Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Global cooling: cause unknown

[Global] Warming Might be On Hold, Study Finds

"Earth's climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

"'This is nothing like anything we've seen since 1950,' Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. "Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn't have one.'"

If scientists don't understand what is causing current cooling, it is axiomatic that they do not understand what controls warming, either.