The Australian Antarctic Division has been condemned
this week for the mutilation of elephant seals at Macquarie Island (800
miles south of Tasmania in sub-Antarctic waters) for `scientific'
research. The island is under Tasmanian state jurisdiction and a visit
by a state government wildlife officer to the island revealed that scientists
had been hot-branding elephant seals in the name of science for the last
7 years. These brands resulted in numerous animals becoming severely infected
with large weeping open wounds. Many seals also had position fixing
devices attached to them, which later caused chafing and further development
of open wounds.
To complete this scientific assault upon an innocent
wild species, seals were routinely subjected to traumatic `stomach lavaging'
during beaching so the scientists could study the contents of their stomachs,
to see how climate change among other things was affecting their feeding
habits.
These practices were even approved by the Division's
Animal Ethics Committee, which begs the question as to what set of ethics
this committee was working to. Maybe it was just another `proxy study'
to them.
As to justification, Climate Change was one reason
(how else would they have got the funding?).
In September last year, the federal environment minister, Senator Robert
Hill, prolaimed a national marine park around Macquarie Island (itself
on the World Heritage List). He said in part -
"While populations have
increased since the end of the commercial harvesting of seals, the species
inhabiting Australian waters still face a range of threats including competition
with fishermen for fish; entanglement in nets; oil spills and chemical
contaminants; tourism; climate change; disturbance
by aircraft and boats and deliberate killing," (my
emphasis)
It seems science itself was perhaps the biggest threat
of all to the species.
The Antarctic Division adopted
12 strategies for their seal research. Item 2 involved the attachment
of the position fixing devices. Item 4 authorised stomach lavaging from
newly-beached seals. Item 5 says - "Mark ~2,000
pups /year for survivorship determinations" This marking
was by large red hot branding irons. Other items in the list involved
weighing animals in large numbers, yet a further disturbance to the seals.
Item 12 says "Attempt to correlate annual pup
mass means with `oceanic events'." (eg.
climate change).
When
the story broke this week, the Antarctic Division quickly announced
it was terminating the branding of seals as it was now no longer `appropriate'.
`Sea
Level Rollercoaster' (2
Apr 2000)
It has long been assumed that
sea levels have remained fairly constant for the last 6,000 years or more,
with man being the only agent of possible future sea level rise.
This assumption is now challenged
by new Australian evidence to be published shortly by Prof. Peter Flood,
Dr Robert Baker and Dr Bob Haworth. According
to ABC `Quantum', deposits of semi-fossilised shellfish and calcareous
coated worms in caves and walls around the Australian coast indicate there
were substantial changes in sea level over the last 6,000 years. Since
these species live at the mid-tide point in such areas , finding their
semi-fossilised remains at heights several metres above current mean sea
level means the sea level was that much higher in the past.
They also found that mean sea
level fell one or two metres in less than 100 years, 3,000-3,500 years
ago during a cooling of the climate.
This further raises the possibility
that the populating of Pacific Islands by Polynesians was made possible
by the sudden exposure of coral atolls about 3,000 years ago as the sea
level fell around them.
These latest findings may also
help to explain the apparent fall in sea level by about 30 cm between 1841
and 1890 as indicated by the sea level
benchmark on the `Isle of the Dead' in Port Arthur, Tasmania, put there
by Antarctic explorer Sir James Clark Ross in 1841.
See
the latest update to the `Isle of the Dead' story here
Record
Snow in Norway (28-Mar
2000)
OSLO, March 28, Reuters report
record snowfalls in northern Norway which have triggered destructive avalanches.
More than two metres (6½
feet) of snow fell in Tromso (northern
Norway's biggest city), so far this month,
a record snowfall for March.
Meteorologists say that the record
snows are not evidence that the planet is getting colder -- and may even
be a side-effect of global warming (time for
the violins).
"Warmer temperatures bring
more evaporation from the sea, which means more humidity and precipitation,"
said Jan Erik Paulsen of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute.
So there you have it -
If it's warmer, it's global warming.
If it's colder, it's global warming.
If there's less snow, it's global warming.
