Friday, July 21, 2006

 

Unreliapundit Runs Away Completely

Even after all the victories that Unreliapundit handed to me in our debates (see previous posts), I didn't think that he would give me the ultimate vindication so quickly and easily. Solely because of his fear of me, he has turned off comments on his site. He is so incapable of responding to my arguments that he's not only "cheated and retreated," as is his wont, he's run entirely from the field of battle. As an added bonus, this was one day after posting the following:

WARS ARE WON WHEN THE ENEMY IS DEFEATED - UTTERLY, TOTALLY AND UNCONDITIONALLY.

Well, thanks, Unreliapundit. I guess I won our little "war," by your definition. You cried and whined and ran away. You deleted my factual posts on global warming, quietly dropped every lost argument to grasp at the next straw, and even with that, you still could make no headway against the truth. In order to silence my outlet for "correcting disinformation," you decided to cut off feedback altogether. This is why people like Unreliapundit cannot be trusted with our freedoms. You believe that protecting your reputation and ego is more important than anything.

Enjoy your re-insulated bubble of ignorance and cowardice. You obviously treasure it more than the truth, honor, bravery, or freedom of speech.

OK, who's next?

UPDATE -- Sunday, July 23rd After considering my post above, Unreliapundit has decided to retake the field and put his comments back up in a different format. I aplaud this decision. You can no longer post comments on particular articles, but in general sections. Naturally, all of my old comments and everyone else's who posted recently were lost in the purge. I've put my first new comment up. We'll see how long this lasts...

UPDATE -- Tuesday, August 1st Didn't last too long. My comment was "removed by administrator". Ahh, the expected cowardice. It is refreshing to be able to count on some things totally and completely.

Comments:
bwahahahahahaha!
 
your so-called factual posts on co2 all were off the mark: these facts remain:

1 - from 1940-1970 global temps decreased as man made co3 increased. if man made co2 causes gloabla warming this would be impossible. it is dispositive.

2 - the greenland study proves climate is local. as does the kilimanjaro study and the alps study.

i have blogged on each with links. or you can google it yourself.

bottom line: kilimanjaro has been shrinking since c1900; the alps were green 1000 years ago. neither situatiuon today can be blamed on glaoba anything or man made co2.

3 -

The truth about global warming - it's the Sun that's to blame
By Michael Leidig and Roya Nikkhah
(Filed: 18/07/2004)

Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 deg Celsius over the past 20 years and are widely believed to be responsible for new extremes in weather patterns. After pressure from environmentalists, politicians agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, promising to limit greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Britain ratified the protocol in 2002 and said it would cut emissions by 12.5 per cent from 1990 levels.

Globally, 1997, 1998 and 2002 were the hottest years since worldwide weather records were first collated in 1860.

Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures.

To determine the Sun's role in global warming, Dr Solanki's research team measured magnetic zones on the Sun's surface known as sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun's energy output.

The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years - but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.

Dr Solanki does not know what is causing the Sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.

He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.

Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, welcomed Dr Solanki's research. "While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said.

"It shows that there is enough happening on the solar front to merit further research. Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor."

Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.

He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.

This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.

Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.

"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.

"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html


4 - There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
By Bob Carter
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?

Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.

The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike. Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported.

Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.

There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.

On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King's, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public's trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly.

Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.

The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.

The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Intern-ationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.

As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.

Informal discussions have already begun about a new AP6 audit body, designed to vet rigorously the science advice that the Partnership receives, including from the IPCC. Can Britain afford not to be there?

• Prof Bob Carter is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html

5 - The Global Warming Hoax
by James K. Glassman (December 15, 2003)

MILAN, Italy -- On many of the walls here at the Feira Milano conference center, site of the giant United Nations meeting on climate change, Green activists have posted flamboyant posters showing a picture of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla), with a quotation from him: "Global warming is 'the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.'"

The idea being proffered by these sophisticates, of course, is that Inhofe is a typical American rube. Global warming a hoax! What a dope!

In fact, Inhofe is one of the best-informed Senators on the science and economics of global warming. And "global warming" -- as it's used by environmental extremists -- is indeed a hoax.

Yes, the Earth's surface has warmed a bit over the past century, but is that warming caused mainly by humans or by natural cycles? And can changes in human activity -- specifically reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions -- have anything more than a tiny effect on temperature? The answers to those questions, which are at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol and other attempts to force cuts in energy use, are simply unknown.

It is the claim of certainty that is a hoax. It's a dangerous one, too, since using global-warming theory as the basis for extreme policy mandates could plunge the world into a long-term recession or even a depression.

The quote on the poster comes from Inhofe's speech during debate over the McCain-Lieberman bill that would have curtailed greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States, a measure similar to the Kyoto Protocol, which President Bush rejected in 2001 as "fatally flawed" and which still lacks enough ratifying nations for implementation six years after it was signed. McCain-Lieberman was rejected, too -- in part because of Inhofe's strenuous efforts as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

One of the themes being promoted by Greens at this conference is that the American people want Kyoto-style measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions and that the close vote on McCain-Lieberman proves it. Wednesday's issue of ECO, the daily conference newsletter backed by WWF International, Greenpeace and other environmental groups, refers to "mounting anger at home" to President Bush's stance on climate change. "The American public is catching on to this charade," claims ECO.

But several times this week, Inhofe has patiently explained the real arithmetic behind the Senate vote. First, it was 16 votes short of the 60 effectively needed for passage under Senate rules. Second, it was riddled with concessions to win votes. Without the amendments, Inhofe figures only 32 Senators would have backed it. Finally, the bill was sold under a claim that it would cost only $20 per household per year. A study commissioned by TechCentralStation and performed by Charles River Associates, the respected economic research firm, found that the costs would be at least 17 times that much.

Inhofe heads a congressional delegation of eight Republicans in Milan. The others are Sens. Larry Craig (Idaho), Craig Thomas (Wyo.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) and Reps. Chris Cannon (Utah), Fred Upton (Mich.), Chris Shays (Conn.) and Jim Greenwood (Pa). There are no Democratic members of Congress here but plenty of Democratic staffers.

I sat down with Inhofe at breakfast at his hotel in Milan Thursday morning. Considering the fact that nothing much has been happening at COP-9, the ninth United Nations conference of the parties to the 1992 Rio agreement on the environment, I started by asking why he was here.

"I'm here," he said, "to show that we are not going to ratify Kyoto."

That's Inhofe at his finest. Straight talk. No nonsense.

Unlike some other members of Congress, who accept the scientific basis for Kyoto but say that the treaty costs too much and exempts developing countries, Inhofe disputes the science. He knows the studies, and he recognizes that the tide has turned in the past few years.

"Virtually all of the research since 1999 has been refuting [the theory of human-caused global warming]. It is ludicrous that Kyoto can be as damaging economically as it is when there is no science to justify it."

New research, for example, has challenged Michael Mann's "hockey-stick" formula, which asserts that temperatures have risen sharply, in an unprecedented fashion. In fact, warming was worse centuries ago, before industrialization and automobiles.

The delegation met Wednesday with counterparts from Europe, and Inhofe and many of his colleagues were shocked at the Europeans' refusal even to consider scientific research that casts doubt on predictions of cataclysmic warming. "They just don't want to talk about the science," said Inhofe. "They don't want to listen. They were Zombies" -- unlike "real people in the U.S." Those Americans, said Inhofe, "we are turning around" with the recent research.

