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Today’s post in my series of commentaries on excerpts from CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, challenges the Gorethodox dogma that the science debate on global warming is “over.”

There are three basic issues in the climate change science debate:

• Detection – Has the world warmed, and if so, by how much?
• Attribution – How much of the observed warming (especially since the mid-1970s) is due to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations?
• Sensitivity – How much additional warming should we expect from continuing increases in greenhouse gas concentrations?

Despite what you’ve heard over and over again, these basic issues are unsettled, and more so now than at any time in the past decade. The science debate is not “over.” Reports of the death of climate skepticism have been greatly exaggerated.

Because of time constraints (Policy Peril runs under 40 minutes), the film briefly explores only the most important of the three basic issues: climate sensitivity. Today’s clip comes from that part of the film: an interview with University of Alabama in Huntsville atmospheric scientist Dr. Roy Spencer. To watch the Spencer interview, click here. To watch the entire movie, click here.

Here’s how this post is organized. First, I’ll reproduce the text of Spencer’s interview. Then, I’ll review some recent research bearing on the three fundamental science issues: detection, attribution, and sensitivity.

Text of today’s film clip:

Narrator: All the IPCC models assume that a CO2-induced warming will produce more high-altitude cirrus clouds, which then trap even more heat in the atmosphere. This is what’s called a positive climate feedback. Roy Spencer and his colleagues use satellites to study cirrus cloud behavior.

Dr. Roy Spencer (University of Alabama in Huntsville): Last August, August of 2007, we published research which showed from a whole bunch of satellite data that when the tropical atmosphere heats up–there are these periods when the atmosphere heats up from more rain activity or cools down from less rain activity–that when it heats up, the skies actually open up. The cirrus clouds that are up high, in the troposphere, in the upper atmosphere, open up and let more cooling infrared radiation escape to space. And it was a very strong effect.

Narrator: Spencer says that if climate models incorporated the negative feedback his team discovered, the models might forecast 75% less warming.

This is definitely not the Al Gore view of climate sensitivity. In fact, in An Inconvenient Truth (p. 67), Gore suggests we could get “three times as much” warming by mid-century as has occurred since the “depth of the last ice age.” That would mean a warming of 10ºC-12ºC by mid-century! Gore’s implicit warming forecast goes way beyond the IPCC best-estimate forecast range of 1.8ºC  to 4.0ºC (IPCC WWI AR4, Summary for Policymakers, p. 13). As we’ll see below, several strands of evidence suggest that the IPCC models are also too “hot.”

Detection

The world has warmed overall during the past 130 years, as evidenced by melting glaciers, longer growing seasons, and both proxy and instrumental data. However, the main era of “anthropogenic” global warming supposedly began in the mid-1970s, and ongoing research by retired meteorologist Anthony Watts leaves no doubt that in recent decades, the U.S. surface temperature record–reputed to be the best in the world–is unreliable and riddled with false warming biases.

Watts and a team of more than 650 volunteers have visually inspected and photographically documented 1003, or 82%, of the 1,221 climate monitoring stations overseen by the U.S. Weather Service. In a report summarizing an earlier phase of the team’s investigation (a survey of 860+ stations), Watts says, “We were shocked by what we found.” He explains:

We found stations located next to exhaust fans of air conditioning units, surrounded by asphalt parking lots and roads, on blistering-hot rooftops, and near sidewalks and buildings that absorb and radiate heat. We found 68 stations located at wastewater treatment plants, where the process of waste digestion causes temperatures to be higher than in surrounding areas.

In fact, we found that 89 percent of the stations–nearly 9 of every 10–fail to meet the National Weather Services’s own siting requirements that stations must be 30 meters (about 100 feet) or more away from an artificial heating or radiating/reflecting heat source. In other words, 9 or every 10 stations are likely reporting higher or rising temperatures because they are badly sited.

“It gets worse,” Watts continues:

We observed that changes in the technology of temperature stations over time also have caused them to report a false warming trend. We found gaps in the data record that were filled in with data from nearby sites, a practice that propagates and compounds errors. We found adjustments to the data by both NOAA and another government agency, NASA, cause recent temperatures to look even higher.

How big a problem is this? According to Watts, “The errors in the record exceed by a wide margin the purported rise in temperature of 0.7ºC (about 1.2ºF) during the twentieth century.” Based on analysis of 948 stations rated as of May 31, 2009, Watts estimates that 22% of stations have an expected error of 1ºC, 61% have an expected error of 2ºC, and 8% have an expected error of 5ºC.

Watts concludes that, “this record should not be cited as evidence of any trend in temperature that may have occurred across the U.S. during the past century.” He further concludes: “Since the U.S. record is thought to be ‘the best in the world,’ it follows that the global database is likely similarly compromised and unreliable.”

A related issue is the influence of urban heat islands on long-term temperature records. Climate Change Reconsidered, a report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), written by Drs. Craig Idso and S. Fred Singer with 35 contributors and reviewers, reviews more than 40 studies on urban heat islands. For example, a study by Oke (1973) of the urban heat island strength of 10 settlements in the St. Lawrence Lowlands of Canada found that a population as small as 1,000 people could generate a heat island effect of 2ºC-2.5ºC. From this study and the others reviewed, the NIPCC concludes:

It appears almost certain that surface-based temperature histories of the globe contain a significant warming bias introduced by insufficient corrections for the non-greenhouse-gas-induced urban heat island effect. Furthermore, it may well be impossible to make proper corrections for the deficiency, as the urban heat island of even small towns dwarfs any concommitant augmented greenhouse effect that may be present [p. 95; emphasis in original].

In a comment submitted to EPA regarding its proposed endangerment finding, University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) atmospheric scientist John Christy notes two additional reasons to conclude that the IPCC surface data records exaggerate warming trends:

As a culmination of several papers and years of work, Christy et al. (2009) demonstrates that popular surface datasets overstate the warming that is assumed to be greenhouse related for two reasons. First, these datasets use only stations that are electronically (i.e. easily) available, which means the unused, vast majority of stations (usually more rural and representative of actual trends but harder to find) are not included. Secondly, these popular datasets use the daily mean surface temerpature (TMean) which is the average of the daytime high (TMax) and nighttime low (TMin). In this study (and its predecessors, Christy 2002, Christy et al. 2006, Pielke Sr. et al. 2008, Walters et al. 2007 and others) we show that TMin is seriously impacted by surface development, and thus its rise is not an indicator of greenhouse gas forcing. Some have called this the Urban Heat Island effect, but, as described in Christy et al. 2009, it is much more than this and encompasses any development of the surface (e.g. irrigated agriculture).

