By [URL="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=David+Rose"]DAVID ROSE
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The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world's most eminent climate scientists.
Their predictions based on an analysis of natural cycles in water temperatures in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans challenge some of the global warming orthodoxy's most deeply cherished beliefs, such as the claim that the North Pole will be free of ice in summer by 2013.
According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado, Arctic summer sea ice has increased by 409,000 square miles, or 26 per cent, since 2007 and even the most committed global warming activists do not dispute this.
The scientists' predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.
They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a warm mode' as opposed to the present cold mode'. This challenge to the widespread view that the planet is on the brink of an irreversible catastrophe is all the greater because the scientists could never be described as global warming deniers' or sceptics.
However, both main British political parties continue to insist that the world is facing imminent disaster without drastic cuts in CO2.
This image of the UK taken from NASA's multi-national Terra satellite on Thursday shows the extent of the freezing weather
Last week, as Britain froze, Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband maintained in a parliamentary answer that the science of global warming was settled'.
Among the most prominent of the scientists is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has been pushing the issue of man-made global warming on to the international political agenda since it was formed 22 years ago.
Prof Latif, who leads a research team at the renowned Leibniz Institute at Germany's Kiel University, has developed new methods for measuring ocean temperatures 3,000ft beneath the surface, where the cooling and warming cycles start.
He and his colleagues predicted the new cooling trend in a paper published in 2008 and warned of it again at an IPCC conference in Geneva last September. Last night he told The Mail on Sunday: A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles perhaps as much as 50 per cent. 'They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely. Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer. The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt. For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling.' As Europe, Asia and North America froze last week, conventional wisdom insisted that this was merely a blip' of no long-term significance.
Though record lows were experienced as far south as Cuba, where the daily maximum on beaches normally used for winter bathing was just 4.5C, the BBC assured viewers that the big chill was merely short-term weather' that had nothing to do with climate', which was still warming. The work of Prof Latif and the other scientists refutes that view. On the one hand, it is true that the current freeze is the product of the Arctic oscillation' a weather pattern that sees the development of huge blocking' areas of high pressure in northern latitudes, driving polar winds far to the south.
Meteorologists say that this is at its strongest for at least 60 years. As a result, the jetstream the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain is currently running not over the English Channel but the Strait of Gibraltar.
A composite photograph released last year to highlight the issue of melting ice and global warming
However, according to Prof Latif and his colleagues, this in turn relates to much longer-term shifts what are known as the Pacific and Atlantic multi-decadal oscillations' (MDOs). For Europe, the crucial factor here is the temperature of the water in the middle of the North Atlantic, now several degrees below its average when the world was still warming. But the effects are not confined to the Northern Hemisphere. Prof Anastasios Tsonis, head of the University of Wisconsin Atmospheric Sciences Group, has recently shown that these MDOs move together in a synchronised way across the globe, abruptly flipping the world's climate from a warm mode' to a cold mode' and back again in 20 to 30-year cycles.
'They amount to massive rearrangements in the dominant patterns of the weather,' he said yesterday, and their shifts explain all the major changes in world temperatures during the 20th and 21st Centuries.
'We have such a change now and can therefore expect 20 or 30 years of cooler temperatures.'
Prof Tsonis said that the period from 1915 to 1940 saw a strong warm mode, reflected in rising temperatures.
Pictures of the snow in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, last week show the city is the coldest it has been since 1970
But from 1940 until the late Seventies, the last MDO cold-mode era, the world cooled, despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere continued to rise. Many of the consequences of the recent warm mode were also observed 90 years ago. For example, in 1922, the Washington Post reported that Greenland's glaciers were fast disappearing, while Arctic seals were finding the water too hot'.
