PREDICTION

Winter officially arrives with Sunday's solstice. But for many Americans, autumn 2008's final days already feel like deepest, coldest January.

New Englanders still lack electricity after a Dec. 11 ice storm snapped power lines. Up to eight inches of snow struck New Orleans and southern Louisiana that day and didn't melt for 48 hours in some neighborhoods.

In southern California Wednesday, a half-inch of snow brightened Malibu's hills while a half-foot barricaded highways and marooned commuters in desert towns east of Los Angeles. Three inches of the white stuff shuttered Las Vegas' McCarren Airport that day and dusted the Strip's hotels and casinos.

What are the odds of that?

Actually, the odds are rising that snow, ice, and cold will grow increasingly common. As serious scientists repeatedly explain, global cooling is here. It is chilling temperatures and so-called "global-warming."

According to the National Climatic Data Center, 2008 will be America's coldest year since 1997, thanks to La Niña and precipitation in the central and eastern states. Solar quietude also may underlie global cooling. This year's sunspots and solar radiation approach the minimum in the Sun's cycle, corresponding with lower Earth temperatures. This echoes Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas' belief that solar variability, much more than CO2, sways global temperatures.

Meanwhile, the National Weather Service reports that last summer was Anchorage's third coldest on record. "Not since 1980 has there been a summer less reflective of global warming," Craig Medred wrote in the Anchorage Daily News. Consequently, Alaska's glaciers are thickening in the middle. "It's been a long time on most glaciers where they've actually had positive mass balance," U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia told Medred Oct. 13. Similarly, the National Snow and Ice Data Center found that Arctic sea ice expanded 13.2 percent this year, or a Texas-sized 270,000 square miles.

Across the equator, Brazil endured an especially cold September. Snow graced its southern provinces that month.

"Global Warming is over, and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change," Imperial College London astrophysicist and long-range forecaster Piers Corbyn wrote British Members of Parliament on Oct. 28. "According to official data in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been colder than that year, yet CO2 has been rising rapidly." That evening, as the House of Commons debated legislation on so-called "global-warming," October snow fell in London for the first time since 1922.

These observations parallel those of five German researchers led by Professor Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences. "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade," they concluded in last May's "Nature," "as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic (man-made) warming."

This "lull" should doom the 0.54 degree Fahrenheit average global temperature rise predicted by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Vatican of so-called "global warming." Incidentally, the IPCC's computer models factor in neither El Niño nor the Gulf Stream. Excluding such major climate variables would be like ESPN ignoring baseball and basketball.

So, is this all just propaganda concocted by Chevron-funded, right-wing, flat-Earthers? Ask Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a physical chemist and retired Navy meteorologist.

"As a scientist and lifelong liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science," Hertzberg wrote in Sept. 26's USA Today. "From the El Niño year of 1998 until Jan., 2007, the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere near its surface decreased some 0.25 C (0.45 F). From Jan., 2007 until the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 0.75 C (1.35 F)."

Chicago Socked By Snow... Over 8 Inches At O'Hare...
SNOWBLAST SET FOR GOTHAM; UP TO 5-INCHES... DEVELOPING...
Watches/Warnings...
Heavy Snow, Detroit to New York; More coming to Chicago...
Coldest Weather Possible In Nearly 15 Years...

Incidentally, the IPCC's computer models factor in neither El Niño nor the Gulf Stream. Excluding such major climate variables would be like ESPN ignoring baseball and basketball.

Armon Ayers wrote:Soon CLIMATE CHANGE will replace the embarrassing term GLOBAL WARMING.

Change we can all believe in? How about the same song and dance, but just a different day?

In opening remarks at her confirmation hearing on Jan. 13, President-elect Barack Obama’s Secretary of State designate Hillary Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations committee she would use the office to shape foreign policy that would fight climate change

“You Mr. Chairman [Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.] were among the very first in a growing chorus from both parties to recognize that climate change is an unambiguous security threat,” Clinton said. “At the extreme it threatens our very existence. But well before that point, it could well incite new wars of an old kind over basic resources – like food, water and arable land.”

According to Clinton, the upcoming 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Copenhagen will be the stage for the next opportunity for the United States to ratify a climate change treaty like the Kyoto Protocol, which was rejected by the U.S. Senate 95-0 in 1997.

“President-elect Obama has said America must be a leader in developing and implementing a global and coordinated response to climate change,” Clinton said. “We will participate in the upcoming Copenhagen climate conference and a global energy forum. And we’ll pursue an energy policy that reduces our carbon emissions while reducing our dependence on foreign oil and gas, fighting climate change and enhancing our economic and energy security.”

Stephanie wrote:I remember them. I was a teenager. I'm a helluva lot older now and my bones and joints ache.

ziggy wrote:

Stephanie wrote:I remember them. I was a teenager. I'm a helluva lot older now and my bones and joints ache.

Yeah, me too.

But today is still a breath of spring compared to January, 1978.