If there's more snow, it's global warming.
If glaciers retreat, it's global warming.
If glaciers advance, it's global warming.
Less or more rain - it's global warming.
Could we even recognise cooling?
Danse
Macabre (19 Mar 2000)
The NRC, when confronted with
the growing divergence between trends in the satellite temperature record
and that of the surface record, decided that both
were right and that the problem must therefore lay in a hitherto undiscovered
change in the atmospheric lapse rate (ie.
change of temperature with altitude).
This has become the new dogma
of the Greenhouse industry, to explain away what any common-sense analysis
would suggest, namely that one of the record sets could actually be wrong.
The satellite record has been subjected to several searching (and
even hostile) reviews, with nothing more than
a few hundredths of a degree errors found (and
since corrected). The satellites are further
supported by the sonde record which shows the same long-term trends.
In other words, the `surface
record' is long overdue for the same kind of searching (and
independent) review that the satellites received.
But to suggest this to an industry addicted to massive funding is to be
greeted by an irrational `cross to a vampire' response.
The latest scientific contortion
to reinforce the NRC's "It's all due
to lapse rate variability" line comes
from that Bastille of the Greenhouse industry, the Hadley Centre in England.
In a new paper (GRL.27, No.7, pp 997-1000,
Apr 1 2000, "Decadal variability in the lower-tropospheric lapse rate"),
messrs. Parker & Folland mount a very weak case to suggest this very
lapse rate effect.
But, to escape having to confront
the issue that it is the surface which is in urgent need of review, they
simply brushed the problem aside thus - "The
reliability of surface data has also been questioned, but there is no convincing
evidence of large uncertainties [Jones et al. 1999]".
Convincing to whom? Not to them
obviously. To justify their statement, they cite a reference, Jones et
al. 1999, who is one of the key people responsible for compiling that surface
record to begin with! To emphasise the point, they add - "errors
are only ±0.05°C for annual hemispheric averages of surface
temperature [Jones et al. 1999].", again
citing Jones, uncritically treating him as both judge and jury in his own
cause. (the satellites are now accurate to
±0.01°C.)
The Hadley Centre runs one of
the major climate models (UKMO), the very models which have been used as
authority to show we will all have a big warming. However, when it comes
to these models reproducing this alleged lapse rate effect, they make this
telling admission - "To date [Bengtsson
et al. 1999] global climate models have not been able to reproduce such
variability".
In order to defend the
indefensible, the Greenhouse industry are clearly hoisting themselves up
by their own petard.
Hotlanta
(26 Mar 2000)
A new
study by NASA has used satellite imagery to focus on a well-known problem
- the `Urban Heat Island Effect'. The difference with NASA's approach is
that it is now possible to determine the full extent of the problem.
In particular, they focus on the city of Atlanta, Georgia,
sometimes nicknamed `Hotlanta' due to the intense summer heat and humidity.
Data from GISS
shows that Atlanta has warmed about 2°C in the last 100 years compared
with Newnan, a small town about 50 km southwest of Atlanta. But the GISS
`adjustment' for urbanisation in Atlanta is only 1°C.
Soothing reassurances that the heat island effect has
been compensated for in determining global mean temperature flies in the
face of station data from all round the world (see `Hot in the City' item
above) where it is quite obvious that the necessary adjustments are inadequate.
The claimed global warming of +0.6°C over the last
100 years would be more than halved if the urban stations like Atlanta
were adjusted properly, which reinforces the point that an independent
review of the surface record and how it is compiled is urgent and long
overdue.
Hot
in the City (12 Mar
2000)
Whenever questions are raised about the contamination
of surface temperature data by urbanisation, the so-called `Urban Heat
Island Effect' (UHI), we get soothing reassurances
that this effect has been fully corrected in the thousands of temperature
records which make up the global averages published by GISS and CRU.
The UHI affects all urban areas, the bigger the city,
the bigger the effect. It results from sunlight being absorbed by harsh
concrete structures and releasing that heat into the urban atmosphere.
This effect is particularly evident at night when the temperature can be
several degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside. Even cities in
cold climates have heat islands due to heat release from heated buildings
and vehicles.
