Global Cooling?

            Last year at this time, I was digging out from one of the whitest winters I’ve seen in western Washington State.  That winter was the only time I have ever come close to exhausting my yearly supply of firewood.  This year, thanks to a mild winter, the woodshed remains well stocked, but the majority of the country and much of the northern hemisphere has experienced a bitter cold winter.

          What can we learn from all this cold weather?  Is the world really getting warmer, as Al Gore continues to tell us, or is it headed into another mini-ice age? 

           Accu weather.com states that this could be the coldest winter in 25 years, with some places in Minnesota reaching -40 degrees.  Burlington, Vermont just set an all time record of 33 inches of snow in a single storm.  Iowa temperatures have recently struggled to reach zero, with a low of -17 in Des Moines.  Wind chills hovered around -20 and 30.  At such temperatures, frostbite can occur in minutes.  Just to the south, ice on the Delaware River forced a partial shutdown of a nuclear plant.  In Memphis, three people have died from hypothermia.  Further south, residents are donning coats and gloves as temperatures drop to freezing in Miami and as low as 21 in Orlando.  Heating systems in southern states are often not adequate to warm homes during such cold winters. 

          A cold winter has pushed British supplies of natural gas to critically low levels and in Scotland and Wales temperatures hovering below zero.  In Swansea, Wales some bookstores report pensioners buying books to burn in the fireplace.  They say thick books “make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.”  On the other side of the planet, air and ground traffic have slowed to a crawl in Seoul, South Korea, where residents are digging out of the worst snowstorm in modern Korean History. 

           Despite the Gore Effect and a torrent of reports like those above, people who make their living preaching global warming doom, gloom and death continue their mantra.  However, recently I’ve noticed that many of those who preached the dangers of “global warming” now use the term “global climate change.”  Possibly they have observed that recent trends don’t support “warming?”

           The chief global warming profiteer, Al Gore, has declared, “The debate is over,” and “Mother Nature is making the evidence ever more obvious.”  Perhaps it is obvious to Al, but for me the jury is still out.

Update on Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 10:08AM by Kyle Pratt

          Global cooling continues.  Winter thus far in the United States has been snowy and very cold, but in the United Kingdom blizzards have brought the country to a standstill.  Natural gas supplies, used for heating, are critically low.  If this were a record warm winter don’t you think the media would be lecturing us all on global warming?