In the climate change world late last week, there were two uncommon events.

First, the BBC uncharacteristically published an article titled “ What happened to global warming?”   The article by BBC climate correspondent, Paul Hudson, notes, among other things, that the warmest year on record was 1998, not 2007 or 2008. The climate models did not predict this fact. This is noteworthy because during the past 11 years man-made CO2 levels have continued to rise.

Mr. Hudson also notes that the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO), one of the most important ocean warming and cooling cycles, is cooling. Researchers have seen a correlation between the PDO and global temperatures. So if the PDO is cooling, then global temperatures might be cooling too. Mr. Hudson poses questions; he does not embrace the skeptically viewpoint. His article at BBC News, however, does attract attention because of its rarity.

The second uncommon event happened in Madison, Wisconsin.  Al Gore gave a talk at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists and he uncharacteristically took questions from reporters. In the past, Mr. Gore has usually refused to debate or take questions about his views of global warming stating that the matter was settled.

Mr. Gore’s appearance, however, was not a free and energized debate. He only took six questions. One of the questions came from Phelim McAleer, the director of “Not Evil Just Wrong” (2008), a documentary about how extreme environmentalism can actually cause damage. Mr. McAleer asked about the British court finding that “An Inconvenient Truth” contained errors. Mr. Gore stated that the court ruling was in his favor. When Mr. McAleer tried to ask Mr. Gore a follow-up question, the program moderators turned the microphone off.

Even though Mr. Gore only took a half dozen questions (and no follow-up for Mr. McAleer) and the BBC did not throw its lot in with skeptics, these two remarkable occurrences are rare events indeed. As Paul Hudson somewhat surprisingly closes his article, “It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. . . some would say it is hotting up.”

Also published at http://www.examiner.com/x-17018-Environmental-Headlines-Examiner

Photo:
NASA images -  http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarchi/2529459067/

Copyright 2009 — K.J.Collins