Thursday, May 01, 2008

Global Warming Will 'Stop', New Peer-Reviewed Study Says

Global Warming Takes a Break for Nearly 20 Years? Post below recycled from Marc Morano. See the original for links

Today's UK Telegraph reports: "Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3øC global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature."

This significant new study adds to a growing body of peer-reviewed literature and other scientific analysis challenging former Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC). MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen's March 2008 analysis found the Earth has had "no statistically significant warming since 1995."- LINK.

Australian paleoclimate scientist Dr. Bob Carter also noted in 2007 that " the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998." Carter explained that the "temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2." (LINK)

In August 2007, the UK Met Office, Britain's version of our National Weather Service, conceded that global warming had stopped as well. Both the Nature and UK Met Office analysis predict a continuation of global warming in future years. [Note: Hyping yet more unproven computer models of the future in response to inconvenient evidence based data is the primary tool of the promoters of man-made climate doom.]

Today's new study in Nature essentially finds that global warming will have stopped for nearly 20 years. (1998 until 2015) According to the UK Telegraph article: "Writing in Nature, the scientists said: `Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming.'"

The UK Telegraph article by reporter Charles Clover noted the significant deficiencies in UN climate models: "The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998."

The evidence based data showing the Earth's failure to continue warming has confounded the promoters of man-made climate fear. The American people have consistently rejected climate alarm as a Gallup Poll released on Earth Day 2008 shows the American public's concern about man-made global warming is unchanged from 1989. Gore's $300 million dollar campaign to promote climate fear is attempting to convince American's that they face a climate "crisis" despite the new accumulating scientific evidence.

This new study in Nature further reveals a "tipping point" for the promoters of climate alarm. 2007 and now 2008 have challenged man-made climate fear as new peer-reviewed studies continue to debunk rising CO2 fears. A U.S. Senate minority report reveals over 400 scientists dissented from man-made climate fears, and more and more scientists continue to declare themselves skeptical of a man-made climate "crisis" in 2008.

Full Text of UK Telegraph Article Below:




Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict

Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said. Researchers studying long-term changes in sea temperatures said they now expect a "lull" for up to a decade while natural variations in climate cancel out the increases caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The average temperature of the sea around Europe and North America is expected to cool slightly over the decade while the tropical Pacific remains unchanged. This would mean that the 0.3øC global average temperature rise which has been predicted for the next decade by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change may not happen, according to the paper published in the scientific journal Nature.

However, the effect of rising fossil fuel emissions will mean that warming will accelerate again after 2015 when natural trends in the oceans veer back towards warming, according to the computer model. Noel Keenlyside of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences, Kiel, Germany, said: "The IPCC would predict a 0.3øC warming over the next decade. Our prediction is that there will be no warming until 2015 but it will pick up after that." He stressed that the results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away.

The IPCC currently does not include in its models actual records of such events as the strength of the Gulf Stream and the El Nino cyclical warming event in the Pacific, which are known to have been behind the warmest year ever recorded in 1998. Today's paper in Nature tries to simulate the variability of these events and longer cycles, such as the giant ocean "conveyor belt" known as the meridional overturning circulation (MOC), which brings warm water north into the North East Atlantic.

This has a 70 to 80-year cycle and when the circulation is strong, it creates warmer temperatures in Europe. When it is weak, as it will be over the next decade, temperatures fall. Scientists think that variations of this kind could partly explain the cooling of global average temperatures between the 1940s and 1970s after which temperatures rose again.

Writing in Nature, the scientists said: "Our results suggest that global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations in the North Atlantic and tropical Pacific temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic [manmade] warming." The study shows a more pronounced weakening effect than the Met Office's Hadley Centre, which last year predicted that global warming would slow until 2009 and pick up after that, with half the years after 2009 being warmer than the warmest year on record, 1998.

Commenting on the new study, Richard Wood of the Hadley Centre said the model suggested the weakening of the MOC would have a cooling effect around the North Atlantic. "Such a cooling could temporarily offset the longer-term warming trend from increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. "That emphasises once again the need to consider climate variability and climate change together when making predictions over timescales of decades."

