Comprehensive article by Marlo Lewis summarizing point by point what is wrong with IPCC case for Global Warming

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-060403C

More fairystories from CSIRO
Australia's  CSIRO, our premier scientific org  tells us from the news.com.au website:
Nation to face more floods, rain
June 5, 2003

AUSTRALIA'S coast will suffer from more frequent wild storms and endure more floods in the next 50 years thanks to global warming, scientists have predicted. The CSIRO today said most scientists now agreed that by 2050 the sea level would rise by 10 to 40 centimetres, ( Lets just hold it here a second. Scientists from  the NATIONAL TIDAL FACILITY AUSTRALIA at  The Flinders University of South Australia who are charged with monitoring Australian and Pacific tide gauges say that Australian sea level is rising at an average 0.3 mm per year. Which equates to a monster extra 15 mm (or 1.5 cm) by 2050 not 10 to 40 cm as CSIRO says. )  tropical cyclones would increase in intensity and there would be more rain. "The community will become vulnerable to these changes as increasing numbers of people move to the coast," it said. The combined influence of a rising sea level and extreme weather would deliver a rise in flood heights, with more areas becoming flood-prone. "This equates to flooding over an area much larger than has been historically affected," CSIRO's atmospheric research scientist Debbie Abbs said.  "What isn't a flood-prone area may now become one in the future." In 50 years, floods in Cairns could cover about twice the area they do now, the CSIRO said. The number of flood-causing storm surges was likely to increase due to the higher sea level, its research found. On average, a storm that would normally be expected every 100 years would hit every 40 years if sea levels rose by 40cm. "In southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, our results suggest damage costs associated with flooding would increase by half if sea level rose by 20cm and more than double if sea level were to rise by 40cm," Dr Abbs said.  "Changes in the intensity and the frequency of rainfall will make these problems worse. "We estimate that severe rainfall events may become up to 30 per cent more intense and occur more frequently."  The scientists used computer models to reach their conclusions.
Coolwire comment:  And taxpayers pay for this !!

Goldilocks and the Three Climatologists

[A fairy tale based on page 11 of the 2001 IPCC WG-1 Summary for Policymakers]

Once upon a time, there was a little Irish girl called Goldilocks.  Sure and she was a pretty little ting.  She lived in the forest, and loved to roam about and learn about nature.  Once she even joined a tree-ring circus to find out what the temperature was 1000 years ago.  But no matter how she tried to Cook the data, the results were as poor as wood.

One day, Goldilocks decided to find out what caused climate.  She went deep down into the forest – about as low as you can go, in fact – until she came to the house of the three climatologists.  They were out to lunch as usual, so Goldilocks decided to go in and wait.

On the table she found three bowls filled with tempting model results.  The first one had only natural forcings in it.  Goldilocks took one taste and spat it out: “Begorrah, dat’s too hot!” she cried.  The next plate contained only anthropogenic forcings, but it was too cold.  The third plate had both natural and anthropogenic forcings.  Goldilocks thought it was just right.  She drew the moral that when it comes to climate attribution, we should all swallow luke-warm mush.  As far as she was concerned, the story should have ended there.

But what’s this? Looking out the window, Goldilocks spies the three climatologists coming up the garden path.  For once they aren’t leading the public, so they are in a bad mood.  Our little truth-seeker hides under a pile of data.  Papa Climatologist comes in first.  He’s a greenhouse man, but he feels like a bear with a sore head.  Like many a Frenchman, he drinks heavily at lunchtime, but puts his problems down to an overdose of sulphates. 

When he sees his plate he gets very steamed up.  “Someone’s been fiddling with my variables”, he booms, “Et ça fait mal à la Tett.”  For once his wife agrees with him.  She’s a sunny little number from Denmark.  (Don’t mind her spots, it’s her total radiance that counts.)  But as usual she cannot get a word in edgeways before Baby Climatologist starts screaming: “Someone’s been fiddling with MY variables, and they’ve swallowed the lot!”

The end of this story is grim.  The climatologists throw all the data out the window and find Goldilocks quaking in fear.  She now knows the truth so the climatologists will not let her out.  In the end they make her take up a modelling career.  We won’t dwell on the indignities she has to suffer in that, but I can tell you that she never recovers her self-respect.

