Science

Possible Mechanism for the Solar/Warming Link

Many scientists believe that the solar cycle plays an important role in climate change. Their beliefs are bolstered by data that show a strong correlation between solar activity and changes in the earths climate. Unfortunately, it has been difficult to discover the mechanism that is responsible for this correlation. Several mechanisms have been suggested. “Cosmic ray influence on clouds has been proposed; others have suggested that the variability reflects other influences such as volcanoes or internal climate oscillations. Another proposed mechanism is amplification of solar variability via stratospheric or thermospheric changes,” according to a new study in Science (April 9, 1999).

The new study, however, suggests that changes in ozone concentrations that are affected by changes in solar cycle irradiance may be the mechanism scientists are looking for. The researchers used a global circulation model in which they added interactive stratospheric chemistry. They found that increases in solar radiation cause greater ozone production that enhances the greenhouse effect, further heating the stratosphere. Atmospheric circulation moves the heat into the lower layer known as the troposphere, warming the earths climate.

El Nio Reduces Global Warming

According to a study in Nature (April 8, 1999), the Pacific Ocean releases less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere during El Nio events that may help slow down global warming. Researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that during the period from 1991 to 1994, when El Nio was present, 30 to 80 percent less carbon dioxide escaped the Pacific Ocean than normal.

There has been lots of talk about scientific consensus surrounding the issue of global warming, and debate about whether a consensus exists or not. There have been several petitions and surveys conducted to try to understand the state of scientific opinion about global warming. A new study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (March 1999) surveyed 412 scientists from Germany, Canada and the United States who are connected in some way to climate science.

The scientists were asked to rate how well ocean circulation computer models and atmospheric models handled various “physical elements of the climate system.” All of the scientists agreed that there are limitations to computer modeling, and they were very skeptical about the ability of atmospheric models to deal with clouds and precipitation. Overall, the scientists leaned towards optimism about the ability of models to adequately deal with the different processes in the climate system.

The scientists were also asked about the predictive ability of climate models for 1, 10 and 100-year forecasts. According to the study, “the mean of the entire sample…for the ability to make reasonable predictions of interannual variability tends to indicate that scientists feel that reasonable prediction is not yet a possibility.” It is interesting that the German scientists were more confident in the ability of climate models to handle climatic phenomena as well as predict future climate change.

Regardless of the general pessimism of the ability of model to forecast future climate change “there is some agreement that global warming is a process already underway but that there is a greater tendency to agree that it is a prospect for the future.” The authors, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch of the Institute of Hydrophysics, GKSS Research Center, Geesthacht, Germany, conclude the “this incompatibility between the state of knowledge and the calls for action suggests that, to some degree at least, scientific advice is a product of both scientific knowledge and normative judgement, suggesting a socioscientific construction of the climate change issue.”

(This article originally appeared in the Washington Times.)

Ten years ago the Alps endured a virtually snowless winter. Environmentalists blamed global warming. A Swiss lobbying group, Alp Action, wrote in 1991 that global warming would put an end to winter sports in the Alps by 2025.

This year the Alps have had their greatest snowfall in 40 years, according to very preliminary data. Greenpeace has blamed global warming.

How in the world can that be? Is it possible to blame global warming for every weather anomaly, even if two consecutive events are of opposite sign?

Can such a claim have “scientific” justification?

If one regards the United Nations as an authority on such things, the answer, unfortunately, is yes. Global warmers, thanks to the good offices of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, can blame any weather event on pernicious economic prosperity and resultant greenhouse gas emissions.

The most recent IPCC summary on climate change was published three years ago. IPCC purports to be the “consensus of scientists” but in fact is a group of individuals hand-picked by their respective governments. Does anyone really expect Al Gore to send me to represent the United States at one of those meetings? (Thank you, no, I have been to one and that was enough.)

Absent my sage advice, here’s what the United Nations wrote in 1995: “Warmer temperatures will lead to . . . prospects for more severe droughts and/or floods in some places and less severe droughts and/or floods in others.”

As a punishment for not cleaning out the cat box, you might ask your kid to diagram this sentence. Rather than strain the graphics of this word processor, we’ll simply parse it. What the IPCC is saying is that global warming will cause in “some places” and/or “others”:

– More intense wet periods.
– More intense dry periods.
– More intense wet and dry periods.
– Less intense wet periods.
– Less intense dry periods.
– And less intense wet and dry periods.

So, according to the “consensus of scientists,” it’s OK to blame a flood, or, if you’re in the mountains, a flood of snow, on global warming. It’s also OK to blame a drought or a snowless Alp on global warming.

It’s even OK to blame weather that is more normal than normal (“less intense wet and dry periods”) on global warming.

The IPCC statement, which cannot be proved wrong, is a cynical attempt to allow anyone to blame anything on global warming. As Julius Wroblewski of Vancouver, Canada, wrote to me, this logic “represents a descent into the swamp of the non-falsifiable hypothesis. This is not a term of praise. Falsifiability is the internal logic in a theory that allows a logical test to see if it is right or wrong.”

