Science

Drought Cycles and Hurricane Cycles

University of New Mexico scientist Louis Scuderi, studying tree ring data in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado, has identified a 72 year drought cycle in the region according to an AP article of April 29th. The last such drought occurred in the 1950s, leading Scuderi to believe that another is imminent in the 2020s.

Although the cause of the drought cycle is still unknown, a good bet would be climactic oscillators, similar to the El Nio and La Nia effects, only operating over this longer timespan. Scientists believe that many of these oscillators may exist, effecting temperature and climate significantly. Naturally, the longer the period of an oscillator, the more difficult it is to detect.

According to hurricane expert Dr. William Gray at Colorado State University, we should see an increase in storm activity over the next 20 years. The storms are expected to cause 5 to 10 times the amount of damage on the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts than previously experienced, due to the massive increase in population and development along these coastlines.

The hurricane activity of the next 20 years should resemble the period that began in the late 1920s and lasted through the 1940s. The increase is due to higher salinity content in the Atlantic Ocean, which alters its currents and increases average ocean temperatures, fueling more storms. Gray emphasizes that this is a cyclical trend and has nothing to do with global warming (CNN, April 22, 2000).

On April 18, the CBS Evening News broadcast a segment, reported by John Blackstone, entitled “Global Warming Generating Short- and Long-Term Drastic and Dangerous Weather Changes.” Bravo to the scientists at CBS for proving the outcomes of warming that have eluded the entire camp of doomsayers since day one.

Blackstone begins by acknowledging the warmth of the “noonday sun in New Orleans… unusually warm for this date,” conclusive evidence in itself, no doubt. His interviewee is James Baker, administrator of NOAA and reknowned global warming enthusiast. According to Baker, “The January, February, March temperatures in the United States are the warmest ever in our 106 years of record keeping” which “is a very significant fact. It’s a wake-up call, really.”

And what will we be waking up to? “Severe weather damage” and “more floods, more droughts and…hurricanes with more destructive power.” Sounds ominous until, of course, one considers recent insurance industry reports, by Swiss Re and others, discrediting the idea of increased weather extremes while blaming more-costly development for rising storm damages.

Baker, though, prepares himself for the worst: “If you had a Category 4 hurricane that hit New Orleans…youd have 20 feet of water in New Orleans. Thats frightening.” Indeed, Mr. Baker, it is, which is why all should be reassured that it’s extremely unlikely.

Of course, some scientists have to justify their federal agency’s funding on a regular basis by such means as strutting about with the global warming cranks at CBS. This might explain why Baker has been trotted out by CBS no less than five times in the past month.

For example, Baker commanded a lead role in the CBS News web article titled “Global Warmings Impact Is Clear,” again highlighting the amazing research being performed by the most weather-conscious of the Big Three networks. It’s been reported, in fact, that CBS scientists, always cutting edge, are on the verge of linking climate change to Nielsen rating reports. Stay tuned…

Announcements

• Dr. Richard Lindzen, Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, will speak at a Washington Roundtable on Science and Public Policy sponsored by the George C. Marshall Institute at noon, May 17, at the University Club, 1135 16^th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Dr. Lindzen, will speak in, “Climate Forecasting: When the Models are Qualitatively Wrong.” For further information, please call (202) 296-9655.
• Also market your calendar for Tuesday, May 30 when an international team of top climate scientists will present their review of the draft Third Assessment Report of the IPCC. The symposium, tentatively scheduled for 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., is sponsored by the Cooler Heads Coalition and the Science and Environmental Policy Project.

Advance News On New IPCC Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is close to releasing its next report on global warming, and contributors have already begun bickering over what the weighty text (1,000+ pages) does and doesnt say.

Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and co-author of several sections of the new report, claims that the text “made for a sharper statement” linking warming to human activity compared to the IPCCs 1995 report. Trenberth attributes this shift to the warm final years of the last decade and new computer models which leave him convinced that “climate change has emerged from the noise of natural variability.” Finally, he points to the new reports focus on “negative elements,” which tend to mitigate or obscure global warming, such as sulfate aerosols.

On the other hand, Richard Lindzen, MIT professor and lead author of one chapter, reads the report differently. “Were really no closer to attributing [global warming since the 19^th century] to anything in particular.” He laments “the assumption that [computer climate] models are good surrogates for the data.”

For their part, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) refuses to comment “until we have completed our review of all the chapters” (Washington Post, April 18, 2000).

All of this raises a question: if the authors of the definitive report on the causes of global warming cant agree on the conclusions of the report they just wrote, can we expect open-minded policy-makers to make sense of this at all? Maybe the IPCC just needs a professional ghostwriter to clear up the confusion.

Xie Simei, Chinese South Pole expert and member of Chinas 14^th South Pole Expedition Team, released his findings on the recent break-off of three giant icebergs from the South Pole to the Xinhua News Service (April 18, 2000).

