Earth's unstoppable 1,500-year cycle of temperature swings

Human activities have little to do with the Earth's current warming trend, according to a new book by Denis Avery and Fred Singer, adjunct scholars with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). In fact, the book concludes that global warming and cooling seem to be part of a 1,500-year cycle of moderate temperature swings. Coming out as the leadership of Congress shifts, the book -- "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years -- builds on research the two previously outlined in an NCPA study, found here

"The evidence supporting a 1,500- year cycle is too great to dismiss," said S. Fred Singer, co-author of the book, professor emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia and president of the Science and Environment Policy Project. "Evidence from every continent and ocean confirms the 1,500-year cycle," added Dennis Avery, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the book's other co-author.

According to Avery and Singer, within the 90,000-year Ice Age cycles, the Earth also experiences 1,500-year warming-cooling cycles. The current warming began about 1850 and will possibly continue for another 500 years. Their findings are drawn from physical evidence of past climate cycles that have been documented by researchers around the world from tree rings and ice cores, stalagmites and dust plumes, prehistoric villages and collapsed cultures, fossilized pollen and algae skeletons, titanium profiles and niobium ions, and other sources.

Considered collectively, the author's findings are clear and convincing evidence of a 1,500-year climate cycle. And if the current warming trend is part of a natural cycle, then actions to prevent further warming would be futile, could impose substantial costs upon the global economy and lessen the ability of the world's peoples to adapt to the impacts of climate change. "Are human activities, including the burning of fossil fuel, the primary or even significant cause of the current warming trend? The scientifically appropriate answer -- cautious and conforming to the facts -- is probably not," the authors said.

Source





INHOFE ON THE U.N. CLIMATE CONFERENCE: IT'S ALL ABOUT MONEY

The United Nations annual climate conference this week exposed what I have known for a long time - that the real focus has little to do with the fate of the planet and much to do about money - who has it, and who wants it. Not surprisingly, many of the proposals at the UN conference involved transfers of wealth from the United States to the rest of the world. For instance, one non-governmental organization (NGO) proposal was to distribute carbon rations according to population, so poor countries like China and India would get the bulk of carbon credits which would then be purchased by Americans - it is hard to imagine a more insidious and effective plan to ensure America surrenders its economy.

This year has been an unprecedented attempt by climate alarmists to convince people that they should fear the so-called impending doom of cataclysmic global warming. As we speak, the United Nations Environment Program is selling its self-published children's book at the climate conference in Kenya. ( http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=265811 ) The disturbing aspect of this is not that the book contains numerous errors, but that it is simply an attempt to instill fear in young impressionable minds. Of course, the recurring theme is that we can avert this catastrophe if we simply ration our energy and redirect massive amounts of our economy toward fighting this supposed threat.

The hysteria has reached such a fever pitch that the British government signed up a former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, to lobby the U.S. in a desperate attempt to bail Europe out the failed Kyoto Protocol. Kyoto is the program, you will recall, in which 13 of the EU-15 will miss their targets. And almost every participating nation has been increasing its emissions in recent years, not decreasing. I am a U.S. Senator, and a former mayor and businessman - and I don't claim to be a climate scientist or to have invented the internet like some other politicians you may know. But I do understand politics, and can tell you that the science of climate change is being politicized. As you have just heard, it is simply untrue that there is consensus on this issue and endless repetition of this propaganda by environmentalists won't make it true.

Unfortunately, too many scientists have put aside their objectivity to embrace political activism in the guise of science. As prominent German researchers Dr. Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr - who are not climate skeptics, incidentally, wrote in Der Spiegel: "Other scientists are succumbing to a form of fanaticism almost reminiscent of the McCarthy era..."

But for all their efforts to quash dissent, the alarmists have failed to shut down the debate, as new science and data are increasingly leading to skepticism. A recent LA Times/Bloomberg poll found the number of Americans that believe warming is due to natural variability has increased more than 50 percent in the last 5 years.

