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The Forum > Article Comments > Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh > Comments

Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh : Comments

By Phil Chapman, published 29/4/2008

The odds are at least 50-50 that we will see significant cooling rather than warming in coming decades.

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This would have been welcome news to the people of Adelaide back in March when they had 13 straight days over 100F. Or to those who worry that the North Pole may be liquid sea water this northern summer, for maybe the first time in a million years. Real scientists who study the effect of solar flares tell us the effect is minor. If we should be in a cooling trend then something must be spoiling it, like maybe adding 30 billion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere each year. The good news is that the human caused part will have to stop within a generation as it gets harder to find anything left to burn. Let's worry about the cooling trend then.
Posted by Taswegian, Tuesday, 29 April 2008 9:04:16 AM
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This is what Professor David Karoly, School of Earth Sciences, University of Melbourne and Member, Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, had to say about it:

“It is excellent to have well-informed opinion pieces published in our newspapers. It is a pity when opinion pieces contain significant errors or misleading information, and then draw mischievous conclusions from them. The opinion piece written by Phil Chapman in The Australian on 23 April appears to contain a number of factual errors, misleading statements and incorrect conclusions.”

His full response can be found here:

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/04/the_australians_war_on_science_12.php#more

I notice Chapman's related links point to Icecap and Bob Carter - Chapman's "opinions" then are not unexpected.
Posted by Q&A, Tuesday, 29 April 2008 9:26:36 AM
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Sorry to spoil the fun but the alleged sources of this 0.7 degree decline are actually available, easily online.

eg NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York
see http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/
which says

GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation

The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data

and the Hadley Centre

http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/

which says

The time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 to 2007. The year 2007 was eighth warmest on record

Further, the author's ignorance of the subject matter is shown by his comment:

Disconcerting as it may be to true believers in global warming ...

Fact: no one seriously interested in climate change could possibly imagine that carbon dioxide is the only factor affecting climate. Why would they find the idea that sunspots affect climate disconcerting?
Posted by jeremy, Tuesday, 29 April 2008 10:47:32 AM
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Another scary climate story, this time from the opposite extreme of the global warmers.

The best thing for us to do is ignore the lot of them. We have no control over the forces of nature, and we have much more important things to think about.
Posted by Mr. Right, Tuesday, 29 April 2008 11:56:26 AM
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Will Mr Gore and Flannery please give their money back.
Posted by runner, Tuesday, 29 April 2008 1:22:10 PM
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This piece is out of date. Before writing this post I checked with spaceweather.com, and the sun at the moment is completely blank, i.e. there are no sunspots at all.

The other thing I take issue with is the idea that millions of refugees will flee to Australia. That will not happen. If necessary our armed forces will sink the boats. If our previous Prime Minister has been given his rightful place as a Knight of the Garter, (as Baron Howard of Tampa,) he would have been able to advise on how to sort out the refugee problem. At the very least, they would have been required to sit for the dictation test.

Nevertheless, I await with great interest the reaction from the media crowd. I am sure that if this comes to pass, they will abandon global warming with the greatest of ease, as all they really need is some imminent catastrophe, whatever it may be.
Posted by plerdsus, Tuesday, 29 April 2008 2:20:55 PM
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