The threat of global warming has been supplanted...

... by the threat of global cooling.  Think I'm joking?

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

...

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.

Well... there you have it...  science is convinced that the real threat is global cooling...

Methinks it's more like global scientific confusion.

But hey, I'm a yahoo.

Comments

[Erasmussimo]

Your source on this is a newspaper reporter. Do you believe everything you read in the newspapers? Because one newspaper reporter claims that we'll be facing global cooling, you conclude that "science is convinced that the real threat is global cooling". Gee, I didn't know that one newspaper reporter speaks for All of Science. I thought the IPCC and the National Academies of Science did that. And you STILL haven't read any of their reports?

Also, you really should check out some of the sources you rely upon. For example, Dr. Hans von Storch, whom the article claims conducted a survey of German scientists, makes no reference to such a survey on his own website, even though he does include lots of his own publications and interviews. And you really should read his commentary. He believes that AGW is real, that there's not much we can do to stop it now, and that the best we can do is try to limit it to 2 degrees C. He is also critical of some scientists who, in his judgement, overstate the dangers of climate change. He's a good example of the breadth of opinion within the scientific community that makes it such a healthy intellectual climate.

[Erasmussimo]

I found the survey referred to in the post, and what was presented in the newspaper article was rather misleading. I present for the readers' benefit this quote from the paper, presenting a more complete synopsis of the findings:

In this section of the discussion attention is turned to the expert opinion of things
that raise public and political hackles. First, can we say for certain that global warming
– man made or otherwise – is underway (Figure 28)? From 1996 to 2003 there was quite
a significant shift saying yes. Given that it is happening how much is it of a leading
problem facing humanity? According to the data (Figure 29) climate change is
perceived by climate scientists are representing a significant global problem (this
however is difficult to reconcile given the discussion concerning impacts). Furthermore,
as Table 6, Appendix A indicates, in 2003 only 7.9% of those scientists responding to the
question ‘I feel the most pressing issue facing humanity today is …’ claimed climate
change/global warming as the most pressing issue. (One should note however the
possible role of competing issues, i.e. terrorism.) So, if global warming is happening, and
if it might be a significant global problem, who, according to science, is to blame?
Figure 30 suggests there is quite some hesitance about putting all of the blame on
humans. However, when considering attribution one should keep in mind the self
proclaimed relative lack of understanding of green house gases and when considering the
claim of climate change being a leading global issue one should keep in mind the self
proclaimed lack of predictive capabilities in the models.

You can find the full paper at:

http://w3g.gkss.de/staff/storch/pdf/070511.bray.GKSS.pdf

[Marc V]

So we've got about 10 years to really juice up the carbon dioxide content and get things all soupy-hot?! Think I'll celebrate and put some more charcoal in the grill this weekend. Maybe I'll get all crazy and bump the thermostat by a degree or two cooler for more AC! Then I'll take all of those carbon credit certificates and burn them in the fireplace ... yeah, that's the ticket.

[sakthi]

We are not fully educated about the causes of global warming.If we not stop polluting the environment,we'll suffer huge in the future.I guess we can start use Bio-Diesel's which is have less emission of Co2...
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