Temperatures peaked in 1998 and have shown no warming for a decade now. Many scientists have been remarking about this trend for several years but no one takes heed, preferring to believe models than actual data. Here is the satellite derived global temperature trend since 1979. Note the cooling globally near the volcanically active periods of the early 1980s and 1990s. Note also the warm spike associated with the super El Nino that seemingly marked the beginning of the end of the warm Pacific trend that began in 1978.
Note the subsequent cooling as a series of 3 La Ninas in 4 years helped cool the earth in the late 1990s. Temperatures rebounded a bit in the early 2000s with a slight rebound in the Pacific warmth, three El Ninos and a volcanic aerosol-free stratosphere, but the trend since 2001 has been flat and at a level considerably below the peak of 1998. This lack of warming has occurred despite the increases in carbon dioxide.
Indeed, when comparing this satellite derived temperature trend the last decade with the carbon dioxide increases as seasonally adjusted from Scripps, we find NO CORRELATION (just 0.07 r squared!!!)
Global warming is over. Man was never responsible.
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America the virtuous: U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Declined 1.5 Percent in 2006
This all happened without benefit of the U.S. ratifying Kyoto. Odd that America does what Europe just blathers about. Will Europe decide on the basis of this that the American way is the right way? No way! European self-esteem depends on America being wrong so they will just ignore this
Total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were 7,075.6 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) in 2006, a decrease of 1.5 percent from the 2005 level according to Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2006, a report released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Since 1990, U.S. GHG emissions have grown at an average annual rate of 0.9 percent. The 2006 emissions decrease is only the third decline in annual emissions since 1990.
U.S. GHG emissions per unit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), or "U.S. GHG-intensity," fell from 653 metric tons per million 2000 constant dollars of GDP (MTCO2e/$Million GDP) in 2005 to 625 MTCO2e /$Million GDP in 2006, a decline of 4.2 percent. Since 1990, the annual average decline in GHG-intensity has been 2.0 percent.
Total estimated U.S. GHG emissions in 2006 consisted of 5,934.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (83.8 percent of total emissions), 605.1 MMTCO2e of methane (8.6 percent of total emissions), 378.6 MMTCO2e of nitrous oxide (5.4 percent of total emissions), and 157.6 MMTCO2e of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) (2.2 percent of total emissions).
Emissions of carbon dioxide from energy consumption and industrial processes, which had risen at an average annual rate of 1.2 percent per year from 1990 to 2005, declined by 1.8 percent in 2006. The decline in carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 to 2006 can be attributed to a one-half percent decline in overall energy demand and a decrease in the carbon intensity of electricity generation. Favorable weather patterns, where both heating and cooling degree-days were lower in 2006 than 2005, and higher energy prices, were the primary causes of lower total energy consumption. The decline in carbon intensity of electricity generation was driven by increased use of natural gas, the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and greater reliance on non-fossil fuel energy sources. Methane emissions, meanwhile, decreased by 0.4 percent, while nitrous oxide emissions rose by 2.9 percent. Emissions of HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, a group labeled collectively as "high-GWP gases" because their high heat trapping capabilities, fell by 2.2 percent.
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Canadians should brace for coldest winter in almost 15 years: forecast
How can this happen in the midst of record CO2 levels? They don't tell us
After years of warmer-than-normal winters that spurred constant talk of global warming, winter this year is expected to be the coldest in almost 15 years and should remind everyone of what real Canadian cold feels like, Environment Canada said Friday. With the exception of only small pockets of northern Canada and southwestern Ontario, this December through February is forecast to be one of the harshest winters in recent memory across the country, said senior climatologist David Phillips.
"It is somewhat remarkable that we're seeing the same situation from coast to coast to almost coast - from Vancouver Island to Bonavista, Nfld., we're showing the country as being colder than normal," Phillips said. "The last time Canada had a significantly cold winter was back in 1994, more than a decade ago, and this may very well rival that one in terms of coldness." 1994 started with a bang of winter weather and Canadians across the country shivered through temperatures as cold as -42C - and that was before factoring in the wind chill.
