has to say:
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.
Of course, there is one thing that the article does not suggest, namely that the Al Gores, James Hansons and William Schlesingers of the world might be wrong and that skeptics like John Christy might be right. (By the way, the JLF co-sponsored a debate on global warming a few weeks ago between Schlesinger and Christy. You can watch it here.) That too much to hope for. Here’s the last quote from the articel:
“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.”
It is the Discovery Channel after all.