Global Warming Hysteria

GREEN DRIVEL EXPOSED

THEGODFATHER OF GLOBAL WARMING LOWERS THE BOOM ON CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA

By Lorrie Goldstein ,Toronto Sun

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Two months ago, James Lovelock, the godfather of global warming, gave a startling interview to msnbc.com in which he acknowledged he had been unduly “alarmist” about climate change.

The implications were extraordinary.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.

Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.

Having observed that global temperatures since the turn of the millennium have not gone up in the way computer-based climate models predicted, Lovelock acknowledged, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” Now, Lovelock has given a follow-up interview to the UK’s Guardian newspaper in which he delivers more bombshells sure to anger the global green movement, which for years worshipped his Gaia theory and apocalyptic predictions that billions would die from man-made climate change by the end of this century.

Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect.

He responds to attacks on his revised views by noting that, unlike many climate scientists who fear a loss of government funding if they admit error, as a freelance scientist, he’s never been afraid to revise his theories in the face of new evidence. Indeed, that’s how science advances.

Among his observations to the Guardian:

(1) A long-time supporter of nuclear power as a way to lower greenhouse gas emissions, which has made him unpopular with environmentalists, Lovelock has now come out in favour of natural gas fracking (which environmentalists also oppose), as a low-polluting alternative to coal.

As Lovelock observes, “Gas is almost a give-away in the U.S. at the moment. They’ve gone for fracking in a big way. This is what makes me very cross with the greens for trying to knock it … Let’s be pragmatic and sensible and get Britain to switch everything to methane. We should be going mad on it.” (Kandeh Yumkella, co-head of a major United Nations program on sustainable energy, made similar arguments last week at a UN environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro, advocating the development of conventional and unconventional natural gas resources as a way to reduce deforestation and save millions of lives in the Third World.)

(2) Lovelock blasted greens for treating global warming like a religion.

“It just so happens that the green religion is now taking over from the Christian religion,” Lovelock observed. “I don’t think people have noticed that, but it’s got all the sort of terms that religions use … The greens use guilt. That just shows how religious greens are. You can’t win people round by saying they are guilty for putting (carbon dioxide) in the air.”

(3) Lovelock mocks the idea modern economies can be powered by wind turbines.

As he puts it, “so-called ‘sustainable development’ … is meaningless drivel … We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can’t stand windmills at any price.”

(4) Finally, about claims “the science is settled” on global warming: “One thing that being a scientist has taught me is that you can never be certain about anything. You never know the truth. You can only approach it and hope to get a bit nearer to it each time. You iterate towards the truth. You don’t know it.”

global warming

Global Hysteria: No Need to Panic About Warming

No Need to Panic About Global Warming

Wall Street Journal
January 27, 2012

There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.

Editor's Note: The following has been signed by the 16 scientists listed at the end of the article:

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.

Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.

global

Uh oh,global warming loons: here comes Climategate II!

By James Delingpole

November 22nd, 2011
The Telegraph

Breaking news: two years after the Climategate, a further batch of emails has been leaked onto the internet by a person – or persons – unknown. And as before, they show the "scientists" at the heart of the Man-Made Global Warming industry in a most unflattering light. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Ben Santer, Tom Wigley, Kevin Trenberth, Keith Briffa – all your favourite Climategate characters are here, once again caught red-handed in a series of emails exaggerating the extent of Anthropogenic Global Warming, while privately admitting to one another that the evidence is nowhere near as a strong as they'd like it to be.

In other words, what these emails confirm is that the great man-made global warming scare is not about science but about political activism. This, it seems, is what motivated the whistleblower 'FOIA 2011' (or "thief", as the usual suspects at RealClimate will no doubt prefer to tar him or her) to go public.

As FOIA 2011 puts it when introducing the selected highlights, culled from a file of 220,000 emails:

“Over 2.5 billion people live on less than $2 a day.”

“Every day nearly 16.000 children die from hunger and related causes.”

“One dollar can save a life” — the opposite must also be true.

