Global warming: OK, so we’ll be slightly less doomed next year

In politics, increasing spending by $1 billion instead of $4 billion translates into “a $3 billion spending cut” in the media.

Applying similar logic in the field of global warming hype, a temperature decrease still constitutes warming.

British forecasters have announced that they expect 2008 to be the coolest year since 2000, BUT, they hasten to add, it will still be one of the 10 warmest years on record and definitely warmer than the average from 1961-90, according to Reuters.

What’s not pointed out in the news releases is that the warmest year on record was 1998 (an El Nino year), followed by two much cooler years. Starting in 2001, the temperature was bumped up slightly (though still much lower than ‘98), and temperatures have remained almost flat since the start of the century. Now if 2008 temperatures go down, that global temperature graph since 1998 starts to look like the down side of a hill.

Depending how low 2008 falls, we may be looking at temperatures in the same range as the mid-1990s, all without issuing a carbon credit!

But lest anyone start to feel less angsty, British officials assure us that global warming is not going away. More’s the pity.