Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Let's flash back to 1998 and some of the scientific reports that encouraged Bill Clinton to back off the Kyoto Accord:

Friday, February 13, 1998 Published at 19:25 GMT
Sci/Tech

Scientists blame sun for global warming

The Sun is more active than it has ever been in the last 300 years
Climate changes such as global warming may be due to changes in the sun rather than to the release of greenhouse gases on Earth.

Climatologists and astronomers speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Philadelphia say the present warming may be unusual - but a mini ice age could soon follow.

The sun provides all the energy that drives our climate, but it is not the constant star it might seem.

Careful studies over the last 20 years show that its overall brightness and energy output increases slightly as sunspot activity rises to the peak of its 11-year cycle.

And individual cycles can be more or less active.

The sun is currently at its most active for 300 years.

That, say scientists in Philadelphia, could be a more significant cause of global warming than the emissions of greenhouse gases that are most often blamed.

The researchers point out that much of the half-a-degree rise in global temperature over the last 120 years occurred before 1940 - earlier than the biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

Ancient trees reveal most warm spells are caused by the sun
Using ancient tree rings, they show that 17 out of 19 warm spells in the last 10,000 years coincided with peaks in solar activity.

They have also studied other sun-like stars and found that they spend significant periods without sunspots at all, so perhaps cool spells should be feared more than global warming.

The scientists do not pretend they can explain everything, nor do they say that attempts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions should be abandoned. But they do feel that understanding of our nearest star must be increased if the climate is to be understood.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/56456.stm

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And today, the very American Association for the Advancement of Science tells us why Bush doesn't support Kyoto, namely because global warming is not natural

Quote:

Report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
THE strongest evidence yet that global warming has been triggered by human activity has emerged from a study of rising temperatures in the oceans.

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

And today, the very American Association for the Advancement of Science tells us why Bush doesn't support Kyoto, namely because global warming is not natural

Quote:
Report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science
THE strongest evidence yet that global warming has been triggered by human activity has emerged from a study of rising temperatures in the oceans.

But no mention of the following in that report:

There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
UK Telegraph
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
SOURCE

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And the very same institution published that report its own homepage (although some weeks earlier):

(What they did say, was that that 2005 was the second warmest year on record: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/press/2005-12-WMO.pdf)

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So who do we believe? I don't know any of these guys personally. I look at the credentials and the facts they post that can be verified by somebody and we still get widely conflicting opinions about what is going on.

I do read everything that looks remotely credible about global warming, at least if the information provides anything other than just parroting what others are saying. I see much less willingness from the global warming advocates, professional or amateur, to give any consideration to data that suggests that global warming is not as much a problem as some say or even that it is not a problem at all.

Why do you suppose that is?

I remain unconvinced and I would like to be convinced one way or the other. I don' think any of us should be devoting a lot of concern to redesigning our lifestyles based on faulty science.

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Foxfyre wrote:

So who do we believe?

Actually, I have more believe in the reports done and published by the institutions and not how some journalists like to read them.

(And I do remeber that you yourself said, you always went down to the original reports.)

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Well I sure don't look to journalists for scientific research. Journalists can competently report on the research results however and, in my opinion, some do. Some also don't.

I also am healthily skeptical of results when a particular result enhances a scientist's personal income. That does not mean that good science is not being done, but I think we are wise to expect some serious more potentially objective scientific collaboration for scientific opinion produced under that kind of conditions.

But we have reports from credible scientists and institutions saying two different things. The article I posted today is written by a specialist in and professor of paleoclimatology. Should his observations be summarily discarded because they don't jive with another article written by a scientist with a different opinion?

Or isn't it the smartest thing to look at both and keep an open mind even as we explore which can be the most credibly collaborated?

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fofxfyre: are you talking about corroboration? Collaboration is when several people work together to produce a result. Almost all science these days is collaboration, rather than a single effort, and the collaborators virtually unanimously agree global warming is real and anthropogenic.

Corroboaration is prdoucing an experiment or making observations that produce the same result as a previous experiment or result--it corroborates the previous one is valid. Scientists have overwhelmingly corroborated that global warming is here and if anything the climate models underestimate it.

The deep ocean is warming. The troposphere is warming--these two results are for many the smoking gun. The years since 1998 for the world as a whole have been the hottest on record. The arctic ice cap has shrunk 20%. It is nearing the point of positive feedback, where more melting exposes more open water, which absorbs more heat rather than an ice cap which reflects it back, which melts more ice. The Greenland ice sheet is melting, and it's been there for more than 400K years. Antarctica is melthing. C)@ in the atmosphere is higher than it has been for the last six ice age-?-interglacial cycles. When CO2 is high, it's interglacial. When it's low, it's an ice age, and we're higher than in any previous interglacial. And it's anthropogenic. Even Sally Baliunas, one of the prime proponents of solar effects on climate says the recent (and apparently not for the last few years)increase in solar output can't accounjt for more than 30% of the warming (and it's that high only with certain simplifying assumptions in the calculations).

Much of the research is recent. Citing something previous to 1998 (as I believe you've done--I'm not talking about your English results above, which are localised), and using that as the last word just doesn't work. The last word is that climate change is here, and it's serious.

