SPPI News Search July 26, 2008
Lonely voice of dissent declared valid http://www.smh.com.au/news/miranda-devine/lonely-voice-of-dissent-declared- valid/2008/07/25/1216492729369.html
Miranda Devine July 26, 2008
There is something odd about the ferocious amount of energy expended suppressing any dissent from orthodoxy on climate change. After all, the climate cataclysmists have won the war of public opinion - for now, at least - with polls, business, media and Government enthusiastically on board.
So, if their case is so good, why try so fervently to extinguish other points of view? There is a disturbingly religious zeal in the attempts to silence critics and portray them as the moral equivalent of holocaust deniers.
Take the British Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, which aired on the ABC last year with an extraordinary post-show panel of debunkers assembled to denounce it. The one program which actually questioned the consensus on man's contribution to climate change, it has been singled out for condemnation and forensic dissection in a way no other program has, least of all Al Gore's error-riddled An Inconvenient Truth.
This week, the British communications regulator, Ofcom, published a long report dealing with 265 complaints about perceived inaccuracy and unfairness in Swindle.
Despite crowing from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the ABC and others, Ofcom does not vindicate Swindle's attackers. In fact, while it declared itself unable to adjudicate on the finer points of climate science, it found the program did not mislead audiences "so as to cause harm or offence".
Further, Ofcom defended the right of Channel 4 and the much-vilified producer Martin Durkin to "continue to explore controversial subject matter. While such programs can polarise opinion, they are essential to our understanding of the world around us and are amongst the most important content that broadcasters produce." Amen.
Ofcom also noted: "Although the complainants disagreed with the points made by the contributors in the programme, they did not suggest that the overall statements about climate models were factually inaccurate."
It identified one factual error - a mislabelled axis of a temperature graph - which the program had already changed in later versions and which Ofcom described as "not of such significance as to have been materially misleading so as to cause harm and offence".
Ofcom nitpicked as hard as it could and Swindle emerged virtually unscathed. I wonder how a Four Corners episode would fare under such scrutiny. The two principal complainants, the oceanographer Carl Wunsch and Sir David King, Britain's former chief scientific adviser, were found to have been wronged - but only partially.
King claimed to have been misquoted by the atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, who told the program: "There will still be people who believe that this is the end of the world - particularly when you have, for example, the chief scientist of the UK telling people that by the end of the century the only habitable place on the Earth will be the Antarctic. And humanity may survive thanks to some breeding couples who moved to the Antarctic."
Ofcom found King had not said the Antarctic would be the "only habitable place on Earth" but "the most habitable place on Earth". Big deal. However, he had not made the "breeding couples" comment, which was the invention of another cataclysmist, Sir James Lovelock.
As for Wunsch, Ofcom found the program's producers had not "sufficiently informed" him of its "polemic" nature, although they had told him their aim was to be sceptical and "to examine critically the notion that recent global warming is primarily caused by industrial emissions of [carbon dioxide]." In any case, after he complained, his interview was removed.
Ofcom dismissed Wunsch's more serious complaint that his views on the "complicated" relationship between carbon dioxide and atmospheric temperature had been misrepresented. But it acknowledged "unfairness" to him in the way his comments were placed "in the context of a range of scientists who denied the scientific consensus about the anthropogenic causes of global warming".
Ofcom also dismissed all complaints about impartiality in most of the program dealing with science. But it found the final section on Africa lacked impartiality when it claimed Western government policies "seek to restrain industrial development [in the Third World] to reduce the production of carbon dioxide", thus restricting the availability of electricity in Africa and causing health problems.
As for the climate change panel's barrage of complaints, Ofcom found the program makers did not give the UN body adequate time to respond to allegations it was "politically driven"' and other claims, but the audience was not "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence".
The Ofcom report (worth reading in full at www.ofcom.org.uk) is an embarrassment to the panel.
The fact is that, regardless of the definitive pronouncements made by politicians and economists, the science on global warming is far from finalised.
Dr David Evans, a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office for six years to 2005, is one of many insiders who have reversed earlier positions.
"There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming," he wrote this month in The Australian.
Ultimately, the integrity of the scientific community will triumph, Evans has said. "The cause of global warming is an issue that falls into the realm of science, because it is falsifiable. No amount of human posturing will affect what the cause is. The cause just physically is there, and after sufficient research and time we will know what it is."
Until then, open debate is important. It is also wise to maintain a healthy suspicion of the zealots, who insist they have all the answers - and that Australia, which is responsible for 1 per cent of the world's carbon emissions, ought to wreck its economy to prove a point.
This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/07/25/1216492729369.html
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The Global Food and Water Crisis http://co2science.org/articles/V11/N30/EDIT.php
In a paper published in the Biological Sciences section of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in July of 2007, Morison et al. report that "agriculture accounts for 80-90% of all freshwater used by humans," that "most of that is in crop production," and that "in many areas, this water use is unsustainable." As a result, they say that "farmers in many countries are now faced with legislative restrictions on use of water," noting that the Chinese government "has set a target of a reduction of 20% in water use in agriculture by the year 2020," such that "if food security for the region is not to be threatened, this must be achieved without a loss in production."
So how is this global food and water crisis to be met and overcome?
In their many pages of discussion of the subject, the four UK researchers examine the underlying relationships that connect crop carbon uptake, growth and water loss, noting that "much effort is being made to reduce water use by crops and produce 'more crop per drop'." Some of the topics they examine in the course of this discussion are designed to alter various crop characteristics that might possibly increase their water use efficiency, such as by genetic engineering, while others deal with crop management strategies, such as how and when to apply irrigation water.
Clearly, all of these approaches to getting "more crop per drop" out of our agricultural enterprises should be pursued. But what if we had a magical substance we could release to the air that would automatically lead to greater crop yields? And what if it produced those greater crop yields while using less water? And what if the many processes that put this super substance into the air were incredibly useful in their own right ... or even essential, both to our individual well-being and to the security of numerous nations?
Why, everyone would be clamoring for its release to the air, right? Wrong! Al Gore, for one, is adamantly against it. So is James Hansen, as are a host of climate alarmists, all of whom feel that the water-use-efficiency-enhancing carbon dioxide that is released to the air by the burning of coal, gas and oil -- which is no different from what every one of us emits to the atmosphere with every breath we exhale -- should not only not be allowed to continue to rise, but should be stopped in its tracks, all because tenuous speculations spawned by woefully inadequate computer- run climate models suggest that releasing more CO2 into the air will lead to catastrophic global warming.
A tiny hint of what we will experience if Al Gore and his followers have their way with the world is already upon us. It is the soaring price of basic foodstuffs caused by farmers growing biofuels in place of food crops, as well as by the increased price of oil and gas that is needed to produce and move those foods -- and move us as well -- which is caused by a reduction in gas and oil availability that is miniscule compared to what the world's climate alarmists would force us to go without.
3 Insanity is upon us, as real catastrophes lie at the doorstep, and as they are actually made worse by those who would fight imaginary ones. Truly, the situation is as described by an astute observer of some three-plus centuries ago:
The World ran Mad, and each distempered Brain, Did Strange and different Frenzies entertain.*
Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso
* Mrs. Aphra Behn. 1688. A Poem to Sir Roger L'Estrange on his third Part of the History of the Times, Relating to the Death of Sir Edmund Bury-Godfrey.
