Settling Global Warming Science

Tech Central Station ^ | August 12, 2004 | Patrick J. Michaels, S. Fred Singer and David H. Douglass

[quidnunc]

How many times have we heard from Al Gore and assorted European politicians that "the science is settled" on global warming? In other words, it's "time for action." Climate change is, as recently stated by Hans Blix, former U.N. Chief for weapons detection in Iraq, the most important issue of our time, far more dangerous than people flying fuel-laden aircraft into skyscrapers or threatening to detonate backpack nukes in Baltimore Harbor.

Well, the science may now be settled, but not in the way Gore and Blix would have us believe. Three bombshell papers have just hit the refereed literature that knock the stuffing out of Blix's position and that the United Nations and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The IPCC states repeatedly that 1) we have reliable temperature records showing how much the planet has warmed in the last century; and 2) computer projections of future climate, while not perfect, simulate the observed behavior of the past so well that they serve as a reliable guide for the future. Therefore, they say, we need to limit carbon dioxide emissions (i.e., energy use) right now, despite the expense and despite the fact that the cost of these restrictions will fall almost all on the United States, gravely harming the world's economic engine while exerting no detectable change on climate in the foreseeable future.

The IPCC claims to have carefully corrected the temperature records for the well-known problem of local ("urban," as opposed to global) warming. But this has always troubled serious scientists, because the way the U.N. checks for artificial warming makes it virtually impossible to detect in recent decades — the same period in which our cities have undergone the most growth and sprawl.

-snip-

[big'ol_freeper]

*ping*

[GailA]

It's 72 degrees in Memphis Tn in the middle of August. In the 18 years I've lived here it's the coolest I've seen, dipped into the low 60's last night. We don't normally get cold fronts in the summer months, we've had them all summer....Maybe we need to sue the enviro whackos for giving us the wrong junk science.

[Montfort]

I fully expect Time or Newsweek to do cover stories on these findings. And CBS, NBC, and ABC will have segments about the UN's flawed models. And public school textbooks will set the record straight.

[dripping sarcasm tags]

[anniegetyourgun]

snicker...

[anniegetyourgun]

That snicker wasn't for you, quid. I just can't help but throw back my head in laughter whenever I see the names Blix and/or Gore. I was just trying to hold it in...but the snicker came out.

[Always Right]

Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science. Computer models full of biased assumptions are not science.

[Boss_Jim_Gettys]

The environMENTALists can, with a straight face, blame global warming for heat waves, drought, blizzards, and floods.

I have always believed that the hysteria over global warming has been caused by academics who get research grants to study alleged phenomena like this.

In the 1980's and into the early 1990's, these guys were telling us about the coming ice age which was being caused by man-made pollution.

[GailA]

My hubby says the same thing, he is an avid weather watcher, has fancy high $$ weather computer programs to track it.

All this cooling/warming stuff is just to bilk more tax dollars out of us to support their jobs. Volocano activity probably plays more of a role than man made pollution is my hubby's theory.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

68 here at the Lake of the Ozarks. Cool weather has conked the jet skis which doesn't really bother me.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Gail, Gail, Gail...come now. Everybody knows by now that the first symptoms of Global Warming are a Global Cooling trend, THEN followed by the big heat. Or weren't you paying attention?

[GailA]

Closely...got my crooked arthritic finger on it. :-)

[wyattearp]

"the science is settled" on global warming?

It sure is. Just like crap in a septic tank.

[PeterFinn]

I live in Sacramento where not one single record has fallen this year for hot days. Much the opposite, this is the coolest summer in recent memory. The next step, which the whackos are already heading for, is to claim that global warming causes global COOLING. No matter what the weather is the whackos will change their tune to forward their left-wing, anti-freedom, anti-American politics. The science of global warming is irrelevant. The politics of global warming are the real issue.

[DTwistedSisterS]

OK. Global warming? Milwaukee just set the RECORD LOW for AUGUST in the HISTORY OF THE CITY (something like 52 degrees farh...)!!!! Where is the warming?

[DoctorZIn]

This article has been posted to DoctorZin’s New News Blog!

[L_Von_Mises]

One theory on global climate change:

Excerpted from the NAOO Paleoclimatology website:

The Milankovitch or astronomical theory of climate change is an explanation for changes in the seasons which result from changes in the earth's orbit around the sun. The theory is named for Serbian astronomer Milutin Milankovitch, who calculated the slow changes in the earth's orbit by careful measurements of the position of the stars, and through equations using the gravitational pull of other planets and stars. He determined that the earth "wobbles" in its orbit. The earth's "tilt" is what causes seasons, and changes in the tilt of the earth change the strength of the seasons. The seasons can also be accentuated or modified by the eccentricity (degree of roundness) of the orbital path around the sun, and the precession effect, the position of the solstices in the annual orbit.

I'm no scientist but from what little I have read or seen on the subject this makes more sense than most of what makes up the popular global warming "science".

These three events occur independently but when peaks in their cycle occur we get either ice ages or the opposite. Thousands of years ago England was tropical with hippos swimming in the Thames. Then with the next extreme created by the convergence of these events there was a major ice age. My assumption is that we are still warming from the last ice age and then the Earth will cycle back to another ice age era.

This theory assumes that the sun has a greater impact on climate than we do. IMHO it does.

[Bernard Marx]

The science of global warming is irrelevant. The politics of global warming are the real issue.

Science and truth have always been irrelevant to these folks. Apart from its usefulness as a fund-raising issue, crying "global warming" always panics a few of the room-temperature IQ types into voting Democrap. Remember, the people behind this junk science are the ones whose credo for winning politically is "By any means necessary."

[AFPhys]

After four years of one of the most rigorous peer reviews ever, Canadian Ross McKitrick and another of us (Michaels) published a paper searching for "economic" signals in the temperature record. McKitrick, an economist, was initially piqued by what several climatologists had noted as a curiosity in both the U.N. and satellite records: statistically speaking, the greater the GDP of a nation, the more it warms. The research showed that somewhere around one-half of the warming in the U.N. surface record was explained by economic factors, which can be changes in land use, quality of instrumentation, or upkeep of records. This worldwide study added fuel to a fire started a year earlier by the University of Maryland's Eugenia Kalnay, who calculated a similar 50 percent bias due to economic factors in the U.S. records.

ROFLMAO!...

This is such a classic situation. Better technology yields a bias toward better science. By the way, the "speed of light" has also been increasing, according to the measurements of it since the mid 1800s... Maroons! ... It never seems to occur to people when they are looking at historical methods that we really DO manage to do things better.

The world is getting warmer for the most part because the Sun is hotter ... PERIOD. See:
The truth about global warming