Antartica grows colder as N. Hemisphere grows warmer

Are we wrong on climate change?

Could we be witnessing a climatic shift rather than a global warming?

Enthusiasm for global-warming ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean. So one awkward question you can ask...is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999. There is emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor. Compilations of weather satellite data show that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. Can we control, or even forecast, a climate ruled by the sun and the stars?