Topic: Ice age claim angers scientists
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/24/2225980.htm
By Emily Bourke
It might be an unpopular view but Dr Phil Chapman is sticking to it. The geophysicist and former NASA astronaut says figures from four separate agencies show the global temperature dropped noticeably during 2007 and that the globe could now be returning to an ice age.
"All the people who monitor the world's global temperature say that the temperature fell by something like 0.7 degrees Centigrade," he told PM.
"We're talking about a very large drop that cancels out all the increase since 1930.
"If this continues, then global warming will have to be, we'll have to admit that it's over."
He says the sun and sunspot changes have a bigger influence on the climate compared to carbon dioxide.
"The variations in the number of sunspots and the time when they occur, how rapidly they build up, has a close correlation with previous changes in climate, in particularly back around 1700 and again around 1790 when the sunspot cycle was delayed and those were two times it was extremely cold," he said.
So can you see a repeat of that happening now with the few number of sunspots that have been detected?
"It's that coincidence between sudden rapid drop in global temperature in the last year and the lack of sunspots which makes it seem a little worrying," he said.
While he won't commit to a date, Dr Chapman says an ice age is on the horizon.
"If the ice age comes, it will come, it certainly will come but we don't know whether it's started already or whether it is going to be a thousand years from now, we're probably OK but you can't be certain, that's all," he said.
Dr Chapman says it is hard to think of what the world can do, other than trying to warm the planet.
"I think we should have an open mind on the subject and not rush around doing things on the assumption that it's going to get warmer when in fact it's going to be cooler," he said.
"It may be that we should be pumping out all the carbon dioxide we possibly can in order to try and keep the temperature up."
David Karoly from Melbourne University's School of Earth Sciences is outraged.
"This is not science. This is misinterpretation or misrepresentation and mis-communication of the factors that influence global temperature," he said.
"It appears to be an opinion of Phil Chapman and he's welcome to his opinion, but in terms of climate variations and an approaching ice age, he is sadly misinformed.
"Yes, the climate system did cool from January 2007 to January 2008 quite dramatically. That cooling was associated with changes in the ocean temperatures in the Pacific, a well known phenomenon, the El Nino to La Nina switch. It isn't unprecedented."
But he says it is not due to sunspot activity.
"Sunspot variations do not lead to the sorts of temperature variations seen from January 2007 to 2008," he said.
"They don't lead to those large temperature variations, even on an 11-year sunspot cycle.
"And so in terms of increasing greenhouse gases, we can also see that effect because the most recent La Nina, the current La Nina, is warmer than earlier La Nina episodes of the same strength.
"We're actually seeing a warming even in these cool periods associated with La Nina."
Dr Graeme Pearman is a climate scientist and past chief of atmospheric research at the CSIRO.
He says the doubt over global warming and its causes is not reasonable and he warns Dr Chapman's wait-and-see approach is dangerous.
"And what science has seen over the last six months or so are changes that are occurring that are further advanced than we would like," he said.
"And so I think there is a high probability, a much higher probability than his scenario coming true, that we're going to look back and rue the fact that we didn't act earlier.
"We must get on with trying to slow down the growth of our emissions as a global community and as an Australian community as soon as possible."
