Yesterday I chaperoned a group of ten year-olds to the Smithsonian. As the bus rolled by, I pointed out the Federal Reserve to my kid and one of the other boys his eyes all aglow said "ooohh, that's where Ben Bernanke works!" Even taking into account the possible uber-nerdiness of the group, this was a surprise.
On another note, five years ago (!) I pointed to a sign at the Smithsonian warning of another ice age and recent global cooling – well the sign (or something like it) is still there only now it does have a little placard above saying that this exhibit will soon be changed to reflect more recent science.
Global temperatures peaked in 1998. Current Arctic sea ice coverage is the largest it’s been in 7 years. Antarctic ice coverage is well above the 1979-2000 mean. Lake Superior froze over this past winter for the second time in 6 years, an event that historically happens only once every 20. Sunspot activity is at an almost 100 year low. I would say global cooling does, in fact, reflect the latest trend.
Where did you find such nerdy ten year olds?
That Ben Bernanke story made my morning and possibly my day. For some reason I get lots of joy knowin that some kid somewhere gives a crap about stuff besides the Jonas Brothers.
CO2 is the mostly deadly poison known to man. Humans who exhale it need to be taxed for their crimes against Gaia. Soon the useless
eaters will be eliminatyed and we can all enjoy our green collar jobs in while living in true freedom.
Ben, I do not think you are right. I too heard the “new ice age” theory and it had nothing to do with global warming, it had to do with a long-term global cooling trend independent of any human action or cause.
The “new ice age” thing was never the opposite of the greenhouse effect. It was one of the suite of predictions in “How does the Earth respond *after* the average surface temperature rises by 2C?” One of those possible responses is that ultracold, ultradry places (Antarctica, central Canada) turn into less-ultracold (but still below freezing) places with massive, massive amounts of snowfall. Hence: warming *can* lead to more snow in some places and less in others.
If you were correct we would not have had people suggesting to preemptively work to warm the planet. We did.
Which is not to say it was ever a position most or many scientists in related fields took (I’ve got no idea), but merely that such people and beliefs did exist.
My own proposal for people exhaling CO2 is to require everybody
to wear chlorophyll masks. Why have not climate activists picked
up on this yet?
Regarding this business of global cooling, I do not know what or
where that sign in the Smithsonian is, and therefore what it is
based on. However, it is a fact that in the 1970s there was concern
about possible global cooling. If one goes back and reads carefully,
one finds careful climatologists speaking about two competing, human-
induced elements affecting global climate that went in opposite directions.
One was CO2, leading to warming. The other was aerosols, or particulates,
particularly those laden with SO2, which led to global cooling.
There is a non-trivial viewpoint held by some non-trivial observers that
says that the explanation of the last century or so of global temperature
was that we had a global warming trend in the early 20th century that then
got side-tracked by a massive expansion of coal-based industry around the
world without any pollution controls. Sulfur-laden aerosols surged, offsetting
the warming trend and inducing a cooling that occurred until into the 1970s.
Then we passed anti-SO2 and anti-particulates environmental legisltation in
the higher-income countries, and so began to cut back those items, allowing
the CO2 rise to again dominate.
Regarding the recent trends, the view of such a prominent “global warming
skeptic” as Patrick Michaels at Cato is that in fact the longer term trend
is to global warming due to CO2, although not as rapidly as many predict,
but that we are in a temporary downturn due to La Nina and other effects.
Ben has it right
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16988-why-antarctic-ice-is-growing-despite-global-warming.html
“Satellite data shows that sea ice has shrunk west of the Antarctic Peninsula and grown in the Ross Sea. Because the increase in sea ice extent has been greater than the reduction around the Antarctic peninsula the net effect is that since the ozone hole appeared 30 years ago, Antarctic ice has grown. The researchers say their models suggest this is most likely a result of the ozone hole although they cannot rule out the possibility that natural variations in sea ice extent have also played a role.”
If the earth is cooling, it is because of climate change. If it is warming, it is because of climate change. If it is wetter, it is because of climate change. If it is drier, it is because of climate change. What a miraculous theory — it must be true because it cannot be disproved.
JSIS,
Does that article say anything about the active volcano underneath the part of the ice shelf that is melting in Antarctica?
@sleepy_commentator:
My AGW skepticism has revealed your own selection biases. A: I’m not a Republican. B: I’m not even American. AGW and modern environmentalism show very similar characteristics of religions, and little in the way of fact based science. So if you want to discuss the use of selection bias… As for links, I thought MR readers clever enough to make use of Google. My bad.
Current Arctic Sea Ice Levels comparison:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png
Danish Meteorological Institute Ice Cover April 21, 2009:
Current Antarctic Sea Ice Levels comparison to 1979-2000 mean:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.south.jpg
Cyrosphere Today
Sunspot Activity:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8009185.stm
BBC April 21, 2009 (if they’re not satisfactory, I do recommend trying Google)
Satellite image of Frozen Lake Superior:
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/images/mqt/Lake%20Superior%20ice%20Mar3_09tbig.jpg
NOAA
The next great real-estate bubble: Alaska and/or Canada and/ or some Scandinavian country and/ or Siberia.
Dibs on Vancouver!
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