Global warming article

This is a long article. So plan on sitting a "spell" for reading it. But, you should find it interesting.

Recent article in the news (Oct. 14, 2009) says that a team trolling through the arctic has, along with a few comrades, have predicted that in less than 20 years, there will be no ice in the arctic at all in the summer ... AND ... that nearly 1/4 of the world population areas will be under water by 10 years -- foretelling that global warming is will soon be running totally out of control ... deserts taking over land areas, super hurricanes commonly, animals species becoming extinct one by one -- all due to human use of fossil fuels.

Few topics have generated as much debate as global warming, it's reality, future, and solutions. It is a very heated debate, and I'm probably going to make someone disturbed with my position. Please understand that anyone's position does not make something so. Further, healthy debate is needed and actually desirable for us to come to the best conclusions. I'm going to give you my take on GW, and give some support for my conclusions. I am not a professional scientist, but I have compiled the info below with some general acquaintence with scientific disciplines.

BACKGROUND: As most of you know, I've been studying meteorology since I was a kid. I also completed a number of meterology (including climatogy) courses at Florida State University, which has one of the premier schools of meteorology in the nation. But further, I have always been a bit of a scientist. I taught earth sciences in the public schools of Pensacola, Florida, and have made it my task to be as informed in as many sciences as possible. My disciplines of study include everything from electronics (incl. an amateur radio licence - Extra class, the top and 5th level) to chemistry, to astronomy, to physics, to health and medicine. Not many "ministers" speak of b-mesons (alternating between matter and anti-matter?) and quarks, or electronegativity or oxidation states, or tropospheric VHF RF wave propogation, or string theory with supersymmetry, or "thickness" and theta-e charts in meteorology. All this is to say, I'm approaching the topic with a critical eye, and with some modicum of scientific foundation. However, even high-level experts disagree, so let's not be surprised if we see social, economic, and political forces at work in the mix. One key aspect to be considered at the get-go is the peculiar angle and impact of the commercial media. I'm not going to dazzle yet encumber you with numerous charts and graphs. I plan to summarize their results. Yet, there will be plenty of specifics and details by the end. So, hold on to your hats ... here goes...

Atmospheric change is not new. We've all heard of ice ages. We don't get so much about the "warm periods," but they are there, and have sometimes been warmer than today. Global warming occured long before the "Industrial Revolution" and the invention of the internal combustion engine. One warming began 18,000 years ago as the earth started warming its way out of the Pleistocene Ice Age-- a time when much of North America, Europe, and Asia lay buried beneath great sheets of glacial ice.

Thus, earth's climate and the biosphere have been in constant flux, dominated by ice ages and glaciers for the past several million years (or less if you subscribe to a young earth theory). We are currently enjoying a temporary reprieve from the deep freeze. The idea that man-made pollution is mainly responsible for all global warming ignores some pretty big warming found in long-term history. The period known as the Holocene Maximum is a good example-- so-named because it was the hottest period in human history. The interesting thing is this period occurred approximately 7500 to 4000 years B.P. (before present)-- long before humans invented industrial pollution.

In a short term fluctuation, Greenland was remarkably settled in a past warm period. Crops all over Europe did well, and humanity flourished during such a time (esp. around 1000 A.D.). So, the first question is "is global warming necessarily or always bad?" No doubt, there are geographical changes ... deserts move or expand, temperate zones expand northward (more cropland), and some places even get more rain than before. Historically, it was a simple answer: warm periods ... good for man, cold periods ... bad for man. But in a technological age, one with huge cities on coastlands, man can't just pack up his tents and slide inland anymore. National boundaries won't move, so some nations may be losers, some gainers in the agricultural and resources domain. These new factors muddle what would perhaps been normally a natural good thing for man. So, although a warm period may be generally good for the overall habitation of the planet, the international upheavals as well as local problems prove to be a significant challenge.

Some say that atmospheric warming will reinfoce itself and "runaway" causing the planet to go "out of control" with scenarios "worse than a nuclear war." I'm not making this up. A Reuters news report cites the International Institute for Strategic Studies as saying "Climate change could have global security implications on a par with nuclear war unless urgent action is taken." Some say it's almost too late. The reason some say it's too late is that it would take action so drastic to correct it all, that nobody will agree to it. More on that later.

