Global Warming

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth by Marlo Lewis, Jr. In Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, the only facts and studies considered are those convenient to Gore's scare-them-green agenda—and in many instances, Gore distorts the evidence he presents. Nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or just plain wrong. (Quote from The Comptitive Enterprise Institute)

The issue of man-made global warming is a subject of discussion on the "Ozark Common Sense" blog at ozarkcommonsense.blogspot.com You may also see that blog here
That blog was written after considerable Internet research. Brief excerpts from some of that research are presented below.

In addition,see selected excerpts by renouned scientists here.

EXCERPTS FROM INTERNET RESEARCH

1. IPCC Summary Report Takes Precedence Over Technical Report
Despite the exhortation:
"PLEASE DO NOT CITE, QUOTE, OR DISTRIBUTE THE DRAFT REPORT"
we feel we have been left with no choice by the bizarre actions of the IPCC. What kind of "science" distributes a summary and then withholds the underlying report for a further three months editing to make it concur with the already distributed summary?
Don't believe it? Neither did we but the plain language statement of intent is here...

2. Earth's Climate Always Changing
During the last 2 billion years the Earth's climate has alternated between a frigid "Ice House", like today's world, and a steaming "Hot House", like the world of the dinosaurs

3. Glaciers Come and Go
When the Earth is in its "Ice House" climate mode, there is ice at the poles. The polar ice sheet expands and contrcts because of variations in the Earth's orbit (Milankovitch cycles). The last expansion of the polar ice sheets took place about 18,000 years ago.

4. Past Earth Temperatures Higher Than Today's
From this data they have found that during most of the Earth's history global temperatures were probably 8 to 15° Celsius warmer than today.

5. Sun Is Major Source Of Global Warming
"The 100,000 year long cycle is likely caused by variations in the Earth's orbit and tilt that change the amount of heat reaching Earth from the Sun. A small change can make the few degrees difference between a temperate climate and ice. Also, the Sun's total output of heat may vary a little. The amounts of the so-called atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide and methane, affect temperature. If nothing else changes, more greenhouse gases would make the temperature rise." But, does higher carbon dioxide increase the temperature or is the carbon dioxide higher because of the higher temperature?

6. Climate Is Result Of Multiplicity of Complex, Interacting Factors
" The situation is not simple since there are other factors involved. For example, water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas. You might think that if it is warmer the ocean would evaporate more, putting more vapor into the air, which would make it still warmer. However, a warmer and moister climate might make more plants grow, and these tend to remove carbon dioxide. Moreover, if the water vapor condenses into clouds (which are not vapor but liquid water drops of ice crystals) the white clouds reflect sunlight back into space (an effect called albedo) before it can warm the Earth. You can see that the Earth's atmosphere is part of a complicated system."

7. Drastic Weather Changes Nothing New
from Time Magazine, Aug 9.1976 In fact, scientists have been unable to explain the basic causes of the bizarre weather that afflicted much of the world this summer. Record rains and floods soaked some areas, while droughts parched others, with potentially serious social, economic and political effects.

8. Global Climate Models Omit Significant Seafloor Methane Cycle
Most current models for global carbon cycling and climate change, however, have continued to omit the large and dynamic seafloor methane cycle.

9. Global Climate Models Inadequately Account For Southern Ocean
6 December 2006
Southern Ocean Could Put Brakes On Warming Trend
Climatologists believe the Southern Ocean may slow the rate of global warming by absorbing significantly more hea t and carbon dioxide than previously thought. The new study, appearing in the Journal of Climate, notes that westerly winds in the Southern Hemisphere have moved southward over the last 30 years." "... The heavy, cold water comes to the surface and then sinks back down, carrying the carbon dioxide and heat with it."

10.. Global Climate Model Based On Erroneous Antarctic Snowfall Estimate" 11 August 2006
Antarctic Snowfall Snafu Derails Climate Models
An improved method of measuring Antarctic snowfall has revealed that previous records showing an increase in precipitation are not accurate, even over a half-century. In the August 10 edition of Science magazine, researchers explain that their analysis of ice cores and snow pits revealed that precipitation levels in the Antarctic have in fact remained steady. The upshot of the study is that models assessing climate-change may need to be revised, as they can no longer be deemed accurate

11. Ocean Organisms Not Taken Into Account In Global Climate Model
3 July 2006
Jellyfish Squish Greenhouse Dogma
Vast swarms of small jellyfish-like creatures, known as salps, may have a greater impact on carbon cycling than previously thought, say scientists in the May issue of Deep Sea Research. The discovery demonstrates that even the most unassuming of organisms can play a vital role in the stabilization of environmental systems.