*****THE END******

In our "Blame it on Global Warming" series;

The CBC report:http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/04/06/cod030406

SMITH SOUND, NFLD. - Thousands of dead northern cod washed ashore in Smith Sound, Newfoundland, on the weekend. Another url; http://www.fisherycrisis.com/DFO/frozencod.htm Thanks to Louis Hissink for this one.

20TH CENTURY CLIMATE NOT SO HOT
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Release No: 03-10  For Immediate Release: March 31, 2003

Cambridge, MA -- A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D. were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.

Smithsonian astronomers Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas, with co-authors Craig Idso and Sherwood Idso (Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change) and David Legates (Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware), compiled and examined results from more than 240 research papers published by thousands of researchers over the past four decades. Their report, covering a multitude of geophysical and biological climate indicators, provides a detailed look at climate changes that occurred in different regions around the world over the last 1000 years.    Soon, Willie, Sallie Baliunas, Craig Idso, Sherwood Idso and David R. Legates, 2003. Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal. Energy & Environment, in the print March 2003.

"Many true research advances in reconstructing ancient climates have occurred over the past two decades," Soon says, "so we felt it was time to pull together a large sample of recent studies from the last 5-10 years and look for patterns of variability and change. In fact, clear patterns did emerge showing that regions worldwide experienced the highs of the Medieval Warm Period and lows of the Little Ice Age, and that 20th century temperatures are generally cooler than during the medieval warmth."

Soon and his colleagues concluded that the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1000 years, nor is it the most extreme. Their findings about the pattern of historical climate variations will help make computer climate models simulate both natural and man-made changes more accurately, and lead to better climate forecasts especially on local and regional levels. This is especially true in simulations on timescales ranging from several decades to a century.

Historical Cold, Warm Periods Verified

Studying climate change is challenging for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the bewildering variety of climate indicators - all sensitive to different climatic variables, and each operating on slightly overlapping yet distinct scales of space and time. For example, tree ring studies can yield yearly records of temperature and precipitation trends, while glacier ice cores record those variables over longer time scales of several decades to a century.

Soon, Baliunas and colleagues analyzed numerous climate indicators including: borehole data; cultural data; glacier advances or retreats; geomorphology; isotopic analysis from lake sediments or ice cores, tree or peat celluloses (carbohydrates), corals, stalagmite or biological fossils; net ice accumulation rate, including dust or chemical counts; lake fossils and sediments; river sediments; melt layers in ice cores; phenological (recurring natural phenomena in relation to climate) and paleontological fossils; pollen; seafloor sediments; luminescent analysis; tree ring growth, including either ring width or maximum late-wood density; and shifting tree line positions plus tree stumps in lakes, marshes and streams.

"Like forensic detectives, we assembled these series of clues in order to answer a specific question about local and regional climate change: Is there evidence for notable climatic anomalies during particular time periods over the past 1000 years?" Soon says. "The cumulative evidence showed that such anomalies did exist."

The worldwide range of climate records confirmed two significant climate periods in the last thousand years, the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period. The climatic notion of a Little Ice Age interval from 1300 to 1900 A.D. and a Medieval Warm Period from 800 to 1300 A.D. appears to be rather well-confirmed and wide-spread, despite some differences from one region to another as measured by other climatic variables like precipitation, drought cycles, or glacier advances and retreats.

"For a long time, researchers have possessed anecdotal evidence supporting the existence of these climate extremes," Baliunas says. "For example, the Vikings established colonies in Greenland at the beginning of the second millennium that died out several hundred years later when the climate turned colder. And in England, vineyards had flourished during the medieval warmth. Now, we have an accumulation of objective data to back up these cultural indicators."

The different indicators provided clear evidence for a warm period in the Middle Ages. Tree ring summer temperatures showed a warm interval from 950 A.D. to 1100 A.D. in the northern high latitude zones, which corresponds to the "Medieval Warm Period." Another database of tree growth from 14 different locations over 30-70 degrees north latitude showed a similar early warm period. Many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to be greater than that of the 20th century.

The study -- funded by NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the American Petroleum Institute -- will be published in the Energy and Environment journal. A shorter paper by Soon and Baliunas appeared in the January 31, 2003 issue of the Climate Research journal.