According to Simei, these new icebergs are nothing unusual. The ice and snow that comprise the Antarctic cap, as thick as 2,000 meters, shift constantly, sometimes breaking off pieces that become icebergs. He notes that this activity is especially common in the summer, when drifting icebergs can be seen more easily in satellite photographs.

Although some have attributed the icebergs appearance to global warming, Simei is quick to discount that claim, arguing instead that gravitation, warm weather, and tidal activity are the causes of this phenomenon.

Finally, Simei maintains that gains in snowfall will make up for any Antarctic ice mass lost via icebergs.

In related news, it has been noted that although one of the icebergs was very large 180 miles by 22 miles it is still quite a bit smaller than previous observed icebergs from the same area. The a largest berg ever recorded was “sighted by the U.S. Navy on November 16, 1956, at 60 miles by 208 miles in size,” notes John Daly. “Little America Harbor from 1948-55 was unusable due to the amount of icebergs clogging that area” (www.vision.net.au/~daly).

On April 5^th, NASA and several European space agencies announced that the hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic was bigger than ever this past winter. After conducting research over the past several months, they concluded that the Arctic ozone layer was depleted by as much as 60 percent.

As with past efforts to garner media attention for ozone research, the press conference was very selective and misleading. For example, the 60 percent depletion only occurred at a particular altitude, above and below which the ozone layer was not affected. And most importantly, the bottom line effect on ground-level ultraviolet B radiation (UVB) from ozone loss remains so small that scientists still cannot even say that there has been a long-term increase at all.

The press conference was much like any of a dozen others over the years, but with one relatively new wrinkle. Several participants blamed the putatively worsening ozone problem on global warming. Scientist Georgios Amanatidis explained that “Warm air is being trapped at lower levels by greenhouse gases and therefore the upper atmosphere is much colder, which helps trigger the chemical reaction that destroys ozone.” Crossing the line from science to advocacy, Amanatidis concluded that this new research “certainly puts even more emphasis than ever on the need to reduce greenhouse gases as outlined in the Kyoto Protocol.”

This is not the first time the two major global environmental issues were linked in order to sell a policy prescription as a means of killing two birds with one stone. Back in the mid-1970s, when the ozone depletion hypothesis was still new, several scientists insisted that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the class of refrigerants believed to be the main ozone depleters, were global warming gases as well.

Indeed, one 1976 study predicted that CFCs, if unregulated, would overtake carbon dioxide as the primary anthropogenic greenhouse gas by 2000. CFCs greenhouse potential was frequently offered up as a second good reason to ban these compounds, in addition to the main concerns about ozone loss.

But then the policy considerations changed and, strangely enough, so did the science. By 1987, the Montreal Protocol was signed, committing the US and other developed nations to CFC reductions based entirely on their ozone depletion potential. By the early 1990s, this treaty was strengthened into a complete ban on CFCs. At this point, there no longer was anything more to be gained by demonizing these compounds as greenhouse gases.

Quite the contrary: the Bush Administration, which was opposed to carbon dioxide emissions reductions, hoped to get credit in a greenhouse context for the CFC reductions the US was already committed to under the Montreal Protocol. Unwilling to give the US this free ride, a number of scientists changed their minds and decided that CFCs were not global warming gases after all. Their reason was that since CFCs deplete the ozone layer and ozone depletion has an offsetting cooling effect, the net greenhouse potential is a wash. From that point on, the already-banned CFCs have stayed off the table in all global warming discussions.

The science (more accurately, the spin put on the science) may have done a flip-flop, but it has been used consistently to support additional international restrictions on industrial activities.

Now we are to believe that the as-yet-unratified Kyoto Protocol will save us from the twin threats of global warming and ozone depletion. Granted, the hypothesis that there may be a link between greenhouse gas-induced stratospheric cooling and increased ozone loss is plausible enough to warrant further research. But if past is any guide, international environmental agreements marketed as two-for-one deals may not be as good a bargain as they sound.

The Moon and Climate Change

When it comes to external influences in the climate, the sun receives most of the attention. But according to some researchers, the moon also plays an important role. Three years ago, Gerard Bond of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, discovered a 1500 to 1800-year cycle in the worlds temperatures that corresponds with lunar oscillations. “This puts the Earth in the middle of a warming phase that began at the end of the Little Ice Age, and will carry on until the 24^th century,” notes the New Scientist (April 1, 2000).

Bond, who has traced the fluctuation back 100,000 years from sediment cores from the Atlantic Ocean, said, “It seems to be the pacemaker of rapid climate change,” but he had no explanatory mechanism. Charles Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography believes that changes in the alignment of the Sun, Earth and Moon affect the Earths tides, which in turn affect global temperatures.

According to Keeling, strong tides “increase the vertical mixing of water in the oceans, drawing cold ocean water from the depths to the surface, where it cools the atmosphere above.” Weak tides, on the other hand, keep the cold water at the bottom of the sea, thereby allowing the atmosphere to warm up. Indeed, tides were at their peak strength during the worst of the Little Ice Age. Keeling believes that the 1800-year cycle has been the primary driver of climate change for the last 10,000 years.

