As word spreads about the Associated Press blind test [2] examining the global cooling theory, which I wrote about earlier this week [3], I began to wonder how many times skeptics have tried to push this global cooling myth recently on the Internets.
So I perused the first 10 pages of results on Google for the term “global cooling” and discovered plenty of examples of skeptics hawking their global cooling theory on the usual suspect blogs and media outlets (with a few exceptions like the much-ballyhooed BBC News article [4] earlier this month). Here is a sampling of the results of the search:
[Editor's note: this is just the beginning of the monster list. Our research team is adding a ton more over the next couple of hours]
Investor's Business Daily | October 12, 2009 [5]
Title: “Three Decades Of Global Cooling”
“Earth's climate is influenced by many things, the least of which is the internal combustion engine. We and reputable scientists have noted the earth has cooled during the last decade, a period in which the sun has grown very quiet with little or no sunspot activity.”
BBC News | October 9, 2009 [4]
Article title: What happened to global warming?
“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.”
Christian Science Monitor | October 10, 2009 [6]
“The Earth isn’t warming right now, is why. It may even be cooling down somewhat. Five major climate centers around the world agree that average global temperatures have not risen in the past 11 years, according to the BBC. In fact, in eight of those years, global average temperatures dipped a tad.”
NewsBusters | September 20, 2009 [7]
“the Atlantic, and particularly the North Atlantic, has been cooling instead. And it looks set to continue a cooling phase for 10 to 20 more years. … it is increasingly clear that global warming is on hiatus for the time being. And that is not what the UN, the alarmist scientists or environmentalists predicted. For the past dozen years, since the Kyoto accords were signed in 1997, it has been beaten into our heads with the force and repetition of the rowing drum on a slave galley that the Earth is warming and will continue to warm rapidly through this century until we reach deadly temperatures around 2100.”
Investor's Business Daily | September 23, 2009 [8]
Editorial title: Decades of Global Cooling Ahead?
Washington Examiner | August 4, 2009 [9]
Title: “Scientific evidence now points to global cooling, contrary to U.N. alarmism”
“U.S. policymakers who cite “consensus” on man-made global warming as justification for anti-emission regulations are relying upon outdated and misleading material from the United Nations that deliberately omits the influence of natural forces, according to climate skeptics. In fact, a growing body of evidence now points to the emergence of another cooling cycle that could persist for decades.”
OneNewsNow | July 27, 2009 [10]
“Marc Morano with ClimateDepot.com says all across America, record low temperatures have been broken throughout the summer. He blames that on a recent trend of global cooling that has been in place for more than seven years.”
Kennebec Journal | July 24, 2009 [11]
“Global warming ended three years ago. We are now entering a 27-year solar cycle of global cooling. … With scientific evidence being reported around the world, Congress, the news media, and the European Union are still proclaiming global warming, while, in fact, global cooling is now in effect.”
National Review | July 13, 2009 [12]
“Earth’s temperatures continue a chilling trend that began eleven years ago. As global cooling accelerates, global-warmists kick, scream, and push their pet theory — just like little kids who cover their ears and stomp their feet when older children tell them not to bother waiting up for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.”
NewsBusters | June 15, 2009 [13]
So with all these reports about worldwide cold weather pouring in, why does Al Gore still have a shred of credibility left? When will he be questioned about how we can have Global Warming when all the evidence is now pointing towards Global Cooling? Come to think of it, when will Heidi Cullen, James Hansen, and Maggie Rodriguez of the CBS Early Show who fretted about an "ice-free" North Pole last year be called to account for being spectacularly wrong by the MSM?
Christian Broadcasting Network (700 Club) | April 20, 2009 [14]
Title: “Global Cooling Earth's Little-Known Threat”
“many fear global warming is the greatest threat to mankind, but what if the Earth was no longer warming, and began to cool? ... global cooling does not seem to be on anyone's political agenda at the moment.”
Heartland Institute | March 2009 [15]
Title: “Global Cooling Continues”
“Continuing a decade-long trend of declining global temperatures, the year 2008 was significantly colder than 2007, and global temperatures for the year were below the average over the past 30 years.”
Business & Media Institute | January 15, 2009 [16]
Title: "The Ice Age Cometh: Experts Warn of Global Cooling"
“'Lou Dobbs Tonight' segment dismisses manmade global warming theory -- 'effects of greenhouse gas have a small impact on climate change.' If you’re fortunate enough to have it – don’t sell that oceanfront property for fear that the icecaps will melt, and rising seas swamping your property. A segment on CNN’s Jan. 13 “Lou Dobbs Tonight” explored the possibility that earth isn’t warming, but is, in fact, cooling.”
NewsMax | January 13, 2009 [17]
Title: “Global Cooling Headed Our Way”
Right Side News | January 7, 2009 [18]
Title: “Global Warming is Really Global Cooling”
“The truth: Since global temperatures have followed a cooling trend for eight straight years (or 11, if one goes back to the exceptionally warm el Nino year of 1998), most of the supposed recent consequences of "global warming" mentioned in the article - to the extent that the phenomena mentioned have occurred at all - cannot possibly have arisen because of "global warming", because there has not been any.”
