Coldest January in Years

OK, I liked. Another pop-science news story, this time from the Daily Express:

Satellite data shows that concerns over the levels of sea ice may have been premature. It was feared that the polar caps were vanishing because of the effects of global warming. But figures from the respected US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that almost all the “lost” ice has come back.[...]

But scientists say the northern hemisphere has endured its coldest winter in decades. They add that snow cover across the area is at its greatest since 1966.

Other online sources (e.g. Watts Up With That) point to other sources providing similar messages, including that the year-to-year change in global temperature has been the greatest ever recorded.

Unsurprisingly, it seems that critics of global warming are using this news as evidence in support of the claim that global warming is bunk.

Personally, I think a saner stance to take is to accept that the global warming hype of the past few years has been largely that—hype. It’s been trendy to think that global warming is resulting in a relatively abrupt change in our environment.

While perhaps that’s possible, I think it’s more likely that we’ve gotten lost in the effects of shorter-term cyclical changes which we don’t fully understand…plus perhaps a bit of random noise in the weather data…both of which could be masking any subtler underlying trends.

Throw in an expectation that a changing climate is also expected to drive more volatile weather patterns, and there’s an awful lot of noise in the data that too many people are misreading a signal from.

It is great that climatological extremes have grabbed the attention of the masses, including (finally) the horde of Joe Average Americans, to issues of climate change. However, I fear that to the extent that when shorter-term cycles and randomness reverse, a certain “anti-climate” backlash could emerge.

And all the while, the slower, much less sexy, far more insidious real climate trend that scientists seem to believe is really occurring, will still progress.

It would not be good if prudent preparation for a warmer climate, as well as a societal desire to at least somewhat embrace sustainability or conservation, were lost because of a negative reaction to misplaced hype.