This year is set to be the coolest since 2000, according to a preliminary estimate of global average temperature that is due to be released next week by the UK Met Office, reports The Guardian - a British newspaper. The global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, which is 0.14C below the average temperature for 2001-07.
This confirms the trend we have seen since 1998, when global warming stopped and the average global temperature showed global cooling. This despite, significant increases in CO2 emissions.
Interestingly, the scenario modeling by the IPCC (the UN climate change lobby organization) was for natural variation leading to 0.3C warming. They now suggest that we will experience a period of cooling - probably until 2015 - followed by accelerated warming.
Meanwhile, the organization within the UN that manages the IPCC and other climate change activities of the UN (such as the conference working on Kyoto 2.0 which met in Poznanthis last week) is in trouble. The international agency has been sharply criticized by a U.N. inspection unit in a confidential report obtained by a number of news organizations, for, among other things, haphazard budget practices, deeply flawed organizational procedures, and no effective oversight by the 188 nations that formally make up its membership and dole out its funds. A small number of individuals guide its activities.
Finally, significant and convincing evidence has been presented that the recent worldwide land warming up to 1998 has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land. Changes in ocean patterns and temperature together with the sun offer a competing explanation and need to be seen as just as viable an explanation for warming between 1945-1998.
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