A few weeks back a spf'er shared this link with me and said he was going to post it here as well. As I've yet to see it, I decided to do it myself. I buried it in the global warming thread yesterday, but decided the info is important enough to warrant its own thread.
This is a five part series that offers the facts, figures and science of an alternative theory to the causes of the current global warming trend. Gore's work in An Inconvenient Truth is also analyzed and refuted with facts, figures and science.
The bottom line, imo, is that CO2 is NOT a strong driver of our climate. Never was, nor ever will be. One point that sticks with me: According to the facts presented by Gore, the theory of CO2 driving warming means the excessive CO2 trapped in the atmosphere is causing global warming. But for that theory to be viable, the warming would necessarily begin in the atmosphere about five miles above the earth's surface, eventually raising the surface temps as well. However, the surface of the earth is heating faster than the zone of the atmosphere suspected of driving the phenomena.
Check it out....
lw
http://www.livevideo.com/video/Conspira ... e-pt-.aspx (http://www.livevideo.com/video/ConspiracyCentral/266507D4094B4538B8284CBBBCDFA40F/the-global-warming-swindle-pt-.aspx)
On Feb. 2, 2007, the United Nations scientific panel studying climate change declared that the evidence of a warming trend is "unequivocal," and that human activity has "very likely" been the driving force in that change over the last 50 years. The last report by the group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2001, had found that humanity had "likely" played a role.
The addition of that single word "very" did more than reflect mounting scientific evidence that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from smokestacks, tailpipes and burning forests has played a central role in raising the average surface temperature of the earth by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since 1900. It also added new momentum to a debate that now seems centered less over whether humans are warming the planet, but instead over what to do about it. In recent months, business groups have banded together to make unprecedented calls for federal regulation of greenhouse gases. The subject had a red-carpet moment when former Vice President Al Gore's documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," was awarded an Oscar; and the Supreme Court made its first global warming-related decision, ruling 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency had not justified its position that it was not authorized to regulate carbon dioxide.
The greenhouse effect has been part of the earth's workings since its earliest days. Gases like carbon dioxide and methane allow sunlight to reach the earth, but prevent some of the resulting heat from radiating back out into space. Without the greenhouse effect, the planet would never have warmed enough to allow life to form. But as ever larger amounts of carbon dioxide have been released along with the development of industrial economies, the atmosphere has grown warmer at an accelerating rate: Since 1970, temperatures have gone up at nearly three times the average for the 20th century.
The latest report from the climate panel predicted that the global climate is likely to rise between 3.5 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit if the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere reaches twice the level of 1750. By 2100, sea levels are likely to rise between 7 to 23 inches, it said, and the changes now underway will continue for centuries to come.
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/scie ... classifier (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier)
Stoney: Don't be so quick to jump on that 100% sure bandwagon. Study the science for yourself.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/stor ... 46d1fc&k=0 (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=1d78fc67-3784-4542-a07c-e7eeec46d1fc&k=0)
Warming is real - and has benefits
The Deniers -- Part II
Lawrence Solomon, Financial Post
Published: Friday, February 02, 2007
One month ago, the world heard that global warming could lead to a global catastrophe "on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century." This assessment, from Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, made banner headlines and led prominent leaders such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair to urge immediate action to stem global warming.
It also led some prominent environmentalists to denounce Sir Nicholas for what they deemed an outrageous study bereft of credibility. None of the environmentalists issued a stronger denunciation, or has better environmental credentials, than Richard S.J. Tol.
Tol is a Denier, to use the terminology of the "science-is-settled" camp in the increasingly polarized global warming debate. Like many other Deniers, Tol doesn't think the evidence is in on global warming and its effects, he doesn't think there's reason to rush to action, and he doesn't think that crash programs to curb global warming are called for.
Also like many other Deniers, he doesn't fit the stereotype that those who use the epithet imagine. Anything but.
Tol is no fringe outsider to the scientific debate. He is at the centre of the academic investigation of global warming, a central figure in the scientific establishment that has been developing the models and the knowledge to understand the global warming phenomenon. At the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, considered by most the authoritative body in the field, Tol is involved as an author in all three of its Working Groups. He is also an author and editor of the United Nations Handbook on Methods for Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation Strategies. He is also a mover and shaker in the prestigious European Climate Forum. He takes global warming seriously and has dedicated his professional life to making a contribution for the better in climate policy and related fields.
Because of his immense reputation, the Stern report itself relied on Tol's work in coming to its conclusions. But Sir Nicholas twisted Tol's work out of shape to arrive at unsupportable conclusions.
As one example, Sir Nicholas plucked a figure ($29 per ton of carbon dioxide) from a range that Tol prepared describing the possible costs of CO2 emissions, without divulging that in the very same study Tol concluded that the actual costs "are likely to be substantially smaller" than $14 per ton of CO2. Likewise, in an assessment of the potential consequences of rising sea levels, Sir Nicholas quoted a study co-authored by Tol that referred to the "millions at risk," ignoring that the same study then suggested greatly reduced consequences for those millions due to the ability of humans to adapt to change.
Throughout his report, in fact, Sir Nicholas not only assumed worst possible cases, he also assumed that humans are passive creatures, devoid of ingenuity, who would be helpless victims to changes in the world around them. Such assumptions underpinned Sir Nicholas's claim that "the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever," and led Tol to view Sir Nicholas's conclusions as "preposterous." Tol's conclusion: "The Stern review can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent."
Tol and Sir Nicholas are worlds apart, and not just because of Sir Nicholas's recklessness with the facts. Where Sir Nicholas paints an altogether bleak picture, Tol's is far more nuanced: Global warming creates benefits as well as harms, he explains, and in the short term, the benefits are especially pronounced.
More important, Tol is a student of human innovation and adaptation. As a native of the Netherlands, he is intimately familiar with dikes and other low-cost adaptive technologies, and the ability of humans in meeting challenges in their environment. To assume that humans in the future would not use their ingenuity and resourcefulness in sensible ways defies the history of mankind and ultimately serves no one.
Yes, global warming is real, he believes, and yes, measures to mitigate it should be taken. But unlike the advocates who believe that the science is settled, and the global warning debate is over, Tol thinks that much research needs to be done before we know how best to respond.
"There is no risk of damage [from global warming] that would force us to act injudiciously," he explains. "We've got enough time to look for the economically most effective options, rather than dash into 'actionism,' which then becomes very expensive."
THE CV OF A DENIER: Richard Tol received his PhD in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is Michael Otto Professor of Sustainability and Global Change at Hamburg University, director of the Centre for Marine and Atmospheric Science, principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a board member of the Centre for Marine and Climate Research, the International Max Planck Research Schools of Earth Systems Modelling and Maritime Affairs, and the European Forum on Integrated Environmental Assessment. He is an editor of Energy Economics, an associate editor of Environmental and Resource Economics, and a member of the editorial board of Environmental Science and Policy and Integrated Assessment.
Btw, there are links to stories/facts of about ten other prominent "deniers" and their experiences with the architects of the current global warming scare in my post directly above this one.
I found the hurricane expert's experience to be especially enlightening. (Anyone remember the dire warnings about last season's hurricane activity?)
lw
Something like 98% of the worlds experts agree that CO2 emissions are a significant cause of global warming along with other man made effects. They know more than we do and they are nearly unanimous. If you wait until everyone agrees, it will never happen. Not everyone agrees the world is round, some say it's flat. Would you say the verdict is not in on the earth's shape? OK, slightly flattened sphere but not flat!
Science has nothing to do with consensus. Data can be manipulated to reach any desired conclusion, imo. In this case much was omitted. But don't take my word for it. Read the facts and the science behind it for yourself.
lw
PS: You seem to forget the numerous scientific errors like the flat earth consensus that existed a few hundred years back in the scientific community.
lw
Hey, here's a global warming related question for you......
How did Greenland get its name?
The Scandinavians who discovered the island hundreds of years back found a lush, green paradise when they arrived. However, after a time, the climate began to change, eventually killing or forcing most to flee for WARMER environs.
Telling people the sky is falling usually gets much better ratings on the tube than when they check in and see its bidness as usual. Remember Y2K?
lw
I've been posting in this thread since coming to the conclusion that CO2 is NOT driving the current global warming phenomena. I've looked at the science from both sides of the isle. What I've seen is a very loose correlation between CO2 levels and temps.
Interestingly, the scientist who has had the most success predicting our weather the past few years(with the awards to prove it) is a person who uses observations of activity on the surface of the sun to predict weather here on earth. He claims cosmic rays emitted from the sun cause the formation of clouds in our atmosphere. More solar activity, more clouds and lower temps. Less activity, less clouds, higher temps on the surface of the planet.
As scientists have been observing and recording sun spot activity for a few hunderd years, it's possible to graph this activity and compare ot graphs of historic temps. There is an amazing corelation that is much more pronounced than the CO2/temps graph.
I have to laugh when I read quotes from world leaders concerning how much warming we can "allow" to occur . That implies we have some control over the weather...
lw
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,214 ... 39,00.html (http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2575639,00.html)
the "weather" is a series of changing conditions which affect one another locally, regionally, and also globally, and we certainly do play our part...when we pollute a river with industrial waste, when we turn unsettled (by humans anyway) land into landfills or nuclear dumps, when we drive cars that pour toxins into the air...we are in turn affected by the weather, such as tsunamis or hurricanes, but also when crops die due to lack or rain, or when floods kill everything in sight...
whether the earth was flat or round was not a crisis, and is little relevant to this discussion...Y2k was a technical situation, a human drama...global warming is a vast subject, as it addresses how humans and their world are going to continue to live together, or begin to oppose each other by human misuse of its native home...but truly Mother Nature is not our adversary or opponent...whether this world exists by some divine hand or by the good fortunes of evolution, it is one we live on and belong to...
and, simply put, we don't act like it...we act like the world is a soda can to be drunk of its contents and, at best, tossed in the recycle bin...we don't collectively think of our world as live, and vulnerable, and in need of care...the world is alive, and there is evidence it is suffering by our doing...lots of evidence...we could be doing more, but we are not...I don't believe it is good-hearted folks like LW and others here who are in the way...i believe it is iniquitous multinational petrochemical companies and similar organizations that want to maintain an "argument" in order that nothing gets done until there is a "consensus" which they are banking will never come...
it's pathetic, and in a way, our only recourse is to elect leaders who will deal with it on the national and global levels, by funding research, getting more answers ongoingly as this and that is tried, and sign treaties and agreements they stick to, and in our own communities work toward recycling and other conscientious efforts to make things better...
the sad thing is that the earth could be made uninhabitable for humans, and still go on...eventually...start with the roaches, go from there...we could be like the dinosaurs, eventually, only without the excuse that our brains are the size of peas...
Quote from: "cenacle"the sad thing is that the earth could be made uninhabitable for humans, and still go on...eventually...start with the roaches, go from there...we could be like the dinosaurs, eventually, only without the excuse that our brains are the size of peas...
I disagree, cen. Nothing sad about humans being unable to destroy the earth, imo. That's a good thing.
Also, please don't confuse my position above, nor the topic at hand. I'm contending that CO2 is not the main driver of earth's weather and that man is not able to manipulate or control our weather at will, as proposed by our most esteemed world leaders.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see humans curb man-made pollution and lessen our dependance on fossil fuels. But connecting those problems with global warming is just bad science, imo.
lw
QuoteHow did Greenland get its name?
The Scandinavians who discovered the island hundreds of years back found a lush, green paradise when they arrived. However, after a time, the climate began to change, eventually killing or forcing most to flee for WARMER environs.
Sorry, lw, not true. Greenland was frosty when it was discovered. It was named that way as a marketing ploy. Too few people wanted to move to Iceland but Greenland sounded much better.
At the flat earth society they insist all this talk about the earth being round is a con job. They say the data is being faked too. Maybe they are right?
Sorry, stoney...
Check your facts.
Here's what I found on more than one site.....
http://explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa121799.htm (http://explorenorth.com/library/weekly/aa121799.htm)
quote from below in case you don't want to read it all.. The next migration came from the east, following "Erik the Red" Thorwaldsson's exploration of the southern coast of Greenland between 982 and 985 AD. In 986, he led a group of Viking families from Iceland, and settled at Brattahlid, traditionally known as Qassiarsuk (route map). The climate at this time was very warm, much wamer than it is today, and crops were able to do well. It seems likely that the name "Greenland" was given to the country, not just as wishful thinkful, but because it was a climatic fact at that time......... The mild climatic period was fairly short-lived in geologic terms - by about 1200 AD, the ever-increasing cold was making life extremely difficult, and some years no supply ships were able to reach Greenland through the ice-choked seas. During this period, Norway has assumed responsibility for supplying the Norse settlers in Greenland, but as the climate worsened it became a very difficult task.......
The year 2000 is extremely important to the people of Greenland, as it marks the approximate 1,000th anniversary of the arrival of the first Inuit, and also of Leif Erikkson's journey from Greenland to Canada. Many special ceremonies and projects are underway or planned, and a greatly-increased awareness of the country's history is apparent.
Greenland was first inhabited about 4,500 years ago. The earliest residents arrived from the west, but either left or died due to periods of exceptionally cold weather and/or poor hunting. Signs of their presence have been found near Maniitsoq. The region seems to have then been uninhabited for about 3,000 years.
The next migration came from the east, following "Erik the Red" Thorwaldsson's exploration of the southern coast of Greenland between 982 and 985 AD. In 986, he led a group of Viking families from Iceland, and settled at Brattahlid, traditionally known as Qassiarsuk (route map). The climate at this time was very warm, much wamer than it is today, and crops were able to do well. It seems likely that the name "Greenland" was given to the country, not just as wishful thinkful, but because it was a climatic fact at that time.
In 999 or 1000, Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, brought the first Christian missionary to Greenland, from Norway. Shortly after, the first church, Thjódhildurs Church, was built at Brattahlid. It was built beside Erik the Red's farmhouse, at his wife's insistence, and was named after her. As part of the celebrations being held in 2000, the church and farmhouse have been rebuilt, and are being dedicated on July 16, 2000.
In 1000, Leif Eriksson made his voyage to North America. That voyage is being recreated with a replica of his ship, the Islendingur. It will sail from Brattahlid (Qassiarsuk) on July 15, 2000, and a lengthy series of celebrations are planned upon her arrival in North America.
The church became extremely powerful in Greenland; in about 1124 a bishop was appointed, and a residence was built at Gardar (Igaliko), near Brattahlid. By most reports, corruption within the church was rampant, and may have ultimately helped destroy the settlements the church was sent to minister to.
At about the same time that the Norseman were settling the south of Greenland, the present Greenlanders, the Inuit, arrived and settled further to the north (some sources state that they arrived as late as 1200 AD).
The mild climatic period was fairly short-lived in geologic terms - by about 1200 AD, the ever-increasing cold was making life extremely difficult, and some years no supply ships were able to reach Greenland through the ice-choked seas. During this period, Norway has assumed responsibility for supplying the Norse settlers in Greenland, but as the climate worsened it became a very difficult task.
By about 1350, the settlements in southwestern Greenland had been abandoned. There is no evidence to prove where the people went to, but one persistent legend says that they went to North America, eventually settling in North Dakota. This legend claims that they were the original Mandan Indians.
In 1408, a wedding was performed in the Hvalsey Church. This is not only the last known service at Hvalsey, but also the last written record of the Viking presence in the region. It is thought that some settlers remained for another 80-90 years, then were forced to leave by the deteriorating climate as well.
Not until 1721 did Europeans return to Greenland, and in 1775, Denmark claimed the island as a closed colony. Although there were no European residents, the merging of Norway and Denmark in the Kalmar Union had resulted in control over Greenland being passed to Denmark.
The people of Greenland did not fare well under Danish rule, and the standard of living was very low until the Second World War. At that time, the United States built a series of military bases, including Thule AFB.
In 1953, a constitutional change made Greenland an integral part of Denmark rather than being a colony. Danish financial assistance increased substantially, and the country modernized quickly. Life expectancy rose, the population doubled due both immigration and an increased birthrate, and modern technology was introduced into most aspects of life, from medicine to transportation and comunications.
In the 1970s, concerns began to be expressly that Greenland's culture was being lost, and pressure began to build for establishment of a Home Rule government. That was accomplished in 1979. The new legislature was given power over everything except foreign affairs, defense and the judiciary, which are still controlled from Copenhagen, although in practise Greenland's opinions are given a great deal of consideration when setting policy.
In modern Greenland, culture and history are very visible parts of everyday life, from colourful clothing to sled dog races. For tourists, the range of historical and cultural attractions is enormous, ranging from accommodations such as the unique Hotel Arctic to natural history tours by dogteam.
As well as the rebuilding of Thjódhildurs Church, many Inuit and Viking sites are being preserved or restored by the coordinated efforts of the National Museum of Greenland (Nunatta Katersugaasivia) and the local museums in Nanortalik, Narsaq and Qaqortoq. The National Museum of Denmark has submitted a proposal to UNESCO to have almost 3,000 square kilometers of Narsaq and Qaqortoq designated as a World Heritage Site. This area encompasses sites ranging from Inuit and Viking settlements to colonial buildings. Plans for establishing "ruin-parks" to both make access easier and protect the most important sites better, promise to provide ever-increasing possibilities to see Greenland's past.
On the same subject...
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/eismayewski.html (http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/eismayewski.html)
quote from the link above: Locked within two cores of ancient ice is evidence of unprecedented swings in Earth's climate throughout the ages. These icy archives tell us that large, rapid, global change is more the norm for the Earth's climate than is stasis.
lw
I found this article most fascinating...
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2Sc ... 6/EDIT.jsp (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N26/EDIT.jsp)
Is the Recent Greenland Temperature Increase Evidence of Man-Induced Global Warming?
Volume 9, Number 26: 28 June 2006
Chylek et al. (2006) recently studied the characteristics of two century-long temperature records from southern coastal Greenland - Godthab Nuuk on the west and Ammassalik on the east, both close to 64°N latitude - concentrating on the period 1915-2005. What did they find?
As they describe it, "although the whole decade of 1995-2005 was relatively warm, the temperatures at Godthab Nuuk and Ammassalik were not exceptionally high," as "almost all decades between 1915 and 1965 were warmer than, or at least as warm as, the 1995 to 2005 decade, suggesting that the current warm Greenland climate is not unprecedented and that similar temperatures were [the] norm in the first half of the 20th century." They also note that "two periods of intense warming (1995-2005 and 1920-1930) are clearly visible in the Godthab Nuuk and Ammassalik temperature records," but that "the average rate of warming was considerably higher within the 1920-1930 decade than within the 1995-2005 decade." In fact, they report that the earlier warming rate was 50% greater than the most recent one.
In comparing the southern coastal Greenland temperature record with that of the entire globe for the same time interval, Chylek et al. note that "while all the decadal averages of the post-1955 global temperature are higher than the pre-1955 average, almost all post-1995 temperature averages at Greenland stations are lower than the pre-1955 temperature average," which observation causes us to wonder how that can be, if CO2-induced global warming is supposed to be earliest and most strongly expressed at high northern latitudes, as claimed by climate alarmists on the basis of a long history of climate modeling. This canary in the coal mine concept of theirs is seen to be even more perverse, when, as noted by the three researchers, "the summer temperature at the Summit of the Greenland ice sheet shows a decreasing tendency since the beginning of the measurements in 1986 (Chylek et al., 2004)."
In light of these several observations, Chylek et al. say: "An important question is to what extent can the current (1995-2005) temperature increase in Greenland coastal regions be interpreted as evidence of man-induced global warming?" In answering this question, they note that "the Greenland warming of 1920 to 1930 demonstrates that a high concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is not a necessary condition for [a] period of warming to arise," and that "the observed 1995-2005 temperature increase seems to be within [the] natural variability of Greenland climate." In addition, they say that "a general increase in solar activity (Scafetta and West, 2006) since [the] 1990s can be a contributing factor, as well as the sea surface temperature changes of [the] tropical ocean (Hoerling et al., 2001)."
With respect to an important implication of their findings, Chylek et al. say that "glacier acceleration observed during the 1996-2005 period (Rignot and Kanagaratnam, 2006) has probably occurred previously," and that "there should have been the same or more extensive acceleration during the 1920-1930 warming as well as during the Medieval Warm Period in Greenland (Dahl-Jensen et al., 1998; DeMenocal et al., 2000) when Greenland temperatures were generally higher than today."
To summarize, as Chylek et al. put it, "we find no direct evidence to support the claims that the Greenland ice sheet is melting due to increased temperature caused by increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide."
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
The bottom line, imo, is that science is being ignored in order to advance a pet theory (co2 levels driving earth's temps).
I've provided scientific data to back my claims. And all I've seen in response is emotional blather about the condition of the earth and the "consensus" of co2 's influence on earths' temps.
If you watched the five part series above, you have seen the comparison of the competing theories, the science behind both and an intrepetation of the data..
Hey, look at that lint in my belly button......
lw
How were the results manipulated, you ask? Please read the article linked below for that answer.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html)?
id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0
From the link above: ..........Wegman became involved in the global-warming debate after the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives asked him to assess one of the hottest debates in the global-warming controversy: the statistical validity of work by Michael Mann. You may not have heard of Mann or read Mann's study but you have often heard its famous conclusion: that the temperature increases that we have been experiencing are "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium. You may have also heard of Mann's hockey-stick shaped graph, which showed relatively stable temperatures over most of the last millennium (the hockey stick's long handle), followed by a sharp increase (the hockey stick's blade) this century.
Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change, the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming. But Mann's work also had its critics, particularly two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who published peer-reviewed critiques of their own.
Wegman accepted the energy and commerce committee's assignment, and agreed to assess the Mann controversy pro bono. He conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, who also agreed to work pro bono. Wegman also consulted outside statisticians, including the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.
"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.
Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.
Worse, the problem also applied more generally, to the broader climate-change and meteorological community, which also relied on statistical techniques in their studies. "f statistical methods are being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best quality science is being done," Wegman recommended, noting that "there are a host of fundamental statistical questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics."
In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.
Stoney: In a post above, you seemed to express confidence in the UN's announcement concerning the high probability of CO2 levels driving world temps. So I did a little research on the guy responsible for the announcement you quote above. Sir Nicholas Stern is the former Chief Economist of the World bank.
I find it interesting that others have accused the world bank and IMF of distorting facts for ideological gains. And here we have Sir N Stern apparently working the same flim-flam scam through his position as UN's mouthpiece on CO2/weather claims....
quote from the article linked below: Several pundits criticized what some referred to as my “radical accusationâ€â€"that economic forecasts are manipulated and distorted in order to achieve political objectives (as opposed to economic objectivity) and that foreign “aid†is a tool for big business rather than an altruistic means to alleviate poverty.
However, both of these transgressions against the true purposes of sound economics and altruism have been well documented by a multitude of people, including a former World Bank chief economist and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, Joseph Stiglitz. In his book, Globalization and Its Discontents, Stiglitz writes:
To make its [the IMF’s] programs seem to work, to make the numbers “add up,†economic forecasts have to be adjusted. Many users of these numbers do not realize that they are not like ordinary forecasts; in these instances GDP forecasts are not based on a sophisticated statistical model, or even on the best estimates of those who know the economy well, but are merely the numbers that have been negotiated as part of an IMF program.1 …
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel ... entid=4271 (http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=52&contentid=4271)
Two possible scenarios and two possible reactions.
#1 Man-made cause and man-chosen ignorance to the subject - results in lack of action and adaptation - a bad outcome. No significant resources consumed in avoiding, but many resources lost in coping.
#2 Man-made cause and with man's awareness of the subject - results in action and adaptation - possibly a neutral outcome. Certainly a more sustainable energy policy is undertaken.
#3 Non-man-made causes and man-chosen ignorace towards the subject - still the same outcome as #1 above.
#4 Non-man-made causes and with man's awareness of the subject - Less energy resource change and fewer adaptation on the consumption side, but with greater difficulty in mitigating the causes and hence greater difficulty in averting the changes that will follow.
So which would we rather it be #2 or #4?
#4 means we are free to do as we please without feeling responsible, but then that means we are subject to the uncontrollable forces of nature.
We may be better off with #2 since then we can do more than adpat to the final outcomes, but instead may be more likely to avoid drastic climate change, albeit possible by means of drastic technological change. Hmm, new technology for whizzing about or feuds over water and crop failures?
We may never know if man is the cause or not.
But doesn't it seem wise to hope we are the cause and try to do something about it. At worst, we are not the cause and fail to limit the change, but at least we tried. At best we are the cause and reap many rewards.
There is another worse case scenario, imo, windey. It's possible that the earth is heading toward another cooling period. If so, it could be in our best interest to allow the planet to warm as much as possible before heading the other direction to mitigate the possible down-swing.
Another possibility is that we hinder the development of the third world in fear of CO2 emissions and facilitate/prolong much pain and suffering in the name of false science.
Thanks for chiming in, btw, windey.
lw
lw, I will quote a portion of what you wrote:
"Greenland was first inhabited about 4,500 years ago. The earliest residents arrived from the west, but either left or died due to periods of exceptionally cold weather and/or poor hunting"
This verifies what I said about Greenland being icey when it was discovered. I'm glad you agree with me.
As for global warming, maybe the vast majority of the world's scientists are wrong and you and the oil companies are right. However, thermometers don't lie and they say the earth is warming. I believe the thermometers and the scientists.
Maybe you could start an organization called "global warming is fake and the earth is flat"?
stoney: I know the earth is warming. (I'd hoped by now we'd be past that point of discussion.)
Thousands of years ago, when Greenland was discovered, it might well have been a frozen tundra. However, when the Scandinavians ventured there less than one thousand years ago, it was green, hence warmer than it is now. (Notice any pattern here?)
The earth has always and will always be either heating or cooling. Big woop-tee-doo. It has done this long before man walked the earth and will be doing it long after we are gone.
Your faith in the world's leaders grasp on this issue reminds me of experiences I've had with some religious (christian) folks. They, too have faith in their leaders and feel little or no need to question the wisdom of the church outside what they are spoon fed by those in charge......
lw
LW, I have very little faith in world leaders. They are by and large a pack of liars, thieves and killers. Take Bush for example. No, what I believe in are the data and the conclusions of the scientists who interpreted them.
Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree on this one. Your faith seems very strong in this area :D
LOL Right on stoney.
However, my faith is in the numbers after studying the science behind both theories.....
Now, just WHY those folks want to ignore the scientific data presented to them and go public with their version of reality is open to debate, imo.
I suspect a fear of a human population explosion facilitated by the industrialization of developing countries to be a possible factor driving their motives.
lw
Quote from: "laughingwillow"The earth has always and will always be either heating or cooling. Big woop-tee-doo. It has done this long before man walked the earth and will be doing it long after we are gone.
See, I'd like to think that the human race can smarten up enough not to kill itself off, along with countless other species. I'd like to think that this home we live on, that we belong to, is one that we can find ways to improve for all of its life, flora and fauna.
I don't know if I believe in scientists per se anymore than political leaders. They can be corrupted too with a large enough check, and have been, and are speaking out on some fat cat's dime, every day.
Thing is, this issue isn't one that we can put off on them, the leaders who pass law and make budgets, or the scientists who study the situation for a living. On contrary, this issue is ours, every last one of us, it is OUR world, our home, and when we allow it to be harmed, when we go along with the harm of it, we might as well be bludgeoning our own hearts and lungs, and those of our loved ones, and children yet to come.
I personally wish I could do even more than using my bike, and walking every day instead of driving and public transit, and recycling, and trying to be aware. But I can say, living in a city, that I see countless every day in their cars, not carpooling, tossing cigarette butts into the streets, leaving trash in the streets. I do what I can, I want to do more, I don't give a damn what the danger is called, or how close we are to identifying every last aspect of it. As far as I'm concerned, we have a chance, it's still a beautiful world, there's still time. But ANYONE who says that millions of humans are not harming this world right now is a blind fool and worse.
Oh, humans harm the earth, no doubt. But we are a product of this earth and not the other way around. Living green to lesson pollution as well as our burden on the environment is one thing. Claiming to be able to control the global climate by manipulating CO2 levels is quite another.
And buying into that theory without bothering to study the numbers behind the claims is just plain lazy, imo.
lw
Rise and shine!
http://www.counterpunch.org/ (http://www.counterpunch.org/)
Dissidents Against Dogma
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
We should never be more vigilant than at the moment a new dogma is being installed. The claque endorsing what is now dignified as "the mainstream theory" of global warming stretches all the way from radical greens through Al Gore to George W. Bush, who signed on at the end of May. The left has been swept along, entranced by the allure of weather as revolutionary agent, naïvely conceiving of global warming as a crisis that will force radical social changes on capitalism by the weight of the global emergency. Amid the collapse of genuinely radical politics, they have seen it as the alarm clock prompting a new Great New Spiritual Awakening.
Alas for their illusions. Capitalism is ingesting global warming as happily as a python swallowing a piglet. The press, which thrives on fearmongering, promotes the nonexistent threat as vigorously as it did the imminence of Soviet attack during the cold war, in concert with the arms industry. There's money to be made, and so, as Talleyrand said, "Enrich yourselves!" I just bought two roundtrip British Airways ticket to Spain from Seattle and a BA online passenger advisory promptly instructed me that the CO2 "offset" cost would be $7.90 on each ticket, which I might care to contribute to Climate Care. It won't be long before utility bills will carry similar, albeit mandatory and much larger charges. Here's a forewarning of what is soon going to happen, courtesy of Samuel Brittan in the Financial Times, under the menacing title, "Towards a true price for energy":
"An enhanced [climate change levy] could be the basis for a genuine shadow price for energy, which could become the basis for energy policy and replace the mind-boggling variety of specific schemes now in place. But for this to happen the consumer exemptions would have to go, and the levy first increased and then raised each year by more than inflation. An approach along these lines would be a contribution to an international effort to reduce dependence on imported and polluting fuels; but it would also benefit any particular country taking this route. And if Opec made disapproving noises we would know that we were really on to something."
Back in the 1970s, as the oil companies engineered a leap in prices, the left correctly identified and stigmatized the the conspiracy. Some thirty five years, here's the entire progressive sector swallowing, with religious fervor, a far more potent concoction of nonsense to buttress a program which will savagely penalize the poor, the third world and the environment.
The marquee slogan in the new cold war on global warming is that the scientific consensus is virtually unanimous. This is utterly false. The overwhelming majority of climate computer modelers, the beneficiaries of the $2 billion-a-year global warming grant industry, certainly believe in it but not necessarily most real climate scientists-people qualified in atmospheric physics, climatology and meteorology.
Geologists are particularly skeptical. Peter Sciaky, a retired geologist, writes to me thus:
"A geologist has a much longer perspective. There are several salient points about our earth that the greenhouse theorists overlook (or are not aware). The first of these is that the planet has never been this cool. There is abundant fossil evidence to support this--from plants of the monocot order (such as palm trees) in the rocks of Cretaceous Age in Greenland and warm water fossil in sedimentary rocks of the far north. this is hardly the first warming period in the earth's history. The present global warming is hardly unique. It is arriving pretty much "on schedule." One thing, for sure, is that the environmental community has always spurned any input from geologists (many of whom are employed by the petroleum industry). No environmental conference, such as Kyoto, has ever invited a geologist, a paleontologist, a paleoclimatologist. It would seem beneficial for any scientific investigatory to include such scientific disciplines.
"Among all my liberal and leftist friends (and I am certainly one of those), I know not a one who does not accept that global warming is an event caused by mankind. I do not know one geologist who believes that global warming is not taking place. I do not know a single geologist who believes that it is a man-made phenomenon.
"There are hundreds of reasons--political, pragmatic and economic, health and environmental--for cleaning up our environment, for conservation of energy, for developing alternate fuels, cleaning up our nuclear program, etc. Global warming is not one of them."
Take Warsaw-based Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, famous for his critiques of ice-core data. He's devastating on the IPCC rallying cry that CO2 is higher now than it has ever been over the past 650,000 years. In his 1997 paper in the Spring 21st Century Science and Technology, he demolishes this proposition. In particular, he's very good on pointing out the enormous inaccuracies in the ice-core data and the ease with which a CO2 reading from any given year is contaminated by the CO2 from entirely different eras. He also points out that from 1985 on there's been some highly suspect editing of the CO2 data, presumably to reinforce the case for the "unprecedented levels" of modern CO2. In fact, in numerous papers prior to 1985, there were plenty of instances of CO2 levels much higher than current CO2 measurements, some even six times higher. He also points out that it is highly unscientific to merge ice-core temperature measurements with modern temperature measurements.
Or take Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, of St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. He says we're on a warming trend but that humans have little to do with it, the agent being a longtime change in the sun's heat. He predicts solar irradiance will fall within the next few years mainly based the well documented sunspot cycle, and therefore we may well face the beginning of an ice age very shortly, as early as 2012. The Russian scientific establishment is giving him a green light to use the nation's space station to measure global cooling.
Now read Dr. Jeffrey Glassman, applied physicist and engineer, retired from California's academic and corporate sectors, who provides an elegant demonstration of how the absorption and release of CO2 from the enormous carbon reservoir in the earth's oceans controls atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This absorption and release is very much a function of the earth's temperature and Glassman shows how the increase in atmospheric CO2 is the consequence of temperature, not the cause.
Move to that bane of the fearmongers, Dr. Patrick Michaels, on sabbatical from the University of Virginia, now at the Cato Institute, who has presented in papers and recently, in his book Meltdown, demolitions of almost every nightmare scenario invented by the greenhousers, particularly regarding hurricanes, tornadoes, sea rise, disappearing ice caps, drought and floods. A qualified climatologist, he analyses the data invoked to buttress each of these scenarios and shows the actual climate history not only fails to support the claims but also that in the majority of cases the opposite is true. Hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and floods and other weather extremes are currently decreasing, contrary to Hansen, Mann and the other sensationalists. Michaels is particularly good on the ludicrous claims regarding catastrophic sea rise as well as the by now universally trumpeted melting icecaps and supposed impending disappearance of the Greenland ice sheet. Michaels is sometimes slammed as a hired gun for the fossil fuel industry, but I haven't seen any significant dents or quantitative ripostes to his meticulous scientific critiques.
Then there's Christopher Landsea. A research meteorologist at the Atlantic Oceanic and Meteorological Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, he described to Lawrence Solomon (author of a very interesting series on "The Deniers" in Canada's National Post in February of this year) how the IPCC utterly misrepresented his work to concoct a scare scenario about warming and increased incidence of hurricanes and cyclones.
There are many others. The geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta, was once a passionate adherent to the theory of anthropogenic global warming. He even started to build a "Kyoto house" in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. These days he's changed his views entirely and indeed has written a book, "The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming." Wiskel says global warming has gone "from a science to a religion" and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy.
The astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's scientists, also abandoned his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. Shaviv is quoted as saying in the the Canadian National Post series. "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" . Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature."
One of the best essays on greenhouse myth-making from a left perspective comes from Denis Rancourt, an environmental science researcher and professor of physics at the University of Ottawa. I recommend his February 2007 essay "Global Warming: Truth or Dare?" on his website, Activist Teacher, which has also featured fine work by David Noble on the greenhouse lobby. Rancourt is a good scientist and also a political radical and the conflation is extremely stimulating though --alas--very rare:
"The planet will continue to change, adapt and evolve, with or without us The atmosphere will continue to change as it always has under the influence of life and of geology. We can't control these things. We can barely perceive them correctly. But we can take control of how we treat each other. The best we can do for the environment and for the planet is to learn not to let undemocratic power structures run our lives. The best we can do is to reject exploitation and domination and to embrace cooperation and solidarity. The best we can do is to not trust subservient scientists and to become active agents for change beyond head-in-the-sand personal lifestyle choices.
"We need to get political, beyond corporate-controlled shadow governments and co-opted political parties. We need to take charge more than we need to recycle. Global warming is strictly an imaginary problem of the First World middleclass. Nobody else cares about global warming. Exploited factory workers in the Third World don't care about global warming. Depleted uranium genetically mutilated children in Iraq don't care about global warming. Devastated aboriginal populations the world over also can't relate to global warming, except maybe as representing the only solidarity that we might volunteer."
The Achilles' heel of the computer models (which form the cornerstone of CO2 fearmongering), is their failure to deal with water. As vapor, it's a more important greenhouse gas than CO2 by a factor of twenty, yet models have proven incapable of dealing with it. The global water cycle is complicated, with at least as much unknown as is known. Water starts by evaporating from oceans, rivers, lakes and moist ground, enters the atmosphere as water vapor, condenses into clouds and precipitates as rain or snow. Each transition from one form of water to another is influenced by temperature and each water form has an enormous impact on global heat processes. Clouds have a huge, inaccurately quantified cooling effect: they reflect heat received from the sun, though how much is unknown. Water on the Earth's surface has different effects on retaining the sun's heat, depending on whether the water is liquid and dark, as are the oceans, which are highly absorbent; or ice, which is reflective; or snow, which is even more reflective than ice. Such water cycle factors cause huge swings in the Earth's heat balance; they interact with global temperatures in ways that are beyond the ability of computer climate models to predict.
The first global warming modelers simply threw up their hands at the complexity of the water problem and essentially left out the atmospheric water cycle. Over time a few features of the cycle were patched into the models, all based on unproven guesses at the effect of increased ocean evaporation on clouds, the effect of clouds on reflecting the sun's energy and the effect of cloud warming on rainfall and snow. All of these "band aid" equations are hopelessly inadequate to repair the computer models' inability to describe the water cycle's role in temperature.
Besides the inability to deal with water, the other huge embarrassment facing the modelers is the well-researched and well-established fact published in many papers that temperature changes first and CO2 levels change 600 to 1,000 years later. Any rational person would immediately conclude that CO2 could not possibly cause temperature if the rise in CO2 in comes centuries after the rise in temperature. The computer modelers as usual have an involuted response: They say the temperature increase is initiated by the "relatively weak" effect of increasing heat from the sun during the rising phase of the Milankovich cycle (Milankovich's meticulously calculated cycles on rising and falling heat input from the sun are universally accepted by astrophysicists). That effect initiates the warming of the oceans, which - just as Dr. Martin Hertzberg says - releases lots of CO2. According to the modelers the released CO2 is the real culprit because it amplifies the "relatively weak" effect of the sun, turning minor warming into a really serious matter.
This is a cleverly concocted gloss which would be a wonderful argument for demonstrating that once warming starts, CO2 will make it worse and worse until all life on earth dies. Unfortunately for the climate modelers the history of the earth's many temperature and CO2 swings tells us that it obviously does not get worse and worse. After any given warming phase begins, thousands of years later the cyclical Milankovitch decrease in the sun's heat kicks in. The warming stops, reverses and an ice age ensues. Where the modelers' clever gloss founders is onm explaining how the "relatively weak" decrease in the sun's heat makes all that extra CO2 disappear. Obviously the "bad" C02 must disappear due to some "feedback" that the modelers haven't thought of yet, i.e., one that keeps the earth's climate in rough equilibrium.
If the public swallows this new greenhouse dogma, it won't just be carbon taxes on an airline ticket. It will be huge new carbon offset charges on your utility bill for the alleged carbon savings of the hundreds of immensely expensive nuclear plants the industry is so eager to build. And you, having been softened by the propaganda of the CO2 fearmongers, will be delighted to pay those hefty levies to give a cooler, cleaner world to your grandchildren.
Finally, A word on sources and authorities. They begin with papers and talks by Dr Martin Hertzberg. These are being scanned and as soon as this is done, I will give the relevant links--probably in a week--in an updated version of this piece.
M. Hertzberg and J. B. Stott, "Greenhouse Warming of the Atmosphere", 25th International Symposium on Combustion, Irvine, CA (1994), Poster Session No. 5, Paper # 73, p459
M. Hertzberg, "The Facts and Fictions of Global Warming", talk presented at the 'Cafe Scientifique at the Summit', Frisco, CO, Oct. 3, 2006
J. A. Glassman, "The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide", posted in www.rocketscientistsjournal.com (http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com)
F. Goldberg, "Climate Data Show That the Increase in CO2 in the Atmosphere is Due to Natural Causes", lecture at Cal Tech, Pasadena, Jan 10, 2007, work in progress available by request from:
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ ... point.html (http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/ci/31/special/mayo1viewpoint.html)
R. Essenhigh,Energy and Fuels, 2006, Vol 20, pp 1057-1067
Z. Jaworowski et al, "Do Glaciers Tell a True CO2 Story", The Science of the Total Environment, 144
(1992) pp 227-284
Z. Jaworowski, "Ice Core Data Show No Carbon Dioxide Increase", 21st Century Science & Technology, Spring 1997, available on line at www.21stcenturysciencetech.com (http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com)
D. G.Rancourt, "Global Warming: Truth or Dare", Activist Teacher: Global Warming: Truth or Dare?
R. Lindzen, The Wall Street Journal, Wed. April 12, 2006, Editorial Page
R. Lindzen, "Is There a Basis for Global Warming Alarm?", Oct 12, 2005, Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, on line at: www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1714 (http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1714)
The following are all available on the John Daly web-site:
J. L. Daly, "The 'Hockey Stick': A New Low in Climate Science" available at
www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm (http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm)
J. L. Daly, "Days of Sunshine", available at www.john-daly.com/solar.htm (http://www.john-daly.com/solar.htm)
H. Hug, "The Climate Catastrophe - A Spectroscopic Artifact", available at
www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm (http://www.john-daly.com/artifact.htm)
J. Ahlbeck, "Absorption of Carbon Dioxide From the Atmosphere",available at
www.john-daly.com/co2-conc/ahl-co2.htm (http://www.john-daly.com/co2-conc/ahl-co2.htm)
J. Ahlbeck, "Increase of the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Concentration Due to Ocean Warming",
available at www.john-daly.com/oceanco2/oceanco2.htm (http://www.john-daly.com/oceanco2/oceanco2.htm)
Footnote: a much shorter version of this piece ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday.
What is absolutely unique about this warming trend (or cooling trend) is that we can be aware of it. Never in the past was there an awareness that would allow consideration of the future. Furthermore, we are scattered about yet entrenched in our scattered places. We are so entrenched now that places that become hard to live in cannot be simply abandoned. We are so numerous now that the places that are easier to live in cannot easily accomodate the hordes that will want in these places.
Again I say - regardless of the truth, and we should seek to find the truth - we should hope that we can do something about what is happening, particularly if we are causing a greater effect than would occur without our carbon dioxide contributions to the atmosphere.
Winder: I appreciate the input. I agree with everything you say.
However, my hope is that humans reach a point of understanding what really drives weather before attempting to "fix" any preceived problems by implementing draconian policy hindering development in Africa and other third world countries.
Btw, I'm not in the camp which believes there are currently too many humans for the earth to sustain. However, I do have a feeling that belief MIGHT be driving the currently accepted weather theory (among those who set policy) almost as much as the rising temps we've recently experienced.
lw
LW--I don't see you as right or wrong. I see you as reading the words of some and accepting, and denying the words of others, and rejecting. I guess it's what most of us have to do regarding most situations in the world, even in our own lives. We cannot verify all, so we go on what we are told by those we respect and trust.
Therefore, this thread could go on years until you are convinced, if ever, that there is a problem.
The only difference between this debate and one on, say, the existence of God, is that this debate is laden with quantifiable facts. So many, it seems, that nobody has convinced everybody of any given conclusion derived from a universally accepted set of facts. My hope in 2008 is that the next President and Democratic Congress will pour a lot of money into the matter, make it a priority, get some answers that are convincing as a set, and act. And eventually show the results to be solid, or marginal.
That said, one's perception of humans crowding the world depends in part on where one is and how one is living. There are a billion people in this world without access to clean drinking water. I think they will beg to differ with Americans who think there's plenty of room and resources for all.
Thanks, cen.
HOwever......
I've accepted the word of no one concerning the causes of global warming, imo. I studied the science made available and mixed well with common sense.
Btw, its not the billion people without clean water saying there are too many people on the planet. Its the fat cats in industrialized countries with most to lose, screaming the loudest, imo. Sometimes a lack of water is just that.
What i'd love to see is the industrialized nations coming up with a solution to the lack of water you mention instead of spending precious resources on a scenario which is blantly a lie, verifyable by any willing to take the time to study the facts. (Global warming being driven by rising levels of CO2)
lw
Data on tree growth, tropical air temperatures and CO2 readings collected over 16 years indicate that a warming climate may cause the tropical forests to give off more carbon dioxide than they take up. This would upset the common belief that tropical forests are always a counterbalance to carbon, taking huge amounts out of the atmosphere. The study, by Deborah and David Clark of the La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica, and Charles Keeling and Stephen Piper of the Scripps Institution, reports that rainforest trees grow much more slowly in warmer nighttime temperatures, which is a hallmark of climate change in the tropics.
This article really struck a chord with me.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-1 ... 10621.html (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9deb730a-19ca-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html)
quote from below for those too busy or lazy read the entire article.
.......I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial ageâ€......
Freedom, not climate, is at risk
By Vaclav Klaus
Published: June 13 2007 17:44
We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough â€" irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent â€" for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.
In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary†film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s â€" more or less Tony Blair’s â€" Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.
The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propagandaâ€. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established†truth, although a lot of people â€" including top-class scientists â€" see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.
As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.
The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.
The scientists should help us and take into consideration the political effects of their scientific opinions. They have an obligation to declare their political and value assumptions and how much they have affected their selection and interpretation of scientific evidence.
Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).
Due to advances in technology, increases in disposable wealth, the rationality of institutions and the ability of countries to organise themselves, the adaptability of human society has been radically increased. It will continue to increase and will solve any potential consequences of mild climate changes.
I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial ageâ€.
The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.
As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
?Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
?Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
?Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
?Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensusâ€, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
?Instead of speaking about “the environmentâ€, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
?Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
?Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.
The writer is President of the Czech Republic
I have hope this great swindle is coming to an end......
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... 5C23C24651 (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=469DD8F9-802A-23AD-4459-CC5C23C24651)
Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say
March 12, 2007
Posted by Marc Morano -
Marc_Morano@epw.senate.gov - 10:51 am ET
Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...
Bright sun, warm Earth. Coincidence?
By Lorne Gunter
National Post
Link to Article
Monday, March 12, 2007
Mars's ice caps are melting, and Jupiter is developing a second giant red spot, an enormous hurricane-like storm.
The existing Great Red Spot is 300 years old and twice the size of Earth. The new storm -- Red Spot Jr. -- is thought to be the result of a sudden warming on our solar system's largest planet. Dr. Imke de Pater of Berkeley University says some parts of Jupiter are now as much as six degrees Celsius warmer than just a few years ago.
Neptune's moon, Triton, studied in 1989 after the unmanned Voyageur probe flew past, seems to have heated up significantly since then. Parts of its frozen nitrogen surface have begun melting and turning to gas, making Triton's atmosphere denser.
Even Pluto has warmed slightly in recent years, if you can call -230C instead of -233C "warmer."
And I swear, I haven't left my SUV idling on any of those planets or moons. Honest, I haven't.
Is there something all these heavenly bodies have in common? Some one thing they all share that could be causing them to warm in unison?
Hmmm, is there some giant, self-luminous ball of burning gas with a mass more than 300,000 times that of Earth and a core temperature of more than 20-million degrees Celsius, that for the past century or more has been unusually active and powerful? Is there something like that around which they all revolve that could be causing this multi-globe warming? Naw!
They must all have congested commuter highways, coal-fired power plants and oilsands developments that are releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into their atmospheres, too.
A decade ago, when global warming and Kyoto was just beginning to capture public attention, I published a quiz elsewhere that bears repeating in our current hyper-charged environmental debate: Quick, which is usually warmer, day or night?
And what is typically the warmest part of the day? The warmest time of year?
Finally, which are generally warmer: cloudy or cloudless days?
If you answered day, afternoon, summer and cloudless you may be well on your way to understanding what is causing global warming.
For the past century and a half, Earth has been warming. Coincidentally (or perhaps not so coincidentally), during that same period, our sun has been brightening, becoming more active, sending out more radiation.
Habibullah Abdussamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a host of the rest of the world's leading solar scientists are all convinced that the warming of recent years is not unusual and that nearly all the warming in the past 150 years can be attributed to the sun.
Solar scientists from Iowa to Siberia have overlaid the last several warm periods on our planet with known variations in our sun's activity and found, according to Mr. Solanki, "a near-perfect match."
Mr. Abdussamatov concedes manmade gasses may have made "a small contribution to the warming in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance."
Mr. Soon showed as long ago as the mid-1990s that the depth of the Little Ice Age -- the coldest period in the northern hemisphere in the past 1,500 years -- corresponded perfectly with a solar event known as the Maunder Minimum. For nearly seven decades there was virtually no sunspot activity.
Our sun was particular quiet. And for those 60 to 70 years, the northern half of our globe, at least, was in a deep freeze.
Is it so hard to believe then that the sun could be causing our current warming, too?
At the very least, the fact that so many prominent scientists have legitimate, logical objections to the current global warming orthodoxy means there is no "consensus" among scientists about the cause.
Here's a prediction: The sun's current active phase is expected to wane in 20 to 40 years, at which time the planet will begin cooling. Since that is when most of the greenhouse emission reductions proposed by the UN and others are slated to come into full effect, the "greens" will see that cooling and claim, "See, we warned you and made you take action, and look, we saved the planet."
Of course, they will have had nothing to do with it.
© National Post 2007
Stoney:Looks like you and a few classmates have this all figured out. hahahahaha! Talk about a brain-wash job. I included reader comments at the end, as it appears there are more and more folks waking up to the swindle you and your friends have bought hook, line and sinker, sucker.....
http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=113600 (http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=113600)
Pending doom: Global warming crisis
A group of fourth-graders in Portland creates a list of priorities to stop global warming.
June 14, 2007
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Hallie Repeta, Miranda Richman, Carole Grant, Jacob Austin and Gabrielle Wagabaza are fourth-grade students in Randy Bigelman's class at Portland's East End Community School.
Our school study of global warming started with lots of
questions. What is global warming? What is happening now?
What might happen in the future? What can each of us do to
help? Why should we care? What will the future look like?
A small group of students at our school has been researching
and studying the effects of global warming. The evidence and
data we collected is so overwhelming that we have decided to
write about this issue.
We want everyone to help curb Global warming. It truly means
that the Earth is getting warmer. The ocean is warming at such
an alarming rate that the continents are in danger.
Such a warming of the ocean is fuel for more severe hurricanes
such as Katrina. Katrina was only a Category 1 storm when it
crossed Florida. It became a monster storm by feeding off the
extremely warm water in the Gulf of Mexico.
Not just the ocean temperature, but also the overall temperature
on the planet is rising to dangerous levels.
The 10 "hottest" average years on record have occurred within
the last 14 years. We continue to see record carbon dixoide
levels in the atmosphere year after year. Just notice the strange
weather around us this winter and spring and even summer-like
days in March.
The United States is the leading contributor to the global-
warming crisis, producing one-third of the total greenhouse
gases in the world, more than South America, Africa, Asia and
Australia combined.
Please think about what people are doing and what could
happen if they do not stop.
Have we ever wondered what life might be like in 50 to 100
years? We might have imagined big robotic cities and flying cars,
but I bet we didn't imagine huge cities and tall skyscrapers
underwater. Well, that's what life will be if we keep burning fossil
fuels without thought.
Here are some facts that might help people realize the danger
we are facing.
Glaciers are melting at a faster and faster rate and glaciers are a
huge source of the world's drinking water. Greenland and the
Arctic ice shelf are melting faster each year and will disappear in
our lifetime if our fossil fuel usage continues unchecked. That
melting will raise the water level of the world's oceans nearly 40
feet. Basically, Manhattan would be underwater.
Hopefully, people will understand the danger we are facing. Do
Mainers want this to be our future? Although global warming is a
huge pending global disaster, we all have the means to change it
together.
