Global Warming

Almost two years ago, the Los Angeles Times ran a story entitled “Poster Species For A Planet,” warning that the polar bear is likely to be the first “victim” of global warming. This, we’re told, is because the Arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate, according to “projections,” “forecasts,” and “trends.” What they don’t mention is that most of the climatology models used for these “predictions” are about as accurate as a blind-folded dart thrower. Still, the alarmists continue to clamor for an audience, and action. What happens, though, when we look at the facts we do have, and look at them objectively?

Question: What percentage of citizens are aware that the Antarctic snow pack is increasing by about 5 feet per year? Or, that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet gained about 45 billion (with a "b") tons (tons!) of ice between 1992 and 2003? Moreover, how many citizens are aware that the Antarctic ice sheets are several kilometers thick in some places, and that they contain about 90% of the world’s ice?

Other glaciers are growing elsewhere in the world, as well, including the Helm and Place glaciers in Canada; Argentina’s Perito Moreno glacier; Antizana in Ecuador; Mt. Blanc in France; Silvretta in Switzerland. Norway’s glaciers are growing at a record pace, and the Maali glacier in Russia is “surging.” Glaciers are also growing in New Zealand, the United States and Greenland.

Why isn’t this newsworthy? Is it because there is a “consensus” with regard to global warming, and “the debate is over”?

Not yet, it ain’t.

In 1999, paleoclimatologist Michael Mann authored a paper claiming that the 1990s were the "warmest decade in a millennium" and that 1998 was the warmest year in the last 1,000.
Prior to Mr. Mann's work, the accepted view, as embodied in the United Nation’s 1990 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that the world had undergone a warming period in the Middle Ages, followed by a mid-millennium cold spell and a subsequent warming period -- the current one. That consensus held that the Medieval warm period was considerably warmer than the present day.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mann’s paper eliminated the Medieval warming period, which resulted in a statistical model (a graph) showing a nice, steady temperature oscillation that persists for centuries followed by a dramatic climb over the past century. The “hockey stick” graph was instantly hailed as the Holy Grail for global-warming alarmists: It was placed in the U.N.’s 2001 report on climate change and was even used in Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.” It has, of course, cropped up all over the place since then.

The problem is, Mr. Mann’s work is plagued by statistical errors and his methodology was found to be biased toward hockey sticks. This is all the more problematic for the “true believers” in the Glabal Warming Crusade, who have bravely soldiered on in the face of this inconvenient truth. In 2007, Al Gore won an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize for perpetuating climate change alarmism. (Those of you who were surprised by either of these “awards,” please raise your hand.)

As if Mr. Mann’s shenanigans weren’t enough, we also know – thanks to meteorologist Anthony Watts – that a great many of the “official” ground weather stations scattered around the nation and used by NASA to measure the average annual temperature in the U.S. are not providing credible data. Mr. Watts and his volunteers have checked out some 500 of these stations (out of 1,221 total) and found that nearly 70% of the sites fail to meet governmental standards because they are actually in place and taking measurements from atop rooftops, or are situated near air-conditioning exhaust fans, or are within 100 feet of buildings, and on and on it goes.

There’s more.

A 2008 survey show that Arctic Sea ice has, in fact, recovered from its lowest recorded level and is now “10 to 20 centimeters thicker in many places than it was at this time last year,” according to an article in Canada’s National Post, quoting the Canadian Ice Service. A year ago, China had one of its most brutal winters in the last 100 years, and snow cover over Siberia, Mongolia, China and North America is at the highest levels since 1966. Also, the average temperature in January 2008 was about one-third of a degree cooler than the average temperature for the 20th century – and this was the second coldest January in the last 15 years. Meanwhile, respected Canadian and Russian scientists are predicting a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

Anyone with even the most basic understanding of heating and cooling is likely to be skeptical of the “global warming crisis.” Let’s look at it in a practical manner. Most of us have heating and cooling systems in our home. When we set our thermostat for a specific temperature, the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system works to achieve the desired temperature. If it’s cold in the house, the heat will kick in until that temperature is reached. Conversely, if it’s too hot, the air conditioning will come on to help cool down the house. As accurate as modern thermostats are, and as efficient as today’s HVAC systems are, there is still going to be some degree of “overshoot.” In other words, these systems can’t stop on a dime at the precise temperature we have selected; the temperature will continue to increase or decrease, by a slight amount, after attaining the target. Now, all of this happens within a very small, relatively closed (or homogeneous) system. Can you imagine trying to heat or cool an open system? A system as vast and complicated as planet Earth? This assumes, of course, that we know the optimum (average) global temperature at which to set the planet’s thermostat to begin with, which we don’t. But we do have a pretty good idea: The Earth’s average global temperature hasn’t changed more than a couple of degrees, give or take, over the last 1,000 years (including the Medieval Warm Period and the Mini-Ice Age).

