Short Introduction (main-stream view) :
Global warming is the rise in the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans since the late 19th century and its projected continuation. Since the early 20th century, Earth’s mean surface temperature has increased by about 0.8 °C (1.4 °F), with about two-thirds of the increase occurring since 1980. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and scientists are more than 90% certain that it is primarily caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. These findings are recognized by the national science academies of all major industrialized nations.
Climate model projections were summarized in the 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They indicated that during the 21st century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 2.9 °C (2 to 5.2 °F change) for their lowest emissions scenario and 2.4 to 6.4 °C (4.3 to 11.5 °F change) for their highest. The ranges of these estimates arise from the use of models with differing sensitivity to greenhouse gas concentrations.[10][11]
Future climate change and associated impacts will vary from region to region around the globe. The effects of an increase in global temperature include a rise in sea levels and a change in the amount and pattern of precipitation, as well as a probable expansion of subtropical deserts. Warming is expected to be strongest in the Arctic and would be associated with the continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Other likely effects of the warming include a more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events including heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfall, ocean acidification and species extinctions due to shifting temperature regimes. Effects significant to humans include the threat to food security from decreasing crop yields and the loss of habitat from inundation.
Proposed policy responses to global warming include mitigation by emissions reduction, adaptation to its effects, and possible future geoengineering. Most countries are parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose ultimate objective is to prevent dangerous anthropogenic (i.e., human-induced) climate change. Parties to the UNFCCC have adopted a range of policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to assist in adaptation to global warming. Parties to the UNFCCC have agreed that deep cuts in emissions are required, and that future global warming should be limited to below 2.0 °C (3.6 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level. Reports published in 2011 by the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Energy Agency suggest that efforts as of the early 21st century to reduce emissions may be inadequate to meet the UNFCCC’s 2 °C target.
Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth‘s surface and atmosphere culminating in a period of extensive glaciation. This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the full scope of the scientific climate literature, i.e., a larger and faster-growing body of literature projecting future warming due to greenhouse gas emissions. The current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but undergone global warming throughout the 20th century.
In the 1970s, there was increasing awareness that estimates of global temperatures showed cooling since 1945, as well as the possibility of large scale warming due to emissions of greenhouse gases. Of those scientific papers considering climate trends over the 21st century, only 10% inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming. The general public had little awareness of carbon dioxide’s effects on climate, but Science News in May 1959 forecast a 25% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the 150 years from 1850 to 2000, with a consequent warming trend. The actual increase in this period was 29%. Paul R. Ehrlich mentioned climate change from greenhouse gases in 1968. By the time the idea of global cooling reached the public press in the mid-1970s temperatures had stopped falling, and there was concern in the climatological community about carbon dioxide‘s warming effects. In response to such reports, the World Meteorological Organization issued a warning in June 1976 that a very significant warming of global climate was probable.
Currently there are some concerns about the possible regional cooling effects of a slowdown or shutdown of thermohaline circulation, which might be provoked by an increase of fresh water mixing into the North Atlantic due to glacial melting. The probability of this occurring is generally considered to be very low, and the IPCC notes, “even in models where the THC weakens, there is still a warming over Europe. For example, in all AOGCM integrations where the radiative forcing is increasing, the sign of the temperature change over north-west Europe is positive.”
Climate Change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions, or in the distribution of weather around the average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors that include oceanic processes (such as oceanic circulation), biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics and volcanic eruptions, and human-induced alterations of the natural world; these human-induced effects are currently causing global warming, and “climate change” is often used to describe human-specific impacts.
Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record — extending deep into the Earth’s past — has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, floral and faunal records, glacial and periglacial processes, stable-isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels. More recent data are provided by the instrumental record. General circulation models, based on physics, are often used in theoretical approaches to match past climate data, make future projections, and link causes and effects in climate change.
On the broadest scale, the rate at which energy is received from the sun and the rate at which it is lost to space determine the equilibrium temperature and climate of Earth. This energy is distributed around the globe by winds, ocean currents, and other mechanisms to affect the climates of different regions.
Factors that can shape climate are called climate forcings or “forcing mechanisms”. These include processes such as variations in solar radiation, variations in the Earth’s orbit, mountain-building and continental drift and changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. There are a variety of climate change feedbacks that can either amplify or diminish the initial forcing. Some parts of the climate system, such as the oceans and ice caps, respond slowly in reaction to climate forcings, while others respond more quickly.