“Poverty is a death sentence.”

“Nations must invest $37 trillion in energy technologies by 2030 to stabilize
greenhouse gas emissions at sustainable levels.”

Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

FOIA 2011 is right, of course. If you're going to bomb the global economy back to the dark ages with environmental tax and regulation, if you're going to favour costly, landscape-blighting, inefficient renewables over real, abundant, relatively cheap energy that works like shale gas and oil, if you're going to cause food riots and starvation in the developing world by giving over farmland (and rainforests) to biofuel production, then at the very least you it owe to the world to base your policies on sound, transparent, evidence-based science rather than on the politicised, disingenuous junk churned out by the charlatans at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

You'll find the full taster menu of delights here at Tall Bloke's website. Shrub Niggurath is on the case too. As is the Air Vent.

I particularly like the ones expressing deep reservations about the narrative put about by the IPCC:

/// The IPCC Process ///

<1939> Thorne/MetO:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary [...]

<3066> Thorne:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

<1611> Carter:

It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by
a select core group.

<2884> Wigley:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]

<4755> Overpeck:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s
included and what is left out.

<3456> Overpeck:

I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” [...] Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?

And here's our friend Phil Jones, apparently trying to stuff the IPCC working groups with scientists favourable to his cause, while shutting out dissenting voices.

<0714> Jones:

Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about
the tornadoes group.

<3205> Jones:

Useful ones [for IPCC] might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on the solar/cloud
issue – on the right side, i.e anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be
have to involve him ?)

Here is what looks like an outrageous case of government – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – actually putting pressure on climate "scientists" to talk up their message of doom and gloom in order to help the government justify its swingeing climate policies:

<2495> Humphrey/DEFRA:

I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a
message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their
story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made
to look foolish.

Here is a gloriously revealing string of emails in which activists and global warming research groups discuss how best to manipulate reality so that climate change looks more scary and dangerous than it really is:

<3655> Singer/WWF:

we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the
public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and
b) in order to get into the media the context between climate
extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and
energy

<0445> Torok/CSIRO:

[...] idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed
“global icons” [...] One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef [...]
It also became apparent that there was always a local “reason” for the
destruction – cyclones, starfish, fertilizers [...] A perception of an
“unchanging” environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral
loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of
systematic damage from long-term climatic/environmental change [...] Such a
project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate
change

<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:

In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public
relations problem with the media

Kjellen:

I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global
warming

Pierrehumbert:

What kind of circulation change could lock Europe into deadly summer heat waves
like that of last summer? That’s the sort of thing we need to think about.

I'll have a deeper dig through the emails this afternoon and see what else I come up with. If I were a climate activist off to COP 17 in Durban later this month, I don't think I'd be feeling a very happy little drowning Polie, right now. In fact I might be inclined to think that the game was well and truly up.

global

Asia Pollution Blamed for Halt in Warming




July 5, 2011
By Gerard Wynn
Scientific American



LONDON (Reuters) - Smoke belching from Asia's rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulfur's cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday.

The paper raised the prospect of more rapid, pent-up climate change when emerging economies eventually crack down on pollution.

World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show.

The researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and Finland's University of Turku said pollution, and specifically sulfur emissions, from coal-fueled growth in Asia was responsible for the cooling effect.

Sulfur allows water drops or aerosols to form, creating hazy clouds which reflect sunlight back into space.

"Anthropogenic activities that warm and cool the planet largely cancel after 1998, which allows natural variables to play a more significant role," the paper said.

Natural cooling effects included a declining solar cycle after 2002, meaning the sun's output fell.

The study said that the halt in warming had fueled doubts about anthropogenic climate change, where scientists say manmade greenhouse gas emissions are heating the Earth.

"It has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008," said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

A peak in temperatures in 1998 coincided with a strong El Nino weather event, a natural shift which brings warm waters to the surface of the Pacific Ocean every few years.

Subsequent years have still included nine of the top 10 hottest years on record, while the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said 2010 was tied for the record.