Unfortunately, Keeling claims that these findings mean that efforts to reduce greenhouse gases are more urgent than ever. Presumably, since the Earth is already warming due to natural causes mans influence on the climate may be even more dangerous than previously thought. Keelings inference is incorrect, however.

This new evidence suggests that greenhouse gases have less of an effect on global temperatures than previously thought. Scientists are still sorting out the relative magnitudes of the different forcings on the climate system, including the magnitude of manmade greenhouse gases. Global temperature increases have been much smaller than predicted by the theory of human-induced global warming, suggesting a much smaller carbon dioxide forcing than that assumed in the computer climate models. Including natural forcings such as the sun, fluctuations in oceanic circulation, and now lunar oscillations, the estimated magnitude of temperature forcing from CO2 should fall even more.

In late March one of the largest icebergs ever broke free of the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. “We see an iceberg of this magnitude only once every 50 to 100 years,” noted Mathew Lazzara, senior research specialist at the University of Wisconsin Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC). “This is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but this is not a common thing.” Only a week later a smaller, but still significant, iceberg broke free from the same place.

The iceberg, which is 180 to 185 miles long and 22 miles wide, broke free due to ocean tides, according to the researchers. “As the ice shelf develops and gets influences from the ocean it starts to deteriorate where the ice meets the ocean waters. The ocean tides act upon it, causing it to crack and wearing it away. The ocean currents and the tides are responsible for getting it going and putting it into motion,” said Lazzara.

And what about global warming? “Climate change is not a factor in the break off, although people try to use the event to further their objectives,” said Professor Emeritus Charles Stearns, also of SSEC. “If the ice did not flow off Antarctica, all the water in the oceans would be deposited there. Be glad that all the water in the world does not collect on Antarctica” (University Wire, March 20, 2000).

The latest victim of CBSs morbid fascination with global warming is the science of glacial activity. On March 29, CBSs Bob McNamara played the straight man and let his on camera guests make the case that “Global warming is a reality” and glacial melt “is probably going to be a wake-up call.” But while reporting on the melting glaciers and permafrost from Alaska, McNamara mentioned in passing that, “In Greenland it’s actually getting colder.” So if the warmer weather in Alaska is due to global warming, the colder weather must be due to global warming, too?

If anyone doubts CBS has an agenda here, Dan Rather should erase them: he introduced the Alaska glacier story by casually noting, “Against the backdrop of the latest tornadoes in Texas, US climate experts say global warming and La Nina are making for longer and stronger tornado seasons.” Thats right, Dan, toss in La Nina to give yourself some wiggle room, while snidely suggesting we share collective guilt for the tragic Fort Worth tornado.

Ironically, the very next night CBS proved it can play it straight by airing a story on the virtues of warming for the British climate and its (ever-hopeful) wine industry. Sure, they threw in a few scare lines about disastrous floods and avalanches, but they’ve got to do something to get their viewers excited, right?

Potential Health Effects of Global Warming

The U.S. Global Change Research Program has released its findings regarding the effects of possible future global warming on human health in the United States. The workshop summary, part of the National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability, appears in the current issue of Environmental Health Perspectives (http://ehis.niehs.nih.gov).

According to the researchers, “We conclude that the levels of uncertainty preclude any definitive statement on the direction of potential future change for each of these health outcomes, although we developed some hypotheses.” The health outcomes considered by the researchers included, “temperature-related morbidity and mortality; health effects of extreme weather events (storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, and precipitation extremes); air-pollution-related health effects; water- and food-borne diseases; and vector- and rodent-borne diseases.”

In the discussion of vectorborne diseases such as malaria and dengue and yellow fever the authors note, “The ecology and transmission dynamics of these vectorborne infections are complex and the factors that influence transmission are unique to each disease. It is not possible, therefore, to make broad generalizations on the effect of climate on vectorborne diseases.” The authors point out however, that these diseases are largely unknown in the U.S. “mainly because of changes in land use, agricultural methods, residential patterns, human behavior, and vector control.”

According to the authors, the presence of dengue fever, for instance, “is greatly influenced by house structure, human behavior, and general socioeconomic conditions.” For example, “In the period 1980-1996, 43 cases were recorded in Texas as compared to 50,333 in the three contiguous border states in Mexico.”

Regarding extreme weather events, the report states, “Climate models currently are unable to accurately project changes in extreme events such as floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes, making it difficult to assess future potential health impacts of such events.” It then proceeds to discuss in detail deaths, injuries and damages from past extreme events as well as a discussion of post-traumatic stress disorder.

