Posted on 08/12/2005 8:20:24 AM PDT by cogitator
For years, skeptics of global warming have used satellite and weather balloon data to argue that climate models were wrong and that global warming isn't really happening.
Now, according to three new studies published in the journal Science, it turns out those conclusions based on satellite and weather balloon data were based on faulty analyses.
The atmosphere is indeed warming, not cooling as the data previously showed.
...
Argument evaporates
According to Santer, the only group to previously analyze satellite data on the troposphere -- the lowest layer in Earth's atmosphere -- was a research team headed by Roy Spencer from University of Alabama in 1992.
"This was used by some critics to say 'We don't believe in climate models, they're wrong,'" Santer told LiveScience. "Other people used the disconnect between what the satellites told and what surface thermometers told us to argue that the surface data were wrong and that earth wasn't really warming because satellites were much more accurate."
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
These are fairly pivotal studies, and may significantly shift the scientific assessment of global warming as it is occurring now. I really enjoy watching the process of science at work.
There is an error in the LiveScience article; it says that the previous analysis by Spencer and Christy's group showed a tropospheric cooling, whereas the new analysis shows a warming. In actuality, the new correction increases the warming trend in Spencer and Christy's data by about 50%. They report a decadal trend (from 1979) of 0.12 degrees C, in contrast to Mears and Wentz, who get 0.19 degrees C. In either case and considering the error bars, the tropospheric temperature trends are now in agreement with models of how the surface and atmosphere are warming.
Lets see, as I remember we haad an Ice Age and now we don't... hmmmm. Yep. I think its getting warmer.
The real question is the role of man. And the jury is out on that one.
The fact that the climate is warming has never really been in dispute. The warming & cooling of the planet has been going on forever.
The dispute is whether the current warming trend is man-made, which has never been conclusively proven.
That would explain the so-much warmer winters we have been having lately.
What, you mean we haven't been having warmer winters? They're actually colder???
It must be Bush's fault, then!
Quantitatively, the jury is still out. Qualitatively, the verdict is in -- we're causing some of it. When the article talks about "models", one of the main things being modeled is the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
Here is the problem, instruments on the ground read one thing and instruments 2 feet up and farther show no warming at all so, those supporting global warming are saying yes, there is global warming, the instruments and how we use them are wrong becuase they don't prove our theory.
Right. Well, you expect little from Yale and, you get it.
"This was used by some critics to say 'We don't believe in climate models, they're wrong,'" Santer told LiveScience. "Other people used the disconnect between what the satellites told and what surface thermometers told us to argue that the surface data were wrong and that earth wasn't really warming because satellites were much more accurate."
They're moving the goalpost.
What we have no idea about is how much is is caused by humans, and what would be happening if we weren't here?
The earths atmosphere radically warmed and cooled all on it's own many times before humans invented the internal combustion engine. It's not static. Finding that it's gradually changing is not a big shock.
Only a fool would want colder winters.
If not for a general moderation in the interglacial climate....civilization as we know it would not have developed.
And in those days where were cars, power plants and greedy businessmen?
But until then, the evidence demonstrates that non-human sources for climate changes are far more important than even the worst predictions of the global warming crowd.
The bottom line, I don't care if the earth's warming. I'm not going to change the way I live.
Well, interesting.
But, for most folks, we won't care.
Unless global warming actually results in a noticeable change in the weather, which really hasn't happened, people won't get worked up about it.
One of the reasons for doubt was the previous discrepancy between the surface and lower troposphere warming trends. I.e., the models, based on atmospheric physics and the observed surface warming trend, predicted a significant warming in the lower troposphere. The discrepancy is apparently resolved, indicating that this aspect of the models is much less doubtful. Go to the RealClimate link for more information.
Even if we are partly to blame, and I don't buy into that, history shows nature balances itself out.
If we get to hot, nature WILL cool us off, one way or another, even if it means going into a new ice age.
That is perhaps in the process already......the salinity levels in the northern Atlantic are rapidly dropping.
Actually, given that the models are now in good agreement with the surface AND lower troposphere warming trends, the human contribution to warming due to greenhouse gases will be much better quantified.
One thing that's being ignored is the effect of environmental "improvements". An article from a year or so ago admitted that cleanups of soot and other particulates had caused some of the warming.
Since CO2 was going up during the decades when the climate was cooling (up till 1970). And those years had no environmental cleanup efforts, a cursory glance might indicate that it's the environmental rule compliance since 1970 that's "caused" the recent warming.
A classic statement is this: "Climate = average weather".
It takes a significant shift to change a long-term average, just as a baseball player has to go on an amazing hitting streak in August to raise his batting average significantly if he was hitting .200 from April through July. One of the changes in "average weather" due to warming would be earlier spring thaws and later winter freezes for water bodies in temperate zones (like the United States).
Such trends have been conclusively observed.
The other, for me, is that the very same people screaming about global warming are the very same people, who in the 70's, screamed about the coming ice age. I believe it was even a cover piece on Newsweak.
Well I would believe it was man inspired if they can show the data that during the last 10,000 years that man has used fire( wood and coal) to cook, warm himself and work every single moment of the day and that didnt effect climate?
After the USSR fell the secularists needed to find something so huge that could never be acurately measured by lay people in order for them to focus their attention. That way it becomes a religion and the scientists are the priests. Research funding are the contributions and enviromental protests are their worship services. To see it any other way is naive.
Same for soot and aerosols.
Quite a few good climate scientists anticipate that major changes in energy production and usage patterns will moderate the warming trend we're seeing now. I think they're right.
Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No
The text of the Newsweek article you mention can be found on this site. I don't think it was on the cover.
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