Some members of the delegation have been as forceful as Inhofe on the subject of climate-change science. For example, in 1998, with Bill Clinton in the White House, Sen. Larry Craig said, "As more and more American scientists review the available data on global warming, it is becoming increasingly clear that the vast majority believe the commitments for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions made by the administration in the Kyoto Protocol are an unnecessary response to an exaggerated threat the vice president himself [i.e., Al Gore] is caught up in making."

The talk of the conference has been Russia. Will the Russians ratify Kyoto? The treaty requires the votes of nations producing 55 percent of all emissions from developed countries. Currently, the tally is 44 percent, so the Russians, with 17 percent, hold the key.

Inhofe says that some Russians see negotiations on ratification "as a way to make some money. They want to see how big the bribe will be." But, in the end, he thinks the Russians will reject Kyoto, for reasons of science and economics, just as Bush rejected it as shortly after his inauguration.

"I'm proud of Putin for having the courage to look at the science," said Inhofe, referring to the Russian president. "In this environment, it takes courage."

Inhofe also agrees with the assessment that this has been a particularly depressing conference for the Greens. The plenary sessions are only about half-full, and "there was no enthusiasm in the room."

Meanwhile, Inhofe points out, the United States is shelling out $4.7 million, footing the bill for about one-fourth of the cost of the U.N.'s extravaganza. But the price may be worthwhile, if only because Inhofe is getting his message out. He's teaching the value of straight talking to the Europeans and the Green NGO officials who, for a long time now, have assumed they can set the world's agenda. This year, with Kyoto on its deathbed, they're learning otherwise. It's delightful to see.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3400

6 - Man-Made Global Warming Hoax
Excerpts reprinted with permission from Tom Gremillion
Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Global warming is a hoax, invented in 1988, that combines old myths including limits to growth, sustainability, the population growth time bomb, the depletion of resources, pollution, anti-Americanism and anti-corporate sentiment and, of all things, fear of an ice age. Those that espoused and supported the old myths have joined forced into a new group called “Environmentalists.”

Most environmentalists have no technical or scientific credentials whatsoever. What they have are major news outlets ready and willing to publicize their every utterance regardless of whether or not they are backed up by scientific proof. Atmospheric science requires highly technical knowledge and skills, not possessed by the vast majority of the so-called environmentalists, who yet feel qualified to demand that human activity subjugate itself to the whims of their new deity, Mother Nature.

Environmentalists claim that the Earth’s atmosphere is getting hotter. They claim that the polar icecaps and glaciers will melt and sea levels will rise over two hundred feet, flooding most coastal cities. They claim that many areas of the Earth will turn into deserts. They make all these claims but cannot substantiate them with real scientific evidence. Parts of the polar icecap and glaciers are melting but other areas of the polar icecaps and glaciers are thickening. The environmentalists base their “proof” of the existence of global warming on the melting areas but are strangely silent, even militant to the point of violence, if anyone mentions the areas that are thickening, and those thickening areas are many.

In the past, there have been many times when the global mean temperatures were warmer, sometimes much warmer and colder, much colder than they are now. Global mean temperatures are cyclical with the seasons but also with other normal cycles, as they have been for the entire history of the Earth. Scientific data from ice cores, tree rings and other indicators of global mean temperatures prove this. Human activity has never been the cause of these global temperature swings as the “global warming” advocates claim. If human activity was the cause, where were the SUVs, the power plants and industries in our historical past? They did not exist. If human activity was not the cause of these global temperature swings, what was?

The energy output of the Sun is far greater in one second than human activity could produce in a million years. The Earth rotates around the Sun. Its orbit is slightly elliptical. The energy reaching the Earth from the Sun varies slightly as the distance from the Sun to the Earth varies due to its elliptical orbit. The Sun activity increases and decreases with fluctuations in the solar flares emitted by the Sun. Differences in these fluctuation rates cause increases and decreases of solar energy hitting the Earth. This causes fluctuations in the global mean temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere.

In 2004, the energy from massive solar flares bombarded the Earth with solar energy. This solar energy caused heating of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. Most of the energy of the solar flare eruptions dissipated into space. The amounts of energy ejected were massive, much greater than normal. Had the Earth received a full blast of the solar energy from one of the numerous flare eruptions in 2004, the consequences to life on Earth could have been disastrous. The higher than usual amounts of energy that struck the Earth’s atmosphere did have their effects, however, including some heating of the atmosphere.

Then there is the eruption of volcanoes, such as Mt. St. Helens, ejecting dust and ash into the Earth’s atmosphere. The amount of dust and ash in the atmosphere varies the amount of energy that can cause heating or cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere. Volcanoes also eject the kind of compounds that environmentalists call greenhouse gases. A single eruption the size of the Mt. St. Helens eruption released more of these gases, dust and ash into the atmosphere than all such emissions by human activity since the beginning of recorded human history. And there are numerous volcanic eruptions yearly.

The oceans are also a major source of greenhouse gases, as are trees. Trees and other vegetation take in carbon dioxide and give off other gases such as methane, a major greenhouse gas, and a host of other compounds, many of which are also greenhouse gases. Decaying vegetation also gives off methane gas. Studies of smog in the Los Angeles basin indicate that over 90% of the smog is generated by the vegetation in the area. To aid in perpetuating the hoax, however, environmentalists, aided by major news media outlets, censored and suppressed this study.

Studies have shown that greenhouse gases produced by human activity accounts for around 1 percent of the gases in the atmosphere. The total elimination of human generated greenhouse gases would have a negligible effect on Earth’s global mean atmospheric temperatures. The elimination of all U.S. gasoline powered vehicles would reduce worldwide “greenhouse” emissions by less than 0.2%.” What would be the effect on global mean temperatures? None. Doubling of manmade greenhouse emissions above current levels would increase the global mean temperature by one degree Centigrade, which is within the normal range of temperature swings.

It is the fluctuations of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, volcanic eruptions, the emission of gases by oceans and trees, all natural occurrences, that cause rises and declines in global mean temperatures, i.e., “global warming” and “global cooling,” not human activity.

Satellite data taken over the past 25 years indicate no surface or atmospheric warming. If anything there has been a very slight cooling, on the order of 0.01 degree Centigrade.

Recently, astronomers have noticed a thinning of the polar icecaps on Mars.

Is this “global warming, Mars style” and do Martian SUVs, power plants, and industries cause it? Hardly, but the “environmentalists” think so. Some even blame it on us here on Earth.

Global warming IS a hoax. Those claiming that “global warming” is real have an agenda other than saving the planet from human activity.

http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=12594

7 - The Global Warming Hoax
By Alan Caruba
National Anxiety Center | June 23, 2005

On June 13, USA Today declared, "The Debate's Over: Globe Is Warming." That's another headline you can ignore.

The world has been warming ever since the last Ice Age, but it is not rapidly warming in ways that threaten our existence, nor warming in a way that requires the industrialized nations to drastically cut back on their use of energy to avoid the many scenarios of catastrophe the Greens have been peddling since the 1980s.

Global warming is a classic scare campaign initiated by the Greens after a previous effort in the 1970s to influence public policy by declaring a coming Ice Age failed to generate any response. What we are seeing now is yet another worldwide coordinated campaign by the Greens to rescue the global warming theory from the junk heap to which it should be consigned.