12. Russian Scientist Says Greenhouse Gases Not The Culprit
17 March 2006 Tunguska Event Responsible For Warming Climate? Current global warming models show that the rise in carbon dioxide emissions neatly coincides with the onset of the industrial revolution, but Shaidurov’s own analysis of yearly mean temperature changes over 140 years indicate that there was actually a slight cooling in temperature up until the early twentieth century. Shaidurov believes that it was not the industrial revolution that caused the rise in temperature, but the catastrophe known as the Tunguska event, or Tungus meteorite

13. Water Is Most Powerful Greenhouse Gas
..." Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University, writing in The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change, claims that: "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, as the most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapor. Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."

14. Global Climate Model Based On Erroneous Arctic Soil Carbon Estimate
6 December 2005 Arctic Soil Carbon Vastly Underestimated It seems that current efforts to understand the effects of carbon on climate warming could be a waste of time as estimates of Arctic soil carbon appear to be hugely underestimated. New University of Washington research shows that the estimate of how much soil carbon is available in the high Arctic to be released into the atmosphere could be out of whack by a factor of one hundred or more.

15. Effect Of Volcanic Eruptions Under-estimated
Scientists have known for some time that airborne volcanic particles (aerosols) can reflect the Sun's rays back out into space and cool the planet for relatively short periods. But now, British scientists have discovered another cooling mechanism triggered by volcanic activity that has the potential to cool the Earth for much longer periods.

16. Gain In Antarctic Ice Sheet Belies Global Warming
25 May 2005
Glaciers May Be Shrinking But Antarctic Ice Sheet Gains Mass
While some climate change research suggests that global sea levels are rising due to global warming and the shrinkage of glaciers, a new study in Science has found that the interior of the East Antarctic ice sheet is actually gaining mass.

17. Effect Of Vegetation On Climate Change Too Complex To Model
11 May 2005
Climate Change And Vegetation A Complex Feedback
Diffenbaugh believes that this study adds weight to the idea that interactions among land, air and sunlight are more complex than we might imagine. "Earth's climate is all about relationships, and this study shows that ground cover plays a significant part in determining changes in climate extremes,"

18. Global Climate Models Incorrectly Predict Temperature Variations
Friday, August 19, 2005
“Greenhouse theory says (and the models calculate) that the atmospheric trend should be 30 percent greater than the surface trend -- and it isn’t,” says Singer. “Furthermore, the models predict that polar [temperature] trends should greatly exceed the tropical values -- and they clearly don’t ... In fact, the Antarctic has been cooling,” adds Singer.

19. Climate Change Is Nature's Way
Change is what the climate is always doing and is the result of our planet's orbital eccentricities, axial wobble, solar brightness variation, cosmic ray flux, etc.. There are also plausible terrestrial drivers of climate change too, including super volcanic events and tectonic movement, but these are not in the realm of anthropogenic (manmade) effects and so we won't looking at them here.

20. Global Warming Scare Invention Of The Media
It is amazing that so many people believe global warming is real and is caused by humans (Vermont Guardian, Jan. 9). This myth has been largely promoted by the major media that gives much attention to those who support it and very little to those who debunk it.
For example, in December, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK, chaired a “Climate Change and the Media” meeting. He said that global warming is a hoax. The meeting received almost no major media attention. At this meeting, Dr. David Deming, a geophysicist at the University of Oklahoma, stated, “I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.” Deming also said that he received an astonishing e-mail from a major researcher in climate change that read, “We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period.” From about 800 A.D. to 1300 A.D. we had the Medieval Warm Period where the world was as warm or warmer than it is today. But, it is an obstacle to those maintaining that the current warming is abnormal.

21. Man-made Global Warming A Hoax
Global warming: a load of hot air?
January 17, 2004
"With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" asked Senator James Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works committee in July. "It sure sounds like it."
In the age of the dinosaurs, for example, the world was six degrees hotter than now, with far more greenhouse gases than present. And, many times, it has been colder. Ice ages occur roughly every 100,000 years; the last one finished only about 16,000 years ago. Temperatures then were nearly six degrees lower than those of today.

