Important Developments on Global Warming in 2006 E. Calvin Beisner Despite continued alarmist claims in the mainstream media, by advocacy groups, and by some scientists, actual scientific and economic developments related to the global warming debate during 2006 point toward the collapse of the catastrophic human-induced global warming (CHIGW) dogma. Here’s a brief summary: • IPCC Reduces Warming Projections. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) draft 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (FAR) reduces projected temperature impact of human-induced climate change by 25 percent versus the previous (Third Assessment Report, 2001 [TAR]) assessment.1 Other research puts the most likely effect of E doubled CO2 on global average temperature at 3 C or less and says no evidence supports estimates of 4.5E or more.2 • IPCC Reduces Estimate of Human Contribution. The FAR’s Table of Forcings reduces human contribution to energy absorption in the atmosphere by 35 percent from the TAR’s. The FAR also reduces the IPCC’s estimate of the overall effect of human action on global temperature since the Industrial Revolution in light of increasing understanding of the cooling effect of aerosols and oceanic heat absorption.3 The estimated roles of variations in solar energy and solar wind output in climate change have risen greatly, with recent studies attributing nearly all or even all observed climate change to them, leaving little warming role left for human action.4 • IPCC Reduces Projected Sea Level Rise. The FAR reduces high-end projected twenty- first century sea level rise by 50 percent, from 34 to 17 inches.5 The more credible International Union for Quaternary Research’s Sea Level Commission projects twenty- first century sea level rise of only 0 to 7.88 inches (0 to 0.79 inch per decade).6 Studies indicate no statistical correlation between sea level changes and atmospheric CO2 concentration.7 • IPCC Abandons Discredited Hockey Stick Graph. The “hockey stick” graph–which was the basis of claims that the late twentieth century was the warmest period in a thousand (or more) years, seemingly eliminated the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age from history, and was touted repeatedly by the IPCC’s TAR–was thoroughly refuted by the Wegman Report to Congress and does not appear in the FAR.8 • WMO and Others Conclude Against Anthropogenic GW Connection to Hurricanes. The World Meteorological Organization released consensus statements that “[t]hough there is evidence both for and against the existence of detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point” and that “No individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.”9 Additional studies weigh in against human influence on hurricanes.10 Contrary to predictions based on a global warming/hurricane frequency-and-intensity connection, 2006 was a quiet year for Atlantic hurricanes, with storm and hurricane activity days down 30 percent, category 3+ days down 50 percent, and category 4+ days down 54 percent.11 • Fears of Ill Effects of Global Warming Calmed. Studies find little ground for fears that global warming threatens biodiversity.12 Long-term data show no correlation between global warming and droughts.13 Claims that global warming was slowing thermohaline circulation (the “Atlantic conveyor belt” of cold Arctic waters into the tropics and vice versa) and that this could lead to a sudden-onset ice age were disproved; the TC has not slowed.14 Though challenged, long-recognized studies indicating that enhanced 15 atmospheric CO2 results in greater crop yields were vindicated. • Evidence of Natural, Cyclical Climate Change, Overshadowing Anthropogenic Warming, Mounts. Increasing evidence of many sorts points to several overlapping cycles of global warming and cooling of entirely natural cause that overshadow anthropogenic warming and explain the warming of the late twentieth century.16 Russian scientists warn that Earth could soon enter a sixty-year cooling cycle similar in magnitude to that of the Little Ice Age.17 • Scientists Speak Out Against CHIGW Dogma. Sixty climate researchers wrote to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper against CHIGW dogma.18 Over 145 leaders (including climate and related scientists and environmental and developmental economists) signed “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming,” opposing CHIGW dogma.19 Even climate scientists who generally affirm that the majority of recent warming is human-induced and warn of significant harmful effects are protesting exaggerations by alarmist scientists and the media. “Skeptics” may be closer to the scientific “mainstream” than “alarmists.”20 Award-winning French geophysicist Claude Allegre, formerly a proponent of CHIGW, changed his mind in 2006 and became a climate skeptic.21 • Kyoto Dying. It remains the case, as has been recognized for years, that even full compliance with the Kyoto protocol, costing the global economy from $200 billion to $1 trillion per year, would shave only about 0.2E F from global warming by the year 2050, and thus would need to be supplemented by twenty