Sorting out the truth on global warming

St Petersburg Times ^ | April 23, 2007 | BILL ADAIR

[Cincinatus' Wife]

WASHINGTON - A major international study recently concluded there was overwhelming evidence that humans were causing global warming. But that didn't quiet the skeptics. They continue to raise doubts, suggesting that everything from sunspots to cattle flatulence is causing the earth to warm, and insisting that scientists were stretching the truth.

"Every weather extreme is global warming!" said radio host Rush Limbaugh three days after the release of the report. "These people, they're brilliant little socialists and communists. They know how to propagandize; they know how to keep this alive."

Global warming has been called the most dire issue facing the planet, and yet, if you're not a scientist, it can be difficult to sort out the truth.

Here's what scientists involved in the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say about the skeptics' points. The IPCC involved more than 2,500 scientists from 130 nations reviewing thousands of climate studies.

Cattle flatulence creates more greenhouse gas than cars.

Variations of this point have been made by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who made a crack about it in a recent dissenting opinion and conservative columnist George Will. There is some truth to it, although it is sometimes exaggerated.

Cattle and other ruminant animals are surprisingly large producers of methane, the No. 2 greenhouse gas. When they eat plant material, it combines with bacteria in their stomachs to produce methane. U.S. cows emit about 5.5-million metric tons of methane each year, accounting for 20 percent of the nation's methane emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The skeptics often mention animal flatulence to trivialize the causes of warming, but Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist who was a reviewer on the IPCC study, says more gas comes from the front of the animals than the rear.

"It's not really flatulence," he said. "It's really burps."

The skeptics have sometimes exaggerated its effect as a greenhouse gas. The scientists' best estimate says the impact of all animal-produced methane worldwide is roughly the same as the carbon dioxide produced by cars and trucks in the United States. But some skeptics neglect to include those qualifiers and incorrectly contend that cows alone create more greenhouse gas than all cars, trucks and planes.

Sunspots are a major factor in global warming.

This theory, promoted by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and others, seems to make a lot of sense. We know there are fluctuations in heat from the sun, so it seems logical that they could make the Earth hotter.

But the landmark IPCC report released in February said solar fluctuations were not an important factor in the dramatic warming of the Earth in recent decades. Scientists say the amount of heat from the sun has not increased significantly in the past 30 years, even though global temperatures did.

Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University who worked on the IPCC report, said solar variations "are not the dominant contributor to warming in the past 50 years. Greenhouse gases are the dominant factor."

Studies show Antarctica is cooling, which contradicts the belief that the Earth is warming.

Like other points from the skeptics, this one - from novelist Michael Crichton, conservative author Ann Coulter and others - has a germ of truth, but has been exaggerated.

Indeed, a 2002 study found that a small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had cooled over a five-year period. It also found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had cooled than had warmed.

The study, by University of Illinois at Chicago professor Peter Doran and other scientists, drew tremendous news coverage. It ran counter to people's assumption that global warming would occur uniformly throughout the planet, and quickly became a talking point for the skeptics.

Doran says his research was taken out of context and wildly exaggerated. Although it showed one portion of Antarctica was cooling, it was wrongly cited as evidence against global warming, he wrote in the New York Times.

Scientists say his findings reflected Antarctica's unique weather patterns, which keep one portion of the continent cooler while the peninsula, which stretches toward South America, has been warming faster than the global average.

Just 30 years ago, there was talk of an ice age coming.

Limbaugh, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and many others make this point to suggest that scientists are fickle. If the experts were pursuing ice-age theories 30 years ago, the skeptics ask, how can they now believe the Earth is warming?

Indeed, Newsweek published a story in 1975 headlined "The Cooling World."

"There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth," the article warned, citing a "sudden, large increase" in snow cover and a drop in the amount of sunshine reaching the continental United States.

Today, climate scientists say that was unfounded media hype. Although there were a few studies that suggested the possibility of global cooling in the 1970s, they did not represent a consensus of the world's scientists reviewing the thousands of studies, as the IPCC's reports do today.

"With all due respect to your noble profession," Schmidt said in an interview, "I would have to caution people not to believe everything they read in Newsweek or Time."

The "hockey stick" theory has been debunked.

Charts showing the increase in global temperatures resemble a hockey stick. They show temperatures relatively flat for centuries and then increase sharply in the last 100 years, like the blade on the stick. But skeptics such as Inhofe often say that this theory has been proven wrong and that "the hockey stick is broken."

Scientists involved with IPCC study acknowledge there were minor problems with supplementary information in the original 1998 study that became known as the hockey stick report. Those problems were identified and corrections were made.

But the scientists say the problems were insignificant and did not undermine the core finding of that study and many others since: The Earth's average temperature changed relatively little over centuries but then went up dramatically in post-industrial times.

Said Schmidt: "The hockey stick lives."

What's the big deal if average temperatures increase a few degrees?

This point has been raised by Thomas Gale Moore, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry about Global Warming.

"It's absurd to believe that we live in the best of all possible times and that we can't adjust" to a temperature change, he recently told Newsweek. He says more people die from cold than warmth and says an increase of a few degrees could prevent thousands of deaths.

Indeed, scientists acknowledge that there are benefits from global warming. They noted at a news conference last week that some apples taste better because the growing season is longer. And as the Earth warms, frigid locales will be more temperate and presumably more desirable.

But the scientists who wrote the IPCC study say they are concerned because the Earth has been warming so fast.

"With just a small increase in the average temperature, you get a big increase in the extremes," said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a lead author of the IPCC study.