The report also notes that, “Death rates are higher in the winter than in the summer and it is expected that milder winters could reduce the number of deaths in winter months.” The report concludes, “We found that most of the U.S. population is presently protected against adverse health outcomes associated with weather and/or climate, although certain demographic and geographic populations are at increased risk. Vigilance in the maintenance and improvement of public health systems and their responsiveness to changing climate conditions and to identified vulnerable subpopulations should help protect the U.S. population from any adverse health outcomes of projected climate change.”

The recent report by the National Research Council claims that the surface-based temperature record is essentially correct. There may be some problems with that assertion, however. According to new research by NASA, the urban heat island effect may be greater than previously thought. Using satellite-based, remote-sensing technology researchers have found that, “Urban Atlanta can reach 5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit or higher than surrounding rural areas.

(http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/headlines)

It has long been recognized that the urban heat island effect causes an upward bias in the surface temperature data. Scientists have attempted to adjust the data to eliminate the bias, and it is generally thought that they have been successful. But, as John Daly notes on his webpage (www.vision.net/~daly), that, “Data from GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies) shows that Atlanta has warmed about 2 degrees C in the last 100 years compared with Newnan, a small town about 50 kilometers southwest of Atlanta. But the GISS adjustment for urbanization in Atlanta is only 1 degree C.”

This suggests that the adjustments have been inadequate. Daly shows other dubious adjustments on his website. Denver has only been adjusted +0.1 degrees C, even though it has experience tremendous growth since 1933 when the data begin.

Dan Rather: a shill for the environmental lobby? You decide. Witness two adjacent articles on the CBS News website, evidence of the network’s latest mis-fired salvo in the global warming battle.

In the first, “Antarctica Just Got Smaller,” from the AP newswire, Matthew Lazzara, senior researcher at the University of Wisconsin, describes the separation of a 4,200 square mile iceberg from the Ross Ice Shelf as an event that happens with some regularity: “I guess a berg of this magnitude breaks off every 50 to 100 years, and it’s been that long for one to break off this size on this end of the continent.” Lazzara claims its just too early to chalk this event up to global warming. “The ice shelves, this is their job. They calve off icebergs all the time, but they’re usually much smaller.”

Now for the spin: in a story reported on the evening news only hours later (and subsequently published on the Internet), “Sea Temperatures On The Rise,” correspondent Russ Mitchell rounded up the usual suspects for a global warming love-in. According to the article, the new iceberg “is a casualty due in part to a world in hot water,” which the story mysteriously attributes to “scientists,” none of whom would apparently let their name be tied to such an irresponsible remark. Sydney Levitus used the segment as a platform to push his latest NOAA research on ocean warming-funding-time must be near. Scare-monger David Hawkins of the Natural Resource Defense Council chimes in, “We need to be careful. We are destroying the atmosphere. Things are getting worse.”

The same could be said of CBS News with regard to journalistic integrity.

Global Temperature Update

Warm February temperatures in the U.S. gave the press plenty of ammunition for the global warming scare mill. It turns out that U.S. temperatures and global temperatures were going in opposite directions.

According to Dr. John Christy, a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who compiles the satellite temperature data with Dr. Roy Spencer at NASA, “While North America showed extremely warm departures from the 20 year average, the globe as a whole was cooler than normal by almost one-tenth of a degree (Celsius).”

“Virtually all of the tropical belt remained cooler than normal, due to the continuing cold (La Nia) phase of the ENSO (El Nio/Southern Oscillation) cycle.” Christy noted that, “February was a good example of how local regional temperature patterns give little information about the globe as a whole.”

In a related matter, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rose by a mere 0.5 percent in 1998 (BNA Daily Environment Report, March 6, 2000).

Climate Changes Linked to the Suns Magnetic Activity

A new study published in the February 23 issues of New Astronomy could have important implications for our understanding of changes in the Earths climate. The study shows that the sun may have a significant impact on the Earths temperatures.

According to the authors, solar physicists Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, climatologist Eric Posmentier of Long Island University, and physicist Pius Okeke of the University of Nigeria, changes in the suns magnetism are closely correlated to temperatures in the Earths lower troposphere as measured by satellite-borne instruments called microwave sounding units.

The data show, for instance, that as the Suns magnetic activity weakens there is a distinct drop in the atmospheric temperature. This is due to the corresponding expansion of coronal holes in the Suns outer atmosphere, which in turn increase the amount of hot, supercharged particles striking the Earths atmosphere. These particles may increase cloud cover, lowering the Earths temperature. Greater magnetic activity, on the other hand, warms the Earth.

The study concludes that, “Variable fluxes either in solar charged particles or cosmic rays modulated by the solar wind, or both, may influence the terrestrial tropospheric temperature on a timescale of months to years.”

New York Times Gives Skeptics a Fair Shake

The New York Times environment reporter, William K. Stevens, has been suspected of bias in his reporting of global warming issues. Recently, however, his reporting has tended to be balanced, making some concessions to those who are not convinced that global warming is a serious threat. His most recent article, “Global Warming: The Contrarian View,” is devoted entirely to the global warming skeptics.

