Maybe you saw the U.N.'s weather announcement that 2010 was the warmest year on record, "The 2010 data confirm the Earth's significant long-term warming trend," said Michel Jarraud, the World Meteorological Organization's top official. But anyone with even elementary understanding of weather and climate, knows this is nonsense. Here are five good reasons some scientists are skeptical of these claims.
1. Where does the data come from? They gather readings from land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys, and satellites. 70% of the earth is covered by water, but there are very few buoy’s to provide temperature data. And because nearly all remote sensing stations have been eliminated and replaced by metropolitan locations. Anthony Watt on his SurfaceStations.org website states that 61% of the stations used to measure temperature are less than 10 meters from an artificial heating source—a big no no. Further, meterological “experts” manipulate and "normalize" the data. If this was a football game, they would normalize the score, and the real score of 28 to 14, would be normalized to be 22 to 19, or some such nonsense. You can’t “normalize” the data, it is what it is. It is the naïve public who are being manipulated
2. There's less ice in the oceans. Or more. Or something. The WMO report notes that Arctic sea-ice cover in December 2010 was the lowest on record. In fact, the overall sea-ice record shows virtually no change throughout the past 30 years, "the quite rapid loss of Arctic sea ice since the satellites were watching has been matched by a near-equally rapid gain of Antarctic sea ice." So where’s the love for Antarctic ice growth? Somebody has an agenda here.
3. El Niño has been playing havoc with temperatures. Over the ten years from 2001 to 2010, global temperatures have averaged 0.46°C (0.83°F) above the 1961-1990 average (if you believe the “manipulated” and “normalized” data), the report points out, calling these measurements "the highest ever recorded for a 10-year period since the beginning of instrumental climate records." The WMO notes that warming has been especially strong in Africa, parts of Asia, and parts of the Arctic.
Of course temperatures are up, it's El Niño, stupid.
"El Niños cause spikes up. La Niñas drop it down." "Why have we gone up overall in the past 30 years? Because we've been in a warm cycle in the Pacific," he said. "But the tropical Pacific has cooled dramatically, and it's like turning down your thermostat -- it takes a while, but the house will cool."
4. Besides, it's getting chilly. 2010 may have been a warm year, but 2011 has been off to a very cold start -- and may be among the coldest in decades.
"December 2010 was the second-coldest December in the entire history dating back to 1659," noted Steve McIntyre, a climate scientist and the editor of climate blog Climate Audit. He bases his claim on data from the longest continuous record in the world, kept by The Met Office, the U.K.'s official weather agency. No doubt, the December data was “normalized” to eliminate its “chilling” effect on the global warming data.
"If we look at the last 30 years, then the coming 30 years will cool back to where we were in the late 70s," he said. "Look at it this way. Suppose you didn't have a scale until 3 weeks ago. Every day for the last 3 weeks you weigh yourself and you are 175 or so. One morning you are 175.1 How much weight have you gained?" You're the heaviest you have ever been, right? "If you weren't weighing yourself before, or were using a different scale, can you really say this is the heaviest ever?" he asked.
5. Forecasts are often wrong. Predicting the weather -- especially a decade or more in advance -- is unbelievably challenging. In 2000, a scientist with the Met Office's Climatic Research Unit declared that within ten years, snowfall would be "a very rare and exciting event." Tell that to the people on the East Coast, or North Carolina, or Alabama, or…London, which was buried in snow and cold for weeks in December 2010, that nearly brought the country to a standstill.
And in 1970 at the first Earth Day event, one researcher predicted that the planet would be 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. Ok, so the whackos are in charge.
The following predictions were posted previously, but seemed to fit with the above really far out predictions.
1. Within a few years "children just aren't going to know what snow is." Snowfall will be "a very rare and exciting event." Dr. David Viner, senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, interviewed by the UK Independent, March 20, 2000.
Ten years later, in December 2009, London was hit by the heaviest snowfall seen in 20 years. And just last week, a snowstorm forced Heathrow airport to shut down, stranding thousands of Christmas travelers.
2. "[By] 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots…[By 1996] The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computers." Michael Oppenheimer, published in "Dead Heat," St. Martin's Press, 1990.
Data from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center shows that precipitation -- rain and snow -- has increased slightly over the century…and the platte River is definitely not dry.
3. "Arctic specialist Bernt Balchen says a general warming trend over the North Pole is melting the polar ice cap and may produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean by the year 2000." Christian Science Monitor, June 8, 1972.
Ice coverage has fallen, though as of last month, the Arctic Ocean had 3.82 million square miles of ice cover -- an area larger than the continental United States -- according to The National Snow and Ice Data Center.
4. "Using computer models, researchers concluded that global warming would raise average annual temperatures nationwide two degrees by 2010." Associated Press, May 15, 1989.
If temperature data is not “normalized” it is difficult to find that global warming has occurred at all. Many scientists, especially in the 1970s, made an error in the other direction by predicting global freezing:
5. "By 1985, air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." Life magazine, January 1970.
Air quality has actually improved since 1970. And the earth’s atmosphere has an amazing “cleansing” capacity.
6. "If present trends continue, the world will be ... eleven degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age." Kenneth E.F. Watt, in "Earth Day," 1970.
Uh, no! And "Present trends didn't continue," Ehrlich and his “tribe” of scientists all support each other, no doubt, but their predictions make them look rather foolish.
7. "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people ... If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000." Ehrlich, Speech at British Institute For Biology, September 1971.
Ehrlich's prediction was taken seriously when he made it, and New Scientist magazine underscored his speech in an editorial titled "In Praise of Prophets." Prophets, yes; scientists? No.
8. "In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish." Ehrlich, speech during Earth Day, 1970
How a nut case like Ehrlich can garner so much respect inside the scientific community, and out, is a question for another time, but he’s a “respected” scientist, and people believe him, just like people believe the so-called climate scientists currently running around telling us the sky is falling.