A non-falsifiable theory is one for which no test can be devised, and the U.N. statement fits the bill perfectly. There is simply no observable weather or climate that does not meet its criteria, except one: absolutely no change in the climate, meaning no change in the average weather or the variability around that average.

Every climatologist on the planet knows that is impossible. Climate has to change because the sun is an inconstant star and the Earth is a nonuniform medium whose primary surface constituent, water, is very near its freezing point. Freezing (or unfreezing) water makes the planet whiter (or darker), which affects the degree to which it reflects the sun’s warming rays. A flicker of the sun, therefore, ensures climate change.

A hot young climatologist named Robert Mann, writing in Geophysical Research Letters, recently provided a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon. Using long-term records from tree rings and ice cores, he concluded that the planet was on a 900-year cooling streak between 1000 and 1900. Then we warmed up almost twice as much as we had cooled, but at least half of that warming was caused by our inconsistent sun. Two NASA scientists recently demonstrated that the sun has been warming throughout the last 400 years. As a result, if the last decade weren’t among the warmest in the last millennium, something would have been wrong with the basic theory of climate: The sun warms the Earth.

That doesn’t mean we haven’t supplied a bit of greenhouse warming, too. But greenhouse warming behaves differently than pure solar warming: It occurs largely in the coldest air masses of winter.

That’s a far cry from the United Nation’s nonsense about “some places” and “others” experiencing more unusual, less unusual or unusually usual weather. And it has nothing to do with avalanches or snowless winters, either.

Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and science adviser to the Greening Earth Society in Arlington.

Glaciers Dont Show Global Warming

One of the most powerful images used by the global warming activists to frighten the public is that of melting glaciers and precipitous sea level rise. The Greens also claim that glaciers are one of the most important leading indicators of manmade global warming. A recent survey of the science, however, shows that “glaciers are poor barometers of global climate change,” and “Far from providing scientific proof of global warming, the behavior of glaciers represents yet another powerful indictment of the already controversial global warming theory.”

According to John Carlisle of the National Center for Public Policy Research, glaciers are subject to many influences which scientists dont fully grasp. Mountain glaciers are especially tricky due to the “complex topography of mountain areas.” Carlisle quotes Alaska Geophysical Insitute glaciologist Keith Echelmeyer as saying, “to make a case that glaciers are retreating, and that the problem is global warming, is very hard to do . . . The physics are very complex. There is much more involved than just the climate response.”

Many Alaskan glaciers, for example, are advancing in the same areas that others are retreating. Switzerland has experienced mild winters, warmer summers, and less precipitation over the last decade, yet many of its glaciers have advanced during this time.

An important determinant of how glaciers react to temperature change is size. A polar ice sheets response time to temperature change ranges from 10,000 to 100,000 years, for example. Large mountain glaciers respond on time scales ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 years and small mountain glaciers take 100 to 1,000 years to respond. “One explanation for some glaciers retreating today,” says Carlisle, “is that they are responding to natural warming that occurred either during the Medieval Warm Period in the 11^th century or to an even warmer period that occurred 6,000 years ago.”

Mountain glaciers only account for about 6 percent of the earths total ice mass. The real danger of precipitous sea level rise would come from the melting of the polar ice sheets. Again Carlisle finds little evidence to support these claims. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet which is deemed to be the most vulnerable to global warming, were to melt the earths seas would rise by 17 feet. It has been estimated, however, that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would take about 50,000 years to respond to any warming that may occur now, due to its great size. A recent study of the ice sheet found that it has been stable for the last 100 years.

The Greenland ice sheets have also failed to recede. In fact, Greenland is in the midst of cooling period, contrary to global warming predictions. One study has found that the West Greenland Ice Sheet has thickened up to seven feet since 1980.

CO₂ Is Good For the Planet

The Cooler Heads Coalition hosted a science briefing for congressional staff and media that featured Dr. Keith Idso. Dr. Idso argued that even though it is a trace gas, carbon dioxide, a necessary component of plant photosythesis, supports all life on earth. Idso explained to the audience that CO₂ is not a pollutant, but is an odorless and invisible gas that is not toxic to animals, even at very high levels.

Thousands of scientific experiments have confirmed that a CO₂ rich environment is more healthy, one in which plants thrive. One of the most important scientific discoveries about CO₂ is that under a variety of stressful situations plants do better when there is more CO₂ in the air. In fact plants that are stressed due to lack of water, high soil salinity, low light conditions or the presence of pollutants in the air, have a relatively higher response rate to CO₂ than do plants in optimal environmental conditions.

Plants are now starving for CO₂, according to Idso. About 95 percent of earths plant life evolved when CO₂ concentrations were about 3,000 to 4,000 parts per million. Now with CO₂ making up only about 360 parts per million, plants are struggling to survive. Any increase in CO₂ can only benefit plants and the animals that depend on them.

Global Warming Guru Urges Caution

Recently several scientists who traditionally supported the apocalyptic global warming theory have made statements that downplay the certainty of the science behind the global warming scare. Most recently Stephen Schneider, a Stanford University biologist and one of the stalwarts of the global warming scene, told an audience at a March 23 conference in St. Louis University, that there is no reliable way to determine the impact of global warming on the earth, and that scientists dont really know what should be done about it.

