The frigidly cold weather has resulted in power outages, crop damage, book burning to stay warm, and of course, global warming jokes. “Where’s all that global warming now?” or “I could really use some of that global warming.” Minnesotans have been saying that for years. According to some scientists, we may see a longer cooling trend:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

Their predictions – based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans – challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy’s most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 – and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.”

Climate scientist Mojib Latif, who is such a strong believer that global warming is problem he previously said, “If my name was not Mojib Latif, my name would be global warming” had this to say about global temperatures:

They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer. The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.”

One cold winter does not indicate we’re headed for the next ice age, just as an abnormally hot summer, a hurricane or a drought are results of global warming. It does show how unsettled the scientific dispute is and how far off base the near-term predictions of 20-foot level sea rises and increased natural disasters are made from the Al Gores of the world. Manmade or not, there are problems associated with climate change, but there are even bigger problems associated with the policies designed to prevent a warmer world – most notably the aggregate GDP losses will be $9.4 trillion, the job losses of 2.5 million and the impact of a few tenths of a degree that it will on the earth’s temperature. Talk about a real disaster.