Is it true? Has this winter been so cold worldwide that global warming trends are now back to average?

Question

On the Paul Harvey radio show at noon today, he said that four monitoring points on the globe have all given this result. Can it be accurate, or did I misunderstand what he said?

Answer 1

True - we lost all the warmth gained by global warming.

Temperatures are now below the accepted average for the planet.

And this is happening even with a steady increase of green house gases!

Answer 2

No, it's not true.

Basically what's true is that January was a relatively cool month.  It was still warmer than the average temperature from 1951-1980, which was warmer than the average global temperature anytime before 1935 for the past thousands of years.

Basically because we're in the middle of a strong La Nina cycle:

http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/klaus.wol...

global temperatures in January dropped a significant amount.  They still only dropped to 0.05°C cooler than January of 2000, which was the last strong La Nina event.

If the global temperature were to stay at its January 2008 level, it would have "erased" approximately the past 30 years of global warming.  

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...

But it won't, because this La Nina cycle will last a few months at most, after which point the global temperature will return to normal.

January of 2007 was the hottest single month ever recorded, but did Paul Harvey and the right-wing blogs freak out saying that global warming was out of control?  No.  But we have one relatively cool month and everybody goes crazy because they don't understand the difference between weather and climate, signal and noise.

Pay no attention.  In a few months when this La Nina cycle is fading away and temperatures return to normal, everyone will forget about January being a cool month, because in the long run one month means diddly squat with regards to global climate.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs...

Answer 3

It's true and what's more, on the news today also, they said the trend is actually "cooler" than predicted by the global warming fanatics.

Answer 4

Is true.  News report are that this year has cold front has erased 100 years of global warming.  Now what is Dan Quail gong to do?

Answer 5

If you go to www.paulharvey.com and click "Listen Now" and choose "Thursday Morning - Feb 28th..." you can hear it again.

The Global Warming crowd are just a bunch of alarmists. When I was a kid, my teachers told us the sun was burning out and that we were all going to freeze to death...

Answer 6

I dont think so its been a warm winter here the warmest iv seen in a while actually!!!

Answer 7

No, global warming is not about the temperature, it is about socialist liberal control of your life. So it does not matter why anyone says to deny GW, as far as the believers go GW is their religion.

Answer 8

I didn't hear what Paul Harvey said, but I can confidently say that his level of scientific understanding isn't exceptionally high.

For the past 12-months (2/2007 - 1/2008) the average global temperature is 0.504 C above the base period of 1951-1980.

The preceding 12-month period (2/2006 - 1/2007) was 0.574 C above the base period.  That's only a difference of 0.07C, well within the expected noise/weather year-to-year fluctuations.

The climate warming trend is computed based on 20 or 30 year trends, not individual months.  Both the 20 & 30 year trends still (even with 1 very cold month) show a warming trend of 0.2 C/decade.  We're experiencing a La Nina (a relatively short term event) right now which tends to cause a cooling over a large part of the planet.  That's simply masking the warming effect of the green-house gases.

Answer 9

Well first of all, global warming is bs.(unbelievably not true)  There have been more new glaciers forming than melting. The temperature only goes up a forth of a degree ferenheight every 12,000 years. i mean come on, what will Al Gore think of next? He will probably say it is global leeking on a rainy day!

Answer 10

I'm not sure what's true and what's not anymore concerning this issue. If it is true, I think these holy climatologists should easily be able to tell us why. After all, many scientists have told us with certainty, that many people and places would be under water in a century, maybe less. For this temperature decrease, something had to change. The CO2 levels have certainly not fallen. There has to be one or many other factors that can drastically change climate patterns in a very short time. What are these factors? My guess is, they really don't know. And if they don't understand short-term climate change, how can they possibly know the long term. Not much science there, just common-sense. In Ohio we've had a pretty cold and snowy winter, definitely not a warm one. I've worked out doors for years and have had to be very aware of the weather. I can readily believe, at least for the short term in my local area, that there has been a cooling trend. Is that a scientific observation?

Answer 11

There have been DOZENS of questions on this here, and most have been mislead by the media.

What has happened is that January 2008 has been significantly colder than you would expect from the current trend, and indeed it is quite close to average (about 0.12 degrees above).

However, you cannot judge anything based on only a single month, January could be, and probably is, just an anomalously low point in the dataset. It could be a sign of cooling to come, but that is impossible to judge on only one data point, we need to wait much longer to see if the trend continues.

Explanations for the cold January include the fact that we are now in the middle of a strong "la niña" cycle, which causes lower temperatures. The onset of la niña would explain the slight cooling that began in mid-2007.

So, yes, January was close to average, but the overall trend remains the same, that is, about level since 1998, or significant warming if you look from before then.