Global Warming Hoax

Governments across the globe have squandered trillions of dollars on the global warming hoax.  These politicians are either stupid or evil, but in any case, they all need to be replaced.  This hoax has helped bankrupt Europe and the U.S.  It’s time to end the spending NOW.  The blame for this treason rests with the U.N., a corrupt organization we need to close down. The goal of this scam is to subjugate all sovereign nations to the U.N. This is a global communist scam supported by global corporations and politicians.   Norb Leahy

Man made Global Warming. An alternative view.

Global warming has now been replaced by climate change.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.

The increase of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) in the atmosphere is said to be responsible for global warming. This is the main plank in the argument of the global warming lobby.

The atmosphere consists of water vapour (90%), and various gases including carbon dioxide. The amount of carbon dioxide contributed by mankind is 0.12%. The percentage of carbon dioxide has increased in the last 50 years or so from 240 parts per million to the present level of 380 parts per million. In the long distant past the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been as high as 1,800 parts per million. (Long before humans stated to produce carbon dioxide).

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.

“CO2 is not a pollutant.

On the contrary, carbon dioxide makes crops and forests grow faster. Satellite mapping shows the Earth has become about 6 percent greener overall in the past two decades, with forests expanding into arid regions. The Amazon rain forest was the biggest gainer, with two tons of additional biomass per acre per year”.

So, we are asked to believe that manmade carbon dioxide, which is barely one tenth of one percent of the atmosphere, is responsible for man made global warming. Ask yourself if this is really likely.

2. Is there any actual warming?

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.

It would be natural to expect some warming over the centuries because the Earth is still emerging from the last Ice Age and from the mini ice age that ended around 1,700 AD.

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.

3. Computer models versus empirical observational data.

The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.) is possibly the main advocate of man made global warming and climate change. Its predictions are based on computer models which purport to predict temperature levels a century ahead. Yet they will not allow the raw data on which the computer models are allegedly based to be released for scientific analysis. This is contrary to the usual way science works. Normally, a scientist who promotes a particular theory publishes his or her findings and the raw data upon which those findings are based so that the theory can be subjected to peer review by other scientists. Either the theory stands up to scientific scrutiny or it does not. If it does it becomes part of settled science. If not, it is discarded. So responsible scientists are very, very careful in their research and findings because they know these will be subject to scientific scrutiny. So, what of the scientists who promulgate theories but refuse to publish the raw data on which those theories are based. Well, decide for yourselves.

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.

5. The UK Meteorological Office.

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.

Generally, there is little published science that supports any correlation between sun activity and the temperature of the Earth. This does not mean this is none, but simply that there is little scientific published work that supports it. But wait. There is something. There is an article by Stephen Wilde dated 21 May 2008 which says, inter alia, “Having observed the apparent failure of the models with their speculative CO2 component and having seen the relative success of the solar and astronomic influences at anticipating real world changes I have written this article to draw attention to what I consider to be the underlying real world process of global temperature change. Global temperature is controlled quite precisely (although it is difficult to calculate) by solar energy modulated by a number of overlapping and interlinked oceanic cycles each operating on different time scales and being of varying intensities, sometimes offsetting one another and sometimes complementing one another. Any other single influence such as an enhanced greenhouse effect from CO2 is just one of a plethora of other potential but relatively minor influences which as often as not offset one another and leave the solar/oceanic driver unchallenged in terms of scale”.

Stephen Wilde is a Fellow of The Royal Meteorological Society and has been since 1968. His full article, which is quite convincing, called “The real link between solar energy, ocean cycles and global temperatures”, can be read at www.climaterealists.com

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.

7. The Jet Stream.

Below is an explanation of the Jet Stream provided by the UK Meteorological Office. I have included this to save time and to provide a better explanation than I could give.

“Jet streams are narrow fast flowing “rivers” of air. They are formed by temperature differences in the upper atmosphere, between the cold polar air and the warm tropical air. This abrupt change in temperature causes a large pressure difference, which forces the air to move.

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.

Again, I show below a copy of an article on this phenomenon. I know it is long but I urge you to read it.

