Category: Global Warming

Rate of Global Warming is Slowing and Nobody Knows Why

Despite hype to the contrary, the world has seen a slowdown in the rate of warming over the past few years. The change is causing many scientific organizations to adjust their climate change projections. Late last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reduced its projected warming from a range of 0.4 to 1.0 degrees Celsius to 0.3 to 0.7 degrees Celsius between 2016 and 2035. More importantly, nobody seems to know why the warming has slowed.

The leading theory is that the increased heat has been partially absorbed by the ocean. A group at the Scripps Institute suggested the extra heat is being absorbed by the surface waters of the Pacific Ocean. Other scientists suggest that the deeper, colder parts of the ocean are absorbing the heat. Another theory is that active volcanoes are suppressing global warming by spewing ash and gas that reflect the sun’s heat back into space. Some have suggested particulate matter from coal power plants in developing countries spewed into the atmosphere may be reflecting sunlight thereby reducing heat. Others think that an exceptionally active solar cycle may be influencing temperatures.

The scientific method has always been a five-step process involving a question, a research hypothesis, experimentation and data analysis. While most scientists now believe humans play a significant role in global warming, the exact level is up for debate. And past projections have been off sometimes significantly. In one of the first predictions, Dr. James Hansen told Congress in 1988 that the world would warm 1.0 degree Celsius every 20 years until 2050. We now know that figure was 2-3 times too high.

Where does this leave policy makers and citizens? Policy makers should continue to develop free-market oriented solutions to global warming. Some folks favored a carbon tax, but its lack of success in Europe has pushed many towards carbon capture instead. Other potential solutions are worthy of consideration.

At the same time, scientists should emphasize that all predictions are estimates. The earth and its atmosphere are complicated places; we still have a lot to learn on climate change. Everybody should remember that science is not religion; actual facts are needed before a conclusion can be made. There is one thing that we can be certain of today: nobody can predict with 100% accuracy what any aspect of earth, including its climate, will be like in 2050.

Sep 15, 2014 | 4 comments | by

Calming Fears of Climate Change in Asia

Many climate studies have focused on South and Southeast Asia, as the region is considered uniquely vulnerable to the projected effects of climate change such as a reduction in crop yields, rising sea levels, flooding, a loss of biodiversity and drought. Many of these Asian countries are islands or are on peninsulas, with highly populated coastal cities; if climate change predictions come true, these countries would be highly vulnerable.

The five cities deemed at the most “extreme risk” for climate change by global risk analysis company Maplecroft are Dhaka, Mumbai, Kolkata, Manila and Bangkok — all of which are in South or Southeast Asia. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming poses a special risk to these two regions.

But while climate change alarmists have suggested that higher temperatures will increase food insecurity in Asia, food production has been increasing for the last half-century:

  • Since the 1990s, food production in Southeast Asia has increased substantially.
  • South Asia has kept a stable supply of arable land, and the amount of arable land in Southeast Asia has increased.
  • In fact, according to agronomist Craig Idso, increased levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has increased, not decreased, plant production.

Similarly, while many have raised concerns about sea level rise, there is no consensus on the amount of rise. According to the World Bank, were the sea level to rise by one meter, just 1 to 2 percent of land area, population and farmland in developing countries would be affected, and GDP would fall by 0.5 percent to 2 percent.

Mitigation seeks to combat climate change by embarking upon new projects or instituting measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to curb climate change. Adaptation, on the other hand, consists of strategies to deal with the effects of global warming, such as rehabilitating coral, engaging in water resource management and protecting wildlife.

As climate science is so uncertain and unsettled, adaptation is the more cost-effective approach to climate change.

Tanner Davis is a research associate at the National Center for Policy Analyis.

Sep 03, 2014 | 1 comment | by

Reduced Sunspots Increases Global Cooling

Reduced periods of sunspot activity correlate with cooler and very cold periods, with higher incidences producing opposite effects — according to a recent study, highlighted by Larry Bell.

If a leading theory regarding why this occurs is correct, a weaker magnetic heliosphere surrounding our Solar System evidenced by low sunspot activity permits more cosmic rays from deep space to enter Earth’s protective magnetosphere and atmosphere. This increased flux of heavy electrons — or “muons” — striking the atmosphere produces increased cloud cover, in turn reflecting more solar radiation away from Earth and back to space.

While the Sun was exceptionally active during the 20th century, many scientists believe that this condition is now coming to an end. Although the Royal Observatory of Belgium’s July average monthly sunspot count increased slightly for the sixth straight month despite a rare mid-month spotless day, solar Cycle 24 still remains to be the weakest in 100 years.

It is predicted that increased counts may continue for a few more months before activity once again begins to fade. In fact, long-term indicators suggest that the next sunspot cycle will be much weaker than this one. If so, as with other extended periods of inactivity as occurred during Cycles 3, 4, and 5 which marked the beginning of a “Dalton Minimum”, we can expect the past 18 years of flat global temperatures to become significantly cooler.

