Global cooling back again?

Just saw this, and thought it was pretty funny, you know, given how back in the 50's there was something of a panic about this, and then global warming somehow became absolute "fact" and now we're back to cooling again.

You'd think mother Earth was going through menopause.

So I'm curious to see what everyone's take on this is.

I remember reading something Gech wrote about how everyone who actually deals with the Earth on a professional basis basically thought global warming was a pile of shit.

I pretty much fell in line with that opinion. So I welcome this news as vindication.

DailyTech - Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

Quote:

Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

This clearly means Al Gore is wrong. America, start your engines.

All of them. Especially the big ones.

Don't you know it's no longer 'Global Warming'? But 'Climate Change'? Come on people get with the political correct rhetoric here!

Originally Posted by guyinrubbersuit

Don't you know it's no longer 'Global Warming'? But 'Climate Change'? Come on people get with the political correct rhetoric here!

Might as well just take it one step further and call it:

Spoiler:

Weather!
*gasp*

I really like how this whole nonsense about 'climate change' is effectively no different from primitive tribes who thought the gods were angry at them because the weather felt inconsistent with what the prominent generation remembered, except instead of ripping out hearts, the trendy thing to do is rip out catalytic converters.

News flash: When the globe warms, that doesn't mean everywhere gets warmer. The weather as a whole just gets more extreme - higher highs, lower lows, and increased turbulence. Large-scale trends are not predictors for individual events. Surprise, surprise.

I don't care what you call it, global warming, global cooling, just as long as there is a gratuitous ripping of catalytic converters.

Originally Posted by Arainach

News flash: When the globe warms, that doesn't mean everywhere gets warmer. The weather as a whole just gets more extreme - higher highs, lower lows, and increased turbulence. Large-scale trends are not predictors for individual events. Surprise, surprise.

Except for that whole discussion on reduced solar activity, but hey, I'm totally sure the sun has been dramatically impacted by the Earth's environment.

Also large scale trends and individual events, I'm glad we agree on something. Except an individual event is all the data supporting global warming amounts to in the scope of geological history.

Seriously though, just a one year gathering of data is not enough to determine if the earth is truly cooling. For one, wasn't the year before pretty much the hottest on record or pretty close to it? And what about this year? There have a record amount of tornadoes in the Midwest which is unheard of during the winter months.

Psh -- the temperature of Earth has barely risen 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last 100 years.

Only in the most technical sense is Earth warming.

Yes, one degree Farenheit won't make much of a difference. Spoken like a true engineer!

Originally Posted by Avalokiteshvara

Except for that whole discussion on reduced solar activity, but hey, I'm totally sure the sun has been dramatically impacted by the Earth's environment.

The popular climate change discussion is about what effects does man's activity have on the environment. The discussion that is happening here is that cancer doesn't matter, because a man with cancer has been killed by a car accident.

Well, whether the world generally heats up or cools down, both is a departure from the weather we're used to. Generally, our attempts to fix global warming, or to not fix it, doesn't seem to have a significant. After all, the sun throws more energy onto the atmosphere than all of us combined, you can't expect our actions > sun, right?

However, I think erratic weather patterns generally make life difficult for everyone, so we technically should do what we can to save our own butts. Whether we have to warm up the world or cool it it secondary to our survival.

No one's talking about our actions affecting the sun. That would be idiotic.

i know, what i'm saying is, our effect on the planet is unlikely to be more significant the sun's impact on us.

You don't think that depleting the ozone, our protection from the sun, could negatively affect us?

I think it does. Only that, our actions still pales in comparison to the sun's effects on us. We shouldn't contribute to our own doom, however by letting the ozone deplete from whatever we do.

I feel reassured that the end of the world will always have an element of uncertainty.

I love it when the ozone layer is brought up in discussions about the climate and global warming. It's a sure sign that no one in the thread knows anything whatsoever about what they're talking about.

I love it when RABicle enters a thread to denounce every poster due to the presence of one. It's a sure sign he's about to get his ass kicked for trolling and worthlessness.

Where have all the sunspots gone?

I think "Climate Change" can happen a lot faster than people think it can... hot or cold, either way.