In early June, the National Resources Defense Council, one of the large Green organizations, declared that, "Global warming is fast becoming the number one environmental problem of our time."

It has organized an Internet campaign led by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Sen. John McCain, and other so-called environmental leaders to drum up the fears of people who know little of the real science of the Earth in order to force the US to implement the United Nations Kyoto protocol on "climate control." Anyone who thinks humans have any control over the Earth's climate is willfully ignoring the evidence that we have none.

The NRDC declared, "The world's leading scientists now agree that global warming is real and is happening right now. According to their forecasts, extreme changes in climate could produce a future in which erratic and chaotic weather, melting ice caps and rising sea levels usher in an era of drought, crop failure, famine, flood and mass extinctions."

Scary, eh? One huge volcanic eruption could do this. As to the weather, it is the very definition of chaos and has been for billions of years.

The good news is that leading climatologists and meteorologists are actively debunking this nonsense. One of them, Dr. F. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, is in the forefront.

He debunks a June 7 statement issued by several national academies of sciences just before Britain's Tony Blair arrived for talks with President Bush, saying, "The Statement simply regurgitates the contentious conclusions of the (UN) International Panel on Climate Change report of 2001, which has been disputed by credible scientists. The so-called scientific consensus is pure fiction."

Among the data he cites is the fact that, "Since 1940, there has been a 35-year-long cooling trend and not much warming in the past quarter-century, according to global data from weather satellites."

Moreover, "an extrapolation of the satellite data gives at most a fraction of a degree rise for the 2lst century," adding that, "The IPCC further claims that the 20th century was the warmest in the past 100 years, but this myth is based on a seriously flawed publication. The IPCC also claims that sea levels will rise by up to nearly a meter by 2100; but every indication is that they will continue to rise inexorably and much less, as they have for nearly 20,000 years since the peak of the last Ice Age."

Bear in mind that the IPCC is a creation of the United Nations and we have all seen how corrupt that institution has become, failing to fulfill its mandate for a more peaceful world while seeking to become a world government that would destroy the sovereignty of the United States and all other nations.

Other scientists have joined Dr. Singer to dispute the global warming claims. Paul Knappenberger of the University of Virginia, says of the claims made by the science academies that, "What is missing is the scientific assessment of the potential threat. Without a threat assessment, a simple scientific finding on its own doesn't warrant any change of action, no matter how scientifically groundbreaking it might be."

What passes for a threat assessment is simply the claim being made. Knappenberger noted, "The fact of the matter is that there does exist a growing body of scientific evidence that the climate changes in the coming decades will be modest and proceed at a rate that will lie somewhere near the low end of the IPCC projected temperature range."

Here's what you must keep in mind; the IPCC claims are based on what virtually every scientist knows to be seriously flawed computer models for its projections. In short, we are being asked to believe what computer engineers are telling us, not what credible climatologists and meteorologists are telling us.

There isn't a computer model for the world's weather that can reliably predict the future by more than a week at best. This is why tracking the routes of hurricanes proves so difficult. This is why blizzards often turn out to be better or worse than initial projections.

Iain Murray, another scientist, laid into the statement of the national academies for having committed the sin of advocacy. "Climate alarmists in the scientific community now face a long retreat, while the victory of President Bush's position on the issue seems assured.

Even the hopes of European intervention are dashed." The U.S. Senate unanimously rejected signing the Kyoto protocol many years ago. "Rational nations will not take action if the costs of the action outweigh the benefits," said Murray of the protocol's demand for energy caps on emissions while exempting nations like China and India, each with more than a billion people.

Meanwhile, in Congress we have people like Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-NM, the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, seeking to introduce legislation that would put "caps" on emissions of greenhouse gases and implementing what is essentially the Kyoto protocol that the Senate rejected long ago.

The Department of Energy has estimated that a cap-and-trade program such as Bingaman proposes would cost $331 billion in lost GDP between 2010 and 2025. Other Senators like McCain and Lieberman have similar strategies. In my view, caps are idiotic.

There is no scientific consensus. There is only the manipulation of public opinion and the effort to influence public policy. There is no rapid global warming and no way that any limits on energy use could have any effect on it if it did exist. Global warming is a classic scare campaign and we may well be witnessing its last desperate gasps as more and more scientists step forward to debunk it.
Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at The National Anxiety Center.

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18526

8 - State of Fear by Michael Crichton: Exposing the Global Warming Sham
by Alan Caruba (February 15, 2005)

The famed novelist, Michael Crichton, may achieve what mountains of scientific data produced by meteorologists and others have not. He may get the public to understand that the UN Kyoto Climate Control Protocol is, itself, a work of fiction.

His novel, “State of Fear”, (HarperCollins, 603 pages) is a technopolitical thriller based on the widely ignored data that global warming is a hoax, but worse than that, it is a hoax specifically designed to harm the lives and the economy of people living in industrialized nations. It may well be the first novel to come complete with a section devoted to the data that demonstrates not only how false global warming is, but the impact it would have if the UN Protocol was strictly enforced.

When first proposed, the US Senate unanimously rejected the global warming treaty and, in his first term, President George W. Bush withdrew the Kyoto Protocol from consideration in 2001. If this action had not been taken and the treaty applied to the US, the country would have been required to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 7% below its 1990 level. They only way to achieve this would have been to impose strict energy use limits.

Take away energy or greatly reduce it and you create the conditions for an economic disaster and impact the lives and health of Americans from coast to coast. You invite draconian “solutions” such as limiting the use of air conditioning, gas rationing, and how many hours factories can operate.

“State of Fear” begins with the murder of an American graduate student studying ocean-wave dynamics. Other murders follow, but the UN Kyoto Protocol is tantamount to murder, too. Recall the deaths of Frenchmen when a heat wave hit that nation a few years ago. The lack of air conditioning literally killed countless elderly and others. Consider how the East Coast of the United States shut down when a massive electrical blackout occurred. Only the backup generators in hospitals prevented the deaths of seriously ill patients.

The novel references the same bogus computer models that are cited by global-warming proponents such as Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, Kevin Knobloch of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and John Passacantando of Greenpeace, USA. They predict melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and other catastrophes. They are as reliable as a deck of Tarot cards. Here again, scientific data amply demonstrates that, though the temperatures in Greenland and Iceland have been falling at 2.2 degrees Celsius since 1987, there has been no affect on the ice in those nations that has actually been accumulating, not melting. The same is happening in Antarctica.

After the Russian Federation approved its participation in the UN Kyoto Protocol, the treaty comes into effect on February 16, 2005. Its requirements for the reduction of energy use exempts Red China, India, both home to a billion people, and some 130 Third World nations. Happily, the US will not participate, but UN treaties have saddled us with laws such as the Endangered Species Act that have proven a great hindrance to economic growth. Most certainly, the US Constitution does not authorize such laws, although it does bind us to honor idiotic treaties conjured up by the UN.

There are, however, those in the Congress and in various States who would impose these harmful restrictions on Americans. Chief among them in Congress is Sen. John McCain and Sen. Joseph Lieberman who introduced “The Climate Stewardship Act” (S. 139) that would cap CO2 emissions at 2000 levels by 2010. It is estimated this would cost the American economy $106 billion.