For example, the UK Hadley Center, relying on two electronic surface stations, computed a TMax temperature trend in East Africa of 0.14ºC per decade during 1905-2004. Christy, using data from 45 stations, found a trend of only 0.02ºC per decade.

In California, Christy found that the only significant warming trend is for TMin in the irrigated San Joaquin Valley. Note, in the non-irrigated Sierra mountains, where models project a greenhouse gas-induced warming should occur, there is actually a decreasing temperature trend.

Obviously, temperature data are the starting point of any analysis of global warming. But if we can’t trust the U.S. and IPCC temperature records, how do we know how much global warming has actually occurred?

Satellite observations are not influenced by heat islands and irrigation, or subject to the quality control problems detailed by Watts. Moreover, satellite records tally well with weather balloon observations–an independent database. So maybe detection should be based solely on satellite data, which do show some warming over the past 30 years. However, the “debate is over” crowd is unlikely to embrace this solution.  The satellite record shows a relatively slow rate of warming–about 0.13ºC per decade–hence a relatively insensitive climate.

Moreover, as can be seen in the above chart of the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH) satellite record, some of the 0.13ºC/decade ”trend” comes from the 1998 El Nino warming pulse. Remove 1998, and the 30-year satellite record trend drops to 0.12ºC/decade.

Attribution

The IPCC, the leading spokesman for the alleged scientific consensus, claims that, “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.” How does the IPCC know this? The IPCC offers three main reasons.

First, according to the IPCC, “Paleoclimate reconstructions show that the second half of the 20th century was likely the warmest 50-year period in the Northern hemisphere in 1300 years” (IPPC AR4, WGI, Chapt. 9, p. 702).  The warmth of recent decades coincided with a rapid increase in GHG concentrations. Therefore, the IPCC reasons, most of the recent warming is likely due to anthropogenic GHG emissions.

This argument is unconvincing if the warming of recent decades is not unusual or unprecedented in the past 1300 years. As it happens, numerous studies indicate that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP)–roughly the period from AD 800 to 1300, with peak warmth occurring about AD 1050–was as warm as or warmer than the Current Warm Period (CWP).

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change has analyzed more than 200 peer-reviewed MWP studies produced by more than 660 individual scientists working in 385 separate institutions from 40 countries. The Center divides these studies into three categories–those with quantitative data enabling one to infer the degree to which the peak of the MWP differs from the peak of the CWP (Level 1), those with qualitative data enabling one to infer which period was warmer (Level 2), although not by how much, and those with data enabling one to infer the existence of a MWP in the region studied (Level 3). An interactive map showing the sites of these studies is available at CO2Science.org.

Only a few Level 1 studies determined the MWP to have been cooler than the CWP; the vast majority indicate a warmer MWP. On average, the studies indicate that the MWP was 1.01ºC warmer than the CWP.

Figure Description: The distribution, in 0.5ºC increments, of Level 1 studies that allow one to identify the degree to which peak MWP temperatures either exceeded (positive values, red) or fell short of (negative values, blue) peak CWP temperatures.

Similarly, the vast majority of Level 2 studies indicate a warmer MWP:

Figure Description: The distribution of Level 2 studies that allow one to determine whether peak MWP temperatures were warmer than (red), equivalent to (green), or cooler than (blue), peak CWP temperatures.

The IPCC’s second main reason for attributing most recent warming to the increase in GHG concentrations is that climate models “cannot reproduce the rapid warming observed in recent decades when they only take into account variations in solar output and volcanic activity. However . . . models are able to simulate observed 20th century changes when they include all of the most important external factors, including human influences from sources such as greenhouse gases and natural external factors” (IPCC, AR4, WGI, Chapt. 9, p. 702).

This would be decisive if today’s models accurately simulate all important modes of natural variability. In fact, models do not accurately simulate the behavior of clouds and ocean cycles. They may also ignore important interactions between the Sun, cosmic rays, and cloud formation.

Richard Lindzen of MIT spoke to this point at the Heartland Institute’s recent (June 2, 2009) Third International Conference on Climate Change:

What was done [by the IPCC], was to take a large number of models that could not reasonably simulate known patterns of natural behavior (such as ENSO, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation), claim that such models nonetheless adequately depicted natural internal climate variability, and use the fact that models could not replicate the warming episode from the mid seventies through the mid nineties, to argue that forcing was necessary and that the forcing must have been due to man. The argument makes arguments in support of intelligent design seem rigorous by comparison.

“Fingerprint” studies are the third basis on which the IPCC attributes most recent warming to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Climate models project a specific pattern of warming through the vertical profile of the atmosphere–a greenhouse “fingerprint.” If the observed warming pattern matches the model-projected fingerprint, that would be strong evidence that recent warming is anthropogenic. Conversely, notes the NIPCC, “A mismatch would argue strongly against any signficant contribution from greenhouse gas (GHG) forcing and support the conclusion that the observed warming is mostly of natural origin” (NPICC, p. 106).

Douglass et al. (2007) compared model-projected and observed warming patterns in the tropical troposphere. The observed pattern is based on three compilations of surface temperature records, four balloon-based records of the surface and lower troposphere, and three satellite-based records of various atmospheric layers–10 independent datasets in all.

“While all greenhouse models show an increasing warming trend with altitude, peaking around 10 km at roughly two times the surface value,” observes the NIPCC, “the temperature data from balloons give the opposite result; no increasing warming, but rather a slight cooling with altitude” (p. 107). See the figures below.

The mismatch between the model-predicted greenhouse fingerprint and the observed pattern is profound. As the Douglass team explains: “Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modeled trend is 100% to 300% higher than observed, and above 8 km, modeled and observed trends have opposite signs.”

