Global Cooling?

This article from today'sTelegraph has some interesting examples that suggest maybe the whole global warming thing has more to do with perception and headlines and (dare I say it) wishful thinking. 

... A little vignette of the media's one-sided view was given by recent events on Snowdon, the highest mountain in southern Britain. Each year between 2003 and 2007, the retreat of its winter snow cover inspired reports citing this as evidence of global warming.

In 2004 scientists from the University of Bangor made headlines with the prediction that Snowdon might lose its snowcap altogether by 2020. In 2007 a Welsh MP, Lembit Opik, was saying "it is shocking to think that in just 14 years snow on this mountain could be nothing but a distant memory".

Last November, viewing photographs of a snowless Snowdon at an exhibition in Cardiff, the Welsh environment minister, Jane Davidson, said "we must act now to reduce the greenhouse gases that cause climate change".

Yet virtually no coverage has been given to the abnormally deep spring snow which prevented the completion of a new building on Snowdon's summit for more than a month, and nearly made it miss the deadline for £4.2 million of EU funding. (Brussels eventually extended the deadline to next autumn.) ...

The one thing I know about the weather is that it changes.  I see so much "evidence" to suggest that global warming is happening and so much evidence to suggest that it's not happening that I've decided that it may be happening.  Global warming is a theory - it may be right it may be wrong.  It is not a fact.

Comments

[Rob Schneider]

Global warming is indeed a theory, as is anything related to the prediction of the future. I have concluded that it is indeed a "fact" that greenhouse gasses have increased in our atmosphere, and I think that the root cause of that is the burning of fossil fuels. I believe that a change in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will have an impact. I believe that we should stop putting greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, but I also believe that will be almost impossible for us to accomplish. I don't know for sure what impact that has on the future, and I'm not ready to point to changes in weather as indicators of climate change. I do believe that the climate will change--that's an easy forecast since climate has always changed. I am not ready to jump on solutions that are not sufficently understood with respect to unintended consequences, e.g. using food for biofuels, nor am I convinced there are "solutions". I also am not willing to turn this into a "blame" and "wealth redistribution" game--as global warming is in the media and the world political stage. May we all be so lucky to live in such interesting times.

[Dave Berry]

"Climate" and "Weather" are not the same. Most climate scientists stress that isolated weather events do not prove or disprove global warming; you have to look at long-term trends. The media is not very good at "long-term" anything.

There have also been several recent articles pointing out that while scientists are fairly certain that we are warming the world and that this will have major effects overall, it is hard to predict what the detailed effects will be in any specific region.

[Tim D]

To explain this years very cold winters worldwide the answer lies out in the Pacific with a to-and-fro movement of warm and cool currents of air called El Nino Southern Oscillation. This causes warm ‘events’ when the warm waters are just off South America (El Ninos) and cold events when the cooler waters are just off South America (La Nina’s).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article2517868.ece

Last Sept a La Nina formed and upset weather across the world. El Nino’s tend to warm the atmosphere, La Nina’s cool it. La Nina also pushes the jet streams around as diverts bodies of moisture in the atmosphere that fall as rain or snow. For more on this:
China: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/01/30/china.weather/index.html
USA: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2000/12/1209_blizzard.html

And yes, La Nina influences British weather too: You can blame her (La Nina is ‘girl child’ in Spanish) for the heavy rainfall in January and the combination of her cold together with positions of high and low pressure areas between the Azores and Iceland for the return of snow back onto Snowdon.
“When the Icelandic low is very deep and the Azores is very high, the jet stream drives towards Britain and northwest Europe, bringing a wet, mild winter; when the pressure seesaw slackens off, Britain has a winter of cold and snow.” [Bttm of page]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3200801.ece

This La Nina is due to fade away by mid summer, signs are it’s already weakening.
If you do a Google search you’ll find much on both La Nina and El Nino.