Nine northeastern states are colluding for the same goal (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.) Other States attorneys general are using a public nuisance lawsuit against five utilities to achieve the same goal. All this is more than curious given the Senate resolution that rejected the UN Kyoto Protocol. And, of course, they based their action on the same bogus data put forth by the UN and the many NGOs behind the global warming hoax. The end result would be a significant slowdown in economic growth combined with a rise in the cost of energy.

I hope Michael Crichton’s novel (which is soundly rooted in documented science) becomes yet another big bestseller. I hope lots of people who remain susceptible to the lies of the Greens will read it and discover what those of us who have fulminated against the UN Kyoto Treaty since the Greens first conjured it in the early 1990s. Our speeches, our articles, our books, based on real science and real economics have not slowed or stopped its ratification or implementation. Perhaps a work of fiction will achieve what we could not?

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4143

9 - Global Warming Explained

The solar constant isn't constant. The sun is a variable star.

The vast majority of climate scientists in the world seriously and objectively studies what it is that influences global climate changes. We don't hear as much from them in the media as we do from the far smaller but also far more vocal minority of climate scientists who make a living by publicizing alarmist and often outrageous claims about man's detrimental influence on the global climate.

Armed with the very real evidence of the global cooling trend during the first half of the 20th century, climate alarmists claimed in the 1970s that another ice age was imminent. Today they (including even some former proponents of a coming ice age, e. g.: Stephen Schneider), ride a wave of alarm about man-made catastrophic global warming, a wave of alarm they created and keep fueling .

Objective scientists find that the evidence supporting a man-made global warming trend is at best skimpy. However, it cannot and should not be denied that climate changes take place and that they have done so since long before man even made an appearance on Earth.

Based on many different indicators from widely varying sources, it has been found that our sun, a variable star, is a major and controlling influence on the extent and rate of long- and short-term climate changes affecting Earth. In a January 17, 2003 article, Science@NASA describes the extent of the fluctuations in solar radiation over time, how they are being measured, the instruments that are being used to measure them, how those instruments are being calibrated and what has been found by using them.[1] The following graph is from that article.

eddy_strip.gif (99597 bytes)

Above: Inferred variations in solar intensity (red and green lines) over the last 900 years appear to be related to the severity of winters in London and Paris. The red line is deduced from the abundance of a heavy form of carbon (carbon-14) in tree rings. This "isotope" of carbon is formed in the upper atmosphere when incoming cosmic rays smash into carbon dioxide molecules. When the Sun's activity is low, its weakened magnetic field lets more cosmic rays into the solar system, so carbon-14 abundances go up. (Notice on the graph that the scale for carbon-14 is upside down.) This image by scientist John Eddy is based on an earlier one that appeared in Science, 192, 1189 (1976).[1]

That appears to be ample evidence of variations in solar radiation, but it does not explain what causes them. If the causes of the variations were do be determined and if it were possible to use knowledge about them to predict the trends of the variations in solar radiation, that would permit to forecast trends for climate change. Some climate researchers are hard at work to do just that.

In his report, Solar Activity: A Dominant Factor in Climate Dynamics, Dr. Theodor Landscheidt discusses that the distance of the nucleus of the Sun from the center of the mass of the solar system varies in an eleven-year cycle. The centre of the mass of the solar system is a function of the distribution of the mass of the Sun and the planets, and as that distribution changes as the planets orbit around the Sun, the distance between the nucleus of the Sun and the center of the mass of the solar system is not constant and varies from one cycle to the next. That causes variations in the rotational speed of the Sun. In turn, that causes disturbances in the internal circulation of the Sun.
Those disturbances manifest themselves in the form of sunspots and solar flares. It is primarily the intensity of solar flares and eruptions, not so much the 11-year sunspot cycle, that is of concern. Massive solar flares can be triggered and occur even during or near the minimum of the 11-year sunspot cycle, and it can happen that none or few of the sunspots detected during the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle are associated with very intense increases of solar radiation brought about by massive solar flares or eruptions.

Depending on whether the nucleus of the Sun is closer or farther removed from the center of mass of the solar system, and depending on the Sun's position in its oscillation around that centre of mass, solar activity ranges from being virtually absent to being very pronounced. During periods of high solar activity, the energy radiated by the Sun increases, and therefore the Earth receives more radiation from the Sun and heats up. Moreover, solar activities also interfere with the amount of cosmic radiation that reaches the atmosphere of the Earth. Then there will be also a corresponding reduction in cloud formation and therefore less precipitation. When the Sun has a long interval of relatively large energy output, the Earth experiences global warming. When the energy output by the Sun is low for an extended interval, the Earth cools off. If such a quiet interval lasts for a very long time, the Earth experiences an ice age.

The position of the Sun over time in relation to the center of mass of the solar system can be calculated with great accuracy, both forward and backward in time and for many years. It is therefore possible not only to correlate solar activity with attributes of the climate in the past but also to predict to what extent solar activity will vary in the future. Dr. Landscheidt related his calculations to some aspects of the weather and accurately predicted three years in advance an end to the Sahelian drought (the end of which brought hunger in Ethiopia to a close). He also predicted the devastating flood in the Spring of 2001 (as well as others, that, he estimates, are still to come at intervals of about 8.7 years, as they have been doing) in the River Po catch basin, Italy.

Figure 7
solvarfig7.gif (26510 bytes)

Most important [in the prediction of global climate] are solar cycles which are without exception related to the sun’s fundamental oscillation about the center of mass of the solar system and form a fractal into which cycles of different length, but similar function are integrated. The solar dynamo theory developed by H. Babcock, the first still rudimental theory of sunspot activity, starts from the premise that the dynamics of the magnetic sunspot cycle is driven by the sun’s rotation. Yet this theory only takes into account the sun’s spin momentum, related to its rotation on its axis, but not its orbital angular momentum linked to its very irregular oscillation about the center of mass of the solar system (CM).

Figure 7 shows this fundamental motion, described by Newton [85] three centuries ago. It is regulated by the distribution of the masses of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in space. The plot shows the relative ecliptic positions of the center of mass (small circles) and the sun’s center (cross) for the years 1945 to 1995 in a heliocentric coordinate system. The large solid circle marks the sun’s surface. Most of the time, CM is to be found outside of the sun’s body. Wide oscillations with distances up to 2.2 solar radii between the two centers are followed by narrow orbits which may result in close encounters of the centers as in 1951 and 1990. The contribution of the sun’s orbital angular momentum to its total angular momentum is not negligible. It can reach 25% of the spin momentum [60]. The orbital angular momentum varies from -0.1 x 10 47 to 4.3 x 10 47 g cm 2 s -1 , or reversely, which is more than a forty-fold increase or decrease. Thus it is conceivable that these variations are related to varying phenomena in the sun’s activity, especially if it is considered that the sun’s angular momentum plays an important role in the dynamo theory of the sun’s magnetic activity.

Figure 2
solvarfig2.gif (39426 bytes)
Modulation of the intensity of the 11-year sunspot cycle by the 90-year Gleissberg-cycle, according to J. A. Eddy [17].
The arrows indicate the minima of the Gleissberg-cycle around 1670 (Maunder-Minimum), 1810 and 1895, which coincided with low points in global temperatures.

