Wednesday, February 27, 2008

More Global Cooling evidence

Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling

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.


You say but it’s just anecdotal reporting. Sure, but so was the photo of polar bears on ice floes, the melting of the Arctic ice—in summer, the melting of snow on Mount Kilimanjaro (due more to the change in the forest cover in the surrounding areas for agriculture than Global Warming), and the calving of icebergs from Antarctica from ice shelves that had extended (read grown) too far out to sea. And, lest we forget, the rise in temperature measured by thermometers located in parking lots and other urban settings where once they had been in rural or suburban areas.

The article contains links to other real data measurements and ends with a cautionary warning and a hope.

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.

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