It interviewed a Captain Martin Ingebrigsten, who had been sailing the eastern Arctic for 54 years: He says that he first noted warmer conditions in 1918, and since that time it has gotten steadily warmer. 'Where formerly great masses of ice were found, there are now moraines, accumulations of earth and stones. At many points where glaciers formerly extended into the sea they have entirely disappeared.' As a result, the shoals of fish that used to live in these waters had vanished, while the sea ice beyond the north coast of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Ocean had melted. Warm Gulf Stream water was still detectable within a few hundred miles of the Pole. In contrast, Prof Tsonis said, last week 56 per cent of the surface of the United States was covered by snow. That hasn't happened for several decades,' he pointed out. It just isn't true to say this is a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while.'
He recalled that towards the end of the last cold mode, the world's media were preoccupied by fears of freezing. For example, in 1974, a Time magazine cover story predicted Another Ice Age', saying: Man may be somewhat responsible as a result of farming and fuel burning [which is] blocking more and more sunlight from reaching and heating the Earth.'
Prof Tsonis said: Perhaps we will see talk of an ice age again by the early 2030s, just as the MDOs shift once more and temperatures begin to rise.' Like Prof Latif, Prof Tsonis is not a climate change denier'. There is, he said, a measure of additional background' warming due to human activity and greenhouse gases that runs across the MDO cycles.
'This isn't just a blip. We can expect colder winters for quite a while'
But he added: I do not believe in catastrophe theories. Man-made warming is balanced by the natural cycles, and I do not trust the computer models which state that if CO2 reaches a particular level then temperatures and sea levels will rise by a given amount.
'These models cannot be trusted to predict the weather for a week, yet they are running them to give readings for 100 years.'
Prof Tsonis said that when he published his work in the highly respected journal Geophysical Research Letters, he was deluged with hate emails'.
He added: People were accusing me of wanting to destroy the climate, yet all I'm interested in is the truth.'
He said he also received hate mail from climate change sceptics, accusing him of not going far enough to attack the theory of man-made warming.
The work of Profs Latif, Tsonis and their teams raises a crucial question: If some of the late 20th Century warming was caused not by carbon dioxide but by MDOs, then how much?
Tsonis did not give a figure; Latif suggested it could be anything between ten and 50 per cent.
Other critics of the warming orthodoxy say the role played by MDOs is even greater.
William Gray, emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University, said that while he believed there had been some background rise caused by greenhouse gases, the computer models used by advocates of man-made warming had hugely exaggerated their effect.
Dr David Viner stands by his claim that snow will become an 'increasingly rare event'
According to Prof Gray, these distort the way the atmosphere works. Most of the rise in temperature from the Seventies to the Nineties was natural,' he said. Very little was down to CO2 in my view, as little as five to ten per cent.'
But last week, die-hard warming advocates were refusing to admit that MDOs were having any impact.
In March 2000, Dr David Viner, then a member of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, the body now being investigated over the notorious Warmergate' leaked emails, said that within a few years snowfall would become a very rare and exciting event' in Britain, and that children just aren't going to know what snow is'.
Now the head of a British Council programme with an annual £10 million budget that raises awareness of global warming among young people abroad, Dr Viner last week said he still stood by that prediction: We've had three weeks of relatively cold weather, and that doesn't change anything.
'This winter is just a little cooler than average, and I still think that snow will become an increasingly rare event.'
The longer the cold spell lasts, the harder it may be to persuade the public of that assertion.
Greg Burnham Wrote:The mini ice age starts here (2010)
By [URL="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=&authornamef=David+Rose"]DAVID ROSE
[/URL]
Greg - David Guyatt, Magda Hassan and I know all about "David Rose".
Britain has strong libel laws, so I'll leave it like this.
To the cognoscenti, the inverted commas say everything I need to say.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Dengue is fastest-spreading tropical disease, WHO says
GENEVA (Reuters) - Dengue is the world's fastest-spreading tropical disease and represents a "pandemic threat", infecting an estimated 50 million people across all continents, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday.
Transmitted by the bite of female mosquitoes, the disease is occurring more widely due to increased movement of people and goods - including carrier objects such as bamboo plants and used tires - as well as floods linked to climate change, the United Nations agency said.