Because the United States contributes one-third of the carbon
dioxide emissions worldwide, here are seven sensible ways to
save our seven beautiful continents:
nChange light bulbs to long lasting fluorescents and save 150
pounds of CO per year in every household.
nDrive less and save 1 pound of CO for every fewer mile.
nSave 2,400 pounds of CO by recycling plastics and paper.
nPlant a tree -- it breathes over a ton of helpful gases per
lifetime.
nTurn off any electrical items (TV, games, cell phones, lights,
etc.) when not in use to save 1,000 pounds of CO.
nBe informed -- go to www.stopglobalwarming.org (http://www.stopglobalwarming.org) or
www.climatecrisis.net (http://www.climatecrisis.net).
nStay informed -- Watch Planet Earth (kids) and An Inconvenient
Truth (families).
Is our future already chosen for us? We are all young students,
ages 9-11, and cannot change the world like adults can. All the
facts we have presented are true, real, and will shape our future
unless decisive action is taken.
We will be in great danger if we don't...
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Reader comments
Bruce of Solon, ME
Jun 15, 2007 4:50 PM
So...
The kids say that "Glaciers are melting at a faster and faster rate and glaciers are a huge source of the world's drinking water."
Did anyone tell these kids that, as recently as 13,000 years ago, the ENTIRE STATE of Maine was covered with glaciers? How do they explain the loss of those glaciers back when humans were living in caves and hunting with clubs?
Martin Russo of Portland, ME
Jun 15, 2007 4:19 PM
What incredible silliness! I can understand a bunch of little kids, hectored and bullied by their adult "science teacher," falling for this stuff, but what is the Portland Press Herald's excuse for printing this nonsense? I am only thankful that my child's name (or school)is not associated with this foolishness. These poor kids!
My youngest comes home from her Portland public school with these junk science factoids all the time. I have to sit her down and explain that political movements that border on the quasi-religious aren't facts or science. Just because a fat, balding hypocrite Loserman says something in a movie doesn't make it true. Global warming may be happening, and being environmentally smart and friendly is a good thing, but GW is not proven to be a man-made event to any significant measurable degree. Many of the same GW alarmists were raving hysterically in the '70's about the oncoming global ice age. And as yet, no GW alarmist has explained why temperatures are rising on Mars.
I guess it is about time I pulled her out of the public schools in order to ensure she gets a real education rather than political indoctrination.
Greta Samwel of Oviedo, FL
Jun 15, 2007 4:05 PM
I'm so glad to know that so many people have nothing better to do that rag on a bunch of fourth graders.
It's as though you are all going, "well thank goodness - instead of actually having to argue with adults about global warming (and ACTUALLy have some facts on our side) we can make fun of little kids and how stupid they are. It MUST be brainwashing by those EVIL liberals."
Get a life people.
Jennifer Phillips of Waterville, ME
Jun 15, 2007 4:00 PM
Ask me why I homeschool my kids...
Better to be blinded by science than faith, imo...
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/fina ... db11f4&p=4 (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=597d0677-2a05-47b4-b34f-b84068db11f4&p=4)
Read the sunspots
The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling
R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.
They call this a consensus?
Dire forecasts aren't new
The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.
Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.
My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.
Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.
My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.
Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.
Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.
In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.
Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.
However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.
Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.
The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.
In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.
Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.
Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."
R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.
I have watched the video and have read the majority of this thread. I found the information presented quite compelling. It is certaintly worthy of more careful consideration. When looking at this sort of stuff we need to consider who benefits from a particular course of action. Is it petro chemical companies ? The scientists in the documentary claim to have been paid a penny. What about the flipside and the carbon offset charges that are coming into play? What about the multi billion pound industry that has come about. What about the bigger bigger picture of who are really running the show, how can this play to an advantage? Someone may have vested interests in stopping development in Africa? Africa has every natural resource there is in rich abundance ...they are kept poor for a reason?
We also need to be able to throw away our current belief and look with unbiased reason. So for many of us here to hear this 'global warming swindle' we will think that as we are hippy leftist enviromentalists ( well i hate labels but i'd prob have stuck myself under that banner once upon a time )...this goes against what we think and we try to protect it ( and our ego/belief structure at the same time ).
I do not believe it is a case of saying that global warming must be happening because all these scientists say it is. One must be ale to look at the data as an individual and make up your own mind! Many scientists follow the bandwagon like anyone else!
I do not dispute we treat our earth badly, but man made global warming via CO2 appears to be based on bad science, the evidence of solar activity seems far more compelling and explains elements of climatic activity that CO2 cannot ( time lag of temp and CO2). And the global warming swindle hides the real pollution of toxic waste and heavy metals that is going on. And the fact that until now we are only just hearing the concerns some scientists have with the man made co2 theory just shows how much of a vested interest there is in it.
I waffle, sorry for the not so structured post
Boosh
Thanks you, boosh, for looking at the data presented above. I appreciate the fact that you have more questions than answers on the topic at hand.
Btw, as far as I can tell, you are the first spf member to read the info posted and come to a similar conclusion as I have. Thanks for making me feel a little less lonely on this one. I won't forget that....
lw
I'm going to have an interesting time with this in september when I return to academia. Studying wildlife conservation this topic surrounds alot of what I'm taught ( indoctrinated ), I will be eager to pick the brains of a few lecturers and see what they have to say on the matter. And may even try and dig up some more info on solar activity in thel ibrary or online journals i have access to.
Booosh
Growing up on the prairie, soil conservation has been a topic of interest for me since my younger days. (Iowa has lost over half our top soil since the state was first settled one hundred and fifty years ago.) Farmers plow the fields in the fall to get a jump on the spring work and end up watching black dirt blow out of the fields, into the ditches, to the creeks and rivers headed toward the mississippi....
Now I read declarations that we'll pass the point of no return on CO2 levels within ten years unless we act immediately! What a farce. This lie has been swallowed hook, line and sinker, while other situations with real danger of messing up the world are allowed to fester. (Nuclear proliferation, for example.) Why is it OK for the U$ to have the bomb and not Iran?
What about toxic waste?
Oh yeah, what about all of the folks without clean water cenny has been crying about?
lw
I realize this is an editorial, but do agreew with most of the points made and questions asked.
http://www.investors.com/editorial/edit ... 6634686203 (http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=270256634686203)
Tempest In A Teapot
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 7/25/2007
Global Warming: A private firm's downgrade of its hurricane forecast raises an obvious question: If scientists can't get near-future projections in a limited area right, how can they predict the climate decades from now?
A reasonable response is: They can't. But the global warming climate of fear did not blow in on the soft breezes of reason, but by the storm winds of emotion.
Forecaster WSI Corp. said Tuesday that the season ending Nov. 30 will bring 14 named storms, six of which will grow into hurricanes, three of them major. WSI's initial forecast was for 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four majors.
Why the change? "Because," said WSI forecaster Todd Crawford, "ocean temperatures have not yet rebounded from the significant drop in late spring."
Could it be that the 2007 hurricane season is turning out to be as overrated as 2006? Remember last year's predictions â€" that we were in for a brutal spell of storms? It had been quiet, they said, and we were due for a series of Katrina-like hurricanes. But as we wrote last November, as the much-dreaded '06 season whimpered to a close, the storm year came in like a lamb and went out the same way.
For years, the Greenshirts have told us that emissions of carbon dioxide resulting from man's addiction to fossil fuel-based energy are turning the planet into a sweltering hothouse. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change has projected a temperature increase of 2 to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit for the 21st century due to the greenhouse effect.
As a result, alarmists say, ice caps will melt, glaciers will thaw and sea levels will rise as much as 20 feet, causing floods and death in low-lying areas. Storms are also predicted to increase in both frequency and intensity.
To prevent this coming Category 5 cataclysm, we're supposed to shell out trillions of dollars and gladly adopt Spartan lifestyles. Instead of trying, as their grandparents did, to see how many bodies they can squeeze into a telephone booth, today's college kids are expected to see how many they can get in a Prius.
Yet the fact remains: The local weatherman can't forecast more than about 10 days out, and neither can the experts tell us how warm, or cool, the planet is going to be in 2100, 2075 or even 2050.
Even short-term predictions have been off. James Hansen, NASA scientist, predicted a 0.45-degree Celsius (0.81-degree Fahrenheit) rise in global temperature from 1988 to 1997. But in reality (a place environmental activists rarely visit) the increase was a mere 0.11-degree Celsius.
We hope no one in Hansen's neighborhood relies on him to tell them when it's going to rain or when they'll need a coat and hat.
Setting aside the hubristic notion that alarmists know what the right temperature is, too many other factors besides the greenhouse effect influence climate for them to declare they know exactly, or even approximately, what's coming. Solar activity, for instance, is among the most powerful, as are the El Nino and La Nina phenomena.
We also question the concept of a "global" temperature. How could such a thing be measured when weather stations dot rather than blanket the Earth? Danish physicist Bjarne Andresen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, made sense earlier this year when he said it's "impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth.
"A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system (and) climate is not governed by a single temperature," he said. "Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. , which make up the climate."
The formula for a climate of fear, though, requires nothing more than a lot of thunder and a bit of heat generated by political activists.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... dd978fb3cd (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=175b568a-802a-23ad-4c69-9bdd978fb3cd)
Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt
July 30, 2007
Latest Scientific Studies Refute Fears of Greenland Melt
Posted By Marc Morano â€"
Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov â€" 9:39 AM ET
Ilulissat, Greenland â€" The July 27-29 2007 U.S. Senate trip to Greenland to investigate fears of a glacier meltdown revealed an Arctic land where current climatic conditions are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, according to many of the latest peer-reviewed scientific findings. Recent research has found that Greenland has been warming since the 1880’s, but since 1955, temperature averages at Greenland stations have been colder than the period between 1881-1955.
A recent study concluded Greenland was as warm or warmer in the 1930’s and 40’s and the rate of warming from 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than the warming from 1995-2005. One 2005 study found Greenland gaining ice in the interior higher elevations and thinning ice at the lower elevations. In addition, the often media promoted fears of Greenland’s ice completely melting and a subsequent catastrophic sea level rise are directly at odds with the latest scientific studies. These studies suggest that the biggest perceived threat to Greenland’s glaciers may be contained in unproven computer models predicting a future catastrophic melt.
As a representative of Environment & Public Works Committee Ranking Member, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), I made the trek to the Arctic Circle with the Senate delegation (LINK) to the land the Vikings once farmed during the Medieval Warm Period.
Senators and their staff viewed majestic giant glaciers and icebergs in the Kangia Ice Fjord and in Disko Bay via helicopter, boat and on foot, during the three day 24 hours of daylight trip which began in the Arctic city of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.
In an informational handout, participants of the Senate trip to Greenland were shown a depiction of coastal flooding that illustrated what would happen if most of the ice on Greenland was to melt and sea levels rose nearly 20 feet. The handout on Greenland was written by UN scientist Dr. Richard B. Alley, who is also a professor of Geosciences at Penn State University and traveled with the Senate delegation. Dr. Alley noted that the illustration of coastal flooding was not a forecast or a prediction, but merely an illustration of what could happen.
Dr. Alley’s handout stated in part, “We don’t think Greenland could melt completely in less than many centuries, but it might get warm enough this century to start complete melting.â€
During the trip, a Danish scientist and Danish government officials appealed to the U.S. government to act now to address global warming and used the prospect of Greenland melt fears as a wake up call for such action. But the very latest research reveals massive Greenland melt fears are not sustainable. According to a survey of some of the latest peer-reviewed scientific reports, current Greenland temperatures are neither alarming nor linked to a rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions.
Sampling of Recent Scientific Studies:
1) A 2006 study by Danish researchers from Aarhus University found that “Greenland’s glaciers have been shrinking for the past century, suggesting that the ice melt is not a recent phenomenon caused by global warming.†(LINK) Glaciologist Jacob Clement Yde explained that the study was “the most comprehensive ever conducted on the movements of Greenland’s glaciers, according to an August 21, 2006 article in Agence France-Presse. “Seventy percent of the glaciers have been shrinking regularly since the end of the 1880’s,†Yde explained. [EPW Blog note: 80% of man-made CO2 emissions occurred after 1940. (LINK) ] Niels Tvis Knudsen of Aarhus University co-authored the paper.
2) A 2006 study by a team of scientists led by Petr Chylek of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences found the rate of warming in 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995-2005, suggesting carbon dioxide ‘could not be the cause’ of warming. (LINK)
“We find that the current Greenland warming is not unprecedented in recent Greenland history. Temperature increases in the two warming periods (1920-1930 and 1995-2005) are of similar magnitude, however the rate of warming in 1920-1930 was about 50% higher than that in 1995-2005,†the abstract of the study read.
The peer-reviewed study, which was published in the June 13, 2006 Geophysical Research Letters, found that after a warm 2003 on the southeastern coast of Greenland, “the years 2004 and 2005 were closer to normal being well below temperatures reached in the 1930’s and 1940’s.†The study further continued, “Almost all post-1955 temperature averages at Greenland stations are lower (colder climate) than the (1881-1955) temperature average.â€
In addition, the Chylek led study explained, “Although there has been a considerable temperature increase during the last decade (1995 to 2005) a similar increase and at a faster rate occurred during the early part of the 20th century (1920 to 1930) when carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases could not be a cause. The Greenland warming of 1920-1930 demonstrates that a high concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is not a necessary condition for a period of warming to arise. The observed 1995-2005 temperature increase seems to be within natural variability of Greenland climate. A general increase in solar activity [Scafetta and West, 2006] since 1990’s can be a contributing factor as well as the sea surface temperature changes of tropical ocean [Hoerling et al., 2001].â€
“To summarize, we find no direct evidence to support the claims that the Greenland ice sheet is melting due to increased temperature caused by increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.†The co-authors of the study were M.K. Dubey of Los Alamos National Laboratory and G. Lesins, Dalhousie University in Canada.
3) An October 2005 study in the journal Science found Greenland’s higher elevation interior ice sheet growing while lower elevations ice is thinning. According to a November 8, 2005 article in European Research, “An international team of climatologists and oceanographers, led by the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center (NERSC) in Norway, estimates that Greenland’s interior ice sheet has grown, on average, 6cm per year in areas above 1 500m between 1992 and 2003.†Lead author, Ola M. Johannessen of NERSC “says the sheet growth is due to increased snowfall brought about by variability in regional atmospheric circulation, or the so-called North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO),†according to the article. (LINK) & (LINK to Journal Science)
4) A February 8, 2007 peer-reviewed paper published in Science found two of Greenland’s largest glaciers have “suddenly slowed, bringing the rate of melting last year down to near the previous rate,†according to the New York Times blog (2-8-07). (LINK) The report found that the Kangerdlugssuaq glacier’s “average thinning over the glacier during the summer of 2006 declined to near zero, with some apparent thickening in areas on the main trunk.†(LINK) University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory researcher Ian Howat, the lead author of the report, explained “Greenland was about as warm or warmer in the 1930’s and 40’s, and many of the glaciers were smaller than they are now.†“However, it does suggest that large variations in ice sheet dynamics can occur from natural climate variability,†Howat, also a researcher with the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, explained. “Special care must be taken in how these and other mass-loss estimates are evaluated, particularly when extrapolating into the future because short-term spikes could yield erroneous long term trends,†Howat cautioned.
5) A July 6, 2007 study published in the journal Science about Greenland by an international team of scientists found DNA “evidence that suggests the frozen shield covering the immense island survived the Earth’s last period of global warming,†according to a Boston Globe article. (6-6-07) (LINK) According to the article, the study indicates “Greenland’s ice may be less susceptible to the massive meltdown predicted by computer models of climate change, the main author (Eske Willerslev, professor of evolutionary biology at University of Copenhagen) said in an interview. “This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming. They may withstand rising temperatures,†Willerslev said. The article explained, “The discovery of organic matter in ice dating from half â€"a-million years ago offers evidence that the Greenland ice sheet remained frozen even during the Earth’s last ‘interglacial period’ â€" some 120,000 years ago â€" when average temperatures were 9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they are now.†Willerslev addressed scary computer model predictions of a massive Greenland melt. “[The study] suggests a problem with [computer] models†that predict melting ice from Greenland could drown cities and destroy civilizations, Willerslev said. The study found “Greenland really was green, before Ice Age glaciers enshrouded vast swaths of the Northern Hemisphere…somewhere between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago,†according to the article.
6) Climatologist Dr. Patrick Michaels of University of Virginia and the Virginia State climatologist wrote the scenario promoted by former Vice President Al Gore and others showing Greenland’s ice melting and raising sea levels by 20 feet is not supported anywhere in scientific literature, not even by the United Nations. “Where is the support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)] Policymakers Summary from the United Nations. Under the [IPCC’s] medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent,†Michaels wrote in a February 23, 2007 article. (LINK) “According to satellite data published in [the journal] Science in November 2005,†Michaels wrote, “Greenland was shedding ice at 0.4 percent per century.†“Nowhere in the traditionally [peer-reviewed] refereed scientific literature do we find any support for Gore’s [Greenland melt] hypothesis,†Michaels concluded.
7) Geologist Morten Hald, an Arctic expert at of the University of Tromso in Norway has also questioned the reliability of computer models predicting a melting Arctic. "The main problem is that these models are often based on relatively new climate data. The thermometer has only been in existence for 150 years and information on temperature which is 150 years old does not capture the large natural changes,†Hald, who is participating with a Norwegian national team in Arctic climate research, said in a May 18, 2007 article. (LINK) The article continued, “Professor Hald believes the models which are utilized to make prognoses about the future climate changes consider paleoclimate only to a minor degree.†“Studies of warm periods in the past, like during the Stone Ages can provide valuable knowledge to understand and tackle the warmer climate in the future,†Hald explained.
8) Polar expert Ivan Frolov, the head of Russia’s Science and Research Institute of Arctic and Antarctic Regions, said atmospheric temperature would have to much higher to make continental glaciers melt. “Many hundred years or 20-30 degree temperature rise would have made glaciers melt,†Frolov said in a December 14, 2006 Russian news article. (LINK) Frolov noted that currently Greenland’s and Antarctic glaciers have the tendency to grow. The article explained, “Frolov says cooling and warming periods are common for our planet â€" temperature fluctuations amounted to 10-12 degrees. However, such fluctuations haven’t caused glaciers to melt. Thus, we shouldn’t be afraid they melt today.â€
9) Physicist Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, the former director of both University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute and International Arctic Research Center who has twice been named "1000 Most Cited Scientists" told a Congressional hearing in 2006 that highly publicized climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than “science fiction.†"All the papers since (the advent of satellites) show warming. That's what I call 'instant climatology.' I'm trying to tell young scientists, 'You can't study climatology unless you look at a much longer time period.'†(LINK)
10) In addition, current climate fears tends to ignore the fact that the Vikings arrived in Greenland around 1000 A.D. and found it to be habitable settlement that they farmed for hundreds of years. A 2003 Harvard University study found (LINK) the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period from about 800 to 1300 A.D. without modern SUV’s or man-made CO2 emissions. The Vikings abandoned Greenland when the Little Ice Age took hold.
11) Another problem for predictions of catastrophic sea level rise due to polar ice melt is Antarctica is not cooperating with the man-made catastrophic global warming models. “A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models,†reads the February 15, 2007 press release announcing the findings of David Bromwich, professor of professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. (See: Antarctic temperatures disagree with climate model predictions LINK)
"It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now,†Bromwich explained. The release explains that Bromwich’s research team found “no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.â€
Top UN Scientist Explains Why Climate Models Predictions Are Failing
Recently, a top UN scientist publicly conceded that climate computer model predictions are not so reliable after all. Dr. Jim Renwick, a lead author of the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, admitted to the New Zealand Herald in June 2007, “Half of the variability in the climate system is not predictable, so we don't expect to do terrifically well." (LINK)
A leading scientific skeptic of global warming fears, Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, former CEO of the Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, took the critique of climate models that predict future doom a step further. Tennekes wrote on February 28, 2007, "I am of the opinion that most scientists engaged in the design, development, and tuning of climate modes are in fact software engineers. They are unlicensed, hence unqualified to sell their products to society." (LINK)
Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania noted “for most of Earth’s history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler,†Giegengack said according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine. (LINK) The article continued, “[Giegengack] says carbon dioxide doesn’t control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct linear way.â€
Climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball explained that one of the reasons climate models fail is because they overestimate the warming effect of CO2 in the atmosphere. Ball described how CO2 stabilizes in the atmosphere and its warming impact diminishes. “Even if CO2 concentration doubles or triples, the effect on temperature would be minimal. The relationship between temperature and CO2 is like painting a window black to block sunlight. The first coat blocks most of the light. Second and third coats reduce very little more. Current CO2 levels are like the first coat of black paint,†Ball explained in a June 6, 2007 article in Canada Free Press. (LINK)
New data is revealing what may perhaps be the ultimate inconvenient truth for climate doomsayers:
Global warming stopped in 1998.
Dr. Nigel Calder, co-author with physicist Henrik Svensmark of the 2007 book “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory on Climate Change,†explained in July 2007: (LINK)
“In reality, global temperatures have stopped rising. Data for both the surface and the lower air show no warming since 1999. That makes no sense by the hypothesis of global warming driven mainly by CO2, because the amount of CO2 in the air has gone on increasing. But the fact that the Sun is beginning to neglect its climatic duty â€" of battling away the cosmic rays that come from ‘the chilling stars’ â€" fits beautifully with this apparent end of global warming.â€
Perhaps the conversion of many former scientists from believers in man-made global warming to skeptics (LINK) and the new peer-reviewed research is why so many proponents of a climatic doom have resorted to threats and intimidation in attempting to silence skeptics. (See: EPA to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy’ Career of Climate Skeptic - LINK )
One final note: To many residents of Greenland, a little warming may not be that bad. A June 7, 2007 Washington Post article detailed how Greenland’s residents were “cheering’ on warming. "I can keep the sheep out two weeks longer to feed in hills in the autumn. And I can grow more hay. The sheep get fatter," said one resident. (LINK)
# # #
EPW Inhofe Press Blog Note: The above sampling of scientific studies and scientists are a sneak peak at a blockbuster U.S. Senate report set to be released in the Fall 2007 that will feature hundreds of scientists (many current and former UN scientists) who have spoken out recently against Gore, the UN, and the media driven climate “consensus.†Please keep checking this blog for updates.
Here we go....
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/246027 (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/246027)
Red faces at NASA over climate-change blunder
Agency roasted after Toronto blogger spots `hot years' data fumble
Aug 14, 2007 04:30 AM
DANIEL DALE
STAFF REPORTER
In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all â€" until someone checked the math.
After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.
Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. â€" not 1998.
More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. "temperature anomalies" for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.
NASA officials have dismissed the changes as trivial. Even the Canadian who spotted the original flaw says the revisions are "not necessarily material to climate policy."
But the revisions have been seized on by conservative Americans, including firebrand radio host Rush Limbaugh, as evidence that climate change science is unsound.
Said Limbaugh last Thursday: "What do we have here? We have proof of man-made global warming. The man-made global warming is inside NASA ... is in the scientific community with false data."
However Stephen McIntyre, who set off the uproar, described his finding as a "a micro-change. But it was kind of fun."
A former mining executive who runs the blog ClimateAudit.org, McIntyre, 59, earned attention in 2003 when he put out data challenging the so-called "hockey stick" graph depicting a spike in global temperatures.
This time, he sifted NASA's use of temperature anomalies, which measure how much warmer or colder a place is at a given time compared with its 30-year average.
Puzzled by a bizarre "jump" in the U.S. anomalies from 1999 to 2000, McIntyre discovered the data after 1999 wasn't being fractionally adjusted to allow for the times of day that readings were taken or the locations of the monitoring stations.
McIntyre emailed his finding to NASA's Goddard Institute, triggering the data review.
"They moved pretty fast on this," McIntyre said. "There must have been some long faces."
Just came across this ...
D.C. resident John Lockwood was conducting research at the Library of Congress and came across an intriguing Page 2 headline in the Nov. 2, 1922 edition of The Washington Post: "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt."
The 1922 article, obtained by Inside the Beltway, goes on to mention "great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones," and "at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared."
"This was one of several such articles I have found at the Library of Congress for the 1920s and 1930s," says Mr. Lockwood. "I had read of the just-released NASA estimates, that four of the 10 hottest years in the U.S. were actually in the 1930s, with 1934 the hottest of all."
Reacting yesterday to word that certain European governments and officials are suddenly trying to abandon their costly "global warming" policies, Royal Astronomical Society fellow Benny Peiser, of the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University in Great Britain, recalls the teachings of Marcus Aurelius: "The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
Now for the obvious question.....
If 1934 was actually the hottest year on record (for short time these things have been recorded here in the U$,) what was driving those temp increases experienced in the 30's? I don't believe there was enough man-made CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere at that time to cause the temp spike that apparently peaked in 1934.
Add the fact that from 1934 to the present the amount of CO2 pumped into the air by man has steadily increased, while global temps steadily fell/leveled off until maybe the early 1970's(?) before gradually increasing to current levels.
Here's another question...
If CO2 is responsible for blocking heat, why have temps on the surface of the planet been increasing at a faster rate than that directly under the layer of CO2? IF trapped heat is driving the climate change, shouldn't we expect to see temps rise in that level of the atmosphere first?
lw
http://www.dailytech.com/Survey+Less+Th ... le8641.htm (http://www.dailytech.com/Survey+Less+Than+Half+of+all+Published+Scientists+Endorse+Global+Warming+Theory/article8641.htm)
Blog: ScienceSurvey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory
Michael Asher (Blog) - August 29, 2007 11:07 AM
IPCC co-chairs for Netherlands and Sierra Leone debate changes to the Report Summary.
Comprehensive survey of published climate research reveals changing viewpoints
In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.
Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.
Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."
The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.
These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.
