In several previous posts about the global warming issue, I've pointed out that we're due for an ice age and that maybe we should intensify our efforts to warm the globe in order to offset this impending catastrophe. See, for instance, this post (and the wonderful dialog I had with Fred Bortz in the comments) and especially this post, where I pointed to evidence that the cooling may come rapidly:

I knew that the last ice age ended about 12,000 years ago, and that we're about due for another. But I didn't know about the correlation between ice ages and CO2 levels:

As for that dreaded greenhouse gas, CO2, atmospheric levels of which now exceed 400 parts per million (ppm), it is important to note that paleological records show that every time CO2 levels have exceeded 300 ppm there has been an ice age. Every time — without exception.

I also didn't know that the current interglacial warm period might end quite suddenly:

In 1979, Genevieve Woillard, a pollen specialist in France, concluded from detailed studies that the shift from a warm, interglacial climate to ice age conditions at the beginning of the last ice age, some 100,000 years ago, took "less than 20 years."  …

As I noted in a comment to the first post linked above, "A hundred years from now, as the ice sheets begin edging southward, people living north of the Mason-Dixon line may wish we'd cranked out more carbon dioxide." Now, there is preliminary evidence that we may not even have to wait a hundred years.

The Earth actually stopped warming around the turn of the century. And now, the people tracking global temperatures all agree that the Earth has cooled dramatically in the past year (emphasis added):

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Check out the fine commentary by Mike at Monkey Tennis Centre and by Doug Ross, who offered a slightly snarky speculation:

And I wonder how long Al Gore's carbon-offset bunko scam is going to last when penguins start freezing to death.

BTW, speaking of anecdotal evidence: Those of you inclined toward skiing and snowboarding might want to know that the anecdotal evidence in Colorado is pretty interesting, too. Most of the major ski resorts are at or near record snowfall levels, ranging from 25 to 41 feet. Don't miss it, book your spring ski trip now — just in case I'm wrong, the new data's wrong, Gore's right, and it never happens again. 😉

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