An inconvenient winter

Environment: Record colds from North America to Baghdad reveal a double standard in global-warming alarmism | Mark Bergin

Shwan Mohammed/AFP/Getty Images

A chorus of "I-told-you-so" has echoed daily across conservative talk radio stations since last month when data emerged from the four leading trackers of global temperature to reveal marked cooling over the past year—enough cooling effectively to erase the one-degree (Celsius) rise over the past century that has sparked so much public consternation about climate change.

Some global-warming skeptics have jumped at the chance to claim proof for their contention that all the fuss over reducing carbon dioxide emissions amounts to an environmentalist hoax. Others have suggested mockingly that an impending ice age now threatens civilization.

But what does the data really mean? Is one year of cooling evidence that a century-long global trend has suddenly ceased? Does it discredit prevailing theories about the effect of human activity on climate? Or is the frigid winter merely an aberration with little to no bearing on the long-term discussion?