“The El Niño Effect

El Niño is a severe atmospheric and oceanic disturbance in the Pacific Ocean that occurs every seven to fourteen years. It is called El Niño, meaning “the Child”, because it usually appears near the Christmas season. Warm surface waters flow from the central Pacific towards the eastern Pacific, suppressing the cold, nutrient-rich upwelling of the Humboldt Current off the coast of South America. This disturbance leads to a fall in the number of plankton, wreaking havoc upon the entire ocean food chain and devastating the fishing industry.

The influence of these currents also leads to a complete reversal of the trade winds, bringing torrential rain, flooding, and mudslides to the usually dry coastal areas of Peru and Ecuador. Another result is the collapse of the monsoons in Asia, which can bring severe drought to Indonesia and northern Australia. The phenomenon also causes severe weather disturbances in other parts of the world, such as droughts in areas of Africa and central North America.

Nature’s Vicious Cycle (by National Geographic)

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”.

There is also a report from The World Health Organisation on El Nino.

“El Niño and its health impact

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”.

Wow! The terrible destruction caused around the world by “deranged weather” and storms, flooding, drought and famine in 1997/98 was caused by El Nino and La Nina and not by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and global warming. I wonder if anyone told the I.P.C.C. and the global warming lobby. I think I’ll send them an e-mail.

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.

9. Rising Sea Levels.

Below are part of an article by Dr Tim Ball and an article by William Robert Johnston, both of which are self-explanatory.

“Sea Level Rise; A Major Non-existent Threat Exploited by Alarmists by Tim Ball

Tuesday, July 7th 2009, 4:26 AM EDT

(Dr Tim Ball is former Professor of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg).

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)”

“Facts and figures on sea level rise

by Wm. Robert Johnston
last updated 5 April 2002

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

Consider the following: in the IPCC’s predictions, 20% of the expected sea level rise over the next century is due to net melting of continental ice (outside Greenland and Antarctica). This would require that 20% of the Earth’s continental ice melt in the next century. This ice is the remnant of the ice cover from the last ice age; what remains is 0.4% of the ice cover at the last peak of glaciation. On one hand, for this ice to melt in the next century would involve a rate of melting only one-fourth of the average over the last 20,000 years. Probably more relevant is the fact that this ice has apparently been hard to melt.

Limited data suggests that around the mid 1800s the rate of sea level rise increased to about 15 centimeters per century. This rate has apparently remained constant for the past 150 years; various tidal gauge measurements during the last two decades give results comparable to this rate. While some suggest a link between this and current man-made carbon dioxide emissions, note the following: the observations suggest a constant rate of sea level rise for the past 150 years, while rate of man-made carbon dioxide emissions has increased over 100-fold. Additionally, most of the cumulative rise in sea level preceded the majority of cumulative carbon dioxide emissions. Global temperature change and sea level rise do correlate with each other, but not with human activities; thus it appears that both temperature and sea level are changing principally due to natural phenomena.

Note that there are uncertainties even with these modern measurements of sea level change. Tide gauge measurements for the past 150 years show rising sea level at some locations and dropping sea level at others. The primary factor is sinking and rising of the ground, respectively. The 15 cm per century sea level rise incorporates model-based adjustments for these ground motions. Parts of Europe and North America are still rising in adjustment to the removal of the ice sheets by melting over the past several thousand years. Some sources question the accuracy of these sea level rise rates because of limits in our understanding of this isostatic rebound.

The IPCC predictions heavily depend on models that have limitations. It is first necessary to model global climate change; these models make assumptions regarding future increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide and proceed to model global and regional changes in temperature, precipitation, and other climatic factors. Models of sea level rise use these results and further model mass-balance for the icecaps (considering precipitation and melting) and thermal expansion of the oceans (requiring modeling of changes in temperature-depth relations for the global oceans). These models involve a high degree of uncertainty. The models for temperature change fail miserably to predict temperature changes for the last 20 years, yet their predictions for the next 100 years are still assumed valid. Nearly all the models require “fudge” factors to correctly simulate a steady state situation. The fact that the various models cited by the IPCC give relatively consistent predictions does not reflect reliability; the models have been adjusted to conform to each other, but fail to conform to real world observations. When regional climate changes are considered, the models give inconsistent and sometimes dramatically contradictory results. Further, the models are modeling global carbon dioxide balance, which is very poorly understood at this time. Sea-level change models likewise attempt to model icecap mass balance, also poorly constrained by current observations.