22. Congressional Hearing Slams Mann Data
It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done. In this case we judge that there was too much reliance on peer review, which was not necessarily independent. Moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that this community can hardly reassess their public positions without losingcredibility. Overall, our committee believes that Dr. Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.’–
Excerpt from Wegman report
Background: On June 23, 2005, following reports of a dispute surrounding two key historical temperature studies prominently used in the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2001 assessment report, the Energy and Commerce Committee wrote the three authors of the studies, the IPCC, and the National Science Foundation for information relating to the use of the studies by IPCC. The studies in question, by Dr. Michael Mann, et al, formed the basis for the IPCC assessment’s conclusion that the increase in 20thcentury Northern Hemisphere temperatures is “likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years” and that the “1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year” of the millennium. Questions about the reliability of the Mann studies were of interest because they raised policy-relevant questions concerning the objectivity of the IPCC and its reliance upon and “promotional” use of the studies’ ‘hockey stick’ shaped historical temperature reconstruction.
Following receipt of the letter responses, committee staff informally sought advice from independent statisticians to determine how best to assess the statistical information submitted. Dr. Edward Wegman, a prominent statistics professor at George Mason University who is chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, agreed to independently assess the data on a pro bono basis.....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- : • Mann et al., misused certain statistical methods in their studies, Wegman’s analysis concludes that Mann’s work cannot support claim that the1990s were the warmest decade of the millennium. ...
• A social network analysis revealed that the small community of paleoclimate researchers appear to review each other’s work, and reuse many of the same data sets, which calls into question the independence of peer-review and temperature reconstructions. ...
• Authors of policy-related science assessments should not assess their own work....
• Policy-related climate science should have a more intense level of scrutiny and review involving statisticians. Federal research should involve interdisciplinary teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research...
• Federal research should emphasize fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of climate change, and should focus on interdisciplinary teams to avoid narrowly focused discipline research. ..

23. Climate Record Of Last 14000 Years
During the coldest periods of the Ice Age, average global temperatures were probably 4 - 5° Celsius colder than they are today. The last ice age, called the Pleistocene, started about 2 million years ago and ended about 14000 years ago. During that time glaciers extended into most of North America, Europe, and Asia and they sometimes retreated and sometimes advanced due to warming or cooling during the period. Since that time, glaciers have usually, but not always, been retreating:
14,000 years ago: Start of the current glacial retreat.
14,000 to 12,000 years ago: Temporal period of glacial retreat called the Holocene epoch.
12,000 to 10,500 years ago: Sudden cooling period called the Younger-Dryas period.
10,500 to 7000 years ago: Warming and retreating of the glaciers continued
7000 to 5000 years ago: During the warmest times of this "Holocene" period, called the climatic optimus, global temperatures were 1 to 2 degress Celsius higher than today. Many of the Earth's great ancient civilizations began and flourished. In Africa, the Nile River had three times its present volume, indicating a much larger tropical region
5000 to 4000 years ago: Cooling trend occurred which caused large drops in sea-level and the emergence of many islands (Bahamas) and coastal areas that are still above sea-level today
4000 to 3500 years ago: Short warming trend
3500 to 2750 years ago: Short cooling trend again which caused a drop in sea-level of 6 to 9 feet below current day levels.
2750 to 2150 years ago: Warming trend.
2150 to 1100 years ago: Cooling trend. At the coldest of this time, freezing occurred in the Nile River and the Black Sea.
1100 to 800 years ago: Warming trend called the "Little Climatic Optimum". Vikings established settlements on Greenland and Iceland. The snow line in the Rocky Mountains was about 370 meters above current levels.
800 years ago to 450 years ago: Start of cooling trend. There are records of floods, great droughts and extreme seasonal climate fluctuations.
450 to 150 years ago(1850): Coldest of this cooling trend period, called "The Little Ice Age". "The average annual temperature of the Northern Hemisphere was about 1.0 degree Celsius lower than today. During the period 1580 to 1600, the western United States experienced one of its longest and most severe droughts in the last 500 years. Cold weather in Iceland from 1753 and 1759 caused 25 % of the population to die from crop failure and famine. Newspapers in New England were calling 1816 the year without a summer."
1850 to present: General warming.
1850 to 1910--Consistently cooler each year than average for the base period (1951 to 1980)
1910 to 1935—Not significant variation
1940 to 1965—Cooling trend.
1965 to 1980—Slightly and usually warming.
1980 to 1999—Warming. Temperatures higher by 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius than for the average from 1850 to 1999.



