Man Made Global Warming
Man Made Global Warming
Man Made Global Warming
Global warming has now been replaced by climate change. This change
of description is significant because in using it the claims made by the
global warming lobby can be expanded by that lobby to include not only
man made global warming but also changes in world weather, also said to
be man made.
I have become sceptical about man made global warming and man made
climate change. I set out below some matters for consideration. This is in
no way scientific. I cannot prove any of it. It is based upon what I have
seen and read. Either it will be persuasive or it will not. The reader must
decide. However, a limited search of the internet will corroborate what I
have said, if you take the trouble to do it.
1. The Atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide is essential for human and animal and plant life on earth.
The following is an extract from, ”A Primer on Global Warming:
Dispelling CO2 Myths” by Dr Jay Lehr, Science Director of The
Heartlands Institute in the USA. The full article is shown in Appendix 2.
I think we can all agree that there are natural fluctuations in the
temperature of the Earth from one year to the next. For example, the
summers of 1975 and 1976 were long and hot and dry. In 1975 this
weather lasted from spring until late summer and in 1976 from spring
until the end of August. Britain literally turned brown. I know. I was
there. Was this due to man made global warming? No, it was not, and
nobody claims that it was. It was due to a natural variation in climate and
because The Jet Stream (referred to later), another natural variation the
position of which changes from year to year, was further to the North
than usual.
There may have been some warming in the last decade. I say may have
been because there is some doubt that the published temperature figures
are correct. Take, for example, The United States of America. This
country was once thought to be the place to start in examining reliable
temperature records going back at least 150 years. But recently doubt has
been cast about the reliability of these records because of the places
where temperature monitoring stations were situated. An American
scientist started to survey the positions where these monitoring stations
were situated. He found that most of the ones surveyed were in urban
areas and most of them were in quite unsuitable places next to air
conditioning units and in car parks and near other heat sources which
could not help but distort the records. The U.S. authorities tried to stop
this survey by refusing to provide information on where these stations
were situated. There was a court case and the court ordered the
information released under the Freedom of Information legislation. So,
the survey continues.
Even so, let us assume that there has been some warming over the last
decade. There is no evidence that any such warming is due to carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere or that it is man made. There is no evidence
that this is not part of a natural fluctuation.
There seems little doubt that cities are getting warmer by around 1 degree
Celsius over a century. This is man made, but it is to be expected. Cities
have grown enormously over the last century and more people means
more heat for a variety of reasons. This is known as the Urban Heat
Island effect. It is not a representative part of global warming. A survey
has been carried out in the U.S.A comparing temperature readings taken
from monitoring stations in urban areas with those in rural areas. The
results are startling. Those taken in urban areas show a small increase in
temperature (the Urban Heat Island effect) whereas those from the rural
areas shown no increases at all. None. Some show slight cooling. For
example, New York City shows a small increase over a century but
Albany in the north of New York State shows no increase at all.
There is great doubt, to say the least, that computer models can be used to
predict the climate one hundred years ahead. Yet, the man made global
warming theory depends on them. What you get out of a computer model
depends on what you put into it. The information can be manipulated or
just plain wrong.
So, the predictions about man made global warming and climate change
depend on computer models. They are not based on actual empirical
observational data, which is the only information a true scientist would
accept.
4. The University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.
This is one of four main centres in the world for climate research and it
supplies, with the others, the climate information upon which the I.P.C.C.
predicts disaster and catastrophe fifty to one hundred years ahead. The
unit has received some $20 million dollars for its research. It has recently
been thoroughly discredited. A whistleblower who works for the unit has
released copies of thousands of e-mails generated by the unit over a
number of years. These show that the unit has manipulated the data to
conform to their theories.
The unit has consistently refused to publish or make available the raw
data on which its theories and computer models are based despite the fact
that legally this information should be made available under the Freedom
of Information Act in the UK. It has even tried to destroy e-mails which
incriminate them. This is a crime.
Don’t take my word for it. Read about it on the internet for yourselves.
The Meteorological Office has a link with the University of East Anglia
Climate Research Unit. It takes their data.
Recently, the Met. Office announced that it was going to release and
publish their own raw temperature data from places all over the world.
Great, I thought. Some light would be shone on the climate debate at last.
This information would be based on observed and recorded data and not
on computer models. But no.
The information has been published but the Met. Office has said that it
will take them three years to analyse the data. Now, like me, you may
wonder why the raw data has not already been analysed by the Met.
Office and how they can take a position on data which has not yet been
analysed.
This may be why they are unable to forecast the weather more than one
week ahead. The notion that they can predict the climate fifty to one
hundred years ahead would be hilarious if it were not so dangerous and
damaging. Does anyone remember them predicting that 2009 would be a
good summer? They predicted the summer would be a hot and dry,
“barbeque summer”. Do you think it was?
6. The Sun.
Hands up all those who think that the Sun might have a major effect on
the temperatures of the Earth.
Call me old fashioned, but I live in Spain and I know that when the Sun is
shining I am hot and when it is not I am not so hot.
