Scientist Shifts View on Global Warming

AP Via AOL News ^ | May 18, 2008 | SETH BORENSTEIN,AP

[rightwingintelligentsia]

WASHINGTON (May 18) - Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject.

Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday.

In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming's wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming and hotter waters that fuel them.

Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle.

[pnh102]

Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic ...

Stopped reading at that point. Where are all these hurricanes?

[Always Right]

I can’t even believe they think these models can predict such things a hurricane activity.

[Walrus]

No conclusions to be drawn from this, either. This guy is using “computer models” for his THEORIES, just like Al Gore’s buddies have been.

[johniegrad]

Doesn’t matter.....Global CLIMATE change......carbon footprint.....ozone hole.....carbon credits.......rising seas.....dying polar bears......retreating glaciers.....CO2 emissions......greenhouse gases.....SUVs......Kyoto.....Euroweenies.....battery cars.....fossil fuels....Al Gore.....Inconvenient Truth........Doomed

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[yldstrk]

Gee, you don’t say........

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I think that there might be a major change coming through in one to three years.

That is, for the next decade or so, the sun is expected to be at low ebb. All energy input to the Earth’s climate comes from the sun. Mind you, the sun will still give a normal amount of heat to Earth.

However, this lack of solar activity is likely going to strongly reduce clouds that hold in heat. And since water vapor is by far *the* dominant greenhouse gas, this means that while it might be “hot during the day, it will still be cold at night”.

This will drag down annual *low* temperatures. And in turn, it will prevent higher *high* temperatures built from “leftover” heat.

So this means a decade of global cooling. However, it means something else as well. Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is very temperature dependent. It peaks in May and bottoms out in September, when the oceans “sink” the most CO2.

The MMGW advocates say that the ocean cannot sink any more CO2 than they are now. However, if the oceans are colder, they may start absorbing a *lot* more CO2. Just like cold soda holds more carbonation than hot soda.

This matters, because if cooler temperatures sink a lot more CO2 than mankind produces, it will demonstrate that what people do doesn’t matter as much as the MMGW crowd would have us believe.

[Recovering_Democrat]

Global Warming as depicted by Al Gore is a bunch of idiocy...I don’t know how/why normally smart people like Newt Gingrich come to accept this CRAP.

God bless Rush Limbaugh and Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma for standing up to this STUPIDITY.

[Recovering_Democrat]

You’re right, but the kooks have started planting the seeds already—saying “oh yes, it will get cooler but THEN it will get WARMER!!”

They know they will lose on the OBSERVATIONAL side of the weather, so they’re working overtime...sometimes with conservatives’ help, and ALWAYS with the LameStream Media’s help to take away our freedoms.

[Right Wing Assault]

Good move. Get off the sinking ship before it’s too late.

[kempo]

The Republicans who are making commercials with liberals about global warming are doing nothing but legitimizing Al Gore's lies.

[Parley Baer]

These clowns keep moving the goal post to fit their agenda.

[Amendment10]

But NOAA hurricane meteorologist Chris Landsea, who wasn't part of this study, praised Knutson's work as "very consistent with what's being said all along."

"I think global warming is a big concern, but when it comes to hurricanes the evidence for changes is pretty darn tiny," Landsea said.

I'm not an expert in these things, but Mr. Landsea's statement seems to compliment the following.

Given that the oceans cover 66-70% of the earth's surface, it's no surprise that ocean temperatures are regarded as a major indicator of global warming activity. So the slight decrease in ocean temperatures indicated by the Argo System oceanic temperature probes over the last several years not only compliments Mr. Landsea's statement but, also reflects on the politically correct foundation of AGW alarmism, in my opinion.

Argo System ocean temperature probes
Argo System web site

[BIGLOOK]

The late Edward Lorenz agrees with you.

An early pioneer of the theory was Edward Lorenz whose interest in chaos came about accidentally through his work on weather prediction in 1961.[14] Lorenz was using a simple digital computer, a Royal McBee LGP-30, to run his weather simulation. He wanted to see a sequence of data again and to save time he started the simulation in the middle of its course. He was able to do this by entering a printout of the data corresponding to conditions in the middle of his simulation which he had calculated last time. To his surprise the weather that the machine began to predict was completely different from the weather calculated before. Lorenz tracked this down to the computer printout. The computer worked with 6-digit precision, but the printout rounded variables off to a 3-digit number, so a value like 0.506127 was printed as 0.506. This difference is tiny and the consensus at the time would have been that it should have had practically no effect. However Lorenz had discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome.[15] Lorenz's discovery, which gave its name to Lorenz attractors, proved that meteorology could not reasonably predict weather beyond a weekly period (at most).

[Lancey Howard]

“Global warming” hoax BUMP!

[PGR88]

Scientists can be lemmings just like the rest - maybe their left-wing Universities infect their brains.

[gusopol3]

oops! AP thought you forgot by now.

