Global Warming Back on the Burner

[sunsettommy]

From About.com

<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>Global Warming Back on the Burner </TD></TR><TR><TD bgColor=#cc0000 colSpan=2 height=1>http://images.about.com/all/bullets/dot_clea.gif</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Winds of controversy threaten the small flame of truth

Excerpt:

It takes only a spark to start a fire. A good example was a wave of media agitation about global warming, conveniently timed for maximum effect on the 2000 U.S. presidential election. The spark was a mere 21 words from the beta version of an important United Nations document. What happened next shows how treacherous the climate for science can be when politics is in the mix.

Another excerpt:

Perhaps you remember the 1995 IPCC Report, which gave birth to the following widespread belief among the media and the public: Scientists of the world agree that human greenhouse gases are heating up the Earth's surface, and they predict the climate will heat up by 1 to 3.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. That's a simplification of the Summary for Policymakers' simplified conclusions. Here's the actual soundbite from the 1995 Summary, on the IPCC Web site (http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/sarsyn.htm):

The balance of evidence, from changes in global mean surface air temperature and from changes in geographical, seasonal and vertical patterns of atmospheric temperature, suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.

That's not a very definitive statement—the balance (not the majority or preponderance) of evidence suggests (not indicates or documents) a discernible (not substantial or even measurable) influence. But it accurately reflects the state of science at that date. The temperature projections came from selected computer models, but these models range widely in their methodologies, and the numbers are clouded by a thick haze of uncertainties.

The 21 words of the October 2000 media storm were supposedly in the Summary for Policymakers of the upcoming 2001 IPCC Report. A draft of the Summary was being circulated among high-ranking scientists and nonscientist officials, part of a long and rigorous review process before finalizing the statement. Someone leaked the draft to an Associated Press writer, Joseph Hebert, and on October 26 he quoted it very selectively (http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi%2Dbin/article.cgi%3Ffile=/news/archive/2000/10/26/national0304EDT0451.DTL) in this single sentence:

"While there remain uncertainties, studies of the last five years and more sophisticated computer modeling shows 'there is now stronger evidence for a human influence' on the climate and more certainty that man-made greenhouse gases 'have contributed substantially to the observed warming over the last 50 years.' "

Interpreting this handful of words, taken out of their context, is like the wild scientific guessing that followed the first pictures from the surface of Mars. Hebert interviewed a few atmospheric scientists who would only comment on the fact that the global temperature has been rising recently, which is not disputed. A reporter for Reuters could not get one scientist to comment on the record. CNN (http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/10/27/earth.matters/index.html) gave even less substance and included a quote that doesn't match what Hebert reported. But the hint of smoke has prompted some over-the-top "flames" from people who aren't experts, like politicians. If you pay attention to the exact words that people are using, as in this summary of recent political jousting about environmental issues (http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/10/27/green/index.html), you can watch the soundbite grow and change as people repeat it and stretch it.

Another selected excerpt:

As it happened, the Summary for Policymakers came out on schedule and those 21 words were nowhere to be found. All the heat and furor was baseless; all the political points scored were arms waving in the air. Better that we should read a balanced, authoritative article by a genuine atmospheric scientist, David Gutzler (http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://epswww.unm.edu/facstaff/gutzler/) of the University of New Mexico, in the October 2000 GSA Today. Titled "Evaluating Global Warming: A Post-1990s Perspective," it is very useful in untangling the parts of the climate-change problem that are well known and still uncertain, and it suggests specific ways that scientists can help inform the public debate to result in sensible, unified action. The article is online here (http://geology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.geosociety.org/pubs/gsatoday/gsat0010.htm).


http://geology.about.com/library/weekly/aa102900a.htm

The distortions that made a long lived creation of nonexistent words were created by a group of overtly biased Media writers.Most people are being told distortions and lies quite often and also Water Vapor is nearly non-existent in the pages of "media science writers.

A quote from the link:

"Scientists of the world agree that human greenhouse gases are heating up the Earth's surface, and they predict the climate will heat up by 1 to 3.5 degrees Celsius by the year 2100."

See the usual attempt to foster the idea of Consensus? It turned out to be a LIE!

It is sad.

[Naturalized-Texan]

No one disputes the fact that global temperatures have risen in the past 100+ years. However, more than two-thirds of that warming occurred prior to 1940, prior to the huge post-war industrial expansion and and prior to the post-war population explosion. No honest scientists could possibly claim that the warming is being caused by human activities because if it is, nearly all of the warming would have occurred after WW II. Consequently, we must look elsewhere for the cause and by far the most likely cause is nature.

[Mountain Topper]

Junk Science has been running rampant for the past 50 years. TV has created a pablum that is being fed to the masses pre-digested. The writers take miniscule clips from lengthy research and slap it in front of The NEWS-READERS who spew this slop into the air waves. The masses gobble it up according to the sensational quotient that the writers have been able to generate.

TV has taken the necessity to read and think out of the formula for developing a personal philosophy. Thought is imputed to those who are too lazy to search out the truth on their own.

Case in point: Less than twenty-five years ago, the theory of "Global Cooling" was thrown against the wall, but it didn't stick, so a new exciting/scary theory was generated to keep the research dollars flowing in. The very sad part of the notoriety of the global warming nonsense is that the idea of "world scientists" or "the majority of scientists" or "Scientists of the World," etc. is being floated about as fact, where in truth, the vast majority of scientists, the real ones who see through the maybe or could be or might have been lies, slough this stuff off and move on because they know the sensational value of the truth will get no play in the media.

Tell a lie often enough.......

[Naturalized-Texan]

Tell a lie often enough.......
Yep! The Big Lie Propaganda technique is still alive and well among leftists.