Aug 25, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by

New White House Climate Change Initiative and Wrong Priorities

While the President barely lifts a finger to protect and strengthen our border with Mexico by announcing a new border initiative, the White House is still very actively promoting their climate change initiatives with yesterday’s latest big announcement.

The White House commitments to the new initiative include:

  • Convening Agriculture and Technology Leaders at the White House.
  • New Features on climate.data.gov.
  • Hosting Agriculture-Innovation Workshops.

The White House also includes a good number of “private sector” commitments to the initiative. The entire initiative revolves around data processing and sharing efficiencies that would benefit many of the companies that exist, especially all that can benefit from all of the “global warming” and “climate change” hysteria that the White House continues to throw at the public through their propaganda channels.

Just another example of misplaced priorities. How long will it take for the White House to realize that they are still going down the wrong road (climate change)?

Jul 30, 2014 | 1 comment | by

Slow Rise of Sea Level Despite NCA Climate Change Claim

Infrastructure is being damaged by sea level rise, heavy downpours, and extreme heat….Sea level rise, storm surge, and heavy downpours, in combination with continued development in coastal areas, are increasing damage to U.S. infrastructure including roads, buildings, and industrial facilities, and are also increasing risks to ports and coastal military installations. Flooding along rivers, lakes, and in cities following heavy downpours, prolonged rains, and rapid melting of snow ice pack is exceeding the limits of flood protection infrastructure designed for historical conditions. Extreme heat is damaging transportation infrastructure such as roads, rail lines, and airport runways.

Not one word of this passage is demonstrated by the 841 pages of the report either. The NCA simply suggests to Americans to “[replace] short vehicle commutes with biking or walking and [reduce] your red meat intake to reduce the amount of methane emitted from the animals we eat.”

Sea level has been rising, in fact, since the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago! But there has been no acceleration in the rate of sea level rise for at least 200 years. Over that past 200 years, the long term, stable sea level rise has averaged a mere 6.6 inches per century, as measured by major tidal gauge studies.

Yet, the Obama Administration’s report tries to tell us that global sea levels could rise by as much as 6.6 feet by 2100, which would be 12 times the current long term average rate over the last 200 years! Furthermore, a 2014 peer-reviewed study just published by Cazenave, et. al. finds the rate of sea level rise has decelerated by 31 percent since 2002. That is consistent with a slight global cooling trend since that time, which some senior scientists predict could last decades.

sea levels

All of this true climate science is authoritatively explained in complete detail in the thousands of pages of Climate Change Reconsidered II, authored by the dozens of top scientists serving on the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) and published this year in 3 volumes by the Heartland Institute. Those volumes are “double peer reviewed,” as they discusses thousands of peer reviewed articles published in scientific journals and are themselves peer reviewed. Last year, the Cato Institute published a thorough, comprehensive refutation of the publicly released draft of the NCA, titled The Missing Science from the Draft National Assessment on Climate Change, by Patrick J. Michaels, et. al. If you are interested in knowing what you are talking about, and are an intelligent layman, you can be thoroughly educated by those calm, dispassionate, comprehensive, reasoned discussions of the issues surrounding global warming and “climate change.” You can learn more by attending the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change, to be held at the Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, July 7-9, with more than 1,000 scientists from around the world.

 

Jul 23, 2014 | 2 comments | by

Fact Check: NCA Report’s Extreme Weather Claim

The NCA states the following:

Climate disruptions to agriculture have been increasing and are projected to become more severe over this century. Some areas are already experiencing climate-related disruptions….From mid-century on, climate change is projected to have more negative impacts on crops and livestock across the country — a trend that could diminish the security of our food supply.

However, the increased carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration has unambiguously and substantially increased agricultural yields, which is better established than any other proposition of climate science today. Again, in a 50 year period, that has amounted to $3.2 trillion in increased agricultural output. Once more, the NCA statement is directly the opposite of reality. You see what I mean by calculated deception?

Some extreme weather and climate events have increased in recent decades, and new and stronger evidence confirms that some of these increases are related to human activities. Changes in extreme weather events are the primary way that most people experience climate change….Over the last 50 years, much of the United States has seen an increase in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, more heavy downpours, and in some regions, more severe droughts.

So the increased CO2 is supposedly responsible for both more heavy downpours, and more severe droughts. But the truth is there has been no increase in extreme weather events at all. Paul Driessen reports for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow that “no Category 3-5 hurricane has made landfall in the United States since 2005, the longest such period since at least 1900.” Moreover, “U.S. tornado frequency remains very low, and property damage and loss of life from tornadoes have decreased over the past six decades.” University of Colorado Professor Roger Pielke, Jr. authoritatively finds that “the number of years with very large tornado losses has actually decreased” during 1993-2013 compared to 1950 to 1970.

number of hurricanes

The latest report from the U.N.’s IPCC, as well as analysis from the Obama Administration’s own National Climatic Data Center, both conclude that no case can be made that extreme weather is increasing. As the Heritage Foundation explains, that means “no significant trends for floods, droughts, hurricanes or tornados.”

