Warming to Change

States are mindlessly jumping onto the global warming bandwagon, creating climate change offices and policies in a rush to be politically correct. Pennsylvania, for example, has enacted a Pennsylvania Climate Change Act and a special Climate Change Advisory Committee with responsibilities "including but not limited to, the development of a climate change action plan, annual greenhouse gas inventories, impacts assessment report, voluntary greenhouse gas emissions registry and such other climate change related activities that the DEP might request." Meanwhile the supposed science behind the global warming scare is crumbling, raising an obvious question; if the failure to warm forces us to call global warming by another name, shouldn't we be reexamining our hypothesis? A December 10, 2008 Washington Times article by geophysicist David Deming notes the following:

The last two years of global cooling have nearly erased 30 years of temperature increases. To the extent that global warming ever existed, it is now officially over.

This year began with a severe spell of winter weather in China. Observers characterized it as the largest natural disaster to hit China in decades. By the end of January, blizzards and cold temperatures had killed 60 people and caused millions to lose electric service. Nearly a million buildings were damaged and airports had to close. Hong Kong had the second-longest cold spell since 1885. A temperature of 33.6 degrees Fahrenheit was barely higher than the record low of 32 degrees F set in 1893.

Other countries in Asia also experienced record cold. In February, cold in the northern half of Vietnam wiped out 40 percent of the rice crop and killed 33,000 head of livestock. In India, the city of Mumbai recorded the lowest temperatures of the last 40 years. Across India, there was more frost damage to crops than at any other time in the last 30 years.

In the United States, the weather also was frigid. The city of International Falls, Minn,, whose official nickname is the "icebox of the nation," set a new record low temperature of minus 40 degrees F, breaking the old record of minus 37 F established in 1967.

Alaska experienced an unusually cold and wet summer. For the first time since the 18th century, Alaskan glaciers grew instead of retreating. In Fairbanks, October was the fourth coldest in 104 years of record. Last month in Reading, Pa., the temperature stayed below 40 degrees F for six consecutive days - the longest November cold spell there since 1903.

These cold weather events were not abnormal or isolated incidents. Global measures of climatic conditions indicate significant cooling.

A preliminary estimate by the British Met Office says 2008 will be the coldest year of the last 10. The extent of global sea ice is at the same level it was in 1980. The mean planetary temperature, as monitored by satellite, also is the same as in 1980.

Last March, NASA reported the oceans have been cooling for the last five years. Sea level has stopped rising, and Northern Hemisphere cyclone and hurricane activity is at a 24-year low.

Read the full article at:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/dec/10/global-warming-freeze/

These attempts by states to regulate the sun might better be spent making it easier to pursue energy development of all types, from geothermal, solar and wind to natural gas. The failure to do what is possible and necessary while attempting the impossible and the unnecessary is an unforgivable politicization of planning and science.