[Keith J]

When the majority of the "climatologists" cannot discern the difference between heat, temperature and energy, one has to wonder if they even know what they are talking about.

Then we have a pseudoscientific hypothesis that claims global warming might decrease ocean currents, leading to global cooling...pure junk. They have not the most fundamental grasp of why the polar regions are cold, much less basic understanding of thremodynamics.

I will not discuss, much less argue, global warming with anyone who cannot understand he basic laws of thermodynamics. To do so would be like teaching calculus to a chicken.

[sunsettommy]

Here is something that supports what Keith J is talking about on why the Polar regions are cold.

Coolwire 13 <SMALL><SMALL>4 October 2005
<SMALL style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0)">Scroll down for critique of David Parker's (UK Met Office) short paper in Nature in November 2004, "Large-scale warming is not urban".
Also Campaign starts to get New Zealand out of Kyoto. </SMALL>
</SMALL></SMALL>

<BIG style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(51,51,255)"><BIG>Some timely calm perspective on Arctic temperature and sea ice trend from Willis Eschenbach
<SMALL style="COLOR: rgb(255,0,0)">Plus a word on a newly published trend from Armagh, Northern Island.</SMALL></BIG></BIG><SMALL style="COLOR: rgb(255,0,0)">
</SMALL>
A friend sent me the article attached at the end of this email, which says that "scientists fear" that the Arctic ice area may have reached a "tipping point", beyond which it will continue to warm and never cool again. They article says of the scientists:



They believe global warming is melting Arctic ice so rapidly that the

region is beginning to absorb more heat from the sun, causing the ice
to melt still further and so reinforcing a vicious cycle of melting
and heating.
The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a "tipping point"
beyond which nothing can reverse the continual loss of sea ice and
with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland, which will raise sea
levels dramatically.


Further down I show this excerpt:

I am becoming increasingly concerned about the number of fearful scientists. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of climate science is funded by government, and the competition for funding dollars is intense. Focusing global media attention on the state of the cryosphere is the way to keep funding dollars flowing to where the temperature is cold, so I understand the pressure to spice up plain old boring science with a little dash of fear.


But let's get real, folks. For about a decade (1979-90), minimum ice coverage averaged around 6 million sq. km. Since 1990, minimum ice coverage has averaged around 5.5 million sq. km. This year, last year, the year before that, and the year before that have all been stultifyingly normal, at around 5.5 million sq. km.

This is a "tipping point"? This is a newsworthy event?

And what is this mythical "tipping point" when it's at home? It seems the "tipping point" relates to a postulated feedback which goes like this:



less ice reflecting the sunlight --> more solar absorption --> warmer temperatures --> less ice etc. --> ice free Arctic




Which all sounds very logical, until you realize how little the polar regions are warmed by the sun. Instead, they are warmed by the heat transported from the equator by the atmospheric circulation of the "Hadley Cells". A small difference in the amount of ice coverage at the poles means nothing. It is the heat transferred from the tropics which determines polar temperatures. The minimum in arctic ice in 1998-99, for example, was a result of the 1998 El Nino warming of the tropical Pacific, not ice-reflectivity feedbacks.

Why doesn't the sun matter at the poles? Because at polar latitudes, the sun is always low in the sky. This affects surface heat absorption in three ways. First, the sun intensity per square metre of surface varies as the cosine of the latitude, so at 80° North the sun only has cos(80) = 17% of the energy per surface area it has at the equator.

The second is that as the latitude increases, more and more of the sunlight is reflected off of the surface. The amount absorbed is roughly proportional to the same function as before. So only 17% of the available energy is absorbed by the surface at 80° North, and the rest reflected to space.

Those two alone reduce the absorption of solar energy down to 17% absorbed times 17% intensity = 2.9%. In other words, the surface at 80° North only absorbs 2.9% of the solar energy absorbed at the Equator. But wait, there's more. The sun has to travel further through the atmosphere at the poles than at the equator, so atmospheric absorption is increased and surface absorption is lessened. How much less? Don't know, but we're currently at 3% of the tropical sun, so we'll call it about 2% and let it go at that.

The only reason the poles are not blocks of ice year round is the heat which is exported from the tropics. The idea that a bit more or less sun absorbed by unfrozen ocean at the poles will cause runaway melting is in complete contradiction to thermodynamic reality.

http://www.warwickhughes.com/cool/cool13.htm

The bolding and Italics are mine.

It is a common problem reading these clueless Climatologists who make dumb statements such as this "As more and more sea ice is lost during the summer, greater expanses
of open ocean are exposed to the sun which increases the rate at which
heat is absorbed in the Arctic region, Dr. Serreze said.
Sea ice reflects up to 80 per cent of sunlight hitting it but this
"albedo effect" is mostly lost when the sea is uncovered. "We've
exposed all this dark ocean to the sun's heat so that the overall heat
content increases," he explained.

This stupid quote came from this link:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article312997.ece

It does not seem to be realized that at this region there is so little absorption of sunlight in the first place.So even if all the ice was melted,little increase can be expected because of the steep angle of sunlight and short duration of sunlight hours.The albedo is certaintly true,but since there is so little sunlight in the first place little is actually reflected.

There is a reason why BOTH poles are so cold.Minimal sunlight and MONTHS of ZERO sunlight near the polar regions.So even albedo is insignificant for most of the year.

Stupid morons!

[Eagle1]

so many people have been taught the crap in "science" class.
its gonna take some serious education to get the average american to know the truth.
not that it matters though, the goal of the global warming nuts is to destroy those big bad industries. and they will never accomplish it.