But he said the use of just sea surface temperatures might not accurately reflect the state of the MOC, which was several miles deep and dependent on factors besides temperatures, such as salt content, which were included in the Met Office Hadley Centre model. If the model could accurately forecast other variables besides temperature, such as rainfall, it would be increasingly useful, but climate predictions for a decade ahead would always be to some extent uncertain, he added.

Source. The article in "Nature" appears to be this one.




NASA: FLIP TO COOL OCEAN CYCLE CONFIRMED



"The shift in the PDO can have significant implications for global climate, affecting Pacific and Atlantic hurricane activity, droughts and flooding around the Pacific basin, the productivity of marine ecosystems, and global land temperature patterns." --NASA JPL

A cool-water anomaly known as La Nina occupied the tropical Pacific Ocean throughout 2007 and early 2008. In April 2008, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that while the La Nina was weakening, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation - a larger-scale, slower-cycling ocean pattern-had shifted to its cool phase.

This image shows the sea surface temperature anomaly in the Pacific Ocean from April 14-21, 2008. The anomaly compares the recent temperatures measured by the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA's Aqua satellite with an average of data collected by the NOAA Pathfinder satellites from 1985-1997. Places where the Pacific was cooler than normal are blue, places where temperatures were average are white, and places where the ocean was warmer than normal are red.

The cool water anomaly in the center of the image shows the lingering effect of the year-old La Nina. However, the much broader area of cooler-than-average water off the coast of North America from Alaska (top center) to the equator is a classic feature of the cool phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). The cool waters wrap in a horseshoe shape around a core of warmer-than-average water. (In the warm phase, the pattern is reversed).

See the entire story here. See the PRESS RELEASE from JPL here

Look out California agriculture. The wine industry, fruits and nut growers will be hit with a shorter growing season and more threats of frost, among other things. Recently in Nevada County, much of their grape crop was wiped out. From The Union in Nevada County (h/t Russ Steele)
"Nevada County's agricultural commissioner will seek disaster relief from the state after tens of thousands of dollars worth of crops were ruined from last week's freezing temperatures. Orchard trees, wine grapes and pastures were hardest hit, Pylman said. The commissioner is compiling a report of damages that he will send to the state Office of Emergency Services in coming weeks. "Growers don't have anything to harvest. That's a disaster in my mind," Pylman said....

Here is a short history of PDO phase shifts:

In 1905, PDO switched to a warm phase.
In 1946, PDO switched to a cool phase.
In 1977, PDO switched to a warm phase.

California agriculture has ridden a wave of success on that PDO warm phase since 1977, experiencing unprecedented growth. Now that PDO is shifting to a cooler phase, areas that supported crops during the warm phase may no longer be able to do so.

Source




WILL THE BIOFUEL SCAM DERAIL ENVIRONMENTALISM?

The unintended consequences of climate change alarmism are growing clearer by the day. Prices for wheat are 60 percent higher than a year ago - resulting in soaring bread prices of around 36 percent per year. This is primarily due to agricultural land being used for biofuel production (which now takes up 30 percent of American agricultural capacity). Bread riots, a red light for every regime since time immemorial, toppled the government in Haiti a few days ago and are spreading across the world. Similar developments have triggered protests and riots in countries ranging from Africa, India, Indonesia and Afghanistan.

Alarmed by this, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Argentina have restricted food exports in order to feed their own populaces. Even in the US, probably not much longer the bread basket of the world, rationing of food has begun over the last 6 weeks. Bloggers in New York are relating amazing stories:

"I've heard that rice, flour, beans, and cooking oil are the main items being rationed at places like Pathmark, ShopRite, and Costco. One friend who lives in Flushing mentioned that she was not allowed to purchase more than one 25lb sack of rice in a local grocery. As far as I know, the main neighborhoods being rationed so far are all in the outer Boroughs (Queens, Bronx, Jersey City, parts of Brooklyn, and Harlem).

In silicon valley you could not buy more than one big sack of rice last week. With the growing media coverage of food shortages and related unrest abroad, the already protectionist mood among Americans has lead to calls for a moratorium on wheat exports. American bakery owners marched on Congress last month demanding to curtail wheat exports to give them some relief. Thanks to the collapse of the American dollar it's becoming cheaper for foreigners to buy out US supplies. Bread and butter issues are increasingly likely to become an issue in this November presidential election.