In my home island of Tasmania, the island's capital,
Hobart, has a population of only 129,000 and yet has a night-time heat
island which has been measured up to +5°C in places. A megalopolis
like Los Angeles with over 14 million people will obviously have a very
pronounced UHI. Where a town or city has been growing, this means the temperature
record will exhibit steady warming, caused by the urban growth and not
by genuine climate change at all. The vast majority of station records
are urban.
We can compare the `before' and `after' data for each
station (data
from GISS). The adjustment method used is to take present temperature
as the baseline and to correct past temperatures upward to allow for the
effect of growing urbanisation. In this process it is the oldest temperatures
which are normally corrected the most to bring them up to the assumed present
urban conditions.
Here are adjustments for some rapidly growing urban
centres, in population order, the figures shown (to
nearest 0.1°C) being the difference between raw and adjusted
temperatures for the earliest year in the series -
|
City
|
Population
|
Year
|
Adjustment
|
|
Los Angeles, California, USA
Tokyo, Japan
Buenos Aires, Argentina
New Delhi, India
Dallas, Texas, USA
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Athens, Greece
Ankara, Turkey
Istanbul, Turkey
Perth, Western Australia
Denver, Colorado, USA
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Eilat, Israel
|
14 millon
12 million
10 million
8.3 million
4 million
3.5 million
3.5 million
2.5 million
2.5 million
2.5 million
809,000
500,000
129,000
12,000 |
1878
1892
1931
1931
1948
1879
1939
1919
1933
1933
1897
1933
1883
1951 |
+2.0°C
+2.0°C
+1.4°C
+0.2°C
+0.2°C
+1.0°C
+0.7°C
+0.6°C
+0.2°C
+0.1°C
+0.9°C
+0.1°C
+0.5°C
nil |
What is particularly striking is just how inadequate
the adjustments appear to be. Is the Denver correction of a mere +0.1°C
over 67 years credible? The adjustments are not related to population only,
but through comparisons with neighbouring rural stations. However, these
are also likely to be contaminated by the same urban heat from the city.
For example, the adjusted record for Perth, Australia closely tracks the
record for Rottnest Island, a rural site 10 miles offshore. However, the
prevailing winds in Perth are easterly, which means that Perth's heated
air blows over Rottnest, rendering the comparison questionable.
(For the latest NASA findings on urban heat
islands, click
here)
What is clear from these comparisons is that adjustment
for UHI is inadequate and must therefore be imposing an artificial warming
creep on the global mean temperature as presented in the `surface record'.
This is the obvious reason why the satellites and the surface show contradictory
trends - the satellites are getting it right, the surface record is getting
it very wrong.
:
19th March: A correspondent, Simon Scott,
made further investigation of this population question arising from the
above item. After checking many towns and cities in the GISS database,
he finds that population figures are often wildly incorrect. For example
GISS's quoted population for Istanbul (Turkey) of 2.5 million, was based
on a 1975 census, but the 1990 census shows the Istanbul urban area to
be 6.4 million! He points to numerous other population anomalies, concluding
- "Population data as wayward and inconsistent
as these make one doubt the capacity of GISS to make the painstaking adjustments
required for credible urban heat island correction.".
A rigorous independent review of the surface record is clearly overdue.
More
on those Boreholes ... From:
Mike Sherman
(12 Mar 2000)
<mmsher@dataplusnet.com>
A look at the data and
calculations presented in the Borehole Temperature paper (`Nature'
February 2000).
From experience I know that these
types of measurements are very error prone. I looked at sets of wells that
were close to each other in order to obtain a rough estimate of the error
in the predictions from the borehole temperature model.
I randomly selected sets of wells
in the US that had the same latitude and longitude to 1/100th of a degree.
This would put all the wells within a set in an area no greater than approximately
1,100 meters per side.
There were 14 sets examined,
of which 9 had 2 wells per set, 3 had 3 wells, and 2 had 4 wells. Most
of the wells were logged in the 1960's and 1970's.
