THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VIII, Issue # 86, May 24, 2006
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DID GLOBAL WARMING STOP IN 1998?
By Dennis T. Avery
GLOBAL WARMING & COOLING CYCLES -- WHAT THE EARTH'S NATURAL HISTORY TELLS US ABOUT THE GLOBAL WARMING
THEORY CONCOCTED BY ENVIRONMENTALISTS TO PROVIDE IDEOLOGICAL SUPPORT & JUSTIFICATION FOR THEIR RADICAL
POLITICAL AGENDA: NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THE CLAIM THAT THE EARTH IS UNDERGOING A
CATASTROPHIC WARMING TREND, CAUSED BY MAN-MADE GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS -- NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE TO
SUPPORT THE IDEOLOGY OF POLITICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM
FULL STORY:
The official thermometers at the U.S. National Climate Data Center show a slight global cooling trend over the last seven years,
from 1998 to 2005.
Actually, global warming is likely to continue — but the interruption of the recent strong warming trend sharply undercuts the
argument that our global warming is an urgent, man-made emergency. The seven-year decline makes our warming look much
more like the moderate, erratic warming to be expected when the planet naturally shifts from a Little Ice Age (1300–1850 AD) to
a centuries-long warm phase like the Medieval Warming (950–1300 AD) or the Roman Warming (200 BC– 600 AD).
The stutter in the temperature rise should rein in some of the more apoplectic cries of panic over man-made greenhouse
emissions. The strong 28-year upward trend of 1970–1998 has apparently ended.
Fred Singer, a well-known skeptic on man-made warming, points out that the latest cooling trend is dictated primarily by a very
warm El Nino year in 1998. “When you start your graph with 1998,” he says, “you will necessarily get a cooling trend.”
Bob Carter, a paleoclimatologist from Australia, notes that the earth also had strong global warming between 1918 and 1940.
Then there was a long cooling period from 1940 to 1965. He points out that the current warming started 50 years before cars and
industries began spewing consequential amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2). Then the planet cooled for 35 years just after the
CO2 levels really began to surge. In fact, says Carter, there doesn’t seem to be much correlation between temperatures and
man-made CO2.
For context, Carter offers a quick review of earth’s last 6 million years. The planet began that period with 3 million years in which
the climate was several degrees warmer than today. Then came 3 million years in which the planet was basically cooling,
accompanied by an increase in the magnitude and regularity of the earth’s 1500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger climate cycles.
Speaking of the 1500-year climate cycles, grab an Internet peek at the earth’s official temperatures since 1850. They describe a
long, gentle S-curve, with the below-mean temperatures of the Little Ice Age gradually giving way to the above-the-mean
temperatures we should expect during a Modern Warming.
Carter points out that, since the early 1990s, the First World’s media have featured “an increasing stream of alarmist letters and
articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as 'if,' 'might,'
'could,' 'probably,' 'perhaps,' 'expected,' 'projected,' or 'modeled' — and many . . . are akin to nonsense.”
Carter also warns that global cooling — not likely for some centuries yet — is likely to be far harsher for humans than the
Modern Warming. He says:
“. . . our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years
of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But, for more than 90 percent of
the last 2 million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much
colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden
natural cooling is more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social
and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle
warming.”
Since the earth is always warming or cooling, let’s applaud the Modern Warming, and hope that the next ice age is a long time
coming.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Science, Ethics, & Human Health
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is the Director of the Institute's Center for
Global Food Issues (www.cgfi.org). Formerly he was a senior analyst for the United States
Department of State. Readers may write him at Post Office Box 202, Churchville, VA 24421. Email: cgfi@rica.net
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