Some among us believe that global warming means the end of the world as we know it. However, the fact is, modern day temperatures fit easily into the known range of natural historical variation. The overall stability of our global temperature is quite amazing, and to believe that we, mankind, are capable of instituting any kind of change upon the planet’s thermodynamics is not only arrogant, but grossly misguided. Thankfully, some cooler heads are beginning to prevail.

In March 2008, over 400 scientists, economists and other experts met in New York City for the International Conference on Climate Change. The primary topic of the conference was “Global Warming: Truth or Swindle?” and the focus was on challenging “the claim that global warming is a ‘crisis.’” The event was sponsored in part by the John Locke Foundation, the George C. Marshall Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis, and included Vaclav Klaus, perseident of the Czech Republic; Dr. Robert Balling, professor of Climatology at Arizona State University; Dr. Vincent Gray, executive director of the New Zealand Climate Coalition; and Dr. Willie Soon, chief science advisor to the Science and Public Policy Institute.

The Petition Project (found at www.oism.org/pproject) is a direct refutation of the IPCC’s gallery of charlatans who have been attempting to legitimize global warming hysterics via their own, clannish “consensus.” The petition states:

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

To date, over 31,000 scientists have signed the petition.

As if there were any doubt about the dubious nature of this “crisis,” or if there were any question that the “debate” is far from over, along comes a big fat nail for the Climate Change coffin: Climategate.

In November of 2009 it came to light that the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia appeared to be involved in a rather large conspiracy to “massage the data” involving their anthropogenic (read: Man-made) global warming, uh, “research.” As it turns out -- thanks to numerous documents and emails that were hacked off of a server used by the CRU -- the global warming crisis “consensus” appears to be more a matter of self-serving propaganda than of sound science.

It seems that a number of these “scientists” colluded with each other in order to present an image of solidarity. Apparently they decided that their “consensus” wouldn’t hold up very well to, well, scientific scrutiny, so they made a conscious decision to withhold critical scientific observations, manipulate climate data to make it appear that their case for global warming was far stronger than it really is, circumvent and/or block key peer reviews that dissented with their sky-is-falling thesis, and deleted emails and other related data in order to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests (presumably for third-party review).

Interestingly enough, the aforementioned Michael Mann figures prominently in a number of these documents. Perhaps we should honor Mr. Mann for his persistence and start referring to it as “Mann-made global warming”?

When it comes to our climate, we simply do not have all of the evidence, and much of the evidence that we do have is incomplete -- or, in some cases, corrupt, or knowingly falsified to suit a particular agenda. That there are a number of valid questions with regard to the study of climatology is self-evident, and it undoubtedly requires further rational study. We should be asking if climate change is a normal and natural occurrence. We know that there have been "warm periods" and we know that there have been "ice ages." We know, for example, that the agricultural landscape of Northern Europe was once far more temperate than it is today, and that at one time the Vikings had farming settlements in Greenland. But then the Earth cooled down, the Vikings left Greenland, and the Brits switched from growing plantains to growing barley. Were they responsible for climate change then? Are our activities contributing to climate change today? If so, can we stop it? Should it be stopped? How do we know that a slightly warmer or a slightly cooler global temperature wouldn’t actually be better for the planet? And just what is our plan, anyway, if anthropogenic attempts to modulate the transglobal climate produces a less-than-desirable outcome? Do we get a "do-over"?

We don’t know all of the answers to any of these questions. We're not even sure that we're asking the right questions, yet. But here come the Liberals, once again mounting an ill-advised charge into the unknown armed with little more than a misplaced sense of self and an unbridled enthusiasm for controlling everyone else’s behavior. I wonder how many of these folks are aware that there has been not so much as a tenth of a degree increase in “global warming” for the last 10 years? They’ve probably buried that inconvenient little truth or purged it from their thought process; after all, Liberals seldom let facts get in the way of a feel-good crusade to save people from themselves.

REFERENCES & ADDITIONAL READING

“Hockey Sticks, Principal Components, and Spurious Significance” by Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, Geophysical Research Letters, VOL. 32, 2/12/05
“Hockey Stick Hokum” Editorial, The Wall Street Journal, 7/14/06
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, United Nations, 1990
“Global Warming, Inc.” Review and Outlook, The Wall Street Journal, 11/21/07
“Earth in the Balance” by Richard S. Lindzen
“Chill Out Over Global Warming” by David Harsanyi, The Denver Post, 12/26/06
“Random Thoughts” by Thomas Sowell, 12/4/07
“The ‘Hockey Stick’: A New Low In Climate Science” by John Daly
www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
Climate Science Weblog climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere
http://www.surfacestations.org/
www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp
“Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age,” by Lorne Gunter, National Post February 25th, 2008
www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=332289
“A Total Crock of Doo-Doo!” by Nick Nichols, March 1st, 2008
“Cool News About Global Warming,” by Bill Steigerwald, 3/4/08
http://www.wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/