In the model the borehole temperature
gradient from lower levels is used to linearly extrapolate an estimated
pre-1500 surface temperature. The model then appears to extrapolate the
surface temperatures for 100 year periods up until the date of logging
based upon the temperature gradient at depths above those used for the
pre-1500 estimate and appoaching the surface for the most recent periods.
The data presented in the Nature paper showed a warming trend of 1°C
since 1500 for the 616 wells studied.
Of the 9 sets that had 2 wells
per set, the estimated pre-1500 surface temperature differed between the
two wells within each set by an average of 0.53°C. Of the five sets
with more than 2 wells per set, the average range of the pre-1500 predicted
base ground temperature was 0.64°C. Thus, error in estimating the pre-1500
base temperature is around 0.6°C or 60% of the total warming measured.
Of the 14 sets examined, only
4 sets predicted the same temperature trend from all the wells within a
set for the entire 500 year period. Interestingly, 8 of 14 sets had at
least one well that showed an opposite trend to the others within the set
for a minimum of a 200 year period. In other words, at least one well showed
a cooling trend for a minimum of 200 years while the one or more of the
other wells in the set showed a warming trend over that same period. This
in wells that are within 1,100m of each other.
The largest difference in the
opposite trends within a set was 2.29°C. In this set, the pre-1500
surface temperature differed by 1.2°C leaving 1.09°C attributed
to modeling error. In another set the pre-1500 temperatures were the same
within the set and the opposite trend difference was 1.36°C. Thus,
it appears that an error on the order of 1.2°C may exist in the models
prediction of temperature trends.
When we combine the base temperature
error with the trend temperature error we arrive at an error in predicted
temperature of 1.8°C. The Nature article showed a total increase in
surface temperature of 1°C. Thus, the conclusion can only be that the
increase in surface temperature shown from the borehole model is well within
the expected measurement/modeling error. Therefore,
nothing can be concluded from these projections because they are only showing
calculational noise.
The tools used to make borehole
temperature measurements are not very accurate as to actual temperatures
and are used to look for temperature anomalies in the wellbore as an indication
of flow into and out of the borehole environment. Their accuracy is highly
dependent on the operator taking the measurement. They are also affected
by the wellbore enviroment and history, making direct numerical calculations
almost meaningless.
Freezing
`Zud' Disaster in Mongolia (12 Mar 2000)
"Will Global Warming never
come?" must be the plea of thousands
of Mongolian families in this, the harshest and most icy winter they have
known. `Disaster
Relief' reports that even the old people report this freezing weather
to be worst ever. The weather pattern, known to Mongolians as a `Zud',
begins with autumn drought, followed by heavy snow and freezing rain in
winter, resulting in the formation of an ice cap over the ground preventing
herd animals from grazing. It is reported that as of 1st March some 1.3
million animals (cattle, sheep and goats)
have died in the freezing conditions and that losses per household are
running at 60 to 70% of their animals. Also dying in catastrophic numbers
are those popular icons of Mongolian culture, their horses.
Since Mongolia is land-locked
between China and Russia, the scale of the disaster there has scarcely
caught the attention of the western media, but some aid is trickling in
from the US and Russia. Much more is desperately needed.
The
Wrath of the Norsemen !
(11 Mar 2000)
The Norwegian Parliament dealt
a crushing blow to the Kyoto Protocol (on
9th March), when they over-ruled the coalition
government by deciding to proceed with desperately needed natural gas-fired
power plants.
The Norwegian government then
resigned after losing a vote of no confidence by the Parliament.
The coalition had insisted all
along that no new power plants be built until technology made it possible
to produce power without also emitting CO2. They also ruled out importing
power as this would have also come from CO2-emitting sources.
According to a Norwegian newspaper
(Dagsavisen), the former government was even
exploring the possibility of introducing electricity rationing if consumption
could not be contained through conservation or voluntary reduction.
Norway has a much easier target
under the Kyoto Protocol than most other countries, and yet even they have
now found it politically impossible to implement it.
The price the now-defunct government
paid for their adherence to the Kyoto Protocol was loss of office, loss
of power, and even worse - loss of relevance.
