Posted on 03/23/2008 12:20:39 PM PDT by Delacon
The Australian reports a few inconvenient truths regarding global climate change that have yet to receive much attention from a media sold on global warming. Not only has the Earth cooled since its peak year in 1998, not only are oceans cooler than predicted, but new NASA data shows that the computer models that predicted runaway global warming were based on a fundamental error. Rather than having clouds and water vapor amplifying the warming effect of carbon in the atmosphere, it turns out that they compensate for it (via Memeorandum):
Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.
Duffy asked Marohasy: “Is the Earth stillwarming?”
She replied: “No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.”
Duffy: “Is this a matter of any controversy?”
Marohasy: “Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued … This is not what you’d expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you’d expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up … So (it’s) very unexpected, not something that’s being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it’s very significant.” …
Duffy: “Can you tell us about NASA’s Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we’re now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?”
Marohasy: “That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you’re going to get a positive feedback. That’s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite … (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they’re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you’re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback.”
Duffy: “The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?”
Marohasy: “That’s right … These findings actually aren’t being disputed by the meteorological community. They’re having trouble digesting the findings, they’re acknowledging the findings, they’re acknowledging that the data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they’re about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.”
Hmm. How many have actually heard that the NASA Aqua satellite returned this kind of data? I searched the New York Times and found nothing since 2006 on Aqua — and that was just an announcement that NASA would launch more satellites to study weather. The Washington Post reported on ice loss in the Arctic just this week, but noted that Aqua shows an ice increase in the Acrtic this winter, but never reported on the other data that throws cold water on global warming.
So far, no one asserts that we have produced less carbon in the atmosphere. Global-warming activists continue to make Chicken Little predictions of catastrophe based on increases in carbon releases, especially from China and India as they modernize and industrialize. If carbon releases resulted in global warming, then the rate of increase should be constant; there definitely should be no decrease, especially given the theoretical amplification of water vapor.
Apparently, though, both assumptions have either proven incorrect or far too simplified to explain the actual impact of carbon on global temperatures. That’s not surprising, especially given the previous global-cooling scare of the 1970s and how baseless that theory turned out to be. What’s surprising is the utter lack of coverage that the new data has received. Why haven’t the same media outlets that relentlessly cover global-warming advocacy reported on the appearance of contradictory data?
Perhaps because global warming is more advocacy than science.
No, you should have visited, and tried to understand the content, at the link I provided for you.
But to protect our country we need to deal with reality.
To have a meaningful discussion about "reality", you need to first have to have some sort of a clue as to what constitutes reality.
Did you respond to the wrong post - that looks like long term CO2 data without error bars whereas post 5 was about the last 100 years.
I hope you are not under the illusion that help America or conservatism this way.
Your command of written English is impressive.
That has got to be the all-time champion for a non-sensical statement; at least in the English language.
As for the actual controversy, it is useful for the alarmists to mix everything together to confuse and confound (just like they doctor the data); the "controversy", for lack of a better word is two-fold.
1. That global warming is real (no rational person denies it, and it's happened dozens of times in the past independent of man, by definition. Primitive man could not possibly have had a role in that until the last 4000 years). Only an idiot would continue flogging that dead horse.
2. The anthropogenic nature of the current trend. Here there is unlimited room for honest differences of opinion, based on the data, the incompetent "massaging" of the data by questionable "scientists", and the very primitive nature of the data that underlies their opinions. Some of the most loud and hysterical proponents of anthropogenic global warming still insist on using unreliable observed data (the documentation is extensive), or the primitive satellite data of 50 years ago (!).
Keep pretending that you don't understand the nature of #2, and keep screaming about #1, since that is the only leg that the one-legged doomsday artists can get traction with.
Take it as another indicator that warm & cool periods in history are MOST likely cause by the SUN.......
Negative?
Doesn't that depend on what your definition of "is" is...?
And you want to take a climate model based upon our rather limited, infinitesimal recorded history, and even smaller data set with more granular measuring and recording instruments, not to mention still limited understanding of all the variables, and make predictions as to our future?
Good luck with that.
Personally speaking; whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, and there ain't a whole hell of a lot we can do about it.
>Just trying to shown the long term trend since you ‘Global Warning’ whinnies think ANY short term period proves your (Al gore) points.<<
My point was that there is a 100 year warming trend with a flat spot between 1945 and 1976. I doubt Al would it that way because the flat spot proves something other than CO2 is a major influence.