Environment Canada's forecast for precipitation suggests much of the country is due for normal amounts of snow, although some cities could get more than usual, including Calgary, Regina and Toronto, which infamously called in the army in January 1999 to deal with a heavy snowfall. The precipitation forecasts are less reliable, but Phillips said a colder winter would likely result in a lot of white Christmases across the country - defined as two centimetres of snow on the ground at 7 a.m. on Christmas Day.
Even if the forecasts don't hold true, Phillips said the weather will almost certainly be worse than the last couple years for much of the country. Last year, a number of traditionally cold and snow-covered cities like Quebec City, Ottawa and Timmins, Ont., had a green Christmas for the first time in decades. And places like Moncton, all of Prince Edward Island and Toronto had only two-thirds of their normal snowfall.
If there is a bright side to the gloomy forecast that most Canadians will probably curse, it's that snow and cold in the winter is good for the economy, Phillips said. When Canadians see snow outside their windows they'll likely get into the Christmas spirit and start shopping, he said. And others will see the snow and make immediate plans to head south. "I always think it's good for the economy when weather is behaving like it should, when winters are cold and summers are hot," Phillips said. "With the Canadian dollar the way it is and with this colder than normal weather, it very well may be that the busiest people in the country are travel agents."
Phillips said the forecast for cold weather is being triggered in part by La Nina, a period of lower than normal temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
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Official American weather body inflating storm numbers and aiding Political Campaign for Carbon Restrictions
End of 2007 Hurricane Season Shows NOAA Forecasts Wrong for Second Year in a Row
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is inflating the count of tropical storms and aiding a political campaign to regulate energy use in the process, according to The National Center for Public Policy Research. Today marks the official end of the 2007 hurricane season, and for the second year in a row the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's forecast for the season was wrong. NOAA had predicted there would be seven to nine hurricanes, three to five major hurricanes and 13-17 "named storms." The season ended with just five hurricanes, two of which were major (category three or above) and 14 named storms.
"NOAA correctly predicted the number of named storms, but it's not clear this statistic has any meaning, as the agency is inflating today's storm numbers relative to storms in the past," said David A. Ridenour, vice president of The National Center for Public Policy Research and author of a forthcoming new report on this year's hurricane season. "NOAA is doing so both by changing the criteria for naming storms and by failing to account for changes in technology that make detection of storms much easier." In its annual hurricane season forecast and subsequent tropical cyclone reports, for example, NOAA makes no mention that it started naming subtropical storms for the first time in 2002. This year, one storm - equal to 7% of named storms - was a subtropical storm.
State-of-the art equipment is also enabling observers to detect cyclones they would have missed in the past. The QuikScat, an orbiting satellite that measures the ocean's surface winds, produces more than 200 times the amount of ocean wind information that had been available from ships. "Unfortunately, NOAA's forecasts and cyclone reports suggesting increased activity are being seized upon by activists to support their campaign government take-over of energy," said Ridenour. "There's not truth to the claim that global warming is putting cyclones on steroids, unless we're talking about one of the side-effect of long-term steroid use - impotency."
The National Center's observations mirror the findings of Neil Frank, former director of NOAA's National Hurricane Center, who says that as many as six of this year's named storms wouldn't have been named in past decades. Bill Read, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, disputed this in published reports saying, "For at least the last two decades, I am certain most, if not all, the storms named this year would have also been named."
"The National Hurricane Center started naming subtropical storms for the first time just five years ago," said Ridenour. "To suggest that the criteria for naming storms hasn't changed is simply dishonest."
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COOLER ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE OBSESSION
OVER the past half-century we have become used to planetary scares of one kind or another. But the latest such scare - global warming - has engaged the political and opinion-forming classes to a greater extent than anything since, a little over 200 years ago, Malthus warned that, unless radical measures were taken to limit population growth, the world would run up against the limits of subsistence, leading inevitably to war, pestilence and famine.
