SOME MORE REALITY THAT IS NOT IN THE CLIMATE "MODELS"

Scientists are peering into the clouds near the top of the world, trying to solve a mystery and learn something new about global warming. The mystery is the droplets of water in the clouds. With the North Pole just 685 miles away, they should be frozen, yet more of them are liquid than anyone expected. So the scientists working out of a converted blue cargo container are trying to determine whether the clouds are one of the causes - or effects - of Earth's warming atmosphere.

"Much to our surprise, we found that Arctic clouds have got lots of super-cooled liquid water in them. Liquid water has even been detected in clouds at temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 F)," said Taneil Uttal, chief of the Clouds and Arctic Research Group at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). "If a cloud is composed of liquid water droplets in the Arctic, instead of ice crystals, then that changes how they will interact with the earth's surface and the atmosphere to reflect, absorb and transmit radiation," said Uttal. "It's a new science, driven by the fact that everybody doing climate predictions says that clouds are perhaps the single greatest unknown factor in understanding global warming." ....

Uttal, Drummond and other American and Canadian scientists recently visited Eureka, an outpost established jointly by Canada and the United States in 1947 and now equipped with instruments that sound like sci-fi inventions - the ozone spectrophotometer, for instance, or the tropospheric lidar. (A lidar, an amalgamation of "light" and "radar," uses laser light to detect atmospheric particles.) The new technology helps to better understand the impact of clouds on Earth's surface temperature. The clouds being studied here range from six miles high to almost touching the ground.

"For a couple of decades we have known that super-cooled liquid water droplets could exist in clouds," Uttal said. "But the prevalence of it in Arctic clouds was not really known until these specialized sensors starting operating in the Arctic about eight years ago." "The really exciting thing," she said, will be the ability to track an aerosol layer or an Asian dust cloud from their source and measure their effect on a cloud.

Uttal noted that water clouds are more likely to warm the Arctic atmosphere than ice clouds, since the liquid clouds retain more heat radiated by the Earth's surface. "This means that the ice-to-water ratios in clouds may be very important in controlling the Arctic surface temperatures and how it melts," she said....

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NORDHAUS ON STERN

Economist William Nordhaus has published a critique of the Stern Report (PDF here) Here is his summary...

"How much and how fast should the globe reduce greenhouse-gas emissions? How should nations balance the costs of the reductions against the damages and dangers of climate change? The Stern Review answers these questions clearly and unambiguously: we need urgent, sharp, and immediate reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions."

I am reminded here of President Harry Truman's complaint that his economists would always say, on the one hand this and on the other hand that. He wanted a one-handed economist. The Stern Review is a Prime Minister's dream come true. It provides decisive and compelling answers instead of the dreaded conjectures, contingencies, and qualifications.

However, a closer look reveals that there is indeed another hand to these answers. The radical revision of the economics of climate change proposed by the Review does not arise from any new economics, science, or modeling. Rather, it depends decisively on the assumption of a near-zero social discount rate. The Review's unambiguous conclusions about the need for extreme immediate action will not survive the substitution of discounting assumptions that are consistent with today's market place. So the central questions about global-warming policy - how much, how fast, and how costly - remain open. The Review informs but does not answer these fundamental questions."

Nordhaus's paper is fairly technical but he does make an amusing aside imagining what would happen if Stern-like zero discount rate reasoning were applied to other areas of public policy....

"While this feature of low discounting might appear benign in climate change policy, we could imagine other areas where the implications could themselves be dangerous. Imagine the preventive war strategies that might be devised with low social discount rates. Countries might start wars today because of the possibility of nuclear proliferation a century ahead; or because of a potential adverse shift in the balance of power two centuries ahead; or because of speculative futuristic technologies three centuries ahead. It is not clear how long the globe could long survive the calculations and machinations of zero-discount-rate military powers. This is yet a final example of a surprising implication of a low discount rate."

(William D. Nordhaus is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA)





PESKY RECENT SCIENCE THAT STERN AND THE MEDIA IGNORED

Sometimes we don't pay a lot attention to things that are right in front of our own eyes. The biggest, most obvious things are often ignored. Consider for instance the sun. It is a massive nuclear reactor that mainly takes hydrogen and turns it into energy. It is also a magnetically active star with a magnetic field that is strong and in constant flux and this produces things like sunspots, solar flares and solar wind.

Every second the sun coverts 4 million tonnes of matter into energy and sends solar radiation through the galaxy. Now what role might this giant furnace play in global warming? Of course we know that all heat on the planet comes directly, or indirectly, from the energy of the sun. But the sun changes global weather in other ways as well. Recently two scientific papers dealt with this impact. And here we find two interesting stories. The first is about the science itself and how this discovery points to solar activity as a major contributor to global warming. The second story is the fact that these new science papers were ignored by the media.

