Tuesday, September 09, 2008

The Whited Sepulchre: An Inconvenient Test
...I've created a test. These sentences are from a 1974 Time magazine article.
Fill in the blanks.
You will be graded, so take this test Oh So Very Seriously.
Try to learn some Inconvenient Truths.
Alarmist thinking: Cooling is caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, while warming is caused by trace amounts of CO2
Two or three times a century, a vast swirling lagoon of slightly warmer water forms in the western Pacific and over two or three decades drift up past Alaska and dissipates west of the Queen Charlotte Islands. Just such a cycle (known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation) ended a couple of years ago, leaving cooler water exposed and chilling the air over millions of square miles of ocean. The same air that will follow the prevailing winds to the B.C. coast.

In the Atlantic meanwhile, the northernmost loop of a much larger current that swings across both oceans similarly surges and weakens over periods of decades. When the current runs faster, temps across eastern North America and Europe rise for years on end. But the current has been weakening, and some scientists think the so-called Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation may be poised to slip into its slower "negative" state -- bringing temps down again for a few years.

If that happens, and the rapid warming of the 1990s and early '00s takes a break for the next few years, it will be easy for North Americans and Europeans to relax their concern, and perhaps even to think that the ostriches may have been right.

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