The viral disease, which affected only a handful of areas in the 1950s, is now present in more than 125 countries - significantly more than malaria, historically the most notorious mosquito-borne disease.
The most advanced vaccine against dengue is only 30 percent effective, trials last year showed.
"In 2012, dengue ranked as the fastest spreading vector-borne viral disease with an epidemic potential in the world, registering a 30-fold increase in disease incidence over the past 50 years," the WHO said in a statement.
Late last year, Europe's suffered its first sustained outbreak since the 1920s, with 2,000 people infected on the Portuguese Atlantic island of Madeira.
Worldwide, 2 million cases of dengue are reported each year by 100 countries, mainly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, causing 5,000 to 6,000 deaths, said Dr. Raman Velayudhan, a specialist at the WHO's control of neglected tropical diseases department.
But the true number is far higher as the disease has spread exponentially and is now present on all continents, he said.
"The WHO estimates that on average about 50 million cases occur every year. This is a very conservative estimate," Velayudhan told Reuters, adding that some independent studies put the figure at 100 million.
"Dengue is the most threatening and fastest spreading mosquito-borne disease. It is pandemic-prone, but it is a threat only. Definitely a bigger threat now than ever," he said
Malaria caused more deaths but was on the decline, affecting fewer than 100 countries.
SILENT EXPANSION
Speaking to a news briefing after the WHO released a report on 17 neglected tropical diseases affecting 1 billion people, Velayudhan said: "The mosquito has silently expanded its distribution.
"So today you have (the) aedes mosquito in over 150 countries. The threat of dengue exists all across the globe."
In Europe, the aedes mosquitoes that cause both dengue and chikungya disease have spread to 18 countries, often via the importation of ornamental bamboo or second-hand tires, he said.
"But we are trying to address this in a more systematic way, by controlling entry of vectors at points of entry - seaports, airports, as well as the ground crossings," Velayudhan said, noting that it was hard to detect mosquitoes and their eggs.
Dengue causes flu-like symptoms that subside in a few days in some sufferers. But the severe form of the disease requires hospitalization for complications, including severe bleeding, that may be lethal.
There is no specific treatment but early detection and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates below 1 percent, according to the Geneva-based WHO.
"You have to bear in mind that it has no treatment and vaccines are still in the research stage," Velayudhan said.
The most advanced, being developed by French drugmaker Sanofi SA, proved only 30 percent effective in a large clinical trial in Thailand, far less than hoped, according to results published in September.
But researchers said it did show for the first time that a safe vaccine was possible.
The WHO also said aims to eliminate globally two neglected tropical diseases, dracunculiasis, known as guinea worm disease, in 2015, and yaws, or treponematoses, in 2020.
Last year's drought increased the spread of a carcinogenic mold called aspergillus (Aspergillus flavus), a fungal pathogen that poisons cattle, kills pets and has infected the 2012 corn crop, rendering significant portions of the harvest unfit for consumption.
Whereas the deadly organism mainly affects countries like China and developing African nations, many U.S. states have experienced an increase in corn contamination since 2011. Farmers are likely to see more of the carcinogen as temperatures continue to rise and droughts become more frequent.
"It's really a climate variable issue," says Barbara Stinson, founding and senior partner of Meridian Institute, a public policy organization. "We're probably looking at an increase in aflatoxin as a result of that."
A. flavus releases toxic spores that can be fatal when ingested, prompting symptoms that include jaundice, liver cancer and internal bleeding. The poison is so deadly that in 1995 Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein confessed to weaponizing the mold spores for use in biological warfare. The high toxicity of the mold means crops with more than 20 parts per billionthe equivalent of about 100 kernels in a truckload of corncan't cross state lines, says Ronnie Heiniger, professor of cropping systems at North Carolina State University.
That's bad news for the agricultural industry, which suffers annual losses of more than $190 million due to aspergillus. Last year the green-black mold contaminated more than half the corn harvested in Missouri by October. In contrast, only 8 percent of the 2011 crop suffered, according to the Missouri Grain Inspection Service.