A U.N. panel of climate scientists said in 2007 that it was 90 percent certain that humankind was causing global warming.

COAL

Sulfur aerosols may remain in the atmosphere for several years, meaning their cooling effect will gradually abate once smokestack industries clean up.

The study echoed a similar explanation for reduced warming between the 1940s and 1970s, blamed on sulfur emissions before Western economies cleaned up largely to combat acid rain.

"The post 1970 period of warming, which constitutes a significant portion of the increase in global surface temperature since the mid 20th century, is driven by efforts to reduce air pollution," it said.

Sulfur emissions are linked to coal consumption which in China grew more than 100 percent in the decade to 2008, or nearly three times the rate of the previous 10 years, according to data from the energy firm BP.

Other climate scientists broadly supported Monday's study, stressing that over longer time periods rising greenhouse gas emissions would over-ride cooling factors.

"Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced," said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain's Met Office.





 
 
 
 
 
 
global

The Sun - Making us Warmer or colder

Amazing isn't it - that the sun actually makes us hotter.  I know, blows your mind. 





SOLAR ACTIVITY:



A DOMINANT FACTOR IN CLIMATE DYNAMICS



Dr Theodor Landscheidt
Schroeter Institute for Research in Cycles of Solar Activity
Nova Scotia, Canada




1. “Solar Constant” Variations in the 11-Year Sunspot Cycle and Climatic Effects



Atmospheric circulation, the cause of weather, is driven by the sun’s energy. Climate is the integral of weather over periods of more than a year. This integral also depends on the flux of solar energy. The same applies to variations in the energy flux caused by the sun’s varying activity. Satellite data show that the “solar constant” S is variable. The solar irradiance decreased from the sunspot maximum 1979 to the minimum 1986, increased again on the way to the next maximum in the 11-year sunspot cycle, and decreased anew in the descending phase. This came as a surprise as it is plausible that the dark sunspots with their strong magnetic fields impede the free flux of energy from the sun’s interior to the outside. Yet P. V. Foukal and J. Lean [22] have shown that bright faculae in the vicinity of sunspots increase even more than sunspots when the activity grows stronger, so that an irradiance surplus is established.

IPCC scientists hold that the corresponding variation in the solar constant (Delta S) is smaller than 0.1% and has no impact on climate that could count in comparison with the greenhouse effect [94]. Yet they fail to appreciate that quotes of 0.1% in the literature refer to the absolute amplitude of the sinusoidal variation in the solar constant, not the whole change from minimum to maximum, or from maximum to minimum [25, 32, 39]. Figure 1 after C. Fröhlich [25] shows this distinctly. The data at the top of the figure, designated by `HF', represent NIMBUS-7 measurements. The smoothed curve shows the 81-day running average related to the interval of three solar rotations of 27days. The horizontal axis indicates the investigated period, above in years, below in days since the first day of 1980. The vertical axis measures the solar constant S in W/m2. The scale in the middle of Figure 1 indicates the range of 0.1%. When this scale is taken to measure the variation in the smoothed curve from the sunspot maximum 1979 to the minimum in 1986, the result is Delta S approximately equal to - 0.22%. IPCC scientists cannot object to this higher value on the grounds that it is not a common practice to assess the total variation in such a way. They proceed equally by relating the rise in global temperature to the minimum at the end of the 19th century and not to the long-term temperature mean.

