SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Findings Undercut Theory of Global Warming Threat

Despite fears that the planet is heating up as a result of greenhouse effect warming, temperatures in the southeastern United States have actually fallen 1 degree Fahrenheit and yearly rainfall has increased by 2 inches over the last 30 years, according to a federal study. The finding seemingly contradicts the widely held notion that pollution in the atmosphere has already made temperatures start to rise.

Weather in the Southeast has been “cooling and getting wetter,” said oceanographer George A. Maul of the U.S. Commerce Department’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. “This is quite different from what the computer models suggest should be going on with global warming.”

He said his work does not definitely prove that global warming is not happening. The fall in temperatures “may be a factor of the difficulty of calculating global warming on a regional scale. But it should increase the debate about global warming.”