- Feb 8, 2001
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While we have many anthropogenic climate change advocates wandering blindly through this forum, the evidence to support the case they try to make is weakening daily just as surely as Winter is following the balminess of Fall.
The science that was claimed just a few years ago appears no longer validated with updated research and refinements in measurement.
We all remember ex-VP Al Gore's frightening claims that carbon dioxide, a minor gas in the atmosphere on which all life depends and which mankind's very existence might cause to increase a fraction, was causing exponential increases in global temperatures. This has been rejected by the latest scientific research.
Al Gore has and continues to make tons of money around the world being a harbinger of climate doom. Will he now agree to donate all those ill-gotten gains to advance the study of mass hysteria?
I do not believe the science is definitive on the issue of climate change, whether one subscribes to cooling, warming or stasis.
The real problem is that this early stage science is being used to justify the enactment of horrifically expensive governmental programs and direct/indirect taxing schemes like "cap-and-trade" that are guaranteed to
1) not effect the global climate one way or another, and
2) so politicize scientific research as to delay a true understanding of natural phenomenon, and
3) curtail much needed economic development, and
4) divert funding that might be needed for programs that will have a much higher likelihood of contributing to the greater good, and/or
5) significantly increase the crippling national debt we now face after just one year of the Democrats being in complete control of the government.
The climate alarmists have been shouting as loud as they can that we need to do something, anything RIGHT NOW! How often in just the past 18 months have we heard this? And to what end but ruinous financial profligacy?
They have done their best to drown out the voices and opinions of those who caution about the validity of the data, the interpretations of the data and the lemming actions being proposed.
It is time for more rational voices to be heard.
************************************
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
(In Two Parts)
By Gerald Traufetter
Spiegel Online International
(Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan)
Part 1 - Stagnating Temperatures
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
Reached a Plateau
The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."
Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.
"It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community," says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. "We don't really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point."
Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius -- in other words, a standstill.
The differences among individual regions of the world are considerable. In the Arctic, for example, temperatures rose by almost three degrees Celsius, which led to a dramatic melting of sea ice. At the same time, temperatures declined in large areas of North America, the western Pacific and the Arabian Peninsula. Europe, including Germany, remains slightly in positive warming territory.
Mixed Messages
But a few scientists simply refuse to believe the British calculations. "Warming has continued in the last few years," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). However, Rahmstorf is more or less alone in his view. Hamburg Max Planck Institute scientist Jochem Marotzke, on the other hand, says: "I hardly know any colleagues who would deny that it hasn't gotten warmer in recent years."
The controversy sends confusing and mixed messages to the lay public. Why is there such a vigorous debate over climate change, even though it isn't getting warmer at the moment? And how can it be that scientists cannot even arrive at a consensus on changes in temperatures, even though temperatures are constantly being measured?
The global temperature-monitoring network consists of 517 weather stations. But each reading is only a tiny dot on the big world map, and it has to be extrapolated to the entire region with the help of supercomputers. Besides, there are still many blind spots, the largest being the Arctic, where there are only about 20 measuring stations to cover a vast area. Climatologists refer to the problem as the "Arctic hole."
The scientists at the Hadley Center simply used the global average value for the hole, ignoring the fact that it has become significantly warmer in the Arctic, says Rahmstorf. But a NASA team from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which does make the kinds of adjustments for the Arctic data that Rahmstorf believes are necessary, arrives at a flat temperature curve for the last five years that is similar to that of their British colleagues.
Marotzke and Leibniz Institute meteorologist Mojib Latif are even convinced that the fuzzy computing done by Rahmstorf is counterproductive. "We have to explain to the public that greenhouse gases will not cause temperatures to keep rising from one record temperature to the next, but that they are still subject to natural fluctuations," says Latif. For this reason, he adds, it is dangerous to cite individual weather-related occurrences, such as a drought in Mali or a hurricane, as proof positive that climate change is already fully underway.
"Perhaps we suggested too strongly in the past that the development will continue going up along a simple, straight line. In reality, phases of stagnation or even cooling are completely normal," says Latif.
The science that was claimed just a few years ago appears no longer validated with updated research and refinements in measurement.
We all remember ex-VP Al Gore's frightening claims that carbon dioxide, a minor gas in the atmosphere on which all life depends and which mankind's very existence might cause to increase a fraction, was causing exponential increases in global temperatures. This has been rejected by the latest scientific research.
Al Gore has and continues to make tons of money around the world being a harbinger of climate doom. Will he now agree to donate all those ill-gotten gains to advance the study of mass hysteria?
I do not believe the science is definitive on the issue of climate change, whether one subscribes to cooling, warming or stasis.
The real problem is that this early stage science is being used to justify the enactment of horrifically expensive governmental programs and direct/indirect taxing schemes like "cap-and-trade" that are guaranteed to
1) not effect the global climate one way or another, and
2) so politicize scientific research as to delay a true understanding of natural phenomenon, and
3) curtail much needed economic development, and
4) divert funding that might be needed for programs that will have a much higher likelihood of contributing to the greater good, and/or
5) significantly increase the crippling national debt we now face after just one year of the Democrats being in complete control of the government.