[IGBT]

..the US needs to sweep the eco-theists and eco-KOOKS’s off the world stage and start producing/drilling for oil in the US as necessary. The global warming hoax also needs to be dismissed. The Carbon-Con racketeers will have a runious effect on global prosperity and result in food riots over ethanol production. Carbon-Con racketeers will continue their steady drum beat of climate alarmism in an attempt to cash in on the Carbon-Con. Don’t let the eco-crooks get away with it. The Carbon-Con is on and the eco-crooks are trying to make it the “new gold rush” faux.

[Jim Noble]

Repeat after me: There is no global warming.

[eggman]

There has been a jump in the number of hurricanes... predicted. Their models were wrong the past 2 years but they continue to believe the models and ignore reality. Such is the “science” of global warming.

[pjd]

There's one thing that may be wrong in your analysis. You say that "this lack of solar activity is likely going to strongly reduce clouds..."

The theory that I am familiar with says that a less active sun means a weaker solar wind. Less solar wind means a higher cosmic ray flux (because a stronger solar wind deflects the cosmic rays.) More cosmic rays correlate to more clouds.

So a less active sun leads to more clouds, which give higher reflectivity, resulting in lower temperatures. We both get to the same place, but the path is different.

[IGBT]

..it’s the Carbon-Con.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

On this particular subject, science has to take a step back and be a bit humble, because all sorts of very common sense assumptions are not panning out.

For example, everyone assumed that higher evaporation in the mid latitudes would result in more heat retaining clouds. But with high evaporation the sky was as clear as a bell, and the temperature dropped.

They know that clouds both reflect and keep in heat, but no idea how much in either direction or why.

I am not even sure if the cosmic ray theory of cloud generation still holds water. It is disputed. However, what I was talking about, basically solar flares, I see as a far more potent source of atmospheric interaction.

Solar flares can both knock out satellites and cause major fluctuation in the planetary magnetic field. And that means a lot of energy. If Earth was really unlucky, a giant solar flare could actually scorch us.

But at least I have a theory which will prove itself, or be disproven, in just a few years.

[pjd]

I am not even sure if the cosmic ray theory of cloud generation still holds water. It is disputed.

I don't disagree with you, but you have to be careful about the phrase "It's been disputed."

Global Warming proponents "dispute" ever argument that demonstrate natural climate drivers. The science of the dispute is almost always hand-waving or non-existent. The key thing is that they get "someone" - anyone - to dispute it so later that can simply respond to your solid and logical arguments with, "Oh, that's been disputed."

So before you say something has been disputed, make sure you take a good look at the science of the dispute.

Usually, the disputes are of the form that something else might, under special circumstances, provide an alternate explanation. But it is never (or at least, seldom) shown that the special circumstances needed to validate the dispute are present to the degree necessary to for the conclusion.

There is always some crackpot on the left who will "authoritatively" dispute every well-supported theory that contradicts the party line. So the phrase, "...has been disputed," has little meaning.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Here is a disputation.

http://tinyurl.com/2gtppr

[avacado]

"Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday."

No! The COOLING of the eastern Pacific Ocean causes wind shear across the Caribbean and Atlantic which destroys the tops of hurricanes, thereby reducing the number of hurricanes and the intensity of hurricanes.

The article is less than honest.

[pjd]

Here is a disputation.

http://tinyurl.com/2gtppr

I checked it out. This "disputation" is garbage. It is full of hedge-words, cherry-picked data, straw men, invalid conclusions from unsupported premises and obvious bias as evidenced from the derogatory words and attitude throughout the article.

There is actually a more modern paper (2004), which the New Scientist article conveniently failed to acknowledge which invalidats essentially all of the criticisms raised in the left-wind New Scientist blog.

Check out:
Pallé, Enric, C. John Butler, and Keran O'Brien,The possible connection between ionization in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and low level clouds. Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, 66(2004).

[pjd]

Here's a link to the paper cited above.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

After reviewing the paper, it’s hedging is still within what I would call “disputed”. I use the word disputed, not in relation to the argument, but by there still being a profound shortage of scientific knowledge about climate systems.

As I pointed out on my first posting, so many major discoveries are still being made, some of them counterintuitive, that at best I’m hesitant. For example, I mentioned that MMGW advocates discovered that even though mid-latitude evaporation was intense, it was not generating high clouds. Nobody on either side of the argument expected this. It was a long-accepted axiom that higher evaporation meant more high clouds.

It blew a major hole in the MMGW argument, but at the same time was totally unexpected by the MMGW skeptics.

Assuming for a moment that cosmic radiation has a strong effect in low cloud production. As they say in the pdf, this would account for *much* global warming. But *all* global warming has to originate with the Sun.

So solar activity may work against cosmic radiation, but at the same time might also work in favor of global warming itself. Solar radiation-heat retention-heat radiation into space. There is a lot more there than anybody is yet taking into account.