Global Warming

Atlanta is becoming increasingly distressed over a drought that has reached “exceptional” level threatening to leave more than 3 million city residents without tap water if the drought persists more than a few more months. What happened to the increasingly frequent and severe Atlantic hurricanes that so-called “global warming” was supposed to produce? There’s nothing but the proverbial sound of crickets chirping in the southeast where there should be at least a few howling hurricanes or remnants thereof dumping torrential rain on the region. Meanwhile, on the western side of the Gulf coast, Texas has had an unprecedented amount of rainfall even absent hurricane activity. Lake Travis, a 20,000 acre flood control reservoir near me, has been near or into Read More ›

Says Emeritus Professor Gray:

Imagine that. One of the world’s foremost atmospheric scientists saying that scientists are afraid to say what they believe because of the personal financial consequences of going against the popular, fashionable, politically correct “scientific consensus”. Sound familiar? Atmospheric scientists are the newest victims, joining scientists who openly question evolutionary dogma, in the war against open scientific inquiry. I fear science may be a long time recovering from these shameful political agenda driven displays. It’s a good thing engineers don’t try to base technological innovation on hare-brained just-so stories like these that escape from academia to the main stream media.

William M. “Bill” Gray

(b. 1931), Ph.D., is a pioneer in the science of forecasting hurricanes. In 1952 he got a BS degree in Geography from George Washington University, in 1959 he got a MS in Meteorology from the University of Chicago, where he went on to get a PhD in Geophysical Sciences in 1964.

Gray pioneered the concept of “seasonal” hurricane forecasting — predicting months in advance the severity of the coming hurricane season. Gray’s prognostications, issued since 1983, are used by insurance companies to calculate premiums. [1]

Gray is Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University (CSU), and head of the Tropical Meteorology Project at CSU’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences. Gray is noted for his forecasts of Atlantic hurricane season activity.

Professor Gray served as a weather forecaster for the United States Air Force, and as a research assistant in the University of Chicago Department of Meteorology. He joined Colorado State University in 1961. He has been advisor of over 70 Ph. D. and M. Sc. students. His team has been issuing seasonal hurricane forecasts since 1984.

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A recent survey of climate change articles in science journals finds fewer than half of the authors endorse anthropogenic global warming theories. The so-called consensus has now collapsed to a minority position. I love being right. Linked by The Drudge Report:

Breaking: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

DAILYTECH

SURVEY: LESS THAN HALF OF ALL PUBLISHED SCIENTISTS ENDORSE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY; COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY OF PUBLISHED CLIMATE RESEARCH REVEALS CHANGING VIEWPOINTS

Michael Asher
August 29, 2007 11:07 AM

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the “consensus view,” defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes’ work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

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The Washington Times reports there was a global warming scare in the 1920’s and 1930’s. http://www.washingtontimes.com/article/20070814/NATION02/108140063 Only problem is, shortly after the scare global temps trended downward for decades. As Dave says, the global warming house of cards is about to come down.

Even when we don’t do anything: In the post-imperial age, powerful nations no longer have to invade and kill. Simply by driving a Chevy Suburban, we can make the oceans rise and wipe the distant Maldive Islands off the face of the Earth. This is a kind of malignant narcissism so ingrained it’s now taught in our grade schools. -Mark Steyn Bill Dembski asked me to do a riff on this but I think the points are so self-evident commentary isn’t really needed… Mark Steyn: Warm-mongers and cheeseburger imperialists MARK STEYN Syndicated columnist Something rather odd happened the other day. If you go to NASA’s Web site and look at the “U.S. surface air temperature” rankings for the lower 48 Read More ›

Hey Newsweek: Why not just call us heretics? by FRANK MIELE If you wanted to see an example of biased journalism, a good place to start would be the Aug. 13 cover story in Newsweek about global warming. The issue’s cover says “Global Warming Is A Hoax,” but there is an asterisk, which leads to the statement “Or so claim well-funded naysayers who still reject the overwhelming evidence of climate change.” In other words, Newsweek has an agenda to promote global-warming hysteria, and they don’t feel any need to give equal time to a point of view they disagree with. Indeed Newsweek’s author Sharon Begley denounces global warming skeptics as “deniers,” a term which I think establishes the pseudo-religious quality Read More ›

Some of the hype over recent US temperature records got deflated when NASA corrected a Y2K temperature processing error found by Steve McIntyre. (Aug. 13, 2007: McIntyre is upgrading server, and is temporarily  posting c/o Anthony Watts’ Watts Up With That) In Does Hansen’s Error “Matter?” ClimateAudit.org takes NASA to task for not clearly publicizing its corrections. NASA quietly corrected its GISS data of contiguous 48 states US temperature anomalies and corresponding US 48 state temperature anomaly graphs. IceCap reports the new top 20 rankings. Dust bowl 1934 now holds the hottest temperature record, with 1931, 1938 and 1939 also in the top ten. Of recent years, 1998 drops to second, and only 2006 and 1999 remain in the top Read More ›