© 2001, 2002 by Wm. Robert Johnston. Last modified 5 April 2002”.

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.

10. Melting Ice.

Of the world’s ice, 90% is in Antarctica, 6% is in Greenland and the Himalayas and the Alps and the remaining 4% is at the North Pole in the Arctic. Generally speaking, the ice in Antarctica is not melting; it is getting thicker.

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.

11. The Polar Bears.

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.

Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views ‘are extremely unhelpful’ , reveals Christopher Booker

According to the world’s leading expert on polar bears, their numbers are higher than they were 30 years ago. Photo: AP

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.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

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.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists’ agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week’s meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: “it was the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition”.

Dr Taylor was told that his views running “counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful”. His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was “inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG”.

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.

12. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

This phenomenon may well be a major force in climate change. However, it is far too complicated for me to attempt to describe it.

See Appendix 3 – Global Warming as a Natural Response to Cloud Changes Associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D. October 20, 2008 (updated December 29, 2008)

13. Carbon capture and storage.

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.

Another example of the intention of the industrial nation to go on producing carbon dioxide is carbon credits. As I understand it, the underdeveloped nations of the world will be awarded carbon credits which they will probably not need because they are undeveloped and are unlikely to produce their own carbon dioxide emissions. Then they will be free to sell their carbon credits to the industrial nations which will use them to go on producing more carbon dioxide of their own.

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.

15. The cost in money.

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.

16. The cost to humanity.

If the objectives of the warmists are to be achieved the economies of the developed world countries would have to be severely restricted, as would those of the third world. In order to meet their carbon emission targets, governments would have to severely limit their industries, the generation of power supplies which there is no hope in hell of replacing by renewable sources of energy, car production and use, transport, aviation, defence, shipping etc. etc. etc. Standards of living would fall. Large unemployment would result.

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.

17. The climate sceptics.

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.

The following is a copy of an open letter sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations signed by around 150 eminent scientists.

Open Letter to Secretary-General of United Nations

Wednesday, December 9th 2009, 2:07 AM ES Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Dear Secretary-General,

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.
Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;

Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;

Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;

Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;

The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;

Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;

Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;

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;

Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;  Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so”.

The above is self explanatory. It is reproduced in full in Appendix 4 which contains a full list of the scientists who signed. Look at who they are and the positions they hold.

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.

The Manhattan Declaration is similar to the above and was signed or endorsed in 2008 by around a thousand scientists. The full declaration and lists of endorsers is shown on Appendix 5. Again. Look at the names and the positions they hold.

18. The Media including the BBC.

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 used to have an unparalleled reputation for honest reporting. At one time, if you heard it or saw it on the BBC you knew it was true. Alas, no more. This despite the fact that the BBC is a public service broadcaster funded entirely from public funds. It should be fiercely independent and report in a balanced non partisan way. It does not. Its first duty should be to the public and not political expediency.

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?

19. The information available and bias.

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 information provided by some warmists is too ludicrous to take seriously. For example, Al Gore says that sea levels will rise 20 feet by the end of the century. Not even the I.P.C.C. makes that claim. I saw him on CNN on 14 December and he said that all the ice in the world was melting and that there were droughts and fires and all sorts of other disasters all over the world as a result of global warming. Clearly, he has never heard of El Nino. This man has won a Nobel Prize for his utterances on global warming (worth over a million pounds) and has made an absolute fortune from his book and after dinner speeches peddling his nonsense.

On the other hand, I have found a wealth of information from global warming sceptics which I have found very persuasive. The internet is full of it. Thank God for the internet. I cannot reproduce it all here. If you are interested you will have no trouble finding it yourselves. Either it will convince you or it will not.