"We have a big aflatoxin problem," says Charles Woloshuk, a botanist and plant pathologist at Purdue University. "There are loads of corn coming to the [grain] elevators that have been rejected."
Grains like corn and cereals are well documented hosts of aspergillus, although the fungus is also found in oilseed, spices, tree nuts, groundnuts, milk, meat and dried fruitall staples on which a significant portion of the world's population rely for sustenance. Drought conditions don't cause the mold, but they do help speed its expansion. Unlike the fuzzy stuff that grows on bathroom tiles or in the back of the garage, A. flavus prefers hot, dry climesprecisely like the drought afflicting more than half the U.S.
Although the international community has adopted strict legislation to regulate the acceptable amount of aflatoxin for individual countries, cases of poisoning, called aflatoxicosis, still surface regularly. Because the level of aflatoxins found in any given load of corn can be higher than the legal maximum, farmers are allowed to mix contaminated corn with safe corn to dilute the amountbut sometimes contaminants slip through the cracks.
"That's always the problem with a contaminant at these low levelsthe distribution of that contaminant in that load," Heiniger says. "The detection of these contaminants is almost more of an art than a science because you're searching for this one little kernel." He adds, "If you selected one bite from that whole area and happened to hit that one kernel you'd get the contaminant."
Aflatoxin contamination is a global food security issue, but it's especially a problem in developing countries, which are often largely populated by subsistence farmers who don't have the resources, technology or infrastructure needed for adequate grain testing. Lack of education about the effects of the mold also contributes to aflatoxicosis poisoning.
"The average person can't tell whether the mold contains aflatoxin. You can't tell if it's highly toxic or an innocuous fungus," Stinson says. "So people are used to eating it and don't know that they're poisoning themselves or their children."
To make matters worse, aflatoxins react strongly to the hepatitis B virus (HBV), the most common cause of liver cancer in the world. In countries where HBV is endemic, such as in China and some African nations, ingesting the mold intensifies and speeds liver failure by acting as an immunosuppressant. Consequently, there are over 750,000 new reported cases of primary liver cancer reported yearly worldwide, making it the sixth most common cancer for humankind, according to 2008 statistics from the World Cancer Research Fund International.
The cost in human life is likely due, in part, to international trade issues. Because aspergillus standards in developed countries are so high, African nations export much of their pure commodities overseas, leaving the tainted crops at home for consumption by locals. Natural disasters that increase foreign demand for African productslike floods and droughts in industrialized countriesonly compound the issue.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) estimate more than five billion people worldwide are at risk for chronic exposure through contaminated foods, according to a March 2012 study published in PLoS One.
"Strict aflatoxin standards mean that many nations will export their best-quality foods and keep contaminated foods domestically, resulting in higher aflatoxin exposure in low- or middle-income nations where hepatitis prevalence is high," wrote co-authors Felicia Wu and Hasan Guclu, both Pitt faculty members.
Whereas the U.S. is most often spared the cost in human health, the repercussions aren't nil. Dairy cows and cattle, already stressed from living in close proximity to large numbers of animals, are at particularly high risk for succumbing to aflatoxicosis, though they can handle higher doses of toxin. Pets, too, are susceptible to the poison. In 2007 aflatoxins forced a nationwide pet food recallbut not before dozens of man's best friends fell ill and died.
Researchers have not yet found an animal species immune to the aspergillus's effects. The spores are so poisonous that even destroying the contaminated crops is an ordeal. Scientists worldwide keep careful tabs on aflatoxins in a large-scale effort to avoid outbreaks of aflatoxicosis, according to Stinson.