Even the NCA itself says, “there has been no universal trend in the overall extent of drought across the continental U.S. since 1900.” Other trends in severe storms “are uncertain.” Lewis accurately reports:

The Assessment ignores substantial data and research finding no long-term increases in the strength and frequency of tropical cyclones and no trend in extreme weather-related damages once losses are “normalized” (adjusted for changes in population, wealth, and consumer price index).

 

Jul 21, 2014 | 2 comments | by

More Evidence of Global Cooling from NCA Report

According to the network of nationwide thermometers monitored by the United States Historical Climatology Network, James Taylor noted that 2014 so far has been the coldest year for the United States ever, at least through May 6. Taylor writes,

Assertions that warming temperatures in the United States are causing a host of problems are soundly contradicted by the objective temperature data.

Soon, the more recent period of no global warming will be longer than the older period of actual warming, which lasted approximately 20 years, from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Preceding that were 30 years of global cooling, generating alarms regarding a new ice age (which is actually overdue, given historical climate cycles). Even Britain’s Met Office, an international cheerleading headquarters for global warming hysteria, conceded in December, 2012 that there would be no further warming at least through 2017, which would make 21 plus years with no global warming.

The foundation for the establishment’s argument for global warming is nothing more than broad theory, which does nothing to specify how much and when warming occurs, even with 73 climate models collected by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The problem is that the warming trends projected by these models are all diverging farther and farther from the real world trend of actual temperature observations.

The NCA states:

The global warming of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels.

But there is no proof of this basic declarative statement in the entire 841 pages of the report. Instead, the incontestable truths explained above show that the global warming of the past 50 years was 20 years of warming from the late 1970s to the late 1990s, preceded by roughly 30 years of global cooling, followed by almost 20 years of no warming, despite record acceleration during this time of human carbon dioxide emissions.

The NCA asserts that:

As these data records have grown longer and climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed.

Such a blatantly false statement in an official U.S. government report that cost taxpayers $7 billion of whitewashing over 3 years is shameful. As incontestably explained above, the climate model projections have only grown farther and farther from reality over the past 34 years actually, particularly during the last 17 plus years of no global warming.

These climate models, with projections that cannot even replicate the past, have again been falsified by real world temperature data. So to say that over time, as “the climate models have become more comprehensive, earlier predictions have largely been confirmed,” would be fraudulent if the statements had not been so transparently penned by PR flacks with no idea of any actual “climate science,” let alone the incontestable climate science truths explained above.

Jul 16, 2014 | 2 comments | by

National Climate Assessment Misses the Mark

Although the National Climate Assessment (NCA) attempts to provide a comprehensive report on the state of global warming and climate change, it misses the mark in every possible way. First, the report claims nothing but negative effects of rising anthropogenic CO2 levels. However, CO2 composes a minute percentage of atmospheric gases, and the rise in emissions has actually been economically beneficial by exponentially increasing crop yield. Moreover, data reveals that the environment is currently entering a period void of any global warming. Second, the assessment states that the rising temperatures are causing more frequent and severe natural disasters. Yet, experts testify that no significant trends in floods, droughts, tornados, or hurricanes exist. In fact, according to these experts, the frequency of tornadoes and severity of hurricanes have decreased over time in the United States. Third, the NCA reports that rising sea levels have severely damaged domestic infrastructure. However, data reveals a deceleration in sea level rise, one that will remain negligible in the coming century. In light of this propaganda, the Obama administration is using this assessment to prevent natural gas and oil exploration which could support tens of thousands of jobs during a staggering economy. As will be explained in future blog posts, it seems like the National Climate Assessment has done nothing but perpetuate lies and hurt the economy.

Jul 09, 2014 | 7 comments | by

The Global Warming Uncertainty: Is “Doing Something” More Ethical Than “Doing Nothing”?

However great your task or the challenge ahead, it’s better to do something rather than nothing. We may only be as small as a grain of sand on the beach, but we can make a lasting impact especially if we work together.

— Peter Hawkins

Although Dr. Hawkins was not addressing climatology with his quote, it accurately expresses a common philosophy employed by most environmentalists. Are the skeptics of mankind’s complicities in causing global warming (or climate disruption, or whatever is the term du jour) guilty of negligence in the face of potential global catastrophe? Are the “deniers” who disdain costly regulations over individual liberty guilty of the sin of “doing nothing” when it would be far more ethical “to do something”? Let’s take a look at recent climatological history.

