So are we warming? Or cooling?

I was shocked to see a mention of global cooling in the last week from, of all places, the BBC.

It reads “What happened to global warming?”  And continues:

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

I’ve always been skeptical of  global warming, though I’m certainly all for saving energy and reducing pollution when possible.  I have done more than some in this regard.  I live in a passive solar house and have for more than 20 years.  Our family car is a Honda Accord.

But the idea that we have been changing the climate with coal-fired power plants, lawn mowers, and even freon and aerosol cans always seemed absurd.  It did make me feel a little better when I ate a piece of steak, that I was helping reduce the number methane-producing cows–if only by one.

I chuckled last year when Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize for his “Inconvenient Truth” since much of his global warming “religion” is not a truth, but a belief.  And if he really believed that stuff, he’d cut back on the jets and downsize his lifestyle, like actor Ed Begley Jr.

Is the earth’s climate changing?  Of course it is.  It has never stopped changing. But it isn’t getting warmer.  For about a decade the temperatures have stayed the same.  Despite more pollution, and a growing population, the temperatures have stayed the same!  NASA and NOAA both agree on this, though they believe this is an aberration which will only last 10 or 20 years.

…in a climate being warmed by man-made carbon emissions, “it is possible, and indeed likely, to have a period as long as a decade or two of ‘cooling’ or no warming superimposed on a longer-term warming trend.”

But I’m not so sure and lots of people agree with me.  More than 30,000 people have signed a petition stating that,

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.

That web page says more than 31,oo0 “scientists” have signed the thing, though I’m skeptical of that as well.  They might not be scientists, just people like me (I haven’t signed it).

Take a look at this:

Sea surface temperature

The late Michael Crichton attacked this issue in his fascinating novel State of Fear.  It includes 20 pages of references to support his positions.  I found parts of the story to e contrived, but he obviously did not believe we are slowly cooking ourselves.  The book was attacked, of course, but he stuck by it.

Crighton testified before a Senate Committee when the Republicans were in control, a couple of years later, Al Goretestified before a House Committee, making a veiled reference to Crichton’s book

Al Gore said on March 21, 2007 before a US House committee: “The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor [...] if your doctor tells you you need to intervene here, you don’t say ‘Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem’”. Several commentators interpreted this as a reference to State of Fear.

I do know that there have been times in the last few thousand years when the carbon dioxide level was much higher than it is now.  I also know that the biggest producer of carbon dioxide on earth is volcanoes.  And I know the ice record shows historic increases in CO2 have happened about 800 years after a global warming trend.

And this brings me back to the Brits.  And real science.  Here’s a documentary from Great Britain on global warming called The Great Global Warming Swindle.

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