According to satellite measurements, the mean value of the solar constant is S = 1367 W/m2. 0.22% of this amount of energy equals 3 W/m2 . This result may also be read from Figure 1. The maximum of the smoothed curve is at 1374.2 W/m2 and the minimum at 1371.2 W/m2 . The variation of 0.22% does not affect climate in its entirety. The solar constant defines the amount of energy which just reaches the outside of the earth’s atmosphere. 30% of this energy is not absorbed by the atmosphere, but reflected. Furthermore, it has to be taken into account that the irradiated sectional area of the earth constitutes only a quarter of the surface to which this thermal energy has to be distributed. So there is only 239 W/m2 available to heat the atmosphere. Consequently, the variation of 3 W/m2 has only a climate effect of 0.53 W/m2 . How this affects global temperature depends on the general circulation model used to assess the climate sensitivity. C. Fröhlich [25] proceeds from a value between 0.3° and 1.4° C / W/m2 . When we choose the mean value 0.85° C / W/m2 to avoid an overestimation, the climate effect of 0.53 W/m2 yields a temperature effect of 0.45° C. The chosen mean value lies within the range given in the literature [19, 31, 33, 82, 87, 89, 115]. Even if a four times longer smoothing interval is chosen as in Figure 1, the variation of the solar constant reaches 2.2 W/m2 [74] with a temperature effect of 0.33° C.

Variations in global temperature of 0.45° or 0.33° C in the course of seven years cannot be considered negligible. This all the more so as the observed rise of temperature during the last hundred years amounts to merely 0.4° C. From the value 0.5° C, quoted in the literature, 0.1°C has to be subtracted because it is due to urban warming that causes a spurious rise in global temperature [39]. Observed climate data, which follow the rhythm of the 11-year sunspot cycle, indicate that the effect of irradiance variations on the atmosphere is enhanced by positive feed-back processes or stochastic resonance. This form of resonance involves the cooperative interplay of random and periodic stimuli. Noise can improve the response to small periodic or quasiperiodic signals so that the small input is able to entrain large scale fluctuations [80, 116]. This effect is strongest in nonlinear systems with a high level of noise.

The atmosphere meets these conditions. K. Labitzke and H. van Loon [51] have discovered a statistically significant connection between temperature-dependent 30-hP heights in the stratosphere and extrema in the 11-year sunspot cycle, which involves the troposphere and is strongest in special geographical regions. It is an indication of feed-back or resonance amplification that the temperature difference in the stratosphere between minimum and maximum of the 11-year cycle reaches 1.8° C and in the troposphere still 0.9° C [50]. In the Subtropic troposphere this difference even amounts to 2° C [70]. Northern and Southern Hemisphere show such sunspot related temperature patterns in a mirror-symmetric way. The geographic distribution of the temperature effect corroborates the hypothesis that a modulation of Hadley cell circulation is involved [95]. Experiments with models have shown that winds in the lower stratosphere can have an impact on circulation in the troposphere [84]. Strong temperature variations following the course of the 11-year sunspot cycle were not only observed in recent decades. According to M. Stuiver, P. M. Grootes, and T. F. Braziunas [109] the GISP delta 18O climate record shows a close correlation with the 11-year sunspot cycle for hundreds of years. This data point to a regional temperature variation of 2.6° C following the sunspot rhythm.

(to read more click on the link at the top)




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
global warming

Greenhouse: A habitat covered in green

Ice cystals or water vapor ... say, like all the water vapor from the volcano in Iceland - if this scientist is even remotely close, the volcanic eruption did more to cause global warming then all the cars on earth (or almost).



Greenhouse theory smashed by biggest stone


Mar 14, 2006
Space & Earth



A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in the journal "Science First Hand". The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.

Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.

The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure." Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.

Global warming is thought to be caused by the "greenhouse effect". Energy from the sun reaches the earth's surface and warms it, without the greenhouse effect most of this energy is then lost as the heat radiates back into space. However, the presence of so-called greenhouse gases at high altitude absorb much of this energy and then radiate a proportion back towards the earth's surface. Causing temperatures to rise.

Many natural gases and some of those released by conventional power stations, vehicle and aircraft exhausts act as greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide, natural gas, or methane, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are all potent greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane are found naturally in the atmosphere, but it is the gradual rise in levels of these gases since the industrial revolution, and in particular the beginning of the twentieth century, that scientists have blamed for the gradual rise in recorded global temperature. Attempts to reverse global warming, such as the Kyoto Protocol, have centred on controlling and even reducing CO2 emissions.