Figure description: Temperature trends for statellite era (ºC/decade). HadCRUT, GHCH and GISS are compilations of surface temperature observations. IGRA, RATPAC, HadAT2, and RAOBCORE are balloon-based observations of surface and lower troposphere. UAH, RSS, UMD are satellite-based data for various layers of the atmosphere. The 22-model average comes from an ensemble of 22 model simulations from the most widely used models worldwide. The red lines are the +2 and -2 standard errors of the mean from the 22 models. Source: Douglass et al. 2007.

The NIPCC concludes that the mismatch of observed and model-calculated fingerprints “clearly falsifies the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW)” (p. 108). I would put the state of affairs more cautiously. In view of (1) significant evidence that the MWP was as warm as or warmer than the CWP, (2) the inability of climate models to simulate important modes of natural variability, and (3) the failure of observations to confirm a greenhouse fingerprint in the tropical trosophere, the IPCC claim that “most” recent warming is “very likely” anthropogenic should be considered a boast rather than a balanced assessment of the evidence.

Climate Sensitivity

The most important unresolved scientific issue in the global warming debate is how sensitive (reactive) the climate is to increases in GHG concentrations.

Climate sensitivity is typically defined as the global average surface warming following a doubling of carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC says a doubling is likely to produce warming in the range of 2ºC to 4.5ºC, with a most likely value of about 3ºC (IPCC, AR4, WGI, Chapt. 10, p. 749). The IPCC presents a range rather than a specific value because of uncertainty regarding the strength of the relevant feedbacks.

In a hypothetical climate with no feedbacks, positive or negative, a CO2 doubling would produce 1.2ºC of warming (IPCC, AR4, WGI, Chapt. 8, p. 631). In most climate models, the dominant feedbacks are positive, meaning that the warmth from rising GHG levels causes other changes (in water vapor, clouds, or surface reflectivity, for example) that either increase the retention of outgoing long-wave radiation (OLR) or decrease the reflection of incoming short-wave radiation (SWR).

In his speech at the June 2 Heartland Institute conference, Professor Lindzen summarized his research on climate sensitivity, which has since been accepted for publication by Geophysical Research Letters. Lindzen argues that climate feedbacks and sensitivity can be inferred from observed changes in OLR and SWR following observed changes in sea-surface temperatures. For fluctuations in OLR and SWR, Lindzen and his colleagues used the 16-year record (1985-1999) from the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE), as corrected for altitude variations associated with satellite orbital decay. For sea surface temperatures, they used data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction. For climate model simulations, they used 11 IPCC models forced with the observed sea-surface temperature changes.

The results are striking. All 11 IPCC models show positive feedback, “while ERBE unambiguously shows a strong negative feedback.”

Figure description: ERBE data show increasing top-of-the-atmosphere radiative flux (OLR plus reflected SWR) as sea surface temperatures rise whereas models forecast decreasing radiative flux. Source: Lindzen and Choi 2009.

The ERBE data indicate that the sensitivity of the actual climate system “is narrowly constrained to about 0.5ºC,” Lindzen estimates. ”This analysis,” says Lindzen in a recent commentary, “makes clear that even when all models agree, they can be wrong, and that this is the situation for the all important question of climate sensitivity.”

At the Heartland Institute’s Second International Conference on Climate Change (March 2009), Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University presented satellite-based research that may explain the low climate sensitivity the Lindzen team infers from the ERBE data.

The IPCC climate models assume that CO2-induced warming significantly increases upper troposphere clouds and water vapor, trapping still more OLR that would otherwise escape to space. Most of the projected warming in the models comes from this positive water vapor/cloud feedback, not from the CO2. Satellite observations do not support this hypothesis, Gray contends:

Observations of upper tropospheric water vapor over the last 3-4 decades from the National Centers of Environmental Prediction/National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCEP/NCAR) reanalysis data and the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) data show that upper tropospheric water vapor appears to undergo a small decrease while Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) undergoes a small increase. This is the opposite of what has been programmed into the GCMs [General Circulation Models] due to water vapor feedback.

The figure below comes from the NCEP/NCAR reanalysis of upper troposphere water vapor and OLR.

Figure description: NCEP/NCAR renalysis of standardized anomalies at 400 mb (~7.5 km altitude) water vapor content (i.e. specific humidity — in blue) and OLR (in red) from 1950 to 2008. Note the downward trend in moisture and upward trend in OLR.

Gray’s paper deals with water vapor in the upper troposphere. What about high-altitude cirrus clouds, which climate models also predict will increase and trap more OLR as GHG concentrations increase?

Spencer et al. (2007), the study Dr. Spencer spoke about in today’s Policy Peril film clip, found a strong negative cirrus cloud feedback mechanism in the tropical troposphere. Instead of steadily building up as the tropical oceans warm, cirrus cloud cover suddenly contracts, allowing more OLR to escape. As mentioned, Spencer estimates that if this mechanism operates on decadal time scales, it would reduce model estimates of global warming by 75%.

A 2008 study by Spencer and colleague William D. Braswell examines the issue of climate feedbacks related to low-level clouds. Lower troposphere clouds tend to cool the Earth by reflecting incoming SWR. Observations indicate that warmer years have less cloud cover compared to cooler years. Modelers have interpreted this correlation as positive feedback effect in which warming reduces low-level cloud cover, which then produces more warming.

Spencer and Braswell found that climate modelers could be mixing up cause and effect. Random variations in cloudiness can cause substantial decadal variations in ocean temperatures. So it is equally plausible that the causality runs the other way, and increases in sea-surface temperature are an effect of natural cloud variations. If so, then climate models forecast too much warming. For more on this, visit Spencer’s Web site.

In a study now in peer review for possible publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Spencer and colleagues analyzed 7.5 years of NASA satellite data and “discovered,” he reports on his Web site, “that, when the effects of clouds-causing-temperature-change is accounted for, cloud feedbacks in the real climate system are strongly negative.” “In fact,” he continues, “the resulting net negative feedback was so strong that, if it exists on the long time scales associated with global warming, it would result in only 0.6ºC of warming by late in this century.”

In related ongoing satellite research, Spencer finds new evidence that “most” warming of the past century “could be the result of a natural cycle in cloud cover forced by a well-known mode of natural climate variability: the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO).”