Schulte's survey contradicts the United Nation IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (2007), which gave a figure of "90% likely" man was having an impact on world temperatures. But does the IPCC represent a consensus view of world scientists? Despite media claims of "thousands of scientists" involved in the report, the actual text is written by a much smaller number of "lead authors." The introductory "Summary for Policymakers" -- the only portion usually quoted in the media -- is written not by scientists at all, but by politicians, and approved, word-by-word, by political representatives from member nations. By IPCC policy, the individual report chapters -- the only text actually written by scientists -- are edited to "ensure compliance" with the summary, which is typically published months before the actual report itself.
By contrast, the ISI Web of Science database covers 8,700 journals and publications, including every leading scientific journal in the world.
Even if its all BS...it will scare ppl into inproving the enviroment...so shut up lol...
It's like your saying "Guess what? Global warming is BULLSHIT! Let's cut down some trees and drill for more oil!"
LOL Cut down trees and use more oil, eh? You think that's what I'm saying?
I think we need to move away from our dependancy on oil. Cars are major pollutors of the environment.
As for cutting more trees... I believe the old-growth forests should be preserved. However, the sustainable harvesting of trees is quite possible and not a bad thing, imo. New forests suck up much more CO2 than mature stands of trees. But I'm sure you already knew that.....
Welcome to spr, btw.
lw
QuoteEven if its all BS...it will scare ppl into inproving the enviroment...so shut up lol...
That sort of comment is not intelligent and is darn right offensive. I'd ask you to apologise for telling another member to 'shut up'. As it happens LW, regardless of whetehr he is right or wrong is raising an important issue.
Booosh
one of my biggest problems with the whole flavour of the recent boom in all things (superficially) green is the 'fear-factor'!
there are much better ways to make a change than to scare people into it, like educating them & appealing to their common sense...
regardless of the science behind all this, regardless of whether or not there is even such a thing as 'global warming' - we humans should want to live more efficiently & harmoniously with the earth simply for the sake of having a good relationship with our living home...
that's my position, and that's the reason i haven't bothered to figure out who's right about all this (or read the whole of this thread!), tho i respect the straightening out of shoddy science, especially when it maybe distracting from the real issues.
Well said there Psilly, I could not agree more.
I did however dig up what the wiki had to say on this documentary, it does indeed critique it's claims and it seems the director has a knack for making controversial programs. That is not to say that some of it's content does not have value.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_ ... ng_Swindle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warming_Swindle)
Boooshpig
Thanks, fellas.
I have no idea what the "truth" on this one will shake out to be. But I find it interesting how some wish to stifle dialogue on the issue.
On the other hand, the fear factor being invoked really pisses me off.
I've been a conservation minded person since childhood. And I've always considered earth our mother. But for every "disaster" global warming facilitates, I'm willing to guess that there would be a positive as well. For instance, I'm under the impression that there are signs and records of England once being a country heavy into grape production the last time when when that area was warmer than today.
But all we hear is the doom and gloom for which we are being held directly responsible.
bush: Thanks for that last link.
lw
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show ... 6495.shtml (http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,176495.shtml)
Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."
The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.
"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.
The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.
Singer emphasized, "Humans have known since the invention of the telescope that the earth's climate variations were linked to the sunspot cycle, but we had not understood how. Recent experiments have demonstrated that more or fewer cosmic rays hitting the earth create more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds that deflect solar heat back into space-amplifying small variations in the intensity of the sun.
Avery and Singer noted that there are hundreds of additional peer-reviewed studies that have found cycle evidence, and that they will publish additional researchers' names and studies. They also noted that their book was funded by Wallace O. Sellers, a Hudson board member, without any corporate contributions.
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years is available from Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Globa ... 0742551172 (http://www.amazon.com/Unstoppable-Global-Warming-Every-Years/dp/0742551172) /ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-6773465-0779318?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189603742&sr=1-1
For more information, please contact Dennis Avery, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and co-author of Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, at 540-337-6354: Email:
cgfi@hughes.netHudson Institute
Here is an example where the "experts" have apparently failed in their prediction of what global warming would do to SA rain forests. While doom and gloom was expected due to a decrease in precipitation, the region actually thrived and grew during the recent time of (relative) drought.
If the article below is true, then I'm guessing the rain forests in question have learned to deal with the enormous amounts of precipitation but actually prefer more sun and less moisture.
This is an example of the skewed opinions and estimations that have been fed into the computer models predicting castrophy due to global warming, imo.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 500311.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2500311.ece)
From The Times
September 21, 2007
Climate change may help rainforests
Ten predictions about climate change that have come true | An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change
Climate change may lead to lush growth rather than catastrophic tree loss in the Amazonian forests, researchers from the US and Brazil have found. A study, in the journal Science, found that reduced rainfall had led to greener forests, possibly because sunlight levels are higher when there are fewer rainclouds.
But scientists cautioned that while the finding raises hopes for the survival of the forests, there are still serious threats. Climate models have suggested that the forests will suffer as the region becomes drier and will release huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Climate models have suggested in the past that the Amazon will suffer enormous die-backs as the region becomes drier and will release huge quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Deforestation is calculated to be one of the main contributors to the rising carbon dioxide levels that are widely held by the scientific community to be causing global warming. The loss of the Amazon would cause enormous quantities of carbon dioxide stored in the vegetation to be released back into the atmosphere, intensifying the warming effect.
Researchers identified the greener regions of the Amazon after analysing satelite images and comparing them to rainfall records. The 2005 drought provided them with “a unique opportunity to compare actual forest drought response to expectationâ€.
They said: “Large-scale numerical models that simulate the interactions between changing global climate and terrestrial vegetation predict substantial carbon loss from tropical ecosystems including the drought-induced collapse of the Amazon forest and conversion to savanna.
“If drought were to have the expected negative effect on canopy photosynthesis, it should have been especially observable during this period.
“The observations of intact forest canopy ‘greenness’ in the drought region, however, are dominated by a sgnificant increase, not a decline.â€
Growth spurts would be “inconsistent with expectationâ€, they reported in the journal Science, and concluded the reduced rainfall was more than compensated for by extra sunlight.
“These observations suggest that intact Amazon forests may be more resilient than many ecosystem models assume, at least in response to short-term climatic anomolies,†they added.
Further studies will be needed to assess the long-term impacts of changing weather patterns on the Amazon and other forest regions from factors including strong el Nino events and long-term climate change.
Deforestation from logging, legal and illegal, and fires were cited as other threats to the condition of the Amazon forests, especially as the areas pinponted as being in the steepest decline were those that were “heavily impacted by human activitesâ€.
The paper 'Amazon Forests Green-Up During 2005 Drought' was written by Scott R. Saleska, Kamel Didan, Alfredo R. Huete and Humberto R. da Rocha.
Have your say
Let's face it, there is no way to win in the Farcical Global Warming debate. Who in the blazes programs their computer climate models,,,,,, The endangered Apes of Africa. Just a reminder, these "experts" are the70's 80's Newsweek New Ice Age predictors. As I have said before in these columns,,,follow the money trails. Have not the good souls in the UK not rumbled left-wing con job ? Should there not be a Public Trial of these "scientist" to try and recover the countless millions of taxpayer funds spent on this farce.
Robert Granville Lee, Bloomfield hills,, Michigan, USA
The AGW hype is clearly beginning to erode as time and faccts emerge.
AGW still has this amazing ability to claim all outcomes are due to AGW, no matter how disparate, buteven that is beginning to collapse.
I look forward tot he reviews of the rise and fall of AGW hysteria in a few years.
hunter, USA, USA
This is terrible! We are all going to die! Oh, wait, we were all going to die anyway. I need a celebrity spokesmodel to sort this out for me and tell me what to think. Quick! get Paris Hilton on the phone. She'll know what to do.
Rafer Hoxworth, Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii
Important issue this. I also watched 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' and was mostly convinced that the earth is being heated up by the big shiny hot thing in the sky. Human contribution to the warming is rather small in comparison but our contribution to pollution is out of control.
Right on, Cassie.
I agree that pollution caused by humans needs to be curbed. But I've thought that for most of my life.
I remember the first time I flew into that brown smudge of LA. From that point on, I was barely comfortable with the thought of visiting there, let alone living in and breathing that foul air day in and out.
Our dependence on oil is insane. But two wrongs still don't make a right, imo.
lw
http://www.investors.com/editorial/edit ... 7681833290 (http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=275267681833290)
The 'Old' Consensus?
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 9/21/2007
Climate Change: Did NASA scientist James Hansen, the global warming alarmist in chief, once believe we were headed for . . . an ice age? An old Washington Post story indicates he did.
On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.
The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.
Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.
So what about those greenhouse gases that man pumps into the skies? Weren't they worried about them causing a greenhouse effect that would heat the planet, as Hansen, Al Gore and a host of others so fervently believe today?
"They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere," the Post said in the story, which was spotted last week by Washington resident John Lockwood, who was doing research at the Library of Congress and alerted the Washington Times to his finding.
Hansen has some explaining to do. The public deserves to know how he was converted from an apparent believer in a coming ice age who had no worries about greenhouse gas emissions to a global warming fear monger.
This is a man, as Lockwood noted in his message to the Times' John McCaslin, who has called those skeptical of his global warming theory "court jesters." We wonder: What choice words did he have for those who were skeptical of the ice age theory in 1971?
People can change their positions based on new information or by taking a closer or more open-minded look at what is already known. There's nothing wrong with a reversal or modification of views as long as it is arrived at honestly.
But what about political hypocrisy? It's clear that Hansen is as much a political animal as he is a scientist. Did he switch from one approaching cataclysm to another because he thought it would be easier to sell to the public? Was it a career advancement move or an honest change of heart on science, based on empirical evidence?
If Hansen wants to change positions again, the time is now. With NASA having recently revised historical temperature data that Hansen himself compiled, the door has been opened for him to embrace the ice age projections of the early 1970s.
Could be he's feeling a little chill in the air again.
NEWS FLASH!
Pollution causes global warming. CO2, methane, and other gases have been shown to trap and absorb the suns rays. This causes heating. Humans produce pollution, pollution contributes to GW, therefore, human activity contributes to GW.
Totally agree ... I've been a greenie since I left the brownies. Still though, that video convinced me that global warming is majorly out of our control due to the current sun-spot cycle.
News Flash: I believe man's contribution to global warming to be negligible. However, that theory seems to run up against some folks green-religion.
lw
quote from below: .... during the three-day hearing, the court heard that the critically-acclaimed film contains a number of inaccuracies, exaggerations and statements about global warming for which there is currently insufficient scientific evidence.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1811 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=485336&in_page_id=1811)
Schools must warn of Gore climate film bias
Last updated at 17:36pm on 3rd October 2007
Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth has been called unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.
Schools will have to issue a warning before they show pupils Al Gore's controversial film about global warming, a judge indicated yesterday.
The move follows a High Court action by a father who accused the Government of 'brainwashing' children with propaganda by showing it in the classroom.
Stewart Dimmock said the former U.S. Vice-President's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is unfit for schools because it is politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.
He wants the video banned after it was distributed with four other short films to 3,500 schools in February.
Mr Justice Burton is due to deliver a ruling on the case next week, but yesterday he said he would be saying that Gore's Oscar-winning film does promote 'partisan political views'.
This means that teachers will have to warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film.
He said: 'The result is I will be declaring that, with the guidance as now amended, it will not be unlawful for the film to be shown.'
The outcome marks a partial victory for Mr Dimmock, who had accused the 'New Labour Thought Police' of indoctrinating youngsters by handing out thousands of Climate Change Packs to schools.
Mr Dimmock, a lorry driver from Dover with children aged 11 and 14, said at the outset of the hearing: 'I wish my children to have the best education possible, free from bias and political spin, and Mr Gore's film falls far short of the standard required.'
His solicitor John Day, said yesterday that the Government had been forced to make 'a U-turn', but said it did not go far enough.
He said 'no amount of turgid guidance' could change the fact that the film is unfit for consumption in the classroom.
The case arises from a decision in February by the then Education Secretary Alan Johnson that DVDs of the film would be sent to all secondary schools in England, along with a multimedia CD produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs containing two short films about climate change and an animation about the carbon cycle.
David Miliband, who was Environment-Secretary when the school packs were announced, said at the time: 'The debate over the science of climate change is well and truly over.'
But during the three-day hearing, the court heard that the critically-acclaimed film contains a number of inaccuracies, exaggerations and statements about global warming for which there is currently insufficient scientific evidence.
The Climate Change Resource Pack has now been sent to more than 3,500 schools and is aimed at key stage 3 pupils - those aged 11 to
Children's Minister Kevin Brennan said last night: 'The judge's decision is clear that schools can continue to use An Inconvenient Truth as part of their teaching on climate change in accordance with the amended guidance, which will be available online today.
'We have updated the accompanying guidance, as requested by the judge to make it clearer for teachers as to the stated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change position on a number of scientific points raised in the film.'
quote from below: The Times has warned of four separate climate changes since 1895.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/special ... xecsum.asp (http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice_execsum.asp)
Fire and Ice
Journalists have warned of climate change for 100 years, but can’t decide weather we face an ice age or warming
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Thanks to the release of Al Gore’s latest effort on global warming â€" this time in book and movie form â€" climate change is the hot topic in press rooms around the globe. It isn’t the first time.
The media have warned about impending climate doom four different times in the last 100 years. Only they can’t decide if mankind will die from warming or cooling.
As the noise from the controversy has increased, it has drowned out any debate. Journalists have taken advocacy positions, often ignoring climate change skeptics entirely. One CBS reporter even compared skeptics of manmade global warming to Holocaust deniers.
The Society of Environmental Journalists Spring 2006 SEJournal included a now-common media position, arguing against balance. But that sense of certainty ignores the industry’s history of hyping climate change â€" from cooling to warming, back to cooling and warming once again.
The Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute (formerly the Free Market Project) conducted an extensive analysis of print media’s climate change coverage back to the late 1800s.
It found that many publications now claiming the world is on the brink of a global warming disaster said the same about an impending ice age â€" just 30 years ago. Several major ones, including The New York Times, Time magazine and Newsweek, have reported on three or even four different climate shifts since 1895.
In addition, BMI found:
“Global Cooling†Was Just as Realistic: Several publications warned in the 1970s that global cooling posed a major threat to the food supply. Now, remarkably, global warming is also considered a threat to the very same food supply.
Glaciers Are Growing or Shrinking: The media continue to point to glaciers as a sign of climate change, but they have used them as examples of both cooling and warming.
Global Warming History Ignored: The media treat global warming like it’s a new idea. In fact, British amateur meteorologist G. S. Callendar argued that mankind was responsible for heating up the planet with carbon dioxide emissions â€" in 1938. That was decades before scientists and journalists alerted the public about the threat of a new ice age.
New York Times the Worst: Longtime readers of the Times could easily recall the paper claiming “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable,†along with its strong support of current global warming predictions. Older readers might well recall two other claims of a climate shift back to the 1800s â€" one an ice age and the other warming again. The Times has warned of four separate climate changes since 1895.
quote from below... "The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said.
He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.
"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/ ... 38792.html (http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html)
Gore gets a cold shoulder
Steve Lytte
October 14, 2007
ONE of the world's foremost meteorologists has called the theory that helped Al Gore share the Nobel Peace Prize "ridiculous" and the product of "people who don't understand how the atmosphere works".
Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, told a packed lecture hall at the University of North Carolina that humans were not responsible for the warming of the earth.
His comments came on the same day that the Nobel committee honoured Mr Gore for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming.
"We're brainwashing our children," said Dr Gray, 78, a long-time professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie [An Inconvenient Truth] and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."
At his first appearance since the award was announced in Oslo, Mr Gore said: "We have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing."
Mr Gore shared the Nobel prize with the United Nations climate panel for their work in helping to galvanise international action against global warming.
But Dr Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - was responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place.
However, he said, that same cycle meant a period of cooling would begin soon and last for several years.
"We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Dr Gray said.
During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students and a host of professional meteorologists, Dr Gray also said those who had linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years were in error.
He cited statistics showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900 to 1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957 to 2006 when the earth warmed.
"The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Dr Gray said.
He said his beliefs had made him an outsider in popular science.
"It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."
Still flogging your dead horse, lw? Gore just got a Nobel prize for his work. Don't go nuts on us now.
I found this one quite interesting.
quote from below for the ADD inclined: I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.
http://media.newsbusters.org/stories/we ... am-history (http://media.newsbusters.org/stories/weather-channel-founder-global-warming-greatest-scam-history.html?q=blogs/noel-sheppard/2007/11/07/weather-channel-founder-global-warming-greatest-scam-history)
By Noel Sheppard | November 7, 2007 - 17:58 ET
If the founder of The Weather Channel spoke out strongly against the manmade global warming myth, might media members notice?
We're going to find out the answer to that question soon, for John Coleman wrote an article published at ICECAP Wednesday that should certainly garner attention from press members -- assuming journalism hasn't been completely replaced by propagandist activism, that is.
Coleman marvelously began (emphasis added, h/t NB reader coffee250):
It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.
Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens. Only one reporter at ABC has been allowed to counter the Global Warming frenzy with one 15 minutes documentary segment.
[...]
I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.
In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious.
Let's hope so, John; let's hope so.
Related articles:
Harvard Paper Calls Al Gore a Hypocrite
Renowned Environmentalist Calls Biofuels‘Crime Against Humanity’
John Stossel: ‘Don’t Look to Government to Cool Down the Planet’
UN Climate Panel to Discuss Global Warming at Tropical Resort
Global Warming Tutorial Media Should be Required to Watch
Vote for Stephen McIntyre's Climate Audit as Best Science Blog
â€"Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... ook125.xml (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/25/nbook125.xml)
Christopher Booker: Planet-saving madness
We are set on a course of 'planet saving' madness
The scare over global warming, and our politicians' response to it, is becoming ever more bizarre. On the one hand we have the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coming up with yet another of its notoriously politicised reports, hyping up the scare by claiming that world surface temperatures have been higher in 11 of the past 12 years (1995-2006) than ever previously recorded.
This carefully ignores the latest US satellite figures showing temperatures having fallen since 1998, declining in 2007 to a 1983 level - not to mention the newly revised figures for US surface temperatures showing that the 1930s had four of the 10 warmest years of the past century, with the hottest year of all being not 1998, as was previously claimed, but 1934.
On the other hand, we had Gordon Brown last week, in his "first major speech on climate change", airily committing his own and future governments to achieving a 60 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 - which is rather like prime minister Salisbury at the end of Queen Victoria's reign trying to commit Winston Churchill's government to achieving some wholly impossible goal in the middle of the Second World War.
Mr Brown's only concrete proposal for reaching this absurd target seems to be his plan to ban plastic bags, whatever they have to do with global warming (while his government also plans a near-doubling of flights out of Heathrow).
But of course he is no longer his own master in such fantasy exercises. Few people have yet really taken on board the mind-blowing scale of all the "planet-saving" measures to which we are now committed by the European Union.
By 2020 we will have to generate 20 per cent of our electricity from "renewables". At present the figure is four per cent (most of it generated by hydro-electric schemes and methane gas from landfill).
As Whitehall officials privately briefed ministers in August, there is no way Britain can begin to meet such a fanciful target (even if the Government manages to ram through another 30,000 largely useless wind turbines).
Another EU directive commits us to deriving 10 per cent of our transport fuel from "biofuels" by 2020. This would take up pretty well all the farmland we currently use to grow food (at a time when world grain prices have doubled in six months and we are already face a global food shortage).
Then by 2009, thanks to a mad gesture by Mr Blair and his EU colleagues last March, we also face the prospect of a total ban on incandescent light bulbs.
This compulsory switch to low-energy bulbs, apart from condemning us to live in uglier homes under eye-straining light, is in practice completely out of the question, because, according to our Government's own figures, more than half Britain's domestic light fittings cannot take them.
This year will be remembered for two things.
First, it was the year when the scientific data showed that the cosmic scare over global warming may well turn out to be just that - yet another vastly inflated scare.
Second, it was the year when the hysteria generated by all the bogus science behind this scare finally drove those who rule over us, including Gordon "Plastic Bags" Brown, wholly out of their wits.
The great row over under-funding of our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, led in the Lords by five former Chiefs of the Defence Staff, has so far missed a hugely important part of the story, although it was hinted at by General Sir Mike Jackson when he was interviewed on the Today programme.
Alas, John Humphrys failed to pick up the significance of Jackson's observation that "we may not have enough to do the things which we do now and the things which we may have to do in the future".
The problem with our defence spending in recent years is not that the Ministry of Defence has been starved of cash. On the contrary, it has been earmarking colossal sums for projects designed to equip us to fight imaginary wars in the future, as part of the European Rapid Reaction Force to which Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon committed us around 2000: £20 billion on the Navy's two giant carriers (with planes and infrastructure); £16 billion on FRES, a new family of vehicles for the Army; not to mention the £20 billion already committed to Eurofighters for the RAF.
It was the diversion of resources into planning for that imaginary future that took the eyes of the MoD and the then-Chief of the Defence Staff off the need to equip our forces adequately for the totally different type of insurgency war they have actually been having to fight.
The MoD is belatedly trying to make amends for this disastrous blunder, for instance equipping our troops with properly mine-protected Mastiffs, instead of the unprotected Snatch Land Rovers that have caused so many deaths. It may also help that enthusiasm for the EU's fantasy armed forces of the future has been on the wane.
But no one at the time shared that enthusiasm more obviously (or was happier to send those hopelessly inadequate Land Rovers to Iraq) than the officer who was then Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Mike Jackson.
Desmond Swayne, MP for New Forest West, tells me of a fearful problem affecting Hampshire schools, which have been told by the county education officer, Ian Beacham, that under new rules teachers must no longer drive pupils in mini-buses unless they have a full "passenger vehicle licence" - "a huge and expensive undertaking which entitles them to drive a coach or bus".
Threatening many extra-curricular activities, such as away sporting fixtures, this is causing such grief that Mr Swayne has asked in Parliament whether it is right that teachers should be forbidden to drive children in this way.
Schools minister Jim Knight didn't know the answer but said he would look into it. Harriet Harman, Leader of the House, suggested that Mr Swayne should move for a debate on the issue.
Had those ministers or Hampshire's education officer learned to use Google, they might have found in seconds that this is all a fuss about nothing. The two relevant EU directives on driving licences, 91/439 and 2003/59, make clear that teachers are exempted from the licensing requirements, as does a leaflet available at the click of a mouse on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency website.
But does it not say something about the way we now allow our laws to be made in Brussels that neither ministers nor a council official responsible for enforcing them appear to know what those laws say?
• On October 19, 1999 I reported here a remarkable "personal message" sent out to Britain's small businesses over the signature of Nick Montagu, then head of the Inland Revenue Board. He told them how "exciting and important" it was for him and his staff to be "at the forefront of implementing the new Labour Government's policy agenda".
How apt, in light of the mega-grief they are currently causing the Government, that eight years later our incompetent tax-gatherers appear to be playing such a significant part in New Labour's impending downfall.
You may have missed this
U.N. Report: Global Warming Could Be 'Abrupt, Irreversible'
Friday, November 16, 2007
VALENCIA, Spain â€" Climate change is here, and it's getting worse, the year's final report by a U.N. panel will say when it's officially released Saturday.
"Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Summary for Policymakers begins in a statement meant to dispel any skepticism about climate change.
It goes on to say that global warming could lead to "abrupt and irreversible" results, such as the widespread extinction of species, according to persons familiar with the final draft who requested anonymity because the summary was not yet public.
• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Natural Science Center.
Working until dawn Friday, negotiators hashed out week-long disputes on the language, one of its authors said.
Provisional agreement on the text â€" which is about 20 pages and summarizes thousands of pages of data and projections â€" required compromises among the more than 140 delegations, but resulted in a "good and balanced document," said Bert Metz, a Dutch scientist who helped draft the report.
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The brief Summary for Policymakers is expected to get final approval later Friday after a longer version of about 70 pages is reviewed and adopted.
It is to be released at 11 a.m. Spanish time Saturday â€" 5 a.m. EST â€" by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Until then, the text is supposed to remain confidential.
The paper will be an "instant guide" to policymakers at a critical meeting next month in Indonesia, which could launch a round of complex talks on a new international accord for controlling carbon emissions and other human activity that is heating the planet.
Though it contains no previously unpublished material, the summary pulls together the central elements of three lengthy reports released earlier this year by the IPCC.
They describe observations of the changing climate, the potentially disastrous impacts of global warming and the tools available to slow the warming trend.
The document "is a clear message to policymakers," said Hans Verolme, of the World Wide Fund for Nature, one of the environmental groups acting as observers. "The scientists have done their job. They certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. Now the question is, what are the policymakers going to do with it?"
The panel shared this year's Nobel Peace Prize with Vice President Al Gore.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 983816.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article2983816.ece)
Fall in weather deaths dents climate warnings
David Smith
GREEN scientists have been accused of overstating the dangers of climate change by researchers who found that the number of people killed each year by weather-related disasters is falling.
Their report suggests that a central plank in the global warming argument â€" that it will result in a big increase in deaths from weather-related disasters â€" is undermined by the facts. It shows deaths in such disasters peaked in the 1920s and have been declining ever since.
Average annual deaths from weather-related events in the period 1990-2006 â€" considered by scientists to be when global warming has been most intense â€" were down by 87% on the 1900-89 average. The mortality rate from catastrophes, measured in deaths per million people, dropped by 93%.
The report by the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, a grouping of 41 mainly free-market bodies, comes on the eve of an international meeting on climate change in Bali.
Indur Goklany, a US-based expert on weather-related catastrophes, charted global deaths through the 20th century from “extreme†weather events.
Compared with the peak rate of deaths from weather-related events in the 1920s of nearly 500,000 a year, the death toll during the period 2000-06 averaged 19,900. “The United Nations has got the issues and their relative importance backward,†Goklany said.
The number of deaths had fallen sharply because of better warning systems, improved flood defences and other measures. Poor countries remained most vulnerable.
Greenpeace attacked the International Policy Network, one of the Civil Society organisations, which is publishing the report in Britain.
“The International Policy Network is known for being in the pay of the world’s biggest oil company,†a spokesman said.
The network said: “Funding for this project has come entirely from private individuals and foundations.â€
60mph winds blow balmy month away
High winds and rain are likely this weekend, ending the spell of unusually settled autumn weather.
