Global Cooling? Not A Chance! It Is Just The Opposite.

Global warming has not paused or slowed it continues in full force and is still accelerating.

That's right it's like the silent movie days. The piano player is playing frantically, the will be hero is racing to reach the locomotive engine, running atop the box cars, leaping from one to the next trying to reach the engine and ease the throttle back and apply the brakes before the entire train plunges in the abyss no longer spanned by the bridge.

In the rapid fire frenetic world of Global Warming Denialism (GWD for short) you may have encountered so much disinformation that you want to shut down and walk away from the entire issue because you just do not know what to believe.

It crucial that you do not walk away and you understand the truth.

First two definitions. A Global Warming Skeptic is a person who does good science and is not convinced that Earth is warming and/or that humans are driving the heat energy accumulation in the natural systems that make up our planet.

A Global Warming Denier is a person who uses false logic, incomplete information, contorted physical principles, modified data and graphics and denies global warming in whole or in part. A denier may have monetary gain in mind when crafting her/his argument.

Skeptics are few in number. Deniers are plentiful.

There are no (i.e. zero) arguments presented by deniers that can pass the litmus test as good science.

Deniers are inconvenient to scientists in that their often simple arguments have appeal and seem to make sense.

Here are a few examples:

Denier Statement: Lake Superior had record ice cover during the winter of 2013-2014. Earth must be cooling.

My Reply: It is "global" warming and not just about the Lake Superior region. There are fluctuations and temporary regional cooling events. The GLOBE is still accumulating heat and at an accelerating rate.

Denier Statement: Warming stopped in the late 1990s.

My Reply: Completely false. The rate of warming of surface temperatures has slowed but the average global temperature is still on the rise.

In Addition: There is more to our planet than surface temperatures. there is the middle and upper atmosphere, the cryosphere (ice) and the ocean where more than 90% of the thermal energy is accumulating.

Denier Statement: Ice in Antarctica is increasing.

My Reply: This statement is partially correct but incomplete and misleading in three important ways:

Deception #1: Sea ice around the Antarctic continent has been increasing since 1979. But sea ice melts every southern summer so ice is not accumulating.

Deception #2: It is plenty cold during Antarctic winters to support even more floating sea ice. Sea ice is NOT increasing because it is colder, which is what deniers want you to think. Sea ice is increasing because winds are stronger, pushing sea ice in specific directions and exposing more water to cold winter Antarctic winds. Sea ice insulates water below it and greatly slows or stops freezing at the bottom edge of the ice. When winds open up expanses of the Southern Ocean by moving existing ice more water is frozen.

Deception #3: Sea ice is only 1/3 of the antarctic ice story. The other two parts are the ice of the high ice plateau of East Antarctica and the ice of West Antarctica. The high ice plateau is either gaining ice slightly or in balance. There is no definite trend there. In West Antarctica the ice is melting at a catastrophic rate and ice losses there exceed any gains elsewhere in or around the continent.

The Real Story:

Globally 2014 has been a warm year.

Here are graphs from NOAA. They depict:

2014 AVERAGE MONTHLY

GLOBAL

LAND AND OCEAN

TEMPERATURE ANOMALIES

for January through August 2014.

Please note the words "average" and especially "global". An anomaly is the difference between a monthly average temperature and the long-term average.

In this case the base is the 20th Century average.


January 2014 4th Warmest January on Record (Land + Ocean) 4th Warmest January on Record (Land only) 7th Warmest January on Record (Ocean only)


February 2014 21st Warmest February on Record - Tied with 2001 (Land + Ocean) 44th Warmest February on Record (Land only) 7th Warmest February on Record (Ocean only)


March 2014 4th Warmest March on Record (Land + Ocean) 5th Warmest March on Record (Land only) 7th Warmest March on Record (Ocean only)


April 2014 Tied with 2010 for Warmest April on Record (Land + Ocean) 3rd Warmest April on Record (Land only) 6th Warmest April on Record (Ocean only)