Reference Morison, J.I.L., Baker, N.R., Mullineaux, P.M. and Davies, W.J. 2007. Improving water use in crop production. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 363: 639-658.
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Little Ice Age (Regional - Europe: Central) – Summary http://co2science.org/subject/e/summaries/europecentrallia.php
Because of concerns about modern global warming and what may or may not be causing it, one of the more important things about the Little Ice Age to people of our day is the contrast it provides to the periods of warmth that preceded and followed it. In this brief review, we thus summarize the findings of a number of scientists who have studied the Little Ice Age from this perspective, focusing on what has been learned about it and its neighboring warm periods from studies conducted in Central Europe.
Filippi et al. (1999) ["] obtained stable isotope data (δ18O and δ13C) from bulk carbonate and ostracode calcite in a radiocarbon-dated sediment core removed from Lake Neuchatel in the western Swiss Lowlands at the foot of the Jura Mountains, from which they reconstructed the climatic history of the region over the prior 1500 years. Their data indicated that mean annual air temperature dropped by about 1.5�C during the transition from the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) to the Little Ice Age (LIA); and they state that "the warming during the 20th century does not seem to have fully compensated the cooling at the MWP-LIA transition," noting also that during the Medieval Warm Period, mean annual air temperatures were "on average higher than at present."
Bodri and Cermak (1999) ["] derived individual ground surface temperature histories from the temperature-depth logs of 98 separate boreholes drilled in the Czech Republic. These histories revealed the existence of a medieval warm epoch lasting from approximately AD 1100 to 1300, which they describe as "one of the warmest postglacial times." They also note that during the main phase of the Little Ice Age, from 1600-1700, all investigated territory was subjected to "massive cooling," and that "the observed recent warming may thus be easily a natural return of climate from the previous colder conditions back to a 'normal'."
Niggemann et al. (2003) ["] utilized petrographical and geochemical properties of three stalagmites found in a cave in Sauerland, Northwest Germany, to develop a climatic history of the surrounding region covering the last 17,600 years. As they describe it, the three stalagmite records "resemble records from an Irish stalagmite (McDermott et al., 1999)," which has also been described by McDermott et al. (2001). With respect to their own records, they say they provide evidence for the existence of the Little Ice Age, Medieval Warm Period and Roman Warm Period, which also implies the existence of the unnamed cold period that preceded the Roman Warm Period and what McDermott et al. (2001) call the Dark Ages Cold Period that separated the
4 Medieval and Roman Warm Periods. From this information it can be appreciated that the Little Ice Age was but one node of a millennial-scale climatic oscillation that has periodically bought multi-centennial intervals of both relative cold and warmth to Central Europe.
In a study of the serin, a bird that was of great interest to ornithologists of the 19th and 20th centuries due to the rapid expansion of its range in historical times, Kinzelbach (2004) ["] examined "all the sources of records of the serin in 16th century Europe," including "both those already known and some that have been newly discovered." This work, in Kinzelbach's words, confirmed the findings of Mayr (1926) that "north of 48�N there were no free-living populations of Serinus serinus in the 16th century." During that period, the serin may have attempted to expand its range, but Kinzelbach says it "was halted by colder periods of the Little Ice Age after 1585, only resuming a rapid expansion at the beginning of the 19th century," after which it was "able to expand its range from the Mediterranean region throughout large areas of Central Europe within a mere 200 years." Interestingly, the temperature history of Esper et al. (2002) depicts post-Little Ice Age Northern Hemispheric warming beginning at about the same time the serin began its northward migration, whereas the highly-debated hockeystick temperature history of Mann et al. (1999) does not depict post-Little Ice Age warming until about a century later.
The next study we highlight is based on the work of Antal Rethly (1879-1975), a former director of the National Meteorological and Earth Magnetism Institute of Hungary, who spent the greater portion of his long professional life collecting over 14,000 historical records related to the climate of the Carpathian Basin, and who published a four-volume set of books about them in the Hungarian language (Rethly, 1962, 1970; Rethly and Simon, 1999). These works were meticulously codified and analyzed by Bartholy et al. (2004) ["], who emphasize the importance of gaining a proper understanding of "past climate tendencies and climatological extremes," and who upon gaining that understanding report that "the warm peaks of the Medieval Warm Epoch and colder climate of the Little Ice Age followed by the recovery warming period can be detected in the reconstructed temperature index time series," either overtly or unconsciously noting that 20th-century warming is best characterized as a naturally expected event - a "recovery" from the colder era that preceded it.
In a review and analysis of other pertinent scientific literature, Kvavadze and Connor (2005) ["] "present some observations on the ecology, pollen productivity and Holocene history of Zelkova carpinifolia," a Tertiary-relict tree whose pollen "is almost always accompanied by elevated proportions of thermophilous taxa." This species, in their words, "is a mesophilous tree, requiring warm conditions," and because it requires heat and moisture during the growing period, they say that "the discovery of fossil remains in Holocene sediments can be a good indicator of optimal climatic conditions." In their analysis, for example, they find a millennial-scale oscillation of climate that places the Medieval Warm Period "from 1350 to 800 years ago," and during portions of this time interval, they report that tree lines "migrated upwards and the distribution of Zelkova broadened." What is more, they present a history of Holocene oscillations of the upper tree-line in Abkhasia -- derived by Kvavadze et al. (1992) -- that depicts slightly greater-than-present elevations during a portion of the Medieval Warm Period and much greater extensions above the current tree-line during parts of the Roman Warm Period. Last of all, and following the Medieval Warm Period, Kvavadze and Connor note that "subsequent phases of climatic deterioration (including the Little Ice Age) ... saw an almost complete disappearance of Zelkova from Georgian forests," indicative of the fact that the expected recovery warming in this region of Central Europe has not yet been completed.
Mangini et al. (2005) ["] used precisely dated δ18O data, which they derived from a stalagmite recovered from Spannagel Cave in the Central Alps of Austria, to develop a highly-resolved record of temperature over the past 2000 years based on a transfer function they derived from a comparison of their δ18O data with the reconstructed temperature history of post-1500 Europe developed by Luterbacher et al. (2004). The lowest temperatures of the past two millennia, according to the new record, occurred during the Little Ice Age (1400-1850), while the highest
5 temperatures were found in the Medieval Warm Period (MWP: 800-1300). Furthermore, Mangini et al. say that the highest temperatures of the MWP were "slightly higher than those of the top section of the stalagmite (1950) and higher than the present-day temperature." In fact, at three different points during the MWP, their data indicate temperature spikes in excess of 1�C above present (1995-1998) temperatures.
Mangini et al. additionally report that their temperature reconstruction compares well with reconstructions developed from Greenland ice cores (Muller and Gordon, 2000), Bermuda Rise ocean-bottom sediments (Keigwin, 1996), and glacier tongue advances and retreats in the Alps (Holzhauser, 1997; Wanner et al., 2000), as well as with the Northern Hemispheric temperature reconstruction of Moberg et al. (2005). Considered together, they say these several data sets "indicate that the MWP was a climatically distinct period in the Northern Hemisphere," emphasizing that "this conclusion is in strong contradiction to the temperature reconstruction by the IPCC, which only sees the last 100 years as a period of increased temperature during the last 2000 years."
