From the CBC:
There's more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be explained by man-made global warming alone, a new study found. Nature is pushing the Arctic to the edge, too....
"Think of it as a boxer that's almost going down for the count … and that one blow to the noggin comes and he's down for the count," said Serreze, a senior scientist at the U.S. government's snow and ice data centre in Boulder, Colo.
So now the Arctic was "almost going down for the count" and you punched it in the head, or ran it over with your SUV as the case may be. Still, it almost sounds like they aren't exactly sure why the Arctic has melted so rapidly over the last few years. Meanwhile, its 11 degrees outside and Drudge has posted this story:
2008 will be slightly cooler than recent years globally but will still be among the top 10 warmest years on record since 1850 and should not be seen as a sign global warming was on the wane, British forecasters said.
The Met Office and experts at the University of East Anglia on Thursday said global average temperatures this year would be 0.37 of a degree Celsius above the long-term 1961-1990 average of 14 degrees and be the coolest since 2000.
It certainly feels cooler. But two things here trouble me. First, I just don't buy that anyone can say with confidence what the global mean temperature was in 1850. NASA recently revised temperature data for the 1990s. It seems entirely possible, if not likely, that some bright guy will come along and point out that temperature estimates for the 19th century failed to account for some crucial factor (laudanum drinking meteorologists?) . Also, who cares what the 1961-1990 average was? Of those three decades, one--the 1970s--was so freakishly cold that it prompted widespread fears of a new ice age. It stands to reason that the average of the three would be pretty cold.
And finally, one other bit of climate change news. Reuters reports:
Saturn's chilly north pole boasts a hot spot of compressed air, a surprising discovery that could shed light on other planets within our own solar system and beyond, researchers said on Thursday.
Who's fault is that?