Forcing mechanisms can be either “internal” or “external”. Internal forcing mechanisms are natural processes within the climate system itself (e.g., the thermohaline circulation). External forcing mechanisms can be either natural (e.g., changes in solar output) or anthropogenic (e.g., increased emissions of greenhouse gases).
Whether the initial forcing mechanism is internal or external, the response of the climate system might be fast (e.g., a sudden cooling due to airborne volcanic ash reflecting sunlight), slow (e.g.thermal expansion of warming ocean water), or a combination (e.g., sudden loss of albedo in the arctic ocean as sea ice melts, followed by more gradual thermal expansion of the water). Therefore, the climate system can respond abruptly, but the full response to forcing mechanisms might not be fully developed for centuries or even longer.
Internal forcing mechanisms
Natural changes in the components of Earth’s climate system and their interactions are the cause of internal climate variability, or “internal forcings.” Scientists generally define the five components of earth’s climate system to include atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, lithosphere (restricted to the surface soils, rocks, and sediments), and biosphere.[5]
Source and read more at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change
Disbelievers rise
UK Energy Research Center shows the number of those who resolutely do not believe in climate change has more than quadrupled since 2005.
The Government funded report shows 19 per cent of people are climate change disbelievers – up from just four per cent in 2005 – while nine per cent did not know.
Why global warming appears to have slowed down in the past 15 years even though greenhouse gas emissions keep rising ?
Dr. Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist and author of Climate Confusion, argues in his influential blog the UN report shows scientists are being forced to “recognize reality”.
He said: “We are now at the point in the age of global warming hysteria where the IPCC global warming theory has crashed into the hard reality of observations.”
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett blamed the Government for the increase in climate change doubters.
She said: “When the government is so clearly failing to act on climate change, or take seriously its obligations under the Climate Change Act, it’s not surprising that the level of doubt about climate change has risen.
“Of course, however, the 72 per cent of the public who acknowledge the climate is changing are backed overwhelmingly by the scientific evidence.
“The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that half of last year’s extreme weather events around the world were in part caused by climate change.
“With massive floods in Colorado and Mexico in the grip of flood disaster, we’re reminded that the forces of nature have huge force that we must not continue to magnify.”
Source and read more:
Express – September 19, 2013
Global warming and Ice Rising ?
Much attention is paid to melting sea ice in the Arctic. But less clear is the situation on the other side of the planet. Despite warmer air and oceans, there’s more sea ice in Antarctica now than in the 1970s – a fact often pounced on by global warming skeptics. The latest numbers suggest the Antarctic sea ice may be heading toward a record high this year.
While changes in weather may play a big role in short-term changes in sea ice seen in the past couple of months, changes in winds have apparently led to the more general upward sea ice trend during the past few decades, according to University of Washington research. A new modeling study to be published in the Journal of Climate shows that stronger polar winds lead to an increase in Antarctic sea ice, even in a warming climate.
“The overwhelming evidence is that the Southern Ocean is warming,” said author Jinlun Zhang, an oceanographer at the UW Applied Physics Laboratory. “Why would sea ice be increasing? Although the rate of increase is small, it is a puzzle to scientists.”
NASA/Digital Mapping System
This mixture of different types of Antarctic sea ice was photographed Oct. 13, 2012, by a NASA aircraft flying over the Bellingshausen Sea.
His new study shows that stronger westerly winds swirling around the South Pole can explain 80 percent of the increase in Antarctic sea ice volume in the past three decades.
The polar vortex that swirls around the South Pole is not just stronger than it was when satellite records began in the 1970s, it has more convergence, meaning it shoves the sea ice together to cause ridging. Stronger winds also drive ice faster, which leads to still more deformation and ridging. This creates thicker, longer-lasting ice, while exposing surrounding water and thin ice to the blistering cold winds that cause more ice growth.
In a computer simulation that includes detailed interactions between wind and sea, thick ice — more than 6 feet deep — increased by about 1 percent per year from 1979 to 2010, while the amount of thin ice stayed fairly constant. The end result is a thicker, slightly larger ice pack that lasts longer into the summer.
“You’ve got more thick ice, more ridged ice, and at the same time you will get more ice extent because the ice just survives longer,” Zhang said.
When the model held the polar winds at a constant level, the sea ice increased only 20 percent as much. A previous study by Zhang showed that changes in water density could explain the remaining increase.
U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center
Antarctic sea ice concentration changes from 1981 to 2011.