In a second severe blow to IPCC dogma, Mangini et al. found "a high correlation between δ18O and δ14C, that reflects the amount of radiocarbon in the upper atmosphere," and they note that this correlation "suggests that solar variability was a major driver of climate in Central Europe during the past 2 millennia." In this regard, they report that "the maxima of δ18O coincide with solar minima (Dalton, Maunder, Sporer, Wolf, as well as with minima at around AD 700, 500 and 300)," and that "the coldest period between 1688 and 1698 coincided with the Maunder Minimum." Also, in a linear-model analysis of the percent of variance of their full temperature reconstruction that is individually explained by solar and CO2 forcing, they found that the impact of the sun was fully 279 times greater than that of the air's CO2 concentration, noting that "the flat evolution of CO2 during the first 19 centuries yields almost vanishing correlation coefficients with the temperature reconstructions."
Similar results were obtained by Buntgen et al. (2005) ["], who used the regional curve standardization technique applied to ring-width measurements from both living trees and relict wood to develop a 1052-year summer (June-August) temperature proxy from high-elevation Alpine environments in Switzerland and the western Austrian Alps. This reconstruction revealed the presence of warm conditions from the beginning of the record in AD 951 to about AD 1350, which they associated with the Medieval Warm Period, after which the Little Ice Age ensued, lasting until approximately 1850.
Analyzing a much longer period of time were Holzhauser et al. (2005) ["], who utilized high- resolution records of variations in glacier size in the Swiss Alps -- together with lake-level fluctuations in the Jura mountains, the northern French Pre-Alps and the Swiss Plateau -- in developing a 3500-year climate history of west-central Europe.
Near the beginning of the study period, their analysis revealed that "during the late Bronze Age Optimum from 1350 to 1250 BC, the Great Aletsch glacier was approximately 1000 m shorter than it is today," and they note that "the period from 1450 to 1250 BC has been recognized as a warm-dry phase in other Alpine and Northern Hemisphere proxies (Tinner et al., 2003)." Then, after an intervening unnamed cold-wet phase, when the glacier grew in both mass and length, they say that "during the Iron/Roman Age Optimum between c. 200 BC and AD 50," which is perhaps better known as the Roman Warm Period, the glacier again retreated and "reached today's extent or was even somewhat shorter than today." Next came the Dark Ages Cold Period, which they say was followed by "the Medieval Warm Period, from around AD 800 to the onset of the Little Ice Age around AD 1300," which latter cold-wet phase was "characterized by three successive [glacier length] peaks: a first maximum after 1369 (in the late 1370s), a second between 1670 and 1680, and a third at 1859/60," following which the glacier began its latest and still-ongoing recession in 1865.
6 Data pertaining to the Gorner glacier (the second largest of the Swiss Alps) and the Lower Grindelwald glacier of the Bernese Alps tell much the same story, as Holzhauser et al. report that these glaciers and the Great Aletsch glacier "experienced nearly synchronous advances" throughout the study period.
With respect to what was responsible for the millennial-scale climatic oscillation that produced the alternating periods of cold-wet and warm-dry conditions that fostered the similarly-paced cycle of glacier growth and retreat, the Swiss and French scientists report that "glacier maximums coincided with radiocarbon peaks, i.e., periods of weaker solar activity," which in their estimation "suggests a possible solar origin of the climate oscillations punctuating the last 3500 years in west-central Europe, in agreement with previous studies (Denton and Karlen, 1973; Magny, 1993; van Geel et al., 1996; Bond et al., 2001)." And to underscore that point, they conclude their paper by stating that "a comparison between the fluctuations of the Great Aletsch glacier and the variations in the atmospheric residual 14C records supports the hypothesis that variations in solar activity were a major forcing factor of climate oscillations in west-central Europe during the late Holocene."
Also producing a paper about this same time were Chapron et al. (2005) ["], who documented the Holocene evolution of Rhone River clastic sediment supply in Lake Le Bourget via sub-bottom seismic profiling and multidisciplinary analysis of well-dated sediment cores. Their work revealed that "up to five 'Little Ice Age- like' Holocene cold periods developing enhanced Rhone River flooding activity in Lake Le Bourget [were] documented at c. 7200, 5200, 2800, 1600 and 200 cal. yr BP," and that "these abrupt climate changes were associated in the NW Alps with Mont Blanc glacier advances, enhanced glaciofluvial regimes and high lake levels." They also report that "correlations with European lake level fluctuations and winter precipitation regimes inferred from glacier fluctuations in western Norway suggest that these five Holocene cooling events at 45�N were associated with enhanced westerlies, possibly resulting from a persistent negative mode of the North Atlantic Oscillation."
Situated between these Little Ice Age-like periods, of course, would have been Current Warm Period-like conditions. The most recent of these prior warm regimes (the Medieval Warm Period) would thus have been centered somewhere in the vicinity of AD 1100, while the next one back in time (the Roman Warm Period) would have been centered somewhere in the vicinity of 200 BC, which matches well with what we know about these warm regimes from many other studies (see Medieval Warm Period ["] and Roman Warm Period ["] in our Subject Index). In addition, since something other than an increase in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was obviously responsible for the establishment of these prior Current Warm Period-like regimes, it is reasonable to assume that another increase in that same "something" -- and not the coincidental rise in the air's CO2 content -- was likely responsible for terminating the Little Ice Age and ushering in the Current Warm Period.
In a paper published one year later, Joerin et al. (2006) ["] write that "the exceptional trend of warming during the twentieth century in relation to the last 1000 years highlights the importance of assessing natural variability of climate change." Why? Because we need to determine, by comparison, if there is anything unusual, unnatural, or unprecedented about the past century's increase in temperature, since these adjectives are commonly used by the world's climate alarmists to describe 20th-century global warming.
In their quest to accomplish this objective, the three Swiss researchers examined glacier recessions in the Swiss Alps over the past ten thousand years based on radiocarbon-derived ages of materials found in proglacial fluvial sediments of subglacial origin, focusing on subfossil remains of wood and peat. Combining their results with earlier data of a similar nature, they then constructed a master chronology of Swiss glacier fluctuations over the course of the Holocene.
7 This work revealed, in the words of the researchers who conducted it, that "alpine glacier recessions occurred at least 12 times during the Holocene," once again demonstrating the reality of the millennial-scale oscillation of climate that has reverberated throughout glacial and interglacial periods alike (see Climate Oscillations (Millennial Variability) ["] in our Subject Index); and as a result of this particular finding, it is clear that 20th-century global warming was not unusual. It was merely the latest example of what has been the norm throughout hundreds of thousands of years.
Second, Joerin et al. determined that glacier recessions have been decreasing in frequency since approximately 7000 years ago, and especially since 3200 years ago, "culminating in the maximum glacier extent of the 'Little Ice Age'." Consequently, the significant warming of the 20th century cannot be considered strange, since it represents a climatic rebounding from the coldest period of the current interglacial, which interglacial just happens to be the coldest of the last five interglacials (Petit et al., 1999). And when the earth has been that cold for a few centuries, it is not unnatural to expect that, once started, warming would be rather significant.