He also argued that there is a “large degree of uncertainty among the experts over what might happen,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (March 24, 1999). Schneider also made the case that “so many variables exist that estimates on the timing vary from the years 2030 to 2100, and the estimates on temperature rise vary from a manageable 1 degree Fahrenheit or less to as much as 4 degrees,” the Post-Dispatch reported. “Its not so much a scientific question as it is a question of human values,” said Sncheider.

Another scientist who is favorable to the global warming theory, Jerry Mahlman, director of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University, said that it will be at least 10 years or more before scientists can separate the human effects on climate from natural variation. “The uncertainties concerning the responses of clouds, water vapor, ice, ocean currents and specific regions to increased greenhouse gases remain formidable,” he said.

Announcements

• The Cooler Heads Coalition is sponsoring two briefings for congressional staff and media in April. On April 9 Ben Leiberman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute will discuss the Montreal Protocol: A Success Story or Cautionary Tale. On April 16 Jeremy Rabkin will discuss the sovereignty implications of the Kyoto Protocol. Both briefings will be held at the Rayburn HOB room 2200 at 12:00 noon. Lunch will be provided.
  
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced the release of the draft inventory for U.S. emissions for the years 1990 to 1997 as required by the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Comments from the public will be accepted until April 9, 1999. Comments received after that date will be considered for the next edition of the report. The draft is available at www.epa.gov/globalwarming/inventory.
  
• The transcripts from the Cooler Heads science briefings for congressional staff and media and CEIs Costs of Kyoto lectures are available on CEIs website at www.cei.org. Transcripts currently available include, Climate Change: Insights from Oceanography, by Dr. Roger Pocklington; Global Warming: Evidence from the Satellite Record, by Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease: Is Warmer Sicker? by Dr. Paul Reiter; Kyoto & Our Collective Economic Future: Economic & Energy Underpinnings, by Mark P. Mills; Emissions Credits: The Supply and Demand Gap, by Robert Reinstein; and Hot Times or Hot Air: The Sun in the Science of Global Warming, by Sallie Baliunas.

Whats Up (or Down) With Carbon?

Two new studies appearing in prestigious science journals may force scientists to rethink the global warming hypothesis. It has been an ongoing debate within the scientific community as to whether increases in atmospheric CO2 leads or follows rises in global temperature. In the March 12 issue of Science, researchers concluded that during three separate deglaciations temperature rise came first. Using ice core samples from the Antarctic they found that “carbon dioxide concentrations increased by 80 to 100 parts per million by volume 600 400 years after the warming of each of the last three deglaciations.” This is directly the opposite result that one would expect from simple global warming theories.

Another assumption made by climate scientists is that CO2 levels have remained constant over the last 11,000 years, a period known as the Holocene epoch, until the advent of the industrial revolution. An article in Nature (March 11, 1999), which shared many of the same authors as the Science article, argues that during this period atmospheric CO2 levels fluctuated significantly. This is no surprise given that we still do not fully understand the carbon cycle nor can we account for significant amounts of CO2 emitted by man a third of which seem to disappear without a trace.

Its interesting how the press handled the studies. The Washington Post (March 15, 1999) basically got the story right, acknowledging that the studies may force a new understanding of the “relationship between airborne carbon dioxide and climate change.” But Anthony J. Broccoli of the NOAAs Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory is worried that “greenhouse skeptics will probably jump on this paper as proof” that there is no link between global warming and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. He claims, according to the Washington Post that “the new findings are completely consistent with a positive CO2-temperature feedback” system in which changes in one prompt changes in the other.”

The Associated Press did two articles about the Science study. On of the articles explained correctly that rises CO2 follow rises in temperature. The other article, however, got the story almost completely backwards. AP science writer Joseph B. Verrengia wrote, “a new study suggests carbon dioxide levels in Earths atmosphere fluctuated after the Ice Age, helping to warm the climate and trigger the spread of deserts.” Fred Singer points out that the study shows a “transition from a warm and wet Climate Optimum, 6000 years ago, to a cooler and dryer climate, i.e., the droughts and deserts correlate with cooling.” Unfortunately, nine newspapers ran the article that bungled the story and none pick up the one that got it right.

IPCC Plans to Use Fewer Climate Models in its Next Assessment

The IPCC could be gearing up to start another major controversy. Of the thirty-three general circulation models in existence, it is currently planning on using only three. Depending on the three they choose this could have the effect of raising estimates of warming over the next several decades.

A clue to the direction that the forecast is heading is the elimination of the newest model produced by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The NCAR model, according to University of Virginia climatologist Patrick Michaels, has “better resolution vertically and horizontally, improved methods of moving heat from the surface to the upper atmosphere, and a more sophisticated treatment of clouds and the oceans.” As a result it only predicts 2.3 degrees C of warming for a doubling of CO2 and a 1.3 degrees warming over the next 100 years, lower than any model to date. Moreover, the NCAR model, unlike other models, is completely transparent (World Climate Report, March 1, 1999).