“People have been talking about the possible link between winds and Antarctic sea ice expansion before, but I think this is the first study that confirms this link through a model experiment,” commented Axel Schweiger, a polar scientist at the UW Applied Physics Lab. “This is another process by which dynamic changes in the atmosphere can make changes in sea ice that are not necessarily expected.”
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Still unknown is why the southern winds have been getting stronger. Some scientists have theorized that it could be related to global warming, or to the ozone depletion in the Southern Hemisphere, or just to natural cycles of variability.
Differences between the two poles could explain why they are not behaving in the same way. Surface air warming in the Arctic appears to be greater and more uniform, Zhang said. Another difference is that northern water is in a fairly protected basin, while the Antarctic sea ice floats in open oceans where it expands freely in winter and melts almost completely in summer.
The sea ice uptick in Antarctica is small compared with the amount being lost in the Arctic, meaning there is an overall decrease in sea ice worldwide.
Many of the global climate models have been unable to explain the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice. Researchers have been working to improve models to better reproduce the observed increase in sea ice there and predict what the future may bring.
Source:
Washington.edu – September 17, 2013
Temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years
Scientists working on the most authoritative study on climate change were urged to cover up the fact that the world’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years, it is claimed.
United Nations report, compiled by hundreds of scientists, shows politicians in Belgium, Germany, Hungary and the United States raised concerns about the final draft.
Published sonn, it is expected to address the fact that 1998 was the hottest year on record and world temperatures have not yet exceeded it, which scientists have so far struggled to explain.
The report is the result of six years’ work by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is seen as the world authority on the extent of climate change and what is causing it – on which governments including Britain’s base their green policies.
Concerns: Scientists have been urged to cover up the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years amid fears it would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change
Concerns: Scientists have been urged to cover up the fact that the Earth’s temperature hasn’t risen for the last 15 years amid fears it would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change
But leaked documents seen by the Associated Press, revealed deep concerns among politicians about a lack of global warming over the past few years.
Germany called for the references to the slowdown in warming to be deleted, saying looking at a time span of just 10 or 15 years was ‘misleading’ and they should focus on decades or centuries.
The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its tune after issuing stern warnings about climate change for years
Hungary worried the report would provide ammunition for deniers of man-made climate change.
Belgium objected to using 1998 as a starting year for statistics, as it was exceptionally warm and makes the graph look flat – and suggested using 1999 or 2000 instead to give a more upward-pointing curve.
The United States delegation even weighed in, urging the authors of the report to explain away the lack of warming using the ‘leading hypothesis’ among scientists that the lower warming is down to more heat being absorbed by the ocean – which has got hotter.
The last IPCC ‘assessment report’ was published in 2007 and has been the subject of huge controversy after it had to correct the embarrassing claim that the Himalayas would melt by 2035.
It was then engulfed in the ‘Climategate’ scandal surrounding leaked emails allegedly showing scientists involved in it trying to manipulate their data to make it look more convincing – although several inquiries found no wrongdoing.
The latest report, which runs to 2,000 pages, will be shown to representatives from all 195 governments who can discuss alterations they want to make.
But since it was issued to governments in June, they have raised hundreds of objections about the 20-page summary for policymakers, which sums up the findings of the scientists.
What it says will inform renewable energy policies and how much consumers and businesses will pay for them.
The report is expected to say the rate of warming between 1998 and 2012 was about half of the average rate since 1951 – and put this down to natural variations such as the El Nino and La Nina ocean cycles and the cooling effects of volcanoes.
A German climate scientist – Stefan Rahmstorf, who reviewed the chapter on sea levels – yesterday admitted it was possible the report’s authors were feeling under pressure to address the slowdown in warming due to the ‘public debate’ around the issue.
The draft report, which is not new research but a synthesis of all the work being done by scientists around the world, is likely to be highly disputed at the three-day meeting.
It will make the case that humans are causing global warming with carbon emissions even more strongly upgrading it from ‘very likely’ in 2007 to ‘extremely likely’ it is man-made.
But scientists are under pressure to explain why the warming has not exceeded 1998 levels although the decade 2000-2010 was the hottest on record.
Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Washington, said yesterday: ‘I think to not address it would be a problem because then you basically have the denialists saying: ‘Look the IPCC is silent on this issue.’
Jonathan Lynn, a spokesman for the IPCC said yesterday: ‘This is the culmination of four years’ work by hundreds of scientists, where governments get a chance to ensure the summary for policymakers is clear and concise in a dialogue with the scientists who wrote it, and have the opportunity to raise any topics they think should be highlighted.’