20. The good news.

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.

Anyone reading this is welcome to review it. I would welcome any feedback whether positive or negative. If you agree with what I have said and share my concerns then please feel free to pass it on. The more the better. If not, consign it to the electronic waste bin but, please, only after you have made enquiries yourself.

Elwyn Roberts.

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.

A must must read is, “Monckton-caught green-handed.

23. Appendices.

Appendix 1. Global Warming: Natural or Manmade? Dr Roy Spencer.

Appendix 2. A Primer on Global Warming: Dispelling CO2 Myths. Dr Jay Lehr.

Appendix 3. Global warming as a natural response to cloud changes associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Dr Roy Spencer.

Appendix 4. Open letter to The Secretary-General of The United Nations.

Appendix 5. The Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change.

Appendix 1.

Global Warming: Natural or Manmade?

Dr Roy Spencer. Ph.D.

Dr Roy Spencer is a Meteorologist and Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He was formerly a Senior Scientist at NASA where he and Dr John Cristy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites.

“Global warming” refers to the global-average temperature increase that has been observed over the last one hundred years or more. But to many politicians and the public, the term carries the implication that mankind is responsible for that warming. This website describes evidence from my group’s government-funded research that suggests global warming is mostly natural, and that the climate system is quite insensitive to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions and aerosol pollution.

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 United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that the only way they can get their computerized climate models to produce the observed warming is with anthropogenic (human-caused) pollution. But they’re not going to find something if they don’t search for it. More than one scientist has asked me, “What else COULD it be?” Well, the answer to that takes a little digging… and as I show, one doesn’t have to dig very far.

But first let’s examine the basics of why so many scientists think global warming is manmade. Earth’s atmosphere contains natural greenhouse gases (mostly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane) which act to keep the lower layers of the atmosphere warmer than they otherwise would be without those gases. Greenhouse gases trap infrared radiation — the radiant heat energy that the Earth naturally emits to outer space in response to solar heating. Mankind’s burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal, petroleum, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and this is believed to be enhancing the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect. As of 2008, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 40% to 45% higher than it was before the start of the industrial revolution in the 1800’s.

It is interesting to note that, even though carbon dioxide is necessary for life on Earth to exist, there is precious little of it in Earth’s atmosphere. As of 2008, only 39 out of every 100,000 molecules of air were CO2, and it will take mankind’s CO2 emissions 5 more years to increase that number by 1, to 40.

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.

The ‘consensus’ of opinion is that the Earth’s climate sensitivity is quite high, and so warming of about 0.25 deg. C to 0.5 deg. C (about 0.5 deg. F to 0.9 deg. F) every 10 years can be expected for as long as mankind continues to use fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. NASA’s James Hansen claims that climate sensitivity is very high, and that we have already put too much extra CO2 in the atmosphere. Presumably this is why he and Al Gore are campaigning for a moratorium on the construction of any more coal-fired power plants in the U.S.

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.

Climate change — it happens, with or without our help.

Appendix 2.

A Primer on Global Warming: Dispelling CO2 Myths.

Written By: Jay Lehr, Ph.D.

Published In: Environment & Climate News > July 2009

Publication date: 07/01/2009

Publisher: The Heartlands Institute

The scientific facts clearly show carbon dioxide is a good thing, not something we should fear.

CO2 is not a pollutant.

On the contrary, carbon dioxide makes crops and forests grow faster. Satellite mapping shows the Earth has become about 6 percent greener overall in the past two decades, with forests expanding into arid regions. The Amazon rain forest was the biggest gainer, with two tons of additional biomass per acre per year.

Certainly climate change does not help every region equally, but careful studies predict overall benefits—fewer storms, more rain, better crop yields, longer growing seasons, milder winters, and lower heating costs in colder climates. The news is certainly not bad and on balance may be rather good.

CO2 is merely a trace atmospheric gas.

The world will laugh when we finally understand the pursuit of economic ruin in the name of saving the planet from carbon dioxide has been a terrible joke. It is an unarguable fact that the portion of the Earth’s greenhouse gas envelope contributed by man is barely one-tenth of 1 percent of the total.