Source





Another way the warmists cost you money

Aside from all the other little problems (like starvation in poor countries) associated with ethanol production, gasoline blends using ethanol actually cost motorists more, even when the blend is cheaper per gallon. The Kansas City Star explains:
"...a gallon of E-10, which is a blend of 10 percent ethanol and conventional gas now widely available in the Kansas City area, there's an energy difference of about 3.4 percent [in energy content]. "

So motorists get lower mileage. In fact most of the people I know get mileage much worse than merely a 3.4% decline. And the Star quotes motorists to that effect. Ten percent seems to be the consensus among those whom I have heard comparing their experience with E-10 to ordinary gasoline. In Missouri, E-10 is now mandatory. But in Kansas, where many suburbs of Kansas City are located, it is not mandatory, so people are buying ordinary 100% gasoline fuel there.

E-85 blend gasoline, with 85% ethanol gets much worse mileage. But vehicles need some fairly special minor special equipment to be able to operate with it. General Motors is betting heavily on "flex fuel" vehicles to sustain its green street cred. But now, with the rise in price for corn and other commodities, even with federal subsidies, it is turning out that fuel costs rise when motorists purchase both ethanol blends.

AAA now calculates a price for E-85 to adjust for its energy content. The national average pump price for the fuel on Thursday was $2.91 per gallon; regular gasoline was $3.56. But adjusted for its energy content, the price for E-85 jumps to $3.83, or 27 cents more than regular.

Source





Plastic hysteria strikes again

A new health scare - over the safe and useful plastic component, bisphenol-A (BPA) - has taken wing, fomented by the usual suspects: "experts" in rat toxicology working with alarmist, chemical-hating "environmental" activists and self-serving media scaremongers. Soon, we know all too well, will come the plaintiffs' lawyers to "protect" the public from the non-existent (but lucrative) threats lurking in our plastic bottles.

Once again, our environmental stewards have ventured into an area to which they are ill-suited: human health. The new draft report on the chemical, issued by the National Toxicology Program (NTP, a branch of the EPA), is being trumpeted by greeniacs everywhere as if a cure for cancer had been discovered or malaria eradicated.

The facts buried in the report are quite the opposite of the newspaper headlines. There is no cause for concern, much less alarm, over the tiny exposures we face from plastic bottles made with BPA. The hysteria, aggravated by reports of moms nationwide throwing out "toxic" baby bottles with the number 7 on them, is based (as usual) on rat tests and "general themes" of toxicity, rather than on anything approaching scientific evidence.

The NTP panel found that high doses of BPA caused illnesses in rats and mice. To this unsurprising news, they helpfully added that some researchers are concerned that low doses might have effects on embryonic rodents as well. Never mind that it's always the same small group that discovers these "low-dose effects." Mainstream scientists strongly doubt the existence of such hypothetical effects - if large doses don't harm, how can small ones do so? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that makes no sense, just someone acquainted with the basic principle of toxicology that the dose makes the poison.

Please take note: there is no evidence at all - none - that human beings of any age or developmental stage have been harmed in any way by common exposure to BPA. Even workers using the chemical in manufacturing have not been shown to have suffered any harm. The fact that rodents suffer at high doses of the chemical has nothing to do with human health: The same animal tests performed on natural chemicals we eat and drink every day give the same "toxicity" results. If we consistently banned substances based on these tests, we'd be left with nothing at all, natural or manmade. And the presence of tiny amounts of BPA in our bodies and tissues does not mean that it causes us any harm - although you would never know that from the news stories describing the "chemical soup" we live in.

The NTP panel exposes its bias by proclaiming that there is some evidence of "hormonal effects" in workers from BPA. When one delves into the sources of this assertion, it seems that the evidence shows no such thing at all. The only "evidence" the panelists cite derives from rodent tests - and now, even the EPA has declared such tests to be unreliable for human health risk assessment.

This alarmist tripe follows the recent uproar about contaminated toys from China. But while that concern was actually about excessive lead content - a regulatory rather than a public-health issue - the media and the activists managed to provoke fear about plasticizer phthalates in toys as well, and they have successfully gotten several states to ban these perfectly safe chemicals - over nothing. Again, the source of the "evidence" comes from one or two labs whose careers have been built on fomenting baseless chemical fears.

