SOLAR-INDUCED WARMING OVER THE 20TH CENTURY

Discussing: Scafetta, N. and West, B.J. 2006. Phenomenological solar contribution to the 1900-2000 global surface warming. Geophysical Research Letters 33.

Background

The 20th century is said by climate alarmists to have experienced a temperature increase that was unprecedented over the past two millennia, due primarily to CO2-induced global warming. For the moment, we will forget about the "unprecedented" part of this claim and focus on the attribution portion, in a review of a paper that looks at the role played by solar radiation variability over the 20th century.

What was done

Scafetta and West developed "two distinct TSI [total solar irradiance] reconstructions made by merging in 1980 the annual mean TSI proxy reconstruction of Lean et al. (1995) for the period 1900-1980 and two alternative TSI satellite composites, ACRIM (Wilson and Mordvinov, 2003), and PMOD (Frolich and Lean, 1998), for the period 1980-2000," after which they used what they deemed to be appropriate climate sensitivity transfer functions to transform the TSI histories they developed into 20th-century temperature histories.

What was learned

The two researchers determined that the sun contributed some 46-49% of the 1900-2000 global warming of the earth; and considering that there may have been uncertainties of 20-30% in their sensitivity parameters, they suggest that the sun may possibly have been responsible for as much as 60% of the 20th-century temperature increase.

What it means

The role of the sun in 20th-century global warming, according to Scafetta and West, has been vastly underestimated by the climate modeling community, with various energy balance models producing estimates of solar-induced warming over this period that are "two to ten times lower" than what they found.. Why is this so? The two researchers say "the models might be inadequate because of the difficulty of modeling climate in general and a lack of knowledge of climate sensitivity to solar variations in particular." They also note that "theoretical models usually acknowledge as solar forcing only the direct TSI forcing," thereby ignoring "possible additional climate effects linked to solar magnetic field, UV radiation, solar flares and cosmic ray intensity modulations." In this regard, we additionally note that some of these phenomena may to some degree be independent of, and thereby add to, the simple TSI forcing Scafetta and West employed, which suggests that the totality of solar activity effects on climate may be even greater than what they calculated.

CO2 Science Magazine, 14 June 2006






REALITY CHECK: MOST AMERICANS REMAIN COOL ON WARMING HYPE

Half of Americans chilling out over global warming, but many hot under the collar about pandemic, terrorists. Public opinion can be such a weird thing. Today comes word of a new poll in which Americans were asked which of four dangers really worries them. Roughly the same proportion that believed global warming "could happen" in their lifetimes believed a collision between the Earth and an asteroid "could happen" before they die.

Now, bear in mind that virtually all climate scientists say global warming already is happening -- and, hey, just ask those Alaskans who are seeing their homes and roads crumble as the permafrost melts! The most authoritative, if somewhat dated, look at this is the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Why then did only 24 percent said global warming "could happen" while 25 percent said the asteroid collision "could happen?" Two other big dangers scored much higher on Americans' radar, even though they are -- while fairly probable -- not yet a certainty: a pandemic that wipes out a major portion of the population, and further terrorist attacks on America. Just over 50 percent of those polled said both could happen before they're pushing up daisies.

When you look at those responding that one of the four either "could" or "will" happen in their lifetimes, it's 80 percent for terrorist attacks, 74 percent for the pandemic, 47 percent for global warming and 31 percent for the asteroids. It would be fascinating to speak with the 6 percent who said an asteroid collision "will happen" in their lifetime, dontchathink?

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 June 2006






GORE'S LIES ENCOURAGES GLOBAL WARMING SKEPTICISM

Albert Einstein once said, "Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods." While the gods must consider An Inconvenient Truth the ultimate comedy, real climate scientists are crying over Al Gore's new film. This is not just because the ex-vice-president commits numerous basic science mistakes. They are also concerned that many in the media and public will fail to realize that this film amounts to little more than science fiction.

Gore's credibility is damaged early in the film when he tells the audience that, by simply looking at Antarctic ice cores with the naked eye, one can see when the American Clean Air Act was passed. Dr. Ian Clark, professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa (U of O) responds, "This is pure fantasy unless the reporter is able to detect parts per billion changes to chemicals in ice." Air over the United States doesn't even circulate to the Antarctic before mixing with most of the northern, then the southern, hemisphere air, and this process takes decades. Clark explains that even far more significant events, such as the settling of dust arising from the scouring of continental shelves at the end of ice ages, are undetectable in ice cores by an untrained eye.