Featured in the article are atmospheric scientists, Dr. William Gray, of Colorado State University, Dr. Fred Singer, president of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, Dr. Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Robert Balling of Arizona State University, and Dr. Patrick Michaels of the University of Virginia.

Although Stevens gives fair play to the skeptics veiws, he also finds it difficult to avoid using terms such as “mainstream” when referring to the views of global warming believers. He cites Michael Oppenheimer an atmospheric scientist with Environmental Defense (formerly Environmental Defense Fund) as representative of the mainstream (New York Times, February 29, 2000).

Oppenheimer himself seems to give up a great deal of ground to the skeptics when he says in the article, “There is no compelling evidence to allow us to choose between the low end, or the high end, or the middle.”

As for what constitutes “mainstream,” Dr. Singer, who circulates widely among the scientific community, noted that, “Stevens fails to mention that there are dozens if not hundreds of contrarians out there besides the half dozen he mentions in his article” (The Week That Was, www.sepp.org, March 4, 2000). Indeed, the Cooler Heads Coalition has sponsored several congressional briefings featuring some of the other contrarians.

Is Global Warming Speeding Up?

According to a paper published in the March 1 issue of the Geophysical Research Letters, during the sixteen month period from May 1997 to September 1998, “Each month broke the previous monthly world average temperature record,” reported the New York Times (February 23, 2000).

The research team led by Dr. Thomas R. Karl of the National Climatic Data Center calculated that there is a 1-in-20 chance of such a string of record breaking months occurring. “It raises a flag because it was such an unusual event that we need to watch very carefully in the next several years, because, indeed, it could be a signal of an increased rate of temperature increase,” said Karl.

Dr. John Christy, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, urges caution in linking the unusual event to global warming, however. The powerful El Nio of 1997-98 is at least partly to blame for the temperature spike, said Christy. Karl agrees, but he said, “Its important to keep in mind that El Nio is a natural phenomena but not necessarily unrelated to the forcing of man on the climate.”

That may be true, but an article that appeared in Nature on May 28, 1998, showed that there have been several powerful El Nio events long before the buildup of manmade greenhouse gases and when temperatures were much cooler. There appears to be no correlation between the frequency or magnitude of El Nio events and global temperatures.

Dr. Patrick Michaels, of the University of Virginia, also takes exception to the studys interpretation of the data, noting that it uses “16 months of data to forecast the next 100 years” (Washington Times, March 7, 2000).

NRC Report Clarification

The recent National Research Council report on the discrepancy between the surface-based and satellite-based temperature records received a lot of press attention. Most of it was wrong, according to John M. Wallace, chairman of the panel, and John R. Christy, a member of the panel. “When the report hit the streets, several news outlets across the country cited it as one more piece of definitive evidence that greenhouse gases were causing the Earth to warm,” they said. “Policy makers rushed to announce initiatives to combat the problem.”

Wallace and Christy chastise those who try to turn global warming into a “pro” or “con” issue. “To really understand long-term global climate change, we have to pay attention to what the science tells us,” they said. “And like it or not, the evidence to date is telling us that while were making great strides, we still dont have all the answers.”

Wallace and Christy conclude, “Despite differences in the two sets of temperature data, the Earths surface is in fact warming. Our panel did not address whether greenhouse gases have led to the temperature increases of the past two decades.

Unfortunately, the important distinction between greenhouse warming and global warming was all but ignored by some policy makers and interest groups who seized on our findings to further their own agendas. Many scientists do believe that increasing greenhouse gases or other human-induced changes are responsible for the warming, but some still have reasonable doubts” (HMS Beagle, www.biomednet.com/hmsbeagle, February 18, 2000).

Tropospheric Temperature Change

With the release of the NRC report, there has been a lot of discussion about the discrepancy in temperature trends as measured on the surface and in the layer of the atmosphere known as the troposphere. Two new papers in Science (February 18, 2000) address the issue. Both papers confirm the accuracy of the satellite temperature data.

One is a paper that discusses the use of balloon borne radiosonde temperature measurements as confirmation of the satellite data. The lead author is Dian Gaffen of the Air Resources Laboratory, NOAA, and is co-authored by John Christy of Earth System Science Laboratory, University of Alabama-Huntsville, among others. Gaffen et al. offers possible explanations of the temperature discrepancy, such as “Surface and lower tropospheric temperatures may respond differently to changes in a suite of natural and human-induced climate forcings, including well-mixed greenhouse gases, stratospheric and tropospheric ozone, tropospheric aerosols, and stratospheric volcanic aerosols.”

The discrepancy is largest at the tropical belt and so the paper focuses on the temperature trends for those areas. Balloon measurements of the tropical belt began in 1960 and show that the lower to mid troposphere actually warmed faster than the surface in “a pattern consistent with model projections of the vertical structure of tropospheric warming associated with increasing concentrations of well-mixed atmospheric greenhouse gases. From 1979 to 1997, however, the balloon data “show the same pattern of surface warming and tropospheric cooling since 1979 as the independent surface and MSU (satellite) observations.”

