Media losing faith in global warming?

So says Tim Blair, quoting Marc Marano. “We have reached the ‘tipping point.’ 2009 can now be officially declared the year the media lost their faith in man-made global warming fears.”

And from The Daily Mail, Whatever happened to global warming? How freezing temperatures are starting to shatter climate change theory:

Closer to home, Austria is today seeing its earliest snowfall in history with 30 to 40 centimetres already predicted in the mountains. Such dramatic falls in temperatures provide superficial evidence for those who doubt that the world is threatened by climate change.

But most pertinent of all, of course, are the growing volume of statistics. According to the National Climatic Data Centre, Earth’s hottest recorded year was 1998. If you put the same question to NASA, scientists will say it was 1934, followed by 1998. The next three runner-ups are 1921, 2006 and 1931. Which all blows a rather large hole in the argument that the earth is hurtling towards an inescapable heat death prompted by man’s abuse of the environment

Warming advocates always liked comparing the 80s and 90s to the 50s and 60s, but the mid-century was remarkably cooler than the early part of the century. That fact never really fit with the idea of greenhouse gas-induced global warming.

And, yeah, record cold temperatures this year are shattering some people’s faith in global warming. If the temperature continues to drop then global warming advocates will be forced to defend theories and computer models that failed to predict the temperature drop. If that happens during this time of reduced solar activity then the solar theory of global warming and cooling is going to start taking hold in the media.