Etc.

• USA Today (March 17, 1999) is reporting that shark attacks are down in 1998 for the third straight year. Some researchers think it may have something to do with climate change. Chalk it up as another benefit of global warming.
  
• The following is an excerpt from a “letter to the editor” from an astute observer of the press: “I could scarcely believe my ears yesterday morning when I heard Kate Adie, introducing “From Our Own Correspondent” on Radio 4, say that scientists were blaming the heavy snow in the Alps and the avalanche at Chamonix on global warming. Oh, puhleeze!

“Are these the same scientists who, after the virtually snow-free Alpine winters of 1988-89, 1989-90, 1991-92 and 1994-95, were warning us that global warming meant much less snow in the Alps in future decades? The European winter holiday industry, they said, would have to up sticks to Scandinavia.”

“Please, Kate, the next time you have some unusual weather to report, see if you can do it without mentioning global warming.”

Announcements

• The Cooler Heads Coalitions is sponsoring a briefing for congressional staff and media on March 19, 1999 to discuss the Ecological Benefits of Carbon Dioxide. The briefing will feature Keith Idso with the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. The briefing will be held the Rayburn House Office Building room 2325 at 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m.
  

• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced the release of the draft inventory for U.S. emissions for the years 1990 to 1997 as required by the Framework Convention on Climate Change. Comments from the public will be accepted until April 9, 1999. Comments received after that date will be considered for the next edition of the report. The draft is available at www.epa.gov/globalwarming/inventory.
  
• The transcripts from the Cooler Heads science briefings for congressional staff and media and CEIs Costs of Kyoto lectures are available on CEIs website at www.cei.org. Transcripts currently available include, Climate Change: Insights from Oceanography, by Dr. Roger Pocklington; Global Warming: Evidence from the Satellite Record, by Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease: Is Warmer Sicker? by Dr. Paul Reiter; Kyoto & Our Collective Economic Future: Economic & Energy Underpinnings, by Mark P. Mills; Emissions Credits: The Supply and Demand Gap, by Robert Reinstein; and Hot Times or Hot Air: The Sun in the Science of Global Warming, by Sallie Baliunas.

Arlington, VA March 25, 1999) In their fourth report pursuant to a Greening Earth Society research grant to Arizona State University, the ASU Climate Data Task Force examined 1,437-years of temperature data extrapolated from tree-ring chronologies of Bristlecone pines (Pinus aristata) growing in the San Francisco Peaks area of northern Arizona. The reconstructed temperatures during the 20^th Century showed a warming of 0.10C per decade that, over the entire 1,437-year record, appears to be “an inconsequential twist in the long road of temperature changes in the region.”

The long-lived Bristlecone pine trees have been growing around the Colorado Plateau for thousands of years and their “rings” preserve remarkable information about the climate of each year in the trees lifespans. The actual values of the chronology used by the ASU task force were obtained from the International Tree-Ring Databank at the University of Arizonas Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research. The original chronology was developed by the late Donald Graybill from a site 3,500 meters above sea level and spans the period from 548 AD to 1984 AD.

The University of Arizona researchers followed a standard procedure used in literally hundreds of tree-ring reconstructions of local and regional climate conditions. In their review of the data, the ASU researchers found the mean sensitivity for the San Francisco Peaks chronology to be very high, indicating that the specimens respond well to annual climate variation. The ASU team gathered historical climate records from different stations in the general area of northern

Arizona and southern Utah and found that the tree-ring series had a relatively high correlation with the annual temperature data from Hanksville, Utah over the period from 1912 to 1984.

The ASU team used a standard set of time series and multivariate statistical procedures to link the variance in the tree-ring data to the annual temperature variance at Hanksville, removing autocorrelation in the data, establishing the statistical linkage between the tree-ring widths and the temperature data, developing transfer furnctions, and generating an estimate of annual temperature for each year from 548 AD to 1984 AD. According to the ASU researchers, “We tested the comparisons over the period of actual and reconstructed temperature values during this century, and we generated diagnostic statistics indicating that a long-term, meaningful reconstruction was possible.”

The results, displayed on the last page of the ASU study, while showing the “inconsequential” 20^th Century warming also showed that while greenhouse gas concentrations did not increase in the early 1100s or the early 1300s, the temperature had no trouble shooting upward. Similarly, the ASU team notes, “There is no indication for any drop in greenhouse gas concentration in the last 1300s when temperatures fell like no other time in the 1,437-year record.”

“We must note that the magnificent Bristlecone pine trees of northern Arizona have been enjoying the recent buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide,” the ASU Climate Data Task Force reports. “The effect is a growth stimulation that may produce a recent warming bias in our reconstruction. Despite this problem, the temperature reconstruction does not reveal a warm-up that looks anything out of the ordinary over the past 1,437 years. The Bristlecone pines are telling us a lot about our climate. Wed better listen.”

