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Earth a little more resilient than computer models
Hot Air ^ | March 23, 2008 | Ed Morrissey

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.



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: algore; cizik; climatechange; co2; globalwarming; greenhouse; houghton; liarsforjesus
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To: gondramB

They moved the brakes up to the handlebars...


61 posted on 03/23/2008 3:41:11 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: gondramB

The graph certainly looks authoritative and consequential - doesn’t it. Sorry, but this simplistic chart is great way to manipulate highly variable data and make it tell the story you want it to.

In a way it reminds me of a facetious suggestion to make airplane crash statistics to look better by making the calculations in incidents per flight-second rather than flight-hour.

Whoever made this graph was intending to perpetrate a hoax.


62 posted on 03/23/2008 3:41:12 PM PDT by TeaDumper
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To: gondramB

Nope


63 posted on 03/23/2008 3:41:51 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Old Professer

>>They moved the brakes up to the handlebars...<<

I once saw a kid on a bike smash into a concrete wall because it was his first day with the brakes on the handlebars...

Apparently it really hurt.


64 posted on 03/23/2008 3:42:34 PM PDT by gondramB (Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.)
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To: patton

The sun was hotter -no spots now


65 posted on 03/23/2008 3:42:35 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: TeaDumper

That would be NASA...

And there are some problems with the data.
But there are independent measures that agree.


66 posted on 03/23/2008 3:43:42 PM PDT by gondramB (Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.)
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To: gondramB

You confuse the message with the messenger.


67 posted on 03/23/2008 3:45:22 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: gondramB

Never - not even the biased ones.

Present the new data.


68 posted on 03/23/2008 3:47:50 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Old Professer

Ah, but how many tangle chords of magnetism provide an ionic path, for the sun to deliver megajoules of electricity directly into the Aurora Borealis?

I ask that you quantify that, Sir, then we may contemplate potential remedies for the vagaries of the sun.

I suggest that we nuke the dang thing.

(Makes more sense than manbearpig, anyway - and no, I have not lost my marbles...)


69 posted on 03/23/2008 3:49:29 PM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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To: gondramB

You don’t deserve victim status - you haven’t earned it.

You said the Australian was not a good source, why?


70 posted on 03/23/2008 3:50:27 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: gondramB

When I want to heat the cold laundry warm I fill the washer with hot water; it will take the chill off for hours.

The oceans are now demonstrably cooling and that’s an inconvenient fact.


71 posted on 03/23/2008 3:54:09 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Old Professer

>>You don’t deserve victim status - you haven’t earned it.

You said the Australian was not a good source, why?<<

Did I say that?

And I’m not claiming victim status - these was one individual who was using personal attacks so I declined to continue talking to him. And I left him with the last word so as not to be unfair.


72 posted on 03/23/2008 3:55:31 PM PDT by gondramB (Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.)
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To: gondramB

” It may be helpful in cold areas but that’s not largely where the population is.”

You just hit on the main reason that this ‘global warming is bad’ idea is a hard sell.


73 posted on 03/23/2008 3:57:10 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: San Jacinto

Models are mathematical equations based upon assumptions (made by humans) and probabilities.
Models are not all-seeing, all powerful beings.


74 posted on 03/23/2008 4:00:16 PM PDT by tbw2 ("Sirat: Through the Fires of Hell" by Tamara Wilhite - on amazon.com)
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To: patton

I think you’ve tangled your cords in the mangle of space.


75 posted on 03/23/2008 4:03:19 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: Old Professer

>>” It may be helpful in cold areas but that’s not largely where the population is.”


You just hit on the main reason that this ‘global warming is bad’ idea is a hard sell.<<

Other reasons are that the current changes are below human perception, the future changes are slow, the warnings are overblown and some of the loudest people are the same ones who always oppose capitalism.


76 posted on 03/23/2008 4:04:31 PM PDT by gondramB (Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.)
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To: gondramB

You mentioned definitive? As far as you’re being pilloried by an over-critical poster, fair enough explanation.

What needs to be examined here is whether there is room left for honest debate.


77 posted on 03/23/2008 4:05:49 PM PDT by Old Professer (The critic writes with rapier pen, dips it twice, and writes again.)
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To: patton
>>Ok, the sun is hotter - what shall we do about it? Send money to al gore?<<

Total solar irradiance has been going down

total solar irradiance tsi,total solar irradiance tsi

The graph is from the Lasp Interactive Solar IRradiance Datacenter
http://lasp.colorado.edu/LISIRD/
78 posted on 03/23/2008 4:08:47 PM PDT by gondramB (Preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words.)
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To: gondramB
Oh sure, we can probably blow it to Kingdom Come, but a major influence on weather...

We're just kiddies playing in a sandbox.

79 posted on 03/23/2008 4:12:43 PM PDT by AFreeBird
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To: gondramB

So is ocean temperature - odd how that works, huh?


80 posted on 03/23/2008 4:13:02 PM PDT by patton (cuiquam in sua arte credendum)
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