Posted on 12/28/2007 12:40:59 PM PST by neverdem
'The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 and every year since 2001'
Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?
Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.
With only few days remaining in 2007, the indications are the global temperature for this year is the same as that for 2006 – there has been no warming over the 12 months.
But is this just a blip in the ever upward trend you may ask? No.
The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.
In principle the greenhouse effect is simple. Gases like carbon dioxide present in the atmosphere absorb outgoing infrared radiation from the earth’s surface causing some heat to be retained.
Consequently an increase in the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases from human activities such as burning fossil fuels leads to an enhanced greenhouse effect. Thus the world warms, the climate changes and we are in trouble.
The evidence for this hypothesis is the well established physics of the greenhouse effect itself and the correlation of increasing global carbon dioxide concentration with rising global temperature. Carbon dioxide is clearly increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s a straight line upward. It is currently about 390 parts per million. Pre-industrial levels were about 285 ppm. Since 1960 when accurate annual measurements became more reliable it has increased steadily from about 315 ppm. If the greenhouse effect is working as we think then the Earth’s temperature will rise as the carbon dioxide levels increase.
But here it starts getting messy and, perhaps, a little inconvenient for some. Looking at the global temperatures as used by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK’s Met Office and the IPCC (and indeed Al Gore) it’s apparent that there has been a sharp rise since about 1980.
The period 1980-98 was one of rapid warming – a temperature increase of about 0.5 degrees C (CO2 rose from 340ppm to 370ppm). But since then the global temperature has been flat (whilst the CO2 has relentlessly risen from 370ppm to 380ppm). This means that the global temperature today is about 0.3 deg less than it would have been had the rapid increase continued.
For the past decade the world has not warmed. Global warming has stopped. It’s not a viewpoint or a sceptic’s inaccuracy. It’s an observational fact. Clearly the world of the past 30 years is warmer than the previous decades and there is abundant evidence (in the northern hemisphere at least) that the world is responding to those elevated temperatures. But the evidence shows that global warming as such has ceased.
The explanation for the standstill has been attributed to aerosols in the atmosphere produced as a by-product of greenhouse gas emission and volcanic activity. They would have the effect of reflecting some of the incidental sunlight into space thereby reducing the greenhouse effect. Such an explanation was proposed to account for the global cooling observed between 1940 and 1978.
But things cannot be that simple. The fact that the global temperature has remained unchanged for a decade requires that the quantity of reflecting aerosols dumped put in our atmosphere must be increasing year on year at precisely the exact rate needed to offset the accumulating carbon dioxide that wants to drive the temperature higher. This precise balance seems highly unlikely. Other explanations have been proposed such as the ocean cooling effect of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation or the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation.
But they are also difficult to adjust so that they exactly compensate for the increasing upward temperature drag of rising CO2. So we are led to the conclusion that either the hypothesis of carbon dioxide induced global warming holds but its effects are being modified in what seems to be an improbable though not impossible way, or, and this really is heresy according to some, the working hypothesis does not stand the test of data.
It was a pity that the delegates at Bali didn’t discuss this or that the recent IPCC Synthesis report did not look in more detail at this recent warming standstill. Had it not occurred, or if the flatlining of temperature had occurred just five years earlier we would have no talk of global warming and perhaps, as happened in the 1970’s, we would fear a new Ice Age! Scientists and politicians talk of future projected temperature increases. But if the world has stopped warming what use these projections then?
Some media commentators say that the science of global warming is now beyond doubt and those who advocate alternative approaches or indeed modifications to the carbon dioxide greenhouse warming effect had lost the scientific argument. Not so.
Certainly the working hypothesis of CO2 induced global warming is a good one that stands on good physical principles but let us not pretend our understanding extends too far or that the working hypothesis is a sufficient explanation for what is going on.
I have heard it said, by scientists, journalists and politicians, that the time for argument is over and that further scientific debate only causes delay in action. But the wish to know exactly what is going on is independent of politics and scientists must never bend their desire for knowledge to any political cause, however noble.
The science is fascinating, the ramifications profound, but we are fools if we think we have a sufficient understanding of such a complicated system as the Earth’s atmosphere’s interaction with sunlight to decide. We know far less than many think we do or would like you to think we do. We must explain why global warming has stopped.