The forced resignation of Norway's
government provides a clear warning to other governments (many
with tougher targets under the protocol) that
continued adherence to this policy will come at a huge political cost.
The irony is that the protocol
has not even come into force! It remains unratified by anyone, especially
by the USA, and carries no legal or moral force whatever. It is unlikely
now to ever be ratified. Kyoto is now very dead.
The European Community which
spearheaded the campaign for the protocol is itself in some difficulty
in meeting the targets since the easy cuts they got from the closure of
the dirty East German industries and British coal mines are now well behind
them, and further cuts are much harder to come by. Some E.C. member countries
are now signalling their inability to meet the deadlines.
As to Al Gore and the U.S. election,
Kyoto could figure prominently in the campaign, the terms of the protocol
itself being largely his creation.
(thanks to Emily McGee
for the intel.)
Another
Boring Proxy (26 Feb
2000)
The latest proxy study of global
temperature (`Nature' 17 Feb)
involved taking temperatures in 616 boreholes on six continents. These
holes, typically 2 to 4 inches wide and a quarter of a mile deep, were
originally drilled for mining, geological research, and oil exploration.
The assumption was that temperatures
up to 500 years ago on the surface filter deep down into the ground and
remain to this day to be measured by thermometers lowered into the holes,
thus giving a temperature profile of the last 500 years - since the Little
Ice Age. As to be expected, the authors concluded there had been warming.
In all, 479 of these holes showed
average warming of 1°C since 1500, with more than half since 1900.
That makes the 20th century warming amount to +0.5°C. Since we know
nearly all of that is assumed to have been achieved by 1940
(now widely accepted to have been caused by increased solar activity),
this study hardly supports the man-made global warming theory , even though
that is the spin which has been put on it for public and media consumption.
But there are some `deep holes'
in the study (apologies for the pun).
Firstly, the ground temperature
is not the same as surface atmospheric temperature. Stand on the ground
on a hot day on an Australian mining site to see what a difference direct
solar heating of the ground can do. It's enough to fry eggs on exposed
rocks. That's the heat the borehole study was finding, not atmospheric
temperature as such. The typical site upon which such holes were bored
were not shaded woodlands but ground ripped bare by miners and prospectors,
so that solar heating of the ground would be much more significant than
an equivalent patch of forested or shaded ground.
Secondly, these holes were on
land. That leaves out the 70% ocean area of the planet, and especially
the southern hemisphere which is 85% ocean.
Finally, the very act of drilling
is itself a heat-inducing activity. Thermal contamination of the boreholes
by the drilling would make any such analysis purely speculative at best.
We can but await the next exotic
proxy the greenhouse industry dredges up to make us see something that
simple thermometers have not so far detected.
No
Early Ice Melt (10
Feb 2000)
The University of Tasmania's
Antarctic Research Centre,
headed by Prof Garth Paltridge, has just released (10th
Feb 2000) a Position Statement on the prospects of
sea level rise resulting from `global warming'.
The statement puts the time scales
of sea level change into the hundreds, even thousands, of years, not decades
as is commonly promoted by environmentalists and the IPCC.
Their calculations suggest that
a hypothetical warming of a few degrees might trigger the melting of much
of the Greenland ice-sheet, but that it would take, not decades, but one
or two thousand years.
As for the Antarctic, their conclusion
is - "The Antarctic ice-sheet is much
larger. Its effective volume is equivalent to 55 meters of global sea level.
It is not expected that it would melt as a result of a warming of two or
three degrees. This is because temperatures in most of Antarctica are well
below the melting point of ice."
This may be stating the obvious,
as it needs no models to figure out that ice at -20°C cannot melt if
the temperature rises a few degrees. However, it was clearly necessary
at this time to state the obvious.
"In the shorter term - that
is, over the next century or two - it is expected that there will be relatively
little melting of the ice-sheets. Indeed it is expected that the volume
of Antarctic ice will increase slightly because greater snowfall caused
by higher evaporation from the warmer oceans will outweigh any increase
in melting."
