THE ACIA "STUDY" OF THE ARCTIC AGAIN:

This bit of shallow scare-mongering continues to get press attention here and there. Both I (on 3rd.) and Louis Hissink have already pointed out many flaws in it but I thought I might reproduce below the contrary evidence in "The Economist's" article on the subject:

While acknowledging that disintegration this century is still an unlikely outcome, Dr Oppenheimer argues that the evidence of the past few years suggests it is more likely to happen over the next few centuries if the world does not reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. He worries that an accelerating Arctic warming trend may yet push the ice melt beyond an "irreversible on/off switch".

That is scary stuff, but some scientists remain unimpressed. Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, complains about the ACIA's data selection, which he believes may have produced evidence of "spurious warming". He also points out, in a new book*, that even if Arctic temperatures are rising, that need not lead directly to the ice melting. As he puts it, "Under global warming, Greenland's ice indeed might grow, especially if the warming occurs mostly in winter. After all, warming the air ten degrees when the temperature is dozens of degrees below freezing is likely to increase snowfall, since warmer air is generally moister and precipitates more water."

Nils-Axel Morner, a Swedish climate expert based at Stockholm University, points out that observed rises in sea levels have not matched the IPCC's forecasts. Since this week's report relies on many such IPCC assumptions, he concludes it must be wrong. Others acknowledge that there is a warming trend in the Arctic, but insist that the cause is natural variability and not the burning of fossil fuels. Such folk point to the extraordinarily volatile history of Arctic temperatures. These varied, often suddenly, long before sport-utility vehicles were invented (see chart). However, the chart also shows that the past few millennia have been a period of unusual stability in the Arctic. It is just possible that the current period of warming could tip the delicate Arctic climate system out of balance, and so drag the rest of the planet with it.





FROM LOUIS HISSINK'S WEEKLY SCIENCE ROUNDUP:

"Bailey then wonders why the authors of a Greenland Ice Cap is melting scenario did not cite a recent paper showing that average temperatures in Greenland have been falling at the rather steep rate of 2.2 degrees Celsius since 1987? Facts suggest temperatures are dropping, but fantasy asserts that the Greenland ice cap is melting....

Which brings me to an interesting remark made by a scientist in the plasma physics field in answer to a question I posed on a restricted discussion group, concerning greenhouse and temperatures. I repeat it here verbatim:

"The fallacy with this (LH - Greenhouse effect) is the confusion of the visible-light radiation surface with the infrared-light radiation surface. The first is the ground, the second is the top of the atmosphere. Reducing "radiation loss" at the ground-with-atmosphere can't be compared with the radiation loss of the ground-without-atmosphere. The proper comparison would be radiation-plus-convection loss (with atm) against radiation loss (without atm), or, equivalently, radiation-from-atmosphere-top (with atm) against radiation-from- ground (without atm). The atmosphere doesn't "trap" heat, it just adds a "convection" step in the transfer process. To get "global warming" from that, some mechanism would have to slow down convection- -a true greenhouse (glass roof) effect. The amount of atmospheric absorption (amount of "greenhouse gasses") would be irrelevant.

Of course, the primary fallacy is the assumption that total energy input is known--exclusively from insolation. The presence of plasma circuits--and the evidence of most planets radiating more than they receive from the sun--renders the entire argument frivolous."

And that, like all Green Assertions, makes human induced global warming from the burning of fossil fuels entirely frivolous. The reason a greenhouse works is because it stops circulation of the air - but the earth's atmosphere circulates and as John Christie shows with his satellite data, the earth is not warming up, so the Greenhouse effect so beloved of our fact-challenged Greens does not exist. The excess energy trapped in CO2 is simply radiated out to space by convection.

One other factor which seems not well understood is that, apart from fossil fuels not being based on fossils, it is clear that under present day climatic conditions, organic matter is continually recycled in the biosphere. There are no fossils being formed at present, so ancient fossil accumulations, whether brown coal or fossilised dinosaurs, represents carbon that has been accidentally removed from the biosphere, resulting in a significant reduction in carbon levels. So burning fossil fuels merely returns the accidentally removed carbon back to the biosphere.... "

More here


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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

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