Whether or not the PDO proves to be a major player in climate change, Spencer has identified a potentially serious error in all IPCC modeling efforts:

Even though they never say so, the IPCC has simply assumed that the average cloud cover of the Earth does not change, century after century. This is a totally arbitrary assumption, and given the chaotic variations that the ocean and atmosphere circulations are capable of, it is probably wrong. Little more than a 1% change in cloud cover up or down, and sustained over many decades, could cause events such as the Medieval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age.

Finally, recent temperature history also suggests that most climate models are too “hot.” Dr. Patrick Michaels touched on this topic in Policy Peril (albeit not in today’s excerpt).

Carbon dioxide emissions and concentrations are increasing at an accelerating rate (Canadell, J.G. et al. 2008). Yet, there has been no net warming since 2001 and no year was as warm as 1998.

Figure description: Observed monthly global temperature anomalies, January 2001 through April 2009, as compiled by the Climate Research Unit. Source: Paul C. Knappenberger.

Paul C. Knappenberger (”Chip” to his friends) quite reasonably wonders, “[H]ow long a period of no warming can be tolerated before the forecasts of the total warming by century’s end have to be lowered?” After all, he continues, “We’re already into the nineth year of the 100 year forecast and we have no global warming to speak of.” It is instructive to compare these data with climate model projections.

A good place to start is with the climate model projections that NASA scientist James Hansen presented in his 1988 congressional testimony, which launched the modern global warming movement.

The figure below, from congressional testimony by Dr. John Christy, a colleague of Roy Spencer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, shows how Hanesn’s model and reality diverge.

Figure description: The red, orange, and purple lines are Hansen’s model forecasts of global temperatures under different emission scenarios. The green and blue lines are actual temperatures from two independent satellite records. Source: John Christy.

“All model projections show high sensitivity to CO2 while the actual atmosphere does not,” Christy notes. “It is noteworthy,” he adds, “that the model projection for drastic CO2 cuts still overshot the observations. This would be considered a failed hypothesis test for the models from 1988.”

What about the models used by the IPCC in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)? How well are they replicating global temperatures?

This figure, also from Dr. Christy’s testimony, is adapted from Dr. Patrick Michaels’s testimony of February 12, 2009. The red and orange lines show the upper and lower significant range (95% of all model runs are between the lines) of global temperature trends calculated by 21 IPCC AR4 models for multi-year segments ending in 2020. The blue and green lines show observed temperatures ending in 2008 from satellite (University of Alabama in Huntsville) and surface (U.K. Hadley Center for Climate Change) records.

Christy comments:

The two main points here are (1) the observations are much cooler than the mid-range of the model spread and are at the minimum of the model simulations and (2) the satellite adjustment for surface comparisons is exceptionally good. The implication of (1) is that the best estimates of the IPCC models are too warm, or that they are too sensitive to CO2 emissions.

Christy illustrates this another way in his comment on EPA’s endangerment proposal.

Figure description: Mean and standard error of 22 IPCC AR4 model temperature projections in the mid-range (A1B) emissions scenario. From 1979 to 2008, the mean projection of the models is a warming of 0.22ºC per decade. HADCRUT3v (green) is a surface dataset, UAH (blue) and RSS (purple) are satellite data sets.

Christy comments:

. . . even with these likely spurious warming effects in HADCRUT3v and RSS, the mean model trends are still significantly warmer than the observations at all time scales examined here. Thus, the model mean sensitivity, a quantity utilized by the IPCC as about 2.6ºC per doubled CO2, is essentially contradicted in these comparisons.

Michaels, in his testimony, shows that if year 2008 temperatures persist through 2009, then the observed temperature trend will fall below the 95% confidence range of model projections. In other words, the models will have less than a 5% probability of being correct.

Although the IPCC AR4 models have not failed yet, they are, in Michaels’s words, “in the process of failing,” and the longer the current temperature regime persists, the worse the models will perform.

Conclusion

The climate science debate is not “over.” In fact, it is just starting to get very, very interesting. All the basic issues–detection, attribution, and sensitivity–are unsettled and more so today than at any time in the past decade.

A final thought–anyone who wants further convincing that the debate is not over should read the marvelous NIPCC report. On a wide range of issues (nine main topics and 60 sub-topics), the report demonstrates that the scientific literature allows, and even favors, reasonable alternative assessments to those presented by the IPCC.

P.S. Previous posts in this series are available below:

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warns that global warming could raise sea levels by 20 feet, and he implies that this could happen quite suddenly–in our lifetimes or those of our children.

Specifically, on pp. 204-206 of the book version of AIT, Gore warns that if half the Greenland Ice Sheet and half the West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted or broke up and slipped into the sea, some 100 million people living in Beijing, Shanghai, Calcutta, and Bangladesh would  “be displaced,” “forced to move,” or “have to be evacuated.”  Is there any truth to it?

Today’s clip from CEI’s film Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself, again features Dr. Patrick Michaels of the Cato Institute, former Virginia State Climatologist, author of several superb books (most recently, Climate of Extremes: The Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know), and prolific blogger on World Climate Report.

Here are my previous posts in this series:

• Policy Peril: Looking for an antidote to An Inconvenient Truth? Your search is over
• Policy Peril Segment 1: Heat Waves
• Policy Peril Segment 2: Air Pollution
• Policy Peril Segment 3: Hurricanes

To watch today’s video clip, click here. To watch Policy Peril from start to finish, click here.

The text of today’s excerpt immediately follows. It includes some graphics from the film and footnotes to the pertinent scientific literature.

Dr. Patrick Michaels: This even as there is a purported large melt of ice from Greenland. It turned around — the thermohaline circulation became stronger. [1] 

Narrator: Hmm. These facts are inconvenient only for the makers of An Inconvenient Truth. But who can forget the scenes where a 20-foot wall of water rolls across the world’s coastal communities. In the book version [of AIT], Gore says, “If Greenland melted or broke up and slipped into the sea–or if half of Greenland and half of Antarctica melted or broke up and slipped into the sea–sea levels worldwide would increase by 18 to 20 feet.” Reality check! How much ice is Greenland shedding?

Dr. Michaels: The actual loss of ice from Greenland is about 25 cubic miles per year. [2] Now, if that seems like a lot, there are about 700,000 cubic miles of ice on Greenland. The loss rate is four-tenths of one percent of its ice mass, per century. I didn’t say per year. I didn’t say per decade. I said four-tenths of one percent per century. [3]

Narrator: That translates into how much sea-level rise?

