Global Warming Data and Facts

From Richard S. Lindzen, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Richard Siegmund Lindzen Ph.D. (b. February 8, 1940, Webster, Massachusetts) is a Harvard trained atmospheric physicist and Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The following are some of his observations and conclusions:


1. CO2 has been increasing since the early 1800s, well before the industrial revolution
2. CO2 is a minor atmospheric constituent, (.003%) and as such it’s variations are not important.
3. Increased CO2 also stimulates the growth of vegetation
4. As far as we know, there is no direct adverse effect of CO2 on human beings.
5. Although models suggest a global warming (since 1880) of 2-5C, observable data cannot even show a .5C increase in temperature; and anything less than .5C simply show negative feedback.
6. [Global Temperatures] The determination of the globally averaged temperature is virtually impossible.
a. Temperatures vary widely even over short distances.
b. Two thirds of the earth’s surface is water, and we have no permanent monitoring stations over the earth’s oceans. Observations come from ships, which are rarely in the exact same spot when reporting, nor do they present a controlled reporting environment.
c. There is also “natural variability” from year to year, regardless of CO2 increases or decreases, so the cause of variability is subjective, or unknown entirely.
d. None of the three standard observable calculations indicate any significant temperature change since the mid 1800s. (Possibly a quarter of a degree)
e. On the basis of the records available, the best estimate for the global temperature change that has occurred over the industrial period, does not significantly vary from zero, suggesting that current models are exaggerating expected warming.
f. Data suggests it was warmer prior to 1880, than afterward.
g. The major sharp increase occurred prior to 1940, after which, temperatures dropped, causing experts to predict an ice age. In 1960, temperatures began a slight increase.
h. There is clearly variance in the record on all time scales.
i. The absence of any significant trend in the contiguous 48 states, leads to the suspicion that all the trends in the global record may be spurious.
j. Since 1978, satellite soundings over the 48 states correlate excellently with the land based thermometric record.
k. Computer models do not even accurately simulate present day regional variations, calling into question their global variations.
l. About the only thing the models agree on is that warming temperatures will be greatly exaggerated in polar regions. Observations show that the arctic is not warming, but cooling.
7. [Green House] Given the data alone, we would have little basis for alarm regarding the greenhouse effect. The alarm, instead, comes from theoretical considerations.
a. The earth’s current average temperature (15 degrees C), is close to the “black body” temperature (the temperature without any greenhouse warming).
b. All models showing a doubling of the CO2 level, both in the past, and at present, fail to reveal any significant green house effect. These models also predicted a warming effect, over the past 100 years, in the polar regions; however, the predictions are contradicted by the observed cooling in polar regions.
c. [Models]The remarkable thermodynamic characteristics of water, lead to its acting as nature’s thermostat. Yet, the major numerical models all give water a positive warming effect, showing that the effect of doubling CO2 to be much less than the models predict.
d. Water is a far more important green house gas than CO2.
e. Although the green house absorption is primarily important above 5km (from the surface of the earth), greenhouse models attribute it at all levels of the atmosphere. Ignoring the fact that convection and lower cloud formation significantly reduces the green house effect above 5km.
f. Global warming leads to drying of the upper atmosphere above 5 km (as opposed to moistening which occurs in most models) and leads to the elevation of the altitude at which convected heat is deposited, producing negative, rather than positive, green house effects.
g. Consistent with past data, models should predict a warming effect of only a few tenths of a degree.
h. The current state of our understanding of climate hardly justifies a consensus over the response of climate caused by the theoretical doubling of CO2.
8. If there is any single major impediment to understanding climate, it may very well be the lack of capable scientists.
9. It is difficult to imagine any practical action that will make much difference to the final outcome (of climate).
10. Large changes in CO2 emissions (20-40%) will, at most, reduce warming by a fraction of a degree.

Global Warming Belief fades...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — (USA Today) More Americans than at any time in the past decade believe that the seriousness of global warming is being exaggerated, a Gallup poll showed Thursday.

Forty-one percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters that they are doubtful that global warming is as serious as the mainstream media are reporting, putting public skepticism about the hot-button issue at the highest level recorded by Gallup.

Gallup's 2009 environment poll, which surveyed 1,012 adults by land- and mobile phone line between March 5 and 8, also showed that Americans ranked global warming last out of eight environmental issues that respondents were asked to give a score to based on their level of concern about the topic.

And a record high 16 percent of Americans told Gallup pollsters that they believe the effects of global warming "will never occur."

