Earth On A 10-Year Cooling Trend; But Don’t Relax, It’s All Still Part Of ‘Global Warming’

From McClatchydc.com

WASHINGTON — Has Earth’s fever broken?

Official government measurements show that the world’s temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998.

That’s given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary.

Proposals to combat global warming are “crazy” and will “destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family’s annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year,” the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. “High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health,” the ads asserted.

Many scientists agree, however, that hotter times are ahead. A decade of level or slightly lower temperatures is only a temporary dip to be expected as a result of natural, short-term variations in the enormously complex climate system, they say.

“The preponderance of evidence is that global warming will resume,” Nicholas Bond, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, said in an e-mail.

“Natural variability can account for the slowing of the global mean temperature rise we have seen,” said Jeff Knight, a climate expert at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Exeter, England.

According to data from the National Space Science and Technology Center in Huntsville, Ala., the global high temperature in 1998 was 0.76 degrees Celsius (1.37 degrees Fahrenheit) above the average for the previous 20 years.

So far this year, the high has been 0.42 degrees Celsius (0.76 degrees Fahrenheit), above the 20-year average, clearly cooler than before.

However, scientists say the skeptics’ argument is misleading.

“It’s entirely possible to have a period as long as a decade or two of cooling superimposed on the long-term warming trend,” said David Easterling, chief of scientific services at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

“These short term fluctuations are statistically insignificant (and) entirely due to natural internal variability,” Easterling said in an essay published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters in April. “It’s easy to ‘cherry pick’ a period to reinforce a point of view.”

Climate experts say the 1998 record was partly caused by El Nino, a periodic warming of tropical Pacific Ocean waters that affects the climate worldwide.  (Read more.)

B.S. Report–It’s the same old story–if it gets hotter it’s because of “global warming” but if it gets cooler, it’s merely a temporary blip on the overall heating pattern.  I understand completely that 10 years of marginal cooling doesn’t mean a whole heckuva lot.  But does 100 years?  Or a thousand years?

After all, we are talking about weather cycles that last far longer than our recorded history.  What I’m saying is that the scientists have a working theory that they’ve constructed through very unreliable models–nothing more.

I don’t claim to know whether there is “global warming” or not.  But I don’t believe that the scientists know either.  And that’s the point.  There is no hard evidence to support their claims and, based on the accuracy of their past predictions, I see no reason to be alarmed.