They conclude that "over
the next century or two", the only sea
level rise that is possible would be from thermal expansion of the oceans
and/or the melting of non-polar glaciers, but they also admit that even
here the processes "are not sufficiently well understood".
It seems it may be a good idea
to buy that seafront property after all...
Bronzed
Aussies? - Not This Summer ! (1
Feb 2000)
It's now official. Australia's
National Climate Centre has announced that this current southern summer
in Australia has been the coldest in at least 50 years.
As if we needed telling. Some
days in January have been so cold in Tasmania that many people have been
lighting their household log fires, months before they would normally do
so.
The cool summer was blamed by
the NCC on La Niña, but this is neither the longest nor the biggest
such La Niña in recent decades.
Much more serious is the associated
collapse in the ice cream market.
The
Russia House (19 Jan 2000)
Mys Smidta, Siberia, 68.9N 179.4W,
(data from GISS)
The Greenhouse industry says the global surface temperature
record shows a `real' warming, and not a false one created by heat islands
etc. They particularly cite the huge Soviet/Russian landmass as exhibiting
a stong warming in the 1990s (a warming not shared
in the surface record of the United States, nor shared by the satellite
record). This Russian `warming' strongly affects the overall global
temperature calculation.
But based on what evidence?
This table is the 1990s temperature data for `Mys Smidta',
a weather station in Siberia, Russia, close to the Bering Strait. (`ND'
indicates no data available). This station, and many like it, were
returning reliable and consistent records for many decades (including
the war years) right up to 1990.
But, since the fall of communism in 1991, the record
has become fractured with missing data, the value or accuracy of the remaining
data thus being highly questionable. This pattern is repeated all across
Russia.
But the $5 billion Greenhouse industry still
prefers this garbage to the satellite record.
|
Jan |
Feb |
Mar |
Apr |
May |
Jun |
Jul |
Aug |
Sep |
Oct |
Nov |
Dec |
|
1990
|
-28.7
|
-31.1
|
-21.2
|
-8.3
|
-2.6
|
2.1
|
4.1
|
4.9
|
0.3
|
-7.3
|
-15.1
|
-26.3
|
|
1991
|
-25.2
|
-27.6
|
-24.3
|
-16.8
|
-3.3
|
ND
|
4.8
|
4.4
|
1.1
|
-4.9
|
-12
|
-20.3
|
|
1992
|
-26.3
|
-26
|
ND
|
-15.3
|
-5.1
|
ND
|
6.2
|
3.9
|
-1.7
|
-10.2
|
-16.6
|
-24.6
|
|
1993
|
-19.4
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
-6
|
3
|
7.9
|
ND
|
ND
|
-7.8
|
ND
|
-27
|
|
1994
|
-26.3
|
-27.7
|
-28.3
|
-19.7
|
-7.9
|
ND
|
2.8
|
3.5
|
-1.1
|
-12.3
|
-22.2
|
-27.2
|
|
1995
|
-24.9
|
-25.9
|
-24.9
|
-16.7
|
-4.7
|
1
|
3.9
|
4.2
|
ND
|
-6.3
|
-9.3
|
-22.9
|
|
1996
|
-20.5
|
-25.9
|
-15.6
|
-18.4
|
-1.9
|
3.2
|
3.4
|
3.4
|
-0.1
|
-8
|
-11.8
|
-21.1
|
|
1997
|
-25.7
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
5.6
|
0.2
|
-7.4
|
ND
|
-29
|
|
1998
|
-27.4
|
-29.5
|
-22.9
|
-18.4
|
-8.7
|
1.3
|
ND
|
1.5
|
-0.3
|
-5
|
-14.2
|
-21.7
|
|
1999
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
ND
|
-11.7
|
ND
|
-27.3
|
Cold
Comfort for Alaska Crabs (15
Jan 2000)
Ice pushing much deeper south
than normal has resulted in the postponement of the start of the multimillion-dollar
Alaska snow crab fishery because of unusual ice buildup in the Bering Sea.
Officials of the Alaska Dept.
of Fish and Game has speculated that the fishery, scheduled to open on
Jan. 15, might have to remain closed until late April or May, if ice extending
much farther south than normal makes most of the fishing area inaccessible.
