You’ve probably heard the sceptics – the cool weather across much of the US is giving them ammunition for their quest to convince the American public that we’re in a phase of global cooling, not warming.
The latest polls, in fact, show Americans are less and less concerned about climate change. A poll released by the Pew Research Center last week concluded that only 57% of Americans believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77% in 2006.
Unfortunately, it’s global cooling that’s the hoax, and it was confirmed by an analysis commissioned by the Associated Press. Statisticians couldn’t find a trend of falling temperatures over time.
All the "cooling talk" prompted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) climate data center to take another look at the temperature trends and they too could find no cooling trend.
The data show that the decade ending this December is the warmest in 130 years of records. 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded.
"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University told MSNBC.
President Barack Obama said, "some opponents make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary."
Oceans can cause temporary weather patterns amidst long term trends because they heat up and cool down slowly.
El Nino, for example, creates temporary warming in parts of the Pacific Ocean, which spikes global temperatures. 1998 and 2005 – the warmest recent years were El Nino years.
On the other hand, La Nina years lead to cooler temperatures. Last year was a La Nina year, but 2008 was still the 9th warmest year in the 130 years of NOAA records.
El Nino is forecast to return, making 2010 warmer again. NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt told MSNBC, that 2010 could well break a record, so a cooling trend "will be never talked about again."
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