Topic: Decline of the West
No doubt you’ve seen reports to the effect that 2014 was “the hottest year in Earth’s recorded history.” Such was the headline in the New York Times last week and it has global warming fanatics crowing.
But wouldn’t you know it? There’s far less to this alarming report than meets the eye. Writing for the Federalist, Robert Tracinski lays out the actual facts: “When you read the phrase “in recorded history,” you think we’re talking about a really long time—the time dating back to the first historical records in Sumeria, circa 3500 BC. (That’s what you’ll find if you look up the phrase “recorded history.”) That’s a time frame of 5,000 to 6,000 years. But in the case of the temperature record, it actually means only 135 years. Accurate, systematic, global thermometer measurements of surface temperatures go back only to 1880.”
As Tracinski goes on to point out, 135 years is an eye blink in terms of long-term climate trends. Moreover scientists know that there have been periods prior to 1880 when the global climate was warmer than it is now. As for the changes that can be documented over the 135-year span since 1880, when fitted into the real long-term picture they appear as minor variations from the norm.
The fact that there have been periods in the past when the planetary climate was much warmer than it is today drives the global warming mob crazy and they’ve made a number of attempts to airbrush it out of the historical record, most notoriously with Michael Mann’s false “hockey stick” temperature graph. But perhaps more damning to their case is the additional fact that Earth’s long-term climate profile exhibits repeated fluctuations between warming and cooling, with cooler periods, i.e. ice ages, predominating. Just now we happen to be living through a warm interglacial period—but going forward, climate change is far more likely to take the form of a new ice age.
Oh, and there’s one more thing. It may be true that 2014 was the hottest year since 1880 but then again maybe not. What most news reports neglected to mention was how much hotter it was than the previous hottest year, 2010. Just so you know, 2014 was two one-hundredths of a degree warmer than 2010—that’s 0.02º Celsius. The margin of error for such measurements is 0.1º Celsius. In other words, there was no measurable increase in warming at all.