This latest ASU Climate Task Force report (“Listening to the Pines”) is the fourth to be released by Greening Earth Society in 1999. The first (“20^th Century Temperatures Atop Mt. Washington”) found no change in the sixty-year annualized mean, maximum or minimum temperatures recorded at Mount Washington in New Hampshire. The second (“View of Arctic Temperatures from Drifting Ice”) found no warming in the 37-year record of temperature data gathered at Arctic manned sea-ice stations operated by the Soviet Union between 1954 and 1990, and a slight, though statistically insignificant, cooling of annual mean temperature. The third (“A Climate Gift from Rothamsted”) examined one of the longest-running and continuous temperature records in the world (121 years) from the Rothamsted Experimental Station near Harpenden in southeastern England. That study revealed early, benign warming in that the bulk of warming took place at night and in winter with almost all of the detected warming (92.5%) taking place before 1950, which is before the exponential rise in greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel use.

The four ASU Climate Data Task Force studies were preceded by one prepared by Greening Earth Society science advisor Robert C. Balling, Jr., in November 1998. Ballings study analyzed trends in United States “heating and cooling degree days” between 1950 and 1995. According to Balling, who is Director of the Arizona State University Office of Climatology, no statistically significant trends over the period of study could be detected. That study led to the formation of the ASU Climate Data Task Force and Greening Earth Societys research grant to the university.

Under the research agreement with ASU, the results can be submitted for peer-review in the major journals on climatology. The effort will also be a source of continuing information for use by Greening Earth Society in World Climate Report and at the website (http://www.greeningearthsociety.org) to keep GES members abreast of developments in the science of climate change.”

The yearlong survey of available ground temperature datasets will use disparate, worldwide official climate data repositories and national meteorological centers, expanding the search to include other institutions, as necessary.

Click Here to read the study.

Model Study Shows Mixed Results

A study appearing in the February 25 issue of Nature attempts to ascertain the regional effects of global warming on Europe. Using a climate model from the UK Hadley Center the researchers attempted to determine what effects global warming may have on river flow and wheat yield, both of which are affected by temperature and rainfall. The purpose of the experiment was to see if they could distinguish the impacts of human-induced global warming from natural multi-decadal climate variability.

The results showed that increasing anthropogenic carbon emissions significantly changed river runoff relative to natural variability in northern and southern Europe, but showed no change for western and central Europe. They also found that wheat productivity was very sensitive to natural climate variability. Only Denmark, Finland and Italy showed a marked increase in wheat yield as a result of human-induced global warming. “Elsewhere,” according to the study, ” climate-change impacts on mean wheat yield are indistinguishable from those due to natural climate variability.” Wheat yield was also highly sensitive to increases in CO2 concentrations.

An article discussing the study that also appeared in Nature said that “the clear message of this work is that greater efforts are needed to take account of the noise of natural climate variability when considering the signal of climate change.”

Global Warming Guru Advises Caution

Stephen Schneider is most famous for predicting global cooling in the seventies and then reversing himself to predict global warming in the eighties. As one of the most visible and radical proponents of the global warming theory and international control on energy use he is now urging the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be cautious when making its projections. In an internal paper for the IPCC, Schneider argues that it is a “well-documented tendency for scientific committees to overstate the confidence of their guesstimates.” Schneider argues for a “consistent assessment and reporting of the uncertainties.” No more statements like “the balance of evidence suggests,” which, according to the New Scientist (February 20, 1999), was the “result of a straw poll among themselves [the IPCC].”

Announcements

• The transcripts from the Cooler Heads science briefings for congressional staff and media and CEIs Costs of Kyoto lectures are available on CEIs website at www.cei.org. Transcripts currently available include, Climate Change: Insights from Oceanography, by Dr. Roger Pocklington; Global Warming: Evidence from the Satellite Record, by Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease: Is Warmer Sicker? by Dr. Paul Reiter; Kyoto & Our Collective Economic Future: Economic & Energy Underpinnings, by Mark P. Mills; Emissions Credits: The Supply and Demand Gap, by Robert Reinstein; and Hot Times or Hot Air: The Sun in the Science of Global Warming, by Sallie Baliunas.

NRC Sees Shortcomings in Global Warming Science

Global warming skeptics have argued for years that the science is riddled with uncertainties, errors and outright ignorance about the climate system. While those who use the threat of global warming to advance political agendas have dismissed this argument, scientists who believe that man is warming up the planet readily admit to these problems.

The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences has just released a report, The Atmospheric Sciences: Entering the Twenty-First Century, which discusses in great detail the shortcomings of climate science. The NRC admits that there are large natural variations in the climate system, which make it very difficult to locate a human fingerprint. It argues, for example, that paleoclimatic and computer data show that the climate has varied significantly in the past, and that we can expect it to vary in the future, “irrespective of human impacts on climate.”

The report also admits, “current observational capabilities and practice are inadequate to characterize many of the changes in global and regional climate.” And that “significant progress in characterizing and predicting seasonal-to-century time-scale variability in climate, including the role of human activities in forcing variability, is likely to take a decade or more.” For at least ten years, similar reports have claimed that it would take a decade to fully understand the climate system.