"Our understanding is that in some cases you can't even incinerate (contaminated food) safely because the aflatoxin can get airborne and be inhaled," she says. "If there is a high level of aflatoxin…they're going to be in the position of having to store and destroy crops."
t was another top-ten hottest year on record during 2012, which ranked as the 10th warmest year since records began in 1880, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center said today. NASA rated 2012 as the 9th warmest on record. Including 2012, all 12 years to date in the 21st century (20012012) rank among the 14 warmest in the 133-year period of record. Only one year during the 20th century--1998--was warmer than 2012. The year 2012 was the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present. Global land temperatures were the 7th warmest on record, and ocean temperatures were the 10th warmest. Global satellite-measured temperatures in the lower atmosphere were the 9th or 11th warmest in the 34-year record, according to UAH and RSS, respectively. Following the two wettest years on record (2010 and 2011), 2012 saw near average precipitation on balance across the globe. In a NASA Press Release today, climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said, "One more year of numbers isn't in itself significant. What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason it's warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere."
Figure 1. Departure of global temperature from average for 2012. The continental U.S. and the eastern 2/3 of Canada were Earth's warmest regions, relative to average. Image credit: NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.
Global extremes of 2012
Weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera has put together a list of global extremes for 2012, and maintains a comprehensive list of extreme temperature records for every nation in the world on his website. If you reproduce this list of extremes, please cite Maximiliano Herrera as the primary source of the weather records. Here, then, is Maximiliano's list of 2012 global extremes:
Hottest temperature in the world in 2012: 53.6°C (128.5°F) in Sulaibiya, Kuwait, July 31
Coldest temperature in the world in 2012: -84.2°C (-119.6°F) at Vostok, Antarctica, September 16
Hottest temperature in the Southern Hemisphere: 47.5°C (117.5°F) at Birdsville, Australia, January 7
Coldest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere: -63.1°C (-81.6°F) at Summit, Greenland, December 28
Highest annual precipitation: Cherrapunji, India, 13364 mm (526")
Lowest annual precipitation: Several stations in Southern Egypt saw not even a trace of precipitation
All-time world record warm minimum temperature tied: 41.7°C (107°F), Death Valley (USA), July 12
All-time world record highest 24-hour average temperature: 47.5°C (117.5°F), Death Valley (USA), July 11-12
World record high temperature in an island: 51.8°C (125.2°F), Failaka Island, Kuwait, July 31
World record high temperature on a coast: 52.1°C (125.8°F), Kuwait City, Kuwait, July 31
World record highest temperature with rain: 46.1°C (115°F), Needles (USA), August 13
World record for lowest humidity with rain: 11%, Needles (USA), August 13
Figure 2. True-color MODIS satellite image of California and Arizona taken at 1:25 pm PDT August 13, 2012. Developing thunderstorms surround Needles, CA, and the line of clouds to the southwest of the city would develop into a thunderstorm that brought rain to the city at 4 pm PDT, at a temperature of 115°F and a relative humidity of 11%--both world records. Image credit: NASA.
New country and territory hottest temperature records set in 2012
Five nations and two territories tied or set their hottest temperature readings in recorded history during 2012; no coldest all-time national records were set. For comparison, Seven countries and one territory set all-time hottest temperature records in 2011, and one nation set an all-time coldest temperature record. The most all-time national heat records in a year occurred in 2010, when twenty nations and one territory did so. Here are the 2012 national heat records:
Morocco recorded its hottest temperature on record on July 17, 2012 in Marrakech, when the mercury hit 49.6°C (121.3°F).
Kuwait recorded its hottest temperature on record on July 31, 2012 in Sulaibya, when the mercury hit 53.6°C (128.5°F). This surpasses the highest undisputed temperature ever recorded in Asia--the 53.5°C (128.3°F) measured at Moen Jo-Daro, Pakistan on May 26, 2010. The only higher temperature ever measured in Asia was a 54°C (129.2°F) reading from Tirat Tsvi, Israel on June 22, 1942. The Israeli Met Office pursued an investigation of the record in 2012 (prompted by an inquiry from the WMO and wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt), and concluded that the record was valid. However, they have refused to make public the details leading to their conclusions, and until they do so, the record remains suspect.
