Did global warming stop in 1998?

Question

Did global warming stop in 1998?



The official thermometers at the U.S. National Climate Data Center show a slight global cooling trend over the last seven years, from 1998 to 2005.

Actually, global warming is likely to continue—but the interruption of the recent strong warming trend sharply undercuts the argument that our global warming is an urgent, man-made emergency. The seven-year decline makes our warming look much more like the moderate, erratic warming to be expected when the planet naturally shifts from a Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD) to a centuries-long warm phase like the Medieval Warming (950–1300 AD) or the Roman Warming (200 BC– 600 AD).

The stutter in the temperature rise should rein in some of the more apoplectic cries of panic over man-made greenhouse emissions. The strong 28-year upward trend of 1970–1998 has apparently ended.

Fred Singer, a well-known skeptic on man-made warming, points out that the latest cooling trend is dictated primarily by a very warm El Nino year in 1998. “When you start your graph with 1998,” he says, “you will necessarily get a cooling trend.”

Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist from Australia, notes that the earth also had strong global warming between 1918 and 1940. Then there was a long cooling period from 1940 to 1965. He points out that the current warming started 50 years before cars and industries began spewing consequential amounts of CO2. Then the planet cooled for 35 years just after the CO2 levels really began to surge. In fact, says Carter, there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between temperatures and man-made CO2.

For context, Carter offers a quick review of earth’s last 6 million years. The planet began that period with 3 million years in which the climate was several degrees warmer than today. Then came 3 million years in which the planet was basically cooling, accompanied by an increase in the magnitude and regularity of the earth’s 1500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger climate cycles.

Speaking of the 1500-year climate cycles, grab an Internet peek at the earth’s official temperatures since 1850. They describe a long, gentle S-curve, with the below-mean temperatures of the Little Ice Age gradually giving way to the above-the-mean temperatures we should expect during a Modern Warming.

Carter points out that since the early 1990s, the First World’s media have featured “an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as ‘if’, ‘might,’ ‘could,’ ‘probably,’ ‘perhaps,’ ‘expected,’ ‘projected’ or ‘modeled’—and many . . . are akin to nonsense.”

Carter also warns that global cooling—not likely for some centuries yet—is likely to be far harsher for humans than the Modern Warming. He says, “our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 percent of the last 2 million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.”

Since the earth is always warming or cooling, let’s applaud the Modern Warming, and hope that the next ice age is a long time coming.

Answer 1

I'm not certain we can trust information released by a US government agency, numerous scientists have accused the bush admin of doctoring scientific information related to global warming.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/01/28/top-nasa-scientist-bush-_n_14637.html?p=2

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0219-02.htm

and what is your source?

Answer 2

Only if you don't know math. The fact that 1998 was, until 2005, the hottest year on record led a number of right-wing, non-scientist loudmouths to proclaim that global warming stopped in 1998. The fact is that the proper way to determine whether global warming has stopped is to use regression, and the regression slope for world temperature during the period 1998-2006 is positive using both the NASA/GISS dataset (+1.9°C per century) and the Hadley dataset (+0.8°C per century).

Answer 3

What causes global warming?
Carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun's heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution -- they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.

Here's the good news: technologies exist today to make cars that run cleaner and burn less gas, modernize power plants and generate electricity from nonpolluting sources, and cut our electricity use through energy efficiency. The challenge is to be sure these solutions are put to use.

Is the earth really getting hotter?
Yes. Although local temperatures fluctuate naturally, over the past 50 years the average global temperature has increased at the fastest rate in recorded history. And experts think the trend is accelerating: the 10 hottest years on record have all occurred since 1990. Scientists say that unless we curb global warming emissions, average U.S. temperatures could be 3 to 9 degrees higher by the end of the century.

Are warmer temperatures causing bad things to happen?
Global warming is already causing damage in many parts of the United States. In 2002, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon endured their worst wildfire seasons ever. The same year, drought created severe dust storms in Montana, Colorado and Kansas, and floods caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in Texas, Montana and North Dakota. Since the early 1950s, snow accumulation has declined 60 percent and winter seasons have shortened in some areas of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington.

Of course, the impacts of global warming are not limited to the United States. In 2003, extreme heat waves caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe and more than 1,500 deaths in India. And in what scientists regard as an alarming sign of events to come, the area of the Arctic's perennial polar ice cap is declining at the rate of 9 percent per decade.

Is global warming making hurricanes worse?
Global warming doesn't create hurricanes, but it does make them stronger and more dangerous. Because the ocean is getting warmer, tropical storms can pick up more energy and become more powerful. So global warming could turn, say, a category 3 storm into a much more dangerous category 4 storm. In fact, scientists have found that the destructive potential of hurricanes has greatly increased along with ocean temperature over the past 35 years.

Is there really cause for serious concern?
Yes. Global warming is a complex phenomenon, and its full-scale impacts are hard to predict far in advance. But each year scientists learn more about how global warming is affecting the planet, and many agree that certain consequences are likely to occur if current trends continue. Among these:


Melting glaciers, early snowmelt and severe droughts will cause more dramatic water shortages in the American West.


Rising sea levels will lead to coastal flooding on the Eastern seaboard, in Florida, and in other areas, such as the Gulf of Mexico.


Warmer sea surface temperatures will fuel more intense hurricanes in the southeastern Atlantic and Gulf coasts.


Forests, farms and cities will face troublesome new pests and more mosquito-borne diseases.


Disruption of habitats such as coral reefs and alpine meadows could drive many plant and animal species to extinction.

Answer 4

The global warming has just begun. It's not going to cool off enough to start the restoration of the polar ice caps. They still continue to get smaller and smaller. The global warming will continue until there is so much moisture in the air that it will block the warmth of the sun and then we will have about 2000 years of super cold ice age.

Answer 5

It never got started, tis but a myth to inspire fear amongst the masses.

Answer 6

It never was an issue, is not an issue, and never will be an issue. The real issues are the terrorists and how to get rid of them.

Answer 7

it began when al bore made it an issue...well tried to


GO BIG BLUE GO

Answer 8

please help:)

http://www.climatecrisis.net/pdf/10things.pdf

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/default.asp