In the climate change world late last week, there were two uncommon events.
First, the BBC uncharacteristically published an article titled “What happened to global warming? ” The article by BBC climate correspondent, Paul Hudson, notes, among other things, that the warmest year on record was 1998, not 2007 or 2008, and the climate models did not predict this fact. This is noteworthy because during the past 11 years man-made CO2 levels have continued to rise.
Mr. Hudson also observes that the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO), one of the most important ocean warming and cooling cycles, is cooling. Researchers have seen a correlation between the PDO and global temperatures. So if the PDO is cooling, then global temperatures might be cooling too. In his article, Mr. Hudson poses questions; he does not embrace the skeptical viewpoint. His report, however, does attract attention because of its rarity at the BBC.
The second uncommon event occurred in Madison, Wisconsin Friday night. Al Gore gave a talk at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists and he uncharacteristically took questions from reporters. In the past, Mr. Gore has usually refused to debate or take questions about his views of global warming stating that the matter was settled.
Mr. Gore’s appearance, however, was not a free and energized debate. He only took six questions. One of the questions came from Phelim McAleer, the director of “Not Evil Just Wrong” (2008), a documentary about how certain extreme environmentalism can actually cause damage. Mr. McAleer asked Mr. Gore about the British court finding that “An Inconvenient Truth” contained errors. Mr. Gore stated that the court ruling was in his favor. When Mr. McAleer tried to ask Mr. Gore a follow-up question, the program moderators turned the microphone off.
But, even though Mr. Gore took only a half dozen questions (and no follow-up for Mr. McAleer) and the BBC did not throw in its lot with the skeptics, these two remarkable occurrences are noteworthy because they are rare events indeed. As Paul Hudson, somewhat surprisingly, closes his article, “It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. . . some would say it is hotting up.”
Photo:NASA - http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarchi/2529459067/
Copyright 2009 -- K.J.Collins
Comments
some people just interpret the meaning of global warming completely wrong. Would the ice glacier melt, if temp stayed below zero? Apparently not. Judging global warming theory based on areas that have no impact on world climate is just pure misleading...
Earl-E, it appears that y o u are the one who has drunk the coolade
This is an excellent article. Without passion, you pointed out that Al Gore has been in his protected ivory tower playing Oz.
From my perch -- for the BBC to question and Al Gore to answer there must be a shift taking place and it isn't just in the climate.
Thank you for this./ Sophie
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Excellent article.
What amazes me is that liberals apparently believe that the analytical scientific process is so far superior to questions of faith, it is treated almost as a new religion. I don't mind that--when we're talking about SCIENCE.
But SCIENCE by its nature implies theories that are constantly questioned, tested, altered, etc. in a cycle.
Even Evolution is an ongoing debate. Not so much "Do animals evolve", but HOW do they evolve. And we constantly learn new data that changes what were thought to be sound theory. Evolution was thought for decades to be a slow, constant change. Then others postulated (and data supported) that evolution can and often does happen in sudden spurts.
Anthropologists had decided that Humans had evolved on an open plain, and our bipedalism was explained as an adaptation to that environment. Now new discoveries point to tropical forests as our birth place.
The debate is NEVER over in science, Mr. Gore.
BS
What possible good does badgering the author about the Earth entering the Holocene inter-glacial period do? hmm?
If you are REALLY interested, why don't you look up what Milankovich Cycles are?
Doc
Red scare; nuclear Armageddon; global freeze; etc. Now it's global warming. It seems every generation needs its own version of the apocalypse.
The simple answer is that Beeb got it wrong. There has been no "break" in the warming trend. Mean temperatures tick up and down annually but the line over 10 and twenty years is clearly on an upward trend, as are other longer term trend lines:
[Go to realclimate dot org to see for yourself]
And new scientific evidence appears on an almost daily basis, adding to the existing mountain of evidence already in the literature, pointing inexorably in one direction: warming and significant climatic disruption.
I've been following this subject for close to 20 years and have had the privilege of knowing and working with some of the best domain scientists in the world (though I do not claim to be a climate scientist myself -- I do computer visualization). Nothing in the literature leads me to believe anything other than that AGW is a fact and that if we do not act quickly we will pay severe consequences.
Physics is physics and it doesn't give a hoot about pol
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