Ice conditions are reported to
be the most severe since January 1975, with the St. Paul Island and harbor
(with processing plants) iced in and inaccessible.
Such a delay is unprecedented
for the 240-boat crab fleet.
(thanks to Gordon
Watts for the intel)
Comments
on "New Evidence Helps Reconcile Global Warming Discrepancies; Confirms
That Earth's Surface Temperature Is Rising"
- (The
NRC report already commented on elsewhere on this page)
George H. Taylor State
Climatologist, Oregon
President, American Association of State Climatologists
Oregon State University
January 13, 2000
"New Evidence Helps Reconcile
Global Warming Discrepancies; Confirms That Earth's Surface Temperature
Is Rising" describes how surface temperatures have warmed in
the past 20 years, even though upper-atmosphere temperatures have remained
stable. This "surface warming" is
said to be due to "a combination of human activities
and natural causes," and is reputed to be real evidence that
the earth's temperature is rising.
While I agree with most of what appears in the press
release, some additional comments are warranted. As a state climatologist,
one whose job it is to examine data records for quality, I am very cautious
about using data from individual stations to infer global trends. Local
biases, particularly the "urban heat island" effect, can bias
temperature measurements. Tom Karl, Director of the National Climatic Data
Center (NCDC), has the same concerns. For
that reason, Karl initiated the Historical Climatology Network (HCN) program
a number of years ago. NCDC selected reliable long-term stations, those
thought to be free of local biases (neglecting, for
example, stations in growing urban areas). When HCN temperature
trends are plotted for the last 105 years, there is a very slight warming,
but the warmest period of the century occurred in the late 1930s and early
1940s. See for yourself: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ol/documentlibrary/cvb.html.
The December issues of Climate Variations Bulletin show the annual trends.
What this means is that the long-term trends in temperature
in one of the largest countries in the world, using the finest available
surface temperature data, do not show the warming that the global data
sets indicate. Why not? As Tom Karl suggested in the March, 1989 Bulletin
of the American Meteorological Society, "all
global temperature data sets are contaminated by a number of biases of
varying magnitudesof which the most serious may be the global-warming bias."
These statements, which were Karl's rationale for formulating the
HCN, still ring true. My explanation for the difference between U.S. temperatures
(which show almost no warming this century)
and global data (which show a lot) is that
the latter is of considerably lower quality, and much more biased, than
the carefully-constructed HCN data set.
One of the best overviews on global climate changed
I have seen was Pat Michaels' testimony before the Subcommittee on National
Economic Growth, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs, of the U.S.
House of Representatives in October, 1999. If you haven't seen it, it's
worth a read (http://www.cato.org/testimony/ct-pm100699.html).
Michaels listed several major conclusions, all of them
based on peer-reviewed journal publications. Of most significance are:
* Observed surface warming is
far below what the climate models have forecast. Even though the model
predictions for future climate have steadily dropped as they become more
sophisticated, their predictions have consistently exceeded actual observations.
* Most of the warming has been
in winter, and confined to the very coldest airmasses. The warming outside
of these airmasses is only 0.2C per century.
* Climate variation has declined
significantly on a global basis while there is no change for precipitation.
* In the United States, streamflow
records show that drought has decreased while flooding has not increased.
* Maximum winds in hurricanes
that affect the United States have significantly declined, and there is
no evidence for a global increase in mid-latitude storms.
* The Kyoto Protocol to the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will have no discernable
impact on global climate within any reasonable policy timeframe.
Ten years ago, I believed the modelers that global
warming was a serious problem that needed attention and intervention. As
I studied the issue year by year, I became less and less convinced that
the "problem" was truly serious. My current bottom line: while
human activities doubtless influence climate (on
a local, regional, and even a global scale), the human-induced climate
change from expected increases in greenhouse gases will be a rather small
fraction of the natural variations. I don't foresee global warming causing
big problems, and believe that even if we controlled every molecule of
human emissions we would still see substantial climate change, just as
we always have.
George H. Taylor
(reproduced with author's
permission)
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