Third, the last of the major glacier recessions in the Swiss Alps occurred between about 1400 and 1200 years ago, according to Joerin et al.'s data, but between 1200 and 800 years ago, according to the data of Holzhauser et al. (2005) for the Great Aletsch Glacier. Of this discrepancy, Joerin et al. say that given the uncertainty of the radiocarbon dates, the two records need not be considered inconsistent with each other. What is more, their presentation of the Great Aletsch Glacier data indicates that the glacier's length at about AD 1000 -- when there was fully 100 ppm less CO2 in the air than there is today -- was just slightly less than its length in 2002, suggesting that the peak temperature of the Medieval Warm Period likely was slightly higher than the peak temperature of the 20th century. Consequently, 20th-century warming has likely not been unprecedented over the past millennium. And being neither unusual, unnatural nor unprecedented, there is no compelling reason to attribute 20th-century global warming to anthropogenic CO2 emissions; it has been simply a run-of-the-mill consequence of cyclically-recurring forces of nature that have manifested themselves again and again throughout earth's history at millennial-scale intervals.
About this same time, Buntgen et al. (2006) ["] developed an annually-resolved mean summer (June-September) temperature record for the European Alps. Covering the period AD 755-2004 and based on 180 recent and historic larch (Larix decidua Mill.) maximum latewood density series, the temperature history was derived using the regional curve standardization method that preserves interannual to multi-centennial temperature-related variations.
Among a number of other things, notable features identified by the researchers in this history were high temperatures in the late tenth, early thirteenth, and twentieth centuries and a prolonged cooling from ~1350 to 1700, or as they describe it: "warmth during medieval and recent times, and cold in between." Also of great interest, they report that the coldest decade of the record was the 1810s, and that even though the record extended all the way through 2004, the warmest decade of the record was the 1940s. In addition, they observed that "warm summers seem to coincide with periods of high solar activity, and cold summers vice versa." Finally, they report that comparing their newest temperature record with other regional- and large-scale reconstructions "reveals similar decadal to longer-term variability." As a result, Buntgen et al. concluded -- in the final sentence of their paper -- that in terms of being a reason for 20th-century global warming, "the twentieth-century contribution of anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosol remains insecure."
In yet another study from the same year, Eiriksson et al. (2006) ["] reconstructed the near-shore thermal history of the North Atlantic Current along the western coast of Europe over the last two millennia, based on measurements of stable isotopes, benthic and planktonic foraminifera, diatoms and dinoflagellates, as well as geochemical and sedimentological parameters, which they acquired on the Iberian margin, the West Scotland margin, the Norwegian margin and the North Icelandic shelf. In addition to identifying the Roman Warm Period (nominally 50 BC-AD 400) --
8 which exhibited the warmest sea surface temperatures of the last two millennia on both the Iberian margin and the North Icelandic shelf -- and the following Dark Ages Cold Period (AD 400-800), Eiriksson et al. report detecting the Medieval Warm Period (AD 800-1300) and the Little Ice Age (AD 1300-1900), which was followed in some records by a strong warming to the present. However, they make a point of stating that this latter warming "does not appear to be unusual when the proxy records spanning the last two millennia are examined," pretty much echoing the conclusions of the authors of several of the other papers we have discussed.
Extending the work of Mangini et al. (2005), who developed a 2000-year temperature history of the central European Alps based on an analysis of δ18O data obtained from stalagmite SPA 12 of Austria's Spannagel Cave, Vollweiler et al. (2006) used similarly-measured δ18O data obtained from two adjacent stalagmites (SPA 128 and SPA 70) within the same cave to create a master δ18O history covering the last 9000 years, which Mangini et al. (2007) ["] compared with the Hematite-Stained-Grain (HSG) history of ice-rafted debris in North Atlantic Ocean sediments developed by Bond et al. (2001), who had reported that "over the last 12,000 years virtually every centennial time-scale increase in drift ice documented in our North Atlantic records was tied to a solar minimum." This work revealed there was an almost unbelievably good correspondence between the peaks and valleys of the master δ18O curve and the HSG curve of Bond et al., leading Mangini et al. (2007) to conclude that (1) "the excellent match between the curves obtained from these two independent data sets gives evidence that the δ18O signal recorded in Spannagel cave reflects the intensity of the warm North Atlantic drift, disproving the assumption that the Spannagel isotope record is merely a local phenomenon," and, therefore, that (2) their δ18O curve "can reasonably be assumed to reflect non-local conditions," implying that it has wide regional applicability.
Having established this important point, Mangini et al. next focused on why their δ18O curve "displays larger variations for the last 2000 years than the multi-proxy record in Europe, which is mainly derived from tree-ring data" and "from low resolution archives (Mann et al., 1998, 1999; Mann and Jones, 2003)." The most probable answer, in their words, "is that tree-rings rather record the climate conditions during spring and summer," whereas both the HSG and δ18O curves "mirror winter-like conditions, which are only poorly recorded in tree-rings."
One important consequence of these differences is that whereas the Mann et al. and Mann and Jones data sets do not reflect the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, the Spannagel Cave data do. And applying the calibration curve derived for SPA 12 by Manginni et al. (2005) to the new δ18O curve, it can readily be determined that the peak temperature of the Medieval Warm Period was approximately 1.5�C higher than the peak temperature of the Current Warm Period. Consequently, not only does the new data set of Manginni et al. (2007) confirm the inference of Bond et al.'s finding that over the last 12,000 years virtually every centennial-scale cooling of the North Atlantic region "was tied to a solar minimum," it also demonstrates that the data sets of Mann et al. and Mann and Jones fail to capture the full range of temperature variability over the past two millennia. As a result, the new data set clearly depicts the existence of both the Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period, the latter of which is seen to have been substantially warmer over periods of centuries than the warmest parts of the 20th century, almost certainly as a result of enhanced solar activity, and in spite of the fact that the air's CO2 concentration during the Medieval Warm Period was more than 100 ppm less than it is today.
In conclusion, the findings of the several Central Europe palaeoclimate studies we have reviewed - - as well as those of the many additional studies cited in those reports -- suggest that the IPCC- endorsed hockeystick temperature history of Mann et al. (1999) does not reflect the true thermal history of the Northern Hemisphere over the past thousand or so years. In addition, they indicate that the IPCC appears to be focusing on the wrong instigator of climate change, i.e., CO2, when solar activity appears to be the primary culprit in this regard.
9 References Bartholy, J., Pongracz, R. and Molnar, Z. 2004. Classification and analysis of past climate information based on historical documentary sources for the Carpathian Basin. International Journal of Climatology 24: 1759-1776.
Bodri, L. and Cermak, V. 1999. Climate change of the last millennium inferred from borehole temperatures: Regional patterns of climatic changes in the Czech Republic - Part III. Global and Planetary Change 21: 225-235.
Bond, G., Kromer, B., Beer, J., Muscheler, R., Evans, M.N., Showers, W., Hoffmann, S., Lotti- Bond, R., Hajdas, I. and Bonani, G. 2001. Persistent solar influence on North Atlantic climate during the Holocene. Science 294: 2130-2136.
B�ntgen, U., Esper, J., Frank, D.C., Nicolussi, K. and Schmidhalter, M. 2005. A 1052-year tree- ring proxy for Alpine summer temperatures. Climate Dynamics 25: 141-153.
Buntgen, U., Frank, D.C., Nievergelt, D. and Esper, J. 2006. Summer temperature variations in the European Alps, A.D. 755-2004. Journal of Climate 19: 5606-5623.
Chapron, E., Arnaud, F., Noel, H., Revel, M., Desmet, M. and Perdereau, L. 2005. Rohne River flood deposits in Lake Le Bourget: a proxy for Holocene environmental changes in the NW Alps, France. Boreas 34: 404-416.
Denton, G.H. and Karlen, W. 1973. Holocene climate variations - their pattern and possible cause. Quaternary Research 3: 155-205.
