The Warming-Cooling Earth

I have articles piling up about global warming, but I'd rather not turn this blog into a climate site, so I'll space them out. Plus, there's just so many things I'd like to bring up in general, but my evenings are just too short. Anyway, the BBC shows their usual bias and slant on another global warming story. The article details how 2008 will be cooler than average thanks to the La Nina phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean. There's nothing wrong with this fact, of course, rather it's how they frame the entire article in the "accepted consensus" paradigm of man-made global warming. It only takes them until the third paragraph before they quickly tell you, "oh don't worry though! Global warming is still there! We promise!"

The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.

But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.

They employ the type of journalism that allows them to tell true statements, but are purposely misleading and/or out of context. Case in point:

The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C.

Alright, so to the casual observer this looks like patented evidence of global warming. So, what's the problem? Well, first of all, the most accurate method of determining the earth's average temperature is with the use of satellites. This method has only been around since 1979. So, everything before this is far less accurate (there really is a consensus on this point). Also, everyone should know that anomalies throw off averages. For instance, consider a horrifically dry summer where instead of the usual 30 days of measurable rainfall you only get two, but it just so happens that one of these two days was an epic storm that dropped 12 inches of rain. Does this rainy day characterize the whole summer well? Nope. The point is, 1998 was largely an anomaly thanks to a super strong El Nino (which the BBC hardly mentions), however for the US, the hottest year is still 1934 (before 74 years of carbon was released to the atmosphere).

Notice the huge 1998 spike.

Also, satellite and surface temperature data have shown no measurable rise in temperature since 1998. Additionally, while the surface temperature increased in the 1990's, different layers of the atmosphere have actually cooled. But, more importantly, the oceans (which have a far greater capacity to store heat) have cooled. And just to drive the point home, satellites or not, scientists believe the middle ages were warmer than at any point today, which just so happened to coincide with a prolonged solar optimum...hmmm.

The BBC keeps the "consensus" idea going:

A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked and argue the Earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than predicted.

A "minority"? Maybe someone should tell these scientists, or maybe these 19,000 scientists that they're crazy "deniers" and are thus in the pocket of big oil. I thought journalists (like scientists) are supposed to be skeptical and ask questions. They sure have that attitude towards President Bush. Maybe if they had the same skepticism of anthropogenic global warming as they did Bush, then we could have a real public debate....nah.

UPDATE:

Well, this is just crazy. It appears that this aforementioned BBC article was further swayed by a global warming alarmist who managed to convince the author to alter his story to better fit the alarmist mantra. What's more is that she brags about this change on the Campaign Against Climate Change website of which she is a part. In less than two hours, this person, via e-mail, was able to change a worldwide disseminated BBC report. Now, just imagine if an Exxon Mobile rep e-mailed the BBC to ask them to downplay any global warming alarmism. Sheesh.