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 ’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 . 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 . 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 and 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 .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 , 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 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 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 ,” 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 driving the Earth’s climate. Are humans involved?” Environmental , 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.

7. C. E. Larsen and I. Clark, “A search for scale in sea-level studies,” Journal of Coastal Research 22 (2006): 788-800, abstract and introduction online at http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-16376318_ITM, discussed in “Sea Level Rise Is Not Accelerating: No Relationship to Atmospheric CO2 Record,” CO2 Science, November 29, 2006, online at http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/articles/V9/N48/C1.jsp.

3 8. Edward J. Wegman, et al., “Ad Hoc Committee Report on the ‘Hockey Stick’ Global Climate Reconstruction,” report to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, July 14, 2006, online at http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/07142006_Wegman_Report.pdf; see also National Academy of Sciences, Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years,” online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html#toc; Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, “The M&M Critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index: Update and Implications,” online at http://www.multi-science.co.uk/mcintyre-mckitrick.pdf; McKitrick and McIntyre, “Hockey Sticks, Principal Components and Spurious Significance,” Geophysical Research Letters vol. 32, no. 3, February 12, 2005.

9. Roger Pielke Jr., “WMO Consensus on Tropical Cyclones and Climate Change,” Science Policy, November 30, 2006, online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001005wmo_consensus_statem.html; World Meteorological Organization, press release, December 11, 2006, online at http://www.wmo.int/web/Press/PR_766_E.doc.

10. P. J. Klotzbach and W. M. Gray, “Causes of the Unusually Destructive 2004 Atlantic Basin Hurricane Season,” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 87 (2006): 1325-1333; C. W. Landsea, et al., “Can We Detect Trends in Extreme Tropical Cyclones?” Science 313 (2006): 452-454.

11. Steve McIntyre, “The 2006 Hurricane Season,” Climate Audit, November 19, 2006, online at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=919.

12. “Global Warming: Will It Cause Multiple Species Extinctions?” CO2 Science 9:48 (November 29, 2006), online at www.co2science.org/scripts/co2scienceB2C/articles/v9/n48/edit.jsp, and sources cited therein.

13. “Darn Data,” World Climate Report, November 14, 2006, online at http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/11/14/darn-drought-data/.

14. Friedrich A. Schott, et al., “Variability of the deep western boundary current east of the Grand Banks,” Geophysical Research Letters 33 (2006), online at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026563.shtml; Christopher S. Meinen, et al., Variability in deep western boundary current transports: Preliminary results from 26.5EN in the Atlantic,” Geophysical Research Letters 33 (2006), online at http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2006GL026965.shtml; Richard A. Kerr, “Global Climate Change: False Alarm: Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn’t Slowed Down After All,” Science 314:5802 (November 17, 2006): 1064.

15. The challenge was in Stephen P. Long, et al., “Food for thought: lower-than-expected crop yield stimulation with rising CO 2 concentrations,” Science 312:5782 (June 20, 2006): 1918-1921, abstract online at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/312/5782/1918. The vindication is in Francesco N. Tubiello, et al., “Crop response to elevated CO2 and world food supply: A comment on ‘Food for thought...’ by Long et al,” European Journal of Agronomy, November 20, 2006, abstract online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T67-4MCWMJH-1&_user=10&_coverDate=11%2F20%2F2006&_alid=501957 242&_rdoc=1&_fmt=summary&_orig=browse&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0be7432c f1e1f6c915de3fd025ca59fc.

16. S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery, Unstoppable Global Warming–Every 1,500 Years (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

17. “Russian scientist predicts global cooling,” Physorg.com, August 26, 2006, online at http://www.physorg.com/news75818795.html.

18.http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605

19. “Call to Truth” online at http://www.interfaithstewardship.org/pdf/CalltoTruth.pdf; signers listed at http://www.interfaithstewardship.org/pdf/OpenLetter.pdf#page=3.

20. Mike Hulme, “The chaotic world of climate truth,” BBC News, November 4, 2006, online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6115644.stm; K. Vranes, “So What Happened at AGU [American Geophysical Union] last week?” online at http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001030so_what_happened_at_.html; Iain Murray, “The tension between science and alarmism,” online at http://www.openmarket.org/2006/12/21/the-tension-between-science-and-alarmism/.

21. “Climat: la prévention, oui, la peur, non,” L’Express, May 10, 2006, online at http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/allegre/dossier.asp?ida=452950; “The increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere is an observed fact and mankind is most certainly responsible. In the long term, this increase will without doubt become harmful, but its exact role in the climate is less clear. Various parameters appear more important than CO2. Consider the water cycle and formation of various types of clouds, and the complex effects of industrial or agricultural dust. Or fluctuations of the intensity of the solar radiation on annual and century scale, which seem better correlated with heating effects than the variations of CO2 content” (cited at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_global_warming_consensus).