However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

The role of water vapour in controlling our planet's temperature was hinted at almost 150 years ago by Irish scientist John Tyndall. Tyndall, who also provided an explanation as to why the sky is blue, explained the problem: "The strongest radiant heat absorber, is the most important gas controlling Earth's temperature. Without water vapour, he wrote, the Earth's surface would be 'held fast in the iron grip of frost'." Thin clouds at high altitude allow sunlight to reach the earth's surface, but reflect back radiated heat, acting as an insulating greenhouse layer.

Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO2 levels. According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in 'The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change', "Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, "Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation."

As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called 'silver', or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily - the twentieth century. There are many hypothetical mechanisms of how this mesosphere catastrophe might have occurred, and future research is needed to provide a definitive answer.

Source: University of Leicester























global warming

Gore's Unending Blizzard Of Lies
Investors Business Daily
02/03/2011 06:27 PM ET


Hoaxes: As the nation digs itself out, the grand wizard of global warming comes out of hiding and blames it all on that SUV stuck in your driveway. A blizzard is a terrible thing to waste.

What has been dubbed the Groundhog Day Blizzard has caused Al Gore to poke his head out of his massive carbon-generating mansion in Nashville, Tenn., to blame the 2,000-mile storm on our alleged obsession with fossil fuels.

Sorry, Al, but in Chicago the solar panels were buried under upward of two feet of snow as citizens cranked up those polluting snow blowers, a scene repeated in much of the country. In the middle of blowing snow, blowing smoke does not help. Get our drift?

Fox News icon Bill O'Reilly recently asked rhetorically, "Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?" He said he'd left a message for Gore. Gore replied on his blog Tuesday that "scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe" and that what we are shoveling is a result of "increased evaporation meeting the cold air of winter."

Gore has been relatively quiet in recent months as the hot air of his theories met the cold logic of observable fact. Earth has demonstrably cooled in the past decade as the sun and its solar cycle grew quiet.

The ClimateGate scandal was a direct result of scientists — and we use the term loosely — at Britain's Climate Research Unit and others, such as Michael Mann, conspiring to manipulate data to "hide the decline" in global temperatures.

Mann was the architect behind the famous hockey-stick graph produced in 1999. It really should have been dubbed the hokey stick, since it was developed by Mann using manipulated tree ring data. It supposedly proved that air temperatures had been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20th century.

The assessment reports of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been exposed as fraudulent accumulations of anecdotal evidence and speculation.

Case in point was the claim in its 2007 report that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. It was not based on any scientific study or research. It was instead based on one scientist's speculation in a telephone interview with a reporter.

Some Himalayan glaciers are in fact advancing, and a report by scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the University of Potsdam said there was "no uniform response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change" and highlighted "the importance of debris cover for understanding glacier retreat."

People such as Gore, who used to moan about "global warming" but are now faced with a demonstrably cooling earth, have begun talking instead about "climate change," which covers just about everything under our quiet sun.

As Gore writes in his blog post, climate change "can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters." So if it's too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry, it's all due to climate change.

In 2007, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., warned that we wouldn't have enough snow and that "the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30% to 70% of the snow pack will disappear."

In 2009, Boxer warned: "Looking at the United States of America, the IPCC clearly warned that unchecked global warming will lead to reduced snow pack in the Western mountains, critically reducing access to water, which is our lifeblood."

Reduced snow? On the Senate floor on March 31, 2002, Sen. Robert Byrd said the lack of snow that winter in the nation's capital showed the need to do something about global warming. California Sen. Dianne Feinstein in 2005 said of Sierra Nevada white stuff: "By the end of the century, the shrinking of the snow pack will eliminate the water source for 16 million people."

Too much snow, too little snow, floods and droughts, all caused by global warming, er, climate change. Al Gore and friends have been doing a lot of shoveling, but it hasn't been the white stuff.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
global warming

All that rubber - where does it go?

Where does all that rubber go from your tires?

Actually an interesting question - and for the global warming set, they help.

