SOME UNMENTIONABLE SCIENCE

The Climate Action Report, a periodic report to the United Nations, was issued in early June. A media frenzy claimed that this report somehow contained revelatory new science that changed the debate on global warming. The report has little new science. But since 1992, when America embarked on the Rio Treaty, a great deal of new science has come forward. The United States is a leader in studying the subject. The U.S. has invested some $45 billion in research funding on this question over the past 10 years. I wanted to update you on the latest science since 1992 and assure you that what is in the Climate Action Report is really nothing revelatory.

The scientific facts on which everyone agrees are that, as a result of using coal, oil, and natural gas, the carbon dioxide content of the air is increasing. The air's concentration of other human-produced greenhouse gases, like methane, has also increased. These greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation from the sun, and they retain some of that energy close to earth. All computer simulations of climate change say that, based on how we understand climate to work, the low layer of air for one to five miles up (the low troposphere), where the radiation is trapped, should warm. That low layer of air warming should, in turn, warm the surface.

Scientific facts gathered in the past 10 years do not support the notion of catastrophic human-made warming as a basis for drastic carbon dioxide emission cuts.

You probably know that the Kyoto agreement fails to stop the hypothesized human-made global warming. Kyoto would hurt America's and the world's workers and the struggling poor and the elderly, owing to the severe cuts in energy use that it entails.

Now for the science. There are two important records that we'll look at. I just told you how we think climate operates in the presence of increasing carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the air from human activities. The layer of air one to five miles up retains energy and that layer, in turn, heats the surface of the earth. The human-made greenhouse warming component must warm both layers of air, with computer simulations indicating the low troposphere would warm more quickly and to a greater amount than the surface. Let's start with the surface temperature records. They are made by thermometers, and go back to about the mid-19th century in locations scattered around the world. For some locations the records go back even further.

Two groups have analyzed these surface temperature records: the Climatic Research Unit in Great Britain, and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Sciences. They broadly say the same thing: The 19th century was cooler than the 20th century. There may be some disagreement on the exact amount of the warming, but certainly the 20th century was warmer than the 19th.

To see if the 20th-century surface warming is from human activity or not, we begin looking in detail at the surface record. In the 20th century, three trends are easily identified. From 1900 to 1940, the surface warms strongly. From 1940 to about the late 1970s, a slight cooling trend is seen. Then from the late 1970s to the present, warming occurs. Briefly, the surface records show early 20th-century warming, mid-20th-century cooling, and late 20th-century warming.

Most of the increase in the air's concentration of greenhouse gases from human activities--over 80 percent--occurred after the 1940s. That means that the strong early 20th century warming must be largely, if not entirely, natural. The mid-20th-century cooling can't be a warming response owing to the air's added greenhouse gases. The only portion of this record that could be largely human-made is that of the past few decades. The slope of that trend calculated over the past few decades is about one-tenth of a degree Centigrade per decade.

Now, most all the computer models agree that the human-made warming would be almost linear in fashion. So over a century the extrapolated warming trend expected from continued use of fossil fuels would amount to about 1 degree Centigrade per century. That's what the surface temperature says would be the upper limit. But I gave you a scientific test to do early in my remarks. The question is, What happens in the low layer of air from one to five miles up that must warm in response to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations? The surface warming can be concluded as owing to human-made greenhouse gas emissions only if the low troposphere warms, if the computer simulations are accurate.

One can have surface warming from a variety of reasons. So the key layer of air to look at is the one-to-five-mile up layer of air.

NASA launched satellites starting in 1979 to measure this layer of air. The satellites look down and record these measurements daily. I've plotted the monthly averages. There are lots of jigs and jags in the data, and they are real. The air temperature varies not only on a daily basis, on a monthly basis, but also from year to year. A very huge warming spike in 1997-1998 is a strong, natural phenomenon called El Nino, a warming of the Pacific that in turn warms the air. Because the Pacific is so pervasive in the global average, it raises the temperature. But it doesn't last very long, and after the El Nino subsided, temperatures fell.

El Ninos are natural and occur every several years. In 1982, an equally strong El Nino was developing in the Pacific. But then, a volcano erupted. Material lofted by strong volcanic eruptions can temporary cool temperatures. So those two events occurring at nearly the same time meant there was a net cooling just after 1982, instead of an unmasked strong El Nino-driven pulse of warmth. El Nino is part of a system of ocean and air changes called the El Nino Southern Oscillation, in which the La Nina phase tends toward cooling. Detailed physical understanding of the El Nino Southern Oscillation is lacking. Again, these phenomena are naturally occurring. They have existed for many millennia prior to human-added greenhouse gases in the air.

I asked the computer to naively draw a linear trend through the data recorded by satellites. This linear trend probably has a bias, an upward bias because of that strong 1997-1998 El Nino warm pulse. Nonetheless, the fitted trend is: positive four-hundredths of a degree Centigrade per decade. Now, this is the layer of air sensitive to the human-made warming effect, and the layer that must warm at least as much as the surface according to the computer simulations. Yet, the projected warming from human activities can't be found in the low troposphere in any great degree. The four-hundredths of a degree Centigrade might be entirely due to this El Nino bias. If the small warming trend in the low troposphere were assumed to be entirely human-caused, the trend is much smaller than forecast by any model. Extrapolated over a century, the observed trend indicates a human-made warming trend no greater than four-tenths of a degree Centigrade.