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10 Kinzelbach, R.K. 2004. The distribution of the serin (Serinus serinus L., 1766) in the 16th century. Journal of Ornithology 145: 177-187.
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11 Muller, R.A. and Gordon, J.M. 2000. Ice Ages and Astronomical Causes. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Germany.
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Last updated 23 July 2008
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U.S. Landfalling Hurricanes http://co2science.org/articles/V11/N30/C1.php
Reference Wang, C. and Lee, S.-K. 2008. Global warming and United States landfalling hurricanes. Geophysical Research Letters 35: 10.1029/2007GL032396.
What was done The authors used the "improved extended reconstructed" sea surface temperature (SST) data described by Smith and Reynolds (2004) for the period 1854-2006 to examine historical temperature changes over the global ocean, after which they regressed vertical wind shear -- "calculated as the magnitude of the vector difference between winds at 200 mb and 850 mb during the Atlantic hurricane season (June to November), using NCEP-NCAR reanalysis data" - onto a temporal variation of global warming defined by the SST data.
12 What was learned Wang and Lee report discovering that warming of the surface of the global ocean is typically associated with a secular increase of tropospheric vertical wind shear in the main development region (MDR) for Atlantic hurricanes, and that the long-term increased wind shear of that region has coincided with a weak but robust downward trend in U.S. landfalling hurricanes. However, this relationship has a pattern to it, whereby local ocean warming in the Atlantic MDR actually reduces the vertical wind shear there, while "warmings in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans produce an opposite effect, i.e., they increase the vertical wind shear in the MDR for Atlantic hurricanes."
What it means The two researchers conclude that "the tropical oceans compete with one another for their impacts on the vertical wind shear over the MDR for Atlantic hurricanes," and they say that to this point in time, "warmings in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans win the competition and produce increased wind shear which reduces U.S. landfalling hurricanes." As for the years and decades ahead, they say that "whether future global warming increases the vertical wind shear in the MDR for Atlantic hurricanes will depend on the relative role induced by secular warmings over the tropical oceans." Hence, it is by no means clear whether further global warming, due to any cause, will lead to an increase or decrease in U.S. landfalling hurricanes. All we can say is that up to this point in time, global warming has had a weak negative impact on their numbers.
Reference Smith, T.M. and Reynolds, R.W. 2004. Improved extended reconstruction of SST (1854-1997). Journal of Climate 17: 2466-2477.
Reviewed 23 July 2008
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Return Periods of U.S. Landfalling Hurricanes http://co2science.org/articles/V11/N30/C2.php
Reference Parisi, F. and Lund, R. 2008. Return periods of continental U.S. hurricanes. Journal of Climate 21: 403-410.
What was done The authors calculated return periods of Atlantic-basin U.S. landfalling hurricanes based on "historical data from the 1900 to 2006 period via extreme value methods and Poisson regression techniques" for each of the categories (1-5) of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, which are defined by wind speeds of (1) 74-95 mph or 119-153 km/hr, (2) 96-110 mph or 154-177 km/hr, (3) 111-130 mph or 178-209 km/hr, (4) 131-155 mph or 210-249 km/hr, and (5) greater than 155 mph or 249 km/hr.
What was learned Return periods (in years) for Atlantic-basin U.S. landfalling hurricanes for the five Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale categories were: (1) 0.9, (2) 1.3, (3) 2.0, (4) 4.7, and (5) 23.1. In addition, the two researchers report that corresponding non-encounter probabilities in any one hurricane season were calculated to be (1) 0.17, (2) 0.37, (3) 0.55, (4) 0.78, and (5) 0.95. They also state that the hypothesis that U.S. hurricane strike frequencies are "increasing in time" -- which is often stated as fact by climate alarmists -- is "statistically rejected."
What it means As the world has warmed over the past hundred-plus years, at a rate that climate alarmists
13 typically describe as "unprecedented," there has been no significant increase in the strike frequency of U.S. landfalling hurricanes. Hence, there is substantial reason to believe that if the planet warms any further in the future, the same situation will likely continue to prevail.
Reviewed 23 July 2008
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USHCN Temperature Record of the Week: Odessa, WA
To bolster our claim that "There Has Been Little Net Global Warming Over the Past 70 Years," each week we highlight the temperature record of one of the 1221 U.S. Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) stations from 1930-2005.
This issue's temperature record of the week is from Odessa, WA. During the period of most significant greenhouse gas buildup over the past century, i.e., 1930 and onward, Odessa's mean annual temperature has cooled by 0.78 degrees Fahrenheit. Not much global warming here!
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14 Gloomy summer headed toward infamy http://www.adn.com/life/story/473786.html
CHILLY: Anchorage could hit 65 degrees for fewest days on record.
By GEORGE BRYSON [email protected]
Published: July 24th, 2008 12:10 AM Last Modified: July 24th, 2008 04:56 PM
The coldest summer ever? You might be looking at it, weather folks say.
Right now the so-called summer of '08 is on pace to produce the fewest days ever recorded in which the temperature in Anchorage managed to reach 65 degrees.
That unhappy record was set in 1970, when we only made it to the 65-degree mark, which many Alaskans consider a nice temperature, 16 days out of 365.
This year, however -- with the summer more than half over -- there have been only seven 65- degree days so far. And that's with just a month of potential "balmy" days remaining and the forecast looking gloomy.
National Weather Service meteorologist Sam Albanese, a storm warning coordinator for Alaska, says the outlook is for Anchorage to remain cool and cloudy through the rest of July.
"There's no real warm feature moving in," Albanese said. "And that's just been the pattern we've been stuck in for a couple weeks now."
In the Matanuska Valley on Wednesday snow dusted the Chugach. On the Kenai Peninsula, rain was raising Six-Mile River to flood levels and rafting trips had to be canceled.
So if the cold and drizzle are going to continue anyway, why not shoot for a record? The mark is well within reach, Albanese said:
"It's probably going to go down as the summer with the least number of 65-degree days."
MEASURING THE MISERY
In terms of "coldest summer ever," however, a better measure might be the number of days Anchorage fails to even reach 60.
There too, 2008 is a contender, having so far notched only 35 such days -- far below the summer- long average of 88.
Unless we get 10 more days of 60-degree or warmer temperatures, we're going to break the dismal 1971 record of only 46 such days, a possibility too awful to contemplate.
15 Still, according to a series of charts cobbled together Tuesday evening by a night-shift meteorologist in the weather service's Anchorage office, the current summer clearly has broken company with the record-setting warmth of recent years. Consider:
• 70-degree days. So far this summer there have been two. Usually there are 15. Last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 49.
• 75-degree days. So far this summer there've been zero. Usually there are four. It may be hard to remember, but last year there were 21. In 2004 there were 23.
So are all bets off on global warming? Hardly, scientists say. Climate change is a function of long-term trends, not single summers or individual hurricanes.
Last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that it's "unequivocal" the world is warming, considering how 11 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 13 years.
So what's going on in Alaska, which also posted a fairly frigid winter?
LA NINA
Federal meteorologists trace a lot of the cool weather to ocean temperatures in the South Pacific.
When the seas off the coast of Peru are 2 to 4 degrees cooler than normal, a La Nina weather pattern develops, which brings cooler-than- normal weather to Alaska.
For most of the past year, La Nina (the opposite of El Nino, in which warmer-than-normal ocean temperatures occur off Peru) has prevailed. But that's now beginning to change.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Web site, water temperatures in the eastern South Pacific began to warm this summer -- and the weather should eventually follow.