We clearly are warmer today than 1500-1850 A.D. Well, that WAS called the little ice age. These facts really aren't in dispute. Questions, and arguments, ensue when we talk about CO2 and where it's all headed. It has been suggested (strongly) that man simply is saturating his environment with the greenhouse gas, and we can obviously see the results over time. However, the first problem emerges when we see that the a big part of the spike in warming occurred in the earliest half of the last century ... well before the highest industrialization and the explosion of auto use. In fact, looking at the ancient past, it is quite clear that CO2 actually lags warming. Yes, CO2 can increase without man, and volcanos can spew many gases including sulfurous ones which can be worse according to some scientists. The curious part about volcanoes, though, is that major ones can actually cause global cooling (for a number of years) due to huge amount of ash clouds that spread and filter out the sun. The volcano Tambora in the Pacific was so major, 1816 was called the year without a summer. It stayed COLD through the summer months with FROSTS in many NE US places. It was horrible for the people, and is a good illustration why cooling is far more disasterous. More recently (in the last decades), eruptions in the Phillipines and of Mt. St. Helens brought several years of measurable cooling in each case.

This brings us to once dire warnings of the next ice age. That was in the mid 1970s. Three unusually cold winter (1976-77, 1977-78,1978-79) were so cold (remember snowflakes in Miami?) that scientists warned (rather alarmingly) that we were likely headed to the next ice age. And, that age could arrive in as few as 50 years (even though lengths of ice ages have run into the tens of thousands of years). Now, in cosmic time, the time from the '70s to now is just an eyeblink. They sure changed their tune rapidly.

Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth's atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth's oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants.

CO2 is odorless, colorless, and tasteless. Plants absorb CO2 and emit oxygen as a waste product. Humans and animals breathe oxygen and emit CO2 as a waste product. Carbon dioxide is a nutrient, not a pollutant, and all life-- plants and animals alike-- benefit from more of it. All life on earth is carbon-based and CO2 is an essential ingredient. When plant-growers want to stimulate plant growth, they introduce more carbon dioxide.

CO2 that goes into the atmosphere does not stay there but is continually recycled by terrestrial plant life and earth's oceans-- the great retirement home for most terrestrial carbon dioxide.

Al Gore, the controversial figure (no judgement yet, just a report here...), has been quoted as saying:

"Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous (global warming) is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are..."

Okay, let's just get to latest reports and facts ... the latest info, that often has NOT gotten out in the press. Surveying members of the press reveals an almost war-like zeal and campaign regarding GW, and almost anything is allowed. So, get ready to get surprised. This will be fun for some of you.

Several scientific studies along with record cold temperatures this past year in both hemispheres is shedding light on the fallacy of manmade global warming.

--Merinews reported:
Satellite measurements available since 1979 show no warming in the southern hemisphere and the trend in the northern hemisphere appears to have waned since 2001.

--In August 2007, the UK Met Office acknowledged that obvious global warming had stopped.

--Paleo-climate scientist Bob Carter testifying before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has noted that the accepted global average temperature statistics used by IPCC show no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.

--A research led by David Bromwich, Professor of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Geography at Ohio State University and researchers with the Byrd Polar Research Centre at Ohio State University shows that during the late 20th century, the temperature in Antarctica did not rise to the level predicted by many global warming models. In fact, it is dropping rather markedly.

--According to UN scientist Madhav L. Khandekar, a retired Environment Canada scientist and an expert IPCC reviewer in 2007, the recent worldwide analysis of ocean surface temperatures shows that sea surface temperatures over world oceans are slowly declining since mid-1998.

--While the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is steadily rising from 280 ppm and might reach 560 ppm by 2100 as predicted by IPCC, the world�s average temperature, instead of following a steep upward gradient, is actually plunging after a period of upward trend. However, the IPCC is not coming out publicly with the truth surrounding the correlation between rise in carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere and its possible consequence on global warming, if any.

--A study by researchers of the Atmospheric Science Group, Department of Mathematical Science, at the University of Wisconsin, found that global warming in the last century was linked to natural causes.

--The Royal Meteorological Institute at Brussels in its report last year said that not carbon dioxide but the most important greenhouse gas was water vapour; it was responsible for 75 per cent of the greenhouse effect. According to Belgian climate scientist Lu Debontridder, the warm winters of the last few years in Belgium are simply due to the North-Atlantic oscillation that has absolutely nothing to do with carbon dioxide.

--A study published in Science last September found that contrary to past inferences from ice core records, carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age. According to the same study, deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

--USC geologist Lowell Scot, the lead author of the study, said that the climate dynamics are much more complex than simply saying that carbon dioxide rises and the temperature warms.

--The IPCC climate model is based on the assumption that increased warming would cause more rainfall that would produce more clouds on the higher reaches of the atmosphere. Since high clouds have a net warming effect this would cause more warming, more rainfall and the cycle will continue. It is this positive feedback that causes the UN climate models to predict a temperature rise in the range of 2.5 degree Celsius to 4.7 degree Celsius due to rise in the level of carbon dioxide to 560 ppm. Dr Roy Spencer along with researchers at the University of Alabama Huntsville and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, after observing the temperatures, clouds and rainfall reported that warming is actually associated with fewer high clouds. There is no data to support the theory that more rainfall will produce more high-altitude clouds.