Prominent international figures are beginning to question the science as well. Recently, for instance, Czech President Vaclav Klaus reportedly said that fears of manmade global warming were "a fatal mistake of the present time." We have also recently seen the conversion of Britain's famed environmental campaigner, David Bellamy, to a climate skeptic. Bellamy now calls fears of manmade catastrophic global warming, "poppycock."

In addition, renowned French geophysicist Claude Allegre recently reversed himself on global warming. ( http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=264777 )Allegre is a former French Socialist Party leader and a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences. More than a decade ago he signed a letter warning of the dangers of global warming - but in September published an article criticizing claims of man-made global warming, saying the cause of warming was unknown. He cited the alarmists' incorrect use of Mount Kilimanjaro's receding ice caps as proof of manmade global warming. Allegre pointed out that local factors were the cause of the disappearing ice, not global warming. Allegre also accused proponents of manmade catastrophic global warming of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!"

I find it ironic that a free market capitalist in the U.S. Senate and a French Socialist scientist both apparently believe that sound science is not what is driving this debate, but greed by those who would use this issue to line their own pockets. The simple fact is that there is a lot of money at stake in this debate - the U. S. alone will spend $6.5 billion this next year. Certain companies stand to profit by forcing the rest of us to pay. And there is much to be gained by developing countries if the United States agrees to subsidize the world. Given this, it's not surprising that the UN's International Panel on Climate Change has been taken over by bureaucrats attempting to abuse the report in order to sway American public opinion.

Late last year I wrote Chairman of the IPCC, Dr. R. K. Pachauri, expressing my concern with his statements in Montreal in regard to a public opinion survey of Americans' attitudes about climate change. He stated: "In the fourth assessment, we will conduct an extensive outreach effort. If facts are highlighted, not exaggerated... then it will help in changing public perception." In other words, he is not trying to educate on science, but rather to persuade and thus influence policy.

Such thinking is not new. In a speech a year ago, I spelled out the irregularities of the last two IPCC assessment reports, citing illicit additions to the text after it was approved, the highlighting of faulty irreproducible studies and of scientists who, despite preeminence in their field, felt excluded from contributing to the fourth assessment because they refused to play off the alarmists' handbook. Unfortunately, this political mindset remains alive and well at the IPCC. Perhaps Lord Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer and a Member of the Committee, was right when he stated: "I believe the IPCC process is so flawed, and the institution, it has to be said, so closed to reason, that it would be far better to thank it for the work it has done, close it down, and transfer all future international collaboration on the issue of climate change..."

Let me end with this thought - I realize that the lack of reporting on Kenya is because little is being accomplished there and there is talk of legislation here next Congress. I will be glad to take your questions on this, but let me be absolutely clear: our government is not going to embrace economy-killing carbon caps next Congress. The McCain-Lieberman climate bill that was overwhelmingly voted down last year would still be defeated by a majority of the Senate despite election losses - and even if Senators like Barbara Boxer who voted against it were willing to embrace nuclear power as some other Democrats do.

Since it only takes 41 Senators to defeat legislation, it is hard to imagine any scenario where the McCain-Lieberman bill would pass even two Congresses from now. Oddly, it is the Bingaman Sense of the Senate passed last year that exposes the fundamental problem of every climate bill proposed in this body - they all fail its test that any legislation: 1) must not harm the U.S. economy; and, 2) should encourage action from developing countries such as China and India.

More here




THE PALEOCLIMATE DEBATE

Where the specialists clash is on what the evidence means for the idea that industrial civilization and the burning of fossil fuels are the main culprits in climate change. The two sides agree that carbon dioxide can block solar energy that would otherwise radiate back into space, an effect known as greenhouse warming. But they differ sharply on its strength. Some argue that CO2 fluctuations over the Phanerozoic follow climate trends fairly well, supporting a causal relationship between high gas levels and high temperatures. "The geologic record over the past 550 million years indicates a good correlation," said Robert A. Berner, a Yale geologist and pioneer of paleoclimate analysis. "There are other factors at work here. But in general, global warming is due to CO2. It was in the past and is now."

