Thursday, March 05, 2009

Just a thought on stupid assumptions

You may have noticed that I don't post much about one of my pet subjects - global warming - these days. There is a reason for that - it's now a dead issue.

Yes, I know that it's still a big deal for many people and governments in particular, but as far as I'm concerned the debate is about to be settled by two things - the economy and the climate.

As things get progressively worse economically across the world, but especially in the USA and Europe, you'll soon see the issue of carbon emissions being forgotten. There will be far more important things to worry about.

As far as climate is concerned - well, my view is that we are entering a cooling phase that will last for decades. Possibly as much as 60-100 years and be as significant as the Little Ice Age - which brings me to my thought.

The thing is - we keep going on about how temperatures today are so much warmer than they have ever been since we started recording temperatures which is true, but here is the point.

We didn't start recording temperatures until we were in the middle of the Little Ice Age - and for much of the time since we did start recording temperatures the LIA dominated. It was only in the last 150 years that the world started to come out of the LIA so it is hardly surprising that temperatures today are higher than they've ever been recorded.

Nobody can actually tell you what the average temperature of the globe should be, but assuming that it was something which was heavily distorted by the LIA seems a pretty stupid assumption to make.

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