Chicken Little Is Alive & Well

For the last few years, many ecology minded people, some even with scientific credentials have bombarded us with tails of global warming and disaster just around the corner. Sea levels rising to inundate coastal cities, and on and on and on. This isn't just an argument in scientific circles, it has become the holy grail of the left, and does not accept arguments to the contrary. Kind of like the Spanish Inquisition without the rack.

What is being lost, is that weather and climatologists that do not agree have been systematically shouted down, branded as ignorant heretics. This is why it was so refreshing to pick up the Sunday Spokesman-Review and find Randy Mann, a long range weather forecaster daring to dispute the mantra. The following are excerpts from this article.

"Snow cover over the Northern Hemisphere in early 2008 was greater than at any time since 1966. The U.S. National Climatic Data Center reported that record cold temperatures were observed across many American cities and towns in January and February. We've seen frigid temperatures as low as minus-20 degrees to minus -30 degrees near the Canadian border, unusual for so late in the season. rare snows fell as far south as Mississippi, Texas and Arkansas last week. Much of Ohio and upstate New York were buried under one to two feet of snow late last week."

(here's the punch line)

"Average global temperatures for January, according to the National climactic Data Center, were 0.3 degrees cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average. THERE HAS BEEN ABOUT A DEGREE DROP IN THE EARTH'S TEMPERATURE SINCE AUGUST 2007."

Mann goes on to point out that China has experienced the most brutal winter since 1210. One ice storm after another has hit Canada for the last two months.

"The Winter was so severe that Arctic sea ice has returned. Forecasters for the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa say that "the ice has not only recovered, but it's now thicker in places than at the same time last year."

Mann goes on to say that some well qualified scientists say La Nina is responsible, some say the lack of sunspots and solar activity. "There is now concern that we may be in for a long period of severe cold if Sunspot activity doesn't pick up soon." Russian Weather expert, Oleg Sorokhtin, pointed out. "THE LAST TIME THE SUN WAS THIS INACTIVE, OUR PLANET WAS ENDURING THE "LITTLE ICE AGE." It was a cold period that lasted 500 years, ending around 1850. During that time, there were widespread crop failures, famine, iced up harbors and rivers.

Mann tells us that it is still too early to tell exactly where Earth's temperature is headed. One cold Winter does not determine whether global warming took a year off, nor does it portend a new ice age. We are apparently in the worst cycle of climatological extremes in about 1000 years.

Perhaps we should leave this to the experts and quit politicising what is at best an unknown future in global warming/cooling.