Do the numbers yourself. Carbon dioxide is no more than 4 percent of the greenhouse gas envelope—with water vapor being more than 90 percent, followed by methane and sulfur and nitrous oxides. Of that 4 percent, man contributes a little more than 3 percent. Three percent of 4 percent is 0.12 percent, and for that we are sentencing people to numerous damaging economic impacts.

Added CO2 increments have less effect.

The effect of additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is limited because CO2 absorbs only certain wavelengths of radiant energy. As the radiation in that particular wavelength band is used up, the amount left for absorption by more of the gas is reduced.

A simple analogy is to consider drawing a curtain across a window. Much of the light will be shut out, but some will still get through. Add a second curtain to the first, and most of the remaining light will be excluded. A point will quickly be reached however, where adding more curtains has a negligible effect, because there is no light left to stop.

This is the case with the absorption of energy as more carbon dioxide is added to the atmosphere.

Anthropogenic warming hasn’t happened.

If greenhouse gases were responsible for global temperature increases in recent decades, atmospheric physics require that higher levels of our atmosphere would show greater warming than lower levels. This did not happen during the 1978-1998 period of 0.3 degrees Celsius warming.

Warming precedes CO2 increases.

A full 900,000 years of ice core temperature records and carbon dioxide content records show CO2 increases follow increases in Earth’s temperature instead of leading them. This makes sense because the oceans are the primary source of CO2, and they hold more CO2 when cool than when warm. Warming causes the oceans to release more CO2.

---

Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (jlehr@heartland.org) is science director of The Heartland Institute.

Appendix 3.

Global Warming as a Natural Response to Cloud Changes Associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

by Roy W. Spencer, Ph.D.

October 20, 2008 (updated December 29, 2008)

Dr Roy Spencer is a Meteorologist and Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. He was formerly a Senior Scientist at NASA where he and Dr John Cristy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites.

ABSTRACT

A simple climate model forced by satellite-observed changes in the Earth’s radiative budget associated with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is shown to mimic the major features of global average temperature change during the 20th Century – including three-quarters of the warming trend. A mostly-natural source of global warming is also consistent with mounting observational evidence that the climate system is much less sensitive to carbon dioxide emissions than the IPCC’s climate models simulate.

1. INTRODUCTION

The main arguments for global warming being manmade go something like this: “What else COULD it be? After all, we know that increasing carbon dioxide concentrations are sufficient to explain recent warming, so what’s the point of looking for any other cause?”

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.

Fig. 1. Projected warming (assumed here to occur by 2100) from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 from the IPCC climate models versus from various observational indicators.

The dashed line in Fig. 1 comes from our recent apples-to-apples comparison between satellite-based feedback estimates and IPCC model-diagnosed feedbacks, all computed from 5-year periods (see Fig. 2). In that comparison, there were NO five year periods from ANY of the IPCC model simulations which produced a feedback parameter with as low a climate sensitivity as that found in the satellite data.

Fig. 2. Frequency histogram of total (reflected solar plus emitted infrared)feedback parameters computed from all possible 5 year periods in transient forcing experiments in 18 climate models tracked by the IPCC, versus the same calculation from Aqua CERES and NOAA-15 AMSU channel 5 satellite data.

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.]

But it also means that the radiative forcing caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 is not sufficient to cause PAST warming, either. So, this then leaves a critical unanswered question: What has caused the warming seen over the last 100 years or so?

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).

The IPCC has simply ASSUMED that these natural fluctuations in weather patterns do not cause climate change. But all it would take is a small change in global average (or Northern Hemispheric average) cloudiness to cause global warming. Unfortunately, our global observations of cloudiness have not been complete or accurate enough to document such a change…until recently.

2. A SIMPLE MODEL OF NATURAL GLOBAL WARMING

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?

Such a cloud change would cause the climate system to go through natural fluctuations in average temperature for extended periods of time. The IPCC simply assumes that this kind of natural cloud variability does not exist, and that the Earth stays in a perpetual state of radiative balance that has only been recently disrupted by mankind’s greenhouse gas emissions.

