Evidence continues to trickle in that we need not fear global temperatures rising to ruinous levels. Anthony Watts provides a reality check at his invaluable site “What’s Up with That?” This is the same material, reformatted and condensed — with some additional material to give a better context. As always, I recommend reading the full articles.
(1) “Current melting of Greenland’s ice mimics 1920’s – 1940’s event“, Ohio State University Research, reporting on a presentation of 10 December 2007 — Excerpt:
Two researchers here spent months scouring through old expedition logs and reports, and reviewing 70-year-old maps and photos before making a surprising discovery: They found that the effects of the current warming and melting of Greenland ‘s glaciers that has alarmed the world’s climate scientists occurred in the decades following an abrupt warming in the 1920s.
(2) “Media Hype on ‘Melting’ Antarctic Ignores Record Ice Growth“, the Inhofe Press Blog at the site of the Senate Committee on Public Works and the Environment, 27 March 2008 — Includes a wealth of links. Excerpt:
This time the media is promoting the ice loss of one tiny fraction of the giant ice-covered continent and completely ignoring the current record ice growth on Antarctica. Contrary to media hype, the vast majority of Antarctica has cooled over the past 50 years and ice coverage has grown to record levels since satellite monitoring began in the 1979, according to peer-reviewed studies and scientists who study the area.
(3) Here is a comment by Ernst-Georg Beck about — or a rebuttal of — the alarming news stories about cooling of the arctic. Beck is a teacher of biology at Merian-Schuleat Freiburg Germany, which seems to be a combination vocational high school and community college. He has published several papers in peer-reviewed journals, available at his web site. His conclusion:
The news item: “Arctic air temperatures climb to record levels” (Reuters, {16 October 2008} is selective science and wrong because the Arctic Ocean (covering an area of more than 50% of the Arctic circle) has been left unconsidered. The NOAA study summarizes: “5°C record levels in temperature in autumn“, presents the averaged temperatures only on land stations and discusses melting sea ice as a cause! This is pseudoscience.
In contrast the current Arctic warming mimics the 1920s-1940s event, as a recent study from the Ohio State University reveals. The scientists recognized from using weather station records, maps and photos from the past century that temperatures in Greenland had warmed in the 1920s at rates equivalent to the recent past.
(4) “Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof“, Lorne Gunter, National Post, 20 October 2008 — Excerpt:
In early September, I began noticing a string of news stories about scientists rejecting the orthodoxy on global warming. Actually, it was more like a string of guest columns and long letters to the editor since it is hard for skeptical scientists to get published in the cabal of climate journals now controlled by the Great Sanhedrin of the environmental movement.
Still, the number of climate change skeptics is growing rapidly. Because a funny thing is happening to global temperatures — they’re going down, not up.
On the same day (Sept. 5) that areas of southern Brazil were recording one of their latest winter snowfalls ever and entering what turned out to be their coldest September in a century, Brazilian meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart explained that extreme cold or snowfall events in his country have always been tied to “a negative PDO” or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Positive PDOs — El Ninos — produce above-average temperatures in South America while negative ones — La Ninas — produce below average ones.
… Also in September, American Craig Loehle, a scientist who conducts computer modeling on global climate change, confirmed his earlier findings that the so-called Medieval Warm Period (MWP) of about 1,000 years ago did in fact exist and was even warmer than 20th-century temperatures.
… While not stooping to such name-calling, weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.
For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA’s eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while man made emissions may be having a slight impact, “variations in global temperatures since 1978 … cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide.”
(5) Just as the mainstream media excitedly reports that the arctic ice is disappearing, the cycle may have turned.
- “Experts Confirm Open Water Circling Arctic“, NY Times Science blog, 6 September 2008 — A somewhat balanced, in a confused way, article about arctic ice.
- “Arctic sea ice now 28.7% higher than this date last year – still rallying“, Anthony Watts, posted at his blog Watt’s Up with That?, 15 October 2008 — This years data may mark an inflection point in arctic cooling.
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Reference pages about other topics appear on the right side menu bar, including About the FM website page.
Some of the posts about global cooling on the FM website:
- More forecasts of a global cooling cycle, 15 July 2008
- One of the most interesting sources of news about science and nature!, 27 October 2008
- An important letter sent to the President about the danger of climate change, 21 October 2009
- About those headlines from the past century about global cooling…, 2 November 2009
Afterword
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