Another confirmation of the satellite data is observed changes in the tropical freezing level, which is closely correlated with tropospheric temperatures. From 1960 to 1997, the freezing level rose by about 30 meters per decade, but during the period of satellite measurements since 1979 the freezing level has fallen. Interestingly, “Tropical glaciers at the 5- to 7-km elevation have retreated during the 1980s and 1990s, while freezing levels have lowered.”

A paper by Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, among others (including Gaffen), analyzed three state-of-the-art climate models to see how well they could account for the discrepancy. Gaffen, et al., noted that the analysis, “suggests that simulated global surface temperature trends over 20-year periods never exceed lower tropospheric trends by as much as” that observed during the 1979 to 1998 period. Even when “forced” by changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, sulfate aerosols, stratospheric ozone depletion and the Mount Pinatubo eruption, the models failed to simulate the trend differences. Santer et al. also argues that part of the discrepancy is due to incomplete surface temperature records.

Gaffen et al. concludes that, “Given uncertainties in the observations, in reconstructing the historical climate forcings, and in the climate systems response to those forcings, we may never have a complete understanding of the complex behavior of tropical tropospheric temperatures, lapse rates, and freezing levels during the past few decades.”

What is the implication of these papers? Dr. Christy told MSNBC (February 18, 2000) that, “The behavior of the surface temperatures and the atmosphere over the past 21 years is at odds with the theories that explain how human-induced climate changes should occur. This suggests that what has happened in the past 21 years is not an example of human-induced climate change.”

Climate Model Uncertainties

Computer models are being used with increased frequency to evaluate and solve problems, writes Barry Cipra in an article in Science (February 11, 2000). These models can be useful, but they also have their drawbacks.

“Although the precise numbers and realistic pictures produced by computer simulations give an illusion of accuracy,” says Cipra, “a ravening swarm of assumptions, simplifications, and outright errors lurk beneath.” Better tools are needed, but according to Cipra, “The quest for such tools is itself an uncertain and challenging process.”

Take global warming, for instance. “Much of the global warming debate,” says Cipra, “is fueled by the radically different numbers that different models produce. As the explosive growth of computer power allows researchers to tackle ever-bigger problems with ever-more-complex models, even the experts have a hard time sorting the scientific wheat from the numerical chaff.”

Mac Hyman, a mathematician at Los Alamos National Laboratory, says that the number of variables and size of the system being analyzed is so great that even the fastest computers strain under the computational requirements.

A Five Century Temperature Trend

Nature (February 17, 2000) has published a paper showing that the Earth has warmed gradually over the last 500 years. By measuring the temperature in boreholes (deep holes in the ground) “at 10-m depth intervals to depths as great as 600 m,” the researchers found a long term global warming. They also found that, “Almost 80% of the net temperature increase observed has occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

Of course, prior to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Earth was in the depths of the Little Ice Age. The end of the Little Ice Age was only 100 to 150 years ago, so these findings are not particularly surprising.

Research Group: Polar Ice Sheets to Remain Stable

The Cooperative Research Center for Antarctica and the Southern Ocean (Antarctic CRC) released a position statement on February 10 entitled “Polar Ice Sheets, Climate and Sea-Level Rise.” The statements findings are part of Antarctic CRCs contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

According to the statement, “There is popular speculation that greenhouse warming of two or three degrees over the next century might trigger a similarly large change in association with melting of the two remaining ice-sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.” A few degrees warming, says the statement, may melt most of the Greenland ice-sheet, raising sea levels by six meters, but that would take 1,000 to 2,000 years.

The Antarctic ice-sheet, if completely melted, would raise sea levels by 55 meters but, “It is not expected that it would melt as a result of a warming of two or three degrees. This is because temperatures in most of the Antarctica are well below the melting point of ice.” At most, increased ice flows from the Antarctic ice-sheet due to warming would increase the sea level by one or two meters over the next 1,000 to 2,000 years.

The statement concludes, “In the shorter term that is, over the next century or two it is expected that there will be relatively little melting of the ice-sheets. Indeed it is expected that the volume of Antarctic ice will increase slightly because greater snowfall caused by higher evaporation from the warmer oceans will outweigh any increase in melting.”

The highest predicted sea level increase is “several tens of centimeters per century,” according to the statement. “This is good news,” said Professor Garth Paltridge, the institutes director. The statement can be found by clicking “News Flash” at www.antcrc.utas.edu.au/antcrc.

Etc.

According to a press release from the Republican National Committee, Chairman Jim Nicholson has “challenged Democrat Senate Candidate Hillary Clinton to declare whether she supports Gores reckless treaty (Kyoto Protocol) or hard-pressed New York families.” Noting that according to the respected economic forecasting firm, WEFA, Inc., the Kyoto Protocol would raise New York home heating oil prices by 71 percent and cost New York 140,000 jobs, Mr. Nicholson thinks that Mrs. Clinton should reveal “whether she shares Gores enthusiasm for the misguided Kyoto Treaty.”