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Interesting article

Quote:

Climate of Fear
Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

BY RICHARD LINDZEN
Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.

So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

M. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

Politics and competition for grant money seem to be a combination that endangers pursuit of the facts in science.

Is anyone surprised that some scientists seem to act out of self interest and turf considerations?

Does the ridicule and scorn that these truth seekers heap on dissenters sound familiar to anyone?

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From the artcile Real Life posted

Quote:

Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates and policymakers.

This is the drum I've been beating in this entire debate. Show me corroboration for human caused global warming between scientists whose funding does NOT depend on there being an issue with green house gasses, etc., and I'll adjust my thinking on this issue. Until then I will not agree to upsetting national economies and major lifestyle adjustments for people because some scientists with personal vested interest in the outcome are telling me this is the way it is.....while....at the same time, there are other credentialed scientists who aren't supporting the findings of the alarmists at all.

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Hi Foxfyre,

Good to hear from you.

Another question that I've asked in other threads where this topic came up is:

If human activity is causing the polar areas to thaw on Earth, what is causing the polar areas on Mars to thaw? Same thing is happening there.

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Quote:

at the same time, there are other credentialed scientists who aren't supporting the findings of the alarmists at all.

Where, perchance, do these scientists receive their funding from? Oil companies?

Cycloptichorn

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Where is Blatham? Did he go away never to return? Crying or Very sad

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

Quote:
at the same time, there are other credentialed scientists who aren't supporting the findings of the alarmists at all.

Where, perchance, do these scientists receive their funding from? Oil companies?

Cycloptichorn

Well I just posted an article from a professor at MIT. He talks about the intimidation of dissenting scientists by the global warming scare force.

Why don't you try to prove that he is paid off by oil companies, if that's what you fervently believe?

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real life wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
Quote:
at the same time, there are other credentialed scientists who aren't supporting the findings of the alarmists at all.

Where, perchance, do these scientists receive their funding from? Oil companies?

Cycloptichorn

Well I just posted an article from a professor at MIT. He talks about the intimidation of dissenting scientists by the global warming scare force.

Why don't you try to prove that he is paid off by oil companies, if that's what you fervently believe?

I asked a question intended to highlight the fact that everyone receives their funding from somewhere; and many of the scientists who are anti-global warming theory, are funded by oil companies.

I have no doubt that the same type of professor that talks about intimidation of dissenting scientists is the type that talks about 'liberal bias' on campus and how we must fix this legistlatively. No thanks.

I work in Physics at UT Austin; if one of our professors had theories that ran contrary to everyone else's, I doubt he would feel entirely comfortable in the department. The reason that scientists who don't believe in climate change are eschewed is that the vast majority of observable evidence states that they are wrong.

Cycloptichorn

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I blame global warming on the sexual revolution in the 60's. Let's face it, all that uninhibited sex created a lot of friction and heavy breathing, thus warming the air and starting all this. So why aren't scientists investigating that? Hmmm? Hmmmm??

(Ok, I couldn't help myself, I'm just in one of those silly moods today. Back to your serious discussion)

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Also,

Quote:

If human activity is causing the polar areas to thaw on Earth, what is causing the polar areas on Mars to thaw? Same thing is happening there.

Be careful with statements like this. It is easy to compare the Earth and Mars, but difficult to find meaningful similarities between the two when it comes to the complex subject of climate change.

Cycloptichorn

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real life wrote:

Hi Foxfyre,

Good to hear from you.

Another question that I've asked in other threads where this topic came up is:

If human activity is causing the polar areas to thaw on Earth, what is causing the polar areas on Mars to thaw? Same thing is happening there.

You'll note that those who seem to most want to believe that it is human activity (most especially activity of greedy and/or selfish Americans) that is causing global warming on planet Earth will rarely if ever even acknowledge, must less consider, shrinking polar ice on Mars.

And the scientist, who does not receive his funding from oil companies, who recently noted indications of solar activity as having an effect on global warming, and the scientist, who is not funded by the oil companies, who noted that the mean temperatures on Earth have not increased since the late 1990's (at which time the last large solar storm ended).

If these events (Mars, Earth temperatures, and solar activity) are all related in some way, I would think they should at least be considered in the whole equation.

I don't have my mind made up on this. I am impressed by those posting here who have the scientific expertise to know which group of scientists is correct. I don't.

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Foxfyre wrote:

I don't have my mind made up on this. I am impressed by those posting here who have the scientific expertise to know which group of scientists is correct. I don't.

So your negative critics on global warming count even double because you are so objective?

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Walter Hinteler wrote:

Foxfyre wrote:

I don't have my mind made up on this. I am impressed by those posting here who have the scientific expertise to know which group of scientists is correct. I don't.

So your negative critics on global warming count even double because you are so objective?

Where did I say that Walter? If you can find any post of mine in which I even suggested that one scientist was right and another was wrong on this issue, I would appreciate it if you would point it out. I am under the impression that I have been quite consistent in that I don't know. I have also been consistent that until I am convinced that one group has it more right than another, I won't endorse a lot of costly and/or inconvenient policies that may have no short or long term benefits whatsoever. I have also been consistent that I want somebody other than the scientists who benefit from there being human caused global warming to come up with a study that strongly suggests it. So far I haven't seen one.

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Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

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