Climate change: Not so hot?

Think the world is getting hotter? “Think again,” said Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial. A new study by U.S. and Finnish scientists has found that the world didn’t warm as predicted between 1998 and 2008; indeed, global temperatures actually dropped slightly between 2005 and 2008. The absence of warming came despite a steady increase in carbon dioxide emissions—which scientists have insisted all along would raise temperatures. This damning evidence should kill off the “Great Global Warming Boondoggle,” said James Delingpole in the London Telegraph. But “the Warmists” have developed a new theory to explain away the inconvenient truth. They claim that sulfur pollutants pumped out from China’s coal-fired power plants are blocking sunlight from reaching the planet’s surface, thereby offsetting the warming effect of CO2 emissions. In other words, “man-made global cooling is canceling out man-made global warming.” Quick: Someone tell the polar bears they’re going to live!

Actually, the Chinese-coal hypothesis is perfectly sound, said Andrew Freedman in The Washington Post. China’s coal consumption more than doubled over the past decade as its economy boomed, accounting for a 26 percent increase in global coal use. Since China has such weak air-pollution standards, its coal burning sent massive amounts of sun-blocking sulfates into the atmosphere. Unfortunately, all that sulfur dioxide also “contributes to the production of acid rain,” said Jamie Vernon in DiscoverMagazine.com. Recognizing the damage this pollutant wreaks on their citizens’ health, crops, and environment, Chinese leaders have ordered coal plants to be fitted with sulfur-scrubbing equipment. Once that cleanup takes effect, the drop in sulfur particles could trigger a sudden and “dramatic” temperature rise, as it unleashes the impact of rising CO2 levels that have been masked for a decade.

And it gets worse, said Kevin Drum in Mother Jones. The most widely accepted climate-change model predicts that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause global temperatures to climb by just under three degrees Celsius. But a recent paper in the American Journal of Science used a more finely tuned model, based on historical data, and found that a doubling of CO2 could produce a temperature increase of six to eight degrees Celsius. That thermometer-shattering rise would result in “mass extinctions, dead oceans, large-scale desertification, coastal cities underwater, and billions dead.” Right now, we’re on course for a doubling of CO2 before this century’s end. “Buckle your seat belts.”

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