Moldova recorded its hottest temperature on record on August 7, 2012 in Falesti, when the mercury hit 42.4°C (108.3°F).
Montenegro tied its hottest temperature on record on August 8, 2012 in Danilovgrad, when the mercury hit 44.8°C (112.6°F).
The Czech Republic recorded its hottest temperature on record on August 20, 2012 in Dobrichovice, when the mercury hit 40.4°C (104.7°F).
The territory of Hong Kong tied its hottest temperature on record on July 21 on Ping Chau Island, when the mercury hit 37.7°C (99.9°F).
The Sprska Republic set a new territorial high of 42.8°C (109°F) on August 24 at Visegrad.
New U.S. State Records set in 2012
New state record high: South Carolina, at Columbia University WS and Johnston, 45.0°C (113°F), June 29
State record high temperature tied: Colorado, at Las Animas, 45.6°C (114°F), June 23
Wunderground's weather historian Christopher C. Burt maintains a database of national heat and cold records on wunderground.com's extremes page, where all of this year's national heat records are updated. Weather records researcher Maximiliano Herrera is the primary source of these national weather records.
How much of the warming in recent decades is due to natural causes?
The El Niño/La Niña cycle causes cyclical changes in global temperatures that average out close to zero over the course of several decades. La Niña events bring a large amount of cold water to the surface in the equatorial Eastern Pacific, which cools global temperatures by up to 0.2°C. El Niño events have the opposite effect. During 2012, a weak La Niña event was present through March. Warming of the Eastern Pacific waters in the spring brought on neutral conditions, which lasted for the remainder of the year. The year 2012 was the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present, surpassing the previous record set just the year before, in 2011. Global temperatures were 0.09°C (0.16°F) cooler than the record warmest year for the planet (2010), and 2012 would very likely have been the warmest on record had an El Niño event been present instead of a La Niña, as seen by looking at the year-to-date global temperature plot for 2012.
Figure 3. Departure from average of annual global temperatures between 1950 - 2012, classified by phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The year 2012 was the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present. ENSO is a natural episodic fluctuation in sea surface temperature (El Niño/La Niña) and the air pressure of the overlying atmosphere (Southern Oscillation) across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Over a period of months to a few years, ENSO fluctuates between warmer-than-average ocean surface waters (El Niño) and cooler-than-average ocean surface waters (La Niña) in that region. Earth's warmest years tend to occur when an El Niño is present; cooler years occur when a La Niña is occurring. A La Niña (El Niño) year is defined here as occurring when the first three months of a calendar year meet the La Niña (El Niño) criteria as defined by NOAA's Climate Prediction Center. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.
Correcting for natural causes to find the human contribution
We know that natural episodes of global warming or cooling in the distant past have been caused by changes in sunlight and volcanic dust. So, it is good to remove these natural causes of global temperature change over the past 34 years we have satellite data, to see what the human influence might have been during that time span. Through 2010, the three major research groups that maintain global surface temperature data sets (NCDC, GISS, and HadCRU) all show global temperatures have warmed by 0.16 - 0.17°C (0.28 - 0.30°F) per decade since satellite measurements began in 1979. The two satellite-based data sets of the lower atmosphere (maintained by UAH and RSS) give slightly less warming, about 0.14 - 0.15°C (.25 - .27°F) per decade (keep in mind that satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere temperature are affected much more strongly by volcanic eruptions and the El Niño phenomena than are surface-based measurements taken by weather stations.) A 2011 paper published by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Global temperature evolution 1979 - 2010, took these five major global temperature data sets and adjusted them to remove the influences of natural variations in sunlight, volcanic dust, and the El Niño/La Niña cycle. The researchers found that adjusting for these natural effects did not change the observed trend in global temperatures, which remained between 0.14 - 0.17°C (0.25 - 0.31°F) per decade in all five data sets. The warmest years since 1979 were 2010 and 2009 in all five adjusted data sets. The known natural causes of global warming have little to do with the observed increase in global temperatures over the past 34 years, and the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists agree that human activity is the primary cause of increasing global temperatures in recent decades.