--The mainstream media seems to be purposely ignoring the bulk of the findings by renowned researchers throughout the globe that the current global warming fear attributed solely to carbon dioxide rise is utterly unfounded.
Dave wrote in that the February (2008) global temperature anomalies show that February like January was another cold month.

Previously:
Brrrr... Antarctica Records Record High Ice Cap Growth
Brrrr... South America Has Coldest Winter in a 90 Years
Brrrr... Iraqis See First Snow in 100 Years As Sign of Peace
Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in a Decade in China Cause Rioting
Brrrr... Jerusalem Grinds to a Halt As Rare Snowstorm Blasts City
Brrrr... Worst Snowstorms in 50 Years Continue to Cripple China
Brrrr... China Suffers Coldest Winter in 100 Years
Brrrr... Pakistan Suffers Lowest Temps in 70 Years-- 260 Dead
Brrrr... Record Cold Hits Central Asia-- 654 Dead in Afghanistan
Brrrr... Severe Weather Kills Dozens in Kashmir
Brrrr... Tajikistan Crisis!! Coldest Winter in 25 Years!
Brrrr... Record Cold Wave Blasts Mumbai, India
Brrrr... Snow and Ice in San Diego?
Brrrr... Wisconsin Snowfall Record Shattered
Brrrr... The Disappearing Arctic Ice Is Back And It's Thick
Brrrr... Turkey's snowiest winter continues.
Brrrr... Record Cold & Snow Blankets Acropolis in Greece (Video)
Brrrr... Longest Ever Cold Spell Kills Cattle & Rice in Vietnam
Brrrr... Most Snow Cover Over North America Since 1966
Brrrr... Australia Suffers Through Coldest Summer in 50 Years
Brrrr... Record Snowfall Slams Ohio River Valley

Brrrr... South America just experienced an unusally cold winter with snow in places not seen since 1820s.

During the last 100 years there have been two general cycles of warming and cooling recorded in the U.S. We are currently in the second warming cycle. Overall, U.S. temperatures show no significant warming trend over the last 100 years (1). This has been well - established but not well - publicized.(1) (The National Center for Climatic records under NOAA/National Weather Service is in Asheville, NC).

(1) A scientific Discussion of Climate Change, Sallie Baliunas, Ph.D., Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Willie Soon, Ph.D., Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Peter Jonker who was an appointed member of EPA's Clean Air Act Advisory Committee, has this to say about CO2:

Let's talk a little bit about CO2, that villain gas. Actually, CO2 is a pretty sorry global warming gas. If it were a good one, we would be using it in all kinds of heat exchange equipment all over the world today. Ever wonder why we don't? I'll tell you: because it's one heck of a lousy candidate for the transfer of heat. Anyone who has studied thermodynamics even one semester knows this. Unfortunately, the sociologists, Chinese herbal medicine folks, landscape architects, surgeons, and the like, who make up the Clinton/Gore team of global warming "experts" haven't a clue about this branch of science. And I'm not making this up: these are in fact some of the "experts" on which the Administration relies. It's a pretty sorry state of affairs as far as I am concerned. Where are the skeptics among the journalists? Where is their outrage at this hoax being perpetrated? Why are all of them falling for this global warming nonsense hook, line and sinker?

(...remember that poverty is the most significant predictor of premature death. Do we take trillions of dollars that could be spent on issues such as poverty, to waste on a theoretical event that has not killed anyone and is unlikely to do so in the future, based on a virtual total lack of data? I know what my answer is. What's yours?)

As the sun is expected to experience a period of lower activity, the Earth will receive less heat and thus will cool. Earth's climate is determined mainly by the Sun's activity and by the small changes in Earth's orbit. The effects of other factors, such as the greenhouse gases, are small relative to these cosmic events.

A Russian astronomer, Khabibullo Abdusamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomic Observatory in St. Petersburg, reported recently that the global warming experienced in the 20th century was mainly caused by an increased solar activity. According to him, this increased solar activity will reach its peak in the next few years from now, after which the temperatures will start to drop.
(a couple of years have passed already)

Abdusamatov said there will be a massive solar output decline between around 2035 and 2045 which will correspond to a mini Ice Age on Earth.
(This is not good news - he also predicts international upheaval and famine with such cooling)

"Dramatic changes in the Earth's surface temperatures are an ordinary phenomenon, not an anomaly", he said, "and result from variations in the sun's energy output and ultraviolet radiation."

This is also supported by a recent mapping of North American glacial history which has shown that in the last 10 000 years glaciers have gone up and down many times. In other words, there were large climatic variations.