Assume your tires last 30,000 km and it will wear 7mm of tread off the tire.  You are running off .2 nanometers of rubber for each meter you drive.  It adds up to about 10,000 tonnes of rubber deposited every year by all the cars in the UK.  In the US that number would be about 5X that number.

Most of the rubber is in the form of dust which washes off the roads into the lanes and ditches, to be washed away in the rains.  Some is filtered out in the water plants while most ends up in the rivers!!

Now, when you are driving around Los Angeles to meet your friends to decide what you will do to save the earth ... enjoy.



Focus Magazine, January 2011, page 30












global warming

Pollution and toxins - Greenhouse gases: The End of the World as We Know It (and there is nothing you can do)

I do not have the time nor desire to explicate this fully, creating a 'trap' that leads you to one inexplicable conclusion.  I will make a few statements and if need be, the support can be found on the internet -

- the far left would like to see man eliminated or at the very least, our population reduced.  They see humans as the threat.

This far left mentality slowly morphs as it heads toward the center, but is still believed in part by the left - man is the problem.  If man were to disappear the world and all within (animals) would be happy and safer.

That if we would but end driving and end industry and end the use of petroleum and end ... the gases would be reduced and we would save the world.

That is a pretty common view held by the left.


Sad though - to be so idealistic and moronic at the same time.

If every human being, every car, every truck, every factory, every product man has produced - if everything were to get sucked up off planet earth tonight, global warming would be well on the way to climate change in a year or ten or twenty or fifty or ... well, we make no impact actually in whatever change is occurring.  We are insignificant - to the universe and our earth.  We are specks of dust, meaningless, and pretty darn useless.  Not at all a serious threat to anything.

A total of 580 gigatonnes of carbon is emitted into the atmosphere each year.  A lot by any measure.  Humanity, and everything man has created - pumps in 30.  The other 550 gigatonnes are pumped out by the earth.

Climate change will occur whether or not we do anything, and if we do ... it won't matter.

Feel real important now, really special.





All that pollution and greenhouse gas, emissions, toxins ...
New Scientist, 1/23/09
Issue 2692
Pages 30-31


The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes. Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms.

James Lovelock





















biosphere

Back to the Future with The Independent: Snow is Gone from England

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past


By Charles Onians
Monday, 20 March 2000
The Independent


Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London's last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.

Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

The effects of snow-free winter in Britain are already becoming apparent. This year, for the first time ever, Hamleys, Britain's biggest toyshop, had no sledges on display in its Regent Street store. "It was a bit of a first," a spokesperson said.

Fen skating, once a popular sport on the fields of East Anglia, now takes place on indoor artificial rinks. Malcolm Robinson, of the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club in Peterborough, says they have not skated outside since 1997. "As a boy, I can remember being on ice most winters. Now it's few and far between," he said.

Michael Jeacock, a Cambridgeshire local historian, added that a generation was growing up "without experiencing one of the greatest joys and privileges of living in this part of the world - open-air skating".

Warmer winters have significant environmental and economic implications, and a wide range of research indicates that pests and plant diseases, usually killed back by sharp frosts, are likely to flourish. But very little research has been done on the cultural implications of climate change - into the possibility, for example, that our notion of Christmas might have to shift.

Professor Jarich Oosten, an anthropologist at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, says that even if we no longer see snow, it will remain culturally important.

"We don't really have wolves in Europe any more, but they are still an important part of our culture and everyone knows what they look like," he said.

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. "We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time," he said.

The chances are certainly now stacked against the sortof heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters, such as Sisley, and the 19th century poet laureate Robert Bridges, who wrote in "London Snow" of it, "stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying".

Not any more, it seems.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
snow fall

Global Warming: Cancer

Now scientists claim climate change could give you cancer (in the week Doomsday warning of rising sea levels was rubbished)




By David Derbyshire
Daily Mail
8th December 2010

Melting glaciers and ice sheets are releasing cancer-causing pollutants into the air and oceans, scientists say.

The long-lasting chemicals get into the food chain and build up in people's bodies - triggering tumours, heart disease and infertility.

