There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998
By Bob Carter
(Filed: 09/04/2006)

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).


Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?

Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.

The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike. Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported.

Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.

There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.

On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King's, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public's trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly.

Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.

The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.

The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Intern-ationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.

As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.

Informal discussions have already begun about a new AP6 audit body, designed to vet rigorously the science advice that the Partnership receives, including from the IPCC. Can Britain afford not to be there?

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Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

I wonder where he got his figures from. Their graph appears to tell a different story.

You missed off the source and the information about the author:

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Prof Bob Carter is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research

quote:

Originally posted by Sue N:

quote:

Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

I wonder where he got his figures from. Their graph appears to tell a different story.

The graph looks right to me. The increments on the y-axis are skewed to show the slightest drift from baseline in 0.1 degrees. The graphs from 1998 to present show no statistical change when combined.

Try here then.

My view of the graph is that in the last 100 years, since 1910, global temperature has increased 1°C, which is 1.8°F. I am about as convinced that this trend will level off as I am convinced that gasoline prices will level off.

The wise man never argues with a fool; the casual observer may not be able to tell them apart...

There's another interesting graph here.

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Originally posted by Sue N:
There's another interesting graph here.

Intersting that the variation from years 1000 to 1200 are very similar to the the variations from 1800 to 2000. They are statistically the same.

I ran across this article. It is from India so it most be unbias. Does make some interesting points.

Global warming or global cooling?

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Almost as soon as the Kyoto Protocol on global warming came into effect on February 15, Kashmir suffered the highest snowfall in three decades with over 150 killed, and Mumbai recorded the lowest temperature in 40 years. Had temperatures been the highest for decades, newspapers would have declared this was proof of global warming. But whenever temperatures drop, the press keeps quiet.

Things were different in 1940-70, when there was global cooling. Every cold winter then was hailed as proof of a coming new Ice Age. But the moment cooling was replaced by warming, a new disaster in the opposite direction was proclaimed.

A recent Washington Post article gave this scientist's quote from 1972. "We simply cannot afford to gamble. We cannot risk inaction. The scientists who disagree are acting irresponsibly. The indications that our climate can soon change for the worse are too strong to be reasonably ignored." The warning was not about global warming (which was not happening): it was about global cooling!

In the media, disaster is news, and its absence is not. This principle has been exploited so skillfully by ecological scare-mongers that it is now regarded as politically incorrect, even unscientific, to denounce global warming hysteria as unproven speculation.

Meteorologists are a standing joke for getting predictions wrong even a few days ahead. The same jokers are being taken seriously when they use computer models to predict the weather 100 years hence.

The models have not been tested for reliability over 100 years, or even 20 years. Different models yield variations in warming of 400%, which means they are statistically meaningless.

Wassily Leontief, Nobel prize winner for modeling, said this about the limits of models. "We move from more or less plausible but really arbitrary assumptions, to elegantly demonstrated but irrelevant conclusions." Exactly. Assume continued warming as in the last three decades, and you get a warming disaster. Assume more episodes of global cooling, and you get a cooling disaster.

In his latest best seller State of Fear, Michael Crichton does a devastating expose of the way ecological groups have tweaked data and facts to create mass hysteria. He points out that we know astonishingly little about the environment. All sides make exaggerated claims.

We know that atmospheric carbon is increasing. We are also in the midst of a natural warming trend that started in 1850 at the end of what is called the Little Ice Age. It is scientifically impossible to prove whether the subsequent warming is natural or man-made.

Greens say, rightly, that the best scientific assessment today is that global warming is occurring. Yet never in history have scientists accurately predicted what will happen 100 years later. A century ago no scientists predicted the internet, microwave ovens, TV, nuclear explosions or antibiotics. It is impossible, even stupid, to predict the distant future.

That scientific truth is rarely mentioned. Why? Because the global warming movement has now become a multi-billion dollar enterprise with thousands of jobs and millions in funding for NGOs and think-tanks, top jobs and prizes for scientists, and huge media coverage for predictions of disaster.

The vested interests in the global warming theory are now as strong, rich and politically influential as the biggest multinationals. It is no co-incidence, says Crichton, that so many scientists sceptical of global warming are retired professors: they have no need to chase research grants and chairs.

I have long been an agnostic on global warming: the evidence is ambiguous. But I almost became a convert when Greenpeace publicised photos showing the disastrously rapid retreat of the Upsala Glacier in Argentina. How disastrous, I thought, if this was the coming fate of all glaciers.