As it happens, Mrs. Clinton said on January 25 that if elected to the Senate she would vote to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

IPCC Rumblings

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes Working Group I has made available a draft of its third assessment on climate change to expert reviewers through the Internet. The address was leaked and although the IPCC has since removed the draft from its website, there was sufficient time for many of the experts skeptical of global warming theory to critique the report extensively.

Some of those criticisms can be found on a debate forum at www.vision.net.au/~daly. Chapter 1 of the draft report states, “The fact that global mean temperature has increased since the late nineteenth century and that other trends have been observed does not mean that we have identified an anthropogenic effect on the climate system.” The report also says in Chapter 5 that, “The net forcing of the climate over the last 100 years (and since pre-industrial times) may be close to zero or even negative.”

These are not the types of statements made by scientists who are convinced that man is definitely causing global warming. Of course, several statements in the draft of the Second Assessment were equally damning, but many were purged prior to publication, causing a major scandal. No wonder that the IPCC doesnt want the drafts to be open to the public.

One reviewer in New Zealand, Dr. Vincent Gray, pointed out that the new report has 40 different scenarios and all are treated as equally likely, that is, there is no longer any predicted range of warming. This makes it difficult to convince governments that there is a pressing need for drastic energy cuts. So, Tom Wigley, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has come up with an “indicative scenario” in a paper he wrote for the Pew Center on Climate Change that was based in part on the IPCC draft report. Wigleys paper was widely touted in the press last summer as definitive.

Dr. Gray also notes that the IPCC ignores the fact that CO₂ emissions have been falling and overestimates other parameters such as world population, economic development, fuel usage, etc. They set their parameters in the computer models, for example, based on the “latest most accurate climate and physical quantity measurements.” Then they multiply each by a “precautionary principle factor, which is currently 250 percent.”

“For example,” commented Gray, “the measured rate of increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for the past 35 years, is 0.4 percent a year. So the figure incorporated in the model is 250 percent times 0.4, [or] one percent a year.” According to Gray, the rate of methane emission rise in the atmosphere has been falling for the last 15 years. “But the modellist cannot tolerate this,” said Gray. “The trend must be instantly reversed. A similar adjustment awaits all the other parameters.” Other extensive reviews are also available at the website.

The Pitfalls of Forecasting

The recent major snowstorm along the East Coast caught weather forecasters by complete surprise. They had predicted 2 to 4 inches of snowfall; 8 to 12 inches fell instead. Roger Pielke, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Daniel Sarewitz, of Columbia Universitys Center for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, argue that such misses are not uncommon and indeed are to be expected. “The idea that fast computers and sophisticated science can give us perfect weather predictions is nonsense,” the authors wrote. “Weather systems are complex phenomena whose behavior can only be approximated, even by the most advanced technologies.”

Problems with forecasting carry over into the realm of climate science, say the authors. “Predictions of global warming have focused international environmental efforts on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But future economic trends, geopolitical events, and technological advances three variables that defy predictive accuracy will have a much greater impact on emissions than any conceivable international agreements.”

They also warn that, “Predictions of the future can be more dangerous than ignorance, if they induce us to behave in ways that reduce our resilience in the face of inevitable uncertainties and contingencies” (Washington Times, February 2, 2000).

Malaria During the Little Ice Age

Green activists continue to claim that global warming will shift diseases such as malaria from the tropics to the temperate zones. These predictions are wrong, according to Paul Reiter, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an article appearing in Emerging Infectious Diseases (March-April 2000) he writes, “Until the second half of the 20^th century, malaria was endemic and widespread in many temperate regions, with major epidemics as far north as the Arctic Circle.” He further notes that, “From 1564 to the 1730s the coldest period of the Little Ice Age malaria was an important cause of illness and death in several parts of England.” The article can be found at www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no1/reiter.htm.

Megadroughts Common to Africa

With increased study of evidence from the distant past, scientists are becoming increasingly aware that climate change, indeed catastrophic climate change, is the norm. The New York Times (February 8, 2000) reports that recent research has found that East Africa experienced “decades-long droughts far longer and more severe than any in recorded weather history [that] alternated with periods when rainfall was heavier than today.” The article also notes that, “The droughts dwarfed any experienced by humans in the 20^th century, including the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the African Sahel drought of the 1970s.”

According to Dr. Dirk Verschuren, who headed the research that appeared in the January 27 issue of Nature, “We have to anticipate that a major catastrophic drought will happen sooner or later, and we must prepare for such an event.” The New York Times reports a “broader lesson” noted by Verschuren: “That irrespective of any human impact on the worlds climate, there is great natural variability in rainfall, and this variability may swamp the effects of any global warming produced by industrial emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.”

