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RE: No Global Warming here, Again!

litterboll — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:55:56 GMT

The media has somehow forgotton about global warming. Haven't heard a thing about it in about a month. They may get back on that Ice Age kick again if we are not careful.

No Global Warming here, Again!

Matthew — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 18:41:57 GMT

If global warming is real, it better get here and melt the snow.

Gore`s Global Warming And Sanity

Matthew — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 06:27:48 GMT

Czech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.

In an interview with "Hospodarske noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:

Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?

A: It`s not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it`s a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It`s neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it`s an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses. This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.

Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...

A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.

Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?

A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a world view has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite. Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change. Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.

Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?

A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it`s obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.

Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...

A: ...I am right...

Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?

A: It`s such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.

Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?

A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It`s clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa. It`s also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected un comparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago. That`s why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.

Experiment Hints Wrong On Climate Change

Matthew — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 13:37:27 GMT

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months` time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains "very likely" as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain`s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any Latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicized in favor of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they 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.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heat waves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter`s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colorful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adelie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you`re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is "Why is east Antarctica getting colder?" It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you`re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it`s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That leveling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun`s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun`s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark`s idea - apart from its being politically incorrect - was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulfuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark`s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it "A new theory of climate change".

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark`s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature`s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.

Climate Changes

Matthew — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 16:26:30 GMT

Is it hotter now? Is it colder now? Some say it is getting hotter un-naturally. Some say it is natural. What do you think? Do you have something to say about what everyone is calling Global Warming?

Climate Change Equals Evolution

Matthew — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:10:32 GMT

About three quarters of the time that I listen to any news broadcast, I hear the words "Climate Change". For millions of years the world has gone through hot and cold temperature changes. Today is no different. In parts of the world it is colder than what they call normal and in others it is hotter than what they call normal. In the Eight Teen Hundreds, the United States was covered with more snow, the Nineteen Thirties, and Forties The United States was warmer and it did not snow much at all in all of the places that had snow in the Eighteen Hundreds. In the Nineteen Sixties, the whole world was suppose to be freezing over, and now we have warmer than normal temperatures. What is Climate Change? Shouldn't we call it Climate Evolution instead?

Glaciers Feeding Rivers

Matthew — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 17:04:24 GMT

Glaciers on the roof of the world -- China`s Qinghai-Tibet Plateau -- are beating a dramatic retreat. In the past three decades, they have shrunk by one hundred and thirty four square kilometers annually, according to the latest report from the China Geological Survey Bureau.

What that means is that an area of glacier equivalent to twice the size of the Beijing downtown area disappears every year.

A further thirteen-thousand square kilometers of glacier -- nearly twenty eight percent of the total glacier area and equivalent to twice the area of Shanghai Municipality -- will disappear by the year twenty-fifty if no protective measures are taken, the report said.

Glaciers on the outskirts of the plateau have already decreased by ten percent and those in the hinterland have shrunk by five percent.

Researchers said the melting of the glaciers has brought abundant water to the rivers, lakes and wetlands in the plateau and its surrounding areas in the short term.

"But as the glacier shrinkage accelerates, the plateau`s total water storage will decrease rapidly," said Fang Hongbin, a remote sensing expert.

Experts point out that since the plateau supplies the head streams of many of the major rivers in East, Southeast and South Asia, the decrease of water storage in the region will have a significant impact on the economic and social development of China as well as neighboring countries.
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If a Glacier feeds a river, doesn't the glacier have to melt in some way? If the glaciers in Asia are going to feed their rivers, the size of the glacier will shrink. Glaciers have been melting for millions of years. Was it global warming the cause of the glaciers melting for those millions of years?

Tropical Forests

Matthew — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 02:11:58 GMT

Tropical forests have been linked to what people are calling Global Warming by the methane gases coming from the Tropical Forests.

Colder World

Matthew — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 01:39:45 GMT

This year has been colder than usual. I have recorded more nights that the weather has been so that it froze more times than last year. Why do I have to keep hearing someone talk about "Global Warming", when if they would shut their moths and read plain facts, they wouldn't talk about it at all.

Hotter World

Matthew — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 21:56:16 GMT

Yes, we have a hotter world. Not for the reasons that you may think. I will try to explain one reason to why this could be happening.

The sun is burning hotter than it has in a thousand years according to a scientific study. A thousand years ago, a land was named. A land that a thousand years ago was very different. A thousand years ago, this land was green with life, and as warm as a babies incubator. Now that land is 90% frozen. If you do not know this land is known for it`s freezing temperatures. This lands name is Greenland.