The current three-month outlook posted by the national Climate Prediction Center in Camp Springs, Md., calls for below-normal temperatures for the south coast of Alaska from August through October -- turning to above- normal temperatures from October through December.
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Is T. Boone Pickens 'Swiftboating' America? http://junkscience.com/ByTheJunkman/20080724.html
By Steven Milloy July 24, 2008
Liberals have done a U-turn on conservative billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens.
16 Formerly reviled for funding the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" campaign against Sen. John Kerry, he's now adored by the Left — unfortunately, for trying to gaslight the rest of us on energy policy.
This column recently spotlighted Pickens' proposed plan to get America off foreign oil by substituting wind-generated electricity for natural gas-generated electricity and then using the natural gas to replace gasoline.
Already having addressed the proposal's flaws — and Pickens' plan to profit at taxpayer expense from it — let's consider how Pickens' marketing shades the truth.
On his Web site and in TV commercials, Pickens tries to frighten Americans about being "addicted to foreign oil."
"In 1970, we imported 24 percent of our oil. Today, it's nearly 70 percent and growing," he intones.
Aside from the fact that the Department of Energy (DOE) puts the import figure at a more moderate 58 percent, Pickens gives the impression that imported oil is scary because it all comes from the unstable Mideast.
His TV commercials feature images of American soldiers fighting in Iraq and he likens the annual $700 billion cost of foreign oil to "four times the annual cost of the Iraq war."
But hold the phone. Only 16 percent of our imported oil comes from the Persian Gulf — barely up from 13.6 percent in 1973, according to the DOE. Imports from OPEC countries are actually down — from 47.8 percent in 1973 to 44.5 percent in 2007.
Contrary to Pickens' assertion that oil imports are growing, the DOE expects oil imports to decrease by 10 percent by 2030.
Pickens tries to shame Americans because, "America uses a lot of oil ... That's 25 percent of the world's oil demand, used by just 4 percent of the world population."
Some might think these figures make us sound greedy and wasteful.
But what Pickens omitted to mention is that the size of the U.S. economy in 2007 was about $13.8 trillion and the size of the global economy was $54.3 trillion.
This means that the U.S. economy represents about 25.4 percent of the global economy. So what's the problem if a nation that produces 25 percent of the world's goods and services needs 25 percent of the world's oil output?
Would he prefer that we shrink our economy by 84 percent to match our share of world population?
Pickens plays the hope-squasher.
"Can't we just produce more oil?" he asks. "The simple truth is that cheap and easy oil is gone," he responds.
But there are hundreds of billions of barrels of oil in the form of oil tar sands and oil shale in North America, not to mention the more than one hundred billion barrels of oil in the outer
17 continental shelf of the U.S. and on public lands like the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve (ANWR).
And don't forget that coal-to-liquids technology can convert our 268 billion tons of coal into 20 times the nation's current crude oil reserves, according to investment analysts. We have liquid fuels to burn.
While producing this oil may not be as easy as it was in 1859, when crude oil bubbled out of the ground in northwest Pennsylvania, it is much more feasible and far less expensive than Pickens' fantasy of replicating the entire existing U.S. wind supply system every year for the next 15 years in addition to building the national infrastructure for natural-gas filling stations.
Finally, Pickens laments the $700 billion (less at current oil prices) "wealth transfer" from America to foreigners every year because of our "addiction."
But is he also concerned about our "addiction" to other imports?
In 2007, the U.S. merchandise trade deficit — the difference between imports of goods from and exports of goods to foreign countries — exceeded $815 billion.
Contrary to Pickens' demagoguery, "wealth transfer" is a term generally used in the context of estate planning, where money is simply "gifted" to heirs.
Our purchases of foreign oil, in contrast, are more reasonably known as "trade" — and trade is good.
Americans are not simply petro-junkies who mainline crude oil for the masochistic high of watching gas pump numbers spin faster. We produce goods and services with imported oil more than any other people on this planet.
Pickens' bad-mouthing of our use of oil sounds like it comes from Al Gore and his fellow Democrats and extreme Greens — and guess who Pickens' new friends are?
Pickens told the National Journal that, "I think I would be for Al Gore for energy czar [in an Obama administration]."
Pickens said that he and Gore agree on about 95 percent of their respective energy plans.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited Pickens to speak before the Democratic Caucus.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that, while Pickens was once a "mortal enemy," they are now friends because of the oilman's conversion to alternative energy.
Then there's Carl Pope, the head of the Sierra Club, who not only flies in Pickens' private jet but writes paeans about him on the liberal Huffington Post blog.
"T. Boone Pickens is out to save America," Pope wrote on July 3.
It would have been more accurate, perhaps, for Pope to write that "Pickens is out to make billions of dollars for himself and to save the Sierra Club's anti-coal, anti-oil, anti-natural gas agenda."
Lastly, the New York Times rhapsodized about Pickens in an editorial this week.
18 Pickens' involvement in the alleged swiftboating of John Kerry seems to have been forgiven and forgotten by the paper. But the Times went absolutely over-the-top when it observed that the billionaire Pickens wasn't in it for the money because "he doesn't really need it."
It's too bad we can't generate electricity from such hilarity, half-truths and hypocrisy. Pickens and his new friends could power us — as Buzz Lightyear might say — to infinity and beyond.
*****
Evidence of variability of atmospheric CO2 concentration during the 20th century Geo-Ecological Seminar University of Bayreuth, 17th July 2008 (see here) Ernst-Georg Beck, Dipl. Biol Summary of the presentation Since the 19th century more than 90,000 reliable CO2 samples are available showing a systematic accuracy within ± 3 % since 1857 that had been gathered near ground, sea surface and as high as the stratosphere mostly in northern hemisphere prior to 1958 when the modern NDIR spectroscopic method had been introduced [Beck 2007]. Comparison of these measurements using old wet chemical methods with the new physical method (NDIR) on sea and land reveals a systematic analysis difference of about - 10 ppm (new procedures compared to the old). Wet chemical analyses indicate three atmospheric CO2 maxima in the northern hemisphere up to approx. 400 ppm over land and sea during the past 180 years. Comparing the measured atmospheric CO2 concentration since 1920 –1950 a strong correlation of more than 80 % exists with the arctic sea surface temperature (SST). A detailed analysis of the Atlantic Ocean water during the arctic warming since 1918 to 1939 by Wattenberg (southern Atlantic ocean) and Buch (northern Atlantic ocean) indicate a very similar state of the Atlantic Ocean (pH, salinity, CO2 in water and air over sea etc.) These data show the characteristics of the warm ocean currents (part of global conveyor belt) at that time indicating a strong CO2 degassing (>360 ppm) from the Atlantic Sea especially in the area of Greenland/Island and Spitsbergen. Polyakov in 2004 had brought evidence for a decadal oscillation of the ocean currents in the arctic circle showing a warm phase (strong arctic warming during 1918 to 1940 with high temperatures in the Island/Spitsbergen area) similar than today and cold phase (around 1900 and 1960) The Island/Spitsbergen area is known today for a strong absorption of CO2. This decadal heating of the oceanic CO2 absorption area and larger parts of the Northern Atlantic Ocean was followed by an increase of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to approx. 400 ppm during the 30s and approx. 390 ppm today. The abundance of plankton (13C) and other biota supports this view.
