Global warming or a New Ice Age?

Hardly a day goes by without another news article or website report about climate change and global warming. And just as we were getting used to the idea of the CO2 green house effect, (extinction of the polar bears, Mediterranean climate in the UK etc) and the dire warnings about the increase in the planet’s temperature, along comes another cold winter, and suddenly we are faced with an ice age scenario. How can this be?

Apparently, data from the NOOA shows a steady increase in Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere over the last five years, but during that same period, stats from the UK Met office shows that the surface temperature of the overall planet has actually gone down!

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) show that over the past year, global temperatures have actually dropped!

“The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.”

Hasn’t the planet always had fluctuations in temperature? According to many there is no actual proof that man’s CO2 emissions caused the warming of the planet during the last century, and there no credible evidence that we are causing it’s current cooling either. CO2, cow shit, sun spots, reduced volcanic dust, water vapour...take your pick!

What’s going on? Are we warming or cooling? Science seems at odds with itself, and as the financial and lifestyle cost of reducing CO2 emissions will affect each and everyone of us, it seems even more important than ever that we have political transparency, and media openness about all these issues.

So what should we believe? And what can we do about it?

Are you confused? I am!

Cicero

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