First, we should cover what the papers said. Two physicists from Duke University, produced a report entitled "Phenomenological solar signature in 400 years of reconstructed Northern Hemisphere temperature record." Not exactly the sort of title to attract much attention. Nothing dire in the title at all. They studied the global surface temperature for the last 400 years. They say: "We find good correspondence between global temperature and solar induced temperature curves during the pre-industrial period such as the cooling periods occurring during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715) and the Dalton Minimum (1795-1825). The sun might have contributed approximately 50% of the observed global warming since 1900."

Whoa, back that up for a second. "The sun might have contributed approximately 50% of the observed global warming since 1900." So this one natural factor, totally beyond human control, could be responsible for half of the small amount of warming we've seen in the last century. They also note that for the last century solar activity and global warming corresponded. "During the 20th century one continues to observe a significant correlation between the solar and temperature patterns: both records show an increase from 1900 to 1950, a decrease from 1950 to 1970, and again an increase from 1970 to 2000."

They do find that there is some surplus warming not explained in their theory. This may, or may not, be anthropogenic in origin. In others words it might be man-made or not. They say the difference they observe could be partially due to "spurious non-climatic contamination of the surface observations such as heat-island and land-use effects. Some authors suggest that the recent surface warming is overestimated... but other authors would disagree." Basically they are saying that the way we take the global temperature might have some problems and that some of the temperature increase is due to problems with estimating global temperatures.

In conclusion they say that "solar change might significantly alter climate" and "trigger several climate feedbacks". "Most of the sun-climate coupling mechanisms are probably still unknown. However they should be incorporated into the climate models to better understand the real impact of the sun on climate because they might strongly amplify the effects of small solar activity increases." In essence they think that about half of all observable warming can be attributed to solar activity. And they concede that most the ways in which the sun effects global temperatures are still unknown and not being included in the global models on which the global warming hysteria is based.

Apparently one way in which solar activity impacts climate is no longer a mystery. The Danish National Space Center did some studies to see how solar activity might impact climate and they discovered a process heretofore unknown. Basically they find that as stars explode in the galaxy they change cloud patterns on Earth. Hard to believe that things so distant could impact us directly. The press release from the Danish agency said: "It is already well-established that when cosmic rays, which are high-speed atomic particles originating in exploded stars far away in the Milky Way, penetrate Earth's atmosphere they produce substantial amounts of ions and release free electrons. Now, results from the Danish experiment show that the released electrons significantly promote the formation of building blocks for cloud condensation nuclei on which water vapour condenses to make clouds. Hence, a causal mechanism by which cosmic rays can facilitate the production of clouds in Earth's atmosphere has been experimentally identified for the first time. "

The agency created a reaction chamber and created inside it a duplicate of the lower atmosphere. They used ultraviolet light to heat the chamber duplicating the sun's rays and then they hit the chamber with cosmic rays. They found that the cosmic rays produces electrons which accelerate "the formation of stable, ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules which are building blocks for the cloud condensation nuclei. A vast numbers of such microscopic droplets appeared, floating in the air in the reaction chamber." These droplets are basically what produce clouds. Low-altitude clouds cool the Earth. "Hence, variations in cloud cover caused by cosmic rays can change the surface temperature. The existence of such a cosmic connection to Earth's climate might thus help to explain past and present variations in Earth's climate."

For the first time these researchers now know how cosmic rays form clouds can change global temperature. Henrik Svensmark, the Director for Sun-Climate Science at the Space Center says: "This is a completely new result within climate science." Remember if this is a completely new resultthat means it has not been used in the computer models upon which global warming theory relies. The head of the Space Center said these studies answer those who dismissed this theory. "Some said there was no conceivable way in which cosmic rays could influence cloud cover. [This] experiment now shows how they do so, and should help to put the cosmic-ray connection firmly onto the agenda of international climate research."

So exploding stars in distant galaxies bombard us with cosmic rays which help produce clouds which induce cooling. "Cloud cover increases when the intensity of cosmic rays grows and decreases when the intensity declines." And over the last century, the century of global warming, our "Sun's magnetic field which shields Earth from cosmic rays more than doubled, thereby reducing the average influx of cosmic rays. The resulting reduction in cloudiness, especially of low-altitude clouds, may be a significant factor in the global warming Earth has undergone during the last century. However, until now, there has been no experimental evidence of how the causal mechanism linking cosmic rays and cloud formation may work."

This is a mechanism which has been ignored until now. What percentage of global warming is due to the reduction of clouds caused by the reduction of cosmic rays hitting the Earth? The computer models used to estimate man's role in global warming have simply not had this information in the past. So how accurate is their estimate that what we are seeing is anthropogenic?

And now for the story within the story. Or more accurately the story that didn't materialize. Recently in the UK the government issued a report by Sir Nicholas Stern which claimed that global warming is anthropogenic and dangerous and that severe measures must be taken now to avoid disaster. Did Stern know that up to half of global warming is due to solar activity? Does he know that cosmic rays change cloud formation impacting on global temperatures? Considering his report came out about the same time these two new papers came out it unlikely he took them into consideration. His report is of tree gobbling size, over 700 pages. But is it worth the large amounts of paper upon which it is written? Or was it outdate before it was released?