The poll results suggest "that the global warming message may have lost some footing with Americans," Gallup analyst Lydia Saad said.

"Americans generally believe global warming is real ... (but) most Americans do not view the issue in the same dire terms as the many prominent leaders advancing global warming as an issue," she said.

Does President Obama, or Congress, know or even care that global warming is the biggest hoax of the century?

Cold is the big news

Cold weather, record cold, record snows...in warm places, is more the news in the past two years than any "warming" news. Odd how Al Gore could be so wrong, and so many scientists, who practice the "global warming" religion could look so foolish.

Still, the bigger news is that government leaders, university professors, and corporate adherents to the "global warming" religion, continue to act as though the earth really is warming, which it's not, that CO2 continues to be the boogeyman of the climate, which it's not. This is truly frightening. If our actions are not based on facts, on science, on logic, reasoning and intelligence--then on what are they based? The religion of environmentalism, with Al Gore as it's prophet.

But this religion is crafty and a chameleon, it changes to keep itself alive. So now it's "climate change", so that no matter what the climate does, it's a problem for them to solve, a problem for the environmentalists and their cronies in the government to "deal with", taxing, making policy, and putting themselves forth as the "saviors" of the planet.

This planet is not dieing, man could not kill it if he wanted to. Life is not endangered, it is thriving. New species of life are being discovered every day. For every species that is "endangered" or found to be extinct; dozens of new species are discovered. Life cannot be stopped, it cannot be killed, it cannot be eliminated. Life is as eternal as matter, light, water and electricity--it cannot be created or destroyed.

Alternative Fuel Cars

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There is No Evidence that Carbon Emissions Cause Global Warming

A recent public "recanting" by a scientist in Australia is worth noting. Dr. David Evans worked for five years for the Australian Greenhouse Office helping to design a carbon accounting system that is used by the Australian Government to calculate its land-use carbon accounts for the Kyoto Protocol.

Dr. Evans makes four key points in his "recanting," and he writes that "(n)one of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them."

1. "The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it."
   
2. "There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None."
   
3. "The satellites that measure the world's temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980)."
   
4. "The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect."
   

Long Term Temperature Predictions

The bottom line is that we do not know what the planet's current temperature is, although satellite-mounted instruments and Argo autonomous floats are giving us a better picture than we had before.

We do not know what the planet's temperature was 100 years ago with any meaningful precision.

We have no way of telling whether Earth will be warmer or cooler at the beginning of Solar Cycle 25 (SC24 is just sputtering to a start now and it is reasonable to guess Earth will be slightly warmer in the midst of the roughly 11 year cycle, although there is no guarantee).

And we're making policy on this kind of uncertainty?

Carbon Dioxide Not to Blame for Warming

"Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change," Sorokhtin writes in an essay for Novosti. "Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind." In a recent paper for the Danish National Space Center, physicists Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen concur: "The sun . . . appears to be the main forcing agent in global climate change," they write.

Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.

Record Cold in 2007

In South America, for example, the start of winter last year was one of the coldest ever observed. According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil, "a brutal cold wave brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow, and major energy disruption." In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years, while in Peru the cold was so intense that hundreds of people died and the government declared a state of emergency in 14 of the country's 24 provinces. In August, Chile's agriculture minister lamented "the toughest winter we have seen in the past 50 years," which caused losses of at least $200 million in destroyed crops and livestock.

Latin Americans weren't the only ones shivering.

University of Oklahoma geophysicist David Deming, a specialist in temperature and heat flow, notes in the Washington Times that "unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007." Johannesburg experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter-century. Australia had its coldest ever June. New Zealand's vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.

Closer to home, 44.5 inches of snow fell in New Hampshire last month, breaking the previous record of 43 inches, set in 1876. And the Canadian government is forecasting the coldest winter in 15 years.

In November 2007, the weather forecast for the western United States for the upcoming winter and spring was to be "warmer than normal, and drier than normal." In fact, the weather for the western United States was significantly colder than normal and much, much wetter than normal. In addition, the cold, wet spring weather lasted far longer than normal and ended only in mid-June 2008. How could the highly educated, and experienced experts in the field have been so wrong?

The weather "experts" got caught up in the politics of weather and the constant brainwashing about "global warming" and just knew the world would continue to heat up. Not only was the western United States colder and wetter, neither did the rest of the world warm either. In fact global temperatures have not risen since 1999.