 EPW Press Blog Feed
U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims Inhofe EPW Website Wins Coveted Gold Mouse Award U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007 Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears EPA Chief Vows to Probe E-mail Threatening to ‘Destroy’ Career of Climate Skeptic Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics EPW Fact of the Day: Clinton, Obama Sign Onto to Boxer’s $4,500 Climate Tax on American Families Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate Wall Street Journal Praises New Inhofe EPW Blog for "Making Waves" Commitment to Cost-Benefit Analysis Commitment to Independent and Verifiable Science Commitment to Oklahoma Eco-Terrorism Environmental Accomplishments Gas PRICE Act Get the Facts on Energy & Gas Prices Global Warming Gulf Coast Hurricane Response Improving the Service of the Federal Bureaucracy Lieberman-Warner Opposition Resource Center; Impacts of Costly Climate Bill Exposed National Infrastructure and Public Works Accomplishments National Security and Energy Independence |
'Global Warming Will Stop', New Peer-Reviewed Study Says
April 30, 2008 Posted By Marc Morano - 6:40 PM ET - Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov Click For Update - May 5, 2008: Scientists React - Global Warming Fears 'Unraveling'
BREAKING NEWS: 'Global Warming Will Stop,' New Peer-Reviewed Study Says Global Warming Takes a Break for Nearly 20 Years? The UK Telegraph reports on April 30: “Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.” End article excerpt. This significant new study adds to a growing body of peer-reviewed literature and other scientific analyses challenging former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen’s March 2008 presentation of data from the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office found the Earth has had “no statistically significant warming since 1995.” (LINK)
Australian paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter also noted in 2007 that “the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.” Carter explained that the “temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2.” (LINK) An August 7, 2007, peer-reviewed study by the UK Met Office, Britain's version of our National Weather Service, conceded that global warming had stopped as well. Both the journal Nature and UK Met Office analysis which appeared in the journal Science predict a continuation of global warming in future years. [Note: Hyping yet more unproven computer models of the future in response to inconvenient evidence-based data is the primary tool of the promoters of man-made climate doom. But it now appears that even these computer model scenarios are failing to predict a man-made climate “crisis.” Even the activists over at RealClimate.org admitted on April 10 that climate models were not "forecasts" or "predictions" but rather "scenarios." (LINK) ]
The May 1study in Nature essentially finds that global warming will have stopped for nearly 20 years (1998 until 2015). According to the UK Telegraph article; “Writing in Nature, the scientists said: ‘Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [man-made] warming.’”
The UK Telegraph article by reporter Charles Clover noted the significant deficiencies in UN climate models: “The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998.” The evidence-based data showing the Earth’s failure to continue warming has confounded the promoters of man-made climate fear. The American people have consistently rejected climate alarm as a Gallup Poll released on Earth Day 2008 shows the American public’s concern about man-made global warming is unchanged from 1989. Gore's $300 million dollar campaign to promote climate fear is attempting to convince Americans that they face a climate "crisis" despite the new accumulating scientific evidence to the contrary.
The latest peer-reviewed scientific data showing the dominance of natural climate variability appears to be directly at odds with Gore's central climate message. On May 25, 2006, Gore declared, "We are the most powerful force of nature now. We are literally changing the relationship between the Earth and the Sun." Gore added that mankind's CO2 emissions have "the capacity to bring civilization itself to a dead halt." (LINK) [Note: Unfortunately, children seem to be the most susceptible to Gore's and others baseless climate doomsday message. See: New York Times article: Children may be driving alarm over global warming. (LINK) Also, read more about global warming propaganda campaign aimed at kids here. ]
This new study in Nature further reveals a “tipping point” for the promoters of climate alarm. 2007 and now 2008 have challenged man-made climate fear as new peer-reviewed studies continue to debunk rising CO2 fears. A U.S. Senate minority report reveals over 400 scientists dissented from man-made climate fears, and more and more scientists continue to declare themselves skeptical of a man-made climate “crisis” in 2008.
