Another Scientific Assessment
S. Fred Singer, President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), has just released a book, Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate which evaluates the current state of knowledge surrounding the greenhouse debate.
Singer makes several important points: Regarding the purported peer review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Singer argues that “The IPCC chapters were never ‘peer-reviewed’ in the generally accepted sense . . .” Normal peer review is done by anonymous referees, but the IPCC reviewers were chosen by those who prepared the summaries. “There is no record available as to what comments from reviewers were ignored; nor is there a record of minority opinions,” states Singer.
The claimed “consensus” of approximately 2,000 scientists is also dubious. This figure includes about 80 lead authors who actually wrote the chapters, several hundred scientists who allowed their work to be quoted as well as hundreds of reviewers who may or may not have agreed with the report or whether their comments were used or not.
Though the IPCC admitted that there were minority views that it was “not able to accommodate” it did not reveal “the size of the minority nor the seriousness of their disagreements.” Several surveys have revealed that the consensus may be exaggerated.
Singer argues that the temperature record shows an unusual warming that began in the last century and continued until 1940. Many scientists believe that this is a recovery from the Little Ice Age. From 1940 to 1975 temperatures dropped substantially and then rose again through the 1980s. Studies which have carefully remove the urban heat island effect in the temperature record have confirmed that, contrary popular belief that the 1980s were the warmest decade on record, temperatures reached their peak in 1940.
One of the explanations given in the IPCC for the discrepancy between the predictions of Global Circulation Models (GCMs) and observations is the existence of manmade sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere which reflects incoming radiation. Recent studies, however, have found that the radiative forcing effects of aerosols are small.
Singer addresses several other problems with the global warming hypothesis, but the bottom line is that he sees little reason to go down the ruinous road that has been proposed in Kyoto. For information on how to obtain the book see SEPP’s webpage at www.his.com/~sepp/.
The Art of Myth-making
Recently Dr. Michael MacCracken of the Office of the United States Global Change Research Program made statements regarding climate change entitled “The Truth about Ten Leading Myths.”
The question is whether Dr. MacCracken was telling the truth or making his own myths. Dr. Sallie Baliunas and Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Mount Wilson Observatory attempt to answer this question in a pamphlet for the George C. Marshall Institute.
Dr. MacCracken states, “In the United States, average temperatures have remained high even in the presence of the increasing cooling influence of sulfate aerosols . . .” Dr.’s Baliunas and Soon reply, “The temperature of the U.S., which has a relatively good surface record taken from many stations, has shown no significant warming trend over the last 100 years. The aerosol cooling effect referred to is extremely complex and difficult to quantify, but seems too small to reduce the projected warming trends.”
In an endnote they quote a paper by James Hansen, et. al. which appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research 102, 6831-6854: “Our specific conclusion regarding anthropogenic aerosols is that their net ‘direct’ impact on global surface temperature . . . is probably small and even its sign is uncertain.”
In another statement MacCraken claims, “Climate models do well at representing large-scale features . . .” The IPCC, however, states, “. . . [L]arge model-model differences in estimates of the spectrum of natural variability, both in terms of variance levels and large-scale spatial patterns, imply considerable uncertainties in our ability to specify the spectrum of natural variability and subsequently to detect any greenhouse warming signal – even if the space time evolution of such signal were perfectly known.” The full critique can be downloaded from the George C. Marshall Insitute’s webpage at http://www.marshall.org/.
Crystal Ball Science
It takes a certain amount of bravado to predict the future, and among some climate scientists bravado is in plentiful supply. J.D. Mahlman, however, seems to have cornered the market. Not only does he endorse predictions made 100 years into the future but he assigns actual magnitudes as to the likelihood that these predictions will come true.
He claims, for example, that there is a greater than 9 out of 10 chance that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over pre-industrial levels will warm the planet from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C in the next century and that sea-levels will rise by 25-75 cm. He also claims that there is a greater than 2 out of 3 chance that there will be a marked decrease in soil moisture as a result of higher summer temperatures over northern midlatitude continents and that tropical storms, once formed, will become more intense.
Mahlman, however, disagrees with the projection that the number of tropical storms, hurricanes, and typhoons per year will increase. One wonders what crystal ball Mahlman might be looking into to get these precise probability estimates (Science, November 21, 1997).
Hurricane Activity
The December issue of the AMS Newsletter (www.ametsoc.org/AMS/newsltr/nl_12_97.html) of the American Meteorological Society reports that 1997 tropical cyclone activity in the Atlantic hurricane basin was well below normal. Seven tropical storms formed and just three reached hurricane strength. The long term average are 10 and 6 respectively. There were no tropical storms in the month of August for the first time since 1961 and there was only one named system during the August-September period which hasn’t happened since 1929.
There were eight tropical cyclones in the central Pacific, nearly twice as many as the 36-year average of 4.5, tying the record for the fourth highest since 1961. However, none of these reached hurricane strength in the central Pacific making it the third consecutive year without a hurricane. This has not happened since 1963-65.
Colorado State researcher William Gray and his colleagues have predicted that 1998 hurricane activity will be slightly below average. He explains that, “Even though El Nino negatively influenced our 1997 hurricane forecast, it is our belief that this event will die before or shortly after the 1998 hurricane season officially begins.” Residual effects of El Nino, argues Gray, will have a dampening effect on 1998 hurricane activity.
Etc.
Reporters, delegates, NGOs, and other climate conference participants experienced a preview of what life will be like on an energy starvation diet. In keeping with the fanaticism of the occasion, the thermostat of the Kyoto conference hall was turned WAY down.
Three penguin ice carvings placed outside by greens who planned for the ice birds to melt in the “warming” climate stood frozen until the sixth day of the conference. Mother Nature obviously didn’t cooperate for the television cameras. The politically-incorrect air in Kyoto was positively cold. Shivering conference-goers were walking around with coats, scarves, even gloves – indoors. Apparently nobody at the UN considered the human health effects of under-heated facilities. People of the world, this is your future if the global warming lobby gets its way.