Global Warming News n Views

If you only go by much of the reporting found in the mainstream media, you would be tempted to believe that man-made global warming is a fact which no one disputes, and that unless drastic action is taken immediately, there will be global disaster.

The actual situation, however, seems much less clear. Not only is there no strong scientific consensus on this issue, but many scientists think the whole thing is mostly a beat up. Consider just one set of facts: From January 2007 to January 2008 all of the major well respected indicators reported global temperature drops.? The UK’s Hadley Climate Research Unit Temperature (HadCRUT), Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa, CA (RSS), University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH), and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global temperature sets have all shown sharp temperature drops for the past year.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s?GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here.??The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the?warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

As people that actually pay attention to weather are aware, the winter in the Northern Hemisphere this year is following the same pattern as last year’s extraordinarily frigid conditions in the Southern Hemisphere.

In fact, all kinds of cold and snow-related records are occurring all over the supposedly warming planet this winter despite continued claims by climate alarmists that the world will come to an end if we all don’t immediately reduce our emissions of that awful — naturally occurring and necessary for most life on earth! — gas, carbon dioxide.

The pythons can be 20 feet long and 250 pounds. They are highly adaptable to new environments.

Two federal agencies — the USGS and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — are investigating the range of nine invasive snakes in Florida, concerned about the danger they now pose to endangered species. The agencies are collecting data to aid in the control of these populations.

They examined Burmese pythons first and, based on where they live in Asia, estimated where they might live here. One map shows where the pythons could live today, an area that expands when scientists use global warming models for 2100.

Human activities are affecting every square mile of the world’s oceans, according to a study by a team of American, British and Canadian researchers who mapped the severity of the effects from pole to pole.

The analysis of 17 global data sets, led by Benjamin S. Halpern of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif., details how humans are reshaping the seas through overfishing, air and water pollution, commercial shipping and other activities. The study, published online yesterday by the journal Science, examines those effects on nearly two dozen marine ecosystems, including coral reefs and continental shelves.

Imagine yourself as a big time editor, and somebody brings you an article with the headline, “Cold Wave in India Attributed to Global Warming.”

Wouldn’t you strongly suggest a rewrite?

Well, no such sanity occurred at the Indian website Sify on Tuesday.

Instead, that preposterous title actually did get published atop an article of equally absurd and hypocritical content (emphasis added):

Addressing the ‘Combat Global Warming’ conference at the Indian Merchants Chamber (IMC) here, former Union minister for power and environment Suresh Prabhu said global warming was primarily a problem created and induced by human beings.

He said the increase in emission of green house gases like carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and methane had resulted in the situation, which could prove catastrophic if unchecked.

UNITED NATIONS — While he acknowledged that scientists are unable to predict its consequences, Mayor Bloomberg yesterday compared the scourge of global warming to the threat of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Although it is a “long-term” fight, he said, reducing gas emissions may save the life of “everybody” on the planet, the same way that fighting terrorism and its proliferation saves lives in shorter terms.

Addressing a U.N. climate change conference, the mayor also announced a new plan to reduce the use of tropical hardwoods by New York City and told delegates that the city plans to host a meeting in June of leaders from 20 major world cities to discuss ways for the largest municipalities to reduce global warming. Other participants in the conference called for a “war” against climate change, in which the United Nations would serve as a front-line combatant.