Dr. Michaels: If you take a look at the IPCC’s latest volume, by the year 2100, they have two inches of sea-level rise resulting from the loss of Greenland ice. Not two feet. Not 20 feet. Two inches! [4] That’s the “consensus of scientists,” okay. Whether or not we believe in consensus science, that’s what they say.

Narrator:  Gore says global warming could melt half of Greenland. Is that plausible?

Dr. Michaels: The United Nations [IPCC] projects that if we raise carbon dioxide to four times the background level–that would be about 1,100 parts per million, right now we’re at about 385 parts per million–and maintain that for 1,000 years, that Greenland would lose about half its ice in a millennium. [5] Now, we don’t have enough fossil fuel to maintain that concentration for 1,000 years.

Narrator: Gore also says half the ice sheet could break off because of “moulins.” For me, this was the scariest part of  An Inconvenient Truth. Moulins are cracks that channel meltwater from the surface of the ice sheet to the bedrock below. By lubricating the bedrock, moulins could destabilize the ice sheet, Gore says. [6]

Well, a recent study in Science magazine lays that fear to rest. A small meltwater lake poured down a moulin at a flow rate exceeding that of Niagara Falls. [7] Yet, Science magazine reports, “For all the lake’s water dumped under the ice that day, and all the water drained into new moulins in the following weeks, the ice sheet moved only an extra half meter near the drained lake.” [8] An extra half meter. [9]

Notes

[1] The thermohaline circulation “became stronger.” Dr. Michaels (Pat to his friends] just finished debunking Gore’s claim that ice melt from Greenland will inject enough fresh water into the North Atlantic to disrupt the thermohaline circulation (THC, a.k.a. oceanic “conveyor belt”), which most scientists–though not Richard Seager of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory–believe is responsible for Europe’s mild winters. There was a brief scare about THC shutdown a few years ago when Bryden et al. (2005) reported that the Atlantic branch of the conveyor belt slowed by 30% between 1957 and 2004. But one year later, Richard Kerr of Science magazine reported on new data showing that the Bryden study was a “false alarm.” In fact, Dr. Michaels says, alluding to Boyer et al. (2006) and Latif et al. (2006), the THC became stronger. The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change reviews Latif et al. (2006) here, and reviews many other THC studies. I discuss Gore’s warming-causes-cooling fantasy on pp. 11-12 of my April 2007 testimony before the Colorado Republican Study Committee.

[2] The estimate of 25 cubic miles of Greenland ice loss per year comes from Luthcke et al. (2006), a study summarized here on NASA’s Web page.

[3] Greenland has approximately 3 million cubic kilometers of ice. To convert cubic kilometers into cubic miles, you multiply the number of cubic kilometers by 0.2399. Hence, Greenland has about 719,000 cubic miles of ice. It is losing about 25 cubic miles of ice per year, which translates into a rate of 2,500 cubic miles per century. 2,500 is 4/10ths of 1% of 719,000.

[4] In the IPCC’s mid-range emissions scenario (A1B), Greenland ice loss contributes between 1 centimeter (cm) and 8 cm of sea-level rise in the 21st Century; in the IPCC’s high-end emissions scenario (A1FI), Greenland ice loss contributes between 2 cm and 12 cm per year (IPCC AR4 WGI, Chapter 10: Climate Change Protections, Table 10.7, p. 820). Translating into inches, Greenland ice loss contributes between 0.4 and 3.1 inches in mid-range A1B emissions scenario and between 0.7 and 4.7 inches in A1FI high-end emissions scenario.

[5] Pat here refers to Ridley et al. (2005), as reviewed in Chapter 10 of IPCC AR4 WGI, on p. 830. The figure below shows what the researchers project would happen to Greenland’s ice if carbon dioxide concentrations increase to four times pre-industrial levels and stay there for 3,000 years.

[6] Gore’s photograph and diagram of moulins come from Zwally et al. (2002), published in Science magazine.

In AIT, Gore animates the diagram so that the ice sheet begins to break apart at the E.Q. (equilibrium) line. This is thoroughly misleading. The E.Q. line of an ice sheet is the elevation at which glacier melting and snow accumulation are equal. Above the E.Q. line, snow accumulation exceeds ice melt; below it, ice melt exceeds snow accumulation. The E.Q. line is not a fault line or fissure in the ice.

More importantly, Zwally et al. (2002) is not evidence of an impending ice sheet crackup. The researchers found that moulins associated with summer ice melt accelerate glacial flow, but only by a few percent. For example, the flow rate of one outlet glacier increased from 31.3 cm/day in winter to 40.1 cm in July, falling back to 29.8 cm in August, increasing annual movement by about 5 meters. Apocalypse not!

[7] In a study updating the Zwally team’s research, Joughin et al. (2008) found somewhat more glacier acceleration associated summer ice melt and moulins. However, the study’s bottom-line conclusion is pointedly non-apocalyptic:

Surface-enhanced basal lubrication has been invoked previously as a feedback that would hasten the ice sheet’s demise in a warming climate. Our results show that several fast-flowing outlet glaciers, including Jakobshavn Isbrae, are relatively insensitive to this process . . . Our results thus far suggest that surface-melt enhanced lubrication will have a substantive but not catastrophic effect on the Greenland Ice Sheet’s future evolution.

[8] In a companion article (cited in this Policy Peril excerpt), Science magazine reporter Richard Kerr quotes Pennsylvania State University glaciologist Richard Alley on moulin-induced ice sheet lubrication:

“Is it run for the hills, the ice is falling into the ocean?” asks Alley. “No, it matters but it’s not huge.”

 Kerr goes on to observe, as noted above, that an entire 4 km-long, 8 m-deep melt-water lake disappeared down a moulin in about 1.4 hours–at an average rate of 8,700 cubic meters per second, “exceeding the average flow rate of Niagara Falls.” Yet, despite all the water dumped under the ice that day and all the water drained into new moulins in the following weeks, the ice sheet moved only “an extra half meter near the drained lake.” 