Conclusion: Atmospheric CO2 concentration varies with climate, the sea is the dominant CO2 memory releasing the gas depending on decadal changes of temperature.
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19 Democrats and Energy: Reality Bites http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121677132892975481.html
By COLLIN LEVY July 23, 2008; Page A15
Former Vice President Al Gore recently took his climate-change show on the road for the benefit of liberal bloggers, Sunday morning TV aficionados and other innocent bystanders. This week he laid out his demand for a miraculous transformation in U.S. energy use over a mere 10 years. As for drilling for more oil? "Absurd," the Nobel Laureate scoffed. "When you're in a hole, stop digging."
The same might be said for Mr. Gore. For while his message hasn't changed, the political realities of the energy debate have. Suddenly, Mr. Gore's inconvenient speechifying only tightens the vise Democrats find themselves in over drilling.
Voters' pocketbooks are now involved, making them more skeptical about climate change -- and about the utility of any policies aimed at influencing climate change. The environmental movement is facing a critical moment. Democrats who support the greenies in their most ambitious goals, and scariest pseudo-scientific rhetoric, suddenly seem woefully out of touch with American voters.
Back in June, Barack Obama made hay of John McCain's comment that while opening lands to drilling might not have a short term direct impact on oil supply and prices, it would have a "psychological impact" by sending a signal to consumers and the market that the country was expanding its own resources. "In case you're wondering," Mr. Obama said, "that's Washington- speak for 'it polls well.'"
Ho, ho. But oil prices have fallen since President Bush announced his support for more drilling. And polls these days are shifting overwhelmingly in favor of it. More than two-thirds of Americans support expanding drilling along the coasts, and 59% approve of drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge, according to a Reuters-Zogby poll. The worst news for Democrats is that support for drilling is now a majority opinion even in their own constituency.
The quandary for Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi et al. is how to keep irate environmentalists inside the tent while still meeting voter demand for lower prices. Raging against oil companies and Wall Street may get you through a news cycle or two, but it's not a solution.
As recently as April, the environmental agenda was a progressive's happy-clappy laundry list: A windfall profits tax, plans to sue OPEC, and even some price-gouging investigations of the oil- industrial complex. June saw Senate Democrats' embarassing failure to move a cap-and-trade bill. Now they aren't doing much besides fighting for a crackdown on oil speculators. No doubt they will claim that this week's share climbdown in oil prices is the result. But, by their nature, market speculators frequently shift their bets and estimates. That's what's happening now, as almost everybody agrees that whatever the long-term challenges, oil supply is adequate to meet demand at prices equivalent of $4 gallon for gas in the U.S.
Equally empty is Democrats' bright idea for "use it or lose it" legislation, which would presumably punish oil companies so dumb as to be sitting on usable leases at a time of $140 oil. Are they waiting for lower prices? House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer must have drawn the short lot, since he had to go out and shill for the Democratic story to the press: "Democrats are saying let's drill. Let's explore. Let's get energy for Americans from America and have it for Americans."
20 Such measures are Democrats' first line of defense on drilling, which is to pray for some blind luck. Maybe oil prices will go down on their own and Democrats will no longer have to choose between making the greenies or motorists happy.
Even Mr. Gore, though he pretends no longer to be a politician, falls prey to such triangulation: Consider his unwillingness, no matter how dire his view of the climate situation, to endorse nuclear power as the quickest, cleanest replacement for the coal-fired plants that are a big part of the alleged CO2 problem.
Mr. Obama has been opposed to nuclear power too, but shows more inclination to throw PC positions over the side for the general election. France and Russia have made nuclear power a central part of their energy strategies. Mr. Obama, if he's elected, will inherit a federal establishment that has been moving unsteadily toward licensing the first new nukes in a generation.
None of this is to disparage the long-term prospects of renewables, solar, etc. Such a shift won't come on Mr. Gore's timetable, however, but only when consumers discover new technologies can actually heat their homes and get them to work in the morning at less cost and comparable speed to today's petroleum-based transportation economy.
Early-stage prototypes are neat for science shows. They don't inspire confidence in leaders who put all their stock in them before anyone can say how much it will cost in time and money to hook up your car's battery at the station on the way to work.
In the meantime, ensuring adequate supplies of oil and gas and coal are tantamount to electoral survival. Democrats, after a long holiday from reality occasioned by cheap oil, are beginning to understand that either they have to take up the challenge of meeting America's need for oil, or voters will find someone who will.
Ms. Levy is a senior editorial writer at the Journal, based in Washington.
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Deja Vu all over again: climate worries of today also happened in the 20’s and 30’s http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/deja-vu-all-over-again-climate-worries- today-also-happened-in-the-20s-and-30s/ 20 03 2008
Two days ago I highlighted a news story from the Washington Post Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt dated from November 2nd 1922. That brought a flood of interest and some other interesting finds along with it as other readers contributed what they found on the story.
21 One of the most interesting finds was a study published in the Monthly Weather Review in September 1933 Titled: IS OUR CLIMATE CHANGING? A STUDY OF LONG-TIME TEMPERATURE TRENDS.
The first page of the original article is below:
Click this link for the full PDF of the article.
What is most interesting about this article is that it stems from a realization that the regular weather patterns they used to know were now acting differently. For example this form the article:
The phase of weather, or climate, that is attracting attention at the present time is not these short- period changes from warm to cool, and vice versa, for they are always present, but rather an apparent longer-time change to cool periods that seem to be less frequent and of shorter duration, and warm periods that are more pronounced and persistent.
And when you look at some of the city temperature graphs presented in the article, such as the one below, the parallels between them and some graphs presented in the present day are striking:
There is even the familiar argument and rebuttal about the Urban Heat Island effect:
It has been suggested that these tendencies to abnormally high-temperature records in recent years may be more apparent than real, in that data cited are nearly always from large cities where the thermometers may have been unduly affected by artificial influences that do not obtain in the open country. We have examined this phase of the matter and find that the suggestion is not well taken.
22 In the concluding remarks, the is the recognition of climate change to a warmer regime:
All of these confirm the general statement that we are in the midst of a period of abnormal warmth, which has come on more less gradually for many years.
Of course we all know what happened next, 1934 became the hottest year on record, the dust bowl and great depression occurred, followed by World War II. The climate changes again, a return to a colder phase lasting all the way until about 1978 when the “new ice age” was being discussed. Then the great PDO shift occurred and warming has been the norm since then.
There wasn’t any push then to accept blame for the change or to take action to change the climate. Many people look to the graph below though and see something other than natural variations.
The difference today is that during this warming phase, much like what led up to 1934, had a significant El Nino year of 1998, and it set off alarm bells. Because unlike in the 30’s, when this paper was written, somebody was ready to step in with a cause that they believed could be modified by action- man made CO2.
Yet as this graph recently published on ICECAP by Joe D’Aleo shows, it appears that the Pacfic Decadal Oscillation (PDO), combined with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) is a good fit to the instrumental surface temperature record of the last 100 years:
23 We could all learn a little bit from our weather history. We could all step back a bit and look at what previously happened in our climate changes before we make a rush to judgement to try to “fix” a problem that is very likely just another natural variance on the upswing, soon to be followed by a downturn.
There are quite a number of articles on “climate change” in the past, for further reading, try looking at some of these article links submitted by readers of this forum from the New York Times newspaper archives. Just click on the date. Thanks to Tim Blair for compiling the list below from our reader submitted links as well as his own research.