This new scare is part and parcel of the "back to nature" school of public health. There is no substance to the dogma promulgated by technophobes that "natural is good, synthetic is bad." All of the great epidemic infections we have conquered are of "natural" origin - and we beat them with technology. The same folks who warn us against BPA - and phthalates in toys and all the other phony threats - tend to oppose gene-splicing technology, which holds the promise of relieving food scarcity now threatening world health and stability. But they'd rather rant about non-existent health threats they invent than deal with real-life problems. They have been warning us about the dangers of cosmetics, French fries and vaccines - while ignoring real problems, such as smoking and underutilization of interventions such as colonoscopy and adult immunizations.

More here

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For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Global Warming Takes a Break for Nearly 20 Years?"

The analogy with doomsday cults is now complete! The Aliens tell the Guru that the Sky Will Fall on a given date, so they sell all their houses and donate the money to the Guru. Then the Day or Reckoning comes and passes. At first nobody can believe it. There whole self-image is at stake. And then the Guru goes in the back room to consult with the aliens, and soon all rejoice at the top of their lungs, for it THEIR caring togetherness that stopped the Sky from Falling! THEY SAVED THE WORLD!!!

I did not make that story up.

But most gurus learned to teach suicide of either mere ego or the entire self, practicing pedophilia along the way, while others learned to create artificial disasters (like releasing nerve gas on subways). I'm afraid our Seventh Day Warmists are of the later persuasion.

-=N=-

P.S. The one person who had the chance to become THE guru of the Century, besides Hitler, was Dr. Timothy Leary, one of the most courageous men I've ever met. It was amateur mycologist and VP of JPMorgan that gave him mushrooms. Leary was Libertarian, not Leftist, but was literally kidnapped by them, when he escaped a life sentence, after being placed in minimum security jail, since he WROTE their psychological test ("The Leary"). Mass media guru Marshall McLuhan tutored him to smile while being arrested, so images would contrasted him to humorless police. He was arrested (Marijuana Tax Act!) under the false pretense of smuggling pot (in his DAUGHTER'S BACKPACK?!), even though his car was turned back at the border so had never ENTERED Mexico, and AT THE TIME WAS COMPETING AGAINST Ronald Reagan for governership of California. John Lennon had already wrote his campaign song ("Come Together"). Sad, is that most people under 35 have no idea who McLuhan, Leary, or Bucky Fuller (a Leftist who didn't comprehend what Leftism was for he turned a blind eye to personality disorders) were, but know who (real Leftists) Lennon and Lenin are. In his old age of cancer and senility, Reagan somewhat, but Leary indeed, raged against the dying of the light, taking up a new cause of protesting the way seniors are prematurely locked up in nursing homes and how death itself is taken too seriously. Proof of their mutual lack of Leftist mindset is how consistently ANTI-GOVERNMENT both were.

The REASON I'm writing this aside is to point out how, as strongly foreshadowed in the last episode of Kenneth Clark's BBC series of 1969 called 'Civilisation', now that we have killed our gods and heroes, along with the very idea of genius vs. genius (Reagan vs. Leary), we are left with hero-lacking masses longing for a cause, a very dangerous situation:

"One doesn't need to be young to dislike institutions, but the dreary fact remains, even in the darkest ages, it was institutions which made society work, and, if civilization is to survive, society must somehow be made to work. At this point, I reveal myself in my true colors, as a 'stick in the mud'."

"Above all I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible."

"Western Civilization has been a series of rebirths. Surely this should give us confidence in ourselves. I said at the beginning of the series that it's a lack of confidence more than anything else, that kills a civilization. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs."

"The moral and intellectual failure of Marxism has left us with no alternative to heroic materialism, and that isn't enough. One may be optimistic, but one can't exactly be joyful at the prospect before us."

Layer Seven said...

Hi, JR,

Most sources credit gasoliine with 124,000 BTU per gallon (or maybe 122,000); ethanol delivers only 80,000 (or maybe 77,000). Other sources site Wh/kg of 12,200 for gasoline; 7,850 Wh/kg for ethanol. Any way you cut it, gasoline can deliver about 50% more energy than ethanol.

Layer Seven