Met Office forecasters say a large depression, which formed over the mid-Atlantic last week, will pass over Britain today.
The strongest winds will be felt over the south coast, with winds reaching 60mph and cloudy wet skies. The rest of Britain should be mainly dry with sunny spells for central and northern Scotland.
Tomorrow will also be unsettled, starting mainly dry but with further wet and windy weather expected.
The arrival of unsettled weather marks the end of one of the warmest and quietest Novembers in the weather records.
Have your say
Articles like this don't matter to zealots of the "global warming" religion. To them, the facts don't matter and never will. One day they'll wake up, smell the roses and realize they have been made fools of. Then they'll be off to the next "hot thing" designed to destroy Western civilization. As the US suffers through unusually cold early Dec weather with a lot more to come, I for one would yearn for REAL global warming, not just the promise of it from our eco-nuts.
Dennis Kelly, New Carlisle, OH/USA
Dennis Kelly, New Carlisle, Ohio
Please notice that Greenpeace does not disput the assertions.
Mickey Campagna, Alexandria, VA/USA
How typical of Greenpeace - if you have no defense for the message, attack the messenger.
Bob Devlin, Baltimore, USA/Maryland
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog ... ove_normal (http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/southern_hemisphere_ice_cover_remains_well_above_normal)
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Southern Hemisphere Ice Cover Remains Well Above Normal
By Alexandre Aguiar, MetSul Weather Center, Brazil
Southern Hemisphere’s ice cover now is at the same level as last June, i.e., a level seen during the last winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Besides, there are two more millions square kilometers of ice now compared to December 2006. And the large positive anomaly has persisted since September.
Icecap note: In the Northern Hemisphere, the ice and snow cover have recovered to within 1% (one snowstorm) of normal with the official start of winter still more than 12 days away
Decided to put this one in for posterity....
A plan written on a piece of paper is going to save the world from oblivion. That's rich.
http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/ap/20071 ... b07b8.html (http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/ap/20071211/tap-as-gen-bali-climate-conference-5th-l-d3b07b8.html)
UN chief: World risks oblivion without deal to battle global warming
By JOSEPH COLEMAN,Associated Press Writer AP - Wednesday, December 12
BALI, Indonesia - The human race faces oblivion if it fails to confront global warming, the U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday, as delegates to the U.N. climate conference haggled over a new document strengthening a call for deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by rich nations.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon arrived on the resort island of Bali to preside over the final days of the two-week conference, which aims to set an agenda and deadline for talks that will lead to a climate change pact to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
Ban urged quick action as negotiators worked on a final conference decision document. A version obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday included guidelines for industrialized countries to cut their emissions overall by 2020 by between 25 percent and 40 percent.
"The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically," Ban said in a speech to delegates.
"We are at a crossroad," he added. "One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear."
The latest draft of the document, to be released at the conference's conclusion Friday, included a new mention of "quantified national emission limitation and reduction commitments" for industrialized countries.
The United States rejected the 1997 Kyoto pact in part because it included mandatory emissions cuts, and Washington has supported only voluntary targets. The word "commitment" _ which was not in an earlier draft obtained over the weekend _ was likely to draw opposition from the U.S. delegation.
The United States has publicly opposed mentions of targets or emissions cuts guidelines in the Bali document, arguing that it was premature to state goals at such an early date. Negotiations for a post-Kyoto pact are to last at least two years.
U.N. officials, however, say the numbers are only guidelines to be hashed out in coming talks. The European Union, developing countries and environmentalists have argued strenuously in favor of including general goals in the Bali declaration.
The latest draft included dozens of changes from the earlier version, suggesting that negotiators were far from reaching agreement on a final wording. In past years, talks on the declaration on the last day have dragged on into the night to the next morning.
Stavros Dimas, the European commissioner for environment, said emissions guidelines were crucial to prevent global temperatures from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial levels. The European Union has committed itself to 20 percent to 30 percent reductions below 1990 levels by 2020.
"We need this range of reductions by developed countries," he told reporters Tuesday. "Science tells us that these reductions are necessary. Logic requires that we listen to science."
Australia, despite its sudden embrace of the Kyoto pact, has shied away from supporting the emissions goals yet, saying it must await the conclusion of a study sometime next year.
"We recognize the need for an interim target," said Penny Wong, Australia's minister for climate change. "We have a clear process of scientific and economic analysis to determine what that interim target should be."
Canada and Japan also oppose inclusion of the suggested figures.
Environmentalists urged them to reconsider.
"This is not the direction we need to be going in. The stakes are too high for this kind of political games," Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said earlier in the day.
In one of the first concrete results of the talks, negotiators said Tuesday they had agreed on the oversight structure of a fund to help developing countries build seawalls and take other steps to adapt to the effects of climate change.
Delegates decided to let the Global Environment Facility _ a U.N. body that helps developing countries with environmental projects _ run the fund, though some countries accuse the facility of being slow to distribute money.
The GEF has only about US$60 million (?40 million), though the World Bank has estimated some tens of billions of dollars (euros) a year will be needed for adaptation. Nothing has been done at Bali to develop new sources of revenue.
The struggle over targets coincided with the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Kyoto accord on Dec. 11, 1997, in Japan. The U.N. cut up a giant birthday cake to mark the occasion.
The Kyoto pact requires 36 industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels in the next five years.
The U.S. is the only major industrial nation to reject Kyoto. President George W. Bush contended the emissions cuts would harm the U.S. economy, and should have been imposed on China, India and other fast-growing poorer economies.
For some reason, these type of factoids don't seem to be reported in the regular news section of the newspapers. I'm guessing it just doesn't fit into most folks perception of reality at this point, so isn't considered real news.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbc ... Y/10575140 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071219/COMMENTARY/10575140)
Year of global cooling
By David Deming
December 19, 2007
Al Gore says global warming is a planetary emergency. It is difficult to see how this can be so when record low temperatures are being set all over the world. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards.
Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S.
South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.
Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In northeastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered.
Last January, $1.42 billion worth of California produce was lost to a devastating five-day freeze. Thousands of agricultural employees were thrown out of work. At the supermarket, citrus prices soared. In the wake of the freeze, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger asked President Bush to issue a disaster declaration for affected counties. A few months earlier, Mr. Schwarzenegger had enthusiastically signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, a law designed to cool the climate. California Sen. Barbara Boxer continues to push for similar legislation in the U.S. Senate.
In April, a killing freeze destroyed 95 percent of South Carolina's peach crop, and 90 percent of North Carolina's apple harvest. At Charlotte, N.C., a record low temperature of 21 degrees Fahrenheit on April 8 was the coldest ever recorded for April, breaking a record set in 1923. On June 8, Denver recorded a new low of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. Denver's temperature records extend back to 1872.
Recent weeks have seen the return of unusually cold conditions to the Northern Hemisphere. On Dec. 7, St. Cloud, Minn., set a new record low of minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. On the same date, record low temperatures were also recorded in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Extreme cold weather is occurring worldwide. On Dec. 4, in Seoul, Korea, the temperature was a record minus 5 degrees Celsius. Nov. 24, in Meacham, Ore., the minimum temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the previous record low set in 1952. The Canadian government warns that this winter is likely to be the coldest in 15 years.
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http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html (http://en.rian.ru/analysis/20080103/94768732.html)
A cold spell soon to replace global warming
13:54 | 03/ 01/ 2008
MOSCOW. (Oleg Sorokhtin for RIA Novosti) â€" Stock up on fur coats and felt boots! This is my paradoxical advice to the warm world.
Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases.
The real reasons for climate changes are uneven solar radiation, terrestrial precession (that is, axis gyration), instability of oceanic currents, regular salinity fluctuations of the Arctic Ocean surface waters, etc. There is another, principal reasonâ€"solar activity and luminosity. The greater they are the warmer is our climate.
Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.
This is my point, which environmentalists hotly dispute as they cling to the hothouse theory. As we know, hothouse gases, in particular, nitrogen peroxide, warm up the atmosphere by keeping heat close to the ground. Advanced in the late 19th century by Svante A. Arrhenius, a Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner, this theory is taken for granted to this day and has not undergone any serious check.
It determines decisions and instruments of major international organizationsâ€"in particular, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Signed by 150 countries, it exemplifies the impact of scientific delusion on big politics and economics. The authors and enthusiasts of the Kyoto Protocol based their assumptions on an erroneous idea. As a result, developed countries waste huge amounts of money to fight industrial pollution of the atmosphere. What if it is a Don Quixote’s duel with the windmill?
Hothouse gases may not be to blame for global warming. At any rate, there is no scientific evidence to their guilt. The classic hothouse effect scenario is too simple to be true. As things really are, much more sophisticated processes are on in the atmosphere, especially in its dense layer. For instance, heat is not so much radiated in space as carried by air currentsâ€"an entirely different mechanism, which cannot cause global warming.
The temperature of the troposphere, the lowest and densest portion of the atmosphere, does not depend on the concentration of greenhouse gas emissionsâ€"a point proved theoretically and empirically. True, probes of Antarctic ice shield, taken with bore specimens in the vicinity of the Russian research station Vostok, show that there are close links between atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and temperature changes. Here, however, we cannot be quite sure which is the cause and which the effect.
Temperature fluctuations always run somewhat ahead of carbon dioxide concentration changes. This means that warming is primary. The ocean is the greatest carbon dioxide depository, with concentrations 60-90 times larger than in the atmosphere. When the ocean’s surface warms up, it produces the “champagne effect.†Compare a foamy spurt out of a warm bottle with wine pouring smoothly when served properly cold.
Likewise, warm ocean water exudes greater amounts of carbonic acid, which evaporates to add to industrial pollutionâ€"a factor we cannot deny. However, man-caused pollution is negligible here. If industrial pollution with carbon dioxide keeps at its present-day 5-7 billion metric tons a year, it will not change global temperatures up to the year 2100. The change will be too small for humans to feel even if the concentration of greenhouse gas emissions doubles.
Carbon dioxide cannot be bad for the climate. On the contrary, it is food for plants, and so is beneficial to life on Earth. Bearing out this point was the Green Revolutionâ€"the phenomenal global increase in farm yields in the mid-20th century. Numerous experiments also prove a direct proportion between harvest and carbon dioxide concentration in the air.
Carbon dioxide has quite a different pernicious influenceâ€"not on the climate but on synoptic activity. It absorbs infrared radiation. When tropospheric air is warm enough for complete absorption, radiation energy passes into gas fluctuations. Gas expands and dissolves to send warm air up to the stratosphere, where it clashes with cold currents coming down. With no noticeable temperature changes, synoptic activity skyrockets to whip up cyclones and anticyclones. Hence we get hurricanes, storms, tornados and other natural disasters, whose intensity largely depends on carbon dioxide concentration. In this sense, reducing its concentration in the air will have a positive effect.
Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.
Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster. Of all the planets in the solar system, only Earth has an atmosphere beneficial to life. There are many factors that account for development of life on Earth: Sun is a calm star, Earth is located an optimum distance from it, it has the Moon as a massive satellite, and many others. Earth owes its friendly climate also to dynamic feedback between biotic and atmospheric evolution.
The principal among those diverse links is Earth’s reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.
What can’t be cured must be endured. It is wise to accept the natural course of things. We have no reason to panic about allegations that ice in the Arctic Ocean is thawing rapidly and will soon vanish altogether. As it really is, scientists say the Arctic and Antarctic ice shields are growing. Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow.
Meanwhile, Europeans can rest assured. The Gulf Stream will change its course only if some evil magic robs it of power to reach the northâ€"but Mother Nature is unlikely to do that.
Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
quote from below: Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO{-2} is the cause of climate change.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/edito ... arming_go/ (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/01/06/br_r_r_where_did_global_warming_go/)
HOME / GLOBE / OPINION / OP-ED
JEFF JACOBY
Br-r-r! Where did global warming go?
Globe Columnist / January 6, 2008
THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.
In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.
Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.
University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.
Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.
Now all of these may be short-lived weather anomalies, mere blips in the path of the global climatic warming that Al Gore and a host of alarmists proclaim the deadliest threat we face. But what if the frigid conditions that have caused so much distress in recent months signal an impending era of global cooling?
"Stock up on fur coats and felt boots!" advises Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and senior scientist at Moscow's Shirshov Institute of Oceanography. "The latest data . . . say that earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012."
Sorokhtin dismisses the conventional global warming theory that greenhouse gases, especially human-emitted carbon dioxide, is causing the earth to grow hotter. Like a number of other scientists, he points to solar activity - sunspots and solar flares, which wax and wane over time - as having the greatest effect on climate.
"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.
Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO{-2} is the cause of climate change.
Yet so relentlessly has the alarmist scenario been hyped, and so disdainfully have dissenting views been dismissed, that millions of people assume Gore must be right when he insists: "The debate in the scientific community is over."
But it isn't. Just last month, more than 100 scientists signed a strongly worded open letter pointing out that climate change is a well-known natural phenomenon, and that adapting to it is far more sensible than attempting to prevent it. Because slashing carbon dioxide emissions means retarding economic development, they warned, "the current US approach of CO{-2} reduction is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it."
Climate science isn't a religion, and those who dispute its leading theory are not heretics. Much remains to be learned about how and why climate changes, and there is neither virtue nor wisdom in an emotional rush to counter global warming - especially if what's coming is a global Big Chill.
Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is
jacoby@globe.com.
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.asp ... 9412587175 (http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=287279412587175)
The Sun Also Sets
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, February 07, 2008 4:20 PM PT
Climate Change: Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV â€" the sun.
Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.
To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.
And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.
Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, is among those looking at the sun for evidence of an increase in sunspot activity.
Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.
Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.
This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.
Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of the Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.
Tapping oversees the operation of a 60-year-old radio telescope that he calls a "stethoscope for the sun." But he and his colleagues need better equipment.
In Canada, where radio-telescopic monitoring of the sun has been conducted since the end of World War II, a new instrument, the next-generation solar flux monitor, could measure the sun's emissions more rapidly and accurately.
As we have noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on the Earth's climate over time has been the sun.
For instance, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the last 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the last 100 years.
R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."
Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."
Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."
"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had."
In 2005, Russian astronomer Khabibullo Abdusamatov made some waves â€" and not a few enemies in the global warming "community" â€" by predicting that the sun would reach a peak of activity about three years from now, to be accompanied by "dramatic changes" in temperatures.
A Hoover Institution Study a few years back examined historical data and came to a similar conclusion.
"The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100," according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.
The study says that "try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures."
The study concludes that if you shut down all the world's power plants and factories, "there would not be much effect on temperatures."
But if the sun shuts down, we've got a problem. It is the sun, not the Earth, that's hanging in the balance.
Another 'basic' debunking of Gore...not making any claims myself here but thought it would be of use here :)
http://thenewamerican.com/node/7009 (http://thenewamerican.com/node/7009)
Boooshpig
Thanks, mon.
http://newsminer.com/news/2008/feb/11/w ... snap-2000/ (http://newsminer.com/news/2008/feb/11/warming-temps-should-end-worst-cold-snap-2000/)
Warming temps should end worst cold snap since 2000
By Tim Mowry
Published Monday, February 11, 2008
E-MAIL STORY
COMMENTS
There is light at the end of the ice fog, and residents in Alaska’s second-largest city should begin seeing it today.
While it was 48 degrees below zero at Fairbanks International Airport on Sunday, the coldest temperature recorded so far in Fairbanks’ worst cold snap in eight years, forecasters were calling for a significant warming trend beginning today.
Temperatures should be above zero by Wednesday, said meteorologist Daniel Robinson at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks.
“The high pressure system that’s been locked in over us is finally starting to retreat toward Siberia and Russia,†Robinson said. “Hopefully we’re going to see an end to these minus 40 temperatures.
The cold air mass will be displaced by a low pressure system from Canada that will bring warmer temperatures and the chance of snow by midweek, he said.
The overnight low on Sunday was still expected to dip to about 35 below, Robinson said, but the high temperature today could climb into the single digits below zero, a marked contrast to the past week when the high temperature barely broke 30 below. Forecasters were calling for a high between 5 and 10 below today.
“That’s a significant improvement over 40 below,†Robinson said. “The difference between 20 below and 40 below feels great to me.â€
By Wednesday, the forecast is calling for a high of 5 above and on Thursday it could be 15 above, he said.
The low of minus 48 on Sunday was still four degrees shy of the record low of 52 below in 1932. The normal low is 17 below.
The current cold snap is the worst Fairbanks has seen in eight years. The last time the low temperature at the airport hit 40 below or colder for eight days in a row was Dec. 29, 1999 through Jan. 5, 2000.
It is also the third-longest such cold snap in February, tying February of 1979 on the list, said meteorologist Corey Bogel. The record for the number of 40 below days in February is 14 in 1950.
The all-time record for consecutive 40 below days is 18 set in 1971 from Jan. 14-31.
Temperatures in the hills were much warmer than in town on both Saturday and Sunday, the result of a strong but shallow inversion that produced temperatures which were almost 30 degrees warmer just a few hundred feet above town.
The low temperature at Birch Hill Recreation Area on Sunday morning, for example, was only 18 below and it was 52 below at Fort Wainwright, which sits at the bottom of Birch Hill. At 2 p.m., the temperature at Birch Hill had warmed to minus 7 and it was still 21 below at the airport.
The inversion was low enough that it was visible from the University of Alaska Fairbanks on Sunday morning, Robinson said.
“You could see the top of the fog layer,†he said.
Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.
This is the one I've been waiting for...
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/col ... ?id=332289 (http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=332289)
orget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Monday, February 25, 2008
Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.
According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.
Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."
He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.
It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.
lgunter@shaw.ca
But wait, there's more!
http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Mo ... e10866.htm (http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Worldwide+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm)
Blog: Science
Temperature Monitors Report Widescale Global Cooling
Michael Asher (Blog) - February 26, 2008 12:55 PM
World Temperatures according to the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction. Note the steep drop over the last year.
Twelve-month long drop in world temperatures wipes out a century of warming
Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.
Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories200 ... olest.html (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080313_coolest.html)
NOAA: Coolest Winter Since 2001 for U.S., Globe
March 13, 2008
The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.
A complete analysis is available online.
U.S. Winter Temperature Highlights
In the contiguous United States, the average winter temperature was 33.2°F (0.6°C), which was 0.2°F (0.1°C) above the 20th century average â€" yet still ranks as the coolest since 2001. It was the 54th coolest winter since national records began in 1895.
Winter temperatures were warmer than average from Texas to the Southeast and along the Eastern Seaboard, while cooler-than-average temperatures stretched from much of the upper Midwest to the West Coast.
With higher-than-average temperatures in the Northeast and South, the contiguous U.S. winter temperature-related energy demand was approximately 1.7 percent lower than average, based on NOAA’s Residential Energy Demand Temperature Index.
U.S. Winter Precipitation Highlights
Winter precipitation was much above average from the Midwest to parts of the West, notably Kansas, Colorado and Utah. Although moderate-to-strong La Niña conditions were present in the equatorial Pacific the winter was unique for the above average rain and snowfall in the Southwest, where La Niña typically brings drier-than-average conditions.
During January alone, 170 inches of snow fell at the Alta ski area near Salt Lake City, Utah, more than twice the normal amount for the month, eclipsing the previous record of 168 inches that fell in 1967. At the end of February, seasonal precipitation for the 2008 Water Year, which began on October 1, 2007, was well above average over much of the West.
Mountain snowpack exceeded 150 percent of average in large parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon at the end of February. Spring run-off from the above average snowpack in the West is expected to be beneficial in drought plagued areas.
Record February precipitation in the Northeast helped make the winter the fifth wettest on record for the region. New York had its wettest winter, while Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Vermont, and Colorado to the West, had their second wettest.
Snowfall was above normal in northern New England, where some locations posted all-time record winter snow totals. Concord, N.H., received 100.1 inches, which was 22.1 inches above the previous record set during the winter of 1886-87. Burlington, Vt., received 103.2 inches, which was 6.3 inches above the previous record set during the winter of 1970-71.
While some areas of the Southeast were wetter than average during the winter, overall precipitation for the region was near average. At the end of February, two-thirds of the Southeast remained in some stage of drought, with more than 25 percent in extreme-to- exceptional drought.
Drought conditions intensified in Texas with areas experiencing drought almost doubling from 25 percent at the end of January to 45 percent at the end of February.
Global Highlights
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the 16th warmest on record for the December 2007-February 2008 period (0.58°F/0.32°C above the 20th century mean of 53.8°F/12.1°C). The presence of a moderate-to-strong La Niña contributed to an average temperature that was the coolest since the La Niña episode of 2000-2001.
While analyses of the causes of the severe winter storms in southern China continues, NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory scientists are focusing on the presence of unusually strong, persistent high pressure over Eastern Europe, combined with low pressure over Southwest Asia. This pattern directed a series of storms across the region, while northerly low level flow introduced cold air from Mongolia. Unusually high water temperatures in the China Sea may have triggered available moisture that enhanced the severity of these storms.
Record Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent in January was followed by above average snow cover for the month of February. Unusually high temperatures across much of the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere in February began reducing the snow cover, and by the end of February, snow cover extent was below average in many parts of the hemisphere.
While there has been little trend in snow cover extent during the winter season since records began in the late 1960s, spring snow cover extent has been sharply lower in the past two decades as global temperatures have increased.
February Temperature Highlights
February was 61st warmest in the contiguous U.S. and 15th warmest globally on record. For the U.S., the temperature was near average, 0.2°F (0.1°C) above the 20th century average of 34.7°F (1.5°C), which was 2.0°F (1.1°C) warmer than February 2007.
Globally, the February average temperature was 0.68°F/0.38°C above the 20th century mean of 53.8°F/12.1°C.
quote from below: Sadly, Mr. Green and Mr. Armstrong found no evidence the IPCC was even aware of the vast literature on scientific forecasting methods, much less applied the principles.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbc ... /home.html (http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080314/COMMENTARY/702895001/home.html)
Climate panel on the hot seat
By H. Sterling Burnett
March 14, 2008
More than 20 years ago, climate scientists began to raise alarms over the possibility global temperatures were rising due to human activities, such as deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.
To better understand this potential threat, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 to provide a "comprehensive, objective, scientific, technical and socioeconomic assessment of human-caused climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation."
IPCC reports have predicted average world temperatures will increase dramatically, leading to the spread of tropical diseases, severe drought, the rapid melting of the world's glaciers and ice caps, and rising sea levels. However, several assessments of the IPCC's work have shown the techniques and methods used to derive its climate predictions are fundamentally flawed.
In a 2001 report, the IPCC published an image commonly referred to as the "hockey stick." This graph showed relatively stable temperatures from A.D. 1000 to 1900, with temperatures rising steeply from 1900 to 2000. The IPCC and public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, have used the hockey stick to support the conclusion that human energy use over the last 100 years has caused unprecedented rise global warming.
However, several studies cast doubt on the accuracy of the hockey stick, and in 2006 Congress requested an independent analysis of it. A panel of statisticians chaired by Edward J. Wegman, of George Mason University, found significant problems with the methods of statistical analysis used by the researchers and with the IPCC's peer review process. For example, the researchers who created the hockey stick used the wrong time scale to establish the mean temperature to compare with recorded temperatures of the last century. Because the mean temperature was low, the recent temperature rise seemed unusual and dramatic. This error was not discovered in part because statisticians were never consulted.
Furthermore, the community of specialists in ancient climates from which the peer reviewers were drawn was small and many of them had ties to the original authors â€" 43 paleoclimatologists had previously coauthored papers with the lead researcher who constructed the hockey stick.
These problems led Mr. Wegman's team to conclude that the idea that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming "cannot be supported."
The IPCC published its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 predicting global warming will lead to widespread catastrophe if not mitigated, yet failed to provide the most basic requirement for effective climate policy: accurate temperature statistics. A number of weaknesses in the measurements include the fact temperatures aren't recorded from large areas of the Earth's surface and many weather stations once in undeveloped areas are now surrounded by buildings, parking lots and other heat-trapping structures resulting in an urban-heat-island effect.
Even using accurate temperature data, sound forecasting methods are required to predict climate change. Over time, forecasting researchers have compiled 140 principles that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including science, sociology, economics and politics.
In a recent NCPA study, Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong used these principles to audit the climate forecasts in the Fourth Assessment Report. Messrs. Green and Armstrong found the IPCC clearly violated 60 of the 127 principles relevant in assessing the IPCC predictions. Indeed, it could only be clearly established that the IPCC followed 17 of the more than 127 forecasting principles critical to making sound predictions.
A good example of a principle clearly violated is "Make sure forecasts are independent of politics." Politics shapes the IPCC from beginning to end. Legislators, policymakers and/or diplomatic appointees select (or approve) the scientists â€" at least the lead scientists â€" who make up the IPCC. In addition, the summary and the final draft of the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report was written in collaboration with political appointees and subject to their approval.
Sadly, Mr. Green and Mr. Armstrong found no evidence the IPCC was even aware of the vast literature on scientific forecasting methods, much less applied the principles.
The IPCC and its defenders often argue that critics who are not climate scientists are unqualified to judge the validity of their work. However, climate predictions rely on methods, data and evidence from other fields of expertise, including statistical analysis and forecasting. Thus, the work of the IPCC is open to analysis and criticism from other disciplines.
The IPCC's policy recommendations are based on flawed statistical analyses and procedures that violate general forecasting principles. Policymakers should take this into account before enacting laws to counter global warming â€" which economists point out would have severe economic consequences.
H. Sterling Burnett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research institute in Dallas.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337710,00.html (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,337710,00.html)
Weather Channel Founder: Sue Al Gore for Fraud
Friday, March 14, 2008
March 13, 2008: Office workers take shelter under umbrellas as they walk past a building's exterior landscaped with a water curtain in Singapore.
March 13, 2008: Office workers take shelter under umbrellas as they walk past a building's exterior landscaped with a water curtain in Singapore.
The founder of the Weather Channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud, hoping a legal debate will settle the global-warming debate once and for all.
John Coleman, who founded the cable network in 1982, suggests suing for fraud proponents of global warming, including Al Gore, and companies that sell carbon credits.
