Lorne Gunter does us a service by describing the propaganda war been unethically waged on behalf of the global warming theory. I have commented a bit on this, but the amount of guff I must wade through for the occasional gem has become annoying. Some of it has fallen to the level of verbal fisticuffs.
It has been my interpretation that the climate in the Northern Hemisphere has been warmer over the past three decades, but not unusually so. It is as if we have shifted a half degree or so and have held it there while the sea ice melts away. This behavior is completely in accordance with the history of the Holocene and may represent a restoration of past climatic conditions.
In fact it is plausible to me that human activity has improved many parts of the Northern microclimate sufficient to have plausibly given us a slight edge. I would mostly though, assign those effects to our heat production throughout the winter. It may not seem significant, but it can prevent rivers from freezing over and perhaps do more. Of course agriculture allows the land to heat up much faster and for a lot of incoming energy to avoid absorption. The trees are gone. Add it all up and we may well be on the way to having a permanently warmer north until another volcano lets go.
In any event, it is clear that the Arctic sea ice is continuing to melt away and now on the edge of final collapse.
One other thought. There is a discrepancy between the north and the south. The south has appeared to be stable at least while the north has been warmer. Human heat production and cover modification is a plausible starting point in terms of explanation.
Lorne Gunter: 'Real' scientists flee from evidence that challenges climate claims
It has been my interpretation that the climate in the Northern Hemisphere has been warmer over the past three decades, but not unusually so. It is as if we have shifted a half degree or so and have held it there while the sea ice melts away. This behavior is completely in accordance with the history of the Holocene and may represent a restoration of past climatic conditions.
In fact it is plausible to me that human activity has improved many parts of the Northern microclimate sufficient to have plausibly given us a slight edge. I would mostly though, assign those effects to our heat production throughout the winter. It may not seem significant, but it can prevent rivers from freezing over and perhaps do more. Of course agriculture allows the land to heat up much faster and for a lot of incoming energy to avoid absorption. The trees are gone. Add it all up and we may well be on the way to having a permanently warmer north until another volcano lets go.
In any event, it is clear that the Arctic sea ice is continuing to melt away and now on the edge of final collapse.
One other thought. There is a discrepancy between the north and the south. The south has appeared to be stable at least while the north has been warmer. Human heat production and cover modification is a plausible starting point in terms of explanation.
Lorne Gunter: 'Real' scientists flee from evidence that challenges climate claims
Posted: July 08, 2009, 9:15 AM by NP Editor
If you visit drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures-- the site of a scientist who, for 30 years, has used satellites to monitor global temperature -- you will see that as of the end of June, the Earth is no warmer than it was in 1979. Over the past three decades, the Earth's temperature has been above average some of the time and below average some of the time. Now it is right on the 30-year average.
If you visit drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures-- the site of a scientist who, for 30 years, has used satellites to monitor global temperature -- you will see that as of the end of June, the Earth is no warmer than it was in 1979. Over the past three decades, the Earth's temperature has been above average some of the time and below average some of the time. Now it is right on the 30-year average.
Indeed, while 1998 was the warmest or second-warmest year on record, no year since has been as warm. And while there have been more warm years than cool ones in the past decade-and-a-half, the trend, since at least 2003, has been downward.
And -- this is the one I really like -- according to climatedepot.com,since Al Gore released his movie An Inconvenient Truth in October 2006, the Earth's temperature has lost 0.74F, almost exactly the amount the UN's climate panel claims was gained in the entire 20th century. The latter stat is apropos of nothing. As a correlation of Al Gore's bombast vs. worldwide temperature averages, it is pure fluke. But you can bet that if there had been a similar rise in the past 33 months, the headlines would be blaring that the end of the world was near. Yet such a precipitous drop-off elicits nothing more than a little blog chatter.
If there is a cause for the decline in temperatures over the past nearly three years, it is the inactivity of the sun, not the hyperactivity of the former U. S. vice-president and his apocalyptic theories. Our solar system has been at the end of one 11-year cycle of sun spots and solar flares and waiting for the long overdue commencement of another.
The current inter-cyclical period has seen an especially inactive sun. Last August was the first month in nearly a century in which there were no sun spots at all. Only just now do solar scientists think they are observing the beginning of the next round.
Still, if anything, the rhetoric of global warming and climate change has become even more frenzied since 2006, not less, even to the point where scientists skeptical of the warming theory are being gagged by the Obama administration and the UN.
At a time when lawmakers in the United States and Canada are considering new regulations on energy use, new taxes on its consumption and new controls on carbon dioxide emissions -- all of which could compound our economic woes -- they are hearing mostly just from one side of the debate.
Recall that during the Bush years, scientists and environmentalist often claimed that U. S. government research into climate change was being stifled by the Republican administration. Never mind that during the Bush years the United States spent nearly $2-billion a year on climate research, almost all of it on the environmentalists' side, or that the government scientist who most frequently claimed to be censored -- NASA's James Hansen -- gave media interviews and speeches, published academic papers or wrote newspaper articles more than 1,400 times during the Bush administration. There were always journalists ready to regurgitate the insistence of activist scientists that their vital warnings on warming we being squelched, whether they were or not.
In 2003, when a U. S. Environmental Protection Agency study claiming recent climate change was "likely mostly due to human activities," was edited by Bush administration officials to tone done such definitive language, activists, networks and newspapers screamed of a conspiracy by the White House and oil companies to suppress the truth.
But when evidence arose last week that the EPA had killed an internal report claiming that much had changed in the past year and that a reassessment of climate predictions was needed, there was barely a media peep. Instead, EPA climate analyst Alan Carlin was told his conclusions would have "a very negative impact on our office."
Similarly, UN scientists gathering in Copenhagen this week to discuss what must be done to save polar bears, have excluded Canadian researcher Mitch Taylor, perhaps the world's foremost polar bear expert, because (according to a memo to Dr. Taylor obtained by London's Daily Telegraph) of "the position you've taken on global warming." According the hosts of the conference, Dr. Taylor's views doubting man-made warming "are extremely unhelpful."
To quote a vocal critic of the Bush administration, "real scientists aren't afraid of opposing views."
National Post
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