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Read What Top Scientists Say About Man-made Global Warming

Dr.Timothy Ball is one of many scientists/climatologists who do not believe that humans are the cause of global warming. His latest article on the subject appeared last Monday: "...one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why...." : Read Dr. Ball's full article

Fred Singer, former director of the National Weather Satellite Center and renowned atmospheric scientist from George Mason University, says concerns about “global warming” — most prominently emanating from presidential hopeful Al Gore — may be a lot of hot air. The author of “Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate,” Singer said.that there is a debate going on — and the public is entitled to know that there is a debate and that the debate is not finished. It is still going on. In fact, the subtitle of my book is “Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate .” and "...the satellite data shows that the atmosphere is not warming. And that, of course, is why it is not even mentioned ..."and "...readings on the surface do show a warming in the last 20 years. But the satellite record measuring the atmosphere on a worldwide basis does not show a warming. Something is wrong here". See reference.

Dr. Richard Lindzen, Meteorology professor at MIT and prior to that Harvard.and the lead author of the first and second technical report of the IPCC says the nature of the IPPC reports are misrepresented and the summaries distort the data. In 2001 he told the senate committee that the summaries for the IPCC (which are most quoted) are written by government reps and NGO's and business, while the full reports are written by scientists. In Environmental News, Nov 2004 he was quoted as saying "...Given the speciousness of the bases for alarm regarding claims of increased storminess, it is perhaps unsurprising that there is real consensus on the following item, though the consensus is barely mentioned: Kyoto, itself, will have no discernable impact on global warming regardless of what one believes about climate change..."
See Dr. Lindzen's comprehensive paper on global warming.

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, was quoted in the UK Times On-Line as saying "the orthodoxy must be challenged " and ".Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised......which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases..." "... the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers..." "... in this case they (the media) often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported."

Dr. Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist from the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Prof. Jan Veizer a geochemist at the University of Ottawa in Canada and Ruhr University in Germany, say that temperature variations are due more to cosmic forces than to the actions of man. See Story.

Frederick SeitzPast President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.and President Emeritus, Rockefeller University presents a letter stating "...based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful..."

The words "global warming" provoke a sharp retort from Colorado State University meteorology professor emeritus William Gray: "It's a big scam." See Article in Denver Post

A comprehensive list of scientists who have voiced opposing opinions in the man-made global warming debate, along with their views, is presented here in the Wikipedia

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Gore is not the only politician with a view on global warming. The Czech president Vaclav Klaus also has an opinion; his is that "each serious person and scientist" says that global warming is a myth.. See Article

Ozark Common Sense About Man-made Global Warming

Even Ozarker common sense can become befuddled sometimes, particularly when the mind is plummeted with conflicting facts, or so-called facts such as those indicated in the following head-lines I noted this morning:

TED TURNER: Global Warming is 'single greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced'...

GORE: 'Never before has all of civilization been threatened'...

NORTH MICHIGAN EXPERIENCING AMONG TOP 10 COLDEST STARTS TO FEB -- IN LAST 100 YEARS...

Thick Ice Forces Emergency relief for Sweden's starving reindeer...

Mr. Turner recommended that no new coal-fired power plants ever be built in the US. Is it only coincidental that this billionaire is the major investor in DT Solar, a New Jersey company involved in large-scale solar power projects?

And what did Mr. Gore say on February 8 to an audience in Spain? "Emerging economies such as China are justified in holding back on fighting greenhouse gas emissions until richer polluters like the United States do more to solve the problem..." Mr. Gore advocates letting the lights go out for you and me so that this giant emerging economy of China that is already cleaning our clock can grow even richer and stronger. Hmm, the Ozarker common sense is wondering what happened to Mr. Gore's common sense. Wouldn't we expect more from the inventor of the Internet?

We are being bombarded with stories from the liberal medium warning of an imminent doomsday because you and I are causing the earth to rapidly approach the heat of Hades. Last week's release by the IPCC of the executive summary of their latest report has sparked even more scare-oriented propaganda. The IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in this report that "it is almost certain.. ." that humans are the cause for current global warming. But the more I study this issue, the more scientists I find who disagree with the view that humans are the major cause of climate change and who, in fact, also disagree that we are currently undergoing any abnormal trend toward global warming. Even some of the scientists working with the IPCC on the research have objected to the summary report, stating that it is a political statement rather than a technical summary. In support of this, they voice their objection to the fact that the actual technical report has been withheld for at least an additional three months so that it can be "...edited to comply with the summary report..."
See report.