The warning comes in a new international study into the links between climate change and a class of man-made toxins called persistent organic pollutants.

Warning: Melting glaciers and ice sheets are releasing cancer-causing pollutants into the air and oceans, claim scientists

It also arrives two days after alarming predictions that global warming could cause sea levels to rise 6ft in the next century were proved to be wrong.

The new study – due to be published next month – says rising temperatures and more extreme weather are increasing human exposure to pollutants around the world, including in Britain.

Scientists are concerned about Persistent Organic Pollutants, or POPs, because they last decades in the environment and accumulate in body tissue.

They include pesticides such as DDT and chemicals called PCBs used in electrical goods.

Donald Cooper, of the United Nations Environment Programme which published the report at the UN climate talks in Cancun, Mexico, said melting glaciers and ice sheets were releasing POPs trapped years ago into the air and seas.

Extreme weather events – such as this year’s devastating Pakistan floods - were releasing banned pollutants which been stockpiled ready to be destroyed.

And higher temperatures were likely to increase the spread of malaria – and increase the use of sprays such as DDT which are harmful to people.

'It is a problem in all parts of the world – pollutants do not respect borders. They travel thousands of miles and they continue to build'Mr Cooper said: 'Very small quantities of persistent organic pollutants get into the food chain but they accumulate in higher and higher levels as they go up the food chain. And the end of the food chain is us. We find them in mother’s breast milk and in blood.'

He added: ‘It is a problem in all parts of the world – they do not respect borders. They travel thousands of miles and they continue to build.

'In the past pollutants have travelled long distances and become trapped in ice in glaciers and ice sheets. But as the ice melts, or when temperatures go up, they are released back into the seas and atmosphere.

'It doesn’t matter whether you live in Kenya or Britain, the food goes everywhere around the world.'

The UN study found that levels of POPs measured in breast milk and blood were rising in parts of the world.

PCBs were banned after studies showed they mimicked sex hormones and were linked to cancer and infertility. They were once used in electrical goods.

The study also raises concerns about the increased exposure to DDT – an insecticide banned for use in farming, but still allowed to control disease spread by insects.

The authors are also concerned at PAHs, airborne pollutants produced by burning fuels.

Achim Steiner, the executive director of UNEP said freak weather events were releasing stockpiles of dangerous pesticides and other pollutants.

'The increasing frequency and severity of tropical cyclones and flood events are increasingly putting at risk stockpiles containing thousands of metric tonnes of obsolete POPs pesticides,' he said.

Higher temperatures can also make seals, whales and polar bars more vulnerable to pollutants, the report says.

The full report is due out next month.

In 2007, a forecast made by the influential Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change claimed a rise in sea levels above six feet was possible by the end of the century.

A Met Office study, the results of which were released this week, said this now looks unlikely.

A two to three feet rise will still submerge cities around the world.














GLOBAL WARMING

Global Warming - Politics and Money

From:  IPCC New

From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010



Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence---it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?



How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.



It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.



So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:



1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate



2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.



3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.



4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind---simply to bring the subject into the open.



5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.



6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.



APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?



I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.



I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.



Hal



Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
















global warming

Polish Scientists: Consensus is ... Ice Age. Coldest Winter in 1000 years.

Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way




04 October, 2010, 22:20


After the record heat wave this summer, Russia's weather seems to have acquired a taste for the extreme.

Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.

The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe.

So far, the results have been lower temperatures: for example, in Central Russia, they are a couple of degrees below the norm.

“Although the forecast for the next month is only 70 percent accurate, I find the cold winter scenario quite likely,” Vadim Zavodchenkov, a leading specialist at the Fobos weather center, told RT. “We will be able to judge with more certainty come November. As for last summer's heat, the statistical models that meteorologists use to draw up long-term forecasts aren't able to predict an anomaly like that.”

In order to meet the harsh winter head on, Moscow authorities are drawing up measures to help Muscovites survive the extreme cold.

Most of all, the government is concerned with homeless people who risk freezing to death if the forecast of the meteorologists come true. Social services and police are being ordered to take the situation under control even if they have to force the homeless to take help.

