Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age

National Post ^ | 2/25/2008 | Lorne Gunter

[Uncledave]

Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, February 25, 2008

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

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.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

lgunter@shaw.ca

[wbill]

She is an excellent writer, so I’m hoping she blows them away. I’ll let you know.

yes, please keep us in the loop.

And, please make sure that your daughter knows that she's not alone. I was a conservative at a college in the Northeast that ran the gamut from Liberal to Incredibly Liberal...and it was pretty lonely at times.

[texas_mrs]

I'll add you to the list. When she finds out all these freepers are interested in her project she will be shocked. Maybe it will give her encouragement, she loves freepers!

I'll pass your words on to her.

[wbill]

Yup. Having FR at hand during my college years would have helped. AlGore hadn’t gotten around to inventing the internet, though.

[SuziQ]

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

There have been NO sunspots for the last 6 weeks.

[Roccus]

Try “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

Go to

http://leaningstraightup.com/2007/03/11/the-global-warming-swindle-video/

and scroll down. It’s on the left.

[SuziQ]

Be sure to have your daughter check out some of the information from the scientists who are looking to the sun as the cause of 'Global Warming' or 'Global Cooling'. Also, be sure to have her check out the sites that show Algore's famous graph, but expanded to show more years, and she can see that the warming isn't created by elevated CO2, the warming CREATES the elevated CO2. She might also ask the students to consider what caused the many times of warming in the past, when there were fewer humans and NO industry or SUVs.

And good luck to her, and congrats for having the courage to take this on!

[muawiyah]

Today's Sunspot Activity

[gathersnomoss]

Jorge rescind his ASSININE bill???

[SuziQ]

I cannot remember the young lady’s name, but there was a high school student who decided to publicly call BS on James Hansen’s proclamations from NASA about Global Warming. She took it upon herself to get as much information as she could and wrote a detailed letter to him. There was a thread about it sometime last year on FR. Anyone on the list remember more about this? That young lady would be a good resource for your daughter.

[SuziQ]

Been like that for weeks. SirKit’s been watching it, since he read an article connecting sunspot activity with warming and cooling.

[texas_mrs]

Thanks, SuziQ, I will be sure to check out that information. Hadn’t heard about the algore graph before.

[Excellence]

She should say, “Yes, they’re slanted toward accuracy.”

[muawiyah]

There are “beats” at 20,000 and 40,000 year intervals. It’s still cold as the dickens with gigantic glaciers wafting about.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

There are, essentially, two types of sea ice — new and not new. New ice forms each winter, by the freezing of the salty ocean water. Older ice is largely salt-free — because the salt was expelled as brine (and, in some places, because of accumulated snow). The new ice melts at a significantly lower temperature than the old ice. The dramatic annual changes in ice area are almost entirely due to melting of new ice. We can expect to hear very little about Arctic ice this summer — because there will likely be a significant increase in area.

[stefanbatory]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJUFTm6cJXM

you’re not the only one who wants it back...;)

[muawiyah]

Excellent idea to put out a garden this year. Most people forget that as far as Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern fruit trees are concerned we had a Fimbul Winter last year ~ several icestorms hit about half the country East of the Mississippi and wiped out the blossoms.

Have you seen the price of apricot preserves? Or the size of New York apples ~ the only kind we could get in the favorite East Coast varieties.

[Snickering Hound]

[muawiyah]

BTW, the complaint is about "grew grapes commercially", not "grew grapes" ~ you can do it in UK ~ but you must protect your plants a bit more than in France.

The deal is that even if UK were warm enough to grow grapes from the Orkneys to Swansea the farmers wouldn't do so commercially because it's so much cheaper to import that product from Portugual or France, or even Argentina or Australia!

[GOPJ]

Interesting - thanks for sharing.

[driftless2]

As much as I would hate it (I live in Wisconsin), a prolonged cold snap would finally drive the nail in the coffin of the GW hysterians and hopefully the rest of the enviromaniacs.