Other experts say that is an oversimplification of a complex picture of natural variation. The fluctuations in the gas levels, they say, often fall out of step with the planet's hot and cold cycles, undermining the claimed supremacy of carbon dioxide. "It's too simplistic to say low CO2 was the only cause of the glacial periods" on time scales of millions of years, said Robert Giegengack, a geologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies past atmospheres. "The record violates that one-to-one correspondence." He and other doubters say the planet is clearly warming today, as it has repeatedly done, but insist that no one knows exactly why. Other possible causes, they say, include changes in sea currents, Sun cycles and cosmic rays that bombard the planet. "More and more data," Jan Veizer, an expert on Phanerozoic climates at the University of Ottawa, said, "point to the Sun and stars as the dominant driver."

Highlighting the gap, the two sides clash on how much the Earth would warm today if carbon dioxide concentrations double from preindustrial levels, as scientists expect. Many climatologists see an increase of as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit. The skeptics, drawing on Phanerozoic data, tend to see far less, perhaps 2 or 3 degrees. In the Phanerozoic (the term is Greek for visible life), complex organisms arose. If its countless ages were compressed into a single year, fish would have appeared in January, land animals in March, dinosaurs in June, monkeys in December and humans late on New Year's Eve. The Phanerozoic dispute, fought mainly in scholarly journals and scientific meetings, has occurred in isolation from the public debate on global warming. Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth" makes no mention of it.

Some mainstream scientists familiar with the Phanerozoic evidence call it too sketchy [or risky] for public consumption and government policy, if not expert deliberations. "In my view, the uncertainties are too great to draw any conclusions right now," Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton, said. "It could be that when the dust settles some insight will emerge that will be germane to the current problem - how do we keep the climate from spinning out of control."

Skeptics say CO2 crusaders simply find the Phanerozoic data embarrassing and irreconcilable with public alarms. "People come to me and say, `Stop talking like this, you're hurting the cause,' " said Dr. Giegengack of Penn. Robert A. Rohde, a graduate student in geophysics at the University of California, Berkeley, may represent a neutral voice. The evidence, he said, "is that CO2 is just one of many influences."

For Wikipedia, Mr. Rohde recently drew up graphic overviews of Phanerozoic carbon dioxide, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic-Carbon-Dioxide.png, and climate swings, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Phanerozoic-Climate-Change.png.

For nearly two centuries, scientists have known that the ancient Earth went through ice ages and other climate upheavals. Their explanations included changes in land forms, ocean flows, solar intensity and Earth's orbit around the Sun. The new argument dates from 1958, when scientists began to track carbon dioxide in the air, finding its levels low, 0.0315 percent, but increasing. They knew that excess gas could in theory trap more heat from the Sun, warming the planet and providing a new explanation for climate change. The greenhouse theory rose to prominence in the 1980's as carbon dioxide continued to increase and as global temperatures started to increase. While scientists tracked many greenhouse gases, including ozone, methane and water vapor, they focused on carbon dioxide because its concentrations seemed to be rising quite rapidly.

Keen to put the threat in perspective, they sought to compare modern CO2 levels to those of the past. Ice cores from the frozen regions turned out to harbor tiny air bubbles that showed carbon dioxide concentrations going back hundreds of thousands of years. Scientists found the preindustrial levels averaging 280 parts per million, down from 315 parts per million, or 0.0315 percent, in 1958. Scientists suspected that the concentrations were once much higher, especially in hot eras of little or no polar ice. Eager to push beyond the cores, which went back just a half million years or so, scientists looked for ways to peer further back.

Dr. Berner of Yale focused on computer models. His studies of the Phanerozoic analyzed factors such as how some ages produced many volcanoes and much atmospheric carbon dioxide and others spawned mountains, extensive weathering of fresh rock and, by that mechanism, considerable uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide. From the start, he consistently reported close ties between carbon dioxide and climate swings. For instance, in the explosion of plant life from 400 million to 300 million years ago, he found a sharp drop in the gas, occurring as the earth entered an ice age. "These results," Dr. Berner wrote in the journal Science in 1990, "support the notion that the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse mechanism is a major control on climate over very long time scales."