This is an assumption that many of us meteorologists find simplistic and dubious, at best. Spencer and Braswell (2008) showed theoretically that daily random variations in cloudiness can actually cause substantial decadal time-scale variability on ocean temperatures. This is not a new finding, as it was also demonstrated over 30 years ago (Hasselman, 1976) and is related to the fact that the ocean, due to its large heat capacity, retains a ‘memory’ of past changes in the Earth’s radiative budget for a very long time.

So, what if those chaotic variations in cloud cover occurred on time scales longer than days… yearly, or 30 years (like with the PDO), or 100 years? Might such internally-generated climate change even explain events like the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age?

I used a very simple energy balance climate model, previously suggested to us by Isaac Held and Piers Forster, to investigate the possibility that the PDO could have caused some of the climate change over the last century. In this model I ran many thousands of combinations of assumed: (1) ocean depth (through which heat is mixed on multi-decadal to centennial time scales), (2) climate sensitivity, and (3) cloud cover variations directly proportional to the PDO index values.

In effect, I asked the model to show me what combinations of those model parameters yielded a temperature history approximately like that seen during 1900-2000. And here’s an average of all of the simulations that came close to the observed temperature record:

Fig. 4. A simple energy balance model driven by cloud changes associated with the PDO can explain most of the major features of global-average temperature fluctuations during the 20th Century. The best model fits had assumed ocean mixing depths around 800 meters, and feedback parameters of around 3 Watts per square meter per degree C.

The “PDO-only” (dashed) curve in Fig. 4 indeed mimics the main features of the behavior of global mean temperatures during the 20th Century — including three-quarters of the warming trend. If I include the CO2 and other forcings during the 20th Century complied by James Hansen with the PDO-forced cloud changes (solid line labeled PDO+CO2), then the fit to observed temperatures is even closer.

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.

But what evidence do we have that any such cloud-induced changes in the Earth’s radiative budget are actually associated with the PDO? I address that question in the next section.

3. SATELLITE EVIDENCE OF RADIATIVE FORCING CAUSED BY THE PACIFIC DECADAL OSCILLATION

To see whether there is any observational evidence that the PDO has associated changes in global-average cloudiness, I used NASA Terra satellite measurements of reflected solar (shortwave, SW) and emitted infrared (longwave, LW) radiative fluxes over the global oceans from the CERES instrument during 2000-2005, and compared them to recent variations in the PDO index. The results can be seen in the following figure:

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.)

Fig. 6. Three-month running averages of global oceanic CERES radiative flux changes versus tropospheric temperature changes (from AMSU channel 5, see Christy et al., 2003) for the time period in Fig. 5. The average feedback estimate (see sloped lines) was then used together with the AMSU5 data to estimate and remove the feedback component from the CERES radiative fluxes, leaving the radiative forcing shown in Fig. 4b.

[NOTE: This feedback estimate does not necessarily represent long-term climate sensitivity (which in this case would be very low, 0.44 deg. C for a doubling of CO2); it is instead the feedback occurring on intraseasonal and interannual time scales which is merely being removed to isolate the forcing signal. This is the same technique employed by Forster and Taylor (2006) to isolate the signal of radiative forcing in 20 climate models tracked by the IPCC.]

When the feedback is removed, we see a good match in Fig. 5 between the low-frequency behavior of the PDO and the radiative forcing (which is presumably due to cloud fluctuations associated with the PDO). Second-order polynomials were fit to the time series in Fig. 5 and compared to each other to arrive at the PDO-scaling factor of 1.9 Watts per square meter per PDO index value.

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.)

4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

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.

Open Letter to Secretary-General of United Nations

Wednesday, December 9th 2009, 2:07 AM EST

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Dear Secretary-General,

Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ – the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.

Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.

We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.

Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;

Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;

Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;

Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;

The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;

Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;

Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;

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;

Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency; Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.

It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so.

      Source: www.walkers.gb.com/roberts.us.com/?page_id=4

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