[9] To put the extra half meter of glacial movement in perspective, consider that the Greenland Ice Sheet extends 2,530 kilometers (1,570 miles) North-South and has a maximum width of 1094 kilometers (680 miles) near its northern margin.

In a segment of Policy Peril immediately following today’s film excerpt, Pat also discusses studies in Science magazine indicating that the West Antactic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is more stable than scientists previously believed. The researchers found that outlet glaciers drag debris under the ice that piles up into “wedges.” These hidden land forms then prop up and stabilize the ice shelf.

The significance? Scientists once worried that sea-level rise of just a few feet could lift the WAIS off its island moorings, hastening its break up and demise. However, as Anderson (2007)  reports in Science magazine, in a review of Anandakrishnan et al. (2007) and Alley et al. (2007) and their discovery of  stabilizing land forms under the WAIS, “At the current rate of sea level rise, it would take several thousand years to float the ice sheet off its bed.”

A more recent study by Pollard and DeConto (2009), reviewed by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, concludes that “the WAIS will begin to collapse when nearby ocean temperatures warm by roughly 5ºC.” How long would that take? 

In a companion article, Huybrechts (2009) estimates that, “The required ocean warmings, on the order of 5ºC, may well take several centuries to develop.” He asserts that “such an outcome could result from the accumulation of greenhouse-gas emissions projected for the twenty-first Century, if emissions are not greatly reduced.” His source here, however, is simply the IPCC report with its questionable assumptions about climate feedbacks and sensitivity. Huybrechts continues:

The implied transition time for a total collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet of one thousand to three thousand years [in Pollard and DeConto (2009)] seems rapid by Antarctic standards. But it is nowhere near the century timescales of West Antarctic ice sheet decay based on simple marine ice-sheet models. 

And one to three thousand years is certainly nowhere near the years-to-decades innundation of the world’s coastal communities that Al Gore conjures up in An Inconvenient Truth.

Announcements

The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Marlo Lewis today unveiled his new film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself. Over the next two weeks, he’ll be posting on globalwarming.org one excerpt from the film a day along with comments and links to newer information that has since come out. The videos present a powerful argument that the global warming debate is very far from “over.”

The Marshall Institute this week released “The Cocktail Guide to Global Warming,” a succinct compendium of replies to questions about climate change.

In the News

The Climate Science Debate Is Just Getting Interesting
Marlo Lewis, MasterRsource.org, 24 July 2009

Cold Shoulder to Climate “Urgency”
George Will, Washington Post, 23 July 2009

NY Mayor as Big a Climate Hypocrite as Gore
Leo Standora, New York Daily, 23 July 2009

Toxic Revenge
Silvia Santacruz, Forbes, 21 July 2009

GOP Targets Cap-and-Trade Supporters
Wall Street Journal, 21 July 2009

Obama’s Wacky Climate Czar
Joseph Abrahams, Fox News, 21 July 2009

Global Warming’s Missing Link
Chris Horner, Energy Tribune, 20 July 2009

Governors Bite Back
Paul Chesser, American Spectator, 20 July 2009

News You Can Use

Department of Inefficient Energy

The Wall Street Journal this week reported on a government audit of the Department of Energy that claims the DOE wasted almost $11 million in taxpayer money in 2009 due to inefficient energy use.

Your Taxpayer Dollars Pay for Alarmist Science
According to a new paper, “Climate Money,” written by Joanne Nova for the Science & Public Policy Institute, the federal government has spent $32 billion on climate research.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

All Politics Is Local

Senate Democratic leaders said this week that delaying votes on health care legislation until the fall will not derail the global warming express. Sure. Seriously, the question is whether health care will dominate town meetings during the August congressional recess or voters will still be angry about passage of Waxman-Markey. If enough voters still want to give their Senators an earful about cap-and-trade, then my guess is that it will have no momentum in the fall and the leadership will have a hard time rounding up sixty votes for anything related to energy rationing.

A video posted on You Tube of a town meeting that Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.) held over the Fourth of July recess is instructive in this regard.  Castle was one of the eight Republicans who voted yes on final passage of the Waxman-Markey bill.

A recent whining fundraising appeal from Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense Fund confirms that the House was flooded with calls and e-mails opposing Waxman-Markey: “For some House offices, their calls overwhelmed the switchboard.”  Krupp blames it on an organized conspiracy led by Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin and “financed with hundreds of millions of dollars from big polluters.” Too bad he doesn’t mention who those big polluters are. As far as I can tell, many of the biggest companies in the U. S. support cap-and-trade and a couple dozen of them belong to the U. S. Climate Action Partnership. EDF is a member of USCAP and works as a front group for big companies that hope to get rich off the backs of American consumers from the higher energy prices required by cap-and-trade. Hundreds of millions has a nice ring, but does anyone actually believe that the opponents of cap-and-trade have even a tenth of the funding of its supporters?

So here’s hoping that Senators back home in August are going to hear from lots of constituents about Waxman-Markey and what energy rationing will do to them.

A Climate Bill We Can Support

Representative Marsha Blackburn on Thursday filed a discharge petition to bring her bill, H. R. 391, to a vote on the House floor. H. R. 391 would simply prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions using the Clean Air Act.  A discharge petition is used to try to bring a bill to the floor that the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction opposes and won’t permit the committee to vote on. To discharge a bill from committee requires signatures from a majority (218) of House Members, so it’s not easy.

The Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill that the House passed by a 219-212 vote on June 26th includes pre-emption of the Clean Air Act (albeit a partial and less-than-airtight pre-emption). Thus, the House has already agreed that using the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon dioxide emissions is a bad idea that needs to be prevented. It could be argued that Members have no reason not to sign the discharge petition to implement a piece of that bill. Doing so could also provide some cover for Members who are being attacked by their constituents for voting for Waxman-Markey.  So although Blackburn’s petition is a long shot, it does present interesting political possibilities.

Around the World

Climate Hero: Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh

Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, this week admonished two diplomatic envoys for insisting that India sacrifice poverty reduction for climate change. During a press conference on Monday, Ramesh told U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he would “like to make it clear that India’s position is that we are simply not in a position to take on legally binding emission reduction,” after Clinton had pressed for Indian participation in an international effort to reduce emissions.