Figure 2 after J. A. Eddy [17] shows the strong intensity variations in the 11-year sunspot cycle. When we connect the peaks by an enveloping curve, minima in the Gleissberg cycle emerge around the years 1670 (Maunder minimum), 1810, and 1895. They are marked by black arrows. Each of these secular sunspot minima coincided with cool climate in the Northern Hemisphere. The deeper the level of solar activity fell, the deeper sank the temperatures.

Quoted from: Solar Activity: A Dominant Factor in Climate Dynamics, by Dr. Theodor Landscheidt, Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity, Nova Scotia, Canada


See also the following:

*

Up-to-date plot of all monthly-averaged sunspot numbers from the year 1749 through the present. (16 kB GIF file)
*

Sunspots in History
*

Solar Activity - Climate and Weather Changes

One of the main parties interested in making a living of the man-made-global-warming hoax is Canada's federal government. It loves "global-warming" because the public's acceptance of the hype constantly provides new means to collect new taxes and to ram through its agenda for socialization and world-income equalization, until we all are at the same level of poverty, or until the Canadian economy collapses in ruins, whichever comes first.

Next Page: The Little Ice Age — Will there be another one?

Back to Global Warming Index Page
http://www.fathersforlife.org/REA/warming4.htm

10 - January 09, 2004
The global warming scam

The British government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has said that global warming is a more serious threat to the world than terrorism. His remarks are utter balderdash from start to finish and illustrate the truly lamentable decline of science into ideological propaganda.

Sir David says the Bush administration should not dismiss global warming because: 1) the ten hottest years on record started in 1991 2) sea levels are rising 3) ice caps are melting and 4) the 'causal link' between man-made emissions and global warming is well established.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. There is no such evidence. The whole thing is a global scam. There is no firm evidence that warming is happening; even if it is, it is most likely to have natural, not man-made causes; carbon dioxide, supposedly the culprit, makes up such a tiny fraction of the atmosphere that even if it were to quadruple, the effect on climate would be negligible; and just about every one of the eco-doomster stories that curdle our blood every five minutes is either speculative, ahistorical or scientifically illiterate.

To take a few examples from Sir David's litany.

1) Sea levels are rising. As this article explains, this claim is not the result of observable data. Like so much of the global warming industry, it is the result of frail computer modelling using dodgy or incomplete data. It is therefore not an observed value, but a wholly artificial model construct. Furthermore, the data fed into the computer is drawn from the atypical North Atlantic basin, ignoring the seas around Australia where levels have remained pretty static. And anyway, as this article explains, sea level rises have nothing to do with warmer climate. Sea levels rose during the last ice age. Warming can actually slow down sea level rise.

2) Ice caps are melting. Some are, some aren't. Some are breaking up, as is normal. But some are actually expanding, as in the Antarctic where the ice sheet is growing, as this article points out. The bit of the Antarctic that is breaking up, the Larsen ice-shelf, which has been causing foaming hysteria among eco-doomsters, won't increase sea levels because it has already displaced its own weight in the sea.

3) The hottest years on record started in 1991. Which records? The European climate in the Middle Ages was two degrees hotter than it is now. They grew vines in Northumberland, for heaven's sake. Then there was the Little Ice Age, which lasted until about 1880. So the 0.6% warming since then is part of a pretty normal pattern, and nothing for any normal person to get excited about.

4) The causal link is well established. Totally false. It is simply loudly asserted. Virtually all the scare stuff comes from computer modelling, which is simply inadequate to factor in all the -- literally-- millions of variables that make up climate change. If you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.

That's why this week's earlier eco-scare story, that more than a million species will become extinct as a result of global warming over the next 50 years, is risible. All that means is that someone has put into the computer the global warming scenario, and the computer has calculated what would happen on the basis of that premise. But -duh! -the premise is totally unproven. The real scientific evidence is that -- we just don't know; and the theories so far, linking man, carbon dioxide and climate warming. are specious. There's some seriously bad science going on in the environmentalist camp.

After Kyoto, one of the most eminent scientists involved in the National Academy of Sciences study on climate change, Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT, blew the whistle on the politicised rubbish that was being spouted. Since his article was so significant, I reproduce it in full here:

'Last week the National Academy of Sciences released a report on climate change, prepared in response to a request from the White House, that was depicted in the press as an implicit endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol. CNN's Michelle Mitchell was typical of the coverage when she declared that the report represented "a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."

'As one of 11 scientists who prepared the report, I can state that this is simply untrue. For starters, the NAS never asks that all participants agree to all elements of a report, but rather that the report represent the span of views. This the full report did, making clear that there is no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and what causes them.

'As usual, far too much public attention was paid to the hastily prepared summary rather than to the body of the report. The summary began with a zinger--that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise, etc., before following with the necessary qualifications. For example, the full text noted that 20 years was too short a period for estimating long-term trends, but the summary forgot to mention this.

'Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and agreement, the science is by no means settled. We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds).

'But--and I cannot stress this enough--we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say, contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions.

'One reason for this uncertainty is that, as the report states, the climate is always changing; change is the norm. Two centuries ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from a little ice age. A millennium ago, during the Middle Ages, the same region was in a warm period. Thirty years ago, we were concerned with global cooling.

'Distinguishing the small recent changes in global mean temperature from the natural variability, which is unknown, is not a trivial task. All attempts so far make the assumption that existing computer climate models simulate natural variability, but I doubt that anyone really believes this assumption.

'We simply do not know what relation, if any, exists between global climate changes and water vapor, clouds, storms, hurricanes, and other factors, including regional climate changes, which are generally much larger than global changes and not correlated with them. Nor do we know how to predict changes in greenhouse gases. This is because we cannot forecast economic and technological change over the next century, and also because there are many man-made substances whose properties and levels are not well known, but which could be comparable in importance to carbon dioxide.

'What we do is know that a doubling of carbon dioxide by itself would produce only a modest temperature increase of one degree Celsius. Larger projected increases depend on "amplification" of the carbon dioxide by more important, but poorly modeled, greenhouse gases, clouds and water vapor.

'The press has frequently tied the existence of climate change to a need for Kyoto. The NAS panel did not address this question. My own view, consistent with the panel's work, is that the Kyoto Protocol would not result in a substantial reduction in global warming. Given the difficulties in significantly limiting levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a more effective policy might well focus on other greenhouse substances whose potential for reducing global warming in a short time may be greater.

'The panel was finally asked to evaluate the work of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on the Summary for Policymakers, the only part ever read or quoted. The Summary for Policymakers, which is seen as endorsing Kyoto, is commonly presented as the consensus of thousands of the world's foremost climate scientists. Within the confines of professional courtesy, the NAS panel essentially concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not provide suitable guidance for the U.S. government.

'The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research activities in climate science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The Summary for Policymakers is, but it is also a very different document. It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom are also their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no evidence.

'Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to make rational decisions. A fairer view of the science will show that there is still a vast amount of uncertainty--far more than advocates of Kyoto would like to acknowledge--and that the NAS report has hardly ended the debate. Nor was it meant to.'

As Professor Philip Stott wrote in the Wall Street Journal on April 2 2001:

'"Global warming" was invented in 1988, when it replaced two earlier myths of an imminent plunge into another Ice Age and the threat of a nuclear winter. The new myth was seen to encapsulate a whole range of other myths and attitudes that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s, including "limits to growth," sustainability, neo-Malthusian fears of a population time bomb, pollution, anticorporate anti-Americanism, and an Al Gore-like analysis of human greed disturbing the ecological harmony and balance of the earth.