Moscow authorities have also started checking air conditioning systems in all socially important buildings. All the conditioners are being carefully cleaned from the remains of summer smog.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
global warming

Global Warming - FAR from settled

Royal Society issues new climate change guide that admits there are 'uncertainties' about the science



By Niall Firth
30th September 2010
Daily Mail


The UK’s leading scientific body has been forced to rewrite its guide on climate change and admit that it is not known how much warmer the Earth will become.

The Royal Society has updated its guide after 43 of its members complained that the previous version failed to take into account the opinion of climate change sceptics.

Now the new guide, called ‘Climate change: a summary of the science’, admits that there are some ‘uncertainties’ regarding the science behind climate change.

And it says that it impossible to know for sure how the Earth's climate will change in the future nor what the possible effects may be.

The 19-page guide says: ’It is not possible to determine exactly how much the Earth will warm or exactly how the climate will change in the future, but careful estimates of potential changes and associated uncertainties have been made.

‘Scientists continue to work to narrow these areas of uncertainty. Uncertainty can work both ways, since the changes and their impacts may be either smaller or larger than those projected.’

And it avoids making any predictions about the possible impacts of climate change and advises caution in making projections about rising sea levels.

It says: 'There is currently insufficient understanding of the enhanced melting and retreat of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica to predict exactly how much the rate of sea level rise will increase above that observed in the past century for a given temperature increase.

'Similarly, the possibility of large changes in the circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean cannot be assessed with confidence. The latter limits the ability to predict with confidence what changes in climate will occur in Western Europe.

The new guidance still makes it clear that human activity is one of the likely causes for climate change but now does so in a more considered way.

It states: 'There is very strong evidence to indicate that climate change has occurred on a wide range of different timescales from decades to many millions of years; human activity is a relatively recent addition to the list of potential causes of climate change.'

The working group behind the new book included two Royal Society fellows who were part of the 43-strong rebellion that had called for the original guide to be rewritten.

Professor Anthony Kelly and Sir Alan Rudge are both members of an academic board that advises a climate change sceptic think-tank called the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Professor Kelly said: "It's gone a long way to meeting our concerns.

‘The previous guidance was discouraging debate rather than encouraging it among knowledgeable people. The new guidance is clearer and a very much better document.’

And Benny Peiser, Director of The Global Warming Policy Foundation also welcomed the Royal Society's decision to revise.

He said: 'The former publication gave the misleading impression that the 'science is settled' - the new guide accepts that important questions remain open and uncertainties unresolved.

'The Royal Society now also agrees with the GWPF that the warming trend of the 1980s and 90s has come to a halt in the last 10 years.

'In their old guide, the Royal Society demanded that governments should take "urgent steps" to cut CO2 emissions "as much and as fast as possible." This political activism has now been replaced by a more sober assessment of the scientific evidence and ongoing climate debates.

'If this voice of moderation had been the Royal Society's position all along, its message to Government would have been more restrained and Britain's unilateral climate policy would not be out of sync with the rest of the world.'

The new book is certainly very different in tone that the original and takes into account some of the problems that have arisen in climate change science over the past year.

The new version sets out its objectives by saying: ‘In view of the ongoing public and political debates about climate change, the aim of this document is to summarise the current scientific evidence on climate change and its drivers.

‘It lays out clearly where the science is well established, where there is wide consensus but continuing debate, and where there remains substantial uncertainty.’

The Royal Society’s decision comes in the wake of a scathing report into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which called for it to avoid politics and stick instead to predictions based on solid science.

The review, which focused on the day-to-day running of the panel, rather than its science, was commissioned after the UN body was accused of making glaring mistakes.

These included the claim that the Himalayan glaciers would vanish within 25 years - and that 55 per cent of the Netherlands was prone to flooding because it was below sea level.

Earlier this year an email scandal involving experts at the University of East Anglia had already fuelled fears that global warming was being exaggerated.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
global warming