to forty such treaties, each more costly than the last, to have a significant impact on future temperature.22 It became clear that Kyoto signatories will not meet their treaty obligations for CO2 emission reductions; neither will American states that have made similar commitments.23 It is now predicted that China will exceed the US’s annual CO2 emissions beginning in 2009.24 The damaging effect of Kyoto compliance on economies has become clearer as Kyoto participants consider adopting trade barriers against non-participants.25 Economic motivations for promoting global warming alarmism are increasingly recognized.26 • Adaptation Tops Mitigation; Other Issues Top Global Warming. Increasing numbers of scientists, like British Association for the Advancement of Science President Frances 2 Cairncross, and economists, like Indur M. Goklany, are arguing that adaptation is more cost-effective than mitigation.27 Among optional investments to solve human and environmental problems ranked from very good to bad by the prestigious Copenhagen Consensus, plans to mitigate future warming have the three worst rankings.28 • Climate McCarthyism Grows. Fearing the collapse of their paradigm and their control over public debate, global warming alarmists have begun trying to prevent the publication of studies that undermine the dogma of CHIGW, thus undermining public debate and threatening the objectivity of science.29 Climate scientist David Deming charged a National Public Radio reporter with offering to interview him but only on condition that Deming would say that warming was due to human activity.30 Evidence grows that professional science journals have adopted a publishing bias in favor of global warming alarmism.31 • Leading Evangelicals Reject CHIGW Dogma. The appearance of growing consensus among evangelicals in favor of alarm over CHIGW is fictitious, fabricated by a few advocates associated with the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which offered almost no evidence for its assertions and was endorsed not by scientists and economists with relevant expertise but mostly by Christian college presidents and mission leaders and was rejected by the National Association of Evangelicals (representing 30 million members) and the Southern Baptist Convention (16 million members) and refuted in “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming,” which has been endorsed by 124 evangelical leaders.32 References 1. Richard Gray, “UN Downgrades Man’s Impact on Climate, Reduces Claims of Future Warming & Sea Level Rise,” Sunday Telegraph, December 10, 2006, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/nclimate10.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_10122006. 2. J. D. Annan and J. C. Hargreaves, “Using multiple observationally-based constraints to estimate climate sensitivity,” Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 33, L06704, doi:10.1029/2005GL025259, 2006, online at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025259.shtml; prepublication draft at http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frcgc/research/d5/jdannan/GRL_sensitivity.pdf. 3. Richard Gray, “UN Downgrades Man’s Impact on Climate, Reduces Claims of Future Warming & Sea Level Rise,” Sunday Telegraph, December 10, 2006, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/nclimate10.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_10122006. 4. Henrik Svensmark, Jens Olaf Pepke Pedersen, Nigel Marsh, Martin Enghoff, and Ulrik Uggerhøj, “Experimental Evidence for the Role of Ions in Particle Nucleation under Atmospheric Conditions,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A, October 3, 2006; Doi:10.1098/rspa.2006.1773; news release online October 13, 2006 at http://spacecenter.dk/cgi-bin/nyheder-m-m.cgi?id=1159917791|cgifunction=form; L.F. Khilyuk and G. V. Chilingar. “On global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?” Environmental Geology, 50 (2006), 899-910; Philip Stott, Professor Emeritus of Biogeography, University of London, “Do I detect the first tiny rumblings of a paradigm shift in climate-change science?” online October 13, 2006 at http://greenspin.blogspot.com/2006/10/do-i-detect-first-tiny-rumblings-of.html; S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming–Every 1,500 Years (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 195-196, citing N. Shaviv and J. Veizer, “Celestial Driver of Phanerozoic Climate?” Geological Society of America 13 (2003): 4-10. 5. Richard Gray, “UN Downgrades Man’s Impact on Climate, Reduces Claims of Future Warming & Sea Level Rise,” Sunday Telegraph, December 10, 2006, at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/nclimate10.xml&DCMP=EMC-new_10122006. 6. Nils Axel Morner, “Estimating Future Sea Level Changes from Past Records,” Global and Planetary Change 40, issues 1-2 (January 2004): 49- 54; Morner, letter to Cambridge Conference Network, 27 April 2001, abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc042701.html; cited in S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming–Every 1,500 Years (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 46-47.