Sampling of key inconvenient developments for promoters of a man-made climate “crisis” so far in 2008: (See also related link at bottom of this report) 1) Oceans Cooling! Scientists puzzled by “mystery of global warming's missing heat” (LINK) 2) New Data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is showing “greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.” (LINK ) 3) Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, formerly of NASA, found not one peer-reviewed paper has 'ruled out a natural cause for most of our recent warmth' (LINK) 4) UN IPCC in 'Panic Mode' as Earth Fails to Warm, Scientist says (LINK ) 5) UN IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri “to look into the apparent temperature plateau so far this century.” (LINK) 6) New scientific analysis shows Sun “could account for as much as 69% of the increase in Earth's average temperature” (LINK) & (LINK) 7) Scientists find dust free atmosphere may be responsible for up to .36 F rise in global temps (LINK) 8) Analysis in peer-reviewed journal finds cold periods – not warm periods – see increase in floods, droughts, storms, famine (LINK) 9) New York Times Laments Media's incorrect hyping of frogs and global warming (LINK) 10) Prominent hurricane expert reconsiders global warming's impact (LINK) 11) MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen’s March 2008 presentation of data from the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office found the Earth has had “no statistically significant warming since 1995.”- (LINK) 12) An International team of scientists released a March 2008 report to counter UN IPCC, declaring: “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” (LINK) 13) Emitting MORE CO2 may 'be good for life on Earth', says climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer, formerly of NASA in May 2008. (LINK) 14) New Report finds global sea ice GROWING: ‘World sea ice in April 2008 reached levels that were ‘unprecedented’ for the month of April in over 25 years.’ (LINK) # # Update May 5, 2008: Posted By Marc Morano - 1: 58 PM ET - Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov 'Global Warming Will Stop,' New Peer-Reviewed Study Says Global Warming Takes a Break for Nearly 20 Years? Update: May 5, 2008: Scientists React - Global Warming Fears 'Unraveling' Sampling of Scientists Commenting on 'global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate' study published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on May 1: (See Earlier Blog on Study Here) “It’s All Unraveling” – Oh dear! The inevitable is happening. The ‘global warming’ trope is unraveling on a daily basis - scientifically, economically, and politically." – May 2, 2008 - UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London. (LINK) “This whole climate change issue is rapidly disintegrating. From now onwards climate alarmists will be on the retreat. […] All indications are that we are now on the threshold of global cooling associated with the second and less active solar cycle.” – May 2, 2008 - By Professor Dr. Will J.R. Alexander, Emeritus of the Department of Civil and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters. (LINK) “Their entire global warming scare was based on around two decades of warming in the late 20th century so if that is followed by 20 years of stasis and cooling, which one of those two episodes represents the trend? How can we be sure that there is ANY trend?” - Australian John Ray, Ph.D., who publishes the website Greenie Watch said on May 2 “The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.” - Dr. John Brignell, a UK Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton wrote on his Numbers Watch website on May 1, 2008. “How many years of declining world temperature would it take now-in the wake of the ten-year non-warming since 1998-to break up Al Gore's "climate change consensus?” -- Environmental Economist and global warming co-author Dennis Avery's 2006 book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, wrote on May 1, 2008.Full Comments by Scientists: 1) Dr. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado reacted to this study in the journal Nature by declaring: “Climate models are of no practical use.” Pielke, who is not a climate skeptic, said on April 30, “There is in fact nothing that can be observed in the climate system that would be inconsistent with climate model predictions. If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun. This means that from a practical standpoint climate models are of no practical use beyond providing some intellectual authority in the promotional battle over global climate policy.” (LINK) 2) Former Harvard University Physicist Dr. Lubos Motl, a string theorist who is currently a professor at Charles University in the Czech Republic said on May 1: “Wow. So the refutation of a prediction of a dangerous warming by the world's top 2,500 scientists ;-) "does not come as a surprise". Note that with no global warming since 1998, the paper predicts 20 years of no warming. Recall that Al Gore has predicted global destruction in less than 8 years from now. […] The whole validation of all existing climate models is (or should be) mostly based on the data from the previous decades or centuries. If an effect that is argued to be as strong as the greenhouse effect has been neglected while it has the power to change 60-70 years of the temperature dynamics, it implies the existence of a critical flaw in the whole picture.” (LINK)