Then last Christmas, I went on vacation to Lake Argentina. The Upsala glacier and six other glaciers descend from the South Andean icefield into the lake. I was astounded to discover that while the Upsala glacier had retreated rapidly, the other glaciers showed little movement, and one had advanced across the lake into the Magellan peninsula. If in the same area some glaciers advance and others retreat, the cause is clearly not global warming but local micro-conditions.

Yet the Greenpeace photos gave the impression that glaciers in general were in rapid retreat. It was a con job, a dishonest effort to mislead. From the same icefield, another major glacier spilling into Chile has grown 60% in volume.

Greenpeace and other ecological groups have well-intentioned people with high ideals. But as crusaders they want to win by any means, honest or not. I do not like being taken for a ride, by idealists or anyone else.

We need impartial research, funded neither by MNCs, governmental groups or NGOs with private agendas. And the media needs to stop highlighting disaster scares and ignoring exposes of the scares.

Glaciers melting, receding. Polar ice receding, melting. (Seas rising.)

Perhaps the pertinent question is not,"is it happening", but rather, "what can we do about it, NOW?"

Can we do something about global warming... my opinion - NO.

Should we pollute less - Sure.

Have we lost any towns or cities due to sea level rising?

quote:

Originally posted by Camp:
Intersting that the variation from years 1000 to 1200 are very similar to the the variations from 1800 to 2000. They are statistically the same.

Hmmm. I see the estimates for 1000 at -0.2 +/- 0.05, and for 1200 -0.25 +/- 0.1, around a rise of 0.05.

1800 is -0.3 +/- 0.1 (and falling). As 2000 approached, the estimates were around -0.05, a rise of 0.25, and the actual measurements went on to rise to +0.25 - an overall rise of 0.55 - 11 times the rise between 1000 and 1200.

The trend upwards looks clear to me from the graphs. Do you see a flat line?

Actually, I agree that the models still leave a lot to be desired. Our world is a very complex set of many interlocking systems, with positive and negative feedback loops, some with simple relationships and others with tipping points. It is not homogenous, so each area will not be affected in similar ways - for example global warming could lead to Great Britain freezing if the Ocean Conveyor Belt fails. There are always going to be example which appear to counter the belief that global warming exists. Nothing is as simple as the sound bites suggest. Pollution has contributed to both global warming and to global dimming. Cutting some kinds of pollutions (particulates) could lead to better air to breathe and therefore better health, but reduce global dimming and therefore contribute to global warming.

I believe, having studied the subject at degree level, that there is more than enough evidence in favour of global warming and our contribution towards it that we ought to do our best to reverse our effect on the planet.

Whilst I respect the opinions of those few climatologists who genuinely disagree with the latest theories about global warming, most articles speaking out against it seem to be from non-climatologists.

Sue,

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I believe, having studied the subject at degree level, that there is more than enough evidence in favour of global warming

What was your position in the seventies with Global cooling? Ice Packs growing, Temperatures falling

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In 1972 Cesare Emiliani warned of the possibility of "a runaway glaciation",

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Originally posted by LOGANTHOR:
What was your position in the seventies with Global cooling? Ice Packs growing, Temperatures falling

I had other things on my mind in the seventies, so I don't really know what evidence there was and did not have a position on it. If I had studied it at the time I doubt if I would have been as sure of it as I am of global warming now - clearly there was less evidence then, and if the graphs mentioned above had been available, they would not have strongly confirmed it.

I certainly think that we need to continue to acquire more evidence and work on the models, including models by those who disagree.People can join in with that if they want.

quote:

Originally posted by Sue N:

quote:

Originally posted by Camp:
Intersting that the variation from years 1000 to 1200 are very similar to the the variations from 1800 to 2000. They are statistically the same.

Hmmm. I see the estimates for 1000 at -0.2 +/- 0.05, and for 1200 -0.25 +/- 0.1, around a rise of 0.05.

1800 is -0.3 +/- 0.1 (and falling). As 2000 approached, the estimates were around -0.05, a rise of 0.25, and the actual measurements went on to rise to +0.25 - an overall rise of 0.55 - 11 times the rise between 1000 and 1200.

The trend upwards looks clear to me from the graphs. Do you see a flat line?

The trend is upward, but statistically meaningless. The mean value is the same. The standard deviation is only slightly greater in the recent group. The chart represents a process that is currently in control. Some subsets of data tail significantly differently for the more recent measures.

My interpretation is that the recent trend is notable, but not of concern.

Tell that to the Inuit, and the Polar Bears, who can no longer hunt effectively on the thinning and melting sea ice --if it forms at all, anymore.

