The Blizzard Of '03 Reduces Visibility On Global Warming

The monstrous snow storm that dumped up to 40 inches of snow on mid-Atlantic states over the Presidents' Day weekend undoubtedly will unleash a new spate of blizzards on op-ed pages blaming it on the eco-activists favorite old bugaboo — global warming.

That's as predictable as French hypocrisy in diplomatic relations, of course, and perhaps we should merely shrug it off. But as much is at stake in the ongoing debate over global warning and what to do about it as there is in the current dispute over what to do about Saddam Hussein.

Like most true believers, the international eco-activists who make up the United Nation's International Panel on Climate Change don't want to debate — and especially not on scientific dueling grounds.

Instead, they've tried to set up a specious premise that makes genuine debate all but impossible. Consider some of their recent weather-related observations:

—Are we having near-record snowfalls from Minnesota to Virginia this winter? Yes, they agree and the reason is global warming.

—Was the weather in your area unseasonably warm last summer? Just another indication of global warming, the Cassandras cry.

—Did a ferocious hurricane storm ashore in North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana or some other southern state? A sure sign of global warming, they chant like a Grecian choir.

—Too much rain last fall? Flash floods? Or was your area hit by a prolonged soil-scorching drought?

Whatever is happening in the skies above us — no matter where on Earth we happen to be — the professional doomsayers in our midst have a ready answer — global warming.

Any unusual change in the weather anywhere sends them rushing to their personal computers to tap out a 750-word op-ed blaming it all on a suddenly overheating Earth. When one considers that your local TV weatherperson — armed with super-sophisticated Doppler radar and other technological marvels — barely does better than 50 percent on week-ahead forecasts, it's difficult to put much stock in computer models that predict weather conditions 100 years into the future. Yet that is exactly the scientific proof that the global warming alarmists advance as proof of their thesis. A few examples should suffice.

The two computer models most relied on — one by the Canadian Centre and the other by the United Kingdom's Hadley Centre — repeatedly disagree with each other.

The Canadian model, for instances, forecasts less rain in the southeastern United States, the Hadley model predicts more. The Canadian model says the Midwest will be hit by an increased number of severe droughts, the Hadley says more rainfall, more frequently.

The Canadian model say water levels on the Great Lakes will drop by up to 5 feet, Hadley foresees an increase of about 1 foot. The Canadian model predicts more spring floods in the western United States, Hadley says less.

In fairness to the vast majority of those who participated in the U.N. project, the report would have been more balanced and emphasized these contradictions, if U.N. bureaucrats hadn't written a preface that repeatedly over-hyped its doomsday aspects. The real issue is not about global warming per se, but the degree of warming, and, more important, whether decreasing man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse” gasses will have any significant effect on this warming.

Virtually all experts agree that the Earth today is about 1 degree warmer than it was about 120 years ago — although NASA weather satellites have detected no warming in the upper atmosphere for more than two decades.

The experts also note that if the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change favored by eco-activists was fully implemented, any increase in the Earth's temperature would be slowed only .07 of one degree Celsius by the year 2050. Yet the costs of Kyoto would be staggering — especially for the U.S. economy, which would take most of the economic blows.

The U.S. Energy Administration warns that Kyoto would force drastic cutbacks in U.S. energy use, cost our economy upwards of $400 billion a year, and destroy tens of thousands of American jobs. Unless we want to turn over our economy to U.N. apparatchik, who'd like nothing better than redistribute our hard-earned money to less developed nations around the world, we ought to seriously study the phenomenon of global warming to see whether it indeed poses a threat.

The recently announced Stanford Project on Energy and Global Climate, a 10-year joint project between the academic and private sectors to find cost-efficient, low-emission energy sources is a hopeful development that reason may at last be supplanting emotion in this crucial debate. The nation's media — thus far, chiefly cheerleaders for accepting global warming as a scientific reality — should do an about-face and begin promoting an active and ongoing debate on this absolutely vital issue. Doing less will only increase America's already high-level of public cynicism.

In the meantime, keep your eyes open for the coming wave of op-eds claiming that global warming triggered the great Presidents' Day snowfall of 2003.And when you read them, keep your sense of humor.