Source and read more:
DailyMail – 19 September 2013
Global warming’ is just taking a short holiday
Global warming has not stopped – it’s just on a ‘hiatus’ and likely to return with ever more heatwaves, droughts, floods and rising sea levels – according to a draft report from leading scientists.
The 127-page United Nations report, and a shorter summary for policymakers , suggests a slowdown in Earth’s rising temperature can be explained by volcanic ash and a cyclical dip in energy emitted from the sun.
While likely to attract opposition from epileptics – who say climate change is not man-made – the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is likely to stand by the bold claims as the body attempts to salvage its reputation following the publication of its last report in 2007.
In that report, scientists erroneously claimed the Himalayas would melt by 2035.
Meltdown: Climate scientists say despite a slowing of temperatures, global warming is still likely to return and continue having a negative effect on the world’s polar ice caps
Now six years on, the IPCC must convincingly explain why temperatures have risen more slowly in the past 15 years despite rising emissions of greenhouse gases – something that has emboldened skeptics who question the need for urgent action.
France called for bolder EU cuts in greenhouse gases and said it would halve its own energy consumption by 2050.
While the IPCC draft report acknowledges the slow rise in temperature, scientists predict this is simply a ‘common break’ in global warming – and it will resume once more.
‘Barring a major volcanic eruption, most 15-year global mean surface temperature trends in the near-term future will be larger than during 1998 to 2012,’ reports the Technical Summary, dated June 7.
Temperatures are likely be 0.3 to 0.7 degree Celsius (0.5-1.3 Fahrenheit) higher from 2016-35 than from 1986-2005, it adds.
Heating up: The report suggests that Earth’s temperatures in the future are likely to be higher than in previous decades
The reports by the IPCC, updating an overview of climate change from 2001, are the main guide for government action.
‘Fifteen-year-long hiatus periods are common’ in both historical records and in computer models.
But scientists were caught out – in one computer model, 111 of 114 estimates over-stated recent temperature rises.
The drafts predict that temperatures could rise by up to 4.8C (8.5F) this century – far above a ceiling set by governments of 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times to avoid dangerous changes to nature and society.
However, the report suggests that with deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, the rise could be kept to just 0.3C (0.5F), the draft says.
Many experts agree that natural variations in the weather, caused by factors such as shifts in ocean currents or winds, can mask a warming trend even with a continued build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The hiatus ‘is not a sign that the warming trend has gone,’ said Guy Brasseur, director of the Climate Service Center in Germany.
He said the climate was comparable to Wall Street – there were often long-term trends with unpredictable daily swings.
Brasseur and other experts contacted were stating their own views, not referring to details of the coming report.
‘There are a number of explanations (for the hiatus), any one of which might be correct,’ said professor Myles Allen of Oxford University, who contributed to the IPCC draft.
‘That is very different from saying: ‘We have no idea what’s going on’.’
Still frozen: A 2007 IPCC report erroneously suggested that the Himalayas would melt by 2035
The drafts say that a reduction in warming for 1998 to 2012 compared to 1951 to 2012 is ‘due in roughly equal measure’ to natural variations in the climate and factors such as ‘volcanic eruptions and the downward phase of the current solar cycle.’
Volcanoes spew ash into the air that can dim sunlight and so cool the surface of the planet.
The sun was in a downward cycle of output – meaning that it was emitting less energy – during most of the period.
The technical summary says that warming from 1998 to 2012 slowed to 0.05 degree C (0.09F) per decade, against 0.12 (0.2F) per decade from 1951-2012.
But the decade to 2012 was the warmest since records began in the mid-19th Century.
It says another factor could be that computer models consistently over-estimate warming.
Some experts argued that near-term projections of temperature rises should be cut by 10 percent, it said.
Other theories include that more heat is going into the oceans or that air pollution is dimming sunlight.
An academic report last month said a cooling of the Pacific Ocean, linked to natural La Nina events that bring cooler waters to the surface, was the main explanation.
The IPCC draft also says the planet may be somewhat less sensitive than expected to a build-up of carbon dioxide in the air.
A doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from pre-industrial times is likely to mean an eventual temperature rise of between 1.5 and 4.5 C (2.7-8.1F), down from 2.0 to 4.5 (3.6-8.1F) estimated in 2007, the report adds.
Source and read more:
DailyMail – 22 September 2013
IPCC – Resurrection
Man’s influence on climate change is “clear”, according to the latest IPCC report which states that global warming is “unequivocal”.
Without making “substantial and sustained reductions” of greenhouse gas emissions, the world can expect an increase of extreme weather including heatwaves and heavy rainfall.
