Gore's climate theory savaged

ONE of the world's leading meteorologists has described the theory that helped Al Gore win a share of the Nobel prize "ridiculous". Dr William Gray, a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasts, spoke to a packed lecture hall at UNC Charlotte and said humans are not responsible for the warming of the earth. His visit, arranged through the meteorology program at UNCC, came on the same day that Gore was honoured for his work in support of the link between humans and global warming. "We're brainwashing our children," said Gray, 78, a longtime professor at Colorado State University. "They're going to the Gore movie (An Inconvenient Truth) and being fed all this. It's ridiculous."

Gray, whose annual forecasts of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes are widely publicised, said instead that a natural cycle of ocean water temperatures - related to the amount of salt in ocean water - is responsible for the global warming that he acknowledges has taken place. However, he said, that same cycle means a period of global cooling will begin soon and last for several years. "We'll look back on all of this in 10 or 15 years and realise how foolish it was," Gray said.

During his speech to a crowd of about 300 that included meteorology students from several Carolinas universities and a host of professional meteorologists, Gray also said those who have linked global warming to the increased number of hurricanes in recent years are in error. He cited statistics, showing there were 101 hurricanes from 1900-1949, in a period of cooler global temperatures, compared to 83 from 1957-2006, when the earth warmed. "The human impact on the atmosphere is simply too small to have a major effect on global temperatures," Gray said.

He said his beliefs have made him an outsider in popular science. "It bothers me that my fellow scientists are not speaking out against something they know is wrong," he said. "But they also know that they'd never get any grants if they spoke out. I don't care about grants."

Source. There is a good coverage of how anti-scientific Gore is here





NASA and the Warmest Year

NASA has made available a website which displays temperature records from weather stations around the world. The site produces graphs of the surface temperature over time at any station you choose, some with data going back to 1880's. It can also produce world maps color-coded to indicate temperature change over different years and datasets. An article here tries to understand the issues around the recent revision of the data, which changed the "warmest year" of the 20th century USA from 1998 to 1934. In addition, the author notes interesting issues in the data and graphs available on the NASA site.

The particular point illustrated in the article is that temperature changes over time vary greatly from place to place -- with any overall trends detectable only by making many assumptions and allowances. Whatever warming there is, it is certainly not global.




State-based climate panic

While the media and environmentalists regularly hammer the Bush administration for its alleged lethargy in addressing global warming, an activist group is working through individual states and substantially influencing how they will reduce their output of greenhouse gases. Taxpayers and energy consumers will take a hit to their household budgets because of it.

What's amazing is that the states - including Maryland - are using the Center for Climate Strategies to de facto create their plans to address climate change, despite CCS's predisposition to alarmism and the fact that the policy development process is mostly paid for by extreme environmentalist foundations.

The course of action taken by Maryland is similar to those in other states. Gov. Martin O'Malley, as have other executives (both Democrat and Republican), issued an executive order in April declaring global warming a threat to the state and creating the Maryland Commission on Climate Change.

The panel consists entirely of political appointees with no expertise in climate science, which is essential to determine whether or not the decisions made will accomplish any reduction in temperature (even if implemented nationwide or globally). Nor were any economists chosen for the commission, so the significant cost to Marylanders will remain a mystery.

The reason why none of this expertise was enlisted is because CCS tells states that they provide all they need to make informed decisions. After all, CCS designed all the policy options - smart growth, renewable energy portfolio subsidies and utility surcharges among them - to theoretically trim greenhouse gas emissions within the state. But if you're looking for how its various ideas will impact temperature or affect the economy of Maryland, forget it. CCS provides no such analysis.

With a series of several dozen options under consideration that could cost consumers and taxpayers billions of dollars, you might think at least the commission members could judge each choice on a straight up-or-down vote. You'd be wrong. The CCS procedure is to establish each option as already approved; to change or remove one would require a mostly uninformed panelist to oppose it. Even if someone does, he or she is often a single voice crying in the wilderness, and if enough members believe strongly enough that an option is unacceptable, it is simply made less objectionable. Maryland is even more unlikely than other states to see options removed because its panel consists almost entirely of government bureaucrats.

Should you still think that the process is not stacked against taxpayers, consider who is paying for the sham. CCS is so appealing to governors because states pay almost nothing to develop their policy. Instead CCS looks attractive by toting along funds it has raised from environmentalist foundations, all of which are squarely on the panic-stricken side of the global-warming argument.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the (Ted) Turner Foundation and the Heinz Endowments are among their patrons. Those names are hardly recognized for their support of individual rights and small government. What do they pay for? Nothing that requires a lot of intellectual heft. CCS, which has none of its own employees, pays six figures annually to several contractors who jet around the country to host climate planning meetings in various states.

Little new is introduced in the way of ideas, procedures or science, as the CCS template is used almost identically everywhere. All its consultants have to do is show up and direct the meetings. With such a controlled process and outcome, it would be laughable for CCS officials to claim they have no bias about climate science or no interest in the policy outcomes of their process, yet that is what they say. "CCS provides a model facilitation service and does not advance an agenda in terms of final policy decisions in respective states," said Brian Hill, president of CCS's parent nonprofit.

Whether you think global warming is throwing the planet into a death spiral or a tropical paradise, CCS's tactics and solutions ought to concern everyone. Marylanders stand to suffer a sock to their economy should the state's climate commission succeed with the draft legislation it produces. It's not too late to start questioning the process.

Source





GEOLOGIC PERSPECTIVE: EARTH NOW UNUSUALLY COOL

Excerpt from Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack, a professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Pennsylvania

Giegengack noted that the history the last one billion years on the planet reveals "only about 5% of that time has been characterized by conditions on Earth that were so cold that the poles could support masses of permanent ice." Giegengack also noted "for most of Earth's history, the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has rarely been cooler."

Source







NASA Study: Arctic Winds Blew Out `Older thicker' Ice leaving Ice region smaller

Excerpt:

A paper being published online today by Geophysical Research Letters, says perennial sea ice covering the Arctic Ocean decreased by 23 percent during the past two winters as strong winds swept more Arctic ice than usual out Fram Strait near Greenland.....

International Arctic Buoy Program, currently directed by Ignatius Rigor of the UW's Applied Physics Laboratory, and eight years of data from NASA's QuikScat satellite: Rigor, a research scientist and co-author on the paper explained: "While the total area of ice cover in recent winters has remained about the same, during the past two years an increased amount of older, thicker perennial sea ice was swept by winds out of the Arctic Ocean into the Greenland Sea. What grew in its place in the winters between 2005 and 2007 was a thin veneer of first-year sea ice, which simply has less mass to survive the summer melt."

Source

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