Yesterday, Ramesh hosted Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, who claimed that developed nations were willing to put “money on the table” to help developing nations pay for expensive energy climate policies, but only if developing countries agreed to act, according to the Financial Times. Ramesh dismissed his counterpart’s suggestion, and he even took a shot at alarmist science that predicts the Himalayan glaciers will disappear in 40 years. “Science has its limitation,” Ramesh told Carlgren, “you cannot substitute the knowledge that has been gained by the people living in cold deserts through everyday experience.”

Across the States

California: 1 Step Forward, Two Steps Back

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) and Democratic and Republican leaders of the state legislature agreed this week to a temporary fix for the state’s $26 billion budget deficit.  It includes a provision to allow new oil production within state waters (which extend three miles out from the coastline), which is expected to generate $1.8 billion in royalties over the next ten years plus higher tax receipts from the additional economic activity.

This is quite a change from California’s strong and long-term opposition to drilling in federal offshore areas, even in areas more than fifty miles from shore.  Schwarzenegger wrote a letter to Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), Chairman of the House Resources Committee, in 2006 opposing Pombo’s bill to open federal offshore areas to oil and gas exploration. The bill would have given States veto power over drilling within fifty miles of their coasts and a share of federal royalties. The bill passed the House, but a big majority of California’s 53 House Members voted against it.

Also this week, the California Small Business Roundtable released a report that estimates that AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act (a climate bill that would reduce California emissions by 25% from current levels through 2020), would cost 1.1 million jobs. The state budget would lose nearly $5.8 billion in taxes.

The Science

New Peer Reviewed Study Throws Cold Water on Alarmist Predictions

Carl Volk
A new paper on climate sensitivity by Drs. Richard Lindzen and Yong-Sang Choi of MIT has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. Their paper compares the observed change in global forcing with the observed change in sea surface temperature to determine that climate sensitivity is low (under 0.5 degrees C for a doubling of CO2) and is dominated by negative feedbacks that work to dampen the effects of increasing CO2. This research runs completely contrary to the conclusions of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and suggests that man-made global warming will be minimal. Lindzen discussed the paper in layman’s terms at Heartland’s recent climate change conference in DC. The accepted paper can be found here.

Springtime in the Rockies

Julie Walsh

Last week, I went heli-hiking near Glacier National Park in the Canadian Bugaboos where they were enjoying spring flowers. A 40-something guide mentioned that their recent spring was the coldest that she had ever lived through. Heartland Institute’s James Taylor recent piece explains the still-receding glaciers despite the long-term cooling trend.

Elsewhere, this graph from the University of Illinois Polar Research Group shows the continued rebound of Arctic sea ice.  And in the Southern Hemisphere, Argentina has been experiencing historic snow.

Announcements

CEI’s Iain Murray and H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, this week released a new report, “10 Cool Global Warming Policies,” on measures that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase wealth creation. To read NCPA’s report, click here.

In “Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC),” coauthors Dr. S. Fred Singer and Dr. Craig Idso and 35 contributors and reviewers present a comprehensive and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on which the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress rely for their regulatory proposals. Click here to get the report.

The Science & Public Policy Institute has released a series of state climate change policy papers. Each study examines an individual State and addresses four topics: observed climate change over time; impacts of climate mitigation measures; costs of federal mitigation legislation; and a list of state scientists who reject the man-made global warming hypothesis. To read more, click here.

In the News

Climate Conspiracy
Christopher Monckton’s Speech to the Heartland Institute’s 3^rd International Climate Conference in Washington, D.C., 2 June 2009

Climate Bill Sparks Lobbying Frenzy
Steven Mufson, Washington Post, 5 June 2009

Little Chance the U.S. Will Sign a Climate Treaty
L.A. Times editorial, 4 June 2009

Green with Guilt
George Will, Washington Post, 4 June 2009

Steep Cost of Renewables
Paul Chesser, GlobalWarming.org, 4 June 2009

Politics, Economics and Green Jobs
J.T. Young, American Spectator, 3 June 2009

Clean Air Act Regulation of CO2: Rough Road Ahead
Marlo Lewis, MasterResource.org, 3 June 2009

Gore-Backed Hara Sees Big $$ in Climate Policy
David Lawsky, Reuters, 1 June 2009

Pelosi’s Chinese Climate Change
Wall Street Journal editorial, 1 June 2009

Cap-and-Trade: All Cost and No Benefit
Martin Feldstein, Washington Post, 1 June 2009

Indiana Wants No Part of Energy Tax
Elisabeth Meinecke, Human Events, 1 June 2009

Now the World Faces Its Biggest Ever Bill
Christopher Booker, Telegraph, 23 May 2009

News You Can Use

Gore Hijinx

Reuters reported this week that Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins invested $6 million in Hara, a “one stop shop for greenhouse gas management,” with the endorsement of former U.S. Vice President Gore, who is a partner at the firm. Gore has lobbied for the Waxman-Markey Clean Energy and Security Act, a major climate change mitigation bill that would create a market for Hara’s services.

Inside the Beltway

Myron Ebell

Bingaman Moves Forward with Senate Anti-Energy Package

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week held another mark-up of Chairman Jeff Bingaman’s (D-NM) comprehensive anti-energy bill. Bingaman plans to finish next week. The title on energy efficiency standards was amended to provide more financial assistance for retro-fitting historic buildings with energy-saving features. The title would require States to adopt building codes that would reach 30 percent energy savings through 2010 compared to 2006 standards, and then 50 percent by some future date to be determined later.

A number of amendments were offered to the renewable electricity standards title, but most were defeated on an 11 to 12 vote. The title would require that 15 percent of electricity must be generated by defined renewable sources by 2021. The committee wrangled over how nuclear power should be treated. An amendment to take new nuclear power out of the baseline from which the 15 percent is calculated was approved. Thus nuclear does not count as renewable, but new nuclear power plants will not increase the requirement to produce other renewables.

Waxman-Markey Heads to Floor?

The House Democratic leadership had a different story to tell every day this week on the schedule to bring H. R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey energy-rationing bill, to the floor.  Their intentions may change again several times, but right now it looks as if they plan to debate and vote on the bill before leaving for the Fourth of July recess. I think Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) have come to the same conclusion I did: their chances of passing it are better sooner rather than later.  To rush such a huge and momentous piece of legislation to the floor in a month is going to take a huge effort. It could easily slip to July or even past the August recess. But for now, we should expect a weeklong floor debate the week of 21st June.