Photos of key climate indicators are available online at  http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/press/pr0310image.html

Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) is a joint collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the Harvard College Observatory. CfA scientists organized into six research divisions study the origin, evolution, and ultimate fate of the universe.

For more information, contact:

David Aguilar, Director of Public Affairs
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7462
daguilar@cfa.harvard.edu

Christine Lafon, Public Affairs Specialist
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
617-495-7463
clafon@cfa.harvard.edu

From The Sunday Telegraph, 6 April 2003
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F04%2F06%2Fnclim06.xml

By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent

Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented" global warming have been seriously undermined by new research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the Middle Ages.

From the outset of the global warming debate in the late 1980s, environmentalists have said that temperatures are rising higher and faster than ever before, leading some scientists to conclude that greenhouse gases from cars and power stations are causing these "record-breaking" global temperatures.

Last year, scientists working for the UK Climate Impacts Programme said that global temperatures were "the hottest since records began" and added: "We are pretty sure that climate change due to human activity is here and it's accelerating."

This announcement followed research published in 1998, when scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia declared that the 1990s had been hotter than any other period for 1,000 years.

Such claims have now been sharply contradicted by the most comprehensive study yet of global temperature over the past 1,000 years. A review of more than 240 scientific studies has shown that today's temperatures are neither the warmest over the past millennium, nor are they producing the most extreme weather - in stark contrast to the claims of the environmentalists.

The review, carried out by a team from Harvard University, examined the findings of studies of so-called "temperature proxies" such as tree rings, ice cores and historical accounts which allow scientists to estimate temperatures prevailing at sites around the world.

The findings prove that the world experienced a Medieval Warm Period between the ninth and 14th centuries with global temperatures significantly higher even than today.

They also confirm claims that a Little Ice Age set in around 1300, during which the world cooled dramatically. Since 1900, the world has begun to warm up again - but has still to reach the balmy temperatures of the Middle Ages.

The timing of the end of the Little Ice Age is especially significant, as it implies that the records used by climate scientists date from a time when the Earth was relatively cold, thereby exaggerating the significance of today's temperature rise.

According to the researchers, the evidence confirms suspicions that today's "unprecedented" temperatures are simply the result of examining temperature change over too short a period of time.

The study, about to be published in the journal Energy and Environment, has been welcomed by sceptics of global warming, who say it puts the claims of environmentalists in proper context. Until now, suggestions that the Middle Ages were as warm as the 21st century had been largely anecdotal and were often challenged by believers in man-made global warming.

Dr Philip Stott, the professor emeritus of bio-geography at the University of London, told The Telegraph: "What has been forgotten in all the discussion about global warming is a proper sense of history."

According to Prof Stott, the evidence also undermines doom-laden predictions about the effect of higher global temperatures. "During the Medieval Warm Period, the world was warmer even than today, and history shows that it was a wonderful period of plenty for everyone."

In contrast, said Prof Stott, severe famines and economic collapse followed the onset of the Little Ice Age around 1300. He said: "When the temperature started to drop, harvests failed and England's vine industry died. It makes one wonder why there is so much fear of warmth."

The United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the official voice of global warming research, has conceded the possibility that today's "record-breaking" temperatures may be at least partly caused by the Earth recovering from a relatively cold period in recent history. While the evidence for entirely natural changes in the Earth's temperature continues to grow, its causes still remain mysterious.

Dr Simon Brown, the climate extremes research manager at the Meteorological Office at Bracknell, said that the present consensus among scientists on the IPCC was that the Medieval Warm Period could not be used to judge the significance of existing warming.

Dr Brown said: "The conclusion that 20th century warming is not unusual relies on the assertion that the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon. This is not the conclusion of IPCC."

He added that there were also doubts about the reliability of temperature proxies such as tree rings: "They are not able to capture the recent warming of the last 50 years," he said.

Copyright 2003, The Sunday Telegraph

Dr. Douglas Hoyt has written in with the following comment.
"Concerning the IPCC scenarios, I would like to make a comment on the upper scenario that causes a 5.8 C warming and that everyone quotes. It requires a CO2 concentration in 2100 of about 1260 ppm. To reach it, CO2 would need to increase by 9 ppm/year or 6 times faster than the current rate. This requires burning 36 Gt of fossil fuel per year. In one decade more fossil
fuel would be burned than in the entire 20th century. Over a century, it requires 3600 Gt of fossil fuel to be burned but the upper limit on fossil fuels in the earth is 4000 Gt. Actually only about 1000 Gt is probably extractable economically, leading to an upper limit on CO2 of about 620 ppm.
So any scenario with more than 620 ppm in 2100 is probably looney toon as you say."

