What happened to global warming?

News.BBC.com

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

via news.bbc.co.uk

I’ve long been a Global Warming Heretic. Since I watched the last solar cycle a lot more than I watched the CO2 emissions [read: not at all] it was quite easy for me to understand that a hotter sun = a hotter earth.

Can I prove the sun is the factor driving our global temperature? No. But, I would argue that Global Warming proponents cannot prove CO2 is causing our temperature to rise either.

There should be little argument that our climate is cyclical. There isn’t any argument about the fact the sun is cyclical, at least none I know of.

Now that I’ve said I don’t believe in Global Warming, as popularized anyway, and no doubt alienated most readers:

I will say that while I could come up with any number of positive benefits for Global Warming, such as increased crop production because of expanded temperate zones, there are no similar benefits for Global Cooling.

With Global Cooling food production will suffer, contracting as growing seasons shorten. As food production suffers more people will find themselves starving – or close to starvation. We already have way too many people living with these realities today, let alone if food become even less available.

As I was composing this post this article came up on Twitter – @Drudge_Report [Missoulian.com]:

Cold temperatures threaten seed potato crop

BOZEMAN – Record-low temperatures in southwestern Idaho are
threatening to destroy at least a portion of this season’s crop of
seed potatoes.

Spuds still in the ground could be saved by a layer of snow; a
dusting had fallen on Bozeman and the surrounding region by
Sunday.

Nina Zydak, director of the Montana State University Potato Lab,
said most area farmers have already started digging.

But many farmers expect to lose some of their potatoes.

“It’s over,” Larry Van Dyke, who owns Van Dyke Farms in
Townsend, told the Bozeman Chronicle.

He says when it’s this cold for too long, the frost penetrates
and the taters are toast.

The main goal now is to make sure the spoiled potatoes don’t
make it into his cellar.

Temperatures on Saturday evening dipped to 17 degrees; the last
time it was this cold, this early, in southwestern Idaho was more
than two decades ago, in 1985.

One early freeze does not a trend make, but combine what we are seeing with our Northern hemisphere temperatures and the current lack of a solar maximum arriving as scheduled, and I believe we can logically suspect we are at the beginning stages of a Global Cooling event.

Beyond disproving the mountain of bad science driving the Global Warming hype, I take no joy in believing that Global Cooling will soon be an over riding concern. A genuine concern – unlike the manufactured concern we have suffered with for too many years.