Global Cooling in Alaska

We are rapidly approaching a tipping point in climate change, says Andrew Simms of the BBC. 

New and cautious calculations by the New Economics Foundation's (nef) climate change programme suggest that we may have as little as 100 months starting from August 2008 to avert uncontrollable global warming.

One hundred months, starting next Friday.  Well, you can't complain that he is being vague.  It reminds me of the David Bowie song, "news had just come over, we had five years left to cry in."  If the world is ending, it might be nice to know exactly how long we have.  But one thing is good news: if the world really is about to reach a point of "uncontrollable global warming," at least we can stop arguing about what to do when that point has been passed.

But you might suppose it would matter that the world isn't warming right now, that in fact it has been cooling for about ten years.  How, exactly, are we approaching a global warming tipping point if we are going in the opposite direction?  And it might matter that a lot of places in the world have been experiencing the coldest temperatures on record.  Consider this, from the Anchorage Daily News:

Right now the so-called summer of '08 is on pace to produce the fewest days ever recorded in which the temperature in Anchorage managed to reach 65 degrees.

   

That unhappy record was set in 1970, when we only made it to the 65-degree mark, which many Alaskans consider a nice temperature, 16 days out of 365.

   

This year, however -- with the summer more than half over -- there have been only seven 65-degree days so far. And that's with just a month of potential "balmy" days remaining and the forecast looking gloomy.

Of course, a decade long cooling trend doesn't mean that the long term warming trend is over.  On the other hand, it is hardly something that can be accounted for using all the famous global warming computer models.  And surely it means we have at least a few years breathing room.  But such is not part of the calculations of the faithful, who continue to dream of forcing us all to change our behaviors to conform to their preferences.