China got hit by a snowstorm...global warming must be wrong

I recently received an email from a good friend with the subject titled “Interesting”. This friend and I have very different beliefs about politics and the environment…however, I very much appreciate him, as he challenges me to think, research, and draw my own conclusions. The link pointed to a web news article in the “National Post”, which is part of the Canada.com network. I’m admittedly unfamiliar with this network so I am unaware if it is strongly biased in any direction.

I noticed 3 things when I clicked the link…first, the title “Forget Global Warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age”, second, I noticed the section of the site where this article was located: Opinion. Third, I scrolled to the bottom of the page to see how many people had left comments…but there wasn’t a comments section. This is unfortunate and is abysmal in the Web 2.0 world where social discussion (and therefore social media) is the heart of free-thinking on the net.

Now don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. I think opinions are extremely important to have and express (I do it here myself). My main requirement for listening to opinions is that the owner of the said opinion must know why they have it in the first place. The ability to have an opinion is one of those freedoms that we are given by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States (just like free-thinking)…and are therefore healthy…(that was a digression from this article and can be labeled as a “rant”).

I had the sense when this link opened that it was supposed to be like a booyah or something like that (remember 4^th grade)…but since I noticed it was in the “Opinion” section first I just went ahead and gave it a read and didn’t let my emotions get the best of me.

The article was indeed fairly interesting (or amusing…I get those emotions mixed up). And instead of writing my reply to the friend, I decided just to make a blog post and then go from there…

Instead of scrutinizing the article line for line, I want to make a few points and hopefully you will be able to draw some conclusions for yourself (caution: this will require thinking).

I recommend you follow along or read it beforehand if you like:

Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age:

1. There is a major difference between climate and weather. I don’t have to cite my sources for this because even the most cynical of skeptics have a good understanding of it (if they are educated). Therefore, we need to understand that erratic/isolated events have very little meaning in the grand picture of the global climate.
2. What we see now, however it appears at the moment must be compared with future data to see the big picture. Unfortunately, since what we see NOW (as in, right this moment), doesn’t allow us to compare future and past data, we rely on other methods. The most popular method is a model which shows us a (global) trend. These models receive their fair share of scrutiny from scientists but most are based on empirical data and can successfully model these trends. Again, a review of climate vs. weather is needed before a successful analysis of this point can be achieved.
   
3. Weather is both temporally and regionally constrained. A coincidence between regional areas suffering from similar “cold spells” is not significant in the picture of global climate.
4. China is a communist (and is historically a (socially) isolated) country. We should be careful how we compare qualitative assessments of events happening now in that country with events we suppose we know about their past.
5. Recent arguments that “the ice in Antartica is back” are common misinterpretations (exacerbated by the media) of a study done by Peter Doran, et.al. To read what Dr. Doran really has to say, see this interview transcript. The science shows that the temperature of the Antarctic Peninsula has actually increased by an average of 3°C over the last half century. Also see this page.
6. Sunspot activity is hard to model. The closest thing there is to predicting it is the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel. I find it typical that a journalist (or anyone else who wants to sound intelligent) starts discussing stuff that they haven’t properly researched. What Oleg Sorokhtin is talking about most likely stems from fellow Russian scientist Habibullo Abdussamatov, who has predicted relative cooldowns due to solar (in)activity in the future. There are scientists that have studied whether this sort of activity can be predicted and have found that it is most likely a chaotic process (i.e. prediction is unlikely).
7. Wind has been shown to affect ocean currents. I read the paper a few months ago. This in itself is not an argument against anthropogenic global warming even in the most extremes…it doesn’t fit any logical piece of the puzzle. If you want to talk about the effects then I’m listening. More importantly though, we need to talk about wind itself, how it forms, why it forms, and how climate change will affect it. It also seems to me that the writer is taking all of his points, throwing them in a bucket and drawing them out one line at a time to write his article. It doesn’t make sense if you really think about it. And another thing…most people that believe humans are contributing to global warming get labeled as alarmists…I don’t count myself as an alarmist…(more on this in a bit).

This author is not a scientist. He has taken a snapshot of data obtained a month ago, and compared it to decades (and essentially centuries) of climate data to decide that the entire idea of anthropogenic global warming is a hoax.

I get the sense that people who know me and know what I believe somehow think that I only choose to look at things from one side. This is not true. I read claims by both sides and scrutinize them as equally as possible.

I’m not an alarmist…maybe a little hippy. Something I have tried to make a major focus of my life is personal responsibility. This applies to many aspects of my life. Responsibility requires information and experience…it is gained from making mistakes and thinking about how you affect and are affected by people. That doesn’t mean I’m out burning down development projects, standing on runways to prevent planes from flying, or protesting naked (which everyone is very thankful for me not doing)…it just means that I want to take responsibility for how I affect my surroundings. I’m a geographer because I like to study the earth (coincidentally Climatology is a sub-branch of geography and you will find many climatologists as members of the geography faculty at universities across the globe). I’m an ecologist because I want to know and understand how living things interact with their environment and live in a world we share. I’m an environmentalist because I care about my surroundings and hope that someday my kids and grandkids can experience the same joys as I have.