So, is it likely that the sun (and other factors not including carbon
dioxide) affects the temperature of the Earth? Well, yes. Let’s go, for
once, with logic and common sense.
In our latitude the jet stream is generally found at around 35,000 feet and
is called the Polar Front Jet Stream. The polar jet stream, as its name
implies, separates the cold polar air to the north and the warm sub-
tropical air to the south.
With the temperature contrast of these air masses greatest in the winter
time, the jet stream is stronger at this time of the year, reaching 300 miles
per hour (but have been measured at over 400 miles an hour in southwest
Scotland). Jet streams are typically thousands of miles long, hundreds of
miles wide and a few miles deep.
Entering and leaving a jet stream can be a turbulent time for any aircraft...
With these kinds of speeds you see why aeroplanes are so keen to use
them, saving both time and fuel, and therefore money. However, to
navigate in a jet stream is not as easy as you might think. Entering and
leaving a jet stream can be a turbulent time for any aircraft no matter how
big it is.
The strong winds along the jet stream generally blow from west to east
due to the rotation of the earth. That is why, especially in winter time,
flights from the USA often land early in this country as they are blown
along by these very strong winds. (Incidentally it is also the reason for
some "bumpy" rides with clear air turbulence). Planes never land early
going the other way.
Jet streams move north and south too, following the boundary between
warmer and colder air. These boundaries are also where weather fronts
generally develop, so when a front passes overhead, bringing wind and
rain, it is quite likely that a jet stream is passing undetected too.
The wind direction in the jet stream can change from the normal west to
east to almost north to south. This is one of the methods that the Earth
uses to transport excess heat from the equatorial regions towards the
poles, and in turn bring cold polar air southwards. It also helps to steer
our Atlantic weather depressions from their normal eastward movement.
At times it can even block their movements altogether. Jet streams can
strengthen up or even die out so.
Jet streams do play a more fundamental role in our weather.
Many years ago meteorologists thought that the rain bearing depressions
that invade us from the Atlantic, formed at the sea level and "grew" up
through the atmosphere. It now seems more likely that they start to form
around the jet streams and percolate downwards.
The winds in the jet stream do not necessarily blow at a constant speed or
in a straight line. Within this fast moving air there are accelerations and
decelerations as the air speeds up, slows down or in fact changes
direction. It is at these points in the atmosphere that high and low
pressures starts to form, and either moves quickly in the wind flow, or
develops into a bigger depression or anticyclone. These positive or
negative acceleration points are very important to the weather forecaster
and these occur at the entrance and exits of the jet stream.
Meteorologists used to spend a long time looking for them on the high
level weather maps. Now this task is performed by a computer. By
looking at a simple diagram of a jet stream it is possible to pick out the
areas below which a depression or anticyclone is most likely to form.
This is the fundamental way that forecasters use jet streams to try to
predict whether and where a rain-bearing depression will form, and if it
forms whether it will develop into a full blown storm which may cause
structural damage as it rushes in from the Atlantic, or whether it will just
be a little blip in the fine weather that rushes along at 60 miles per hour”.
The position of the Jet Stream has a major effect on weather in the
Northern Hemisphere and elsewhere. Generally, it brings bad weather to
countries below it. It is sometimes at higher latitudes and sometimes at
lower ones. The position of the Jet Stream is determined by atmospheric
pressure over the Azores in mid-atlantic. Higher pressure pushes the Jet
Stream further north and lower pressure allows it to be further south.
Whether atmospheric pressure over the Azores is high or low depends on
whether a large body of water along the west coast of South America is
warm or cold. Sounds bizarre does it not? But it is true.
For example, when the Jet Stream is further north the countries in
northern Europe do not get its bad weather and vice versa. This is the
reason why some countries like Spain get consistently good weather. The
Jet Stream rarely descends to that latitude.
So, shall we blame carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for some of the bad
weather or shall we blame the Jet Stream? You decide.
8. El Nino.
It rose out of the tropical Pacific in late 1997, bearing more energy than a
million Hiroshima bombs. By the time it had run its course eight months
later, the giant El Niño of 1997-98 had deranged weather patterns around
the world, killed an estimated 2,100 people, and caused at least 33 billion
[U.S.] dollars in property damage.
Peru was where it all began, but El Niño’s abnormal effects on the main
components of climate—sunshine, temperature, atmospheric pressure,
wind, humidity, precipitation, cloud formation, and ocean currents—
changed weather patterns across the equatorial Pacific and in turn around
the globe. Indonesia and surrounding regions suffered months of drought.
Forest fires burned furiously in Sumatra, Borneo, and Malaysia, forcing
drivers to use their headlights at noon. The haze traveled thousands of
miles to the west into the ordinarily sparkling air of the Maldive Islands,
limiting visibility to half a mile [0.8 kilometer] at times.
Temperatures reached 108°F [42°C] in Mongolia; Kenya’s rainfall was
40 inches [100 centimeters] above normal; central Europe suffered record
flooding that killed 55 in Poland and 60 in the Czech Republic; and
Madagascar was battered with monsoons and cyclones. In the U.S.
mudslides and flash floods flattened communities from California to
Mississippi, storms pounded the Gulf Coast, and tornadoes ripped
Florida.