The report also discusses problems with the computer models. One the most important but least understood aspects of global warming is cloud feedback mechanisms. According to the report, “intercomparison of the magnitude of cloud feedback in a number of global climate models indicates a fourfold range of uncertainty, with some models predicting strong positive cloud feedback and others a weak negative feedback to the climate system.”

In contrast to the statement by the American Geophysical Union, which stated that sufficient knowledge exists to take action now, the NRC argues that “current observational systems are far from adequate in addressing the questions being posed by scientists and policy makers concerning climate change.”

Another major problem, according to the report, is the poor quality of the surface temperature record. Even in the United States, which probably has the best surface temperature record in the world, serious problems exist. There is no reference temperature network; there are problems with maintaining the homogeneity of minimum and maximum temperature readings; and discontinuities resulting from inadequate overlap during changes in instrumentation have occurred. In addition, data corrupted by urban heat island effects, changes in local conditions and a failure to calibrate new instruments with old, remains uncorrected. The report can be found at www.nas.edu.

Coral Bleaching May be Naturally Caused

Coral bleaching is one of a myriad of ecological phenomena that has been blamed on global warming. A new study in Science (February 5, 1999) argues that the observed bleaching is probably due to natural causes. Coral bleaching occurs when a symbiotic algae, known as zooxanthellae, is expelled from the coral. The researchers monitored the Acropora formosa coral in a shallow lagoon in Mauritius for six years. They found that there is a strong seasonal cycle with bleaching occurring almost entirely in the spring and summer. In fact the density of the algae during the “autumn and winter are three times the densities in spring and summer.” The study concludes that “bleaching events in corals within such lagoons may be frequent and part of the expected cycle of variability.”

Etc.

• An article appearing in the EM-Environmental Manager (December 1998) characterized the debate between global warming proponents, made up of various environmental activist groups and government agencies, and skeptics, primarily the Cooler Heads Coalition, as “greens” versus the “red, white and blues.”

Announcements

• The Cooler Heads Coalitions is sponsoring a briefing for congressional staff and media on February 22, 1999 to discuss the Credit for Early Action Act. The briefing will feature Marlo Lewis, Vice President at CEI and Mark Mills of Mills-McCarthy and Associates and a CEI adjunct scholar. The briefing will be held the Cannon House Office Building room at 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m.
  
• The transcripts from the Cooler Heads science briefings for congressional staff and media and CEIs Costs of Kyoto lectures are available on CEIs website at www.cei.org. Transcripts currently available include, Climate Change: Insights from Oceanography, by Dr. Roger Pocklington; Global Warming: Evidence from the Satellite Record, by Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease: Is Warmer Sicker? by Dr. Paul Reiter; Kyoto & Our Collective Economic Future: Economic & Energy Underpinnings, by Mark P. Mills; Emissions Credits: The Supply and Demand Gap, by Robert Reinstein; and Hot Times or Hot Air: The Sun in the Science of Global Warming, by Sallie Baliunas.

The Emerging Sun

Global warming research continues to reveal that the sun is playing an increasingly important role. James Hansen has argued, for example, that if aerosols cancel out much of the climate forcing effects of carbon dioxide, then the sun may play a greater role in the small amount of observed warming than previously thought. Recent research, published in the Journal of Climate (December 1998), has found that the sun has exerted a significant influence over the earths climate over the last 400 years.

Using several types of data, Judith Lean of the E.O. Hulburt Center for Space Research and David Rind of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies found that “the correlation of reconstructed solar irradiance and Northern Hemisphere surface temperature anomalies is 0.86 in the pre-industrial period from 1610 to 1800.” For later periods the correlation dropped somewhat, but remains strong. Solar forcing may account for about half of the 0.55 degrees C increase in temperatures since 1900 and about one-third since 1970.

If half of the last centurys warming was caused by the sun, then the other half must be divided up among many other influences, including rebound from the Little Ice Age, urbanization, and other effects. That leaves little room for greenhouse gases argues Patrick Michaels, a climatologist with the University of Virginia. Michaels also points out that during the 1990s, the sun has been brighter than at any other time in the last 400 years. Combined with the El Nio of 1998, it would have been surprising if 1998 wasnt the warmest year on record.

Fewer Droughts, No Change in Floods

One of the most consistent claims by global warming activists is that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to more severe floods and droughts. This claim was invoked as recently as Clintons State of the Union address, even though government researchers have found otherwise. In an article published in the Geophysical Research Letters (January 15, 1999), Harry Lins and James Slack of the U.S. Geological Survey found that there are fewer droughts but no more floods since the 1940s.

Lins and Slack came to this conclusion by analyzing stream flow trends for “395 climate-sensitive streamgaging stations in the coterminous United States to evaluate differences between low-, medium-, and high-flow regimes during the twentieth century.” What the researchers found was that there is a “distinct upward trend” in the low to middle range of flows. For the highest flows, however, “only four percent of the gages experienced increases, while five percent showed decreases.”

“We can draw three general conclusions form these trends,” Lins said. “First, the nations streams are carrying more water on average. Secondly, the streams are experiencing less severe hydrologic droughts, and thirdly, the streams are not experiencing more floods.” Lins also noted that, “the United States is now less extreme hydrologically than it was earlier in the century.”

