GAIA

Global Warming - has its time passed?

Is the mantra of Global Warming or Climate Change (and overuse use of these shorthand labels) waning?   Have scientists and reporters altered their mindsets?

I ask this because of 2 recent articles which avoid the above labels or find more commonplace explanations: namely, cyclical variations in normal climate .

In its Jan. 18, 2016, p. 11, "Your getting warmer" Bad News item, Maclean's magazine notes the temperature at the North Pole in late December was above zero Celsius which is  20* C above normal.  Canadian meteorologists linked this thaw to the excessive stormy weather affecting Britain and the almost spring-like conditions across North America this Christmas.  While the words Climate Change or Global Warming were not used, there is little doubt it was intended when the article's focus was on future repercusions "due to the warming climate's effect", but the loaded labels -- surprisingly -- were avoided.

At the same time,  a major drought across Africa and especially Ethiopia is causing major concern at the UN and immediate  food aid shipments are being arranged to feed 4,000,000 people . Surprisingly, Global Warming is never mentioned, just the "super cycle El Nino" which alone is blamed by USAID administrator Gayle Smith. (G&M, Feb. 1, 2016, A9).

 As anyone who has  read  this  bog recently should remember,  the super wet and torrential storms that whacked Britain and Northern Europe have universally been attributed to the super El Nino, which from its home off Peru affects temperature and rainfall around most of the world: less so in most years but far more forcefully in others --  with past recorded super cycles  in 1982-83 and 1997-98.

Put simply,  the North Pole's recent warming is an El Nino effect and the area will, as always, revert to 'normal' temperatures and thick ice.

And areas in Africa and elsewhere whose once productive soil is currently suffering from prolonged drought, parched earth and food shortages will eventually revert  as did the lands of the Bible.

 inally,  if, as geologists claim, we are are scheduled  to return to another Ice Age lasting centuries and millenia, as it has been over 10,000 years since the end of the last era when ice covered Canada, Nothern USA, Euopre and parts of Asia, lets enjoy civilization and dry land while it lasts.