• 1923:
Glaciers have disappeared and land once covered with field ice is bare.
• 1924:
Glaciers are moving from their age-old beds, pouring greater quantities of ice into the sea than recorded history has known. Broad areas of land are sinking to new levels. A number of islands have disappeared.
• 1930:
The Alpine glaciers are in full retreat. Out of 102 glaciers observed by Professor P.L. Mercanton of the University of Lausanne and his associates more than twothirds have been found to be shrinking.
• 1935:
The great glaciers of the West, last remnants of the Ice Age on continental United States, have been retreating from their strongholds in the mountains at double time since last year.
• 1947:
A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a “serious international problem,” Dr. Hans Ahlmann, noted Swedish geophysicist, said today.
24 There are also many reports of the climate turning colder:
• 1895:
The question is again being discussed whether recent and long-continued observations do not point to the advent of a second glacial period, when the countries now basking in the fostering warmth of a tropical sun will ultimately give way to the perennial frost and snow of the polar regions.
• 1961:
Winters Since ‘40 Found Colder In Studies by Weather Bureau; Data Indicate, a Reversal of a Warming Trend That Began in 1881
• 1961:
After a week of discussions on the causes of climate change, an assembly of specialists from several continents seems to have reached unanimous agreement on only one point: it is getting colder.
• 1975:
Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable
• 1978:
An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.
Thus nature, and the NYT, balances itself. The paper really should return to the Grandfather Index of climate judgment:
• 1934:
America is believed by Weather Bureau scientists to be on the verge of a change of climate, with a return to increasing rains and deeper snows and the colder Winters of grandfather’s day.
• 1936:
The recent severely cold weather, following, in the main, many mild Winters, has caused people throughout the country to ask: “Does this portend a return to the reputed cold Winters of ‘granddad’s day’ years ago?”
Yep; all over the US, that’s exactly what people were asking. But listen to folks from the actual Granddad’s Day era and they’ll tell you the real cold was earlier still:
• 1890:
Is our climate changing? … The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young …
25 Also, there are fewer mastodons. Last word to the ominously-named, but perfectly sensible, Mr Scarr:
• 1924:
Some People Always Think the Climate Is Changing, But Mr. Scarr Says There Is Nothing in His Records to Justify the Notion
*****
SEC petitioned to warn companies against making false and misleading claims on global warming; Misinformation puts investors at risk, says Free Enterprise Action Fund (Ticker: FEAOX) http://freeenterpriseactionfund.com/release072308.htm
For more info contact: Steve Milloy, 301-258-2852, [email protected]
Washington DC, July 23, 2008 - The Free Enterprise Action Fund (Ticker: FEAOX) submitted the following letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting the SEC to warn publicly-owned companies against making false and misleading statements concerning global warming:
Ms. Florence E. Harmon Acting Secretary U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 100 F Street, N.E. Washington, D.C. 20549
Re: Petition for Interpretive Guidance on Public Statements Concerning Global Warming and Other Environmental Issues
Dear Ms. Harmon,
We are writing on behalf of the Free Enterprise Action Fund ("FEAOX"), a publicly-traded mutual fund, to petition the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC" or "Commission") to issue interpretive guidance pursuant to the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934 ("the Act") that would warn registrants against making potentially false and misleading statements pertaining to global warming and other environmental issues.
We believe the Commission should take action immediately to protect investors.
I. Examples of potentially false and misleading statements made by registrants.
26 Below are but a few examples of the sort of potentially false and misleading statements being made by registrants. The problematic nature of these statements is discussed in Section II.
Exelon Corp. issued a media release and placed full-page advertisements in major newspapers on July 15, 2008 stating, "The science is overwhelming -- climate change is happening now and human activity is the primary cause." Lehman Brothers issued a report on climate change featuring the so- called "hockey stick" graph to support the notion that humans are causing global warming. The General Electric Company issued a "Call for Action" to "slow, stop and even reverse the damage of greenhouse gasses." Toyota Motor Corp. states in a report, "When we drive a vehicle, it consumes fossil fuels and emits CO2, a major contributor to climate change." Goldman Sachs states in a 2007 report, "By now, the dynamics of global warming are widely known, and we find no reason to dispute the scientific assumptions." Caterpillar said in a public statement that, "We must take action now [to reduce carbon dioxide emissions] or risk serious harm to our planet."
All these statements are potentially false and/or misleading as recent events show.
II. Recent events that put registrants at risk of making false and misleading statements.
A number of recent developments have tended to expose the above-mentioned registrant statements (and probably many others) as false and/or misleading, including:
The American Physical Society, the leading professional society for American physicists announced in July 2008 on one of its websites that, "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution." In May 2008, the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine released a petition signed by more than 31,000 U.S. scientists stating, "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing, or will cause in the future, catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate..."
India's National Action Plan on Climate Change issued in June 2008 states, "No firm link between the documented [climate] changes described
27 below and warming due to anthropogenic climate change has yet been established."
Researchers belonging to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in the science journal Nature (May 1) that, after adjusting their climate model to reflect actual sea surface temperatures of the last 50 years, "global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade," since natural climate variation will drive global climate. Climate scientists reported in the December issue of the International Journal of Climatology, published by Britain's Royal Meteorological Society, that observed temperature changes measured over the last 30 years don't match well with temperatures predicted by the mathematical climate models relied on by the IPCC. A British judge ruled in October 2007 that Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth," contained so many factual errors that a disclaimer was required to be shown to students before they viewed the film. A panel of the National Academy of Sciences concluded in 2006 that the "hockey stick" graph is not proof that human activity is linked to global warming.
III. Conclusion
Based on the foregoing, we request that the Commission immediately inform and remind registrants that:
1. False and/or misleading statements on material matters may violate the anti-fraud provision of the federal securities laws. 2. Statements by registrants on global warming and other environmental issues could be considered material. 3. There is considerable ongoing debate about the science of global warming and its impacts and; 4. Statements to the effect that "the science is conclusive," "the debate is over," and that "human activities are definitely causing harmful global warming" should be avoided.
If you have any questions, please contact the undersigned at 301-258-2852 .
Sincerely,
/s/
Steven J. Milloy, MHS, JD, LLM Thomas J. Borelli, PhD Managing Partners Portfolio Managers, Free Enterprise Action Fund
28 FEAOX is a shareholder in Exelon ( 605 shares), Lehman Brothers ( 487 shares), General Electric ( 9606 shares), Goldman Sachs ( 402 shares) and Caterpillar (887 shares). FEAOX does not own shares in Toyota Motor Corp.
By investing in the FEAOX (http://www.FEAOX.com), individuals can participate in the global warming debate while having an opportunity to earn a financial return through ownership of a large-cap mutual fund. With a minimum investment of $2,500, individuals can join FEAOX•fs effort to make CEOs justify their positions on global warming. FEAOX is available exclusively through Northern Lights Distributors LLC, (applications may be obtained at http://www.FEAOX.com/how.html), and through E*Trade Financial, Scottrade, TD Ameritrade and HSBC.
An investor should consider the Free Enterprise Action Fund's investment objective, risks, charges, and expenses carefully before investing. This and other information about the Funds is contained in the fund's prospectus, which can be obtained by calling 1-800-766- 3960). Please read the prospectus carefully before investing. Distributed by Northern Lights Distributors, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.
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