Three out of four future climate change scenarios, based on projected levels of gas and aerosol emissions, suggest that by the end of this century global temperatures are likely to reach 1.5C higher than pre-industrial levels.
In the two highest of the four scenarios, warming by 2100 is expected to exceed 2C, the benchmark after which there are likely to be dangerous effects on the planet.
The effects of climate change will continue for several hundred years even if emissions of carbon dioxide stop, the report states.
Scientists and politicians from 195 countries have been working late into the night all week to finalise details of the document.
In an official statement issued to press on Friday morning, the panel said: “Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident in most regions of the globe.
Click here to watch the videos.
“It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. The evidence for this has grown.”
Warming in the climate system is “unequivocal” and changes seen since the mid 20th century have been “unprecedented over decades to millenia”, they added.
The discussions, which took place at a brewery-turned-conference facility in central Stockholm were frustratingly slow but there is understood to have been little of the infighting between nations that has characterized past meetings.
One delegate told the Telegraph on Thursday night: “The good news is that the Saudis are not objecting to every word like used to happen [at previous meetings].
“It is pretty tame compared to the early years of the IPCC when you used to have a real scrum between people like the Chinese, who could be quite difficult. There is no-one in there saying climate change isn’t real.”
The summary for policymakers is a condensed version of a much larger report running to thousands of pages, which will be released on Monday.
It states that the atmosphere and oceans have become warmer, with the oceans absorbing more than 90 per cent of the extra heat energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010.
Global Warming is hiding in the Ocean
In fact, many scientists believe that warming of the deep oceans, on which data is still uncertain, has been masking climate change at the surface. This could explain why atmospheric temperatures have barely changed in the past 15 years during the so-called “pause”, they say.
Political delegates from the UK and other leading countries such as the US and Brazil are understood to have pushed hard for the report to make explicitly clear that the comparative lack of warming during the past decade and a half does not mean climate change has stopped.
Sir Mark Walport, the Government chief scientific adviser, said the challenge for scientists in overcoming scepticism about man-made climate change was one of “communication.”
He told BBC’s Radio 4 Today program: “Scientists have got to communicate this. There are some people that don’t want to confront the policy decisions and they say ‘the easiest way we can do this is rubbish the science.’ They can’t do this, it’s absolutely robust.”
The summary states: “Due to natural variability, trends based on short records are very sensitive to the beginning and end dates and do not in general reflect long-term climate trends. As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years, which begins with a strong El Nino, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951.”
The report makes clear that each of the past three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850, and that 1983-2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the past 1,400 years.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere have reached levels unprecedented in the past 800,000 years, including a 40 per cent increase since pre-industrial times.
The report also states that sea levels have risen by 19cm since 1901, and that they will continue to rise during this century as surface temperature rises and the Arctic sea ice continues to shrink and thin and glaciers around the world recede.
The oceans are also set to become more acidic as they absorb more carbon.
Qin Dahe, co-chair of the working group, said: “Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased.
“As the ocean warms, and glaciers and ice sheets reduce, global mean sea level will continue to rise, but at a faster rate than we have experienced over the past 40 years.”
Thomas Stocker, the other co-chair of the group, added: “Continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and changes in all components of the climate system. Limiting climate change will require substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gases.
“Heatwaves are very likely to occur more frequently and last longer. As the Earth warms, we expect to see currently wet regions receiving more rainfall, and dry regions receiving less, although there will be exceptions.
“As a result of our past, present and expected future emissions of CO2, we are committed to climate change, and effects will persist for many centuries even if emissions stop.”
Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said solutions to the problem of man-made greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere “must be set in motion today.”
He said: “The risks and costs of doing nothing today are so great, only a deeply irresponsible government would be so negligent.
“Without urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions this warming will continue, with potentially dangerous impacts upon our societies and economy.”
The report strengthened the case for international leaders to work for an “ambitious, legally binding global agreement” in 2015 to cut carbon emissions, he added, thanking the scientists behind it for making clear “what is at stake if we don’t act.”
Source:
Telegraph UK – 27 Sep 2013
mmmmm Let me think – Global cooling perhaps?
A prominent climate scientist says the earth actually faces a global cooling crisis on the eve of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) release of its latest climate change report.
David Archibald, an Australian scientist and visiting fellow at the The Institute of World Politics (IWP) in Washington, D.C., said during an IWP presentation Wednesday that contrary to a perceived consensus among the scientific community, the planet’s climate is not warming. Global temperatures have essentially remained flat in the last thirty years, he said.
