Yet another cold Winter

[pjclarke]

I notice how 1998 is the hottest year, and we seem to be climbing back down again.

Hardly ...

This year is so far tied for the hottest year in a record dating back to 1850 in a new sign of a warming trend, the three major institutes which calculate global warming estimates told Reuters. ... "I would not be surprised if most or all groups found that 2010 was tied for the warmest year," said Nasa's Dr James Hansen

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The globe has warmed before...how else do you explain glacial variations, an argument you pointedly ignore because you have no answer.

Of course the planet has been warmer before, for example in the Eemian (when Hippopotamuses roamed England and when sea levels were 5-7m higher), however civilisation, agriculture and our infratructure developed during the Holocene, a period of remarkable climatic stability. To quote Jim Hansen, writing in the Philosophical Journals of the Royal Society

Earth's climate is remarkably sensitive to forcings, i.e. imposed changes of the planet's energy balance. Both fast and slow feedbacks turn out to be predominately positive. As a result, our climate has the potential for large rapid fluctuations. Indeed, the Earth, and the creatures struggling to exist on the planet, have been repeatedly whipsawed between climate states. No doubt this rough ride has driven progression of life via changing stresses, extinctions and species evolution. But civilization developed, and constructed extensive infrastructure, during a period of unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12 000 years in duration. That period is about to end.

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Why don't you check out the evidence pointed out by Easterbrook pointing to warmer temperatures in the middle ages.

Because life is too short; there is more than enough interesting material from reliable sources to keep me occupied before turning to the likes of widely-debunked Don Easterbrook. As I have pointed out many times he fabricates evidence and manipulates graphs.

Easterbrook’s analysis is hopelessly flawed, and one is left to wonder just why he would intentionally shoot down his own credibility with such sloppiness. Any support of this work on internet sources is not a support of any actual science or data, but an appeal to authority.

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[pjclarke]

I would also like one thing to be clarified. Pachuri was rightfully villified for claiming that the Himalayan glaciers would melt in 35 years. He accepted the error but has not told us when they will actually go into melt down. Maybe you can tell us ?

Or maybe you guys aren't interested now that it's not a useful tool to terrify the general populace.

Well, the error went un-noticed and unremarked for over 2 years so terror levels were presuambly manageable, were you aware of this prediction before this year? Be honest now.

In a regional chapter on Asia in Volume 2, written by authors from the region, it was erroneously stated that 80% of Himalayan glacier area would very likely be gone by 2035. This is of course not the proper IPCC projection of future glacier decline, which is found in Volume 1 of the report. There we find a 45-page, perfectly valid chapter on glaciers, snow and ice (Chapter 4), with the authors including leading glacier experts (such as our colleague Georg Kaser from Austria, who first discovered the Himalaya error in the WG2 report). There are also several pages on future glacier decline in Chapter 10 (“Global Climate Projections”), where the proper projections are used e.g. to estimate future sea level rise. So the problem here is not that the IPCC’s glacier experts made an incorrect prediction. The problem is that a WG2 chapter, instead of relying on the proper IPCC projections from their WG1 colleagues, cited an unreliable outside source in one place. Fixing this error involves deleting two sentences on page 493 of the WG2 report.

If you're really interested in the glaciers, the actual picture is complicated but see here and here :-

Or you might prefer David Bellamy's considered thoughts.

[Paddy]

BBC News - Met Office says 2010 'among hottest on record'

Strange that they choose to say this when it snows, they did the same last time it snowed!

This year is heading to be the hottest or second hottest on record, according to the Met Office.

It says the past 12 months are the warmest recorded

The Met Office says it is very confident that man-made global warming is forcing up temperatures.

[BlasterBates]

Of course the planet has been warmer before, for example in the Eemian (when Hippopotamuses roamed England and when sea levels were 5-7m higher), however civilisation, agriculture and our infratructure developed during the Holocene, a period of remarkable climatic stability. To quote Jim Hansen, writing in the Philosophical Journals of the Royal Society

I notice that you have yet again ignored the the evidence on Swiss alpine glaciers being further back 1000 years ago, that is somewhat later than when the hippos were roaming Britain.

You don't really have an answer to that one.

But it isn't just the Swiss glaciers, the ice cores in Greenland and in Antarctica, and glaciers elsewhere exhibit similar variation, just check the literature it's all in there.