In “Global Warming Propaganda Factory” American Thinker, (Aug. 03, 2007) Christopher J. Alleva describes how the “Society for Environmental Journalists” provides Climate change: A guide to the information and disinformation. Alleva observes: “Except for the seventh chapter titled with the freighted descriptive: “Deniers, Dissenters and Skeptics“, the guide is a one sided presentation that resoundingly affirms global warming and puts down anyone with a different point of view. The site is a virtual digest of the global warming industry. If you’re looking for a road map to the special interest groups behind the hysteria, this is the place to go. The journalist members of this association have obviously abandoned all pretense of objectivity.” The Society of Professional Journalists provides a major Read More ›

Brown haze from burning biomass in Asia and Africa may contribute regionally as much as greenhouse gas emissions to anthropogenic climate warming according to reports in Nature. Designing efficient cookstoves for the poor could improve their livelihood, improve health, and the environment. How would investing in cookstoves compare to carbon sequestration? The heat is on – Nature, Editor’s Summary 2 August 2007 “By 2001, it was realized that the thick brown haze discovered over the Arabian Sea during the Indian Ocean Experiment (INDOEX: 1997-1999) was a persistent dry-season feature above Southern Asia. A UNEP report in 2002 raised concerns of major climate disruption if the sources of the haze, including biomass burning, were not controlled. . . . Atmospheric solar Read More ›

Please read the whole article at the source. There’s a lot more detail, diagrams, pictures, and basically just a lot to learn there. The excerpts below are just a few highlights I snipped out.

Global Warming and Nature’s Thermostat
by Roy W. Spencer

Roy W. Spencer received his PhD in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. He has been a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville since 2001, before which we was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center where he received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. Dr. Spencer is the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite. His research has been entirely supported by U.S. government agencies: NASA, NOAA, and DOE.

A Summary, and the Future

It is now reasonably certain that changes in solar radiation cause temperature changes on Earth — for instance, the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo caused a 2% to 4% reduction in sunlight, resulting in two years of below normal temperatures. It is not so obvious, however, that small changes in the Earth’s infrared cooling from mankind’s burning of fossil fuels will do the same. This is because the Earth’s natural greenhouse effect is mostly under the control of weather systems: specifically, precipitation systems. Either directly or indirectly, these systems determine the moisture (water vapor and cloud) characteristics for most of the rest of the atmosphere.

Precipitation systems thus act as a thermostat, causing cooling when temperatures get too high (and warming when temperatures get too low). It is amazing to think that the ways in which tiny water droplets and ice particles combine in clouds to form rain and snow could determine the course of global warming, but this might well be the case.

I believe that it is the inadequate handling of precipitation systems — specifically, how they adjust atmospheric moisture contents during changes in temperature — that is the reason for climate model predictions of excessive warming from increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

I predict that further research will reveal some other cause for the warming we have experienced since the 1970’s — for instance, a change in some feature of the sun’s activity. In the meantime, a high priority research effort should be the study of changes in precipitation systems with changes in temperature — especially how they confer moisture charateristics to the atmosphere as air is continuously recycled through them.

Fortunately, we now have several NASA satellites in Earth orbit that are gathering information that will be immensely valuable for determining how the Earth’s climate system adjusts during natural temperature fluctuations. It is through these satellite measurements of temperature, solar and infrared radiation, clouds, and precipitation that we will be able to test and improve the climate models, which will then hopefully lead to more confident predictions of global warming.

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China Overtakes U.S. as No. 1 Emitter of Carbon Dioxide By Audra Ang June 21, 2007 7:54AM Excerpt: A new study by a Dutch research group said China, which relies on coal for two-thirds of its energy needs and makes 44 percent of the world’s cement, produced 6.23 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2006. In comparison, the U.S., which gets half its electricity from coal, produced 5.8 billion metric tons of CO2, it said. China has overtaken the United States as the world’s top producer of carbon dioxide emissions — the biggest man-made contributor to global warming — based on the latest widely accepted energy consumption data, a Dutch research group says. According to a report released Tuesday Read More ›

Read the sunspots The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change – and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, professor and director of the Geoscience Centre, Carleton University Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 Excerpt: Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called “proxies”) is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia’s Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change. However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, Read More ›

High price for load of hot air by Bob Carter, June 18, 2007 12:00am Professor Bob Carter is an environmental scientist at James Cook University who studies ancient climate change. Here’s some of what he has to say: The salient facts are these. First, the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998. Oddly, this eight-year-long temperature stasis has occurred despite an increase over the same period of 15 parts per million (or 4 per cent) in atmospheric CO2. Second, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements, if corrected for non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, show little if any global warming since Read More ›

Dirty snow may warm Arctic as much as greenhouse gases

“In the past two centuries, the Arctic has warmed about 1.6 degrees. Dirty snow caused .5 to 1.5 degrees of warming, or up to 94 percent of the observed change, the scientists determined.” Read More ›

Great article by David Limbaugh which appeared in today’s Washington Times.

“Whether or not blind faith in man-made, catastrophic global warming has become a new religion, many of its adherents, ironically, embrace it with the same type of unquestioning zeal they sloppily attribute to and summarily condemn in Christians.” -David Limbaugh

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