By the time the debris settled and the collective misery was tallied, the
devastation had in some respects exceeded even that of the El Niño of
1982-83, which killed 2,000 worldwide and caused about 13 billion
dollars in damage.
And that’s not the end of it. It is not uncommon for an El Niño winter to
be followed by a La Niña one—where climate patterns and worldwide
effects are, for the most part, the opposite of those produced by El Niño.
Where there was flooding there is drought, where winter weather was
abnormally mild, it turns abnormally harsh. La Niñas have followed El
Niños three times in the past 15 years—after the 1982-83 event and after
those of 1986-87 and 1995. Signs of another La Niña began to show up
by June 1998.
Over the years, the appearance of La Niña has been less predictable than
that of El Niño, and fewer of its effects have been recorded. But both
patterns are now far better understood than ever before. That is because
the most recent El Niño will be the first to be remembered for more than
just a litany of disasters. The 1997-98 El Niño marked the first time in
human history that climate scientists were able to predict abnormal
flooding and droughts months in advance, allowing time for threatened
populations to prepare. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) first announced a possible El Niño as early as
April 1997; Australia and Japan followed a month later. By summer
detailed predictions were available for many regions”.
Every few years, an unusually warm current flows off the western coast
of South America. Its appearance after Christmas lead sailors in Peru to
christen it El Niño, the Christ-child in Spanish.
Like a child, it is sometimes unpredictable, and sometimes creates havoc.
In El Niño's case, it brings natural disasters such as storms, floods and
droughts and famine in far-flung parts of the world.
The term El Niño is nowadays used to refer to the periods of strong and
prolonged warm weather, which influence the climate worldwide. The
periods of the warm waters in eastern Pacific (El Niño) and periods of
cooler waters (La Niña) are accompanied by changes of air pressure in
the east and west Pacific: these are called the Southern Oscillation. The
whole cycle is now referred to as El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).
The effects of La Niña are generally less pronounced and tend to be the
opposite of those of El Niño.
• El Niño events occur irregularly, about every 2-7 years.
• They last from 12 to 18 months.
• The El Niño event begins with the weakening of the prevailing
winds in the Pacific and a shift in rainfall patterns.
• The events are associated with extreme weather (floods and
drought) in countries surrounding the Pacific and much further
afield.
• Prolonged dry periods may occur in South-east Asia, Southern
Africa and Northern Australia and heavy rainfall, sometimes with
flooding, in Peru and Ecuador.
• During a typical El Niño, the Asian monsoon usually weakens and
is pushed towards equator, often bringing summer drought to
north-west and central regions of India and heavy rainfall in the
north-east.
• The regions where El Niño has a strong effect on climate are those
with the least resources : southern Africa, parts of South America,
South-east Asia.
The number of people killed, injured or made homeless by natural
disasters is increasing alarmingly. This is partly due to population growth
and the concentration of population in high-risk areas like coastal zones
and cities. Their vulnerability to extreme weather conditions is also
increasing. For example:
• Large shanty towns with flimsy habitations are often located on
land subject to frequent flooding.
• In many areas the only places available to poor communities may
be marginal land with few natural defences against weather
extremes.
Large year–to-year fluctuations of natural disasters, some of which can be
explained by El Niño, are described as the El Niño disaster cycle.
• The risk of a natural disaster is highest in the years during and after
the appearance of El Niño and lowest in the years before.
• El Niño events 1982-83 and 1997-98, the most recent, were the
largest this century.
• El Niño is associated with death and disease, most of which result
from weather-related disasters such as floods and droughts.
• In 1997 Central Ecuador and Peru suffered rainfall more than 10
times normal, which caused flooding, extensive erosion and
mudslides with loss of lives, destruction of homes and food
supplies.
• In the same year nearly 10% of all health facilities in Peru were
damaged.
• The 1991-92 El Niño brought the worst drought in southern Africa
this century, which affected nearly 100 million people.
• Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia suffered serious malaria epidemics after
heavy rainfall in 1983 El Niño. The epidemic in Ecuador was badly
exacerbated by displacement of population owing to the flooding.
• The most expensive natural disaster ever, Hurricane Andrew,
happened during the same 1991-92 El Niño although El Niño
usually reduces hurricane activity.
• During the 1997 El Niño droughts hit Malaysia, Indonesia and
Brazil, exacerbating the huge forest fires. Smoke inhalation from
these fires was a major public health problem in these countries,
with countless people visiting health facilities with respiratory
problems”.
You may say that the 1997/98 El Nino was over ten years ago and what
about the present. Well, as stated above, El Nino occurs every 2 to 7
years and lasts from 12 to 18 months. It is almost always with us. It is a
question of extent.
Sea level has risen as the vast continental glaciers formed during the last
ice age melted. It was some 150 meters (490 feet) lower 18,000 years ago
and has risen since that time. The massive glaciers were built up by water
evaporating from the oceans and accumulating as snow on the land that
changed to ice. Melt began 18,000 years ago but most occurred from
15,000 to 8000 years ago and sea level rose at an average rate of 14 mm a
year. From 3000 to 100 years ago the rise was approximately 0.2 mm.