Etc.

• The February 6 Baltimore Sun reported on a 300 percent increase in the population of Adelie penguins around Cape Royds, Antarctica over the past two decades. Biologist David Ainley “blames” global warming, arguing that reduced ice cover has now placed these penguins closer to their oceanic food sources, thus boosting survival rates.

Before global warming advocates add penguin overpopulation to their list of woes, they may want to sit down with their ozone depletion counterparts and try to get their stories straight. As you recall, these are the very same Adelie penguins many claimed are threatened by the Antarctic ozone hole. Increased solar radiation through the ozone hole was supposed to decimate phytoplankton populations, which form the base of the food chain upon which the penguins and other Antarctic animals rely.

• Green activists and press and politicians with views sympathetic to the Green agenda take every opportunity to highlight temperature events that can be linked to warmer temperatures. They never seem to take notice, however, when the weather turns cold and nasty. In the interest of balance, we would like to review the other side of the climate ledger.
  
• Australias National Climate Center reported that it has just experienced its coldest summer in 50 years. It blames the cold snap on La Nia, but as pointed out at www.vision.net.au/~daly/, “this is neither the longest nor the biggest such La Nia in recent decades.”
  
• The opening of the Alaska snow crab fishery is being delayed by an unusual buildup of ice in the Bering Sea. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the scheduled opening of January 15 may be postponed until late April or May if the ice pushes much further south. These are the worst ice conditions in the area since 1975.
  
• The “city of eternal spring” Kunming in China just had its worst snowfall in 17 years and Beijing just finished its coldest January in 23 years.
  
• Moving further west, Israel experienced its heaviest snowfall in 50 years. The country came to a complete standstill, though children enjoyed snowball fights and building snowmen.
  
• Still further west, snowfalls for much of the U.S. have been the heaviest in 25 years.

Of course we know that these events do not disprove the theory of manmade global warming, nor do they portend a coming ice age, but neither do the events that Green activists cite “prove” that manmade global warming is real.

Climate Flip-Flop

A recent report by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences has attempted to reconcile the difference in temperature trends between surface and atmospheric observations. The surface data shows a strong warming trend, while the satellite data show a zero to slightly positive trend. The climate models, however, predict that the troposphere would warm more rapidly than the surface in response to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The report noted in particular the ground-based warming observed over the last 20 years.

One explanation may lie in a natural climate cycle that occurs every 20 to 30 years, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). According to the scientists at the University of Washington who discovered the phenomenon, the Pacific Ocean goes through cycles of warm and cool periods every 20 or 30 years. The years 1925 to 1946 and 1977 to 1998, for instance, were dominated by a warm phase, while cooler Pacific waters dominated the period in between. This cold phase leads to weather patterns in the U.S. similar to those produced by La Nia (Washington Post, January 20, 2000).

This may help explain global temperature trends over these time periods. The global temperature record measured at the surface shows that the years 1911 to 1945 experienced a rate of warming similar to the one from 1977 to the present. Of course, the cooling trend from 1945 to 1977 had some scientists, such as Stephen Schneider, worried about global cooling. It may be that the PDO can go a long way toward explaining many of the trends observed in the global temperature data as well as the discrepancy between the satellite and surface temperature measurements. If we are indeed entering a cold phase, winters will be colder and wetter, with a higher possibility of drought in the Southwest. This could also lead to heightened hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

In a related item, Colorado State University hurricane expert William Gray has released his hurricane predictions for the year 2000. He predicts that 11 named storms will form in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico this year. This heightened hurricane activity is due to “a marked shift in temperatures in both oceans, back to levels not seen since the active hurricane decades of the 1940s and 1950s,” notes the Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News (January 21, 1999). “The data reflect a naturally occurring fluctuation in ocean conditions, not a sign of global climate change.”

Climate Change Certainty Overstated

Colorados state climatologist, Roger Pielke, Sr., a professor at Colorado State University, says that people should not worry about global warming, according to the Denver Post (January 14, 2000). Pielke presented research at the American Meteorological Societys annual meeting that showed that land use change has a significant effect on the climate system that is not adequately accounted for in the climate models. “If land-use change is as important on the climate system as our results suggest, there is a large uncertainty in the future climate, since there is no evidence that we can accurately predict the future landscape,” said Pielke.

The presence of plants, for instance, influences the Earths energy budget, said Pielke. Increases in atmospheric CO₂ concentrations may increase the area covered by plants, which will lead to more transpiration. This water vapor could have one of two effects: It could cool the atmosphere directly or through cloud formation or it could warm the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. “This is an example of a complex feedback between vegetation and the atmosphere that we do not completely understand,” Pielke said. Other influences on land use can also effect the Earths energy budget.

“Since landscape and other atmosphere-surface interactions involve complex, non-linear feedbacks, it becomes impossible to predict future climate accurately,” Pielke said. “This suggests that the scientific community might be overstating the certainty of global climate change.”