...to say nothing of the profound accumulation of certain 'lower 48'-produced chemical toxins, and their ultra-prevalent accumulations in Arctic ecosystems/food stocks...

Tell that to the Pacific Islanders who evacuated entire islands in favor of ones not in immediate danger of becoming submerged.


The period of 1000-1200 you refer to... did it, or did it not include similar situations in the Arctic, for example?

I'll hazard a quick guess that core samples taken from glaciers and iceburgs would tell the conclusive tale...

Or to the folks of Tuvalu or the Maldives whose islands will not be islands for much longer.

Precisely.

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As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.

thekos, you seem to be talking about a group of six countries (your did not name) which did not sign the original Kyoto Accord - and now Harper wants in. One of the first thing that Harper did was to get Canada out of Kyoto. I wonder what Barbie and Ken think of the countries involved in the AP6:

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PM wants to join opponents of mandatory emission goals

Harper heading to APEC meeting in Australia to actively involve Canada in the workings of AP-6

Aug 30, 2007 04:30 AM
Tonda Maccharles
Ottawa Bureau

OTTAWA–Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads to an international meeting of 21 Asia-Pacific leaders next week in Sydney, Australia, with a view to joining another club.

Harper wants Canada to formally join the six-country Asia-Pacific Partnership made up of Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and the United States – countries that advocate voluntary measures and technological solutions instead of mandatory emissions targets to stop climate change.

It's called the AP-6, a group founded last year by the host of this year's Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a personal friend of Harper's and a kindred political spirit of his Conservative government.

A Canadian government official, who was briefing reporters yesterday about the coming summit, said climate change and energy security are at the top of the agenda. Harper is expected to deliver a keynote address on climate change to a business summit in advance of the leaders' meetings.

Harper will also seek to actively involve Canada in the workings of the AP-6 as a way to engage large greenhouse gas emitters like China, Russia and the United States on the question of how to move through the next phase of international negotiations on climate change, the official said.

"We continue to have a strong interest in joining AP-6 and we hope very much that we have a signal from the existing members about the possibility of us joining. It would be an excellent opportunity for us to work with Asia-Pacific countries on some important and shared interests," said the official.

While Canadian officials have mused before about the benefits of being part of an organization like the AP-6, it was the first clear indication that Harper is actively seeking an invitation to join in.

Graham Saul, executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, said yesterday any move to join AP-6 would be a bad signal.

"It signifies that the Harper administration is moving closer to the Bush administration on climate policy rather than signalling a commitment to specific, meaningful emissions reductions under the Kyoto Protocol," Saul said.

The federal government says Canada cannot meet its target under the international Kyoto Protocol, which requires a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to 6 per cent below 1990 levels, because it would be disastrous for the economy. Harper has nonetheless bowed to political pressure in Canada and introduced measures that he says will meet longer-term targets by 2050.

But Saul says it's important to watch whom Canada chooses as its friends in the effort.

"When you look at the way industrialized countries have aligned themselves around climate change, there's been a damaging movement on the part of Canada away from meaningful commitments at an international level towards the Bush administration's line on voluntary standards.

"If Canada were to join the AP-6 it could be interpreted that that is yet further indication of Canada moving in that direction."

Other issues Harper and the APEC leaders will address include stalled World Trade Organization talks, consumer product safety concerns and more liberalized regional trade. As well, issues of global security will likely come up.

http://www.thestar.com/article/251333

I see no reason why countries shouldn't embrace the aims of both organisations at the same time; reduce emissions to buy more time, and develop new technologies.

What surprises me about the American approach is that signing an agreement concerning new technologies is in effect an interference of the government in the free market. After all, won't a free market automatically supply such technologies?

My answer to that is no, not while the market is not paying the true cost - it is skewed.

Sue N.

Sue, what have you been told about the Asia-Pacific Partnership (AP6)? There is speculation that it is a group that is all smoke and mirrors when it comes to the environment.

In contrast to Kyoto, Harper has been promoting a Made-In-Canada plan which includes Intensity-based targets. The original Clean Air Act promoted the use of Intensity-based targets - though it has been later amended to have teeth - so now Harper is trying to scrap it:

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Intensity-based targets means environmental emissions would be relative to the economic output of various industries. That means even though individual emission limits for each barrel of oil or piece of coal could be lowered, if production increases, the overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants could grow.

Many environmentalists believe capping greenhouse gas emissions is key to tackling climate change. Critics of intensity-based targets say the approach allows heavily polluting industries, such as Alberta's oilsands, to continue to grow and pollute, while remaining under government-imposed limitations.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/19/clean-act.html