Gore repeatedly labels carbon dioxide as "global warming pollution" when, in reality, it is no more pollution than is oxygen. CO2 is plant food, an ingredient essential for photosynthesis without which Earth would be a lifeless, frozen ice ball. The hypothesis that human release of CO2 is a major contributor to global warming is just that -- an unproven hypothesis, against which evidence is increasingly mounting.

In fact, the correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don't precede, and therefore don't cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise -- by as much as 800 years. Even in the past century, the correlation is poor; the planet actually cooled between 1940 and 1980, when human emissions of CO2 were rising at the fastest rate in our history.

Similarly, the fact that water vapour constitutes 95% of greenhouse gases by volume is conveniently ignored by Gore. While humanity's three billion tonnes (gigatonnes, or GT) per year net contribution to the atmosphere's CO2 load appears large on a human scale, it is actually less than half of 1% of the atmosphere's total CO2 content (750-830 GT). The CO2 emissions of our civilization are also dwarfed by the 210 GT/year emissions of the gas from Earth's oceans and land. Perhaps even more significant is the fact that the uncertainty in the measurement of atmospheric CO2 content is 80 GT -- making three GT seem hardly worth mentioning.

But Gore persists, labeling future CO2 rises as "deeply unethical" and lectures the audience, "Each one of us is a cause of global warming." Not satisfied with simply warning of human-induced killer heat waves -- events in Europe this past year were "like a nature hike through the Book of Revelations," he says -- he then uses high-tech special effects to show how human-caused climate changes are causing more hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, infectious diseases, insect plagues, glacial retreats, coral die-outs and the flooding of small island nations due to sea level rise caused by the melting of the polar caps. One is left wondering if Gore thinks nature is responsible for anything.

Scientists who actually work in these fields flatly contradict Gore. Take his allegations that extreme weather (EW) events will increase in frequency and severity as the world warms and that this is already happening. Former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg Dr. Tim Ball notes, "The theories that Gore supports indicate the greatest warming will be in polar regions. Therefore, the temperature contrast with warmer regions -- the driver of extreme weather -- will lessen and, with it, storm potential will lessen."

This is exactly what former Environment Canada research scientist and EW specialist Dr. Madhav Khandekar found. His studies show there has been no increase in EW events in Canada in the past 25 years. Furthermore, he sees no indication that such events will increase over the next 25 years. "In fact, some EW events such as winter blizzards have definitely declined," Khandekar says. "Prairie droughts have been occurring for hundreds of years. The 13th and 16th century saw some of the severest and longest droughts ever on Canadian/American prairies." Like many other researchers, Khandekar is convinced that EW is not increasing globally, either.

On hurricanes, Gore implies that new records are being set as a result of human greenhouse gas emissions. Besides clumsy errors in the presentation of the facts (Katrina did not get "stronger and stronger and stronger" as it came over the Gulf of Mexico; rather, it was category 5 over the ocean and was downgraded to category 3 when it made a landfall), Gore fails to note that the only region to show an increase in hurricanes in recent years is the North Atlantic. Hurricane specialist Tad Murty, former senior research scientist Department of Fisheries and Oceans and now adjust professor of Earth sciences at U of O, points out, "In all other six ocean basins where tropical cyclones occur, there is either a flat or a downward trend." Murty lists 1900, 1926 and 1935 as the years in which the most intense hurricanes were recorded in the United States. In fact, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, has stated that global warming has nothing to do with the recent increase in hurricane frequency in the North Atlantic. Murty concludes, "The feeling among many meteorologists is that it has to do with the North Atlantic oscillation, which is now in the positive phase and will continue for another decade or so."

More here





Global cooling hits Australia

The Perth metropolitan area has shivered through its coldest night on record. The bureau of Meteorology says records tumbled overnight. Duty forecaster Brad Santos says Perth recorded its first official freeze. "With the mercury dipping to minus 0.6 degrees and that beats the previous record of zero back in July 1997 and july 1998," he said. A record low was also recorded at Jandakot of minus three degrees. The cold snap also saw several records broken in towns in the south-west. "At 6:00am (AWST) Collie reported a temperature of minus 5.8 degrees, which is its all time lowest minimum," Mr Santos said. "Also Bridgetown as well the temperature was around minus five degrees which is also a record minimum temperature. The bureau is predicting another cold night tonight, ahead of rain on Monday.

Source

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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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