FIVE DEACDES of cooling ahead.
HardySpicer
in the evening Xmas day at that...
25 Dec 2009
As Americans dig out from another bout of global warming, a new,
peer-reviewed study sees decades of lower, not higher, temperatures
ahead.
A peer-reviewed study by a respected Canadian physicist blames the
interplay
of cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons for 20th-century warming. The
CFCs
are now gone, and so is warming - perhaps for the next 50 years.
Much of the nation got a white Christmas this year, some in
unprecedented
quantities. A record-breaking storm deposited 12 to 30 inches of snow
in
Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Many places set records for
the most
snow in a single December day as more than 50% of the U.S. was covered
by
the white stuff.
"Scientists" (and here we use the word loosely) at Britain's Climate
Research Unit may have tried to "hide the decline" in global
temperatures,
but it's hard to hide two feet of snow. Their motto seems to be the
immortal
words of Groucho Marx: "Who are you going to believe, me or your own
lying
eyes?"
Qing Bin-Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy at Canada's
University of
Waterloo, is a believer in the value of drawing conclusions from
observable
data and not from selective data fed into computer models that are
based on
false assumptions and include "fudge factors."
In a peer-reviewed paper published in the prestigious online journal
Physics
Reports, Lu, who holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of
Newcastle,
reports that CFCs, the compounds once widely used as refrigerants, and
cosmic rays, which are energy particles originating in outer space,
are
mostly to blame for climate change, rather than CO2 emissions.
Lu puts the start of the cooling trend at 2002 and writes that "the
observed
data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused
both the
Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally
unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism
for the
formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming."
From 1850 to 1950, Lu notes, the recorded CO2 level increased
significantly
because of the Industrial Revolution; the global temperature stayed
constant
or rose only 0.1ºC.
"Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules
that
are well-known greenhouse gases ... decreased around 2000," Lu said.
"Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In
striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is
at
its largest growth rate."
Other reputable scientists have also predicted decades of cooling
ahead to,
er, varying degrees and for varying reasons. Earth's climate is
affected by
many things and is more complicated than the CRU computer models.
In a speech in September at the UN's World Climate Conference in
Geneva,
Mojib Latif of Germany's Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel
University, one of the world's foremost climate modelers and a lead
author
for the UN IPCC, acknowledged that the Earth has been cooling and is
likely
to continue to do so the next couple of decades.
According to research conducted by Don Easterbrook from Western
Washington
University, the oceans and global temperatures are closely related and
have
a natural cycle of warming and cooling that affects the planet.
The most important ocean cycle is the Pacific decadal oscillation
(PDO).
Professor Easterbrook notes that in the 1980s and 1990s it was in a
warming
cycle, as was the earth. The global cooling from 1940 to 1975, which
had
some warning of an ice age, coincided with a Pacific cooling cycle.
"The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean,
virtually assuring us of three decades of global cooling," said
Easterbrook.
Such solar and ocean cycles explain why the Earth can cool and polar
ice
thicken even as carbon dioxide levels continue to increase.
We will leave it to better minds to decide for what reason and for how
long
the earth is cooling.
We have some global warming to shovel!