The Northern Hemisphere's most recent cool-down period occurred between 1645 and 1705. Dubbed the Little Ice Age, it left canals in the Netherlands frozen solid and forced people in Greenland to abandon their houses to glaciers.

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Before leaving the effects of the sun ... sunspots are widely considered to be a barometer of future earth temperature trends. Note this article....

The absence of sunspots has left some scientists scratching their heads about what could be next.

Extremely low sunspot activity and extended periods of no sunspot activity have some scientists concerned about how this could affect the weather on Earth. Noted environmentalist and author Lawrence Solomon says there is a vast historical record dating back hundreds of years that could provide some insight to this phenomenon. "There has been a coincidence over the centuries of an absence of sunspots correlating with very cold temperatures, and a presence of sunspots corresponding to warm periods," he explains.

Solomon notes that over 1,000 years ago during the medieval warm period there was increased sunspot activity, and then that activity slowed down as Earth entered the Little Ice Age of the late 1700s to mid-1800s. He also says that, during the last century, the sun had increased sunspot activity, which correlated with a period of warming.

"After the current warming that we had in the 1900s, the sunspots have diminished. And that's one reason that scientists think that we may be entering a little ice age. There are other reasons as well," Solomon contends.

Those other reasons are that in the last decade temperatures have leveled off, and Solomon says in the last year they dropped. He says temperatures have dropped by more than a half a degree centigrade, which is equivalent to more than a century's worth of warming.

Solomon is the author of the book The Deniers, which documents world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria.

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

This adds to reasons that CANADA has pulled out of the Kyoto protocol. This is amazing for a rather liberal country. But their scientists have finally come to grips with reality on this issue.

Then you have scientists such as Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, who said of Al Gore's movie about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," which he refused to watch, "Don't make me throw up, It is not science. It is not true."

So one can no longer say that "all respectable scientists AGREE that GW is real and our fault!" as often is portrayed in the MEDIA.

And unfortunately, a lot of disinformation about where Earth's climate is heading is being propagated by "scientists" who use improper statistical methods, short-term temperature trends, or faulty computer models to make analytical and anecdotal projections about the significance of man-made influences to Earth's climate.

2011 Temperature Watch

Halfway through 2011, the year-to-date (January-June) average temperature for the United States is just 0.15�F above the long-term (20th century) average. Although it is certainly too soon to say for sure (especially considering that a good portion of the country has been stuck in an extended heat wave), there is a good case to be made that when the final numbers are in at the end of December, that 2011 will go down as another in a recent string (which now stands at three years and counting) of rather unremarkable years when it comes to the national annual average temperature. This run of near-normal years is growing evidence that the collection of relatively warm years experienced in the U.S. from 1998-2007 neither represented a new climate state in the U.S. nor a sustained uptick in the rate of warming which could be reliably extrapolated into the future.

The bottom line is presented in Figure 1 (below). Figure 1 includes a projection of the 2011 final end-of-the-year temperature placed in the context of the full U.S. temperature history from 1895-2010.

Figure 1. Projected value for the U.S. annual temperature for 2011 based on data for the first six months of the year. The blue dot at the end is the current year-to-date (January through June) temperature anomaly. The grey bar represents the region where there is about a 2/3rds chance that the 2011 annual temperature will end up being. The hash marks above and below the grey bar indicate the region where there is about a 95% chance the 2011 annual temperature will ultimately fall, and the vertical line represent the limits of the 2011 annual temperature, based on observations from 1895-2010. (Data source: U.S. National Climatic Data Center)

Knappenberger concludes:

�If 2011 ultimately turns out to come in in-line with the central projections in Figure [1], it will strengthen the suggestion that the unusually high temperature that characterized the 10-yr period from 1998-2007, were just that, unusual, and do not best represent either the expected trend or the climate state of the U.S. for the next several decades to come.�Over at MasterResource.org, Chip Knappenberger elucidates why this is the case�catching us up on the temperatures thus far in 2011 and reviewing the recent behavior of the U.S. annual average temperature record.

Is GW real? Somewhat, and in uneven areas around the globe. (Some areas are cooling!)

IS GW spinning out of control, meaning it's almost too late to stop impending disaster? No. (If it was a bit warmer eons ago, the planet survived it fully).

IS GW bad? For some. But benefits outweigh problems. (More crops, more habitable planet).

Is GW man-caused? Very little. And, even if we did cut down 10% of our CO2, our impact (less than 5%) would yield 1/2% decrease, at HUGE costs, and economic peril.

Is GW permanent or here to stay? No. (I imagine we have even less control over sun output!)

The opinion expressed is mine, and does not reflect any other organization or person (except for those cited in this paper).

Even with the overwhelming info above, it behooves BOTH sides to keep an open mind, and not shut the other side down summarily (which seems to be happening too much).