Figure 4. Departure from average of annual global temperatures between 1979 - 2010, adjusted to remove natural variations due to fluctuations in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, dust from volcanic eruptions, and changes in sunlight. The five most frequently-cited global temperature records are presented: surface temperature estimates by NASA's GISS, HadCRU from the UK, and NOAA's NCDC, and satellite-based lower-atmosphere estimates from Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. (RSS) and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH.) Image credit Global temperature evolution 1979- 2010 by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 2011, 044022 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022.
Video 1. Human emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide have continued to warm the planet over the past 16 years. However, a persistent myth has emerged in the mainstream media challenging this. Denial of this fact may have been the favorite climate contrarian myth of 2012. Video courtesy of skepticalscience.com.
18-01-2013, 12:48 AM (This post was last modified: 18-01-2013, 01:43 AM by Greg Burnham.)
By John Coleman
4-6-2011
According to Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Global Warming with all its dire consequences is the result of the increase of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels to power our automobiles and airplanes, our electric power generating plants and our factories. How much do you know about CO2? Let me ask some questions:
Question 1. What percentage of the atmosphere do you think is CO2?
Question 2. What percentage of the CO2 is man-made?
Question 3. Is CO2 a pollutant?
Question 4. Have you ever seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?
The answers to these questions are key in evaluating the global warming scare. However, a sampling with these questions proved almost no one knows the correct answers. Without this basic knowledge there is no way you can logically decide whether Global warming is really happening and whether it is natural or not.
Here are some respondents' perceptions followed by the correct answers.
Question 1. What percentage of the air is CO2?
Respondents' answers: nearly all were 20% - 40%, the highest was 75% while the lowest were 10% - 20%.
The Correct Answer: CO2 is less than a mere four 100ths of 1%! As a decimal it is 0.038%. As a fraction it is 1/27th of 1%. (Measurements for CO2 vary from one source to another from 0.036%- 0.039% due to the difficulty in measuring such a small quantity and due to changes in wind direction e.g. whether the air flow is from an industrialized region or a volcanic emission etc)
Nitrogen is just over 78%, Oxygen is just under 21% and Argon is almost 1%. CO2 is a minute trace gas at 0.038%. For a detailed breakup of the atmosphere go to: [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition
[/URL] Question 2. What percentage of CO2 is man-made?
Respondents' answers ranged from as high as 100%, with most estimating it to be between 25% and 75%.
The Correct Answer: Nature produces nearly all of it. Humans produce only 3%. As a decimal it is a minuscule 0.001% of the air. All of mankind produces only one molecule of CO2 in around every 90,000 air molecules! Yes, that's all.
Question 3. Is CO2 a pollutant?
Respondents' answers: All thought it was a pollutant, at least to some degree.
The Correct Answer: CO2 is a harmless, trace gas. It is necessary for life - just as a harmless, trace gas. It is necessary for life - just as oxygen and nitrogen are. It is essential to photosynthesis, the basic process that makes plants grow. Without CO2 there would be no crops, no flowers, trees, grass or bushes. CO2 is a natural gas. It is clear, tasteless and odorless. It is in no way a pollutant.
Calling CO2 a 'pollutant' leads many to wrongly think of it as black, grey or white smoke. Because the media deceitfully show white or grey 'smoke' coming out of power station cooling towers, most think this is CO2. It is not: it's just steam (water vapor) condensing in the air. CO2 is invisible: just breathe out and see. Look at it bubbling out of your soft drinks, beer or sparkling wine. No one considers that a pollutant - because it's not.
Question 4. Have you seen any evidence that CO2 causes a greenhouse effect?
Respondents' answers: Most did not know of any definite proof. Some said they thought the melting of the Arctic and glaciers was possibly proof.
