From the National Post.
I do not know this publication, but this article seems fairly written--even factual rather than hysterical.

Let the flaming begin....


Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

When was this written? I was under the impression that the sun has resumed its cycle and now is becoming more active again. We'll see what happens in the next 2-3 years. I sure would hope the sun remains fairly inactive because with our greehouse gas emissions there is a lot of heat trapping. We just can't afford the sun to get too active, or we'll be in big trouble. I admit this winter was pretty good, better than average.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

You say this as if we have a choice.

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" We have nothing to fear but the main stream media itself . . . ."- Adapted from Franklin D Roosevelt for the 21st century

OBK #55

1998 Lincoln Continental - Sold
Max 1984 300TD 285,000 miles - Sold
The Dee8gonator 1987 560SEC 196,000 miles - Sold
Orgasmatron - 2006 CLS500 90,000 miles
2002 C320 Wagon 122,000 miles
2016 AMG GTS 12,000 miles

Quick, everyone buy solar panels to absorb the sun's energy!

We have some choice over how much heat-trapping gasses we release into the atmosphere. I was just saying that with our emissions we better hope the sun remains fairly inactive. I'm afraid that won't be the case though.

Mirrors would do the correct job. You want to reflect, not absorb.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

And what exactly is a heat trapping gas? CO2?

Guess we better stop breathing....

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MB-less

Its not so much that as it is the enormous amount we pump out by turning oil and other fossil fuels into CO2 rather then leaving them in the ground.

Also, believe it or not, ranching cows and such (and growing rice) are all big contributors to CO2/Methane in the atmosphere too.

Who knows where the environment is headed, there's not allll that much we can do to stop whatever we may have started. We'll probably find out where its headed though.....should be interesting.

Its my guess that countries/the world will have bigger problems on their hands than temperatures/environmental issues in the coming years. It will be the fights for food and fuel and world power that cause the most problems.

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-diesel is not just a fuel, its a way of life-
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'16 E400 4matic Sedan - 148k - Brothers (OC-155k)

Actually the next big thing to fight over might be water, partly thanks to climate change which messes up rainfall patterns. Rising sea levels and bigger storm surges are another major concern. I'm glad I don't live near a coastline.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL

We have hardly any snow here at all. The storms that have traditionally dumped on us have been running south of us by a coupla hundred miles.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

Be careful making global conclusions based on anecdotal/ local observations.

We better be careful not to cause any volcanic eruptions. Those things put LOTS of bad stuff in the air. Maybe we need a law to prevent eruptions.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

Now that has GOT to be Bush's fault.

First the polar bears were drowning because of the melting ice. Now they're starving because of the freezing ice keeping them from their food sources.

Figuring out the weather and climate change is like trying to figure out women. Is there really any surprise that it's Mother Nature calling the shots?

If only it were Father Nature. There might be some more logical, concrete answers instead of seemingly arbitrary, conflicting ones.

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)

Very good point. Plus climate by definition is over a longer period of time, not just one season. This would be considered weather, not climate.

Solar cycle 24 has just started. That is correct. But when it starts there is very little activity. Currently there is one tiny sunspot on the sun. The first I have seen in about a month (right around the time when the new cycle officially began). It will take a few years for the sun's magnetic field to wind up enough to produce mutliple sunspots. Look for increased solar activity around 2011-2014.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm

It's probably gonna be nasty. Even right now with the sun at its minimum activity, our global mean temp is still well above the recent historic average. Obviously we can't control the sun, be we certainly have some influence over the greenhouse effect.

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2004 VW Jetta TDI (manual)

Past MB's: '96 E300D, '83 240D, '82 300D, '87 300D, '87 420SEL