12 January 2010

Hot, cold, hot... is it 30 years of global cooling coming now?

A layman like me, while reading all these headlines related to global warming, should keep an air conditioner on "max cold" in one corner of the room and another air conditioner on "max heat" in the other corner. Moving from one to another when prescribed.

The latest news says "cold":

Britain's big freeze is the start of a worldwide trend towards colder weather that seriously challenges global warming theories, eminent scientists claimed yesterday.

The world has entered a 'cold mode' which is likely to bring a global dip in temperatures which will last for 20 to 30 years, they say.
The source of that opinion is especially impressive:
The research has been carried out by eminent climate scientists, including Professor Mojib Latif. He is a leading member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He and his colleagues predicted the cooling trend in a 2008 paper, and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva in September.
It isn't that professor Latif or his colleagues have changed their minds on GW, they see these 20-30 years of cooling off as a temporary respite from GW that will sink its teeth into the planet right after these years. Or after the last glacier's retreat, whatever comes first.

On the other hand, it gives the GW theory supporters (and skeptics) enough time to collect their thoughts on the subject. Scientifically speaking. Besides, in 20-30 years, who will remember the predictions? Even Al Gore will chill down by then. I hope so, at least.

But - what a layman is supposed to do meanwhile? To buy a Hummer and start roaming the highways and beyond, producing as much CO2 as possible to warm up the Earth? The price of gas notwithstanding?

Or switch to non-polluting vegetarian diet, stop washing and using electricity and fuel for any purpose (save flying to GW- related events all over the globe, of course)?

I, for one, am getting intermittent hot and cold flashes all the time lately. How about you?

P.S. It's interesting to watch who picked up this news item. And who ignored it. Politically speaking. Guess...

6 comments:

jams o donnell said...

Hot and cold flushes? Are you sure it's not the Manopause!

Dick Stanley said...

The Manopause? An Isle of Man disorder?

snoopythegoon said...

I took my man-o-pause into consideration, subtracting the appropriate levels of hot and cold flashes. In any case the prediction for myself doesn't look good.

snoopythegoon said...

That was a good one...

A. Decker said...

I got the hot and cold, too. Hmm. Thought it was just me.

Your wondering how to react reminded me of a bit by Drew Carey, back when he was still doing stand-up. He said it's so cold in Cincinnati, when people heard about GW, they all just went outside emptying aerosol cans into the air.

snoopythegoon said...

That's a lovely one ;)