We have all heard about the earth warming and climate change effecting the planet.. but what’s this new thing about the globe cooling like never before. Here’s why the debate between ‘mainstream scientists’ and ‘climate skeptics’ continues:
The ‘Skeptics’
Based on the new research and studies which reveal that more than a million square miles of Arctic Sea has frozen in the last one year and has gone up by 60% till August this year, as oppose to a record low ice cover till August 2012, some believe that the earth is cooling than warming!
They explain how the ice cover is now stretching from the Canadian Islands to the northern coast of Russia. It is believed that ice cover has been so thick this year that it has prevented dozens of yachts and cruisers from getting through America’s North-West Passage. The new development has persuaded some experts to believe that temperatures will keep falling for decades, throwing fresh doubts on claims that global warming will devastate the planet.
“Professor Anastasios Tsonis, of the University of Wisconsin, said “We are already in a cooling trend, which I think will continue for the next 15 years at least. There is no doubt the warming of the 1980s and 1990s has stopped.”
Mainstream Scientists
97% of these scientists still believe this new development is largely ‘irrelevant’! Researchers explain, this is because Arctic ice generally reaches its minimum in September, so this ice cover is temporary. Secondly mainstream scientists claim that the ice cover is well above the level recorded last year but is still way below the 1981 through 2010 average for the month, therefore majorly ‘insignificant’.
Further, eminent scientists are not surprised to hear of the record high ice cover, since this was predicted and expected well in advance. And the reason so many climate scientists predicted more ice this year than last year, is quite simple.
“The principle of ‘regression toward the mean’ explains that if an extreme value of a variable is observed, the next measurement will generally be less extreme. In simple words, this means we should not expect to observe records in consecutive years. 2012 shattered the previous record low sea ice extent, hence ‘regression towards the mean’ told us that 2013 is likely to have a higher minimum extent or more ice cover”, explains Nuccitelli, columnist of Guardian.
“The global surface temperatures might have warmed very slowly in the last few years, but overall, the entire planet and the oceans have warmed considerably in the last 15 years compared”, he added. Nuccitelli therefore calls it “foolhardy” to think of global warming as pausing or shifting toward cooling.
Though the debate on the subject shall continue, till IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), presents a verdict on the same later this year.
Photo by hyscience.
