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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Global Warming Skepticism on the Rise

The NCPA Daily Digest has a number of facts that might indicate the debate on global warming is not "over":

  • over the past decade the global average temperature has fallen to its lowest levels in 30 years.
  • International Falls, Minnesota -- the coldest location in the continental United States -- set a new record in January with a low temperature of minus 40 degrees and snowfall records have recently been set in 63 U.S. locations.
  • After two years of ice-cap melting in the Arctic, an abrupt turnaround occurred in 2008, with ice forming at a record pace.
  • More and more scientists are paying attention to the evidence and rejecting the link between human actions and the recent warming trend.
Meanwhile, Scientific Blogging notes that recent surveys indicate that, while "climate scientists" (often those receiving grants to conduct global warming research) almost all agree that global warming is going on now and is man-made, many other scientists disagree.  They also discuss scientists who are ostracized for their dissent - even those who merely find that parts of Antarctica have cooled.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

look at global temp. and CO2 trends since the industrial revolution and tell me you don't see a correlation. you cannot change science with politics, so please stop insulting us...

Nathan Benefield said...

You fell into my trap.

I blogged on critics are trying to silence scientists that call into question the conventional interpretation of global warming and deny evidence contrary to their views, in the hopes that some anonymous, angry commenter would deny this evidence and tell me to be silent.

Anonymous said...

In your 'blog' you mention that global temperatures have fallen to their lowest level in 30 years, well how does that compare to the history of earth? In your 'blog' you mention a town in Minnesota, we ain't worried bout Minnesota, and this is a global thing. In your 'blog' you reference ice forming at a rapid pace, but don't describe this record setting ice formation in regards to the extant of area it covers (what you reference here is a small pocket experiencing cooling [probably related to the earths procession]). Be more "scientific" if you intend to continue blogging on such issues...

Nathan Benefield said...

Here are some more facts to ignore, Steven Milloy

Here are three indisputable scientific facts about climate that are sufficient on their own to throttle any claims of manmade global warming. First, we know from studies of Antarctic ice that, over the last 650,000 years or so, warmer temperatures have preceded increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by hundreds, if not thousands of years. The ice studies indicate that the carbon-dioxide-causes-global warming theory is precisely backwards.

Second, during the 20th century, there is simply no correlation between carbon dioxide emissions and global temperature. Not only did most of the century’s temperature rise occur before most of the century’s manmade greenhouse gas emissions, but during 1940-1975 global temperatures actually declined while atmospheric carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide emission levels steadily increased.

Finally, the ultimate test of a scientific theory is whether it has predictive value. We used Newton’s laws of physics, for example, to land men on the moon. Unfortunately, there are no climate models that predict trends and changes in global climate with any degree of accuracy. Think about the recent failures with hurricane season predictions or even the risk of relying on what your local weatherman predicts for tomorrow’s weather - and you’ll start to get an idea of how far away science is from predicting global climate 10, 50 and 100 years from now.

Nathan Benefield said...

And here is some data on historic global temperatures over the past 30 and 200,000 years.

Anonymous said...

Your fist indisputable fact deals with a 650,000 year time span, while your second indisputable fact deals with a 35 year time span. Do you see the difference in scale here? Your third indisputable fact is somewhat accurate in that computer models are sketchy, however I would assume modeling was a technique employed in generating the data you reference here. You see the problem here? One important “fact” carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are as high as they have been in over 800, 000 years.

Anonymous said...

Isn't CO2 plant food? Look who stands to gain from crippling developed countries. Third-world tyrants who will receive payments from developed countries to by carbon credits.