Read this and learn something:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/hockey-stick-1998-2005-rip/
And the biggest increases in Global Warming occurred during the Clinton/Gore years. Hmmm, I think you are onto something.
thanks for the link. any way you can summarize and translate what is being said?
Are you implying that AGW is real, and will destroy the planet, and that conservatives must accept the death of millions (and a poorer lifestyle for billions) in order to prevent it?
Or are you saying that conservatives MUST become better educated to recognize and argue AGAINST AGW extremists in order to save the planet from socialism and one-world government control?
And feel free to read point #4 in my profile. If there is no new global temperature record by 2013, only then would I say that global warming has stopped -- temporarily. Anything said before that is premature and intended to score skeptical points in the public mind.
1) The worst-case estimates of the environmental and economic effects of AGW are overstated. Almost certainty correct, but the likely results of mid-range perditions are still alarming.
2) There has been warming, but it’s due to some other case (ex: solar flux).
The problem with this theory is that it fails to account for the warming we should be seeing due to greenhouse emissions.
It would be easy for proponents of this view to get the attention of main-stream climate theorists, all they would have to do is either 1) demonstrate that the well understood atmospheric chemistry that predicts AGW as result of “greenhouse gases” is incorrect, and/or 2) demonstrate some countervailing effect that is preventing warming from occurring despite the greenhouse effect.
To date the skeptics has not been able to do either, and by this point it’s highly unlikely that either the atmospheric chemistry and physics is incorrect or such countervailing mechanisms remain undiscovered.
Aerosols injected into the stratosphere have been suggested; sulfur aerosols in the troposphere can create acid rain problems, as they did in the 70's.
I like acid rain.
George Bush stopped global warming!
We did?
DaveLoneRanger posted the same title from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. I figured someone should post the original from New Statesman.
And feel free to read point #4 in my profile. If there is no new global temperature record by 2013, only then would I say that global warming has stopped -- temporarily. Anything said before that is premature and intended to score skeptical points in the public mind.
I have read it. I'm still a denier. IIRC, a substantial majority of the climate change literaure in the last few years doesn't support anthropogenic global warming.
Global warming will stop when Al Bore stops jetting around blowing hot air into the wind.
Glaciers are growing around the world, including the United States
There are real, measurable, and significant adverse environmental consequences to atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment, but anthropogenic climate change isn't one of them. The AGW crowd says NOTHING about them. That's because the greens are funded by the private, tax-exempt, "charitable" foundations of oil company wealth. I don't have time to get to this before Shabbat, but I'd be happy to do so on Sunday evening.
Crucify the heretics!
*******************
Villagers: (enter yelling) A witch! A witch! We’ve found a witch! Burn her! Burn her!
(After Sir Bedimere gets the crowd to admit that they dressed her up as a witch, their only basis for accusing her is that one of them claims that she turned him into a newt. But because he “got better”, they need some way of determining her guilt).
Bedimere: there are ways of telling if she’s a witch. What do you do with witches?
Villagers: Burn them!
Bedimere: And what do you burn, apart from witches?
Villagers: Wood?
Bedimere: Right! So why do witches burn?
Villagers: Because they’re made of wood?
Bedimere: Right! . Now, what else do you do with wood?
Villagers: Build bridges with it!
Bedimere: But do we not also build bridges from stone; does wood float in water?
Villagers: Yes.
Bedimere: And what else floats in water?
King Arthur: (after more confused suggestions from the villagers) A duck!
Bedimere: Right! So, if she weighs the same as a duck, she’d float in water, and she must be made of wood, so.
Villagers: A witch! Burn her!
(They weigh the woman on a large scale with a duck in the other balancing basket, but inexplicably the scales do not tilt one way or the other. As the villagers drag the woman away, the witch looks at the camera and says with resignation “it was a fair court”.)
Bedimere: (to King Arthur) Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
Are you really concerned with how we look? I don’t believe it. Your backdoor attempt at pushing this bull on us deniers is a waste of your time.
“There are real, measurable, and significant adverse environmental consequences to atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment, but anthropogenic climate change isn’t one of them...”
Do you have an explanation of how the atmospheric physics and chemistry predicting that “greenhouse gases” will raise atmospheric temperature is incorrect? If so, you really ought to publish it, as this would totally shake up the world of climate modeling.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/hockey-stick-1998-2005-rip/"
Interesting that the author did not, for example, cite this:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/312/5773/529b
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