"Is he committing financial fraud? That is the question," Coleman said.
"Since we can't get a debate, I thought perhaps if we had a legal challenge and went into a court of law, where it was our scientists and their scientists, and all the legal proceedings with the discovery and all their documents from both sides and scientific testimony from both sides, we could finally get a good solid debate on the issue," Coleman said. "I'm confident that the advocates of 'no significant effect from carbon dioxide' would win the case."
Coleman says his side of the global-warming debate is being buried in mainstream media circles.
From some of the comments below, its apparent that the scientific community doesn't have much of an understanding of all the mechanisms that influence temps here on earth. But for some reason, they are certain it all comes back to human influence and global warming . Apparently some of the cooling is due to warming and warmer ocean temps might be discovered deeper than they are currently probing. Huh?
I'm guessing there might be some entertainment value in watching the talking heads as they continue spinning their little theory while reality takes us back in the other direction. Time will tell.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=88520025 (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025)
The Mystery of Global Warming's Missing Heat
by Richard Harris
Morning Edition, March 19, 2008 · Some 3,000 scientific robots that are plying the ocean have sent home a puzzling message. These diving instruments suggest that the oceans have not warmed up at all over the past four or five years. That could mean global warming has taken a breather. Or it could mean scientists aren't quite understanding what their robots are telling them.
This is puzzling in part because here on the surface of the Earth, the years since 2003 have been some of the hottest on record. But Josh Willis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the oceans are what really matter when it comes to global warming.
In fact, 80 percent to 90 percent of global warming involves heating up ocean waters. They hold much more heat than the atmosphere can. So Willis has been studying the ocean with a fleet of robotic instruments called the Argo system. The buoys can dive 3,000 feet down and measure ocean temperature. Since the system was fully deployed in 2003, it has recorded no warming of the global oceans.
"There has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Willis says. So the buildup of heat on Earth may be on a brief hiatus. "Global warming doesn't mean every year will be warmer than the last. And it may be that we are in a period of less rapid warming."
In recent years, heat has actually been flowing out of the ocean and into the air. This is a feature of the weather phenomenon known as El Nino. So it is indeed possible the air has warmed but the ocean has not. But it's also possible that something more mysterious is going on.
That becomes clear when you consider what's happening to global sea level. Sea level rises when the oceans get warm because warmer water expands. This accounts for about half of global sea level rise. So with the oceans not warming, you would expect to see less sea level rise. Instead, sea level has risen about half an inch in the past four years. That's a lot.
Willis says some of this water is apparently coming from a recent increase in the melting rate of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica.
"But in fact there's a little bit of a mystery. We can't account for all of the sea level increase we've seen over the last three or four years," he says.
One possibility is that the sea has, in fact, warmed and expanded â€" and scientists are somehow misinterpreting the data from the diving buoys.
But if the aquatic robots are actually telling the right story, that raises a new question: Where is the extra heat all going?
Kevin Trenberth at the National Center for Atmospheric Research says it's probably going back out into space. The Earth has a number of natural thermostats, including clouds, which can either trap heat and turn up the temperature, or reflect sunlight and help cool the planet.
That can't be directly measured at the moment, however.
"Unfortunately, we don't have adequate tracking of clouds to determine exactly what role they've been playing during this period," Trenberth says.
It's also possible that some of the heat has gone even deeper into the ocean, he says. Or it's possible that scientists need to correct for some other feature of the planet they don't know about. It's an exciting time, though, with all this new data about global sea temperature, sea level and other features of climate.
"I suspect that we'll able to put this together with a little bit more perspective and further analysis," Trenberth says. "But what this does is highlight some of the issues and send people back to the drawing board."
Trenberth and Willis agree that a few mild years have no effect on the long-term trend of global warming. But they say there are still things to learn about how our planet copes with the heat.
It appears the Aussies are on to the junk science being embraced by the majority.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 83,00.html (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23411799-7583,00.html)
Climate facts to warm to.
Christopher Pearson | March 22, 2008
CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.
Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."
Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"
Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."
Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."
Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"
Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.
"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."
Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"
Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."
Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"
Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."
Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."
Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."
If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.
A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.
With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.
The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.
The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of regulating what can and can't be built on low-lying shorelines will have to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats planning to accommodate "climate refugees".
Penny Wong's climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy challenge of our times.
It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.
THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.
The Australian's Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald's version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that "we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics".
What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)"
The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age's version of the essay. The attribution reads: "Copyright Ian McEwan 2008" and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.
Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn't there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at "absorbing inconvenient fact"?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7329799.stm)
Global warming 'dips this year'
By Roger Harrabin
BBC News environment analyst
La Nina caused some of the coldest temperatures in memory in China
Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.
The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.
This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.
But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.
The WMO points out that the decade from 1998 to 2007 was the warmest on record. Since the beginning of the 20th Century, the global average surface temperature has risen by 0.74C.
Rises 'stalled'
LA NINA KEY FACTS
La Nina translates from the Spanish as "The Child Girl"
Refers to the extensive cooling of the central and eastern Pacific
Increased sea temperatures on the western side of the Pacific mean the atmosphere has more energy and frequency of heavy rain and thunderstorms is increased
Typically lasts for up to 12 months and generally less damaging event than the stronger El Nino.
La Nina and El Nino are two great natural Pacific currents whose effects are so huge they resonate round the world.
El Nino warms the planet when it happens; La Nina cools it. This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Nina.
It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.
Mr Jarraud told the BBC that the effect was likely to continue into the summer, depressing temperatures globally by a fraction of a degree.
This would mean that temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.
Watching trends
A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked and argue the Earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than predicted.
But Mr Jarraud insisted this was not the case and noted that 2008 temperatures would still be well above average for the century.
"When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular year," he said. "You should look at trends over a pretty long period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming.
"La Nina is part of what we call 'variability'. There has always been and there will always be cooler and warmer years, but what is important for climate change is that the trend is up; the climate on average is warming even if there is a temporary cooling because of La Nina."
Adam Scaife, lead scientist for Modelling Climate Variability at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, said their best estimate for 2008 was about 0.4C above the 1961-1990 average, and higher than this if you compared it with further back in the 20th Century.
Mr Scaife told the BBC: "What's happened now is that La Nina has come along and depressed temperatures slightly but these changes are very small compared to the long-term climate change signal, and in a few years time we are confident that the current record temperature of 1998 will be beaten when the La Nina has ended."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/a ... ge_id=1770 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=557209&in_page_id=1770)
2008: The year the world will cool down
Last updated at 16:44pm on 7th April 2008
The world will experience global cooling this year, according a leading climate scientist.
The head of the World Meteorological Organisation said La Nina - the weather phenomenon which is cooling the Pacific - is likely to trigger a small drop in average global temperatures compared with last year.
The prediction - which follows a bitterly cold winter in China and the Arctic - is prompting some sceptics to question the theory of climate change.
The news that the earth appears to be cooling would seem to contradict most experts who say that global warming is melting ice at the Poles
The REAL inconvenient truth: Zealotry over global warming could damage our Earth far more than climate change
However, the World Meteorological Organisation insists that this year's cooling has nothing to do with global climate change.
In fact, this year's temperatures could still be way above the average - and it is possible that 2008 will exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.
La Nina is Spanish for "The Girl" and describes a cooling of the central and eastern Pacific.
It typically lasts for 12 months. In recent months it caused one of the coldest winters in memory in China, and brought torrential rains to Australia.
While La Nina can affect weather around the world, it is usually less of an influence than El Nino (The Boy). In an El Nino year, the Pacific warms up.
Michel Jarraud, the World Meteorological Organisation's secretary general, said La Nina was expected to continue into the summer, depressing global temperatures by a fraction of a degree.
But he said temperatures in 2008 would still be well above average for the last 100 years.
The Met Office predicts that 2008 will be around 0.4C warmer than the average for 1961-1990.
It said temperatures are influenced by a range of variables - including changes in the sun's output, pollution and weather cycles such as La Nina.
But most scientists argue that the long-term temperature rises since 1880 can only be explained by carbon dioxide from human activity.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5736103.html (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5736103.html)
April 28, 2008, 12:47PM
Hurricane forecaster's dispute with school focuses on global warming debate
By ERIC BERGER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle
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By pioneering the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting and teaching 70 graduate students who now populate the National Hurricane Center and other research outposts, William Gray turned a city far from the stormy seas into a hurricane research mecca.
But now the institution in Fort Collins, Colo., where he has worked for nearly half a century, has told Gray it may end its support of his seasonal forecasting.
As he enters his 25th year of predicting hurricane season activity, Colorado State University officials say handling media inquiries related to Gray's forecasting requires too much time and detracts from efforts to promote other professors' work.
But Gray, a highly visible and sometimes acerbic skeptic of climate change, says that's a "flimsy excuse" for the real motivation â€" a desire to push him aside because of his global warming criticism.
Among other comments, Gray has said global warming scientists are "brainwashing our children."
Now an emeritus professor, Gray declined to comment on the university's possible termination of promotional support.
But a memo he wrote last year, after CSU officials informed him that media relations would no longer promote his forecasts after 2008, reveals his views:
"This is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the Department's capitulation to the desires of some (in their own interest) who want to reign (sic) in my global warming and global warming-hurricane criticisms," Gray wrote to Dick Johnson, head of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, and others.
The university may have moderated its stance since last year. Officials said late last week that they intend to support the release of Gray's forecasts as long as they continue to be co-authored by Phil Klotzbach, a former student of Gray's who earned his doctorate last summer, and as long as Klotzbach remains at CSU.
When Klotzbach leaves, he will either produce the seasonal forecasts at his new position, or end them altogether.
Not only does this internal dispute reveal a bit of acrimony at the end of Gray's long career at CSU; it highlights the politically charged atmosphere that surrounds global warming in the United States.
"Bill Gray has come under a lot of fire for his views," said Channel 11 meteorologist Neil Frank, a former director of the National Hurricane Center and a friend of Gray's. "If, indeed, this is happening, it would be really sad that Colorado State is trying to rein in Bill Gray."
CSU officials insist that is not the case.
The dean of the College of Engineering, which oversees atmospheric sciences, said she spoke with Gray about terminating media support for his forecasts solely because of the strain it placed on the college's sole media staffer.
"It really has nothing to do with his stand on global warming," said the dean, Sandra Woods. "He's a great faculty member. He's an institution at CSU."
According to Woods, Gray's forecasts require about 10 percent of the time a media support staff member, Emily Wilmsen, has available for the College of Engineering and its 104 faculty members.
A professor of public relations at Boston University, Donald Wright, questioned why the university would want to pull back its support for Gray now, after he has published his forecasts for a quarter-century.
"It's seems peculiar that this is happening now," Wright said. "Given the national reputation that these reports have, you would think the university would want to continue to promote these forecasts."
Gray, he said, seems to deliver a lot of publicity bang for the buck. The seasonal forecasts are printed in newspapers around the country and splashed across the World Wide Web.
There also seems to be little question that prominent climate scientists have complained to CSU about Gray's vocal skepticism. The head of CSU's Department of Atmospheric Sciences, Dick Johnson, said he has received many comments during recent years about Gray â€" some supportive, and some not.
The complaints have come as Gray became increasingly involved in the global warming debate. His comments toward adversaries often are biting and adversarial.
In 2005, when Georgia Tech scientist Peter Webster co-authored a paper suggesting global warming had caused a spike in major hurricanes, Gray labeled him and others "medicine men" who were misleading the public.
Webster, in an e-mail from Bangladesh, where is working on a flood prediction project, acknowledged that he complained to Johnson at CSU.
"My only conversation with Dick Johnson, which followed a rather nasty series of jabs from Gray, suggested that Bill should be persuaded to lay off the personal and stay scientific," Webster wrote.
Gray also has been highly critical of a former student, Greg Holland, who is among the most visible U.S. scientists arguing about the dangers posed by global warming.
Gray's comments about Holland include referring to him as a member of a "Gang of Five" that is interested in using scare tactics to increase research funding.
The comment was a reference to the Gang of Four, which terrorized China in the 1960s and '70s while purging the Communist Party of moderates and intellectuals.
"I have registered concern in several quarters, including CSU, on the manner in which he has moved away from scientific debate and into personal attacks on the integrity and motives of myself and my colleagues," Holland said.
Although he ceded lead authorship of the forecasts to Klotzbach in 2006, Gray has remained the headliner in storm prognostication. He annually is among the most popular draws at the National Hurricane Conference.
In recent years, as he has increasingly made sharp public comments about global warming, Gray quickly became one of the most prominent skeptics because of his long background in atmospheric sciences.
His views on the climate â€" he says Earth is warming naturally and soon will begin cooling â€" have been applauded by some scientists, particularly meteorologists such as Frank. But they are out of step with mainstream climate science.
The most recent report by an international group of climate scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, concluded that there was 90 percent certainty that human activity had caused recent warming of the planet.
Yet at U.S. universities, threats to the rights of scientists who hold minority viewpoints are generally frowned upon.
A prominent legal scholar, Stanley Fish of Florida International University, said university public relations offices should not pick and choose where resources go, based upon the content of a professor's work.
"If it can in any way be established that (Gray's) global warming views were the basis of this action, then it is an improper action," Fish said.
In his memo, Gray clearly indicates that he believes his academic freedom is imperiled:
"For the good of all of us in the Department, the College and at CSU, please believe me when I say this is not a direction any of you want to go," he wrote. "Our department and college are strong enough to be able to tolerate a dissenting voice on the global warming question."
Woods, Gray's dean, insisted that dissent on global warming is welcomed at CSU.
"He's not the only faculty member in the world who questions global warming," Woods said. "When Bill talks about some of the data, he can make some very good points."
Regarding the GGWS, you should really read the open letter that 37 scientist that were featured in the documentary have signed, see the link below (with some extra information on errors in the GGWS). :)
http://www.climateofdenial.net/?q=node/1 (http://www.climateofdenial.net/?q=node/1)
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/20 ... es-in-may/ (http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/uah-global-temperature-dives-in-may/)
UAH: Global Temperature Dives in May
3
06
2008
Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting, (here and here), the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.
It is significantly colder globally, colder even than the significant drop to -0.046°C seen in January 2008.
The global ∆T from April to May 2008 was -.195°C
UAH
2008 1 -0.046
2008 2 0.020
2008 3 0.094
2008 4 0.015
2008 5 -0.180
Compared to the May 2007 value of 0.199°C we find a 12 month ∆T is -.379°C.
But even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ∆T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon “global warming signal†of the last 100 years.
I’m betting that RSS (expected soon) will also be below the zero anomaly line, since it tends to agree well with UAH. HadCRUT will likely show a significant drop, I’m going to make a SWAG and say it will end up around 0.05 to -0.15°C. GISS; I’m not going to try a SWAG, as it could be anything. Of course anomalies can change to positive on the next El Nino, but this one seems to be deepening.
Update 06/05/08: Per MattN’s suggestion, changed link above for snow melt to news stories from previous link to National Snow and Ice Center
Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
UAH Satellite data: Globally, 2008 significantly cooler than last year
« Another record month!California Proclaims Drought - Governator
Date : 3 June 2008
Categories : Science, climate_change
157 responses to “UAH: Global Temperature Dives in Mayâ€
3
06
2008
Roger Carr (22:03:01) :
Cannot find ‘SWAG’ in the glossary, Anthony…
REPLY: SWAG - Scientific Wild Ass Guess
3
06
2008
crosspatch (22:43:16) :
And June isn’t looking much warmer here in my part of California. We might hit “normal†temps for this time of year two days this week, if we are lucky. The long range forecast doesn’t show us going much above “normal†until the 11th.
3
06
2008
BillS (22:47:06) :
Oh I know a couple…
It’s an acronym not a word - one meaning is for Stuff We All Get - generally referring to trade show type goodies.
The other is Simple/Scientific/Silly Wild Approximate (or another A word) Guess - which is what I suspect Anthony is referring to.
3
06
2008
Walter Dnes (22:48:43) :
For all the AWarmists who claim 10 years of no net warming doesn’t prove anything… go to the UAH data at http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/ ... glhmam_5.2 (http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/public/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2) and note the 8th column (12 month running mean).
- 12 months ending May 2008 is +0.116
- 12 months ending January 1988 is +0.121
*OVER 20 YEARS WITH NO NET WARMING. I REPEAT, OVER 20 YEARS WITH NO NET WARMING*.
3
06
2008
rex (23:03:29) :
I knew it (boasting) sorry can’t help myself (see previous rex posts).. but of anyone can follow the trend by looking at the graphs. Looks like June may be scarier… because it would to take a steep up notch to catch up with mean at this stage.
3
06
2008
Alex Llewelyn (23:25:47) :
And the trend 1979-present has finally dropped to 0.13. Yay.
3
06
2008
Alex Llewelyn (23:28:25) :
And its the coldest month in the record since April 1997! And the coldest May since 1992!
3
06
2008
http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscor ... 42304.html (http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html)
quote from below: ... On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC....
Global Warming and the Price of a Gallon of Gas
by John Coleman
You may want to give credit where credit is due to Al Gore and his global warming campaign the next time you fill your car with gasoline, because there is a direct connection between Global Warming and four dollar a gallon gas. It is shocking, but true, to learn that the entire Global Warming frenzy is based on the environmentalist’s attack on fossil fuels, particularly gasoline. All this big time science, international meetings, thick research papers, dire threats for the future; all of it, comes down to their claim that the carbon dioxide in the exhaust from your car and in the smoke stacks from our power plants is destroying the climate of planet Earth. What an amazing fraud; what a scam.
The future of our civilization lies in the balance.
That’s the battle cry of the High Priest of Global Warming Al Gore and his fellow, agenda driven disciples as they predict a calamitous outcome from anthropogenic global warming. According to Mr. Gore the polar ice caps will collapse and melt and sea levels will rise 20 feet inundating the coastal cities making 100 million of us refugees. Vice President Gore tells us numerous Pacific islands will be totally submerged and uninhabitable. He tells us global warming will disrupt the circulation of the ocean waters, dramatically changing climates, throwing the world food supply into chaos. He tells us global warming will turn hurricanes into super storms, produce droughts, wipe out the polar bears and result in bleaching of coral reefs. He tells us tropical diseases will spread to mid latitudes and heat waves will kill tens of thousands. He preaches to us that we must change our lives and eliminate fossil fuels or face the dire consequences. The future of our civilization is in the balance.
With a preacher’s zeal, Mr. Gore sets out to strike terror into us and our children and make us feel we are all complicit in the potential demise of the planet.
Here is my rebuttal.
There is no significant man made global warming. There has not been any in the past, there is none now and there is no reason to fear any in the future. The climate of Earth is changing. It has always changed. But mankind’s activities have not overwhelmed or significantly modified the natural forces.
Through all history, Earth has shifted between two basic climate regimes: ice ages and what paleoclimatologists call “Interglacial periodsâ€. For the past 10 thousand years the Earth has been in an interglacial period. That might well be called nature’s global warming because what happens during an interglacial period is the Earth warms up, the glaciers melt and life flourishes. Clearly from our point of view, an interglacial period is greatly preferred to the deadly rigors of an ice age. Mr. Gore and his crowd would have us believe that the activities of man have overwhelmed nature during this interglacial period and are producing an unprecedented, out of control warming.
Well, it is simply not happening. Worldwide there was a significant natural warming trend in the 1980’s and 1990’s as a Solar cycle peaked with lots of sunspots and solar flares. That ended in 1998 and now the Sun has gone quiet with fewer and fewer Sun spots, and the global temperatures have gone into decline. Earth has cooled for almost ten straight years. So, I ask Al Gore, where’s the global warming?
The cooling trend is so strong that recently the head of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had to acknowledge it. He speculated that nature has temporarily overwhelmed mankind’s warming and it may be ten years or so before the warming returns. Oh, really. We are supposed to be in a panic about man-made global warming and the whole thing takes a ten year break because of the lack of Sun spots. If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
Now allow me to talk a little about the science behind the global warming frenzy. I have dug through thousands of pages of research papers, including the voluminous documents published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I have worked my way through complicated math and complex theories. Here’s the bottom line: the entire global warming scientific case is based on the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. They don’t have any other issue. Carbon Dioxide, that’s it.
Hello Al Gore; Hello UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Your science is flawed; your hypothesis is wrong; your data is manipulated. And, may I add, your scare tactics are deplorable. The Earth does not have a fever. Carbon dioxide does not cause significant global warming.
The focus on atmospheric carbon dioxide grew out a study by Roger Revelle who was an esteemed scientist at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute. He took his research with him when he moved to Harvard and allowed his students to help him process the data for his paper. One of those students was Al Gore. That is where Gore got caught up in this global warming frenzy. Revelle’s paper linked the increases in carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere with warming. It labeled CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Charles Keeling, another researcher at the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, set up a system to make continuous CO2 measurements. His graph of these increases has now become known as the Keeling Curve. When Charles Keeling died in 2005, his son David, also at Scripps, took over the measurements. Here is what the Keeling curve shows: an increase in CO2 from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 385 parts per million today, an increase of 70 parts per million or about 20 percent.
All the computer models, all of the other findings, all of the other angles of study, all come back to and are based on CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas. It is not.
Here is the deal about CO2, carbon dioxide. It is a natural component of our atmosphere. It has been there since time began. It is absorbed and emitted by the oceans. It is used by every living plant to trigger photosynthesis. Nothing would be green without it. And we humans; we create it. Every time we breathe out, we emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is not a pollutant. It is not smog. It is a naturally occurring invisible gas.
Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.
The UN IPCC has attracted billions of dollars for the research to try to make the case that CO2 is the culprit of run-away, man-made global warming. The scientists have come up with very complex creative theories and done elaborate calculations and run computer models they say prove those theories. They present us with a concept they call radiative forcing. The research organizations and scientists who are making a career out of this theory, keep cranking out the research papers. Then the IPCC puts on big conferences at exotic places, such as the recent conference in Bali. The scientists endorse each other’s papers, they are summarized and voted on, and viola, we are told global warming is going to kill us all unless we stop burning fossil fuels.
May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.
Numerous independent research projects have been done about the greenhouse impact from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide. These studies have proven to my total satisfaction that CO2 is not creating a major greenhouse effect and is not causing an increase in temperatures. By the way, before his death, Roger Revelle coauthored a paper cautioning that CO2 and its greenhouse effect did not warrant extreme countermeasures.
So now it has come down to an intense campaign, orchestrated by environmentalists claiming that the burning of fossil fuels dooms the planet to run-away global warming. Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a myth.
So how has the entire global warming frenzy with all its predictions of dire consequences, become so widely believed, accepted and regarded as a real threat to planet Earth? That is the most amazing part of the story.
To start with global warming has the backing of the United Nations, a major world force. Second, it has the backing of a former Vice President and very popular political figure. Third it has the endorsement of Hollywood, and that’s enough for millions. And, fourth, the environmentalists love global warming. It is their tool to combat fossil fuels. So with the environmentalists, the UN, Gore and Hollywood touting Global Warming and predictions of doom and gloom, the media has scrambled with excitement to climb aboard. After all the media loves a crisis. From YK2 to killer bees the media just loves to tell us our lives are threatened. And the media is biased toward liberal, so it’s pre-programmed to support Al Gore and UN. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, the Associated Press and here in San Diego The Union Tribune are all constantly promoting the global warming crisis.
So who is going to go against all of that power? Not the politicians. So now the President of the United States, just about every Governor, most Senators and most Congress people, both of the major current candidates for President, most other elected officials on all levels of government are all riding the Al Gore Global Warming express. That is one crowded bus.
I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.
In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.
I am very serious about this issue. I think stamping out the global warming scam is vital to saving our wonderful way of life.
The battle against fossil fuels has controlled policy in this country for decades. It was the environmentalist’s prime force in blocking any drilling for oil in this country and the blocking the building of any new refineries, as well. So now the shortage they created has sent gasoline prices soaring. And, it has lead to the folly of ethanol, which is also partly behind the fuel price increases; that and our restricted oil policy. The ethanol folly is also creating a food crisis throughput the world â€" it is behind the food price rises for all the grains, for cereals, bread, everything that relies on corn or soy or wheat, including animals that are fed corn, most processed foods that use corn oil or soybean oil or corn syrup. Food shortages or high costs have led to food riots in some third world countries and made the cost of eating out or at home budget busting for many.
So now the global warming myth actually has lead to the chaos we are now enduring with energy and food prices. We pay for it every time we fill our gas tanks. Not only is it running up gasoline prices, it has changed government policy impacting our taxes, our utility bills and the entire focus of government funding. And, now the Congress is considering a cap and trade carbon credits policy. We the citizens will pay for that, too. It all ends up in our taxes and the price of goods and services.
So the Global warming frenzy is, indeed, threatening our civilization. Not because global warming is real; it is not. But because of the all the horrible side effects of the global warming scam.
I love this civilization. I want to do my part to protect it.
If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.
My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.
Quote from: "laughingwillow"http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html
Let me illustrate. I estimate that this square in front of my face contains 100,000 molecules of atmosphere. Of those 100,000 only 38 are CO2; 38 out of a hundred thousand. That makes it a trace component. Let me ask a key question: how can this tiny trace upset the entire balance of the climate of Earth? It can’t. That’s all there is to it; it can’t.
Oh, yes it can. The atmosphere is very thick and carbon dioxide is a very effective absorber of infrared radiation. Your analysis is flawed by failing to take into account these attributes. Instead, you included the attributes that support your point of view. This analogy should be rather effective with this audience. Your approach is like that of saying a tab cannot affect you mind since it is mostly paper, but those similarly few LSD molecules can surely have an affect despite being a dilute and minor component of blotter paper. This analogy should be rather effective with this audience.
