Atmospheric chemistry scientists from MIT have discovered that the world-wide increase in methane levels during 2007, which by the way was the first in 10 years, occurred siimultaneously, which would contradict theories that man is the primary source for significant increases.

According to the article from Tgdaily, it normally takes about 1-year got man-made gases generated in the more industrialized northern hemisphere to reach the southern hemisphere, but the methane levels recorded in this study rose simultaneously in the same year, indicating that this increase in methane may be part of a natural cycle.

The scientists caution that more study is still needed since 2007 is long gone and much of that data may not be that relevant during 2008.

There was an update to this report. A number of people wondered if the massive Siberian permafrost meltoff in 2007 was responsible. The authors disputed that saying that this episode was a northern hemisphere event and would still require the normal 1-year cycling to reach the southern hemisphere.

Source

In a blog post, Bill Chameides says “global warming” is still happening. It isn’t. As the global temperature graph below shows, all four of the world’s major global surface temperature datasets (NASA GISS; RSS; UAH; and Hadley/University of East Anglia) show a decline in temperatures that have now persisted for seven years.

‘Global warming’? What ‘global warming’? All four of the world’s major surface temperature datasets show seven years of global cooling. The straight lines are the regression lines showing the trend over past seven years. It is decisively downward. Chameides’ graph overleaf appears to have been tampered with to exclude the very rapid cooling that occurred between 2007 (the curve stops in January 2007, when a strong El Nino artificially but temporarily boosted temperatures) and 2008. The fall in temperatures between January 2007 and January 2008, carefully not shown on Chameides’ graph, was the greatest January-January fall since records began in 1880.

Snow fell as the House of Commons debated Global Warming yesterday - the first October fall in the metropolis since 1922. The Mother of Parliaments was discussing the Mother of All Bills for the last time, in a marathon six hour session.

In order to combat a projected two degree centigrade rise in global temperature, the Climate Change Bill pledges the UK to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. The bill was receiving a third reading, which means both the last chance for both democratic scrutiny and consent.

The bill creates an enormous bureaucratic apparatus for monitoring and reporting, which was expanded at the last minute. Amendments by the Government threw emissions from shipping and aviation into the monitoring program, and also included a revision of the Companies Act (c. 46) "requiring the directors’ report of a company to contain such information as may be specified in the regulations about emissions of greenhouse gases from activities for which the company is responsible" by 2012.

Below you'll find a list of the latest Journal Reviews done by the folks at CO2 Science. Check 'em out as they are very informative, fact-based, and above all, interesting.

North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Activity: How has it varied between 1878 and 2006?

The Atacama Desert During the Medieval Warm Period: What distinguished it from the globally-cooler periods that preceded and followed it?

Reproductive Responses of Paper Birch Trees to Elevated CO2 and O3 Concentrations: What are they? ... and how do the benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment compare with the damages caused by O3 pollution of the air?

Dietary-Mediated Effects of Elevated CO2 on the Longevity and Fecundity of Japanese Beetles: How does the beetles' consumption of foliage grown in CO2-enriched air affect the two life-trait phenomena?

Reference
Changnon, D., Merinsky, C. and Lawson, M. 2008. Climatology of surface cyclone tracks associated with large central and eastern U.S. Snowstorms, 1950-2000. Monthly Weather Review 136: 3193-3202.

What was done
Using a newly developed dataset (Changnon et al., 2006), which "defined the dimensions of extra large damaging snowstorms during 1950-2000 in the eastern two-thirds of the nation," the authors assessed the characteristics of "the surface low pressure systems that caused the 241 largest and most costly snowstorms, those producing heavy snow (>15.2 cm of snowfall) over 258,000 km² (100,000 mile²) or more area" in "the same 1-2-day period," which systems were responsible for "the top 10% of all snowstorms."

Abstract
A simple climate model forced by satellite-observed changes in the Earth's radiative budget associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is shown to mimic the major features of global average temperature change during the 20th Century - including two-thirds of the warming trend. A mostly-natural source of global warming is also consistent with mounting observational evidence that the climate system is much less sensitive to carbon dioxide emissions than the IPCC's climate models simulate.

1. Introduction
For those who have followed my writings and publications in the last 18 months (e.g. Spencer et al., 2007), you know that we are finding satellite evidence that the climate system could be much less sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) climate models suggest.