Now sea level rise is directly and simplistically linked to melting glaciers
and in turn linked to global warming.
Originally a grossly simplistic theory asked how much would sea level
rise if the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt completely; the total
water was then added to current sea level. The problem is much of the ice
is already in the ocean so won’t add to the level. In addition, water
expands by about 6% when it freezes so the space occupied by ice below
sea level will hold 6% more water. Similarly, ice above sea level will
produce 6% less water by volume. Then there are the adjustments the
land will make as the weight of the ice is removed. But all this is assumes
total melt and is unlikely for thousand of years if at all because the
average temperatures of both Greenland and Antarctica are below –20°C
(-4°F)”
Those that allege that climate change poses an imminent threat often cite
rising sea level and/or its indirect effects. Rising sea level is, of course,
said to result from rising global temperatures caused by man-made
emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases. This article will present
some facts and figures relating to the specific claims regarding sea level
rise.
The scientific facts regarding climate change in general should be pointed
out. The global warming hypothesis claims that man-made emissions of
carbon dioxide and other gases have caused global temperature to
increase in the 20th century and will cause further increase in the 21st
century, with abundant negative side effects. This hypothesis is not
supported by scientific observations. The 20th century temperature
increases largely occurred prior to the largest increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide. The widely acclaimed temperature increases in the 1980s
and 1990s most likely are flawed readings affected by urban heat-island
effects: independent atmospheric readings show relatively constant global
temperatures for the past 50 years. Despite claims to the contrary, a
majority of scientists (both in general and in fields related to atmospheric
physics) do not accept the global warming hypothesis as fact.
Even though the claims of future sea level rise hinge on this hypothesis,
examination of these claims is useful to clarifying some popular
misconceptions.
The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change is an
international group of scientists, politicians, and others which have met
several times, each time producing a "consensus" statement regarding
predictions and proposed responses regarding climate change. The last
few statements are tied to the Kyoto Protocol treaty, which would
selectively restrict carbon dioxide emissions and other activities. The
politicized nature of this "scientific" conference has been addressed by
others; what follows are its claims regarding sea level rise.
The IPCC's 2001 report predicts that global average sea level will rise by
10 to 80 centimeters (median estimate 48 centimeters) by the year 2100.
This will result from thermal expansion of ocean waters, net melting of
glaciers, and net melting of polar icecaps. Predicted consequences include
coastal flooding, incursion of salt water into coastal freshwater supplies,
and a host of other effects. It might also be noted that environmental
organizations have extended these predictions. For example, the UCS and
ESA recently predicted sea level increases of up to 1 meter along the U.S.
Gulf Coast by combining IPCC predictions with ground subsistence
projections. By combining well-established effects with highly
questionable predictions, they prevent straightforward testing of their
predictions.
Currently there are 28,700,000 cubic kilometers of icecaps and glaciers in
the world. This includes grounded ice in Antarctica and Greenland;
floating ice shelves in the Arctic Ocean and seas near Antarctica; and
glaciers in various mountain regions of the world. This represents the
remaining unmelted ice from the last ice age, when total ice volume was
about 3 times greater (and world sea levels about 120 meters lower).
Calving of icebergs from floating ice sheets is periodically cited as an
indicator of climate change. Regardless of the cause, even the complete
melting of the ice sheets would have no effect on sea level. This is a
consequence of Archimedes' principle of buoyancy. The mass of floating
ice (above and below water both) is identical to the mass of the water
displaced. If the ice melts into water, its density decreases but is mass is
the same, and water level is unchanged. There are potential side effects to
large scale melting of ice sheets. One is a decreased reflectivity of the
Earth's surface; due to clouds and low sunlight angles near the poles the
consequences are minimized. Another is a change in ocean currents in the
Arctic Ocean.
Those that express concern over an increase in sea level make the implicit
assumption that the current stability in sea level is normal. Currently the
Earth is exiting a period of glaciation. As seen in the graph, rising sea
level has been the norm for the last 20,000 years, not the exception. The
average rate of sea level rise in this period was 60 centimeters per
century.
Fig. 1: Rate of sea level rise (in cm/century) vs. year (from 18000 BC to
2000 AD); derived from graph by Lambeck cited in IPCC's Climate
Change 2001
So, small increases in sea level are entirely due to natural factors and
have been ongoing for thousands of years. Over the last 20,000 years
there has been an average rise of 60 centimeters per 100 years (i.e. not 60
centimetres per year – 60 centimetres in 100 years).
Yet we are told all the time by the global warmists that sea ice is melting
at an alarming rate due to global warming and that this will cause sea
levels to rise so much that disasters will result all over the world
including the complete disappearance of small island nations. Al Gore
predicts an increase of 20 feet by the end of the century. But, hey, let’s
not allow the facts to get in the way of a good scare.
The Greenland and Himalayas and Alps ice is not melting except as it
always does due to temperature variations as between summer and
winter.