22. Bjørn Lomborg, “Should we implement the Kyoto Protocol? No–We risk burdening the global community with a cost much higher than that of global warming,” at www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000002D2C3.htm. More specifically, with no , the combined annual cost of compliance in the year 2010 to the , the European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand alone would be around $350 billion; with emissions trading within two blocks of that group, about $240 billion; with unrestricted trading within all Annex I countries, slightly over $150 billion; and with global trading, about $75 billion. Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 303, Figure 158, citing John P. Weyant and Jennifer N. Hill, “Introduction and overview,” The Energy Journal, Kyoto Special Issue [1999], vii-xliv, at xxxiii-xxxiv, and Bureau of Economic Analysis, Price Indexes for Gross Domestic Product and Gross Domestic Purchases

4 (www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/st3.csv) and Selected NIPA Tables showing advance estimates for the fourth quarter of 2000 (www.bea.doc.gov/bea/dn/dpga.txt), both 2001. Calculations of the range of temperature reduction from compliance with Kyoto differ but are all very low. E.g.: (1) “the Kyoto Protocol . . ., if adhered to by every signatory (including the United States)[,] would only reduce surface temperature by 0.07E C (.13E F) in fifty years” (Michaels, Meltdown, 19). (2) “Global mean reductions [in warming by 2100] for the three scenarios are small, 0.08- 0.28EC” [i.e., 0.14-0.5E F] (T. M. L. Wigley, “The Kyoto Protocol: CO2, CH4 and Climate Implications,” Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 25 [July 1998], 2285-88, at 2287). Wigley writes: “For B=CONST, the expected global-mean warming to 2100 is reduced by [Kyoto compliance by] 0.10-0.21EC depending on the climate sensitivity (close to 7% in all cases). For NOMORE, the reduction in warming is 4%, while for the B= -1% case it is approximately 14%. The rate of slow-down in temperature rise is small, with no sign of any approach to climate stabilization. The Protocol, therefore, . . . can be considered only as a first and relatively small step towards stabilizing the climate” (Wigley, “The Kyoto Protocol,” 2287-88, emphasis added). National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist Jerry Mahlman says elimination of human-induced warming would require “forty successful Kyotos” (Tim Appenzeller and Dennis Dimick, “The Heat Is On,” National Geographic, September 2004, 11). David Malakoff cites other climate scientists as saying thirty (David Malakoff, “Thirty Kyotos Needed to Control Warming,” Science, December 19, 1997, 2048).

23. Andrew Forster, “Can we go on building roads and runways and save the planet?”, online at http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/LTT-interviewNo06.pdf; Hisane Masaki, “Japan feels heat over Kyoto protocol,” online at http://www.japantoday.com/jp/comment/947; Beth Daley, “Global warming emissions rise despite vow,” Boston Globe, December 19, 2006, online at http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/12/19/global_warming_emissions_rise_despite_vow/.

24. “China to Pass U.S. in 2009 in Emissions,” New York Times, November 7, 2006, online at http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50B12F83A5B0C748CDDA80994DE404482.

25. Christopher C. Horner, “An Assessment of Kyoto and Emerging Issues for the 12th Conference of the Parties: Europe’s Performance, California Dreaming, Trade Wars and Waiting for Godot,” European Enterprise Institute Policy Note, November 13, 2006, online at http://www.european-enterprise.org/items/whatwedo/policynotes/01_policy_note.pdf. Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn, “UN talks split on date for climate fight rules,” Reuters, November 7, 2006, online at http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07765467.htm; Robin Pomeroy, “Interview–Italy swings its support back to Kyoto and beyond,” Reuters, November 7, 2006, online at http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L07733778.htm; Dan Milmo, “Green policies will hurt economy, says BA,” Guardian Unlimited, November 14, 2006, online at http://politics.guardian.co.uk/green/story/0,,1947304,00.html; France to tax imports from non-signers of Kyoto to protect French business from cheaper competition, New York Times, November 14, 2006, online at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/world/europe/14france.html.

26. Jeremy Lovell, “Green turns to gold in global warming battle,” Reuters, November 17, 2006, online at http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-11-17T142734Z_01_NOA752006_RTRUKOC_0_ENVIRONM ENT-GOLDRUSH.xml&WTmodLoc=HP-C12-Editors-2.

27. Mark Henderson, “Global warming ‘cannot be stopped’,” Timesonline, September 4, 2006, online at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2341516,00.html; I. M. Goklany, “Integrated Strategies to Reduce Vulnerability and Advance Adaptation, Mitigation, and Sustainable Development,” forthcoming in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change (2006).

28. Bjørn Lomborg, Global Crises, Global Solutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=675.

29. Christopher Lingle, “Freedom of speech as victim of global warming,” Korea Times, November 28, 2006, online at http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/opinion/200611/kt2006112717300954060.htm; Christopher Monckton, Viscount Brenchley, “Uphold free speech about climate change or resign,” open letter to U.S. Senators Olympia Snowe and John D. Rockefeller, online at http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061212_monckton.pdf.

30. David Deming, testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, December 6, 2006, online at http://www.epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=266543.

31. A recent case in point is the handling of research by James Annan and colleagues by Geophysical Research Letters, about which Annan testified online December 7, 2006, at http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/12/inconvenient-truth.html.

32. The NAE board announced in a letter dated January 26, 2005, that it would not embrace a position statement on global warming. The SBC’s position, contrary to the ECI, is online at http://www.sbcannualmeeting.org/sbc06/resolutions/sbcresolution-06.asp?ID=8. The “Call to Truth” is online at http://www.interfaithstewardship.org/pdf/CalltoTruth.pdf, and its signers are listed online at http://www.interfaithstewardship.org/pdf/OpenLetter.pdf.

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