The article is at http://water.usgs.gov/public/osw/lins/streamflowtrends.html.

No Evidence of Climate Change in New Hampshire

Long-term, continuous and reliable temperature data sets are hard to come by and those available have become important in the global warming debate. Recently, an analysis of one such data set has been released, and the results are encouraging. Mount Washington in the Presidential Range in New Hampshire has an observatory located at the 4,000 foot summit that was founded in 1932. “The Observatory,” according to the report, “is the only fully-staffed, year-around alpine weather observatory in continental North America.” Observations are taken every three hours and reported to the National Weather Service. Another characteristic that makes this location ideal is that minimal land-use changes have occurred throughout the duration of the Observatorys life.

An analysis of the minimum and maximum temperature data for the period 1939 to 1997 found that there was “little-to-no response to the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases through the 20^th century. And there appears to be no obvious compensating cooling effects that may have overwhelmed the warming effects of the increased concentrations of carbon dioxide.”

The report also pointed out that it appears that the daily temperature range seem to have decreased over much of the planet. The diurnal temperature range on Mount Washington fell by 0.42 degrees F over the 60-year period, but was change was not statistically significant. Other stations do nothing to clear up the picture. The Pic du Midi station located in the Pyrenees at 9,387 feet elevation shows a significant reduction in the diurnal temperature range. But high elevation stations in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria fail to show a reduction. The report can be found at www.greeningearthsociety.org/Articles/mtwash.htm.

Record Rainfall Not Due to Global Warming

Britain has just experienced its wettest January ever with more than five inches falling during the month. According to Rob Nichols, spokesman for the Environment Agency, “The main issue is global warming. Part of the result of the world getting warming is that winters are getting wetter and summers are getting drier” (The People, January 31, 1999).

Not so, according to a spokesman at the Meteorological Office. “A front has been snaking its way over the Midlands but recent weather systems over Europe have prevented it moving on as fast as it should have. It is just a natural fluctuation. I am sure the last time it was nearly as wet, back in January 1960, they were not all talking about climate change. Yes, its been very wet, but its not the end of the world as we know it” (Birmingham Evening Mail, January 26, 1999).

Announcements

• The Competitive Enterprise Institute has released a monograph, titled Doomsday Dj vu: Ozone Depletions Lessons for Global Warming. Author Ben Lieberman argues that rather than serving as a successful model for the Kyoto Protocol, the Montreal Protocol should serve as a cautionary tale. Its mistakes would be greatly amplified if repeated under the Kyoto Protocol. The study can be obtained from CEIs website at www.cei.org or by contacting CEI at (202) 331-1010.
• The transcripts from the Cooler Heads science briefings for congressional staff and media and CEIs Costs of Kyoto lectures are available on CEIs website at www.cei.org. Transcripts currently available include, Climate Change: Insights from Oceanography, by Dr. Roger Pocklington; Global Warming: Evidence from the Satellite Record, by Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease: Is Warmer Sicker? by Dr. Paul Reiter; Kyoto & Our Collective Economic Future: Economic & Energy Underpinnings, by Mark P. Mills; Emissions Credits: The Supply and Demand Gap, by Robert Reinstein; and recently released, Hot Times or Hot Air: The Sun in the Science of Global Warming, by Sallie Baliunas.

Updated Satellite Data Presented

With the end of 1998, much has been made of the record high temperatures from the last year. In an ironic twist, satellite temperature data, which also showed a temperature spike in 1998, was suddenly cited as credible evidence even though it had been harshly criticized as either flawed or irrelevant in the past. At the recent 10^th Symposium on Global Change Studies at the annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society, Dr. John Christy of the Univeristy of Alabama in Huntsville, Dr. Roy Spencer of NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center, and Dr. William Braswell of Nichols Research Corp., discussed the updated version of the satellite temperature data.

Dr. Christy stated that “1998 was particularly interesting. While two previous strong El Nios occurred in the past 20 years, this is the first one that occurs without a simultaneous volcanic eruption.” El Nio events in 1991 and 1983 were both accompanied by volcanic eruptions of Mt. Pinatubo and El Chichon respectively. The eruptions ejected huge amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere which served to dampen the warming effects of El Nio.

“Obviously,” said Christy, “El Nios are part of the natural weather cycle, and shouldnt be discounted. When one looks at long-term trends, however, we shouldnt assign excess importance to individual unusual or extreme short-term events, such as this El Nio or the cooling that followed the eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in 1991.”

Dr. Spencer spoke about the adjusments to the data that were necessitated by findings that were published in Nature. Regarding the study, Spencer pointed out that “when the need for some of the corrections was first noticed, people applied them to the entire dataset. However, this isnt correct, as the data are compiled from nine different satellites, each with its own necessary adjustments.” The data was adjusted to account for orbital decay, diurnal drift, and instrument-body temperature feedback.