Quote from: "laughingwillow"http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html
May I stop here for a few historical notes? First, the internal combustion engine and gasoline were awful polluters when they were first invented. And, both gasoline and automobile engines continued to leave a layer of smog behind right up through the 1960’s. Then science and engineering came to the environmental rescue. Better exhaust and ignition systems, catalytic converters, fuel injectors, better engineering throughout the engine and reformulated gasoline have all contributed to a huge reduction in the exhaust emissions from today’s cars. Their goal then was to only exhaust carbon dioxide and water vapor, two gases widely accepted as natural and totally harmless. Anyone old enough to remember the pall of smog that used to hang over all our cities knows how much improvement there has been. So the environmentalists, in their battle against fossil fuels and automobiles had a very good point forty years ago, but now they have to focus almost entirely on the once harmless carbon dioxide. And, that is the rub. Carbon dioxide is not an environmental problem; they just want you now to think it is.
Smog is a different concern than global warming.
Solving smog has no effect on carbon dioxide levels or greenhouse effects.
I cannot see how the combination of deforestation and increased consumption of fossil fuels could not lead to an increase in carbon dioxide concentrations, and how judgment of such activity could lead to any conclusion other than it is at least somewhat due to mankind's activities.
Quote from: "laughingwillow"http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner/19842304.html
If Al Gore and his global warming scare dictates the future policy of our governments, the current economic downturn could indeed become a recession, drift into a depression and our modern civilization could fall into an abyss. And it would largely be a direct result of the global warming frenzy.
My mission, in what is left of a long and exciting lifetime, is to stamp out this Global Warming silliness and let all of us get on with enjoying our lives and loving our planet, Earth.
Or there is the real possibility of adopting other forms of energy that relieve the US of reliance upon resources located outside our borders and new economic activity begins as new technologies are developed, produced, implemented, and marketed. The automobile replaced the horse and buggy without economic collapse. ipods replaced CD players without economic collapse. Airplanes replaced trains without economic collapse. Changing a source of energy will not cause economic collapse. Speculation for a commodity bought and brought to within our borders is a greater threat to our economy.
But maybe we need to quick thinking we are so entitled to all we want, when we want, how we want, and start balancing the consumption of our share. What makes American's so entitled to the resources we consume?
Doing so keeps the impoverished poor. If developing countries can never afford the resources needed to develop their societies since Americans drive up the prices, then these countries stay impoverished. But if our consumption was lower, then these countries could better afford more raw materials and could better develop.
right on, mon.
lw
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080820/ ... 02b49.html (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080820/twl-environment-climate-2008-dc-1202b49.html)
This year so far coolest for at least 5 years: WMO
Reuters - Wednesday, August 20 05:18 pm
LONDON (Reuters) - The first half of 2008 was the coolest for at least five years, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said on Wednesday.
The whole year will almost certainly be cooler than recent years, although temperatures remain above the historical average.
Global temperatures vary annually according to natural cycles. For example, they are driven by shifting ocean currents, and dips do not undermine the case that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are causing long-term global warming, climate scientists say.
Chillier weather this year is partly because of a global weather pattern called La Nina that follows a periodic warming effect called El Nino.
"We can expect with high probability this year will be cooler than the previous five years," said Omar Baddour, responsible for climate data and monitoring at the WMO.
"Definitely the La Nina should have had an effect, how much we cannot say."
"Up to July 2008, this year has been cooler than the previous five years at least. It still looks like it's warmer than average," added Baddour.
The global mean temperature to end-July was 0.28 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, the UK-based MetOffice Hadley Centre for climate change research said on Wednesday. That would make the first half of 2008 the coolest since 2000.
"Of course at the beginning of the year there was La Nina, and that would have had the effect of suppressing temperatures somewhat as well," Met Office meteorologist John Hammond said.
"But actually La Nina is showing signs of moving towards a more neutral state."
The weakening of the La Nina effect over the last few months could see the global mean temperature creep up again in the latter part of the year, he added.
The past decade ending in 2007 was the hottest since reliable records began around 1850, according to the WMO. World temperatures are about 0.74 Celsius (1.2 F) higher than a century ago.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was "unequivocal" and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were very likely part of the problem.
The WMO releases its final figures for global temperature and ranking for 2008 in December.
http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/031815.html (http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/031815.html)
Brrr! Farmers' Almanac says cold winter ahead
By The Associated Press wire report
August 20, 2008 02:26 PM
"Numb's the word," says the 192-year-old publication, which claims an accuracy rate of 80 to 85 percent for its forecasts that are prepared two years in advance.
The almanac's 2009 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder than average temperatures, with only the Far West and Southeast in line for near-normal readings.
"This is going to be catastrophic for millions of people," said almanac editor Peter Geiger, noting that the frigid forecast combined with high prices for heating fuel is sure to compound problems households will face in keeping warm.
The almanac predicts above-normal snowfall for the Great Lakes and Midwest, especially during January and February, and above-normal precipitation for the Southwest in December and for the Southeast in January and February. The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions should be getting an unusually wet or snowy February, the almanac said.
The forecasts, which are spelled out in three- and four-day periods for each region, are prepared by the almanac's reclusive prognosticator Caleb Weatherbee, who uses a secret formula based on sunspots, the position of the planets and the tidal action of the moon.
Weatherbee's outlook is borne out by e-mail comments that the almanac has received in recent days from readers who have spotted signs of nature that point to a rough winter, Geiger said. The signs range from an abundance of acorns already on the ground to the frequency of fog in August.
The almanac's winter forecast is at odds with that of the National Weather Service, whose trends-based outlook calls for warmer than normal temperatures over much of the country, including Alaska, said Ed O'Lenic, chief of the operations branch at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.
While he wouldn't comment specifically on the almanac's ability to forecast the weather two years from now, O'Lenic said it's generally impossible to come up with accurate forecasts more than a week in advance.
"Of course it's possible to prepare a forecast with any lead time you like. Whether or nor that forecast has any accuracy or usable skill is another question," he said.
Quote from: "winder"But maybe we need to quick thinking we are so entitled to all we want, when we want, how we want, and start balancing the consumption of our share. What makes American's so entitled to the resources we consume?
Doing so keeps the impoverished poor. If developing countries can never afford the resources needed to develop their societies since Americans drive up the prices, then these countries stay impoverished. But if our consumption was lower, then these countries could better afford more raw materials and could better develop.
The bill will come due as global economic forces correct the value of the US dollar in accordance to our astronomical debt and soaring deficits. Foreign debt to China exceeds half a billion USD, yet despite how much the falling value of the dollar is dragging down their economy, they keep agreeing to raise their reserves... Keeping the US economy afloat on a sea of false confidence influenced by global politics and an infinite line of credit backed by no real rating.
YouTube video about the collapse of the USD (//http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n3g5lUgkWk)
Nixon, Reagan, and Greenspan have placed us into a situation which will have dire consequences in the years to come. On a positive note, it is easier than ever to invest in commodites these days. Through use of an ETF you can invest in gold, silver, and oil by buying shares through the market. (NYSEArca: GLD) (AMEX: SLV) (AMEX: USO) Additionally, coin minted bullion is a beautiful and fun way to invest in precious metals. The gold and silver Canadian Maple coin are 99.99% pure and require no assay as they are backed by the Canadian Mint. The American Golden Eagle is likewise backed by the US government, but it is not as pure (91.67%).
Wait for it. Wait for it...............
quote from below.....In the past 1000 years, three previous such events -- the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. On was large enough to be called a "mini ice age". For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.
http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+Hist ... e12823.htm (http://www.dailytech.com/Sun+Makes+History+First+Spotless+Month+in+a+Century/article12823.htm)
Sun Makes History: First Spotless Month in a Century
Michael Asher (Blog) - September 1, 2008 8:11 AM
The sun has reached a milestone not seen for nearly 100 years: an entire month has passed without a single visible sunspot being noted.
The event is significant as many climatologists now believe solar magnetic activity â€" which determines the number of sunspots -- is an influencing factor for climate on earth.
According to data from Mount Wilson Observatory, UCLA, more than an entire month has passed without a spot. The last time such an event occurred was June of 1913. Sunspot data has been collected since 1749.
When the sun is active, it's not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop to near-zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins.
But this year -- which corresponds to the start of Solar Cycle 24 -- has been extraordinarily long and quiet, with the first seven months averaging a sunspot number of only 3. August followed with none at all. The astonishing rapid drop of the past year has defied predictions, and caught nearly all astronomers by surprise.
In 2005, a pair of astronomers from the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Tucson attempted to publish a paper in the journal Science. The pair looked at minute spectroscopic and magnetic changes in the sun. By extrapolating forward, they reached the startling result that, within 10 years, sunspots would vanish entirely. At the time, the sun was very active. Most of their peers laughed at what they considered an unsubstantiated conclusion.
The journal ultimately rejected the paper as being too controversial.
The paper's lead author, William Livingston, tells DailyTech that, while the refusal may have been justified at the time, recent data fits his theory well. He says he will be "secretly pleased" if his predictions come to pass.
But will the rest of us? In the past 1000 years, three previous such events -- the Dalton, Maunder, and Spörer Minimums, have all led to rapid cooling. On was large enough to be called a "mini ice age". For a society dependent on agriculture, cold is more damaging than heat. The growing season shortens, yields drop, and the occurrence of crop-destroying frosts increases.
Meteorologist Anthony Watts, who runs a climate data auditing site, tells DailyTech the sunspot numbers are another indication the "sun's dynamo" is idling. According to Watts, the effect of sunspots on TSI (total solar irradiance) is negligible, but the reduction in the solar magnetosphere affects cloud formation here on Earth, which in turn modulates climate.
This theory was originally proposed by physicist Henrik Svensmark, who has published a number of scientific papers on the subject. Last year Svensmark's "SKY" experiment claimed to have proven that galactic cosmic rays -- which the sun's magnetic field partially shields the Earth from -- increase the formation of molecular clusters that promote cloud growth. Svensmark, who recently published a book on the theory, says the relationship is a larger factor in climate change than greenhouse gases.
Solar physicist Ilya Usoskin of the University of Oulu, Finland, tells DailyTech the correlation between cosmic rays and terrestrial cloud cover is more complex than "more rays equals more clouds". Usoskin, who notes the sun has been more active since 1940 than at any point in the past 11 centuries, says the effects are most important at certain latitudes and altitudes which control climate. He says the relationship needs more study before we can understand it fully.
Other researchers have proposed solar effects on other terrestrial processes besides cloud formation. The sunspot cycle has strong effects on irradiance in certain wavelengths such as the far ultraviolet, which affects ozone production. Natural production of isotopes such as C-14 is also tied to solar activity. The overall effects on climate are still poorly understood.
What is incontrovertible, though, is that ice ages have occurred before. And no scientist, even the most skeptical, is prepared to say it won't happen again.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/20 ... anac_N.htm (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2008-09-09-farmers-almanac_N.htm)
By Jim Cole, AP
Old Farmers Almanac: Global cooling may be underway
By David Tirrell-Wysocki, Associated Press Writer
DUBLIN, N.H. â€" The Old Farmer's Almanac is going further out on a limb than usual this year, not only forecasting a cooler winter, but looking ahead decades to suggest we are in for global cooling, not warming.
Based on the same time-honored, complex calculations it uses to predict weather, the Almanac hits the newsstands on Tuesday saying a study of solar activity and corresponding records on ocean temperatures and climate point to a cooler, not warmer, climate, for perhaps the next half century.
"We at the Almanac are among those who believe that sunspot cycles and their effects on oceans correlate with climate changes," writes meteorologist and climatologist Joseph D'Aleo. "Studying these and other factor suggests that cold, not warm, climate may be our future."
It remains to be seen, said Editor-in-Chief Jud Hale, whether the human impact on global temperatures will cancel out or override any cooling trend.
"We say that if human beings were not contributing to global warming, it would become real cold in the next 50 years," Hale said.
For the near future, the Almanac predicts most of the country will be colder than normal in the coming winter, with heavy snow from the Ozarks into southern New England. Snow also is forecast for northern Texas, with a warmer than usual winter in the northern Plains.
Almanac believers will prepare for a hot summer in much of the nation's midsection, continuing drought conditions there and wild fire conditions in parts of California, with a cooler-than-normal season elsewhere. They'll also keep the car packed for the 2009 hurricane season, as the Alamanac predicts an active one, especially in Florida.
But Editor Janice Stillman said it's the winter foreasts that attract the most attention, especially this year, with much higher heating prices.
So, in line with the weather and economy forecasts, the Almanac includes information on using wood for heat: the best wood, how to build a fire in a fireplace, whether to use a wood stove and how to stay warm â€" all winter â€" with a single log.
Here's the secret, popularized in 1777: Throw a log out an upstairs window, dash down the stairs and outside, retrieve the log, dash upstairs, throw the log out the window and so on.
"Do that until you work up a sweat and you'll be warm all winter," said Stillman.
Last year, the Almanac correctly predicted "above-normal" snowfall in the Northeast â€" an understatement â€" and below-normal snowfall in the mid-Atlantic states.
New Hampshire, home of the Almanac, saw the most snow in 134 years and missed an all-time record by 2.6 inches.
Established in 1792, the Old Farmer's Almanac is North America's oldest continuously published periodical. The little yellow magazine still comes with the hole in the corner so it can hang in outhouses.
Boasting 18.5 million readers, this year's edition contains traditional tips on gardening and astronomical information and tide charts so accurate the government considered banning them during World War II, fearing they would help German spies.
The Old Farmer's Almanac is not to be confused with the Maine-based Farmer's Almanac, published "only" since 1818.
The 217th edition also predicts social trends such as sofas that measure body temperature, shopping carts that sound an alarm when filled with too much junk food and closet shelves and hangers that talk to give advice on matching shirts and ties.
"I would really hate that," Hale said. "What do you mean these don't match? Of course they match! You kidding me? Pink goes perfectly well with yellow," he joked.
Upholding its tradition of being "new, useful and entertaining," the Almanac offers tips on how to keep gardens alive, even in snow, and how to keep people alive, even for 100 years. (Some examples: Take it easy, use your brain, laugh and flirt!)
As printed publications fold around the country because of falling readership, Stillman says the Almanac is keeping pace with the 21st Century with a website that offers the printed version and supplements that can be personalized based on a reader's ZIP code.
Hale said the magazine with the familiar features remains popular in a digital age because, well, it's an almanac, and readers have said they like it being predictable.
"'Oh good,' they say, 'Not everything is disappearing."'
This year, after 154 pages of words of wisdom from scientists and other experts, the 2009 edition closes with words from children â€" letters to God from first- and second-graders.
One, signed Joyce, shows little kids know not to be ungrateful, even when faced with a big disappointment.
"Dear God," she wrote. "Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy."
Something appears to be wrong with the global warming theory presented as fact a few years back. How can the glacial ice come back to Alaska if we have continued pumping co2 into the atmosphere?
When I turn the heat on, our house continues to get warmer until someone turn the heat down. So, who turned down the heat?
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/53884.html (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/53884.html)
Alaska glaciers grew this year, thanks to colder weather
By Craig Medred | Anchorage Daily News
Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008.
Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August.
"In mid-June, I was surprised to see snow still at sea level in Prince William Sound," said U.S. Geological Survey glaciologist Bruce Molnia. "On the Juneau Icefield, there was still 20 feet of new snow on the surface of the Taku Glacier in late July. At Bering Glacier, a landslide I am studying, located at about 1,500 feet elevation, did not become snow free until early August.
"In general, the weather this summer was the worst I have seen in at least 20 years."
Never before in the history of a research project dating back to 1946 had the Juneau Icefield witnessed the kind of snow buildup that came this year. It was similar on a lot of other glaciers too.
"It's been a long time on most glaciers where they've actually had positive mass balance," Molnia said.
That's the way a scientist says the glaciers got thicker in the middle. Read the complete story at adn.com
Cold in oregon breaks 118 year old record.....
http://www.eastoregonian.info/print.asp ... M=29612.53 (http://www.eastoregonian.info/print.asp?SectionID=13&SubSectionID=48&ArticleID=83885&TM=29612.53)
Area in California breaks cold record that had stood since 1893...
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20 ... pe_growers (http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20081014/NEWS/810140335/-1/frontpage?Title=Frost__one_more_thing__for_grape_growers)
Another series of nails in the coffin of man made global warming theory.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blog ... -poof.aspx (http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/10/20/lorne-gunter-thirty-years-of-warmer-temperatures-go-poof.aspx)
Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof
Posted: October 20, 2008, 10:26 AM by Kelly McParland
In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.
Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures -- they're going down, not up.
On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to "a negative PDO" or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs -- El Ninos -- produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones -- La Ninas -- produce below average ones.
Dr. Hackbart also pointed out that periods of solar inactivity known as "solar minimums" magnify cold spells on his continent. So, given that August was the first month since 1913 in which no sunspot activity was recorded -- none -- and during which solar winds were at a 50-year low, he was not surprised that Brazilians were suffering (for them) a brutal cold snap. "This is no coincidence," he said as he scoffed at the notion that manmade carbon emissions had more impact than the sun and oceans on global climate.
Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modelling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.
Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.
But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's "hockey stick," in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.
Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception.
Don Easterbrook, a geologist at Western Washington University, says, "It's practically a slam dunk that we are in for about 30 years of global cooling," as the sun enters a particularly inactive phase. His examination of warming and cooling trends over the past four centuries shows an "almost exact correlation" between climate fluctuations and solar energy received on Earth, while showing almost "no correlation at all with CO2."
An analytical chemist who works in spectroscopy and atmospheric sensing, Michael J. Myers of Hilton Head, S. C., declared, "Man-made global warming is junk science," explaining that worldwide manmade CO2 emission each year "equals about 0.0168% of the atmosphere's CO2 concentration ... This results in a 0.00064% increase in the absorption of the sun's radiation. This is an insignificantly small number."
Other international scientists have called the manmade warming theory a "hoax," a "fraud" and simply "not credible."
While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.
For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ... cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."
Moreover, while the chart below was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.
It may be that more global warming doubters are surfacing because there just isn't any global warming.
This house of cars is coming down.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main ... do1610.xml (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml)
The world has never seen such freezing heat
By Christopher Booker
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.
So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)
Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.
Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.
Oops!
Arctic Sea Ice Underestimated for Weeks Due to Faulty Sensor
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... e9swvOqwIY (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=aIe9swvOqwIY)
I am going to add my 2 cents here in this thread. I think anthropogenic global warming is a bunch of nonsense.
3000 record low temps set in July...
http://www.accuweather.com/mt-news-blog ... s_july.asp (http://www.accuweather.com/mt-news-blogs.asp?blog=weathermatrix&partner=&pgUrl=/mtweb/content/weathermatrix/archives/2009/07/1000_low_temp_records_set_this_july.asp)
Quote from: "laughingwillow"3000 record low temps set in July...
http://www.accuweather.com/mt-news-blog ... s_july.asp (http://www.accuweather.com/mt-news-blogs.asp?blog=weathermatrix&partner=&pgUrl=/mtweb/content/weathermatrix/archives/2009/07/1000_low_temp_records_set_this_july.asp)
Irie LW,
I remember back in the '70's !!!Global cooling!
It finally came true??Buggers Al's theory though!
Hey but seriously it's very cool for this time of year for here.
Shit I've had to put a shirt on. :bcool:
Have you checked out sunspot activity?
I thought there was suppose to be a flare around the beginning of July?
Respect
Z
I just read about tree die off in Yosemite.
global warming....just like killer bees, Y2K, SARS; politicians work the masses by keeping them afraid.
Germany sets all-time record low for October...
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20091020-22693.html (http://www.thelocal.de/society/20091020-22693.html)
Meteorologists on Tuesday morning recorded the lowest ever October temperature in Germany, as the mercury dipped to a chilly -24.3 degrees Celsius in Bavaria's Berchtesgaden national park.
October 2009 was apparently the third coldest on record for the continental US.
Doh! I almost forgot. We are now experiencing man made climate change as opposed to global warming. That explains everything.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=n ... Get+Report (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=national&year=2009&month=10&submitted=Get+Report)
I think the title of the article says it all.......
Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
By Gerald Traufetter
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents
http://www.spiegel.de/international/wor ... 92,00.html (http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html)
Interesting read below.....
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/enviro ... ation.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6634282/Lord-Lawson-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-UEA-global-warming-data-manipulation.html)
Lord Lawson calls for public inquiry into UEA global warming data 'manipulation'
Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, has called for an independent inquiry into claims that leading climate change scientists manipulated data to strengthen the case for man-made global warming.
By Matthew Moore
Thousands of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years.
This morning Lord Lawson, who has reinvented himself as a prominent climate change sceptic since leaving front line politics, demanded that the apparent deception be fully investigated.
Oops......
quote from first linked article: ..............the way Warmist scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence in order to support their cause.
Here are a few tasters.
Manipulation of evidence:
I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/james ... l-warming/ (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/200 ... l-cooling/ (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/24/hiding-evidence-of-global-cooling/)
Irie,
So Crazy conspiracies theories are true !!!! Only thing is that it's the NWO that is running the scam!!!
The church of climatology is purely faith based. Just pay Al Gore you guilt money, & all your sins will be forgiven!
I damn glad they have managed to expose this BS.
It's definitely cooler here in the tropics than ten years ago.....
Respect
Z
I'm posting this article in its entirety due to the nature of the content as well as that of this thread.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu ... ation.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html)
Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation
Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with the Climategate whitewash, says Christopher Booker.
A week after my colleague James Delingpole , on his Telegraph blog, coined the term "Climategate" to describe the scandal revealed by the leaked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, Google was showing that the word now appears across the internet more than nine million times. But in all these acres of electronic coverage, one hugely relevant point about these thousands of documents has largely been missed.
The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Professor Philip Jones, the CRU's director, is in charge of the two key sets of data used by the IPCC to draw up its reports. Through its link to the Hadley Centre, part of the UK Met Office, which selects most of the IPCC's key scientific contributors, his global temperature record is the most important of the four sets of temperature data on which the IPCC and governments rely – not least for their predictions that the world will warm to catastrophic levels unless trillions of dollars are spent to avert it.
Dr Jones is also a key part of the closely knit group of American and British scientists responsible for promoting that picture of world temperatures conveyed by Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph which 10 years ago turned climate history on its head by showing that, after 1,000 years of decline, global temperatures have recently shot up to their highest level in recorded history.
Given star billing by the IPCC, not least for the way it appeared to eliminate the long-accepted Mediaeval Warm Period when temperatures were higher they are today, the graph became the central icon of the entire man-made global warming movement.
Since 2003, however, when the statistical methods used to create the "hockey stick" were first exposed as fundamentally flawed by an expert Canadian statistician Steve McIntyre , an increasingly heated battle has been raging between Mann's supporters, calling themselves "the Hockey Team", and McIntyre and his own allies, as they have ever more devastatingly called into question the entire statistical basis on which the IPCC and CRU construct their case.
The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.
There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious, as lucidly put together by Willis Eschenbach (see McIntyre's blog Climate Audit and Anthony Watt's blog Watts Up With That ), is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.
They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.
This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got "lost". Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.
But the question which inevitably arises from this systematic refusal to release their data is – what is it that these scientists seem so anxious to hide? The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. This comes up so often (not least in the documents relating to computer data in the Harry Read Me file) that it becomes the most disturbing single element of the entire story. This is what Mr McIntyre caught Dr Hansen doing with his GISS temperature record last year (after which Hansen was forced to revise his record), and two further shocking examples have now come to light from Australia and New Zealand.
In each of these countries it has been possible for local scientists to compare the official temperature record with the original data on which it was supposedly based. In each case it is clear that the same trick has been played – to turn an essentially flat temperature chart into a graph which shows temperatures steadily rising. And in each case this manipulation was carried out under the influence of the CRU.
What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.
The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics' work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.
Back in 2006, when the eminent US statistician Professor Edward Wegman produced an expert report for the US Congress vindicating Steve McIntyre's demolition of the "hockey stick", he excoriated the way in which this same "tightly knit group" of academics seemed only too keen to collaborate with each other and to "peer review" each other's papers in order to dominate the findings of those IPCC reports on which much of the future of the US and world economy may hang. In light of the latest revelations, it now seems even more evident that these men have been failing to uphold those principles which lie at the heart of genuine scientific enquiry and debate. Already one respected US climate scientist, Dr Eduardo Zorita, has called for Dr Mann and Dr Jones to be barred from any further participation in the IPCC. Even our own George Monbiot, horrified at finding how he has been betrayed by the supposed experts he has been revering and citing for so long, has called for Dr Jones to step down as head of the CRU.
The former Chancellor Lord (Nigel) Lawson, last week launching his new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, rightly called for a proper independent inquiry into the maze of skulduggery revealed by the CRU leaks. But the inquiry mooted on Friday, possibly to be chaired by Lord Rees, President of the Royal Society – itself long a shameless propagandist for the warmist cause – is far from being what Lord Lawson had in mind. Our hopelessly compromised scientific establishment cannot be allowed to get away with a whitewash of what has become the greatest scientific scandal of our age.
Christopher Booker's The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? (Continuum, £16.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £14.99 plus £1.25 p & p.
Inconvenient truth for Al Gore as his North Pole sums don't add up...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 956783.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/copenhagen/article6956783.ece)
The former US Vice-President, who became an unlikely figurehead for the green movement after narrating the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, became entangled in a new climate change "spin" row.
.....Mr Gore, speaking at the Copenhagen climate change summit, stated the latest research showed that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.
In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: "These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."
However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast. "It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr Maslowski said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."
Mr Gore's office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a "ballpark figure" several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.....
LW, whut a waist of bandagewith!
Al Gore invented "the Internets"! Without him ewe wood not even be able to post!
Ewe are even doutin' Prez Obamma?
They both wons the Nobell Prizes!
Now, ewe don't think ... they just give them away?
Fin
P.S. How ewe bean?
Finny, me friend. I was just thinking about you. Great to hear from you, bruddah.
lw
LW brotha, what a coincidence - I wuz jus thinkin' of stripperz.
So, smoke makes globall warmin'?
Like this:
(//http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y8/ginkorin/obama_smoking_joint-1.jpg)
Intresstin'
Fin
LOL Well, if you put it that way, I guess I might just leave a big-ass carbon footprint, maybe even visible from space. Deep space... :e_surprised:
lw
Well, if you'ins can keep up that pace, then ... you WILL HAVE to run fur Prezidentz too!
