Climate Change, Global Warming - Mixing Science with Politics

Is Winter 2008 Making Climate Alarmists Question Global Warming?
By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)
March 2, 2008 - 19:37 ET


For years, climate realists have been wondering how the global warming alarmists would react when the planet actually cooled, albeit for an unknown amount of time.

With the winter of 2008 ushering in record-cold temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere -- following similar, albeit mostly unreported, weather in the Southern Hemisphere's 2007 winter -- it seems the resolve of the believers has been a bit weakened, to say the least.

Take for example Sunday's New York Times article by environment reporter Andrew C. Revkin entitled "Climate Skeptics Seize on Cold Spell" (emphasis added throughout):

The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.

It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment.

[...]

According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Niño pattern.

If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.

Interesting, wouldn't you agree? Sounds almost like the position of the realists.

After all, Revkin claimed "there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work" in driving down temperatures that have been observed in the past few months. Well, realists believe there's no way to "pinpoint" what forces are responsible for the global warming trend in the past 150 years.

Sounds like common ground, doesn't it?

To better define the realist view, such scientists, meteorologists, and climatologists feel that there are many factors impacting the weather, and that, despite claims by alarmists, there is absolutely no definitive proof that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels is the primary culprit behind a slight rise in average global temperatures since 1850.

Yet, a problem arises from Revkin's "pinpoint" statement: if there's no way to determine exactly what's caused the sudden cooling that scientists have actually been able to observe the past eight months in both hemispheres, how can folks be so confident that carbon dioxide emissions have been the cause of rising temperatures that began a century before most of the alarmists were born?

Interesting conundrum, wouldn't you agree?

Read the rest of this intriguing column HERE