The climate alarmists have been shouting as loud as they can that we need to do something, anything RIGHT NOW! How often in just the past 18 months have we heard this? And to what end but ruinous financial profligacy?
They have done their best to drown out the voices and opinions of those who caution about the validity of the data, the interpretations of the data and the lemming actions being proposed.
It is time for more rational voices to be heard.
************************************
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,662092,00.html
Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out
(In Two Parts)
By Gerald Traufetter
Spiegel Online International
(Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan)
Part 1 - Stagnating Temperatures
Global warming appears to have stalled. Climatologists are puzzled as to why average global temperatures have stopped rising over the last 10 years. Some attribute the trend to a lack of sunspots, while others explain it through ocean currents.
At least the weather in Copenhagen is likely to be cooperating. The Danish Meteorological Institute predicts that temperatures in December, when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be one degree above the long-term average.
Otherwise, however, not much is happening with global warming at the moment. The Earth's average temperatures have stopped climbing since the beginning of the millennium, and it even looks as though global warming could come to a standstill this year.
Ironically, climate change appears to have stalled in the run-up to the upcoming world summit in the Danish capital, where thousands of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists plan to negotiate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Billions of euros are at stake in the negotiations.
Reached a Plateau
The planet's temperature curve rose sharply for almost 30 years, as global temperatures increased by an average of 0.7 degrees Celsius (1.25 degrees Fahrenheit) from the 1970s to the late 1990s. "At present, however, the warming is taking a break," confirms meteorologist Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in the northern German city of Kiel. Latif, one of Germany's best-known climatologists, says that the temperature curve has reached a plateau. "There can be no argument about that," he says. "We have to face that fact."
Even though the temperature standstill probably has no effect on the long-term warming trend, it does raise doubts about the predictive value of climate models, and it is also a political issue. For months, climate change skeptics have been gloating over the findings on their Internet forums. This has prompted many a climatologist to treat the temperature data in public with a sense of shame, thereby damaging their own credibility.
"It cannot be denied that this is one of the hottest issues in the scientific community," says Jochem Marotzke, director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg. "We don't really know why this stagnation is taking place at this point."
Just a few weeks ago, Britain's Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research added more fuel to the fire with its latest calculations of global average temperatures. According to the Hadley figures, the world grew warmer by 0.07 degrees Celsius from 1999 to 2008 and not by the 0.2 degrees Celsius assumed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And, say the British experts, when their figure is adjusted for two naturally occurring climate phenomena, El Niño and La Niña, the resulting temperature trend is reduced to 0.0 degrees Celsius -- in other words, a standstill.
The differences among individual regions of the world are considerable. In the Arctic, for example, temperatures rose by almost three degrees Celsius, which led to a dramatic melting of sea ice. At the same time, temperatures declined in large areas of North America, the western Pacific and the Arabian Peninsula. Europe, including Germany, remains slightly in positive warming territory.
Mixed Messages
But a few scientists simply refuse to believe the British calculations. "Warming has continued in the last few years," says Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). However, Rahmstorf is more or less alone in his view. Hamburg Max Planck Institute scientist Jochem Marotzke, on the other hand, says: "I hardly know any colleagues who would deny that it hasn't gotten warmer in recent years."
The controversy sends confusing and mixed messages to the lay public. Why is there such a vigorous debate over climate change, even though it isn't getting warmer at the moment? And how can it be that scientists cannot even arrive at a consensus on changes in temperatures, even though temperatures are constantly being measured?
The global temperature-monitoring network consists of 517 weather stations. But each reading is only a tiny dot on the big world map, and it has to be extrapolated to the entire region with the help of supercomputers. Besides, there are still many blind spots, the largest being the Arctic, where there are only about 20 measuring stations to cover a vast area. Climatologists refer to the problem as the "Arctic hole."
The scientists at the Hadley Center simply used the global average value for the hole, ignoring the fact that it has become significantly warmer in the Arctic, says Rahmstorf. But a NASA team from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which does make the kinds of adjustments for the Arctic data that Rahmstorf believes are necessary, arrives at a flat temperature curve for the last five years that is similar to that of their British colleagues.
Marotzke and Leibniz Institute meteorologist Mojib Latif are even convinced that the fuzzy computing done by Rahmstorf is counterproductive. "We have to explain to the public that greenhouse gases will not cause temperatures to keep rising from one record temperature to the next, but that they are still subject to natural fluctuations," says Latif. For this reason, he adds, it is dangerous to cite individual weather-related occurrences, such as a drought in Mali or a hurricane, as proof positive that climate change is already fully underway.
"Perhaps we suggested too strongly in the past that the development will continue going up along a simple, straight line. In reality, phases of stagnation or even cooling are completely normal," says Latif.
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