Friday, October 31, 2008

Is global warming over?

Dr. Don Easterbrook at Western Washington University is not so sure about global warming -- for the next 30 years at least. Here’s his conclusions: (Larger image here.)

Rather than drastic global warming at a rate of 0.5C (1F) per decade, historic records of past natural cycles suggest global cooling for the first several decades of the 21st century to about 2030, followed by global warming from about 2030 to about 2060, and renewed global cooling from 2060 to 2090. […] Recent solar changes suggest that it could be fairly severe, perhaps more like the 1880 to 1915 cool cycle than the more moderate 1945-1977 cool cycle.

[In 1998, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change (IPPC) predicted that CO2 emissions would cause global warming of 1F every decade until 2100, causing global catastrophe. Click image to get larger version.]

Now a decade later, the global climate has not warmed 1F as forecast by the IPCC but has cooled slightly until 2007-08 when global temperatures turned sharply downward. In 2008, NASA satellite imagery confirmed that the Pacific Ocean had switched from the warm mode it had been in since 1977 to its cool mode, similar to that of the 1945-1977 global cooling period. The shift strongly suggests that the next several decades will be cooler, not warmer as predicted by the IPCC.

Easterbrook's conclusion:

Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming- it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.

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