2008 Is the Coldest Year of the 21st Century

dtjohnson writes "Data from the United Kingdom Meteorological Office suggests that 2008 will be an unusually cold year due to the La Nina effect in the western Pacific ocean. Not to worry, though, as the La Nina effect has faded recently so its effect on next year's temperatures will be reduced. However, another natural cycle, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, is predicted to hold global temperatures steady for the next decade before global warming takes our planet into new warmth. If these predictions are correct, there must be a lot of planetary heat being stored away somewhere ... unless the heat output from the sun is decreasing rather than increasing or the heat being absorbed by the earth is decreasing due to changes in the earth's albedo."

Comments

Re:gore

[Curunir_wolf]

But what will I do with all my "Gore 2012" buttons?

Ha.

Still, remember that the Gore stance is roughly (yeah, it's exaggerated, but roughly) in line with the science.

The global warming platform from the Republican party is to shoot into the air and yell "yeeehaww!" a bunch.

Maybe so, but gas prices aren't $4.00 a gallon because rednecks shot their guns. What you are paying at the pump is the direct result of environmentalist's policies fed by the FUD spread by AlGore.

Meh. Not entirely accurate, really. If Al Gore's "recommendations" had really been followed by a large proportion of Americans (ignoring for now his own failure to follow them), demand for energy should have decreased significantly. With everybody switching to more efficient lighting and appliances, driving less and buying more fuel efficient cars, etc., chances are that energy prices probably would not have spiked the way they did.

The NIMBYs and the environmental lobby that slowed US drilling and new power plant construction to a crawl and completely stopped any increased capacity for oil refineries and other infrastructure were the real culprits in keeping energy supplies too far below the demand curve. Not that Gore had any solutions for helping improve energy supplies.

Of course, the big jump in oil prices has more to do with the declining value of the US dollar than anything, but that's another issue altogether.