That leaves the remaining 4% at the North Pole. There has been some
melting in recent years but this is nothing new and relates to floating ice
and not land based ice. It is due to the natural variations in the climate of
the Earth and changes in the Arctic Ocean currents and not due to carbon
dioxide and global warming. It has happened before, for example, in 1939
when sailors were able to navigate the North West Passage along the
northern coast of Canada. There is evidence that over the last two years
there has been a recovery in the extent of floating sea ice. One is
bombarded almost daily by the media with pictures of arctic ice
collapsing into the sea with dire warnings that this will increase sea levels
with catastrophic consequences for many parts of the world. These claims
are false and alarmist. Even if the entire floating ice cap melted it would
not result in any increase in sea levels. This is because Archimedes
Principle says that the volume of anything floating in water is exactly the
same as the volume of water it displaces. So, even if all the ice were to
melt it would add nothing to sea levels because the volume of ice (both
above and below the sea level) is exactly the same as the volume of water
it has occupied. The density of the ice would change but not its volume.
So, think about this one example of where the global warming lobby
cannot be correct. The logic is inescapable.
We are told that the population of polar bears in the arctic is declining
and that they are facing extinction due to melting arctic sea ice so that
they can no longer effectively hunt seals which are their main food
source. This is simply not true.
“Polar bear expert barred by global warmists – Daily Telegraph 27
June 2009.
Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in
Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist
Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of
Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a
suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with
extinction by man-made global warming.
Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years.
But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the
computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing
warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds
blowing in from the Bering Sea.
So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for
reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with
extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's
Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually
happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is
still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of
record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007
low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some
time. The bears are doing fine”.
In the 1950’s the polar bear population was estimated at 5,000. In the
1960’s the population dropped due to over-hunting. When restrictions
were imposed on hunting in the early 1970’s the populations rebounded.
Today the populations have risen to 20,000 to 25,000.
You will not get this information from the global warming lobby. They
want you to think that polar bears are in peril. They brook no dissent.
Their minds are firmly made up to the exclusion of all else. Note above
that Dr Mitchell Taylor, a world expert on polar bears, was excluded from
the Polar Bear Specialist Group because of his views on global warming.
There are plans, well under way, to prevent carbon dioxide gas from
escaping into the atmosphere by trapping it and then turning it into liquid
gas. Experimental plants have already been set up and are operating. This
is already big business and it will become bigger.
The plan, then, is to bury all this liquid gas underground. The liquid gas is
to be forced underground in huge mountains containing non-porous rock
at the upper levels and porous rock at lower levels so that once injected
the gas cannot escape. The cost of this will clearly be enormous and
someone is going to make a great deal of money out of it.
Can anyone see the absurdity of this? Huge amounts of money, time and
effort are to be expended to prevent a natural gas from escaping into the
atmosphere when there is not a shred of evidence that carbon dioxide is
responsible for global warming or climate change.
In addition, we see, even now, that the industrial nations of the world are
not really serious in their intention to limit the production of carbon
dioxide, despite their rigid adherence to the man made global warming
and climate change myths. They intend to go on producing it but will trap
it and bury it.
14. The Motive of the global warming and climate change lobby.
This is the most difficult topic to cover. When considering the arguments
put forward to challenge the theories and predictions of the warmists,
people ask what possible motives could most governments of the world
and The United Nations and large numbers of scientists and many
millions of people have to pursue an agenda so which is not supported by
the science and where there is absolutely no evidence that carbon dioxide
causes global warming and climate change and a dramatic rise in sea
levels. It is simply incredible, is it not? In other words, people do not
approach the matter in a balanced logical way and examine the arguments
on both sides. They simply accept what the global warming lobby says
because they think that most governments, scientists, etc, could not be
pursuing such a bogus agenda. It is unthinkable, isn’t it?
Well, I do not have the answer. Some say it gives governments control
over their populations. That it promotes fear. That it allows taxation. That
environment fanatics are intent on scaling back industrial production.
That it allow many scientists to get large money grants to pursue their
research. I do not know. I can only wonder at it.
The money cost of pursuing the agenda of the warmists will be absolutely
enormous. Recently, the European Union has committed 6.5 billion euros
to the help developing nations overcome the effects of global warming
and climate change, of which 1.5 billion is to come from the United
Kingdom. They say that as much as 100 billion will be needed in due
course. And that is by the European Union alone. Wonder about how
much will be spent by all the other developed countries of the world.
Consider what such large amounts of money could be used for. To feed
the hungry. To provide clean water supplies. To provide medicines and
medical treatment. To eradicate disease. To provide education. To
provide proper housing. Etc. etc. etc.
But not to worry, they say. The funds to be made available will not affect
the money available for aid to the third world. I do not believe it. The
record of the first world in providing aid to the third world is already
lamentable. Tiny amounts are promised and much of this never gets there.
The third world would not be able to develope. They would not be able to
become richer with all the consequences this would bring in respect of
health, education, living standards, food production etc. etc. etc.