Paul K.Driessen is a senior fellow at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow www.cfact.org), a nonpartisan think-think based in the nation's capital.

In fairness to the vast majority of those who participated in the U.N. project, the report would have been more balanced and emphasized these contradictions, if U.N. bureaucrats hadn't written a preface that repeatedly over-hyped its doomsday aspects.

Here is the story about the aforementioned preface:

The Report That Nobody Reads

by Christine Hill

Haven't 2,5000 scientist endorsed the U.N.'s global warming hypothesis? Not really. The alleged endorsement is only in a summary report written by Al Gore appointees.

What if it turns out that the globe isn't warming because too many people are making too many things and driving too many cars? Peter P. Rogers, Ph.D., a Harvard environmental scientist respected by businesspeople and enviros alike, gave us his insight.

We asked Rogers about the document that most environmentalists point to for scientific support of their global warming thesis: a report released in 1995 by the 2,500 scientist on the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Doesn't this document conclude that human activity raises the CO2 levels, thus raising the temperature?

Rogers replies with a simple question: Have you read the report? He knows the answer. Of course not. Hardly anyone has or ever will. The report consists of almost 2,000 scientifically dense pages -- a few too many for your average nightly news reporter.

But Rogers has read most of the opus, and reports that its conclusions aren't what most people think. "It says we [scientists] aren't sure what is happening, and we need at least five more years to study the problem," says Rogers.

Most of the media comment derives from readings of the weighty tome's seven-page executive summary. The summary, unlike the document itself, isn't at all uncertain. It says the balance of evidence suggests a human hand in global warming.

"The summary, which everyone reads, bears little relationship to the actual report, which was written by the scientists," says Rogers.

Who wrote the summary? Politics rears its head here. One of the major contributors was Robert Watson, then the associate director of environment at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, a Gore appointee.

Didn't the IPCC executive committee vote to approve the summary. Yes, says Rogers, but the committee members were chosen for political reasons, not for their qualifications as environmental scientists. Regional, racial and gender diversity were paramount. "Instead of looking for an expert in a field of study, the panel needed to fill a position with an African scientist or a woman. Debates were judged by votes rather than reasoning."

Haven't half of the world's living Nobel laureates in science signed a petition condemning global warming? Yes, says Rogers , and most of the laureates are nice people and, for the most part, good scientists, but few know much about environmental science or climate change. "Most of these Nobel laureates are busy people," says Rogers. "They aren't going to spend all of their time learning about climate change."

Of the three climatologists who have won Nobel prizes, two are not champions of global warming, he says.

As Rogers sees global warming, the only thing we know is that the level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is rising. Environmentalists assert that this is caused by burning fossils fuels for energy and electricity. The burning produces CO2 emissions as a byproduct; the rising CO2, in turn, traps heat in the atmosphere and causes the temperature in the earth to rise.

Rogers says this is a credible hypothesis but no more. It might be right. Or it might not. "Rising CO2 could also be due to something we don't know about," he says.

Rogers says the key is the top 10 centimeters to 10 meters of the world's oceans. The oceans hold most of the thermal mass of the earth; the temperature affects CO2 absorption. It is a process, Rogers emphasizes, that science does not yet understand.

Most scientists agree that ocean currents and winds play a big role--but theses factors are not even included in the computer models that forecast global warming.

So complex is the environment, and so primitive the models, that critical information, such as the existence of the Great Lakes or the Sierras, is routinely left out. Absurd results include a forecast of flooding in Death Valley. Another model predicts that due to higher CO2 levels 100 years hence, rainfall in the Midwest could rise by 15% -- or fall by that amount.

Most of the global warming models do not include the most important factor in determining the earth's temperature: cloud cover, which accounts for the majority of the changes in the atmosphere's temperature over time.

For years this glaring omission has been denounced by the abrasive and brilliant MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Rather than address Lindzen's critiques of their models, the climatology community has stopped inviting him to their conferences.

This article appeared in the November 3, 1997 issue Forbes magazine on page 352.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.