The Great Global Warming Swindle

One central problem for those who promote the idea of man made global warming is the earth's temperature record - on almost all time scales.

In the last decade, there has been no clear warming trend (as the UK Met Office and IPCC's own figures demonstrate). In the last century, much of the warming occurred prior to 1940, when human emissions of CO2 were relatively small compared to today. During the post-war economic boom (when one would have expected the temperature to rise) the world cooled, from the 1940s till the mid-70s (again, this is evident from accepted data used by the IPCC).

But it's important to look back further in time 1,000 years. The climate record which used to be accepted as the standard account of this period was published in the first IPCC report. But this account posed a problem. A thousand years ago there was time a warm period - apparently warmer than today (known to climatologists as the Medieval Warm Period). This was followed by a relatively cold period (known as the Little Ice Age), from which, over the past two to three hundred years, seem to have made a slow, welcome recovery.

This has all rather undermined the idea that current temperatures were either unusual or alarming. In subsequent IPCC reports the original graph was replaced by another - the famous 'Hockey Stick' (so-called because it looks like one). The Hockey Stick was a lot more dramatic, and was featured proudly on the top of the front page of the new IPCC reports. But was it true? The Hockey Stick debate is very telling, and we urge readers to review the links below. (See linked website.)

Further back in time, still within our current 'interglacial period, we find more warm spells - notably what geologists call the 'Holocene Maximum' when, for a few thousand years, the earth was significantly warmer than we find it today. Over longer time periods of course, the earth has been far, far hotter than it is today (with tropical forests covering much of the earth) and also far, far colder, with much of the earth buried under miles of ice. The Earth's climate has always changed, and changed without any help from us.

But there is another problem, a very major problem, for those who promote the idea of CO2-led global warming. According to global warming theory, if an enhanced greenhouse effect is responsible for warming the earth, then the rate of temperature rise should be greatest in that part of the earth's atmosphere known as the troposphere, specifically in the tropics. And yet the observations, from weather balloons and satellites have consistently shown that not to be the case. I urge readers to look at the Christy et al papers below. The latest one was recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research (2007).

I saw what happened, I saw it start from him just jibing you, it was you who escalted it and that made it just get worse

If all you did was just lagh it off or at least put a smily face next to your retort, there would be no arguing going on...poopyhead!

(See? Just say something so absurd in response it has to be a joke, and people will get it...Poopyhead!)

This 'globular warming' (sic) is killing me. Its been sooooooo hot we haven't had the air on in over a week. One night it got soooooo hot, we *almost* had to put the heat on. And, July was the *not soooooo hottest* on record. (that's 'Coldest' for DU lurkers)

2009 is: 'The Year Without A Summer'

Hmmmm?!?. Now where did I put those Mukluks I bought in 1978?

I was amazed at the way the House passed the cap and trade bill, which requires that 75% increase in GDP per ton of CO2, with no statements from Pelosi, Waxman, or Markey about a practical plan for achieving that kind of increase in the ratio of GDP to CO2 output. They appeared to just assume it away. They assumed somehow magically all these “green” power plants will get built in only ten years if they just mandate a big cut in CO2 output. I would estimate that in the best case scenario we might be able to increase alternative energy production as a percentage of total energy production by 15 points, and increase overall energy efficiency by a maximum of 25 percent in ten years. That adds up to a 40% increase in the ratio of GDP to CO2 output in the BEST CASE.

So I agree that the required CO2 reduction in the bill is impossible to achieve without GDP growth dropping way below the 2.5% average assumption that you used. That’s really scary when you consider the consequences of this bill: a forced decline in economic activity and a legislated increase in unemployment and federal deficits. What are Waxman, Markey, and Pelosi smoking these days? All I can say is they must be “jokers, smokers, and midnight tokers” (to quote an old song). I predict that the senate is too smart to pass this kind of radical cap and trade legislation. I’d say this bill is DOA in the senate, although they might pass some kind of CO2-related bill just to prevent the EPA from doing something completely loony.

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