Other scientists looked for clues among fossilized soils, plants and sea creatures, assuming that fluctuating climates had altered their growth patterns. In time, the ancient specimens yielded a bonanza of subtle evidence, some confirming aspects of Dr. Berner's modeling. Claudia I. Mora and two colleagues at the University of Tennessee found that ancient soils verified the steep decline in carbon dioxide between 400 million and 300 million years ago.

Other scientists found conflicting evidence. In 1992, a team from the University of New Mexico reported that ancient soils showed extremely high levels of carbon dioxide 440 million years ago, an age of primitive sea life before the advent of land plants and animals. The carbon dioxide levels were roughly 16 times higher than today. Surprisingly, the scientists said, this appeared to coincide with wide glaciation, an analysis, wrote Crayton J. Yapp and Harald Poths in the journal Nature, that "suggests that the climate models require modification."

Throughout the 1990's, reconstruction papers offered evidence on both sides of the debate about the effects of carbon dioxide. Starting in 2000, the attacks intensified as Dr. Veizer of Ottawa questioned the CO2-climate link across the whole Phanerozoic. He and two Belgian colleagues, writing in Nature, based their doubts on how two ice ages - 440 million and 150 million years ago, in the age of dinosaurs - apparently had very high carbon dioxide levels.

In 2002, Daniel H. Rothman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also raised sharp Phanerozoic questions after studying carbon dioxide clues teased from marine rocks. Writing in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, he said that with one exception - the recent cool period of the last 50 million years - he could find "no systematic correspondence" between carbon dioxide and climate shifts.

In 2003, Dr. Veizer joined Nir J. Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to propose a new climate driver. They envisioned slow movements of the solar system through the surrounding galaxy as controlling the cosmic rays that bombard Earth's atmosphere. A reduction, they argued, would lessen cloud cover and Earth's reflectivity, warming the planet. The reverse would cause cooling. The Phanerozoic record of cosmic-ray bombardment showed excellent agreement with climate fluctuations, trumping carbon dioxide, they wrote.

In 2004, Dr. Berner of Yale and four colleagues fired back. While saying cosmic rays were possibly "of some climatic significance," they argued that such an effect was much less than that of carbon dioxide.

In the debate, opponents can differ not only on the contours of past CO2 fluctuations but also on defining hot and cold eras. Although Dr. Veizer sees a cold period 150 million years ago, a time of increased ice at sea but not on land because the continents had shifted from the poles, Dr. Berner, in his modeling, disregards it. Such differences can muddy the dispute.

Today, each side claims new victories. Dr. Veizer says he has a comprehensive paper on the cosmic-ray theory coming out soon. Dr. Berner recently refined his model to repair an old inconsistency. The revision, described in the May issue of The American Journal of Science, brings the model into closer agreement with the fact of wide glaciation 440 million years ago, yielding what he sees as stronger evidence of the dominant role of carbon dioxide then. Dr. Yapp, once a carbon dioxide skeptic, concurred, saying, "The data complied in the last decade suggests that long-term climate change correlates pretty well with CO2 changes."

Some climatologists view the Phanerozoic debate as irrelevant. They say the evidence of a tie between carbon dioxide and planetary warming over the last few centuries is so compelling that any long-term evidence to the contrary must somehow be tainted. They also say greenhouse gases are increasing faster than at any other time in Earth history, making the past immaterial.

Carbon dioxide skeptics and others see the reconstructions of the last 15 years as increasingly reliable, posing fundamental questions about the claimed powers of carbon dioxide. Climatologists and policy makers, they say, need to ponder such complexities rather than trying to ignore or dismiss the unexpected findings. "Some of the work has been quite meticulous," Thure E. Cerling, an expert at the University of Utah on Phanerozoic climates, said. "We are likely to learn something."

Source






Scientists averting their eyes from Misrepresentations of Science

By Roger Pielke

For me the most amazing aspect of the repeated misrepresentation of science related to disasters and climate change is not that political advocates look to cherry pick science or go beyond the state of the science. What is most amazing is that in the face of incontrovertible and repeated misrepresentation that the overwhelming majority of scientists, the media, and responsible advocacy groups have remained mute (with a few notable exceptions such as Hans von Storch).

