Global warming on the Canadian Plains? Not exactly …

(Is weather the same thing as climate? No, it is not. And yet Al Gore and his fellow proponents of manmade global warming have not hesitated to blame one weather disaster after another (including heat waves) on CO2.  As the tide appears to turn away from warm, the new pattern is worth paying attention to, especially as the mainstream media is sure to miss the story, in this case from The Edmonton Journal. — Harold)

By Lorne Gunter

So far this month, at least 14 major weather stations in Alberta have recorded their lowest-ever March temperatures for the date, many by startling amounts.

The solemn beauty, and quiet violence, of winter on the Canadian Plains..

Temperatures began being recorded in Alberta in the 1880s.

This past Tuesday, Edmonton International Airport reported an overnight low of -41.5 C, smashing the previous low for the date of -29.4 C set in 1975. Records just don’t fall by that much, but the airport’s did. Records are usually broken by, at most, a few degrees. The International’s was exceeded by 12 degrees.

To give you an example of how huge is the difference between the old record and the new, if Edmonton were to exceed its highest-ever summer temperature by the same amount, the high here some July day would have to reach 50 C. That’s a Saudi Arabia-like temperature. Also on the same day, Lloydminster hit -35.2 C, breaking its old record of -29.2 C. Fort McMurray — where they know cold — broke a record set in 1950 with a reading of -39.9C. And Cold Lake, Slave Lake, Whitecourt, Peace River, High Level, Jasper and Banff, and a handful of other communities obliterated old cold values, most from the 1950s or 1970s, two of the coldest decades on record in the province.

This has been an especially cold winter across the country, with values returning to levels not often seen since the 1970s, which was an especially brutal decade of winters.

Temperatures began to plummet on the Prairies in December. The cold weather did not hit much of the rest of the country until January, but when it hit, it hit hard. Even against Canada’s normally frigid January standards, “this particular cold snap is noteworthy,” Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson said this past January. Many regions across the country had not been as cold for 30 years or more, he added.

Does this prove fear of global warming is misplaced? On its own, probably not. But if records were being broken the other way — if several Alberta centres had recorded their warmest values on a given date by 10 degrees Celsius — you can bet there would be no end of hand-wringing, horror stories about how we were on the precipice of an ecological disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Environmentalists, scientists who advance the warming theory, politicians and reporters never shy away from hyping those weather stories that support their beliefs. But they tend to ignore or explain away stories that might cast doubt.

In 2005, the summer and fall of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when several major ‘canes pummelled North and Central America, we were told again and again that this was proof warming was happening and it was going to be bad. Al Gore has emissions from industrial smokestacks swirling up into a satellite image of a hurricane on the DVD box for his propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth to underline the point that more and eviller hurricanes will be the result of CO2 output.

But since 2005, only one major hurricane — Ike — has struck North America. And now comes a study from Florida State University researcher Ryan Maue, that shows worldwide cyclonic activity — typhoons, as well as hurricanes — has reached a 30-year low (tinyurl.com/bunynz).

Indeed, the hiatus may go back more than 30 years because it is difficult to compare records before about 1970 with those since, since measurements four or more decades ago were not as precise or thorough. Current low activity may actually be the lowest in 50 years or more.

If Maue had proven hurricane activity were at a 30-year high, of course his findings would have been reported far and wide. But since he is challenging the dogma of the Holy Mother Church of Climate Change, his research is ignored.

For at least the past five or six years, global temperatures have been falling. Look at the black trend line on the chart at http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/ put out by the man who runs NASA’s worldwide network of weather satellites.

Also, in the past few months, two studies — one by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Germany and another by the University of Wisconsin — have shown a slowing, or even a reversal of warming for at least the next 10 to 20, and perhaps longer. Even the Arctic sea ice, which has replaced hurricanes as the alarm of the moment ever since hurricanes ceased to threaten, has grown this winter to an extent not seen since around 1980.

(For more, click here.)