Christy addressed another criticism. “The tropical region was the region criticized in the past year as being the region of greatest errors in the MSU (microwave sounding units). However, a direct comparison of the data shows that the agreement (with independent measures taken with balloon-borne instrumentation) is astounding between these different tropical temperature data sets,” Christy said. The 20 year satellite record has shown no warming trend until the major warm El Nio even of 1998 (www.ssl.msfc.nasa.gov).

There were several other interesting papers presented at the AMS meeting. Duane J. Gubler at the US Department of Health and Human Services argued that even though there has been a “dramatic global resurgence of dengue and other vector-borne diseases in the past 20 years” there is little evidence to suggest that it may be a result of global warming. “Most vector-borne diseases exist in complex transmission cycles involving three hosts.” There are many factors which can effect the transmission of vector-borne diseases and it is the complex interaction of all these factors [that] determine transmission.

Abdel R. Maarouf at the University of Toronto discussed temperature-related mortality. In Canada, for example, the number of deaths from the 1995 heat wave “were not significantly different from normal.” Maarouf analyzed long-term mortality statistics and found “a very pronounced seasonal pattern, with the highest rates in winter and the lowest rates in summer. Predictions from global warming computer models suggests that in the event of manmade global warming Canada would experience “much greater warming in winter than in summer, in mid and high latitudes.” Maarouf concludes that “based on temperature variations only, climate change would be associated with a significantly reduced winter mortality, thus offsetting any potential increase in heat-related summer mortality.”

Finally, William Gray at Colorado State University, showed that global atmospheric circulation experiences distinct multi-decadal variations which effect hurricane activity, El Nio events, sea-surface temperatures, global mean temperatures and many other related weather anomalies.

For example, the period from the mid-1940s to late 1960s experienced a different general circulation patterns than the period of 1970-1994. Gray hypothesizes that these differences are due to variations in the strength of the global ocean thermohaline circulation, in particular the Atlantic portion, which fluctuate on 20-50 year time scales, according to ice core data going back thousands of years.

When the circulation is stronger, North Atlantic sea-surface temperatures are warmer than normal and vice versa. Gray predicts that we will see an increase in the frequency of intense hurricanes as a result of warmer sea-surface temperatures due to a stronger thermohaline circulation. Abstracts of these papers can be found at www.ametsoc.org/AMS/meet/meet_79page.html.

Temperature Accuracy too Good to be True?

Newspapers across the United States are reporting that 1998 was the hottest year on record. That may be true (though it may not, as well show below), but what is truly astounding is the degree of accuracy that is being claimed by NASA. According to NASA 1998s global average temperature was 58.496 degrees F, higher than the previous record of 59.154 degrees F recorded in 1995.

The Electricity Daily (January 19, 1999) makes a back of the envelope estimate that it would take about 8 billion temperature sensors, evenly distributed over the globe, to ascertain the global average temperature to within a degree of accuracy. “Especially since temperature can vary 50 degrees in one day, and 100 degrees in a year, in many places,” it says. In reality there are only 7,000 sensors, about one per 30,000 square miles, and most of these sensors are clustered in the U.S. and Europe, leaving much of the globe entirely unmeasured.

Moreover, the temperature record upon which global warming advocates base their claims goes back to 1880 “when most of the globe was scientifically uninhabited.” The coverage in those days was about “one questionable station per million square miles in many cases.” The conclusion, “basically we have no worldwide mean temperature data. Period . . . . We know nothing about global mean temperature. Nothing, nothing, nothing at all.”

Etc.

The UKs Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, told an audience at the first of a series of nationwide seminars that the Government would place greater emphasis in environmental studies in schools. Designed to promote a climate change consulation paper by the Department of Environment and Transport, Prescott reported, according to the Hull Daily Mail (January 9, 1999), “that parliament had approved a “Childrens Parliament, a body of young people with direct input into parliament, to have their say in the Governments future proposals.” According to the Deputy Prime Minister, “The way to bring the country into line with the rest of Europe is through education. The way to bring adults into line is by getting the children on-side. The power of our young people cannot be underestimated.”

Announcements

• The Competitive Enterprise Institute has released a monograph, titled Doomsday Dj vu: Ozone Depletions Lessons for Global Warming. Author Ben Lieberman argues that rather than serving as a successful model for the Kyoto Protocol, the Montreal Protocol should serve as a cautionary tale. Its mistakes would be greatly amplified if repeated under the Kyoto Protocol. The study can be obtained from CEIs website at www.cei.org or by contacting CEI at (202) 331-1010.
  
• The transcripts from the Cooler Heads science briefings for congressional staff and media and CEIs Costs of Kyoto lectures are available on CEIs website at www.cei.org. Transcripts currently available include, Climate Change: Insights from Oceanography, by Dr. Roger Pocklington; Global Warming: Evidence from the Satellite Record, by Dr. John R. Christy and Dr. Roy Spencer; Global Warming and Vector-Borne Disease: Is Warmer Sicker? by Dr. Paul Reiter; Kyoto & Our Collective Economic Future: Economic & Energy Underpinnings, by Mark P. Mills; Emissions Credits: The Supply and Demand Gap, by Robert Reinstein; and recently released, Hot Times or Hot Air: The Sun in the Science of Global Warming, by Sallie Baliunas.