Stern's report is scary predicting major catastrophes and disasters. And according to Google news this one report has generated more than 2,000 stories in the major publications of the world. If you claim disaster is nigh and man is responsible you get lots of press.

But what about these two important scientific papers? How much press coverage did they get? Using the same Google news they got virtually none. The experiments from Danish National Space Center got some coverage by Fox News and MSNBC. A few small conservative sites mentioned the experiment but otherwise no major newspapers are listed in Google News as having reported on the matter. And that other report, which said that up to half of all global warming is directly caused by the sun, it got even less. Just to be sure I went to the New York Times, the major US newspaper of record, and the BBC, England's premier news source. I couldn't find anything about these reports at either site. I guess it is fair to say you have a "consensus" on global warming when important evidence to the contrary is simply ignored.

Source




COOLING THE DEBATE: A LONGER RECORD OF GREENLAND AIR TEMPERATURE

The reconstruction of Earth's climate history is important because it contextualizes the recent global climate for which we have direct evidence through instrumental observation. Therefore, reconstructions are an important component of the climate change debate, as they speak to alarmists' claims that Earth's climate has warmed to a level that is unprecedented within the last two millennia, and therefore unnatural. The natural proxies used for reconstructing climate (e.g., ice and sediment cores) must be verified through comparison with an overlapping instrumental record, and obviously, the longer the instrumental record, the better.

Contextualizing the recent climate in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere is especially important, as it is across this region that the largest increase in surface air temperature has been both observed during the 20th century and predicted for the 21st century. These ideas highlight the importance of snow cover, its sensitivity to temperature, and its positive feedback to the overlying atmosphere. Higher temperatures in typically snow covered regions may lead to a reduction in snow cover, and in turn, a reduction in the refrigeration of Earth's atmosphere from beneath, and even greater atmospheric warming. The vision of out-of-control warming in Earth's frozen regions makes the leap toward a breakdown of the global oceanic circulation system and global sea level rise an easy one.

Until recently, the instrumental air temperature record for Greenland, an epicenter of glacial study and climate reconstruction, was confined to the period 1873 to present. However, recent collaboration between the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) and the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (United Kingdom) has resulted in the compilation of instrumental data for 13 stations along the southern and western coasts of Greenland that date back to 1784. The data represent the addition of 74 complete winters and 52 complete summers to the previous record along roughly the southern two-thirds of the western Greenland coastline.

The extended surface air temperature record was constructed and analyzed by a group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and the aforementioned CRU (United Kingdom) and DMI (Denmark) (Vinther et al. 2006). In satisfying a major priority of the work, the temperature record clearly verifies ice core records for Greenland. A second priority of contextualizing the recent climate of Greenland has resulted in further complication of the global warming debate. As the popularized side of the debate has led us to expect, the authors found that the coldest year (1863) and the coldest decade (1810s) are early in the record, well before the ballyhooed warming of the 20th century. Problematic from a climate change standpoint is the fact that the two distinct cold periods that made the 1810s the coldest decade followed an 1809 "unidentified" volcanic eruption and the eruption of Tambora in 1815 - unusual geologic events that defined the climate.

However, of greater importance is the fact that the researchers found the warmest year on record to be 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s are the warmest decades on record. This represents very bad news for climate change alarmists, since the warmest period was NOT the last quarter of the 20th century. In fact, the last two decades of the 20th century (1981-1990 and 1991-2000) were colder across the study area than any of the previous six decades, dating back to the 1900s and 1910s (Table 1). When examining the instrumental records of the stations it is apparent that no net warming has occurred since the warm period of the 1930s and 1940s (Figure 1).

In a region of the world where climate models indicate that the greatest impacts of CO2-induced global warming will be most rapid and most evident, this recent extension of instrumental surface air temperature records produces a climate history that seems to suggest otherwise. If global climate models are correct, the increase in CO2 concentration since 1930 should be evidenced rather dramatically in air temperature across a high-latitude region of the Northern Hemisphere such as Greenland. The evidence provided by the instrumental record of air temperature along the western and southern coasts of Greenland produces doubt in the degree to which increased CO2 concentrations impact high latitude climate as represented by the climate models upon which climate change alarmists are hanging their hats.

Source





INCONVENIENT TRUTHS FOR AL GORE

In Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", the only facts and studies considered are those convenient to Gore's scare-them-green agenda. And in many instances, he distorts the evidence he cites. In fact, nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or wrong.

In the following book, videos, and Powerpoint presentation, CEI Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis, Jr. reveals the inconvenient truths that Al Gore ignored in the book and movie versions of his global warming presentation, An Inconvenient Truth.

FULL DETAILS 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.

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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