>>Take it as another indicator that warm & cool periods in history are MOST likely cause by the SUN.......<<
That’s problematic because the sun (and the measure you want is probably total solar irradiance -tsi) has been in a period of decline and does not correlate well with recent warming.
>Negative?
Doesn’t that depend on what your definition of “is” is...?<<
One of my heroes - Hank Hill put it this way “Dale, we live in Texas and its 105 in the summer already”
>> And you want to take a climate model based upon our rather limited, infinitesimal recorded history, and even smaller data set with more granular measuring and recording instruments, not to mention still limited understanding of all the variables, and make predictions as to our future?
Good luck with that.
Personally speaking; whatever is going to happen, is going to happen, and there ain’t a whole hell of a lot we can do about it.<<
Actually physicists talk quietly about possible cooling methods - but the PC folks already freak out over a nice safe reactor... they might explode if we talk about picking an island and creating a mild nuclear winter by blowing it to Kingdom Come.
No true scientist would label such a temperature variation ordinate as an "anomally", since variation is the norm in both climate and weather, and has been forever. The only documented state within the topic of world temperature is constant change.
Here is the crux of the article. Doesn't sound like an conclusion to me; just the reporting of fact "a" followed by fact "b". But that's just me.
"What all the climate models suggest [actually this should read "assume", since model programs do not think, they simple are programmed to follow orders] is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."
First, I apologize for not citing the source.
I tend to re-host graphics so they cannot disappear after I link them.
Here is the original link
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Here is the report its from
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/
So maybe your assertion that the effects of purported AWG are universally bad is questionable. If the sun's in decline for the long haul, maybe A little thicker CO2 blanket isn't a bad thing going forward. Disclaimer: I'm not asserting AWG is real (it almost certainly isn't), but just making a rhetorical point.
They both seem to peak together and then fall together, why is that? If CO2 leads and is causing the temperature to go up, then it would seem that if we want the temperature to go down, then we need to pump as much CO2 into the atmosphere as we can until we hit that critical peak point and they both fall. But what about at the low end? We have such a low concentration of CO2 that the temperature starts to increase? Why would that be?
>>So maybe your assertion that the effects of purported AWG are universally bad is questionable. If the sun’s in decline for the long haul, maybe A little thicker CO2 blanket isn’t a bad thing going forward. Disclaimer: I’m not asserting AWG is real (it almost certainly isn’t), but just making a rhetorical point.<<
If I said the effects are universally wrong then I misspoke (or mis-typed) I should have more carefully said that the studies universally conclude that the net effects will be negative. It may be helpful in cold areas but that’s not largely where the population is.
>>The chart shows a correlation between temperature and CO2 concentration, but does CO2 concentration lead or lag temperature? Is there a cause and effect relationship between them or is/are there some other factor(s) that drive them?
They both seem to peak together and then fall together, why is that? If CO2 leads and is causing the temperature to go up, then it would seem that if we want the temperature to go down, then we need to pump as much CO2 into the atmosphere as we can until we hit that critical peak point and they both fall. But what about at the low end? We have such a low concentration of CO2 that the temperature starts to increase? Why would that be?<<
It is not widely accepted yet but when all the data is out and circulated and double checked I suspect that CO2 increase following some other warming event. The most common such warming even may well be tectonic movement effecting ocean currents.
None of what I just said is consensus whereas the rest of what I’ve been discussing has been consensus.
Please tell me that you realize I was sarcastically imitating the GW crowd and that your post is directed at them and not me.
Sadly; what about one degree in the past 200 years makes you sad?
The +-2F error in the instruments used over 200 years are a greater cause of concern.
The “crisis” is supposed to be based on runaway warming, not the recovery from an ice-age; the runaway effect was going to be the direct result of the linear increase in CO2 - the CO2 continues apace while the temperature has gone on “hiatus.”
None of the models accounts for this.
Intuitively, one degree Celsius doesn’t bother me at all.
Its only projecting forward that becomes a concern.
And its slow enough that even if I thought the one degree was human caused I still would oppose radical solutions because we would have decades to be sure.
Given the flat spot for 21 years in the middle there is clearly at least one other large factor so I don’t think it has been shown how much is CO2 at all.
And even if the whole thing turned out to be human caused I still would object to to hurting the U.S while Russia, India and China grow their CO2 unchecked.
Nonetheless, there is warming and it is worth studying and watching.
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