Doug has a website (see my links page) where he compares the several  global temperature datasets at length.

From: http://unfoundation.org/unwire/current.asp#32961 posted 4 April 03
CLIMATE CHANGE: U.N. Scientists Rebut Emissions Projection Criticisms  Ten U.N. scientists writing in the next issue of Energy and  Environment rebut criticisms published in The Economist of the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's method for forecasting  the economic development that drives industrial production and,  consequently, emissions of the greenhouse gases scientists believe  are behind global warming.
The punchline is: "Mr. Castles and Mr. Henderson have focused on constructing a 'problem' that does not exist," the U.N. experts write.
Coolwire keeps being amazed that de Nile is so often not just a river in Egypt.

This article from NZPA is typical of the pontifications of IPCC accolytes that the media imbibe so breathlessly.
Problem is, when you look at the data, the whole idea so aften crumbles in your hands. Coolwire  comments in green.
Drought a timely reminder of climate change - scientist
01 April 2003
Drought-stricken New Zealanders should look upon the big "dry" as a timely reminder of the coming climate changes, a senior American climate scientist says.

The main way future climate change is likely to be felt in New Zealand is through changes in rainfall patterns, with more intense bursts of rain leading to floods, and prolonged dry periods causing drought, United States National Centre for Atmospheric Research senior scientist Kevin Trenberth said. There we go again, the future is just so bad, bad, bad.

Many parts of New Zealand are experiencing the worst drought in 30 years.

Dr Trenberth said there was a lot of evidence that climate change was real, including a global mean temperature increase, glaciers melting and a rise in sea levels.  Coolwire thinks of the abundant evidence of past "climate change", such as multiple Ice Ages, Medieval Warm Period etc and we do not need Dr. Trenberth's assurance that, "...climate change was real,...".

The recent bushfires in Australia were one example of a climatic event that could be linked to global warming: higher than average temperatures increased evaporation and caused particularly dry conditions leading to the fires.   How could you possibly link the fires to "global warming" when 2002 was only the 40th warmest year in Sydney since 1859.  Also, in case you did not know, the 1939 bushfires are the most severe on record.  Just does not fit the "global warming" syndrome that has everything bad getting worse, does it Dr. Trenberth.

Dr Trenberth said the current El Nino drought on the South Island's east coast and in much of the central and lower North Island made it clear that drought could gut regional economies.  Right, let's look at the temperature record for Christchurch and we see that 2002 was only the 61st warmest year since 1864.  Oops !!, I did it again, data just does not back up the drought / warming connection.

"Increasing climate variability and longer dry periods with higher temperatures will likely increase in intensity in the future," Dr Trenberth said.   We have heard all this before from the CSIRO.

Globally, effects of climate change combined with world population growth would place increasing pressure on natural resources such as water.

"Fresh water scarcity will become one of the biggest problems in the world," he said. "By 2050, the world population is predicted to be 9.3 billion, and 7 billion people in 60 countries will not have an adequate water supply".

Even with big cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, the world was locked into some degree of climate change due to past and present emissions already in the atmosphere – particularly long-term sea-level rise.

"We can't make climate change go away, but we can slow it down," he said.

The international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Kyoto Protocol, was a step in the right direction.

Dr Trenberth has been in New Zealand for the seventh International Conference on Southern Hemisphere Meteorological and Oceanography which finished at the weekend.

NASA Top Story March 20, 2003 - (date of web publication)
NASA STUDY FINDS INCREASING SOLAR TREND THAT CAN  CHANGE CLIMATE
Since the late 1970s, the amount of solar radiation the sun emits, during times of quiet sunspot activity, has increased by nearly .05 percent per decade, according to a NASA funded study.

"This trend is important because, if sustained over many decades, it could cause significant climate change,"  said Richard Willson, a  researcher affiliated with NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Earth Institute, New York. He is the lead author of the study recently published in Geophysical  Research Letters.
For rest of rivetting yarn go to NASA TOP STORY web site.

You read it first here.
 

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