Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict

By Charles Clover, Environment Editor

Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 30/04/2008


Melting icebergs: The study predicts the IPCC's 0.3ºC temperature rise for the next decade may not happen

Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.

Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged.

This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature...

This has a 70 to 80-year cycle and when the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures in Europe. When it is weak, as it will be over the next decade, temperatures fall. Scientists think that variations of this kind could partly explain the cooling of global average temperatures between the 1940s and 1970s after which temperatures rose again.

Writing in Nature, the scientists said: "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming..."

They are willing to admit that the "cooling" is "natural," but they are not willing to admit that the "warming" is! The earth has been, and continues to go through warming AND cooling cycles. It's called nature! Despite what Algore would have us believe, the automobile is NOT our enemy and neither is industry. It is the absolute height of arrogance to think that we can some how effect the global climate.