Two recent events underscore how predictable is the distortion of global warming by those who gain from exaggeration. The events were the Montreal “Conference of the Parties” which had signed the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol on global warming, and the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. Both took place in early December.
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Below are some observations found in a couple of recent journal articles that have received little attention—hmm, we wonder why?

The first observation was made by a team of paleoclimatologists led by Jan Esper in a viewpoint paper entitled “Climate: past ranges and future changes,” published in Quaternary Science Reviews. Esper and colleagues examined the amplitude of the temperature variations that have been reported for earth’s temperature during the past millennium. These include studies from the by-now familiar names of Mann, Moberg, Jones, Esper and Briffa.
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In the December 1st issue of Nature magazine, Harry Bryden and colleagues at Britain’s National Oceanography Centre report that the Atlantic meridional circulation (also known as the thermohaline circulation (THC))—the density driven current that carries warm surface water northward and returns colder deep water southward—has slowed by 30 percent between 1957 and 2004.

The significance of this finding is difficult to assess in light of other recent observations.

Climate model simulations estimate that a complete shutdown of the THC would result in a cooling of Europe of 4ºC or more. So, shouldn’t a 30% slowdown have some noticeable impacts, i.e. a pretty sharp cooling trend?

Just two days before the Bryden results were published, a report from the European Environment Agency detailed all of the ills that Europe has been facing recently because of how warm it has been, and prominently proclaimed that Europe’s four hottest years on record were 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004!
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