There is nothing wrong with being a sceptic. Sceptic is not a dirty word
as it is to the warmists. It is quite respectable. It is what thinking people
are supposed to be. Sceptics are anathema to the warmists. They hate
them. They will not listen to them. They castigate them. Only a few days
ago, Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister said on BBC news that
climate sceptics were, “flat earthers”. How absolutely appalling. My own
Prime Minister calls me, and millions like me, a flat earther simply
because I, and they, have a different but perfectly legitimate point of
view. To me, there is an irony in one of the actual flat earthers calling
climate sceptics flat earthers. But he is a warmist. He is firmly on the
bandwagon and he cannot get off without disastrous consequences. He is
totally committed. His mind is totally made up. He will not listen to any
alternative point of view on global warming and climate change however
persuasive that point of view may be.
Much is made of the fact that some 4,000 scientists have signed up to
man made global warming and climate change. This is not entirely
surprising because they make a good living from it and they get large
amounts of money in grants for their research.
However, there are many, many more scientists who are climate sceptics.
I have read that there are as many as 30,000. These are not “Loony
Tunes” scientists. They are perfectly respectable scientists working in the
fields of meteorology, climatology, physics, chemistry, mathematics,
biology etc.
Dear Secretary-General,
Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with
increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and
coastal communities;
Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to
anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of
those changes;
You will note that they are asking for convincing observational evidence
not based on computer models but on factual raw observational data on
the matters listed. What could be more reasonable? If there is any such
evidence why would it not be released for scrutiny if there is nothing to
hide? Who could refuse such a reasonable request? But he will.
Why would any rational person take any notice of any organisation which
makes predictions which affect the entire world and its populations and
which refuses to support its position with actual evidence? This is science
turned on its head.
It is surprisingly easy to create mass hysteria if the media is with you and
very difficult to reverse it if they are not. Some years ago, a doctor in the
UK linked the triple vaccine MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) with
the incidence of autism in children. He maintained that the single
vaccines were safe but that the triple one was not. At the time, there had
been an increase in autism in children. He was believed, despite the fact
that medical scientist all over the world had said that there was no link
with autism and that the MMR vaccine was safe. The result was that
parents stopped having the MMR triple vaccine for their children and had
the single vaccine instead leaving out vaccination against measles. Who
could blame them? The number of children vaccinated against measles
fell dramatically and even now has reached only 70%. Measles can be a
killer and many more children are now dying from measles.
The same has happened with global warming/climate change. The media
is firmly in the warmist camp and has been for many years. As far as they
are concerned the matter is settled. They have convinced most of the
world. Their reporting is entirely one sided and no effort is made to
publish alternative points of view. They report climate change as a fact.
The science is never examined or challenged. Recently, the editors of 52
newspapers have signed a declaration stating that they support the global
warming and climate change lobby. I naively thought that newspapers
and other media were supposed to be fiercely independent and report the
news in a considered and balanced way. To be fair, there are some
exceptions. The Daily Telegraph in the UK is allowing its reporters to
investigate and report alternative points of view. Perhaps this is to be
expected from the newspaper that exposed the scandal of parliamentary
expenses.
Unfortunately, the BBC is one of the main culprits. They, too, are firmly
in the warmists camp and they report global warming/climate change as a
fact. Despite their enormous resources, they do not investigate alternative
views and they do not broadcast in a balanced way. I am tired of seeing,
on the BBC, pictures of glaciers collapsing into the sea coupled with dire
warnings of rising sea levels and pictures of “stranded” polar bears facing
extinction.
The BBC had the story of the leaked e-mails from the East Anglia
University Climate Research Unit a month before the news was leaked on
the internet. They have admitted so. They did nothing. They sat on the
story. In fact, the whistleblower who leaked the e-mails made the mistake
of sending them to the media first thinking, no doubt, that they would
publish the story. They did not and so he had to leak them again onto the
internet.
I do not know about you, but I find this very scary. Have we reached a
point where we cannot rely on the media for the truth and where we have
to get it from the internet?
I have to caution the reader against bias. Mine. Everyone has a bias
whether they admit it or not. Bias tends to cause you to look for
information whish supports or confirms your own point of view. I have
tried not to do this but it has been difficult. On the one hand I can find no
evidence which supports the global warming/climate change lobby. This
is because there appears, incredibly, not to be any. This is illustrated by
the fact that the I.P.C.C. continues to rely on computer models for its
predictions and will not publish any evidence supporting their case. Thus
the open letter by the scientists to the Secretary-General of the United
Nations. The University of East Anglia has refused to publish the raw
data upon which their computer models are based to the point where they
have destroyed documents and may face prosecution under The Freedom
of Information Act in the UK for failing to comply with the law by
destroying documents they have a legal obligation to release. Their
refusal to release information is completely against normal scientific
protocol. One must draw ones own conclusion as to why these bodies
refuse to release their data.
The first bit of good news is that there is no man made global warming or
climate change. None. Absolutely none. In addition, I believe that the
balance of debate will eventually change, if only over time. As they say,
time will tell. I think that many governments and politicians are going to
look very foolish in only a few years time.