'Initially, in Europe, the new myth was embraced by both right and left. The right was concerned with breaking the power of traditional trade unions, such as the coal miners -- the labor force behind a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions -- and promoting the development of nuclear power. Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research was established at the personal instigation of none other than Margaret Thatcher.

'The left, by contrast, was obsessed with population growth, industrialization, the car, development and globalization. Today, the narrative of global warming has evolved into an emblematic issue for authoritarian greens, who employ a form of language that has been characterized by the physicist P.H. Borcherds as "the hysterical subjunctive." And it is this grammatical imperative that is now dominating the European media when they complain about Mr. Bush, the U.S., and their willful denial of the true faith.'

Go figure.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/000253.html
 
Unreliapundit:

Thanks for giving me another opportunity to instruct you on science and global warming. Once again, I will show the fallacy and shallowness of your arguments, but I'm sure you know that already. It's why you had to stop allowing comments on your blog. I noticed that you had no comment to the factuality surrounding that.

Naturally, I'll address each one of your points and provided articles in order. First, I would like to recommend link tags in the future. There's really no need to quote an entire, copyrighted article, when you can just link to it. It's much more legible and saves on all kinds of potential trouble down the road.

Since my free time is going to be parceled out in small chunks over the next few days, and since it will be more legible, I'll respond to each of your points in a separate comment.

1 - from 1940-1970 global temps decreased as man made co3 increased. if man made co2 causes gloabla warming this would be impossible. it is dispositive.

You've already argued this point and I've refuted it before (see point #5). Now, you simply repeat your disproven assertion, making no reference to my previous rebuttal. Your capacity for learning/remembering is severely limited. Perhaps when deleting my comments from your board, you were also deleting them from your mind.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding here about global warming and greenhouse gases. They are not (and no one claims that they are) the sole determining factor of climate on the earth. Climate depends on a lot of factors. The level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is one of those factors. Other factors can still cause major or minor fluctuations. To not be able to understand that and state that, "if man made co2 causes global warming this would be impossible" is just plain stupid. But, you are Unreliapundit, the Clueless Blogger, so what do I expect.
Naturally, what the science actually predicts and what we observe in the temperature record is a long term overall increase in temperature as the gases increase. Every year doesn't have to be the hottest on record for the long-term trend to hold up.
 
2 - the greenland study proves climate is local. as does the kilimanjaro study and the alps study.
i have blogged on each with links. or you can google it yourself.
bottom line: kilimanjaro has been shrinking since c1900; the alps were green 1000 years ago. neither situatiuon today can be blamed on glaoba anything or man made co2.


This one is a little strange to me, since I have never mentioned Kilimanjaro or the Alps as proof of anything. I did previously correct you on who crossed the Alps. You thought it was Attila, when it was actually Hannibal. As usual, your grasp of simple facts was non-existent.

We did already deal with Greenland extensively here and I showed why the North Atlantic Oscillation and the variability it causes were relevant and why a study needed to control for them in order to draw any conclusions about global warming. My study did and concluded that the temperature record in Greenland supported the theory of global warming. You actually presented no scientific study that made any assertions about global warming.

If Kilimanjaro has been shrinking since 1900, that basically coincides with the start of the industrial revolution and increased man-made greenhouse gases. So what are you trying to say with that?

As for the Alps, I'll assume that you are referring to your posting here. As usual, you are too lazy to make your own arguments. Also, again, you fail to understand how different climate factors can interact. I've given a good analogy for what you're trying to argue here (point #2). Just because something happened in the past for one reason doesn't mean that it can't happen again later for a different reason. I don't understand how this simple and obvious point continues to elude you.

I'm not arguing that other factors aren't contributing to the decline of individual glaciers. Especially in the case of Kilimanjaro, it is recognized that forest depletion in the area around the mountain is a significant, man-created factor. But global warming is a significant factor in all of them.

Finally, you say that these studies prove "climate is local." If glaciers are being reduced simultaneously in Japan (Kilimanjaro), Europe (Alps), North America (Glacier National Park), Africa(Rwenzori Mountains), and the Arctic how does it follow it is being caused by local factors. Seems pretty global to me.
 
3 - The truth about global warming atricle

In typical Unreliapundit style, this "point" is merely a quoting of an entire article, one that I've already dissected here (point 1).

Summary: Once again, every scientist quoted in this article agrees that greenhouse gases AND the recent sunspot activity have both contributed to increased temperatures recently. The only people discounting the effect of increased greenhouse gases here are the headline writers, David Bellamy (an honorary professor), and you. I'll go with the scientists. Further, at the time the study was first published, Dr Solanki, the author, said, "the brighter Sun and higher levels of 'greenhouse gases', such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact." Later, based on review the Max Planck Institute clarified their position as, "solar activity affects the climate but plays only a minor role in the current global warming."

The only truly illustrative thing about point 3 is that Unreliapundit still clings to the same arguments that I've already proven in detail are bogus. He doesn't bother to respond to my arguments as to why this is the case; he just repeats his same disproven argument again as if it were never argued. That's why he has to delete my posts from his site; his arguments cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny, and he has no capacity to respond meaningfully.
 
"COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson worries that he may have found clues that show history repeating itself, and if he is right, the result could have important implications to modern society.
...
From the mountains of data drawn by analyzing countless ice cores, and a meticulous review of sometimes obscure historic records, Thompson and his research team at Ohio State University are convinced that the global climate has changed dramatically.

But more importantly, they believe it has happened at least once before...
...
A professor of geological sciences at Ohio State and a researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center, Thompson points to markers in numerous records suggesting that the climate was altered suddenly some 5,200 years ago with severe impacts.

...

Thompson points to a study of tree rings from Ireland and England that span a period of 7,000 years. The point in that record when the tree rings were narrowest suggesting the driest period experienced by the trees was approximately 5,200 years ago.

He points to ice core records showing the ratio of two oxygen isotopes retrieved from the ice fields atop Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. A proxy for atmospheric temperature at the time snow fell, the records are at their lowest 5,200 years before now.

He lists the shift by the Sahara Desert from a habitable region to a barren desert; major changes in plant pollen uncovered from lakebed cores in South America, and the record lowest levels of methane retrieved from ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica and all occurred at the same time 5,200 years ago.

"Something happened back at this time and it was monumental," Thompson said. "But it didn't seem monumental to humans then because there were only approximately 250 million people occupying the planet, compared to the 6.4 billion we now have.

"The evidence clearly points back to this point in history and to some event that occurred. It also points to similar changes occurring in today's climate as well," he said.
...
Thompson believes that the 5,200-year old event may have been caused by a dramatic fluctuation in solar energy reaching the earth. Scientists know that a historic global cooling called the Little Ice Age, from 1450 to 1850 A.D., coincided with two periods of decreased solar activity.

Evidence shows that around 5,200 years ago, solar output first dropped precipitously and then surged over a short period. It is this huge solar energy oscillation that Thompson believes may have triggered the climate change he sees in all those records."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041219142907.htm

YINYANG MAN: COULDN'T BE MAN-MADE IF IT HAPPENED 5200 YEARS AGO.

SURE: IT MIGHT BE HAPPENING NOW, BUT IT'S N-A-T-U-R-A-L.