While temperatures have increased by a modest 0.8 degrees Celsius in the last 150 years, that rise is unremarkable compared to previous increases in earth’s history, he said. Temperature spikes have occurred for hundreds of thousands of years and were slightly higher in the Roman Empire and Medieval periods, he added, according to a Swedish study and data from ice cores in Vostok, Antarctica.
Additionally, about 80 percent of the warming that has occurred can be attributed to water vapor compared to about 10 percent for carbon dioxide, said Archibald. The IPCC’s report, scheduled for release Friday, is expected to state with 95 percent certainty that greenhouse-gas emissions generated by humans are responsible for 20th century warming.
“The IPCC models have failed,” Archibald said, adding that meetings like the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark are “hilarious.”
Archibald, credited as the first scientist to develop a method for using solar sunspot cycles to predict temperatures, instead said solar activity suggests global temperatures will cancel out previous warming and fall 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2040.
That could wreak havoc on the world’s food supply by potentially reducing global grain production by 400 million tonnes—mirroring the skyrocketing crop costs and 200,000 European deaths sparked by the 1816 eruption of Mt. Tambora in Indonesia.
“There will be at least one consolation. Phil Jones, Michael Mann, James Hansen and Al Gore will all, most likely, still be around to see their entire religious belief system collapsing around their ears,” wrote James Delingpole, a writer for the Telegraph, in a post last year on Archibald’s work.
See slides from Archibald’s presentation here.
Source:
Freebeacon – September 26,
IPCC – GEO-ENGINEERING IS GOOD
This morning’s publication of the IPCC’s summary for policymakers tells a familiar and gloomy story of the science of climate change. The big surprise is the decision to mention the controversial idea of geoengineering.
Today marked an important punctuation mark in the story of humanity’s attempts to get to grips with climate change as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published its summary for policymakers (pdf here). Climate sceptic journalists and interest groups will be making the most of the tiniest surprises and variations in the climate scientists’ new representation of the state of their art. But the evidence is largely unsurprising. For all the talk of a “hiatus” in warming, the IPCC continues to fly its one major fact: more greenhouse gases means more warming.
The big surprise comes in the final paragraph, with a mention ofgeoengineering. In the scientific world, a final paragraph is often the place to put caveats and suggestions for further research. In the political world, a final paragraph is a coda, a big finish, the place for a triumphant, standing-ovation-inducing summary. The IPCC tries to straddle both worlds. The addition of the word “geoengineering” to the most important report on climate change for six years counts as a big surprise.
There are many reasons to be worried about geoengineering. The idea is old. Countless inventions have been proposed as a technological fix to climate change, but scientists have only recently taken it seriously. Their previous reticence was largely due to a concern that talking about easy solutions would wobble the consensus on the need for a cut in emissions that had been painstakingly built over decades. Geoengineering was taboo – too seductive, too dangerous and too uncertain. It is now moving towards the mainstream of climate science. As the number of geoengineering studies published shoots up, it is now acceptable to discuss it in polite scientific company.
There is an argument that the taboo has already been broken and that, like sex education, it therefore has to be discussed. Those of us interested in geoengineering were expecting it to appear in one or two of the main reports when they are published in the coming months. To bring it up front is to give it premature legitimacy.
The description of geoengineering provided in the summary document is suitably critical. The report points to troubles with both carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere and solar radiation management (SRM) – reflecting a bit of sunlight back into space. In the case of CDR, the sheer scale of the clean-up makes it grotesquely expensive and difficult, and SRM would likely have unintended, unpredictable and disastrous effects on regional weather, among many other troubles (see this pdf for more). But the paragraph still states that: “Modelling indicates that SRM methods, if realizable, have the potential to substantially offset a global temperature rise.” This science is still very young. Climate science historian James Fleming describes such studies as “geo-scientific speculation”. To include mention of geoengineering, and its supporting “evidence” in a statement of scientific consensus, no matter how layered with caveats, is extraordinary.
If I were one of the imagined policymakers reading this summary, sitting in a country whose politicians were unwilling to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions (ie any country), I would have reached that paragraph and seen a chink of light just large enough to make me forget all the dark data about how screwed up the planet is. And that scares me.
Source:
TheGuardian – Friday 27 September
The great global warming swindle
The IPCC Exposed
After all that you have read here, What do to think now?… mmmmm… Let say we all need to take a break or a Holiday :):):)
Best Regards
TBU NEWS
