Which Way Does the Hockey Stick Point?

The earth is getting warmer, right? That's what's been inculcated into our gullible little brains by scientists, politicians, and a host of other commentators over the last fifteen years or so. We've been shown "hockey stick" graphs that depict global temperatures shooting into the stratosphere in the coming decades unless we heed the call to drastically curtail our carbon emissions.

President Obama has apparently imbibed Al Gore's apocalyptic prophecies of rising sea levels, desertification of agricultural lands, horrific storms, massive population displacements, drowning polar bears, and other really bad stuff, and is demanding that the coal industry be shut down and that something be done immediately about cow flatulence.

But the grim tidings have apparently failed to impress some German scientists, a pair of whom have just released a report that declares that, so far from the earth getting warmer, it's actually entering a cooling phase that'll last until the next century. Here's the lede:

Better start investing in some warm clothes because German scientists are predicting that the Earth will cool over the next century.

German scientists found that two naturally occurring cycles will combine to lower global temperatures during the 21st century, eventually dropping to levels corresponding with the “little ice age” of 1870.

“Due to the de Vries cycle, the global temperature will drop until 2100 to a value corresponding to the ‘little ice age’ of 1870,” write German scientists Horst-Joachim Luedecke and Carl-Otto Weiss of the European Institute for Climate and Energy.

Researchers used historical temperature data and data from cave stalagmites to show a 200-year solar cycle, called the de Vries cycle.

They also factored into their work a well-established 65-year Atlantic and Pacific Ocean oscillation cycle. Global warming that has occurred since 1870 can be attributed almost entirely to both these factors, the scientists argue.

According to the scientists, the oft-cited “stagnation” in rising global temperatures over the last 15 years is due to the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean oscillation cycle, which lasts about 65 years. Ocean oscillation is past its “maximum,” leading to small decreases in global temperature.

The de Vries solar cycle is currently at its “maximum,” explaining why temperatures have risen since 1870, but leveled off after 1998. However, this means that as solar activity starts to decrease, global temperatures will follow.

“Through [the de Vries solar cycle's] influence the temperature will decrease until 2100 to a value like the one of the last ‘Little Ice Age’ 1870,” the scientists wrote.

Now maybe these guys are no more reputable than the geneticist who last summer delivered himself of the theory that the human species is, in fact, the spawn of a mysterious union of a pig and a chimp. The fact that the BBC carried the German report, however, suggests that these guys aren't just a couple of prankster grad students.

So, anyway. Is the planet warming or is it cooling? How can Al Gore and his fellow lefties claim to be so sure about what's happening to the earth's climate when contradictory scientific opinions litter the landscape? And how can the president, who, like most politicians, is doubtlessly scientifically nescient, undertake to destroy an entire industry when there's no compelling or conclusive evidence that atmospheric carbon is having anything more than a minor effect on global temperatures?

Read the entire article at the link, especially if you've been persuaded by the global warming alarmists that we're on the brink of an imminent global heating catastrophe. One side or the other in this debate has to be wrong and somebody's going to wind up with egg on their faces. The only question is whether the egg will be fried or frozen.