3) UK Astronomer Dr. David Whitehouse, who authored the 2004 book The Sun: A Biography, said on May 1, 2008: “Isn't it curious that over the next decade man-made global warming will be cancelled out by natural cycles. It's nice that Mother Nature (not the journal) is helping us this way but it does beg the question as to whether the man-made effect was all that significant if it can be nullified this way.” 5) Dr. John Brignell, a UK Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton wrote on his Numbers Watch website on May 1: “As we were saying only last month, the motto du jour is get your rationalization in first. The latest wheeze among the doomsayers is that hell fire is being postponed. Of course, it would have been more impressive if it had been published before the recent decade of measurements showing no warming at all. As it stands, it is nothing more than a testament to the infinite tunability of computer models. The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.” (LINK) 6) Environmental Economist and global warming co-author Dennis Avery's 2006 book, Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years, wrote on May 1: “How many years of declining world temperature would it take now-in the wake of the ten-year non-warming since 1998-to break up Al Gore's "climate change consensus"? […] All of this defies the "consensus" that human-emitted carbon dioxide has been responsible for our global warming. But the evidence for man-made warming has never been as strong as its Green advocates maintained. The earth's warming from 1915 to 1940 was just about as strong as the "scary" 1975 to 1998 warming in both scope and duration-and occurred too early to be blamed on human-emitted CO2. The cooling from 1940 to 1975 defied the Greenhouse Theory, occurring during the first big surge of man-made greenhouse emissions. Most recently, the climate has stubbornly refused to warm since 1998, even though human CO2 emissions have continued to rise strongly.” (LINK) 7) Dr. Richard Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant, wrote on May 2: “Several teams made climate models and all those models predicted global warming with increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. None - not one - of those models predicted that global warming would peak in 1998 then stop for the following decade despite atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increasing by ~5%. But that is what has happened. Now, one team has amended their model so it shows the cessation of global warming in 1998. Their amended model predicts that global warming will re-start in 2015. Does anybody other than a fool believe them?”
8) Former Colorado State Climatologist Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr., presently senior scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder wrote on May 1: “…a useful quote from Kevin Trenberth, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research: ‘Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year. It does not happen that way.’ This is an amazing error. Global warming does require a more-or-less monotonic increase in warming (in the absence of a major volcanic eruption) as illustrated in all available multi-decadal global model runs. This essentially monotonic report is even emphasized in the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers (see Figure SPM.4)! Climate Science published a proposed test of the multi-decadal global model predictions (see A Litmus Test For Global Warming - A Much Overdue Requirement). Clearly, so far, the models are failing to skillfully predict the rate (and even the sign for the most recent years) of global warming. Andy Revkin should follow up his article to document what the models predict in terms of global warming (in Joules) over different time periods, and what do the observations actually show. This would be excellent investigative (much needed) journalism.” (LINK)
9) UK Professor Emeritus of Biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London wrote on May 2, 2008: “It’s All Unraveling” – Oh dear! The inevitable is happening. The ‘global warming’ trope is unraveling on a daily basis - scientifically, economically, and politically. The wheels are coming off the hysterical bandwagon, and it is not going to be a salutary sight watching the politicians and the media junkies jumping cart and trying to throw mud in everyone’s eyes. Pathetic Sophistry - First, climate - as long predicted here - just won’t play ball. We now know that there has been no ‘global warming’ since 1998, a fact unpredicted by the models and despite an above-average rise in ‘greenhouse’ gas emissions. […] It is pathetic sophistry to claim, as some are wont, that ‘natural forces’ are having the temerity to “suppress” ‘global warming’. The fundamental point has ever been this: climate change is governed by hundreds of factors. The very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins just one politically-selected factor is about as bonkers as it gets. How on Earth have folk been conned into believing such hubris? It is so like The Prophecies by Nostradamus [above] - the vagueness and lack of dating make it easy to quote ‘evidence’ selectively after every major dramatic event, and retrospectively claim them as a ‘hit’! […]‘Global warming’! I believe it is, at last, unraveling, folks. As a Sun reader penned on May 1: “‘Global warming may “stop”, scientists predict.’ Now if that’s true, how can we tax it?” (LINK) 10 ) Professor Dr. Will J.R. Alexander, Emeritus of the Department of Civil and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and a former member of the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters wrote on May 3, 2008: “From now onwards climate alarmists will be on the retreat. […] Please appreciate the gravity of the following material. If the global climate has ceased warming, this completely undermines the whole climate change issue and confirms our studies. Compare the prediction in Nature that warming will cease from now until 2015 with our prediction model below from my general interest article in press. […] All indications are that we are now on the threshold of global cooling associated with the second and less active solar cycle. Severe drought sequences will almost certainly be one of the consequences. The paper in Nature confirms the global applicability of our studies. More work will have to be done on an examination of concurrent historical global droughts. Suggestions would be welcome. It will be very interesting to see the international responses to the latest developments at the next UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, and the G8 meeting in Japan next month, now that it has become obvious that there is no linkage between the discharge of these gases into the atmosphere and global warming with all its postulated consequences. […] This whole climate change issue is rapidly disintegrating. It is not pleasant to watch as the consequences could be grave. The unjustified switch to biofuels lies at the centre of its collapse. It is also coincident with the looming economic recession. There are other consequences. Food prices are rising.” (LINK) 11) UN IPCC reviewer and chemist Dr. Vincent Gray of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990 and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001 wrote on May 3, 2008: “This paper examines the evidence in detail and shows that none of the evidence presented confirms a relationship between emissions of greenhouse gases and any harmful effect on the climate. […] It is impossible to measure the average surface temperature of the earth, yet the IPCC scientists try to claim that it is possible to measure “anomalies” of this unknown quantity. An assessment of all the temperature data available, largely ignored by the IPCC, shows no evidence for overall warming, but the existence of cyclic behavior. Recent warming was last recorded around 1950.An absence of warming for 10 years and a current downturn suggest that the cool part of the cycle is imminent. […] Humans affect climate by changes in urban development and land use, but there is no evidence that greenhouse gas emissions are involved, except in enhancing plant growth. […] No computer climate model has ever satisfactorily predicted any future climate sequence, so none are suitable for forecasting. This is even admitted by the IPCC, so they assess the value of their “projections” entirely from the opinions of those paid to develop them. With such a conflict of interest, these assessments are worthless and should be ignored. There are no plausible scientific arguments currently available which support the view that human greenhouse gas emissions are having a detectable influence on the climate. (LINK) 12) Meteorologist John Coleman, Founder of The Weather Channel and former meteorologist for ABC's Good Morning America wrote an open letter to environmentalists on May 2: “The war against fossil fuels has become a massive scare campaign that is giving children nightmares. Here's what's wrong with that: the science is not valid. There is no Global Warming underway and the science on which the computer projections of weather chaos are based is wrong. Dead wrong. […] The science behind your global warming scare is bad and no anthropogenic global warming is happening. Dissenting scientists have now produced convincing evidence that the cornerstone of your scientific argument, increased atmospheric carbon dioxide forcing a rapid, irreversible rise in temperature, is invalid. All of the various "signs of global warming" you have so widely publicized have been proven wrong. […] Stop screaming, 'The sky is falling.' It is not." (LINK) 13) Prominent Hungarian Physicist Dr. Miklós Zágoni, who reversed view of man-made warming and is now a skeptic, wrote on May 3: "The present-day greenhouse theory is incorrect in the sense that it is incomplete: it does not contain all the real energetic constraints and boundary conditions. As former NASA atmospheric scientist Ferenc Miskolczi has showed in a new analysis, the Earth maintains a balanced greenhouse effect with controlled surface temperature, which cannot be changed solely by changing the atmospheric longwave absorber concentration. It can be changed only if the incoming available energy changes. Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission cannot generate global warming, neither in the past, nor in the future. The 1 degree Celsius temperature rise from the mid-1800's is mainly due to natural causes; its origin is somewhere in the ocean's heat exchange and/or in the change of solar constant and the planetary albedo. Further 3-6 degree global warming is physically more than unlikely: it is impossible. The new greenhouse equations of Dr. Miskolczi can be read at the official website of the Quarterly Journal of the HMS, Vol. 111. No.1., 2007 (LINK) To put it in a language that IPCC will understand: Extra CO2 does not result extra 'radiative forcing' in the final account, as the energy constraint rules it back to its equilibrium value. Nature's regulatory instrument is water vapor: more carbon dioxide leads to less moisture in the air, keeping the overall GHG content in accord with the necessary balance conditions. So, contrary to the common wisdom, there is no positive H2O-temperature feedback on global scale: in Earth-type atmospheres uncontrolled runaway warming is not possible. This new theory seems to be only a little step forward in the two-hundred years old greenhouse science, but its consequences are revolutionary: actually it stops the possibility of man-made global warming.” 