The second bit of good news is that the global warming and climate
change lobby will never achieve their objectives. Not because reason will
prevail but because the governments of the world will never agree to
those objectives and even if they did, those objectives will never be
achieved. Their progress to date has been lamentable. They have failed
even to limit carbon dioxide emissions to previous levels and they will
never succeed in limiting those emissions in the future. There will be too
much resistance from the developed world. For example, the huge
economies of the United States, India and China are driven by the
burning of coal. Those three countries alone will never abandon industrial
grown to limit carbon dioxide emissions however much they pay lip
service to it.
The bad news is that the man made catastrophe which is the global
warming and climate change lobby will continue a while yet before they
are eventually exposed. In the meantime they will continue to spread
alarm and fear and misery throughout the world and many billions will be
spent and wasted.
21. Review.
22. References.
If you want to read more about this topic (and you should) please go to
www.climaterealists.com which contains many, many articles on the
subject written by well respected scientists.
23. Appendices.
Appendix 1.
Believe it or not, very little research has ever been funded to search for
natural mechanisms of warming…it has simply been assumed that global
warming is manmade. This assumption is rather easy for scientists since
we do not have enough accurate global data for a long enough period of
time to see whether there are natural warming mechanisms at work.
The “Holy Grail”: Climate Sensitivity Figuring out how much past
warming is due to mankind, and how much more we can expect in the
future, depends upon something called “climate sensitivity”. This is the
temperature response of the Earth to a given amount of ‘radiative
forcing’, of which there are two kinds: a change in either the amount of
sunlight absorbed by the Earth, or in the infrared energy the Earth emits
to outer space.
You would think that we’d know the Earth’s ‘climate sensitivity’ by now,
but it has been surprisingly difficult to determine. How atmospheric
processes like clouds and precipitation systems respond to warming is
critical, as they are either amplifying the warming, or reducing it. This
website currently concentrates on the response of clouds to warming, an
issue which I am now convinced the scientific community has totally
misinterpreted when they have measured natural, year-to-year
fluctuations in the climate system. As a result of that confusion, they have
the mistaken belief that climate sensitivity is high, when in fact the
satellite evidence suggests climate sensitivity is low.
The case for natural climate change I also present an analysis of the
Pacific Decadal Oscillation which shows that most climate change might
well be the result of….the climate system itself! Because small, chaotic
fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic circulation systems can cause
small changes in global average cloudiness, this is all that is necessary to
cause climate change. You don’t need the sun, or any other ‘external’
influence (although these are also possible…but for now I’ll let others
work on that). It is simply what the climate system does. This is actually
quite easy for meteorologists to believe, since we understand how
complex weather processes are. Your local TV meteorologist is probably
a closet ’skeptic’ regarding mankind’s influence on climate.
Appendix 2.
The scientific facts clearly show carbon dioxide is a good thing, not
something we should fear.
1. INTRODUCTION
But for those who have followed my writings and publications in the last
18 months (e.g. Spencer et al., 2007; Spencer, 2008), you know that we
are finding satellite evidence that the climate system is much less
sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions than the U.N.’s Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) climate models suggest that it is.
And if that is true, then mankind’s CO2 emissions are not strong enough
to have caused the global warming we’ve seen over the last 100 years.
To show that we are not the only researchers who have documented
evidence contradicting the IPCC models on the subject of climate
sensitivity, I made the following figure (Fig. 1) to contrast the IPCC-
projected warming from a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide with
the warming that would result if the climate sensitivity is as low as
implied by various kinds of observational evidence.
The discrepancy between the models and observations seen in Figs. 1 and
2 is stark. If the sensitivity of the climate system is as low as some of
these observational results suggest, then the IPCC models are grossly in
error, and we have little to fear from manmade global warming. [I am
told that the 1.1 deg. C sensitivity of Schwartz (2007) has more recently
been revised upward to 1.9 deg. C.]
Here I present new evidence that most of the warming could be the result
of a natural cycle in cloud cover forced by a well-known mode of natural
climate variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). While the
PDO is primarily a geographic rearrangement in atmospheric and oceanic
circulation patterns in the North Pacific, it is well known that such
regional changes can also influence weather patterns over much larger
areas, for instance North America or the entire Northern Hemisphere
(which is, by the way, the region over which the vast majority of global
warming has occurred).
As Joe D’Aleo, Don Easterbrook, and others have pointed out for years,
the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) has experienced phase shifts that
have coincidently been associated with the major periods of warming and
cooling in the 20th Century. As can be seen in the following figure, the
pre-1940 warming coincided with the positive phase of the PDO; then, a
slight cooling until the late 1970s coincided with a negative phase of the
PDO; and finally, the warming since the 1970s has once again coincided
with the positive phase of the PDO.
Fig. 3. Five-year running averages in (a) global-average surface
temperature, and (b) the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) index during
1900-2000.
Others have noted that the warming in the 1920s and 1930s led to media
reports of decreasing sea ice cover, Arctic and Greenland temperatures
just as warm as today, and the opening up of the Northwest Passage in
1939 and 1940.
Since this timing between the phase of the PDO and periods of warming
and associated climate change seems like more than mere coincidence, I
asked the rather obvious question: What if this known mode of natural
climate variability (the PDO) caused a small fluctuation in global-average
cloud cover?