The Alternative to Waxman-Markey

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) on 7th May introduced what can be seen as the comprehensive alternative to Waxman-Markey.  Rather than rationing energy in the name of saving us from global warming, the American Energy Innovation Act would increase access to all kinds of energy, especially on federal lands and offshore areas. Bishop, the chairman of the Western Caucus, was joined by Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee, in introducing the bill. H. R. 2300 currently has 59 co-sponsors. Price and Bishop have both written articles promoting this joint effort of the Western Caucus and the Republican Study Committee and contrasting it with the Waxman-Markey bill. The American Energy Innovation Act is too big a bill with too much in it to be perfect, but it’s a good start toward rational (rather than rationing) energy policy. It’s going to be a long journey to get even halfway there.

Heartland’s Climate Conference

The big event in Washington this week (besides the unveiling of the Reagan statue in the Capitol’s Rotunda) was the Heartland Institute’s International Climate Conference.  All the talks will soon be posted here. A good place to start will be with Professor Richard Lindzen’s excellent opening address. Lindzen’s analysis of the politics of global warming in the scientific community is most perceptive, and his demonstration that the climate is not nearly as sensitive to CO2 levels as the climate models assume looks definitive.

GE: General Extortion

Julie Walsh

GE, currently the 22^nd largest company in the world-down from 10^th last quarter-has been lobbying for Cap and Tax. Julia Seymour at Business and Media Institute in her piece “Networks Ignore Trillion-Dollar Price Tag of Climate Cap Bill“ writes:

GE is the largest wind turbine generator maker and according to an “O’Reilly Factor” investigation the company “stands to make billions” from cap-and-trade.

And Vladimir at Redstate has a continuation on Tim Carney’s expose on the lobbying of General Electric:

GE also controls the message through its ownership of the media. That includes NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Universal Studios, 10 major-market NBC affiliate stations, 16 Telemundo stations, plus many of the popular cable TV networks: A&E, History Channel, Sundance Channel, Weather Channel (my emphasis), Bravo, USA Networks, on and on. Have you noticed how hard the Green Agenda is being pushed in all the media?

A savvy capitalist hedges his bets. GE is one of the biggest players in the high-return business of energy lending – financing the capital needs of oil and gas firms.

No wonder the real story on the costs of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-tax bill isn’t getting out.

Around the World

Bonn: New Conference, Same Deadlock

Delegates from 180 countries met in Bonn this week for negotiations in advance of the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change this December in Copenhagen, where the UN hopes to adopt a successor global warming treaty to the failed Kyoto Protocol.

According to the International Energy Agency, it would cost $45 trillion through 2050 to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius. U.S. President Barack Obama wants rapidly developing nations such as China and India, which will account for the preponderance of future increases in global emissions, to share this tremendous economic burden. His top climate envoy, Todd Stern, told the Associated Press, “I would not say that the United States is going to race forward with major players like China on the sidelines.”

Under the Kyoto Protocol, however, rapidly developing nations are exempt from binding emissions cuts that would slow poverty reduction by making energy much more expensive. Delegates from these nations want to maintain this “right to develop,” so they reject Stern’s logic. China’s climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters, “Instead of introducing new concepts, controversial concepts, unfair concepts, the world would be better served if we could focus on what is already agreed upon…”

The deadlock in Bonn is nothing new. For two years, the climate negotiators have been meeting at five star resorts around the world, and they have made no progress on the core dispute: the U.S. won’t act on climate change without China, which won’t act under any circumstance. Thankfully, this impasse appears to be intractable.

Bonn Bombshell

Besides deadlock, the only other news out of Bonn was the European Union’s apparent reversal on its unilateral pledge to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020. On Monday, German environmental minister Sigmar Gabriel told reporters that, “If the others don’t join in, we cannot uphold this target.”

What will the world look like in a century? Imagine asking that question in 1900. And in 1800. The world would have changed in so many dramatic ways, that any economic and environmental predictions would have been worthless.

That’s the problem that we face with the climate doomsayers. They can spin out scenarios day after day, but there is little reason to believe the underlying economic and other assumptions.

So far the computer models have proved inadequate to the task. More research has come forth demonstrating that the models predict more warming than we have so far seen. If they can’t get the last three decades right, why does anyone believe that they will get multiple decades, or longer, in the future right?

Explains Drew Thornley, Texas Public Policy Foundation, writing for Heartland Institute's Environment and Climate News:

Computer models that form the basis for future global warming predictions have projected significantly more warming in recent years than has actually occurred, concludes a comprehensive new scientific study.

“A Comparison of Tropical Temperature Trends with Model Predictions,” published in the December 2007 International Journal of Climatology, is the latest study to cast doubt on the efficacy of climate modeling. Climate scientists David H. Douglass, John Christy, and S. Fred Singer analyzed 22 climate models and found their predictions at odds with actual warming over the past 30 years.

No Human Fingerprint

Most of the models predicted significant middle- and upper-troposphere warming, yet actual warming was minimal.

Douglass and his colleagues write, “Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs.”

Christy, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) contributor, noted in a December 6 press statement, “Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. Satellite observations suggest that greenhouse models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide.”

Models Don’t Reflect Causes

Many top climate scientists point out climate models are incapable of handling confounding factors such as cloud cover and water vapor (the dominant greenhouse gas), thus distorting climate predictions.

Additionally, they note, the models do not reflect the actual causes of warming. Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, says the models used by the IPCC and other alarmists assign too much warming resulting from increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, rendering the models’ predictions inaccurate.

Singer writes, “Dire predictions of future warming are based almost entirely on computer climate models, yet these models do not accurately understand the role of water vapor. Plus, computer models cannot account for the observed cooling of much of the past century (1940-75), nor for the observed patterns of warming. For example, the Antarctic is cooling while models predict warming. And where the models call for the middle atmosphere to warm faster than the surface, the observations show the exact opposite.”

The issue of climate change warrants continuing research. But there is no compelling reason for panic, jumping off an economic cliff to forestall a future unlikely to ever occur.