14) Canadian Climatologist Dr. Timothy Ball wrote on May 5, 2008: “It is urgent to understand how world leaders were so misled about CO2, global warming and climate change and to stop them before any more damage is done. […] The climate debate was now a purely political battle. Science was increasingly and rudely pushed aside. The misdirection and machinations within the IPCC were to get worse as we will see. Sadly, the results and their impact are already evident and going to get worse unless they are stopped.” (LINK) 15) Physicist F. James Cripwell, a former scientist with UK’s Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge who worked with the Operations Research for the Canadian Defense Research Board wrote on May 14: “The warmaholics have a hypothesis that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere causes global temperature to rise. There is no experimental basis for this hypothesis. But in the latter part of the 20th century, CO2 levels rose, and global temperatures rose. Which was fine until we came into the 21st century, and global temperatures stopped rising. Future values of world temperatures are hanging like a Sword of Damocles over the warmaholics, and I was wondering what they would do. Now we have two papers, Smith et al in Science and Keenlyside in Nature saying that there will be a pause in this rise for a number of years, but then the accumulated effects of AGW will come back with a vengence, and temperatures will reach the levels predicted by the IPCC. The idea of AGW seems to be that a number of joules of heat fail to be radiated into space, and accumulate on earth; I call these "AGW joules". They are said to heat the earth's surface. However, if the earth is not heating up, and the AGW joules are accumulating, then they must be heating up something else; they have to "hide" somewhere. The only place that I can see that they can hide is in the deep oceans. For the warmaholics this seems to be enough; there is another hypothesis. But is this good enough for serious scientists? Surely we need to be given the detailed physics of how these AGW joules can hide for 10, 15 or 20 years. Smith and Keenlyside have not addressed this problem; they just run computer models. My physics is not good enough to be able to prove that AGW joules hiding in the deep ocean (or wherever) is scientific nonsense, but I suggest that as scientists we are entitled to be told what this detailed physics is. Or is this just the old business of ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.'" (LINK) Media Reaction: Scripps News: Globe may be cooling on Global Warming - May 1, 2008 - By Deroy Murdock Excerpt: In a December 2007 Senate Environment and Public Works Committee minority-staff report, some 400 scientists -- from such respected institutions as Princeton, the National Academy of Sciences, the University of London, and Paris' Pasteur Institute -- declared their independence from the pro-warming "conventional wisdom." "Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas," asserted climatologist Luc Debontridder of Belgium's Royal Meteorological Institute. "It is responsible for at least 75 percent of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it." AccuWeather's Expert Senior Forecaster Joe Bastardi has stated: "People are concerned that 50 years from now, it will be warm beyond a point of no return. My concern is almost opposite, that it's cold and getting colder." And on Wednesday, the respected journal, Nature, indicated that Earth's climactic cycles have stopped global warming through 2015. If nothing else, all this obliterates the rampant lie that "the scientific debate on global warming is over." (LINK) Junk Science: The Great Global Warming Race - May 1, 2008 - By Steven Milloy Excerpt: A new study indicates alarmist concern and a need to explain away the lack of actual global warming. Researchers belonging to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, reported in Nature (May 1) that after adjusting their climate model to reflect actual sea surface temperatures of the last 50 years, "global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations … temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming." You got that? IPCC researchers project no global warming over the next decade because of Mother Nature. Although the result seems stunning in that it came from IPCC scientists who have always been in the tank for manmade global warming, it’s not really surprising since the notion of manmade climate change has never lived up to its billing. […] Just this week, Al Gore drummed up $683 million for an investment fund that aims to profit from government-subsidized global warming-related technologies. A few weeks ago, Gore launched a $300 million global warming ad campaign. Do you think he’s at all interested in returning that money to investors and contributors? Or that he and the IPCC are interested in returning their Nobel Peace Prizes? (LINK)
