Power of Suggestion

"The Earth has been getting COOLER for a decade? How can that be? I have felt the summers getting warmer."

That's the reaction I got in a recent discussion aboout GLOBAL WARMING with a friend.

"Really? You have noticed warmer summers?" And this in the midst of the "Year without a summer" in the central and eastern states.

First, he hasn't felt the summers getting warming because, quite simply and factually, they have NOT been getting warmer. Even in his state, temperatures have mirrored the global averages which have stabilized or cooled since 1998.

Second, even if gloabl warming is happening, the signature which would be seen would be warmer winters - not warmer summers. There is really nothing in global warming theory which concludes that summers will become warmer - almost all predictions are that the signature would be warmer temperatures in the polar winters. And of course, polar winters are already somewhere on the average of -20 C to -30 C. A slight warming (which has not been measured btw) would mean that the average polar temperatures would be -15C to -20 C (or somewhere similar). In fact, poalr temperatures are very much as they have been since detailed records began.

This friend is very well educated, highly intelligent, very astute in most things, but he was convinced that summers are becoming noticiably warmer based on what he has heard in popular media stories and on the never-ending parade of reports of "Warmest year on record"... "Warmest decade on record" all of which have been shown to be incorrect claims (the 1930s is still the warmest decade - you know, dust bowl and all that - 1934 the hottest year, followed by 1998 (an anomalously strong el nino year), after which the Earth has cooled slightly. In fact as of 2008, we were, temperature wise, back to where we were near the beginning of the last century.

Wasn't it Josef Goebels who said, "If you tell people a lie long enough, they will come to believe it." Even in the face of contrary evidence and against their own senses.