In contrast, the computer models say this very key layer of air must be warming from human activities. The predictions are that the air must be warming at a rate of approximately a quarter of a degree Centigrade per decade. Comparing what the computer models say should be happening with the actual satellite observations shows a mismatch of around a factor of 6. That is, this layer of air just is not warming the way the computer simulations say it should. There should have been a half a degree Centigrade per decade warming in this layer of air over the period of satellite observations. The human-made warming trend isn't there.

Now, an argument is often made that the measurements made by satellites looking down on this key layer of air are biased, or that the satellites have instrumental problems. NASA researchers worked very hard to make these measurements the best possible, and to correct for any of the deficiencies seen in them. But it's always useful to have an independent set of data, and we have that from NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) scientists and from other groups around the world.

Measurements are also made of this layer of air from weather balloons that carry thermometers. Balloons are launched worldwide every day to make the measurements. The balloon data go back to 1957, and importantly, they overlap with the satellite data which began in 1979 and have continued through the present. During the period of overlap, the correlation coefficient between the two data sets, the technical term for how well do these two independent measurements agree, is well over 99 percent. In other words, the satellite data and the balloon data both say that the records reflect the actual change in this layer of air. Again, as with the satellite record, one can recognize short-term natural variations--El Nino, La Nina, volcanic eruptions--but one does not see the decades-long human-caused warming trend projected by climate models.......

The satellite data and the balloon data agree when both records coexist, from 1979 to the present. The balloon record reaches back four decades. Neither record sees a meaningful human-made warming trend.

Now, just remember this one thing from this talk, if nothing else: That layer of air cannot be bypassed; that layer of air must warm if computer model projections are accurate in detailing the human-made warming trend from the air's increased greenhouse gases. But that layer of air is not warming. Thus the human-made effect must be quite small.

Now, if the surface data are warming for a natural reason, what might that be? Our research team studies changes in the energy output of the sun and its influence on life and the environment of earth. Records of sunspot activity reach back to the days of Galileo, some 400 years ago. Scientists then could project an image of the sun and draw these dark sunspots that were seen through early telescopes. We know sunspots to be areas of intense magnetic activity, and from NASA satellite measurements in the last 20 years, we know that over time periods of decades, when the magnetism of the sun is strong, the energy output of the sun is also more intense. That is, the sun is a little bit brighter when magnetism is high, and the sun is a bit fainter when magnetism is weaker. The sharp ups and downs in the sunspot record define the familiar 11-year cycle, or sunspot cycle. The period is not exactly 11 years. It varies between eight and 15 years, and there is no good explanation for the cause of the cycle. But I'm not going to look at the short term, but rather the changing sun over decades to centuries.

Over the past half-century, the sun has become very active, and the sun is more active than it has been for 400 years. Therefore, the sun is likely at its brightest in 400 years.....

The next step is to look closer at the temperature records on earth, and see if they link to the decadal-to-century changes in the sun's energy output. Climate scientists believe they can reliably reconstruct Northern Hemisphere land temperature data back to, say, the year 1700. If changes in the energy output of the sun, drawn from the envelope of that activity of changes in the sun's magnetism, are superposed on the reconstructed temperature record, then the two records show a good correlation.

The ups and downs of each record match fairly well. The coincident changes in the sun's changing energy output and temperature records on earth tend to argue that the sun has driven a major portion of the 20th century temperature change. For example, a strong warming in the late 19th century, continuing in the early 20th century, up to the 1940s, seems to follow the sun's energy output changes fairly well. The mid-20th century cooling, and some of the latter 20th century warming also seem matched to changes in the sun.

To review: The surface warming that should be occurring from human-made actions, which is predicted to be accompanied by low troposphere warming, cannot be found in modern records from balloon and satellite platforms. Thus, the recent surface warming trend may owe largely to changes in the sun's energy output.

More -- much more -- here




TWO ARTICLES ON "CAFE" (COMPULSORY FUEL EFFICIENCY STANDARDS)

They could kill you!

Fuel efficiency amendments ignore safety issue: "As the Senate debates an energy bill this week, amendments are expected to be introduced that would drastically increase fuel economy standards, without regard to technological feasibility or the safety of America's drivers. ... 'These attempts to increase fuel economy all have one thing in common. They totally ignore the lethal of effect of higher fuel economy standards, which reduce crashworthiness by restricting vehicle size and mass,' says Sam Kazman, CEI's general counsel."

CAFE standard insanity: "As the Center has argued in the past, raising CAFE standards is a misguided and costly venture for countless reasons. At the time CAFE standards were implemented the U.S. was importing 30 percent of its oil. Today, over 50 percent of U.S. oil is imported. While CAFE did create more fuel-efficient cars, it also increased the public's incentive to drive because of the cheaper fuel costs. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation?s Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Americans are driving twice as many miles as they did than in the 70?s. More surprising, studies indicate that CAFE regulations are responsible for 46,000 traffic fatalities that were otherwise avoidable. A more fuel efficient and therefore smaller car, amounts to less safety in the event of an accident."

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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.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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