Has Global Warming Stopped Being Cool?
"What Happened to Global Warming?" asks a headline on the Web site of (of all sources) the BBC:
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
The answer is that no one knows:
What can we expect in the next few years?
Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office [Britain's equivalent of the National Weather Service] says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.
It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).
Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.
One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up.
Can we all agree that the time for declaring that the time for debate is over is over?