Now, the average PDO forcing that was required by the model for the two
curves in Fig. 4 ranged from 1.7 to 2.0 Watts per square meter per PDO
index value. In other words, for each unit of the PDO index, 1.7 to 2.0
Watts per square meter of extra heating was required during the positive
phase of the PDO, and that much cooling during the negative phase of the
PDO.
Fig. 5. Three-month running averages of (a) the PDO index during 2000-
2005, and (b) corresponding CERES-measured anomalies in the global
ocean average radiative budget, with and without the feedback
component removed (see Fig. 6). The smooth curves are 2nd order
polynomial fits to the data.
But before a comparison to the PDO can be made, one must recognize
that the total radiative flux measured by CERES is a combination of
forcing AND feedback (e.g. Gregory et al., 2002; Forster and Gregory,
2006). So, we first must estimate and remove the feedback component to
better isolate any radiative forcing potentially associated with the PDO.
As Spencer and Braswell (2008b) have shown with a simple model, the
radiative feedback signature in globally-averaged radiative flux-versus-
temperature data is always highly correlated, while the time-varying
radiative forcing signature of internal climate fluctuations is uncorrelated
because the forcing and temperature response are always 90 degrees out
of phase. This allows some measure of identification and separation of
the two signals.
The following figure shows what I call “feedback stripes” associated with
intraseasonal fluctuations in the climate system. The corresponding
feedback estimate (line slope) of 8.3 Watts per square meter per degree C
was then used together with three-month anomalies in tropospheric
temperature from AMSU channel 5 remove the estimated feedback signal
from the radiative flux data to get the “forcing-only” curve in Fig. 5b.
(Check out this for a more complete treatment of the signature of
feedback…including evidence that this behavior also exists in the IPCC
climate models themselves.)
Another way to show the data is shown in Fig. 7, where yearly averages
of the PDO index and CERES-inferred radiative forcing are plotted
against one another. The dashed line represents what the simple model
‘chose’ for a relationship, and the solid line is fitted to the actual satellite
data.
Fig. 7. As in Fig. 5, but now yearly averages of the PDO index plotted
against CERES- and AMSU5-inferred radiative forcing, and updated
through August 2007.
Thus, these recent satellite measurements – even though they span only
7.5 years — support the Pacific Decadal Oscillation as a potential major
player in global warming and climate change. It will also be interesting to
see where the satellite data averages for 2008 lie in Fig. 7, as the average
PDO value for 2008 was lower than any of the previous years.
It is important to point out that, in this exercise, the PDO itself is not an
index of temperature; it is an index of radiative forcing which drives the
time rate of change of temperature. This answers the question I frequently
get, “Couldn’t the PDO be caused by the temperature changes, rather than
the other way around?”. The answer is “no”, because the forcing occurs
before the temperature change (by 90 degrees of phase for sinusoidal
forcing, if you know what that means). This explains why the history of
the PDO index in Fig. 2 does not ‘look like’ the temperature history. The
PDO index is instead directly related to the change in temperature with
time, not the temperature per se. (And, if you can understand this point,
you are doing better than the single peer reviewer of my article on this
subject who told Geophysical Research Letters to reject my paper
submitted for publication.)
The evidence continues to mount that the IPCC models are too sensitive,
and therefore produce too much global warming. If climate sensitivity is
indeed considerably less than the IPCC claims it to be, then increasing
CO2 alone can not explain recent global warming. The evidence
presented here suggests that most of that warming might well have been
caused by cloud changes associated with a natural mode of climate
variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
The IPCC has simply assumed that mechanisms of climate change like
that addressed here do not exist. But that assumption is quite arbitrary
and, as shown here, very likely wrong. My use of only PDO-forced
variations in the Earth’s radiative energy budget to explain three-quarters
of the global warming trend is no less ‘biased’ than the IPCC’s use of
carbon dioxide to explain global warming without accounting for natural
climate variability. If any IPCC scientists would like to dispute that
claim, please e-mail me at roy.spencer (at) nsstc.uah.edu. (two months
later, as of late December, 2008, I’ve still not received a response.)
It should be noted that the entire modern satellite era started in 1979, just
2 years after the PDO switched to its positive phase during the ‘Great
Climate Shift’ of 1977. Thus, our satellite data records are necessarily
biased toward conditions existing during the positive phase of the PDO,
and might not correspond to ‘normal’ climate conditions. Indeed there
might not be any such thing as ‘normal’ climate conditions.
If the PDO has recently entered into a new, negative phase, then we can
expect that global average temperatures, which haven’t risen for at least
seven years now, could actually start to fall in the coming years. The
recovery of Arctic sea ice now underway might be an early sign that this
is indeed happening. The next few years of satellite data might provide
some very interesting insights into whether the Pacific Decadal
Oscillation is indeed a major force in climate change.
Appendix 4.
Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with
increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and
coastal communities;
Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to
anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of
those changes;
Signed by:
Appendix 5.
Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will,
independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is
not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;
Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than
colder:
Hereby declare:
That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but
misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth”.
That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce
emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.