[RFI] Global Warming and Ecology

[W6YN Don Milbury]

Scientific research has made a decisive turn away from dubious warnings of climate catastrophes and toward a much different thesis, that the modern warming is moderate and not man-made.

First, NASA acknowledged it had accidentally inflated its official record of surface temperatures in the U.S. beginning with the year 2000. The revised data show 1998 falling to second place behind 1934 as the warmest year, followed by 1921, 2006, 1931, 1999, and 1953. Four of the top 10 years on record are now from the 1930s, before human emissions could have been responsible, while only three of the top 10 (1998, 2006, 1999) are from the past 10 years.

New data are also emerging that the temperature record should be adjusted even further downward. Meteorologist Anthony Watts has launched an effort to photograph the 1,221 "most reliable" surface temperature stations in the U.S. to see if land use changes over the years may be contaminating their records. Images of the stations he's photographed so far (available at www.surfacestations.org) show many cases where the stations seem to be reporting warming caused by nearby buildings, parking lots, or heat-generating activities.

The surface temperature record in the U.S. was thought to be the most accurate of all the nations in the world. If that record is unreliable, how reliable is the global temperature record?

The new official temperature trend in the U.S. since the 1930s shows a warming so small it is within the admitted range of error of the instrument record. In other words, there's been no warming trend in the U.S. that could be attributed to human greenhouse gas emissions. How many people know that?

Further adjustments in response to Watts' work and the findings of other scientists who believe the "urban heat island effect" has been underestimated may show the U.S. cooled in the past half-century. Wouldn't that be funny? But more seriously, how credible, then, are claims of significant global warming, which are based on even more poorly maintained temperature stations in Russia and various Third World countries? They, too, will need to be adjusted downward.

Also in August,2007 research published in the American Geophysical Union's Geophysical Research Letters online edition by Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in the University of Alabama - Huntsville's Earth System Science Center, and coauthors again confirmed the existence of a natural climatic heat vent at the equator. The phenomenon, first identified in 2001 by Richard Lindzen at MIT and a NASA research team, acts like a "natural thermostat," releasing heat into space whenever temperatures rise above a certain level.

The supposedly sophisticated global climate models don't have any code written for a natural heat vent. Their response to the discovery since 2001 has been to pretend the climatic heat vent doesn't exist (despite NASA's call at the time for the modeler community to take the development seriously). After August 2007, they can't pretend any longer.

The proven existence of a natural heat vent at the equator would flat-out end the debate over global warming. It would explain why observed warming during the past half-century is less than half as much as the computer models predict. It would reveal a climate system more dynamic than previously thought, one able to breathe in man's considerable carbon dioxide emissions and exhale some part of it into space.

You probably haven't read about any of these scientific discoveries in your daily newspapers. The media, with some notable exceptions, have largely ignored these latest developments, focusing instead on the recently released policymaker's summary of the fourth report of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It proclaims, incongruously, that there is near-certainty that the cause of the modern warming is human.

But it's odd, isn't it, that the executive summary of a "scientific" report would be released three months before part one of the complete report was finished? (The other parts haven't even been released yet.) Or that its supporters freely admit the summary document was edited by a small group of government officials to make it agree with their political agendas?

The latest IPCC report isn't just unreliable, it's wrong. As S. Fred Singer noted in a letter published in the September 2006 issue of Geotimes, a U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report, published in April 2006, shows a global warming pattern (in latitude and altitude) that differs dramatically from the pattern calculated by state-of-the-art greenhouse models. In other words, the observed and theoretical "fingerprints" don't match. Singer says we can therefore state with confidence that the human contribution to current warming is not significant and outweighed by natural climate variability.

The science has clearly turned away from dubious theories and predictions of climate catastrophe. The "skeptics," pilloried just a few months ago by a cover story in Newsweek and countless "news" stories written by uninformed and gullible reporters, have been vindicated. It should be a happy ending.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the world's anti-capitalist policymakers will take note and stop their stampede toward passing expensive and damaging laws to address a nonexistent problem. Global warming may no longer be a problem, but laws and taxes passed in its name may be with us for a long time.

73,  Don,  W6YN

-- Mike Coslo <mjc5 at psu.edu> wrote:
Jim Brown wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:13:47 -0500, Mike Coslo wrote:
>
>   
>> There is no UNDISPUTED evidence that global warming is the result
>> of human activities.
>>     
>
> Those doing the disputing don't have science on their side. I see 
> those doing the disputing as coming from one or more of the 
> following places:
Yoiks Jim, talk about the wrong attributes! I never said that nor would 
I ever.

The greenhouse effect is based on scientific facts that are able to be 
experimentally proven at the high school level. Anyone arguing against 
that might as well tilt at Ohms law while they are at it..

That certain gases have an effect upon atmospheric heat retention is 
also a fact involved in the greenhouse effect.

We've been pumping some of those gases into the atmosphere, increasing 
their percentages of the atmosphere to levels that should  have a 
measurable effect. It appears that this is happening, and your note 
about looking at other areas of the world is well taken. The growing 
season in Canada has been extended by several weeks ( I don't have the 
report in front of me, so I can't note the exact amount) But in any 
event, the most effects will of course be felt at the fringes, even more 
so at first.

That being said, I am perfectly willing to say that global warming is 
utter bunkum. But what I need is some solid scientific evidence, not 
political axe-grinding. Let's see some solid evidence of the reasons why 
some scientific facts do not play out in real life, with the mechanisms 
that defeat the heat retention afforded by increased greenhouse gas 
percentage in the atmosphere. I also need a good explanations that what 
appears to be global warming is something else. Every attempt I have 
seen at debunking originates from funding sources or groups who would 
profit from people believing that Global warming is a hoax.

Like I say, I'm open, but not to politically based arguments.

    - 73 de Mike KB3EIA