Environmental Issues

[rhino56]

U.S. NATIONAL DEBT is estimated at 55 trillion
The estimated population of the United States is 304,261,603
so each citizen's share of this debt is $30,802.27.
The National Debt has continued to increase an average of
$1.33 billion per day since September 28, 2007

[Mark620]

UAH: June 2008: still negative anomaly

According to UAH MSU, the global temperature anomaly in June 2008 was -0.11 °C, up from -0.18 °C in May 2008.

A similar warming from -0.083 °C in May 2008 to +0.035 °C in June 2008 has been reported by RSS MSU, too.

But let us focus on UAH MSU. Anomaly-wise, June 2008 was the third coldest month of the 21st century so far, after May 2008 and July 2004 (that had -0.12 °C, almost the same temperature).

If I were as manipulative (or stupid) as Al Gore, I would also build on the fact that three of the four months in this century with a negative temperature anomaly occurred in 2008 (July 2004; January, May, June 2008).

But this statement is not so surprising for sensible people because the temperature is a continuous (although not smooth) function of time and nearby months should be expected to have similar temperatures. Once we know that May 2008 was the coldest month, it shouldn't shock you that you will find nearby months in the hit parade, too.

Polar regions

In terms of the anomaly, the land in the Southern polar lands - Antarctica - cooled by a hefty 2.35 °C from the previous month - from +0.82 to -1.53 °C. Such things happen near the poles where all changes are amplified and where the area is not too large to guarantee a constancy of temperature.

The Northern polar region cooled from 1.03 to 0.49 °C between May and June 2008. The total sea ice anomaly is currently near zero, as a positive anomaly of the Southern Hemisphere cancels the negative anomaly of the Northern Hemisphere. A year ago, the total anomaly was around -2 million squared kilometers. Those "experts" who bet that there will be less ice in 2008 than 2007 don't look particularly clever to me. ;-)

By the way, a Dutch team just published a study that shows that the Greenland melting cycle exhibits no trend in the last 17 years.

The first half of 2008

The first half of 2008 is over so we can say something about this period. According to the UAH MSU data, the average temperature anomaly for those six months was -0.03 °C, making the H1 of 2008 the coldest half-year since H1 of 1997. It's been a half-year of a cooling U.S. job market, too. ;-)

No, it is not a typo. I really mean that 2008 has been cooler than the "cold" La Nina years and half-years during the 1998-2001 La Nina episode, too. And that's true despite the fact that the 1998-2001 La Nina episode was both longer and stronger than the recent one. To summarize, there's no global warming in the recent 10 years of data.

This absence of warming becomes even more striking in the middle troposphere where the bulk of the greenhouse effect is being predicted while the reality shows an even slower warming trend if any. In fact, the trend since 1979 is 0.00 °C per decade on the Southern Hemisphere and 0.05 °C per decade globally, justifying the claim that there exists no satellite-observed global warming in the mid troposphere.

UAH MSU sees the global June 2008 anomaly in the mid troposphere as -0.20 °C and the average of H1 of 2008 equals -0.18 °C. Since the beginning of the UAH satellite records in 1979, only a few half-years in 1984, 1985, 1989, 1993 were cooler than H1 of 2008.

Author : Luboš Motl
Pilsen, Czech Republic

[Mark620]

Global Temperatures Have Dropped: Did Sunspots Predict It?

March 1, 2008

By Dennis T. Avery, Hudson Institute

CHURCHVILLE, VA—Three of the world’s major climate monitors have announced that the earth’s temperatures dropped over the last 12 months—by enough to virtually offset the entire “unprecedented warming” of the last century. This comes after nine years of no warming, and a net warming since 1940 of just 0.2 degrees.

Equally important, a drop in temperatures had been predicted by the sunspot index that foretells the earth’s temperature changes with a log time of nearly a decade. Our temperatures have a 79 percent correlation with the sunspot index. The sunspot index turned downward in 2000.

Britain’s Hadley Centre, NASA, and the University of Alabama/Huntsville say the temperature drop since January of 2007 was measured between 0.59 and 0.75 degree C. This includes an unusually cold winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and the harshest Chinese winter in a century. Part is due to a regional cooling in the Pacific called La Nina which appears every 4-5 years, but the strength and global scope of this cooling has been startling.

Additionally, the Arctic ice that seemed to disappear last summer is back this spring, and thicker, apparently affected last year more by wind currents than melting. The Antarctic ice is still record-large.

Does this mean a new Ice Age? Probably not, though one will appear eventually. We’re more likely to have a moderate decline in temperatures over the coming decades like the cooling that occurred from 1940 to 1975.

For the longer term, we’re still controlled by the moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle that we discovered in the Greenland ice cores in 1984. It has since been confirmed in seabed and lake sediments, fossil pollen, cave stalagmites and ancient records around the world. The 1,500-year cycle raises temperatures in Washington and Paris by 1–2 degrees C for centuries at a time, and then drops them abruptly into “little ice ages” that also last for centuries.

Humans may have contributed to the Modern Warming—but apparently not much. Most of the Modern Warming occurred before 1940, which is when we started really spewing CO2 from our smokestacks and autos. The net warming since 1940 is a tiny 0.2 degrees C.—and I’ll cheerfully give Mr. Gore half of that for the sake of debate.

Conservation is still and always has been a good idea, but the dangers of CO2 may have been radically overstated. Every wild species on the planet today—including the polar bear—has been through these cycles before. There’s been no acceleration of sea-level rise since the Modern Warming began in 1850.

Let’s put a hold on David Suzuki’s demand that recalcitrant politicians be jailed for not banning fossil fuels. Let’s table in committee the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act that would eliminate about 85 percent of our current energy sources.

The past year’s temperature drop—and nine years of non-warming since 1998 despite rising CO2 levels—raise serious doubt about the supposed link between atmospheric CO2 and our temperatures. Past temperatures show virtually no historic correlation between our temperatures and CO2, despite the claims of Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The end of the 1976-98 temperature surge confirms that we have “time to do the science,” as Al Gore’s climate mentor, Roger Revelle, told us in his last public writing in 1991. But we must also now recognize that the computerized climate models are not science, they’re guesses. It’s too soon for our political institutions to blame a predetermined villain called humanity.<>

DENNIS T. AVERY is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and is the Director for the Center for Global Food Issues. (What’s New at CGFI? | Center for Global Food Issues) He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 2442 or email to cgfi (at) hughes.net.