Centre for Research on Globalization | November 2, 2008 [19]
“Global Cooling is Here: Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Next Three Decades,” by Prof. Don J. Easterbrook
“Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years. The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling, perhaps much deeper than the global cooling from about 1945 to 1977.”
Delta Farm Press | August 25, 2008 [20]
Title: “Global cooling gains momentum among scientists”
American Conservative Union Foundation | 2006 [21]
Title: “Global Cooling?” by Dennis Avery
“The official thermometers at the U.S. National Climate Data Center show a slight global cooling trend over the last seven years, from 1998 to 2005. … Fred Singer, a well-known skeptic on man-made warming, points out that the latest cooling trend is dictated primarily by a very warm El Nino year in 1998. “When you start your graph with 1998,” he says, “you will necessarily get a cooling trend.”
RealClimate.org | May 2008 [22]
Title: “Global Cooling-Wanna Bet?”
“Global cooling appears to be the “flavour of the month”. First, a rather misguided media discussion erupted on whether global warming had stopped, based on the observed temperatures of the past 8 years or so…”
[This one is from RealClimate, a site featuring actual scientists who know that global cooling is a farce, and decided to place a significant wager on the matter with some global cooling proponents. It is unclear whether the challenge was accepted.]
Canada Free Press | October 2009 [23]
Title: “Global Warming? The 'Deniers' are my Heroes”
"The most amazing aspect of the [global warming] hoax is that, despite a decade of global cooling, the mainstream media, print and electronic, relentlessly continue to write about 'greenhouse gases' as if they have anything to do with the Earth’s climate."
WorldNetDaily | October 2009 [24]
Title: "Science bulletin: 'Sun heats Earth!' - Russian research forecasts global cooling"
"Observations of the sun show that as for the increase in temperature, carbon dioxide is 'not guilty,' and as for what lies ahead in the coming decades, it is not catastrophic warming, but a global, and very prolonged temperature drop."
The Telegraph | October 2009 [25]
Title: "Sceptics welcome BBC report on 'global cooling'
"The pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."
New York Post | October 2009 [26]
Title: "The big chill"
"In 1998 the world reached its peak temperatures, according to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and ever since its been downhill. The world is going through a Global Cooling period. There doesn't appear to be any provable link between carbon emissions and global temperatures."
The Globe and Mail | October 2009 [27]
Title: "Michael Ignatieff should think outside the green box"
Carbon dioxide has increased, temperatures have not: The models did not predict that incongruity. We may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.”
Keremeos Review | October 2009 [28]
Title: "Forecast: A cooling tend on climate change"
"Average global temperature is rising at 1.40C per century, not the 3.90C indicated by the IPPC models. We are in the seventh year of global cooling. Sea levels, despite messages to the contrary, are rising at normal rates – eight inches per century – much less than the IPPC models suggested. There has been no significant rise in sea levels over the last four years."
The New American | October 2009 [29]
Title: "More Americans Skeptical of Global Warming"
"The Earth has not warmed over the past 10 years, and some have reported slight global cooling over the same period."
The American Spectator | October 2009 [30]
Title: "Cluck, It's Cold Outside"
"That part [western Antarctica] has been warming for quite some time, but comprises barely 2 percent of the continent. The other 98 percent is cooling. Prof. Don Easterbrook of Western Washington University has done research showing that the most important ocean cycle, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), was in a warming cycle in the 1980s and '90s, but that is now in a cool mode. He says this virtually assures us of three decades of global cooling."
StandardNET | October 2009 [31]
Title: "There's a global cooling trend"
"Satellite data from NASA shows no increase in global temperature since 1998. Mother Nature has provided two consecutive severe winters, and some scientists predict global cooling instead. Over 31,000 have signed a petition denying claims of global-warming alarmists."
The New American | October 2009 [32]
Title: "Is the Golbal Warming Debate Over?"
"Global temperatures have steadily decreased over the past decade, despite rising levels of man-made carbon dioxide and climate models that predict the Earth will soon reach its boiling point."
Yuma Sun | October 2009 [33]
Title: "Global warming refuted by facts"
"Climatologists have reported carbon dioxide has increased in the atmosphere, yet there has been a cooling trend over the past decade. They are now forecasting a continued cooling trend for at least the next two decades. There is scientific data that correlates with our current global cooling trend."
Hot Air Network | October 2009 [34]
Title: "Have You Stopped Beating Your Climate Science Yet?"
"[Certain] science suggests the real danger is not global warming but global cooling, even a new ice age? That would be far more catastrophic than warming… and if we really can affect the temperature, and we try to lower it when it’s already poised to plummet, we would be slitting our own throats out of sheer ignorance and hubris."
FIS | October 2009 [35]
Title: "Climate change views increasingly divided"
"Recent studies have shown that the hottest year on record in recent history was in fact 1998 and that no increase in global temperature has been observed for the last 11 years, adding further scepticism to the climate debate."
