Keep The Coats Handy

     Being kind of a weather junkie, I’m always on the lookout for news and articles about the weather, and I always seem to be watching the weather during the day. Trying to read the clouds on the mountains has always held my attention as I looked out of town.

      Not long ago I came across some articles on climate change. You know, climate change used to be called global warming, until everyone questioned whether the earth was actually getting warmer. Everyone except for Al Gore, of course, and now we question Gore and wonder how he made so much money from it.

The big weather news this past week is that there is now global cooling. Yes – you heard me right – it is getting colder. You certainly couldn’t tell in our area though, could you? All summer we heard Don Day, our meteorologist, talk about the cold air in the Arctic that high-pressure systems in our area were not letting come south. We sure could have used a blast of cool air at times this summer, especially during State Fair. 

Research has shown that a cool Arctic summer has left nearly a million more square miles of ocean covered with ice than at the same time last year, an increase of 60 percent. Last year the ice cap was at a record low, and it was only six years ago that some were predicting that global warming would leave the Arctic free of ice this summer. Some were hoping that there would become a major shipping channel through the Northwest Passage, but instead we now have a solid sheet of ice more than half the size of Europe, the article states. The article goes on to state that some scientists now believe that the world is now headed for a period of cooling that will not end until the middle of the century. Are we headed for another ice age? Besides cold, you need a lot of precipitation to make ice, so we’ll have to wait and see. 

All weather predictions now are made on computer models, and I think to be realistic we just don’t have the data on the ice up north to make good predictions. There is no doubt we have climate change, but the world’s climate has always been changing, with or without carbon dioxide. 

There is a group, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that has a study due out in October on climate change. Now numerous countries are demanding that some 1,500 changes to the report be made based on recent studies. U.S. Climate Expert Professor Judith Curry said, “The uncertainty is getting bigger. It’s now clear the models are way too sensitive to carbon dioxide. I cannot see any basis for the IPCC increasing its confidence level.” 

Scientists are now looking to long-term cycles in ocean temperature, which have a huge influence on climate and suggest that the world may be approaching a period similar to that from 1965-75, when there was a clear cooling period. 

Well, I’ve never had too much faith in anything the United Nations was involved in lately. I don’t see why this study should be any different.