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.
Can I offset my V8 Silverado 1500HD, if
I eat steak 7 days a week ???
I thought that's what clouds do?
Doesn't it stand to reason the hotter it gets, the more clouds we'll have?
THEN, the more clouds we'll have, the COOLER it will get on the surface?
There's a LOT more H2O in the atmosphere than CO2, and plants need CO2 to grow.
In reality, the Earth can and does take care of itself, without our "help"....
You mean how all the "homeless" during Reagan disappeared, just like when Bubba Klintoon was president....
No, but I have researched the amounts of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. Man's contribution accounts for about 3% of the total. Just 3%.
Algore and company are proposing we spend TRILLIONS of dollars to reduce our output by a small fraction of that 3%.
It would be more productive to get rid of the proponents of "global warming".
If it gets warmer, wouldn't we NEED LESS fuel to heat out homes in the winter, thereby cutting CO2 emissions?
GW is nothing more than a money making scheme by those related to the elixir salesmen of the old west....
There is no doubt that greenhouse gases raise the earth's temperature, the question is how much. Science has changed recently on this topic and is definitely not settled. The issues are how much warming is caused by CO2 in the upper atmosphere and how much warming is going to be caused by water vapor feedback throughout the atmosphere.
You're not reading the appropriate literature. Your slice of the literature is probably being biased by your viewpoint. The vast majority of peer-reviewed scientific literature indicates that anthropogenic global warming is occurring. If you're just reading skeptical talking points, then I can see how you'd IIRI. (Final I = "incorrectly").
A few inaccurate stations doesn't change the picture. And there have been numerous weather stations in Third World countries maintained by First World entities (like the Dutch East India company) that provide valid data over decades. And should temperature data from Australia, or New Zealand, or South Africa be suspect?
Sorry, try again.
Your whole premise is wrong. Scientists are starting to realize that the evidence shows that warming precedes increased CO2 levels, not the other way around.
Robert Balling, director of the office of climatology at Arizona State University, notes that "carbon dioxide concentrations were much higher in the past, millions of years ago, when plants evolved around the world."
Wouldn't it be ironic if global warming saved the rain forest? And the whales? More plankton? GW should be a wet dream to enviro's, but they got infiltrated by the Marxists after the fall of the Berlin Wall and are now suspect. The founder of Greenpeace says this, not me.
Lol, you managed to get it on there devolve. Not easy to composite a 45 frame gif.
You somehow were able to use fewer frames!
""Earlier this month Timothy Ball, a former climatology professor, appeared in "The Great Global Warming Swindle," a true documentary broadcast in Britain on Channel 4. In it, several scientists claimed that the theory of global warming had indeed become a religion with contrary opinions considered heresy.
Ball isn't likely to receive an Oscar bid, as Gore's full-length cartoon, "An Inconvenient Truth," did. Since the show aired, he has received at least five death threats by e-mail, including one that warned that if he continued to speak out, he would not live long enough to see the prophecy of global warmers come to pass.
Ball, who has a doctorate in climatology from the University of London and taught at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years, said the belief that disastrous climate change is imminent and that humans are the cause is the "greatest deception in the history of science." To the greenies, this is sacrilege.
Ball lives on Victoria Island, British Columbia, which he likes to remind people was connected to mainland Canada about 8,000 years ago when the sea level was 500 feet lower.
In an interview with Bill Steigerwald in Human Events, Ball noted the current warming trend actually "began in 1680, in the middle of what's called 'The Little Ice Age,' when there was 3 feet of ice on the Thames River in London." That's a bit before the first SUV hit the road. Blame the Industrial Revolution.
As Ball noted, "The world has warmed up until recently, and that warming trend doesn't fit with the CO2 record at all; it fits with the sunspot data. Of course, they are ignoring the sun because they want to focus on CO2."
"They" are the high priests of global warming, who have indeed had a chilling effect, so to speak, on free scientific inquiry. Nigel Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, said: "Governments are trying to achieve unanimity by stifling any scientist who disagrees. Einstein could not have got funding under the current system."
Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also appeared in the "Great Global Warming Swindle." "Scientists who dissent from the alarmism," he noted, "have seen their funds disappear, their work derided and themselves labeled as industry stooges."
As we've noted many times, perhaps the biggest impact on Earth's climate over time has been the sun. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research in Germany report the sun has been burning more brightly over the past 60 years, accounting for the 1 degree Celsius increase in Earth's temperature over the past 100 years.""
''The analogy I use is like my car's not running very well, so I'm going to ignore the engine which is the sun and I'm going to ignore the transmission which is the water vapour and I'm going to look at one nut on the right rear wheel which is the human produced CO2. The science is that bad.''-Dr Roy Spencer, former NASA senior climatologist
1998-2006 annual trend is -.35F/decade and this is with NOAAs data which does not agree with NASA.
I agree.
Gore's got things backwards.
He should remember the adage, "Make hay, while the sun shines."
After all, he and his fellow Tennesseeans are able to grow hay because the Ice Sheets melted.
Hay is an important commodity in Tennessee agriculture. Our high quality hay helps feed the large livestock industry throughout the state.
.
LOL!
Trick #1 - Increase frames on TIME.gif from 2 to 4
Trick #2 - Erase existing penquin
Trick #3 - Match BGcolor
Trick #4 - Reduce frames on animated Penquin.gif from 41 to 4
Once I determine the correct steps, colors, and parameters I note them down and and then duplicate it in about 10-15 minutes
I plan to reduce my carbon footprint when algore, John Kerry, Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, Hillary Clinton cut back to only one residence of under 4,000 square feet less and use a maximum amount of energy that never exceeds that of the average American home
And when they donate all their vehicles and jets to charities and US military transport use that I alone will choose
And all politicians will forfeit all assets over $500,000 and income that exceeds $200,000 a year to the US Treasury
And all tax-exempt non-profit foundations, organizations and busineses are bannned - including the United Nations and all political groups and political campaign funding
All so-called “blind-trusts” would be banned and all politicians investments would be instantly available on internet sites
All under penalty of immediate confiscation of all assets and properties anywhere on the earth and community service of 50 years on a chain gang in the Everglades
All Greenies to be required to drive Yugos and live in pup tents and grow their own fuel from switch grass or process it from raw sewage at their own expense
Answer to question ref post 61
JAMES HANSEN
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