Daily Inter Lake | October 2009 [36]
Title: "Pulling back the curtain on global warming"
"OK, here's what we know. The warmest year recorded by our modern-day Noahs was in 1998, just about the time the global-warming fever was starting to peak. Since then, there has never been a year with global temperatures even close to reaching that level. So in practical terms, there has been a temperature decline since 1998, not an increase. Moreover, some scientists predict that global cooling could continue for at least the next 20 years."
The Wonk Room | July 14, 2009 [37]
Title: "Farm Bureau Chief Bob Stallman Believes In Global Cooling"
"The head of the largest farming lobbyist group believes that the earth is cooling. Bob Stallman, American Farm Bureau Federation, testified today [38] before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that the science of man-made climate change isn’t 'the whole story,' citing several canards promoted by extremist global warming deniers. Stallman even claimed that climate models that have gotten so much attention did not predict the cooling [38] that has occurred over the last decade."
Washington Post | October 1, 2009 [39]
Title: "Cooling Down the Cassandras"
"By asserting that the absence of significant warming since 1998 is a mere "plateau," not warming's apogee, the [New York] Times assures readers who are alarmed about climate change that the paper knows the future and that warming will continue: Do not despair, bad news will resume."
Wonk Room | September 14, 2009 [40]
Title: "O'Reilly's Weatherman Joe Bastardi: 'The Globe Is Actually Cooling'"
"I’m gonna show you the facts over the last two years. California has been very, very dry. Why is that the case? Well, whenever the Pacific Ocean starts cooling, and the global temperatures start to cool, California gets dry. You see this ocean temperature presentation, all this cold water off California means the air sinks over top of California. When it sinks, it dries out, so global cooling is actually a cause of drought in California, which by the way is a dry climate naturally."
Wall Street Journal | October 30, 2009 [41]
Title: "The Earth Cools, and Fight Over Warming Heats Up"
"Two years ago, a United Nations scientific panel won the Nobel Peace Prize after concluding that global warming is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by man. Then came a development unforeseen by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC: Data suggested that Earth's temperature was beginning to drop."
WorldNetDaily | October 7, 2009 [42]
Title: "Climate czar has it down cold"
"Global temperatures in 2009 are continuing a decade-long decline, with June temperatures reaching levels not seen since the 1980s. The evidence of a significant cooling at least since 2001 is so compelling, you no longer hear much about global warming."
Baltimore Weather Examiner | October 27, 2009 [43]
Title: "Climate Change Debate Video: CO2 not to blame but sun may cause cooling"
"While CO2 may not have caused the warming of the last century, other forces like the sun might very well result in a dramatic cooling. This could mimic the mini ice age from the 1600s and 1700s."
The Star Ledger | October 7, 2009 [44]
Title: "Excellent critique of the report that began global-warming hysteria"
"We may be entering a period of global cooling no matter how much CO-2 we emit."
Baltimore Weather Examiner | October 23, 2009 [45]
Title: "Arctic Sea Ice shows a recovery but NASA is not telling you"
" In this era of dire claims of climate marred by the controversy of global cooling, public dissent, and early season snow, a NASA follow up report appears to ignore the good news: The arctic sea ice is actually expanding!"
Title: "Why the global-warming movement may cool off"
"The problem for the global-warming crowd is simple: What if the planet begins to cool? This is a distinct possibility due to the lack of sunspot activity at the moment. A lack of sunspots has historically been accompanied by global cooling rather than warming. Ergo, we may face the threat of another ice age."
There are also several websites dedicated specifically to promoting the global cooling theory.
IsThereGlobalCooling.com [47]
“what if global warming is not what they say it is? What if the world's temperature is headed in the opposite direction? Global temperatures increased for twenty years from the late 1970s to the late 1990s but have actually been cooling the last eleven years.”
ClimateCooling.org [48]
“An alternative view, is that the Earth has been cooling since the 1930s when we had 3 of the 5 warmest years since 1860 in the US, and probably globally if the world environmental data base were cleaned up as is happening in the US. This site will be developed to show the science and the impacts related to global cooling, a very scary event compared to warming. It corresponds in the opposite way to the thousands of global warming sites. An unbiased view is at our sister-site: Climate Change Facts. The Editor started his interest in climate change in the 1970s, charged with helping industry adapt to the certainty of global cooling. Tim Ball has documented the cooling trend and its implications.”
StopGlobalCooling.com [49]
This site isn't very interesting, although they got the money URL. It just aggregates all the skeptic articles on the subject.
StopGlobalCoolingNow.com [50]
“Have you noticed how cold the Winters have been getting? Yeah, so have we. If this keeps up we will all be froze!”
This is just a sampling, and since the AP story broke, the Google results increasingly return various links to the AP story or other coverage of the blind test. It would have been interesting to see the Google results a day before the story broke. But the examples above provide a snapshot of how widely this myth traveled before the AP popped the balloon. And sooner or later, no doubt, somebody will dust off this myth again.
Have you seen any other examples of skeptics promoting the global cooling theory? Let us know in the comments.