More than anything else, even the misrepresentations themselves, the collective willingness to overlook bad policy arguments unsupported (or even contradicted) by the current state of science while at the same time trumpeting the importance of scientific consensus is evidence of the comprehensive and pathological politicization of science in the policy debate over global warming. If climate scientists ever wonder why they are looked upon with suspicion among some people in society, they need look no further in their willingness to compromise their own intellectual standards in policy debate on the issue of disasters and climate change.

Here are just some of the misrepresentations of science in policy discussions related to disasters and climate change from the Prometheus archives:

Misrepresentation by ABI of UK Foresight flood assessment

Misrepresentation by UNEP of disaster loss trends

Misrepresentation by former head of IPCC of disaster loss trends

Misrepresentation by New York Times of trends in disaster losses

Misrepresentation by editor of Science of detection and attribution of trends in extreme events

Misrepresentation by editor of Science of attribution of Katrina to greenhouse gas emissions

Misrepresentation of literature of disaster trends and climate in article in Science

Misrepresentation by lead IPCC author responsible for hurricane chapter of attribution of Katrina to greenhouse gas emissions

Misrepresentation of ABI report on future tropical cyclone losses

Misrepresentation by Al Gore of state of hurricane science and attribution of Katrina

Misrepresentation by Time of science of hurricanes and attribution of Katrina

Misrepresentation by IPCC WG II of storm surge impacts research

Misrepresentation by AGU of science of seasonal hurricane forecast skill

Misrepresentation by Environmental Defense of attribution of Katrina to greenhouse gases and prospects for avoiding future hurricanes

Misrepresentation in the Washington Post of the science of disaster trends and future impacts

Misrepresentation in Stern report of trends in disaster losses and projections of future costs

Misrepresentation by UNEP of trends and projections in disaster losses





Australia to go nuclear

AUSTRALIA could have 25 nuclear power plants dotted up and down the east coast by 2050, under a massive nuclear program envisaged by a Government taskforce. While admitting nuclear power could be up to 50 per cent more expensive than coal-fired power and it will take at least 10 years before any nuclear power flows into the national electricity grid, the draft review by Ziggy Switkowski has found nuclear power can be competitive if the price of carbon-based pollution is factored in.

It finds that modern nuclear designs are far safer than those involved in the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, and Australia has geologically suitable areas for nuclear waste repositories.

After a five-month review, Dr Switkowski and his team have found that Australia has the capacity to expand its production and export of uranium, amid a massive growth in electricity demand worldwide, typified by the historic expansion of China's economy.

Any such expansion of Australian uranium mining, and even a move into other areas of the nuclear fuel cycle like uranium enrichment or nuclear power, would not lead to any increased risks of nuclear weapons proliferation, Dr Switkowski finds.

And Australia would not be at increased risk of being vulnerable to a terrorist attack, despite having as many as 25 nuclear reactors. "Australia faces a social decision about whether nuclear, which has operated commercially in other parts of the world, should be part of that (energy) mix," the report finds.

The period for planning, building and commissioning the first nuclear power plant is one to two decades, he said. "On an accelerated path, the earliest that nuclear electricity could be delivered to the grid is around 2016," he said. "Under a scenario in which the first reactor comes on line in 2020 and Australia has in place a fleet of 25 reactors by 2050, it is clear that nuclear power could enhance Australia's ability to meet its electricity needs from low-emission sources," the report argued.

Nuclear power could then deliver more than a third of Australia's electricity and reduce this country's greenhouse emissions by 18 per cent compared to the situation where we did not develop nuclear power. The report said Australia could safely store high-level waste, but would not need to do so until about 2050.

Dr Switkowski said there are a number of skill shortages and government policies that stand in the way of the growth of the nuclear industry in Australia, that need to be urgently addressed. But even if the current legal and regulatory impediments are removed, the report found "there may be little real opportunity for Australian companies to extend profitably into these areas" of enrichment and conversion.

Source

***************************************

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

Comments? Email me here. My Home Pages are here or here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************