Roman Around

Is there anything more aggravating than having someone you have defended tirelessly turn on you? Is there anything worse than having someone you did your best to protect with every fiber of your being play Judas? Can the words “betrayal” and “disloyalty” even begin to cover it? Can anything be more distressing? More shocking? Sure, we can expect such things from false friends, jealous co-workers, jilted lovers oand angry siblings. We can anticipate such behavior from our elected officials, our bosses, and even, on occassion, our spouses. But from our planet?

Et tu, earth?

How in the world can the impending calamity of a planet ravaged by the effects of man-made global warming be taken seriously if the damn planet won’t even get warm anymore?

Scientists are baffled.

Gerald Traufetter at Speigel Online writes:

Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.

At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.

Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.

Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.

Well, thank goodness Copenhagen has fallen in line.

First of all, I am struck by the incongruity of the third passage of the Speigel article. Traufetter states that the planet’s average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium – which, as far as I can tell means they are no longer going up. That’s what “stopped” means, if I am any judge of the word “stop.” Then, in the next sentence he says, “it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.”

If warming, by definition, means a rise in temperatures, and if temperatures have “stopped” rising since the start of the millennium, how could it look as though global warming might come to a standstill this year? Didn’t it already “stop” getting warmer at the beginning of the millennium? Isn’t “stop” a synonym for “standstill?” And seeing as temperatures haven’t been climbing for almost a decade, is it still possible for the earth to be warming? If so, how?

Poor hysterical doomsdayers. Nothing is working out for them.

Damn the planet for not cooperating!

And it sounds as if this disobliging ball of climactic confusion is breaking the hearts of the ever-loyal enviro-wackos.

Meteorologist Mojib Latif, one of Germany’s best-known climatologists, confirmed that “warming is taking a break.” It’s a clever cover-your-backside kind of thing to say considering the earth’s temperatures have always been cyclical. At some point, warming will always take a break, just like cooling will always take a break. (Think Ice Age, before there were SUVs and CFCs).

On the realization that the world is not getting warmer, as hasn’t for ten years, Latif said, “We have to face that fact.”

He sounded depressed.

“It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community,” says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. “We don’t really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point.”

Not a single computer model predicted this “non-warming” trend, incidentally.

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