Precise forecasts that prove correct are a sharp criterion for efficient science.
The protagonists of global warming remain empty-handed in this respect in spite of great
material and personal expense.
In the eighties S.
Schneider from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado,
predicted in his book “Global Warming” a huge jump in temperature,
polar ice melting away, seas surging across the land, famine on an epidemic scale, and
ecosystem collapse. Today this is no longer taken seriously. Yet other climatologists,
too, made forecasts in the eighties they no longer maintain. C. D. Schönwiese
[99],
usually critical and cautious in his statements, still predicted in 1987 a 4.5° C rise in
temperature until 2030, though only as an upper limit. He thought that the sea level in
the German Bay could rise by 1.5 m till 2040 and in the ocean around India even 2 to 3 m.
A projection of his temperature forecast yields 11.8° C [increase] for the year 2100. At the climate conference in Villach in 1985 similar
predictions were presented to the public. The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change] still predicted in 1990 and 1992 that global
temperature would rise 1.9° - 5.2° C until 2100
[100] and thought that a
rise in sea level by 1.10 m was possible [36].
All these predictions have turned out to be untenable. It is accepted that global
temperature has risen by 0.5° C in the last hundred years. Yet during the last
fifty years the temperature has remained approximately at the same level, even though 70%
of the anthropogenic [human or human-made
influence on nature] carbon dioxide contribution was injected
into the atmosphere during this time. From 1940 to 1970 the temperature fell, and
according to satellite data available since 1979, which are in good accord with balloon
data [27], the trend in the lower troposphere has remained at -0.06°
C per decade. The IPCC prediction made in 1992 proved so exaggerated that it had to be
adjusted to reality three years later by reducing the rise range to 1° - 3.5° C by 2100.
As to sea level rise, the IPCC meanwhile acknowledges (in accordance with a consensus in
the specialized literature [3]) that sea level has risen by merely
18 cm in the last hundred
years.[*] According to
M. Baltuck et al.
[3] it is very probable that the rising sea level is due to natural causes
and not to man’s contribution to the greenhouse effect.[*]
__________________
* My note: Those estimates of the extent to which sea levels rose are
apparently on the high side. Far more so than with temperature records, it is very
difficult to establish absolute references points by which to measure long-term changes in
sea levels. It appears that the promoters of the global-warming hype have been using
their tide gauge data somewhat selectively. For example, some of those gauges are
subsiding because of the weight that the cities in or nearby which they are located exert
on the crust of the Earth, and others of the gauges are sinking because the structures to
which they had been attached, docks and piers, are sinking into the muck of the harbours
in which those were erected. There are more reasons why many of the tide gauges in
the world are subsiding
John L. Daly, science advisor of the Greening Earth Society, produced a
detailed report of
the quality of tide gauge locations and of the information they provide. He
furthermore collected study reports on research by many scientist into such information
and found that the alleged 18 cm sea level rise over the past century is not true to
facts. He reports that, instead, the sea level rose by no more than 0.16mm a year
over the last century. That is a total of 1.6 cm over the last century, less than
one tenth of the 18cm claimed by the IPCC doom-sayers. Moreover, he reports that the
results coming in from Project Poseidon, a satellite ocean surface survey, bear out what
he found. The alarming estimates, predictions and claims by the IPCC are out to
lunch. (More on that story;
the whole story)
—WHS
The discrepancy between IPCC forecasts and
observed data stands out very clearly as to temperatures in the polar regions. The general
circulation models, presented by the IPCC in 1990, predict for the regions near the poles
in a CO2 doubling scenario a rise in temperature of more than
12° C [13].
If this were true, in the last 40 years with their steep increase in CO2 concentration, a warming trend
with a temperature rise of several °C should have emerged. The opposite is true
[20].
A joint investigation by American, Russian and Canadian
scientists shows that the surface temperatures in the Arctic region observed between 1950
and 1990 are going down. They fell 4.4° C in winter and 5° C in autumn
[43].
Satellite data too, available since 1979, do not indicate rising temperatures
[105].
This agrees with data published by the world Glacier Monitoring Network in Zurich,
according to which 55% of the glaciers in high latitudes are advancing compared
with 5% around 1950. [See also: Hubbard Glacier surges
—WHS]
4. Cosmic Radiation,
Solar Wind, and Global Cloud Coverage
The most convincing argument yet,
supporting a strong impact of the sun’s activity on climate change, is a direct
connection between cloud coverage and cosmic rays, discovered by
H. Svensmark and E. Friis-Christensen [111] in 1996. It is shown in
Figure 6. Clouds have a hundred
times stronger effect on weather and climate than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Even
if the atmosphere’s CO2 content doubled, its effect would be
cancelled out if the cloud cover expanded by 1%, as shown by
H. E. Landsberg [53].
Svensmark’s and Friis-Christensen’s result is therefore of great importance. The
thin curve in Figure 6 presents the monthly mean counting rates of neutrons measured by
the ground-based monitor in Climax, Colorado (right scale). This is an indirect measure of
the strength of galactic and solar cosmic rays. The thick curve plots the 12-month running
average of the global cloud cover expressed as change in percent (left scale). It is based
on homogeneous observations made by geostationary satellites over the oceans. The two
curves show a close correlation. The correlation coefficient is r = 0.95 [meaning,
that it is pretty close to being absolutely certain that there is a connection between the
amount of cosmic rays hitting the Earth and the amount of cloud coverage that results from
that. —WHS].
Another contentious point is how long CO2 will stay in the
atmosphere, several hundred years, or only five years? New results by
P. Dietze and T. V. Segalstad show that
shorter residence times are much more probable than the extended ones.
When K. Hasselmann (a leading
greenhouse protagonist) was asked why GCMs [General Circulation
Models] do not
allow for the stratosphere’s warming by the sun’s ultraviolet radiation and its
impact on the circulation in the troposphere, he answered:
“This aspect is too complex to
incorporate it into models”
[8]. Since there are other
solar-terrestrial relationships which are “too complex” such as, for example,
the dynamics of cloud coverage modulated by the solar wind, it is no wonder that the
predictions based on GCMs do not conform to climate reality.
Quoted from:
Solar Activity: A Dominant Factor in
Climate Dynamics, by Dr. Theodor Landscheidt, Schroeter Institute for Research in
Cycles of Solar Activity, Nova Scotia, Canada |