AND TAXING FOSSIL FUELS IS STUPID IF IT'S SOLAR.

repeat: "It is this huge solar energy oscillation that Thompson believes may have triggered the climate change he sees in all those records."

there is evidence that mars and venus and titan are ALL WARMING. this could not be anthropogenic.

it is likely solar.

it is likely it happended before. MANY TIMES.

and Leftism and Kyoto won't change a dang thing.

in fact, placing an extra burden on economic activity is probably a bad thing; it probably will make it tougher for us to respond to the changing environment.

but don't worry your LITTLE head over it: we humans have been good adapters for the last million years; we'll survive - even thrive.

necessity is the mother of invention.

our inventiveness and our free marketplaces will come up with solutions.

our governments won't.

buhbyee!
 
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/12/041219142907.htm
 
if you have a shred of integrity you will surrender your conviction that global warming is anthropogenic.

the science is NOT conclusive.
 
4 - Problem With Global Warming Article

Once again, another "point" that's just a republishing of an article. Is there a pattern here? No analysis, no insight, not even a note about what is significant. Just cut and paste. Shallow and sad.

That being said, this is probably the best article that Unreliapundit has found. It's actually written by a scientist and he actually argues against the evidence for global warming. Of course, it's not a peer-reviewed paper or anything, but still, it's a vast improvement from what we're used to seeing.

The thing that struck me the most about the article was that several assertions were made, but virtually none were backed up with evidence. Let's examine each of the important ones in turn:

"Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero)."
Once again we have the straw man set up that all warming or cooling must be explained by the greenhouse effect. It's just not true, and no one claims that it is. 1998 was a year where the extremely high record temperatures were due to the continual rise from greenhouse gases and the very real, non-man made effects of El Nino. When El Nino subsided, the temperatures retreated, but the general warming trend continued. It's not temperature stasis if we have reached a global average higher each year once this well-known phenomenon (that no one denies the existence of) is accounted for. Note that the article makes no mention of El Nino or why 1998 was special. For further details, see here

The article claims that "thousands of independent scientists...have long appreciated...such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin." It's funny, they don't seem to write many peer-reviewed papers (or even non-peer reviewed papers) about their beliefs. The evidence for the assertion that these scientists exist is zero. It is a baseless assertion. As Science magazine revealed, out of 928 papers on climate change, none disagreed with the assertion that man-made global warming is real.

"Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed."
Once again, an assertion with no evidence (or even explanation) to back it up. I'm saying it is deeply flawed, but I won't tell you why or how that conclusion was reached. Here are some of the issues that he might be talking about and their simple refutations.

Of course, shortly after saying we can't know with any reliability what the temperatures were like in the 20th century, he immediately turns around and discusses the climate from the last 6 million years as stone cold facts. Yes, it's true, we've had warming and cooling periods on the earth before. The difference here is the rate of change over a small period of time and the fact that one of the major causes behind it is a well understood mechanism, the greenhouse effect. In this case, it's being driven by greenhouse gases largely produced by humans. If he doesn't believe that, he should actually question either the idea that man is producing those gases or the effect that those gases have on climate when they exist in increased quantities in the atmosphere. Noting that in the past, there were cycles caused by different things actually says nothing. It's like saying that wildfires started before man, therefore a campfire left burning couldn't have caused one last week.

He says, "The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming." He Unreliapundit, he's one of the crazies that you were railing against that predicted global cooling. I guess they weren't the same people after all.

Finally, he falls back on the conspiracy ideas for why no one supports his ideas. Most of his reasons are fairly Brit-centric, but the gist is "intimidation against speaking out" and "sophisticated scientific brainwashing" fuels all of this. He's accusing thousands of scientists world-wide of acting in concert to perpetuate a myth that they know is wrong. I think Occam's razor suggests that it's a little easier to believe that it's just him being wrong, especially since he is overly fond of unsubstantiated claims.

Here are the actual undisputed facts that this paper (and Unreliapundit) continually ignore:

"(1) Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are increasing rapidly in the atmosphere due to human activity. This is a measured fact not even disputed by staunch "climate skeptics".
(2) Any increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will change the radiation balance of the Earth and increase surface temperatures. This is basic and undisputed physics that has been known for over a hundred years."

You can argue over the amount of influence versus other factors, but these two simple facts are what we can actually count on and why global warming is factual.
 
the biosphere has ample means of uptaking additonal amountsthe co2 from the atmosphere. this has been discussed in several scientific paper. some describe increase in vine growth, others of algae and grasses.


this is how "gaia" maintains homeostatis.

there is proof that global warming has occured b4 humanity inout ANY aditonal co2 or any other greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.

there is no proof that what we are seeing today is unusual from a hisorical perspective.

and there is proof that the warming is not global.

many icons of mmgw are local: fuji, the alps, kilimanjaro - even the arctic.

the dust bowl was a local event.

and you have skirted around the FACT that other bodies in our solar system are warming.

in fact, many parts of your longwinded "essays" agree with the skeptics - because you at least sometimes acknowledge that co2 is not the hole thing, nor man made gases.

kyoto was a fruad. m-m gw due to mm gh gases is a hoax.

and relax: in another 50,000 years the glaciars wil come back!

buhbyeee!

bwahahahahahahaha!
 
5 - The Global Warming Hoax

This article mainly deals with non-scientific issues of legislation and sucking up to James Inhofe. There are really only two scientific assertions that I see:

"Virtually all of the research since 1999 has been refuting [the theory of human-caused global warming]."
Inhofe offers no evidence and his claim is demonstrably false.

"In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8)."

New research, for example, has challenged Michael Mann's "hockey-stick" formula, which asserts that temperatures have risen sharply, in an unprecedented fashion. In fact, warming was worse centuries ago, before industrialization and automobiles.
I've already covered both these assertions above in #4. Again, note, no evidence of of any sort is offered for the claims.
 
6 - Man-Made Global Warming Hoax

This article is so full of misinformation and distortions that Unreliapundit could have authored it (except that the grammar and spelling are adequate). I've dealt with most of this elsewhere, but let's highlight a few points:

Of course, I must first note that there is no link to any study, evidence, or external reference whatsoever in the article. Tom Gremillion claims no degree of expertise. This is just a random piece of trash where any unsubstantiated hit against global warming can be served up.


"A single eruption the size of the Mt. St. Helens eruption released more of these gases, dust and ash into the atmosphere than all such emissions by human activity since the beginning of recorded human history. "
NOAA's tracking of greenhouse gases over time shows a steady increase, closely tracking increased man-made emissions over time. Releasing dust and ash actually cause atmospheric cooling, not warming. They block sunlight. Duh.

Also see, "Gases trapped in ice cores show the dramatic impact that human activities have had on the planet since the Industrial Revolution. The first graph reveals how atmospheric carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxides from coal- and oil-burning power plants, cars, and other fossil-fuel-burning sources have climbed along with the world population, with as yet unknown effects on the climate system." here.