Ozarker common sense also makes it hard to worry about global warming when we are currently freezing our tails off. While we here in Ozark country are having trouble trying to stay warm, we get little comfort knowing it's a lot colder for our northern neighbors. Northern Michigan is experiencing among the top 10 starts for February in the last 100 years. For example, at Houghton Lake Michigan the average temperature for the first week of February is 5.2 degrees F whereas this year it has been –7.6. The weather reports, if you can believe long-term climate forecasts a week ahead, are that the cold snap will continue. Come to think of it, if you can't believe weather reports a week ahead, how can you believe them 75 years ahead? Does this not also stretch our common sense when it comes to forecasts of dire consequential global warming?

Has anyone told the reindeer about global warming? Maybe our green environmental friends should turn their attention to the Arctic where the reindeer are starving because they cannot forage through the thick ice to get to their normal food source. The Swedish government is granting millions of dollars to the native reindeer herding people to provide food for these animals because of the unusually severe conditions. It is because of conflicting observations like these that most Ozark people I know are intuitively skeptical and relatively immune to the brainwashing of the Gore scare-mongers. That makes me proud of the Ozarker common sense.

Now, using that same common sense, I realize that the industrial revolution that started a century and a half ago along with the ever-increasing human population has no doubt resulted in a huge increase of carbon from the earth back into the atmosphere. But the question is whether or not that increase is sufficient enough to overcome nature's inevitable direction and rate of climate change. The climate has been continually changing every since God created the earth. Hot-house to cold-house to hot-house to ....., you get the idea. It was ever so. No one can question that global warming is occurring, the earth is in its normal cycle of recovery from the last ice-house age. But I think it is highly egotistical of the environmentalists to think that we measly men can have greater effect than the sun and other mighty forces of nature that God uses to control the world's climate.

Debate as to the extent of man's intervention in climate change continues to rage among the scientists. We lay-people can only listen to the arguments and use our own common sense in assessing the relative validities. Your common sense, and mine, are at least as good as that of the most vocal of the loud-mouths, Mr. Gore. The problem, however, is that those loud-mouths have the biggest vocal cords in the form of the print and television medium and over-whelm the public with their one-sided message that would weaken this country's economy and hasten their desired trend toward one-world government. But there does exist an opposing view among many scientists and it can be found if you dig deeply enough. For example, data presented by Prof. Mann has been the back-bone of the IPCC's claims even though a congressional investigation resulted in a report which found great fault with the Mann data.
See reference

So as not to bore the casual reader with more of the facts of the matter, I have presented them in a separate web page. If you would like to read more in support of questioning the validity of the IPCC claims, go to ozarkcountry.com/climate
References and a brief excerpt pertaining to each subject below are presented at that site.

1. IPCC Summary Report Takes Precedence Over Technical Report
2. Earth's Climate Always Changing
3. Glaciers Come and Go
4. Past Earth Temperatures Higher Than Today's
5. Sun Is Major Source Of Global Warming
6. Climate Is Result Of Multiplicity of Complex, Interacting Factors
7. Drastic Weather Changes Nothing New
8. Global Climate Models Omit Significant Seafloor Methane Cycle
9. Global Climate Models Inadequately Account For Southern Ocean.
10.. Global Climate Model Based On Erroneous Antarctic Snowfall Estimate
11. Ocean Organisms Not Taken Into Account In Global Climate Model
12. Russian Scientist Says Greenhouse Gases Not The Culprit
13. Water Is Most Powerful Greenhouse Gas
14. Global Climate Model Based On Erroneous Arctic Soil Carbon Estimate
15. Effect Of Volcanic Eruptions Under-estimated
16. Gain In Antarctic Ice Sheet Belies Global Warming
17. Effect Of Vegetation On Climate Change Too Complex To Model
18. Global Climate Models Incorrectly Predict Temperature Variations
19. Climate Change Is Nature's Way
20. Global Warming Scare Invention Of The Media
21. Man-made Global Warming A Hoax
22. Congressional Hearing Slams Mann Data
23. Climate Record Of Last 14000 Years

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