As late as the 1970s, the world’s leading scientists predicted that the earth was headed for an ice age that would wreak havoc on civilization if we were not adequately prepared. Real Science and Popular Technology.net have collected numerous news articles (with their accompanying “scientific” graphs) that predicted a global catastrophe was imminent, lest we do something immediately to prepare for it. Here are just a few:

  • A New York Times article (1/5/78) sported the headline, “International team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere.” While a minority of the climate scientists was not concerned, the majority urged that federal policy be instituted to make preparations. A majority of scientists couldn’t be wrong, could they?
  • A Newsweek article (4/28/75) cites April of 1973 as having produced “the most devastating outbreak (of tornadoes) ever recorded.” It also noted that NOAA’s satellite pictures confirm a “sudden, large increase in northern hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72.” Further, NOAA’s scientists found that the amount of sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S. “diminished by 1.3 percent between 1964 and 1972.” All these examples and more were used as clear and compelling evidence that global cooling was inevitable.
  • The journal Science (7/71) published an article fearing that typical consumer aerosols were contributing to observed global cooling, stating that they “reduce the surface temperature of Earth.” Curbing aerosol use was presumed to help stem the pending global freeze.
  • A CIA report (1974) concludes that the global cooling trend that started in the 1960s has been “confirmed” by science. For the first time, the CIA officially considered a pending climate threat with such a concern that it altered its international relations policies due to the destabilizing political impacts expected to arise from vast crop harvest failures and tremendous population relocations that were sure to follow.

Does this theme of climate alarmism sound familiar? Contemporary science had “concluded” that we were all doomed to a frigid life of local starvation and global political unrest if we did not take immediate and significant actions. Yet what would the world have look like today, had we felt compelled then to “do something — anything” at the time, based on the best available research promoted by an impressive consensus of scientists?

What if we had employed the actions promoted by concerned climate activists, such as covering the arctic ice cap with black soot, increasing its melting rate in order to maintain the sea levels? Or stockpiling millions of tons of American grains in silos at the expense of exporting it to foreign countries that could not produce enough grain to feed their own people? Or pumping tons of extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to counteract the coming freeze by inducing… global warming? Would it really have been more ethical for us to just “do something — anything” in the face of less than universal scientific consensus, in the holy name of saving our planet? I do not think this is what Dr. Hawkins meant when he encouraged us into “making a lasting impact.”

Jun 23, 2014 | 4 comments | by

Understanding CFR’s Global Governance Report Card

This month, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported its Global Governance Report Card for its broad range of international issues, including climate change. This time around, the organization gave the global climate change regime a D-rating. Here were the overall grades that the regime received:

CLIMATE CHANGE REGIME

 CLASS EVALUATION
Understanding Climate Change Threats  Excellent Leader:  European Union, Pacific Islands Forum
Curbing Emissions and Promoting Low Carbon Development  Poor Gold Star:  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change
Monitoring and Enforcing Emissions Cuts  Average Most Improved:  None
Financing Emissions Cuts and Adaptation  Poor Laggard:  China, United States
Adapting to Climate Change  Poor Truant:  Russia, Australia
Utilizing Carbon Sinks Good Detention:

Canada

 

Clearly, the international regime has deprioritized climate change. But while this may not seem all too worrisome, the most startling grades are those that regard adaptation, both of which received poor grades. Please read my other blog post about adaptation strategies for climate change and their importance in today’s era to better understand my concern for these ratings. In essence, climate change does not seem quite imminent but does is occurring. Thus, the private sector or the government should begin investing in adaptation strategies that will ensure the longevity of society before the impacts of climate change enter into full effect. Last year, adaptation projects represented only 17 percent of global climate finance, indicating a widespread lack of prioritization for this type of strategy. However, if climate change is to be adequately dealt with, this percentage should be the opposite, with adaptation strategies representing at least 83 percent of climate finance.

According to the CFR, the United States, China, and the European Union all made modest gains with regards to adaptation strategies, but they wholly failed at assisting developing nations working to come up with similar strategies. As I note in my blog post regarding developing and developed nations, developing countries are more susceptible to the impacts of climate change. Although developed nations have more abundant finances to invest in adaptation strategies, developing nations have more to lose if they fail to implement strategies of their own. Thus, with the assistance of developed nations, these developing nations should start implementing green growth strategies that could help protect their particularly vulnerable societies. The U.S. must move form a laggard status to a leader on climate change, as its leadership on solutions to environmental issues is crucial.

As the international regime’s understanding of climate change threats is “excellent,” it is time that the regime starts actively pursuing strategies that can minimize the effects that the impacts have on society. Perhaps by this time next year, the rating will move.

Tanner Davis is a research associate at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Jun 23, 2014 | Leave a Comment | by
« Previous Page — Next Page »