"Satellite data taken over the past 25 years indicate no surface or atmospheric warming. If anything there has been a very slight cooling, on the order of 0.01 degree Centigrade."
This was totally reversed later the same year. The fact that the satellite data matched the surface data after the previous problem was discovered is what moved a number of skeptics over to agreeing with global warming:
"Satellite and weather-balloon research released Friday removes a last bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say."
"Surface temperatures have shown small but steady increases since the 1970s, but the tropics had shown little atmospheric heating and even some cooling. Now, after sleuthing reported in three papers released by the journal Science, revisions have been made to that atmospheric data."
"Once corrected, the satellite and balloon temperatures align with other surface and upper-atmosphere measures, as well as climate change models, Santer says. “

"Recently, astronomers have noticed a thinning of the polar icecaps on Mars."
OK, now we're really reaching. Where better to look than other planets to try to explain weather on our planet? Of course, this polar icecap thinning is only since 2002, so it does little to explain anything before that. I'll turn the explanation over to the scientists:

"The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.

Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing."
 
7 - The Global Warming Hoax

This article is published by the The National Anxiety Center's Alan Caruba, not exactly a scientific bastion.

Very nicely, for me, this article uses the following as evidence:

"Among the data he [Singer] cites is the fact that, "Since 1940, there has been a 35-year-long cooling trend and not much warming in the past quarter-century, according to global data from weather satellites."

Obviously, I've already shown that this was overturned in 2005, when the inaccuarcies in the satellite data were corrected. After that, this statement was no longer operational. However, it didn't keep Singer from trying to still claim that it was so as he received a deeply deserved "flat-earth" award. The Christian Science Monitor's editor had to interject in their coverage to note he was, if fact, lying about the data:

"What matters are facts based on actual observations. And as long as weather satellites show that the atmosphere is not warming, I cannot put much faith into theoretical computer models that claim to represent the atmosphere but contradict what the atmosphere tells us. [Editor's note: Satellite measurements indicate the lower atmosphere is warming at a rate of 0.12 degrees F. per decade.] A computer model is only as good as the assumptions fed into it."

Other than that, there's really nothing else new in this article. Just a few more of the same unfounded assertions that we've previously covered.
 
8 - State of Fear by Michael Crichton: Exposing the Global Warming Sham

This one is even funnier than the last. It's another Alan Caruba special, but this time, it's all about the Michael Crichton novel, "The State of Fear." What Caruba and Unrelipundit seem to dismiss as irrelevant is that Crichton is a fiction writer and that this novel is a fictional work, not a scientific paper. When you're basing scientific opinions on a "technopolitical thriller," I'd say that you're on pretty shaky ground.

There is one particular point I would like to address here.
"Here again, scientific data amply demonstrates that, though the temperatures in Greenland and Iceland have been falling at 2.2 degrees Celsius since 1987, there has been no affect on the ice in those nations that has actually been accumulating, not melting. The same is happening in Antarctica."

Global Warming means actual global warming (i.e. "the temperature averaged over the surface of the earth is getting warmer"). The climate researcher, John M. Wallace, addressed this exact point, much as I did before, "Greenland, Iceland and Antarctica have cooled very slightly over the past few decades, in contrast to most areas of the Earth, which have experienced warming. Temperature trends over the Earth's surface are not uniform because, in addition to the warming, there have also been changes in circulation patterns, like El Nino and the Arctic Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Changes in these patterns accelerate the warming in some areas and retard it in others."
 
I don't have time to finish #9 tonight, but I wanted to update #6 quickly, before I forgot, in a special post to show the absolute, blatant dishonesty of some of these articles.

Tom Gremillion
A single eruption the size of the Mt. St. Helens eruption released more of these gases, dust and ash into the atmosphere than all such emissions by human activity since the beginning of recorded human history.

Actual scientists
Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons).
 
9 - Global Warming Explained

This is one of the most interesting references yet: a post on the site of a rural electrification association, which is hosted on a father's rights portal. Let me know when the bottom of the barrel has been torn asunder.

This article quotes heavily from Dr. Theodor Landscheidt, the astrologer. While it identifies him as a Dr., it is unclear from anywhere what his doctorate is in or whether he indeed holds one. While being a researcher for the Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity sounds impressive, it is somewhat diminished when you find out that he founded it and was the only researcher.

Naturally, I agree with the article's assertion that solar cycles have an effect on the climate. As one of the referred articles states, "The total energy coming from the Sun only varies by about 0.1% over each 11-year cycle." Naturally, more energy means more heat. However, we have temperature growth over the past 100 years that has no relation to the 11 year cycle and is greater than 0.1%. As I have noted many times, other variables, like solar activity, will cause variations in the trend from year to year, but they will not change the overall trend of the warming. This article presents no facts that go against that explanation.
 
10 - The global warming scam

This article is by Dr. Melanie Phillips, the world-renowned climatologist. Oops, just kidding. It's by journalist/author Melanie Philips, "best known for her controversial column about political and social issues which currently appears in the Daily Mail" (from the biography on her site). Basically, she's Ann Coulter Lite.

Here are some of her claims:

"There is no firm evidence that warming is happening"
Direct measurements of the temperature across the globe by satellite and ground stations supporting the warming trend is actually firm data, since that measures exactly what we're talking about. Here's the graph, again. Here's the satellite data.

even if it is, it is most likely to have natural, not man-made causes
Of course, I won't bother to explain what those causes might be or why that is more likely.

carbon dioxide, supposedly the culprit, makes up such a tiny fraction of the atmosphere that even if it were to quadruple, the effect on climate would be negligible
This is a specious argument, which any scientist would find laughable. It's like saying that arsenic makes up such a small fraction of drinking water that, even if it were to quadruple, it wouldn't make a difference. Sometimes, things are disproportionately important relative to their concentrations.

Let's take a few more:


The European climate in the Middle Ages was two degrees hotter than it is now.
This is a false assertion.
From the National Climate Data Center (a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)):
"The idea of a global or hemispheric "Medieval Warm Period" that was warmer than today however, has turned out to be incorrect...This reconstruction suggests that the 1998 annual average temperature was more than two standard deviations warmer than any annual average temperature value since AD 1,000"

some [ice caps] are actually expanding, as in the Antarctic where the ice sheet is growing, as this article points out.
Antarctic Ice is Growing is actually predicted by the scientific theories and computer models she denigrates.
"This is not a surprising phenomenon as such an increase would be the result of increasing precipitation and this is fully consistent with a warming world as the Antarctic is a desert and warmer climates tend towards more precipitation. And even if you warmed 10 degrees C from -50 degrees C, you would still be accumulating snow, not melting in the rain."

The causal link is well established. Totally false. It is simply loudly asserted.
The corelation is not proof of causation argument.
"In the case of the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, what we do have is a theory (first conceived over 100 years ago) that is based on well established laws of physics, it is consistent with mountains of observation and data, both contemporary and historical, and it is supported by very sophisticated and refined Global Climate Models that can successfully reproduce the climate's behavior over the last century."

Virtually all the scare stuff comes from computer modeling, which is simply inadequate to factor in all the -- literally-- millions of variables that make up climate change.


She goes on to quote a Richard Lindzen article in full, since she probably gets paid by the word. Lindzen's distortions of the NAS report are covered nicely here.


That concludes analysis of your 10 papers. Hopefully, you've at least learned the difference between peer-reviewed scientific papers and meaningless, unscientific opinions posed by people like yourself. I would've thought it would be self-evident, but apparently not.
 
I don't know about you, but I always take very seriously the arguments of a fellow who misuses the word "dispositive." (I assume he was going for its least-used legal definition of "providing a final resolution," but sadly the statement he referred to met no such criteria.)

Nicely done, my dear Mr. Yangtree.
 
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