Scientists believe that as the Earth warms, weather patterns will bring more intense droughts to certain areas and more powerful storms in other places. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere holds more water, leading to more intense rain and more frequent flooding.

Said Oppenheimer, the Princeton professor: "The more we learn, the more we find reasons to be concerned."

Researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Washington bureau chief Bill Adair can be reached at adair@sptimes.com or (202) 463-0575.

For more information on the IPCC study, go to http://www.ipcc.ch/

[Last modified April 23, 2007, 01:47:40]

[Waco]

Shut up, hold still, and let us pick your pocket.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

No kidding.

[Son House]

Democrats won’t stop buying gasoline,
their doing it at an increasingly alarming rate.

[Thrownatbirth]

Shut up, hold still, and let us pick your pocket.

Please don't take my toilet paper square!

[Fresh Wind]

Scientists involved with IPCC study acknowledge there were minor problems with supplementary information in the original 1998 study that became known as the hockey stick report.

The computer model responsible for the hockey stick produced that same result regardless of what information was fed into it. That's a "minor problem"?

[Zon]

Newsweek published a story in 1975 headlined "The Cooling World."

"There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth," the article warned, citing a "sudden, large increase" in snow cover and a drop in the amount of sunshine reaching the continental United States. 

Less sunlight reaching Earth causes global cooling. More sunlight reaching Earth causes global warming.

If Earth had no atmosphere it would be as cold as the moon. But Earth does have an atmosphere. So where does the heat come from? Like a thermos that you can put hot chocolate in to keep warm, the thermos retains heat that  slowly dissipates. When the Sun reduces the amount of heat sent to Earth the heat dissipates faster and cools Earth and the atmosphere.. When the Sun sends more heat to Earth the heat accumulates and warms Earth and the atmosphere.

As expected, it has been found that Sun cycles correlate with the rise and fall of temperature on Earth.  For all intents and purposes the Sun is the cause of global warming and global cooling.

"With all due respect to your noble profession," Schmidt said in an interview, "I would have to caution people not to believe everything they read in Newsweek or Time."

The scare tactics have flip-flopped four times over the last eighty-some years.

 

 

[Zon]

The following graphs show that Earth is in a brief period of global warming called an interglacial. The longer time spans, the deep troughs are glacial periods. The line that runs across the graphs is the temperature in 1950 and listed as "0" on the left axis.

As can be seen in Figure 1-5, Earth appears ready to move toward another ice age in the cycle.

I'm more concerned with sustaining global warming to offset global cooling and the next ice age. 

Ice Ages & Astronomical Causes
Brief Introduction to the History of Climate
by Richard A. Muller

Origin of the 100 kyr Glacial Cycle

This first graph looks bad, doesn't it -- steeper upward temperature trend. Horizontal red line is temperature at 1950.

Figure 1-1 Global warming

The second graph shows today's temperature isn't out of the norm. Horizontal blue line is temperature at 1950.

Figure 1-2 Climate of the last 2400 years

The next graph shows a downtrend in temperatures from 8,000 years ago to today. The down trend is steeper in the recent 2,000 years. From left to right the upper spikes have lower highs while the lower spikes have lower lows. (The same effect can be seen in Figure 1-2, above.) 

Figure 1-3 Climate of the last 12,000 years

This graph shows that agriculture and  stationary societies emerged 8,000 years ago during a time frame when global temperature was much higher than normal, or average.

Figure 1-4 Climate of the last 100,000 years

The next graph shows that the recent 8,000 years was one of five brief hot spikes when glaciers were at minimums. With much longer troughs when glacials (ice ages) were the norm most of the time.

Figure 1-5 Climate for the last 420 kyr, from Vostok ice

The graph below is reversed. That is, the left side is present day and the right side is 3 million years ago. It shows a 3 million year down trend toward widening extremes in the temperature cycle.

Figure 1-6 Climate for the last 3 million years

The final graph shows CO2 lagging temperature change -- not leading it.

Figure 1-7 CO2 and temperature for the last 450 kyr

When man can cause meaningful global warming yesterday would be a good time to begin thwarting the next ice age.

Great documentary: The Great Global Warming Swindle

[thedilg]

Several times the author avers to a dramatic and fast rise in earths temperature but never tells us what it is. It seems that the orbiting satellite that monitors world temperature has if anything dropped an insignificant amount over the last 8 years. Where is the dramatic and recent increase?

Godspeed, The Dilg

[David Isaac]

Google says the video is not available.

[Zon]

Google has deleted the URL. Same thing happened on You Tube. Here's a new link to watch it on You Tube:  The Great Global Warming Swindle  Here's a new link to the video on Google: The Great Global Warming Swindle.

If the above links don't work use the respective search function at each Website. Type: The Great Global Warming Swindle.

[Zon]

See post 11.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

You really need to take computer modeling with a grain of salt.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thanks for the post and information.

[Nextrush]

The only “Global Warming” I believe in is the heat of my anger at this fraud perpetrated by government, business, media, education and the left-wing nuts that are mixed into all these institutions.

The fear campaign about “climate change” permeates education.

They are all talking about “sustainability” and other crap like “carbon credits” and such.

This issue is a propaganda campaign for a political agenda of more government and less freedom.

[newfreep]

It's available via google...at least for awhile.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2332531355859226455

[BufordP]

ping.

[Always Right]

Sorting out the truth on global warming

This is not the truth, this is propaganda of the IPCC. It is on1y the truth if you take what the g1oba1 a1armists as gospe1.

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH

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[GBA]

Great post! The graphs confirm several things for me, the first being that people with an agenda can tell a very believable lie with the truth.