The Correct Answer: There is no proof at all. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (the IPCC) has never produced any proof. There are, however the following proofs that it can't cause a greenhouse effect.
It is true that CO2 can absorb heat a little faster than nitrogen and oxygen but it becomes no hotter because it cannot absorb anymore heat than there is available to the other gases. This is against the laws of thermodynamics. All gases share their heat with the other gases. Gas molecules fly around and are constantly colliding with other gas molecules so they immediately lose any excess heat to other molecules during these collisions. That's why the air is all one temperature in any limited volume. Even if CO2 levels were many times higher, radiative heating physics shows that it would make virtually no difference to temperature because it has a very limited heating ability. With CO2, the more there is, the less it heats because it quickly becomes saturated. For a detailed explanation go to:[URL="http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html"]http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
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The following facts show that even high levels of CO2 can make almost no impact on heating the atmosphere.
1. Glasshouses with high levels of CO2 - hundreds of times higher than in the air to make plants grow faster - heat up during the day to the same temperature as glasshouses with air in them. This is also true for bottles of pure CO2 compared to ones with air.
2. The planets Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are almost entirely CO2 (97%) yet they have no 'runaway' greenhouse heating effect. Their temperatures are stable.
3. The geological record over hundreds of millions of years has shown that CO2 has had no affect whatsoever on climate. At times, CO2 was hundreds of times higher, yet there were ice ages.
4. In recent times when Earth was considerably warmer during the Roman Warming and the Medieval Warming, the higher temperatures then were totally natural because there was no industrialization back then.
Over the last few years Earth has had much colder winters perhaps due to very few magnetic storms on the Sun. These four increasingly colder winters have been particularly noticeable in the northern hemisphere where most of the land is. Because of this, the Arctic has re-frozen and glaciers that were receding are now surging due to the heavy snow falls. The Arctic showed some melting around its edges from the mid 90s to the mid 2000s due to the very high level of solar storm activity at that time. But as the Sun is now entering probably 2-4 decades of low solar activity, this is expected to cause global cooling.
The climate has always been naturally cyclic and variable due to numerous natural drivers of which CO2 is not one. Over millions of years the climate has shown far greater changes in the geological record than we have seen over the last 200 hundred years - and there was no industrialization back then. The very minor variations we have witnessed over the last 100 years have all occurred several times even in that short period. Today's changes in climate are common and completely natural. There are now over 50 books that provide numerous reasons why man-made global warming is false.
What I presented here was mostly written by an Australian man, Gregg D Thompson. I edited and excerpted from his climate posting. He is a Climate Researcher, Astronomer and Environmentalist. He has written two science books, been Business Manager and Director of 3 companies, Author of science magazine articles and Designer and project manager of special effects attractions. He is also a Nature photographer.
When you hear on the news about the government regulating greenhouse gases or the pollutant CO2, another news writer, reporter or editor is displaying dulability, ignorance or bias.
This situation drives me nuts. But, maybe I was sort of nutty before.
John Coleman
[emphasis added]
GO_SECURE
monk
"It is difficult to abolish prejudice in those bereft of ideas. The more hatred is superficial, the more it runs deep."
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This image of the UK taken from NASA's multi-national Terra satellite on Thursday shows the extent of the freezing weather![[Image: article-0-032F8F20000005DC-103_468x291.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/09/article-0-032F8F20000005DC-103_468x291.jpg)
A composite photograph released last year to highlight the issue of melting ice and global warming![[Image: article-0-07BEC4D4000005DC-766_468x286.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/09/article-0-07BEC4D4000005DC-766_468x286.jpg)
Pictures of the snow in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, last week show the city is the coldest it has been since 1970![[Image: article-1242011-067B1FA20000044D-427_233x423.jpg]](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/01/09/article-1242011-067B1FA20000044D-427_233x423.jpg)
Dr David Viner stands by his claim that snow will become an 'increasingly rare event'![[Image: 2012temps.gif]](http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/2013/2012temps.gif){kind=icon}
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