More and more evidence mounts that the idea of man-made global warming is nothing more than hype for the sake of hype. Not only that, but there are political implications here where governments (particularly those controlled by leftist socialists) are using the fear-mongering angle of the issue as an excuse for grabbing more power.
Writing for the Houston Chronicle, Robert L. Bradley shines some light on the issue and looks at the temperature trends of the past 100 years, the prediciations that pseudo-scientists have made concerning global warming and how those predictions fared against reality.
From his column:
The new century has cooled the case for climate alarmism. Global warming has stalled — not accelerated as expected. Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have increased, but temperatures have been flat for the last eight years and have slightly fallen since 1998's El Nino-driven temperature spike. If the cool-off continues until 2015, as could be the case according to a study published in Nature magazine, we will have had a see-saw of global warming (1900-45), global cooling (1945-75), global warming (1975-98), and flatness (1998-2015). Where does all of this leave us coming out of the Little Ice Age that ended in the mid-18th century — and after a century of greenhouse gas buildup in the atmosphere? Today's temperature is about 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer, and in a naturally warmer climate cycle. Compare this to Al Gore's scary talk about an 11-degree man-made temperature rise this century under business as usual. |
I remember the predictions from the 1980's that said Canada and Russia would be the world's leading food producers by now and the mid-West of the North American continent would be a desert. Instead, we are having record cold temperatures, record snow falls and Artic sea-ice now extends out further than it did in 1979.
More:
Of course the climate is changing — always has and always will — and there may very well be a distinct human influence on climate. Carbon dioxide is a warming agent, as are the other greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere from human activities. But the good news is that so far the observed climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases is much less than what some climate models predict. ... The recent temperature reversal comes on top of falsified climate mini-scares. One headline-grabber was that ocean circulation patterns disrupted by global warming would freeze over North America and Western Europe. "False alarm," Science magazine would later declare to little fanfare. Hurricane Katrina was featured in Al Gore's book and movie, An Inconvenient Truth, as if man, not nature, were to blame. But subsequent research has painted a very mixed picture about hurricanes in a warmer world. Most research predicts fewer tropical storms will develop, and changed wind patterns might cancel out the effect of warmer waters on hurricane strength. There is more agreement that extra-tropical storms are lessened from warming because of a diminished temperature gradient between the poles. |
That's right. Cold air from the arctic below and warm air from the tropics above. When they meet, they cause storms. The greater the temperature difference between the two, the more violent the storms. The National Oceanic & Atomospheric Administration (NOAA) actually tracked the number of tornadoes in the American mid-West during the past fifty years and found that when the temperature differential was greater (i.e. a cooler arctic region), more tornadoes formed. This runs counter to the global warming theory that warmer weather leads to more storms. The scientific data suggests that a warmer climate means fewer and less severe storms.
Bradley goes on:
Gore's scenario about a 20-foot sea-level rise in man's future has also not sat well with science. The modest sea-level rise of recent decades — continuing a trend of the past centuries for reasons that are not well understood — is expected to continue. While Greenland is losing ice, Antarctica is gaining ice. Melting Arctic sea ice, meanwhile, does not affect sea level — nor does the growth of sea ice in the southern ocean — for the same reason that melting ice cubes do not cause a drink to spill. The sea-level debate concerns inches, not feet, for future decades and even centuries. |
Rememeber the claims that barrier islands such as the Outer Banks of North Carolina would be underwater by now? Well, the barrier islands are still there.
Evidence continues to mount that global warming alrmists have pulled a huge multi-billion dollar hoax. That money could have been better spent elsewhere.
You can access the complete article on-line here:
Climate-Change Alarmism Runs Into A Reality Check
Robert L. Bradley
Houston Chronicle
January 8, 2009
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