This is partly perhaps because, at least in the richer countries of the world, we have rightly become more concerned with environmental issues. But that is no excuse for abandoning reason. It is time to take a cool look at global warming.
It is frequently claimed, by those who wish to stifle discussion, that the science of global warming is "settled". Even if it were, that would not be the end of the matter. But in fact, while some of the science is settled, there is much that is not. So let's start with the facts. It is customary to focus on three of them.
The first is that, over the past hundred years, the earth has become slightly warmer. To be precise, there has been a rise in global mean annual temperature of about 0.7C. The second is that, over the past hundred years, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere has risen sharply, by well over 30 per cent, largely as a result of carbon-based industrialisation, in particular, electricity generated in coal and oil-fired power stations and motorised transport.
And the third fact (and this is the settled science) is that carbon dioxide is one of a number of so-called greenhouse gases - of which far and away the most important is water vapour, including water suspended in clouds - that in effect trap some of the heat we receive from the sun and thus keep the planet warmer than it would otherwise be.
So is it not clear that the warming we have seen over the past hundred years must be due to the massive rise in man-made carbon dioxide emissions, and that unless we substantially decarbonise the world economy the warming will continue, bringing doom and disaster in its wake? No: it is not at all clear.
In the first place, while atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have grown steadily over the past hundred years, and indeed continue to grow briskly, the warming has occurred in fits and starts. To be precise, it has been confined entirely to two periods: from 1920 to 1940, and from 1975 to 1998. Between 1940 and 1975 there was a slight cooling, and so far this century (and contrary to all predictions) there has been no trend one way or the other.
So clearly carbon dioxide is only part of the global temperature story: it is very far from being the whole story. This is borne out by the longer term historical record. It is well established, for example, that a thousand years ago, well before the onset of industrialisation, there was what has become known as the medieval warm period, when temperatures were probably at least as high as, if not higher, than they are today. Going back even further, during the Roman Empire, agricultural records suggest that it was probably even warmer.
So we are left with a double uncertainty. First, while we know that, other things being equal, rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will warm the planet, we have no true understanding of how much they will do so. And second, we know that in fact other things are very far from equal. So even if we did know the answer to the first question, we would still be unable to predict what the world's temperature will be a hundred years from now. These uncertainties clearly have a profound bearing on the economics of global warming, and thus on the policies it is sensible to pursue.
For while we can do our best to make an estimate of the cost of substantially decarbonising the world economy, we have no idea of what benefit that will bring in terms of a lower mean global temperature than would otherwise be the case. Not that it is clear, even if we could predict the temperature of the planet a hundred years from now (which we can't), how much economic damage a given rise in temperature would do.
It was to advise governments on these issues that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up in 1988, under the auspices of the UN. The IPCC concludes, on the basis of to say the least very slender evidence, that "most" - note, not all - of the warming that occurred during the last quarter of the 20th century was very likely to be due to the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. But even if - and there is clearly a case for erring on the side of caution - this is so, and even if, as the IPCC blithely assumes, the natural forces that affect the world's temperature in often unpredictable ways can be safely ignored, the policy conclusions which are widely believed to follow from this are very suspect indeed.
Is it really plausible that there is an ideal average world temperature, which by some happy chance has recently been visited on us, from which small departures in either direction would spell disaster? Moreover, while a sudden change would indeed be disruptive, what is at issue here is the prospect of a very gradual change over a hundred years and more. In any case, average world temperature is simply a statistical artefact. The actual experienced temperature varies enormously in different parts of the globe and man, whose greatest quality is his adaptability, has successfully colonised most of it. Two countries that are generally considered to be economic success stories, are Finland and Singapore.
The average annual temperature in Helsinki is less than 5C. That in Singapore is in excess of 27C, a difference of more than 22C. If man can successfully cope with that, it is not immediately apparent why he should not be able to adapt to a change of 3C, when he is given a hundred years in which to do so.
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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