Eye just popped in tha Oval Office just tha other day to pick you up some champagene posters. No one wuz mindin' tha door.
Fin
Interestin set of graphs:
http://rense.com/general88/warming.htm (http://rense.com/general88/warming.htm)
Thank you, boosch.
Goers to show that figures don't lie but liars do figure.....
lw
Quote from: "laughingwillow"Thank you, boosch.
Goers to show that figures don't lie but liars do figure.....
lw
... and figures figure.
LW, yor champagne slogan should bee - "A Pound In Every POT, iPhones & Hand-Jobs Fur Everyones!". Yu're shure to wins.
Hey Missus LW.
Fin
Well, fin my friend, you are pretty much on the money with my campaign promises were I to have a desire to leave the prairie for washington. (Which I don't.)
Anyway, if I were running for prez, I would champaign with the promise to do away with victimless crime laws. That means weed and hookers would be legal. I would also outlaw global warming, er, climate change, of the man-made variety by proclamation.
lw
Quote from: "laughingwillow"I would also outlaw global warming, er, climate change, of the man-made variety by proclamation.
That reminds me of some of the creative thinking that already goes on in DC. You'd be a natural!
"So Joe, how
do we make sure that people have health insurance?"
"I know! We'll pass a law that makes them buy it!"
Quote from: "laughingwillow"Well, fin my friend, you are pretty much on the money with my campaign promises were I to have a desire to leave the prairie for washington. (Which I don't.)
Anyway, if I were running for prez, I would champaign with the promise to do away with victimless crime laws. That means weed and hookers would be legal. I would also outlaw global warming, er, climate change, of the man-made variety by proclamation.
lw
W-whudda 'bout tha iPhones & Hand-Jobs fer Everyones?
Fin
Well, fin, I'm guessing the prostitutes will be so happy their profession is legal, there will be plenty of free hand jobs to go around. Introductory offerings, if you will.
As for the iphone, I ain't figured out how to shake down Apple yet. Give me time.....
lw
We drove to my home town to watch my mom get married this weekend. It is one of the towns mentioned for reaching a low of -33 F. (While we were there, of course.)
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/articl ... low-normal (http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20100103/NEWS/1030352/-1/SiteMap/Feeling-cold?-We-re-at-30-below-normal)
Des Moines bottomed out at 17 below zero, two degrees above the record low on Jan. 2 in the capital. The National Weather Service station in Johnston recorded 22 degrees below zero.
Spencer and Sheldon recorded the coldest temperatures in the state with minus-33 degrees. Estherville came in at 28 below zero, Fort Dodge at negative 26. Sioux City and Orange City both reported minus-22 degrees. At least 16 more cities across the state reported lows in the negative double digits.
"We're a solid 30 degrees below normal," said Jeff Johnson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Des Moines is expected to have highs in the single digits above zero through Monday, while temperatures are expected to hover between zero and 10 degrees elsewhere in Iowa.
Here is a story about current severe winter weather and cold temps in Europe, the U$, India, China and Russia. (Most of the northern hemisphere.) I don't see the mention of global warming anywhere in the story, interestingly enough or even climate change. Although the climate IS changing, and has been since the dawn of time here on earth.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ather.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1240319/As-Britain-told-expect-snow-10-days-rest-world-coping-Arctic-weather.html)
As Britain told to expect snow for 'next 10 days', how is the rest of the world is coping with this Arctic weather?
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
When Britain woke up on the first day of the New Year it was met with freezing cold temperatures, feet of snow in places and the promise of travel chaos.
And now, three days into 2010, forecasters have warned to expect continued snowfall for the next 10 days - bringing with it added stress for commuters heading back to work after a festive break and children returning to school tomorrow.
Yet as Britain struggles to cope with the freezing weather conditions, other countries throughout the world are also finding themselves in the same predicament.
A series of weekend avalanches in the Swiss Alps killed at least five people, including a rescue doctor swept up while searching for a group of buried skiers.
But a number of skiers - including an unnamed Briton - were pulled alive from the snow.
Heavy snowfall and fog was hampering this morning's search for three people believed still trapped.
Authorities warned of 'considerable' avalanche risk after snowslides hit a group of skiers and then the rescuers who came to their aid in the Diemtig Valley, about 25 miles south of the capital Bern, on Sunday.
An emergency doctor who was part of the rescue team was among the four people confirmed killed there.
'Rescuers haven't been able to resume their search today because the helicopter can't get close to the site due to the bad weather,' said police spokeswoman Ursula Stauffer.
The three missing skiers were part of a large group that was skiing off-piste in the Chummli area of the Diemtig Valley when an avalanche buried one member of the party around midday on Sunday, she added.
Rescuers who arrived to help the skiers about half an hour later were hit by a second avalanche at the same spot, said Stauffer.
Officials subsequently launched a massive operation involving eight helicopters and 100 rescuers in an attempt to save their colleagues and the missing skiers.
Eight people were pulled from the snow alive, but three later died in the hospital of their injuries. One person was recovered dead. Officials halted the rescue and recovery operation at nightfall.
Stauffer declined to provide details on those killed until a news conference scheduled for late this afternoon.
Bernhard Scherz, an official with the Rubigen ski club who took part in the rescue, told Swiss website 20 Minuten Online that one of those recovered alive from the avalanche was an Englishman.
He had been buried under 8 feet of snow.
Separately, two skiers were buried in another avalanche near the town of Verbier close to the borders with France and Italy. One person was killed while his guide was rescued alive, police in the southern canton of Valais said.
The start of the ski season and heavy snowfall in recent days have prompted officials to warn of a heightened avalanche risk in the Swiss Alps.
AMERICA
Freezing weather gripped large parts of the United States early this morning - with no relief in sight for the rest of the week.
Wind chill took the temperatures in Minneapolis, Minnesota, down to -17C.
While the upper Midwest is used to frigid weather, the sunshine state Florida is also suffering freezing temperatures.
The Panhandle and much of northern Florida is under a hard freeze warning, the National Weather Service says.
The warning extended almost down to Tampa along the Gulf Coast.
Florida officials have been urging residents, visitors and farmers to prepare for temperatures near or below the freezing mark this week.
Along with the dangerously cold temperatures, residents in Montana are braced for blizzard conditions with snowfall of 12 to 20 inches possible across parts of the state.
In Chicago, residents bundled up on another bitterly cold day.
Despite the dangerous cold, some people ventured out - especially parishioners at Holy Name Cathedral.
'It's God first. Even though weather is terrible, we've still got to go to church,' Alez Alverez told CNN.
In the Northeast, the Weather Service warned that a large storm off the New England coast would continue to bring heavy snow to much of central New York state.
CHINA
Snow storms today have caused chaos in China's capital of Beijing, grinding aeroplanes to a halt and causing severe traffic delays.
Around 90 per cent of all flights were either delayed or cancelled, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.
In addition, major roads in Beijing and Tianjin, as well as nearby provinces Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, were forced to close due to the heavy snow.
The snow shows no sign of stopping, however, and temperatures are expected to drop to -16C in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday, causing more problems for those attempting to returning to work after a three-day New Year holiday.
Primary and middle schools in Beijing will be closed tomorrow as people are unable to drive their cars in the heavy snow
Authorities in Beijing and Tianjin announced today there will be no classes at primary and middle schools tomorrow as the snow had caused traffic chaos.
INDIA
Not a country usually associated with snow, India has experienced severe problems since Saturday when snowfall and a dense blanket of fog began to cause chaos.
More than 30 people died in cold-weather related incidents in Northern India over the past 24 hours, with 10 of those losing their lives in train accidents caused by the fog.
More than 40 people were injured, and 10 killed, in train accidents in India caused by the bad weather. Here, Indian Central Reserve Police Force soldiers patrol a railway track as a train moves during heavy snowfall in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir
Meanwhile, 24 homeless people have also died in the Uttar Pradesh state since Saturday due to the severe drop in temperature.
Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir were all hit with heavy snow, while Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi also recorded snowfall over the past 24 hours.
Flights from New Delhi were grounded or delayed yesterday because of poor visibility, Shashanka Nanda, a spokesman for the Delhi International Airport Limited said, before adding that conditions had improved today.
RUSSIA
A country much more used to dealing with high levels of snow, Russia saw temperature lows of a chilling -20C in Moscow today.
Those travelling on trains at stations near the Russian city of Vorkuta, attempted to continue their journeys despite the freezing conditions.
GERMANY
The snow caused more problems with flights in Germany, with one jet veering off the runway at Dortmund airport in western Germany.
The Air Berlin Boeing 737-800 broke to abort the take-off due to a 'technical irregularity', but none of the 165 passengers and six crew members were injured.
All passengers and crew were left unharmed after the Air Berlin plane aborted its take-off
The plane was not damaged but flights from the airport were cancelled or diverted for a large part of the day.
Airline spokeswoman Diane Daedelow said: 'A combination of the snowy weather and the speed the plane was travelling at forced the plane to skid off the runway.'
Over 30 flights from Frankfurt airport were also cancelled this morning.
AUSTRIA
While they are much more accustomed to dealing with snow, even native Austrians were struggling to cope with the freezing lows of -8C at night and -3C during the day.
But one creature happy to bound around in the fluffy snow was a mix breed dog called Lotta, who seemed entirely unconcerned as she became coated in snow during her run in Unken, in the Austrian province of Salzburg.
Meteorologists have predicted continued light snowfalls for the upcoming days in Austria.
Record lows were hit in my state yesterday.
Was -9 @ 5am today. For the record, that is colder than usual.
Good thing Copenhagen fell apart!
Cap and Trade is a SCAM!!!
varj: You might have missed the second to last post of mine...
We were in Sheldon watching my mother get hitched (for the fourth time) when the temps dipped to -33 F.
lw
Yep, I missed that one. Nuts!
Was that a record too? I'd assume so...
Never met yer ma, but glad to hear good things are happening for her. :)
http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-hea ... 1-06_08:49 (http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-headline.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0&date=2010-01-06_08:49)
While frigid air is already in place, yet another brutal shot of arctic air will grip the entire eastern two-thirds of the nation through Saturday. The last time severely low temperatures froze a large swath of the nation was in 1985. New waves of cold air will continue to spread southward from Canada in the coming weeks, possibly causing this winter also to rival the bitterly cold winters of 1982 and 1977-78. Some of the greatest temperature departures from average this winter may yet to come.
I, for one, am getting pretty tired of the cold!
On the other hand, it's really irrelevant to the global warming debate. Global warming (or the lack thereof) is a measure of integrated, average global temperature. It is a thermodynamic function of the rate that energy enters the planetary system (through sunlight) and exits the system (through re-radiation).
The weather is just moving the hot and cold around. If a big mass of cold air moves down from the arctic it seems cold, but it actually has nothing to do with average temperatures or overall warming.
The rate at which energy enters the system is a function of solar intensity and albedo. The rate it leaves is a function of albedo and atmospheric components. In reality weather does have an effect (snow, for example, increases the albedo and reflects more sunlight back out into space), but the effect is secondary and probably minor.
Willow, hav ewe stuk yur headz outsidez latley? Eye went out and me tater sack srivled to tha size of a acern (not tha greenback politikal kind ether)!
Fin
[attachment=0:joflxsz8]slide51-500x375.jpg[/attachment:joflxsz8]
amom: For what ever the reason, I doubt we'll be hearing much on receding arctic ice in the next while.......
lw
Blood in the water, er on the ice...
quote from below... Last week, as Britain froze, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband maintained in a parliamentary answer that the science of global warming was 'settled'....
.... Though record lows were experienced as far south as Cuba, where the daily maximum on beaches normally used for winter bathing was just 4.5C, the BBC assured viewers that the big chill was merely short-term 'weather' that had nothing to do with 'climate', which was still warming....
... However, according to Prof Latif and his colleagues, this in turn relates to much longer-term shifts – what are known as the Pacific and Atlantic 'multi-decadal oscillations' (MDOs). For Europe, the crucial factor here is the temperature of the water in the middle of the North Atlantic, now several degrees below its average when the world was still warming.
But the effects are not confined to the Northern Hemisphere. Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world's climate from a 'warm mode' to a 'cold mode' and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles. 'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather,' he said yesterday, 'and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -here.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1242011/DAVID-ROSE-The-mini-ice-age-starts-here.html)
The mini ice age starts here
By DAVID ROSE
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. The scientists' predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise. This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming 'deniers' or sceptics. However, both main British political parties continue to insist that the world is facing imminent disaster without drastic cuts in CO2.
Last week, as Britain froze, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband maintained in a parliamentary answer that the science of global warming was 'settled'.
Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago. Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany's Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start. He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September. Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: 'A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent. '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.'
As Europe, Asia and North America froze last week, conventional wisdom insisted that this was merely a 'blip' of no long-term significance.
Though record lows were experienced as far south as Cuba, where the daily maximum on beaches normally used for winter bathing was just 4.5C, the BBC assured viewers that the big chill was merely short-term 'weather' that had nothing to do with 'climate', which was still warming.
The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view.
On the one hand, it is true that the current freeze is the product of the 'Arctic oscillation' – a weather pattern that sees the development of huge 'blocking' areas of high pressure in northern latitudes, driving polar winds far to the south. Meteorologists say that this is at its strongest for at least 60 years. As a result, the jetstream – the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain – is currently running not over the English Channel but the Strait of Gibraltar.
However, according to Prof Latif and his colleagues, this in turn relates to much longer-term shifts – what are known as the Pacific and Atlantic 'multi-decadal oscillations' (MDOs). For Europe, the crucial factor here is the temperature of the water in the middle of the North Atlantic, now several degrees below its average when the world was still warming.
But the effects are not confined to the Northern Hemisphere. Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world's climate from a 'warm mode' to a 'cold mode' and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles. 'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather,' he said yesterday, 'and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries.
'We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler temperatures.' Prof Tsonis said that the period from 1915 to 1940 saw a strong warm mode, reflected in rising temperatures.
But from 1940 until the late Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, the world cooled, despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise. Many of the consequences of the recent warm mode were also observed 90 years ago. For example, in 1922, the Washington Post reported that Greenland's glaciers were fast disappearing, while Arctic seals were 'finding the water too hot'.
It interviewed a Captain Martin Ingebrigsten, who had been sailing the eastern Arctic for 54 years: 'He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, and since that time it has gotten steadily warmer. 'Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended into the sea they have entirely disappeared.' As a result, the shoals of fish that used to live in these waters had vanished, while the sea ice beyond the north coast of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean had melted. Warm Gulf Stream water was still detectable within a few hundred miles of the Pole.
In contrast, Prof Tsonis said, last week 56 per cent of the surface of the United States was covered by snow. 'That hasn't happened for several decades,' he pointed out. 'It just isn't true to say this is a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while.' He recalled that towards the end of the last cold mode, the world's media were preoccupied by fears of freezing. For example, in 1974, a Time magazine cover story predicted 'Another Ice Age', saying: 'Man may be somewhat responsible – as a result of farming and fuel burning [which is] blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the Earth.' Prof Tsonis said: 'Perhaps we will see talk of an ice age again by the early 2030s, just as the MDOs shift once more and temperatures begin to rise.'
Like Prof Latif, Prof Tsonis is not a climate change 'denier'. There is, he said, a measure of additional 'background' warming due to human activity and greenhouse gases that runs across the MDO cycles. 'This isn't just a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while' But he added: 'I do not believe in catastrophe theories. Man-made warming is balanced by the natural cycles, and I do not trust the computer models which state that if CO2 reaches a particular level then temperatures and sea levels will rise by a given amount. 'These models cannot be trusted to predict the weather for a week, yet they are running them to give readings for 100 years.' Prof Tsonis said that when he published his work in the highly respected journal Geophysical Research Letters, he was deluged with 'hate emails'. He added: 'People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I'm interested in is the truth.' He said he also received hate mail from climate change sceptics, accusing him of not going far enough to attack the theory of man-made warming.
The work of Profs Latif, Tsonis and their teams raises a crucial question: If some of the late 20th Century warming was caused not by carbon dioxide but by MDOs, then how much?
Tsonis did not give a figure; Latif suggested it could be anything between ten and 50 per cent.
Other critics of the warming orthodoxy say the role played by MDOs is even greater.
William Gray, emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, said that while he believed there had been some background rise caused by greenhouse gases, the computer models used by advocates of man-made warming had hugely exaggerated their effect.
Dr David Viner stands by his claim that snow will become an 'increasingly rare event' According to Prof Gray, these distort the way the atmosphere works. 'Most of the rise in temperature from the Seventies to the Nineties was natural,' he said. 'Very little was down to CO2 – in my view, as little as five to ten per cent.'
But last week, die-hard warming advocates were refusing to admit that MDOs were having any impact. In March 2000, Dr David Viner, then a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over the notorious 'Warmergate' leaked emails, said that within a few years snowfall would become 'a very rare and exciting event' in Britain, and that 'children just aren't going to know what snow is'.
Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: 'We've had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn't change anything.
'This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.'
The longer the cold spell lasts, the harder it may be to persuade the public of that assertion.
Oops! Looks like they did it again......
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 991177.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece)
quote from above link: A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.
Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.
In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.
It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.
Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.
Professor Murari Lal, who oversaw the chapter on glaciers in the IPCC report, said he would recommend that the claim about glaciers be dropped: "If Hasnain says officially that he never asserted this, or that it is a wrong presumption, than I will recommend that the assertion about Himalayan glaciers be removed from future IPCC assessments."
The IPCC's reliance on Hasnain's 1999 interview has been highlighted by Fred Pearce, the journalist who carried out the original interview for the New Scientist. Pearce said he rang Hasnain in India in 1999 after spotting his claims in an Indian magazine. Pearce said: "Hasnain told me then that he was bringing a report containing those numbers to Britain. The report had not been peer reviewed or formally published in a scientific journal and it had no formal status so I reported his work on that basis.
Lots-o admissions below that lead me to believe the public has indeed been misled in regard to man made global warming and that relevant data has been "misplaced."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nised.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html)
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
By JONATHAN PETRE
Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
There has been no global warming since 1995
Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes
Data: Professor Phil Jones admitted his record keeping is 'not as good as it should be'.......
.....The data is crucial to the famous 'hockey stick graph' used by climate change advocates to support the theory.
Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming.
The admissions will be seized on by sceptics as fresh evidence that there are serious flaws at the heart of the science of climate change and the orthodoxy that recent rises in temperature are largely man-made.
The raw data, collected from hundreds of weather stations around the world and analysed by his unit, has been used for years to bolster efforts by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to press governments to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z0fYPoLwE3 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html#ixzz0fYPoLwE3)
OOPs.... They apparently did it again!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ct-siddall (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/21/sea-level-geoscience-retract-siddall)
Climate scientists withdraw journal claims of rising sea levels
Study claimed in 2009 that sea levels would rise by up to 82cm by the end of century – but the report's author now says true estimate is still unknown
Scientists have been forced to withdraw a study on projected sea level rise due to global warming after finding mistakes that undermined the findings.
The study, published in 2009 in Nature Geoscience, one of the top journals in its field, confirmed the conclusions of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It used data over the last 22,000 years to predict that sea level would rise by between 7cm and 82cm by the end of the century...........
....Siddall said that he did not know whether the retracted paper's estimate of sea level rise was an overestimate or an underestimate.
Announcing the formal retraction of the paper from the journal, Siddall said: "It's one of those things that happens. People make mistakes and mistakes happen in science." He said there were two separate technical mistakes in the paper, which were pointed out by other scientists after it was published. A formal retraction was required, rather than a correction, because the errors undermined the study's conclusion....
....In a statement the authors of the paper said: "Since publication of our paper we have become aware of two mistakes which impact the detailed estimation of future sea level rise. This means that we can no longer draw firm conclusions regarding 21st century sea level rise from this study without further work.
"One mistake was a miscalculation; the other was not to allow fully for temperature change over the past 2,000 years. Because of these issues we have retracted the paper and will now invest in the further work needed to correct these mistakes."
I don't know if I would use the term "global warming," so much as climate change. And I don't see how this is such a controversial idea since humans change the climate all the time, when we farm land, clear woods for housing, enact wars that destroy whole areas. We send pollution into the air. We breed new kinds of plants and animals. We continue to grow in population in ridiculous numbers.
I don't dispute, LW, that some claims made about the environment are dubious, or involve vested interests that might just involved cooked statistics. But I do not believe this is always the case, nor that there are not some brilliant scientists making insightful observations and predictions. And I cannot believe that humans, as a huge presence on this planet, with all the industrial and technological activities we engage in, don't have an effect.
I believe this planet is alive, and that is the only reason we are alive on it. Inorganic planets without water and air and so on do not support life, much less the teeming millions of kinds of life this earth supports. I believe we affect the planet and that we often affect it poorly, with short-term decisions and indifference.
I believe we can be better caretakers of our Mother Earth, the being from whom we all come, and everything we know comes, and that we return to when our lives are over. This planet is home, every inch of it. It is unimaginably beautiful, and bountiful, and that we do not cherish and keep her, like we do our families and loved ones and possessions and human institutions, is a tragedy. Whether we are able to inhabit her for the next 50 or 50,000 years is less relevant to me than how we treat her each and every day. We are of this place, but we do not own it, much as many of us act the part, and worse the part of indifferent, abusive owners at that. We do not own this place even as each of us will live our whole lives here and pass on here. What set of human beliefs about the sacred would argue against our home not being so?
There must be more common ground that can be found among those who dispute these topics, and actions taken to preserve the planet's life and beauty. It is in our own interests, and it is the right thing to do.
ccen: Global warming was the term used by Gore and his flunkies until the planet stopped warming. Now its climate change. However, the climate has done nothing but change since the planet was born. Their ENTIRE theory is FUCKED, imo.
Please don't confuse the belief above with the idea that we don't need to be good stewards of this planet. We need to take care of this planet because its the only one we have. (Or the only one that will have us.)
On the other hand, I'm a firm believer in working with reality. Climate change science is in the process of officially being proven to be junk science, imo. The numbers and basic climate change models were based on lies and massaged data, imo. Scientists were paid to go along and provide results desired while those who disagreed were shunned and had funding cut off.
I don't need a scientist to see how humans are currently affecting the planet, and have been for a long time. I arrived at this office walking down a paved street strewn with trash, passed by hundreds of cars spewing poisons into the air. Not too far from almost anyone is a factory of some kind with a cloud of black smoke coming from it. Where North America was once mostly forest it is now not. One can see these things with one's own eyes, smell them. I do what I can, in terms of recycling, and product purchase, and using public transit. But that is a small drop in the bucket.
I have no quarrel with Gore. I respect him. That said, science is the process of theory and proof, and then more facts, and another theory and another proof, etc. That's why we don't believe that the earth is the center of the universe anymore, or that there are only five planets in the solar system.
As far as legislation, I'm all for the kind that cuts the poisons we put in the air, or in the earth, or in our own bodies. But we can't even decide that ill or injured human beings should be cared for by doctors without ending up financially homeless. We do a shit poor job at caring for our own kind, and this is reflected by how we abuse and neglect nature and the planet as a whole.
The thing I keep coming back to is that we could live in balance with each other and with the rest of the world. It is possible. Humans are capable of great innovations for all kinds of works. We can build death camps, with efficient gas chambers; we can build electric cars that get 100 miles on a single charge. We can tend a stranger in a crisis, or step over his moaning body.
Given the mystery of the future, or what calamity may or may not happen, why chance it? Why not put all of our resources into rejuvenating our race and our world? Because it's not important enough? Because it's too much work? Because God will take care of us? I don't know the answer, but I suspect that until something happens, a person's rise to great power, a catastrophe, something, things will shamble along as they are, with people arguing this way and that.
I've long believed the planet will outlive humanity, as it was here before our kind. My suspicion is that we will eventually overwhelm its resources by sheer numbers and abuse, and either die off, or launch in the stars, to use and abuse some other place. The hope I retain, because I need to have some hope to function, is that the balance of people who don't need things to be worse and worse will shift in greater numbers til action is taken, real action, beyond simply lowering one or another grave statistic, toward an honest reckoning with the fragility, mortality, and unspeakable beauty that this world still bears, despite all, and what good can yet come.
Well put Raymond as always. And for all you climate change deniers, conspiracy addicts, and fanatics of all stripes, what if you are wrong??
A high-level inquiry into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found there was "little evidence" for its claims about global warming.
It also said the panel had emphasised the negative impacts of climate change and made "substantive findings" based on little proof.
The review by the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was launched after the IPCC's hugely embarrassing 2007 benchmark climate change report, which contained exaggerated and false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035.
The panel was forced to admit its key claim in support of global warming was lifted from a 1999 magazine article. The report was based on an interview with a little-known Indian scientist who has since said his views were "speculation" and not backed by research.
Independent climate scientist Peter Taylor said last night: "The IPCC's credibility has been deeply dented and something has to be done. It can't just be a matter of adjusting the practices. They have got to look at what are the consequences of having got it wrong in terms of what the public think is going on. Admitting that it needs to reform means something has gone wrong and they really do need to look at the science."
http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/196642 (http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/196642)
I agree with you, cenacle, that we need to stop polluting the earth. There are so many pollutants, and the job is huge.
Which is why it is an actual disservice to the planet and humanity to obscure and blunt our environmental efforts with this "global warming" hype.
The EPA, which allows amazingly high amounts of true toxins and pollutants into our environment daily thru their bad science and policy, has now identified carbon dioxide as a major toxic pollutant. This is ridiculous, and sick. Obama can't get a bill thru the congress, so he will use the EPA as his tool to whip us all into line. They will now gleefully use their extralegal, extrajudicial powers to regulate carbon dioxide production, and to tax us all out of existence. All in the service of their wealthy masters.
JRL, what if I am wrong about anthropogenic, carbon-driven global warming? What if the warmistas are right? Then we will prolly enjoy a return to the Medieval warm period, which was a halcyon time for mankind.
BTW, this is the same medieval warming period that the IPCC and the warmistas tried to send down the memory hole, with their crooked data sets and writings.
IPCC has totally discredited themselves, plain for all to see. They have sunk their own agenda, by doing and publishing bad data and junk science.