Australian John Ray, Ph.D., who publishes the website Greenie Watch said on May 2: “Their entire global warming scare was based on around two decades of warming in the late 20th century so if that is followed by 20 years of stasis and cooling, which one of those two episodes represents the trend? How can we be sure that there is ANY trend? If natural fluctuations can cause an episode of cooling, how can we know that natural fluctuations did not cause the episode of warming? We cannot know that. The prophecies of doom are just irresponsible and very damaging speculation.” (LINK) Melanie Phillips writes in the UK Spectator in an article titled “Can someone pause Al Gore for the next decade?” on May 1: “With a precision of prediction which would have caused medieval sorcerers to strike crystal balls off their wedding present lists, these scientists can foretell precisely when these 'natural climate variations' will subside - even though at the very same time Richard Wood of the Hadley Centre confides: ‘...climate predictions for a decade ahead would always be to some extent uncertain...’ Always uncertain, eh? But isn't the prediction that the planet is about to fry so certain that, as the Royal Society so memorably told us, the argument is over? Truly, a most flexible theory indeed.” (LINK) Reporter Charles Clover of the UK Daily Telegraph wrote on May 1: “The political task of negotiating a meaningful new climate treaty in Copenhagen next year now looks more difficult because it will not take place against a backdrop of droughts and soaring temperatures of the kind that got climate concern under way in 1988.” Steven Goddard wrote in the UK Register on May 2: “How can scientists who report measurements of the earth's temperature within one one-hundredth of a degree be unable to concur if the temperature is going up or down over a ten year period? Something appears to be inconsistent with the NASA data - but what is it? [… ] Both of the satellite data sources, as well as Had-Crut, show worldwide temperatures falling below the IPCC estimates. Satellite data shows temperatures near or below the 30 year average - but NASA data has somehow managed to stay on track towards climate Armageddon. You can draw your own conclusions, but I see a pattern that is troublesome. In science, as with any other endeavor, it is always a good idea to have some separation between the people generating the data and the people interpreting it.” (LINK) Geoffrey Styles wrote in Energy Outlook on May 1: “Those who approach climate change with a quasi-religious fervor are likely to become apoplectic at any suggestion that a few cooler months or years might derail the growing policy momentum to institute the means of dramatically reducing emissions. (LINK)
# #
Full Text of today's UK Telegraph Article Below: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/30/eaclimate130.xml
Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict By Charles Clover, Environment Editor – UK Telegraph Last Updated: 6:01pm BST 30/04/2008 Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3°C global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature. However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model. Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3°C warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that." He stressed that the results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away. The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998. Today's paper in Nature tries to simulate the variability of these events and longer cycles, such as the giant ocean "conveyor belt" known as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which brings warm water north into the North East Atlantic. This has a 70 to 80-year cycle and when the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures in Europe. When it is weak, as it will be over the next decade, temperatures fall. Scientists think that variations of this kind could partly explain the cooling of global average temperatures between the 1940s and 1970s after which temperatures rose again. Writing in Nature, the scientists said: "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming." The study shows a more pronounced weakening effect than the Met Office's Hadley Centre, which last year predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998. Commenting on the new study, Richard Wood of the Hadley Centre said the model suggested the weakening of the MOC would have a cooling effect around the North Atlantic. "Such a cooling could temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. "That emphasises once again the need to consider climate variability and climate change together when making predictions over timescales of decades." But he said the use of just sea surface temperatures might not accurately reflect the state of the MOC, which was several miles deep and dependent on factors besides temperatures, such as salt content, which were included in the Met Office Hadley Centre model. If the model could accurately forecast other variables besides temperature, such as rainfall, it would be increasingly useful, but climate predictions for a decade ahead would always be to some extent uncertain, he added. # # |
Subcommittees | Search | Home | Contact | Site Map | EPW Multimedia | All Text Version | Privacy Policy
U.S. Senate Links: Senators | Senate Committees | Legislation | Reference Site