timeimmortal

mike b writes in with his thoughts on the 31,000 scientists who recently put forth a petition rejecting the concept of anthropogenic global warming and urging the U.S. government not to adopt or ratify the Kyoto protocols or any agreement that is derivative thereof.

Simply put.

Why haven’t these scientists spoken up before? Because they quietly go about their day to day doing GOOD science. Good, refereed, peer-reviewed science. The Global warming people are shrill, loud, and misinformed….Earth History has demonstrated that neither climate nor sea level are constant, two important and completely erroneous precepts of the GW argument. Now we scientists are just fed up at the hot air.

I have to admit that I’ve always been skeptical when people raise alarms over the concept of climate change — given that I live in Alberta, I’m quite used to the idea, actually. The Earth’s climate is not a static thing, and it’s preposterous to argue against changes in it.

Now, the obvious rejoinder might be to point out that it’s not the fact that change happens, but the quality and nature of the changes that are happening that are the real issue for climate change alarmists.

Which would, I suppose, be a legitimate argument, if in fact there were real, demonstrably harmful shifts happening in Earth’s climate. There is not exactly a great body of evidence for this, and what little evidence may exist more or less vanishes with the observation that mike b makes above: when considered in the context of history, what changes have been observed are, in essence, normal. The Earth has had periods where its average temperature has been higher than it is now, and the Earth has also had periods where the average temperature has been lower than it is now.

Within recent history, the global average temperature is basically at where it was a decade ago, and that same average temperature is expected to drop. That drop will probably be followed, at some point, by a rise. That is because such a thing as the global average temperature, imprecise metric of the relative “health” of the ecosystem that it is in the first place, fluctuates over time. Climate does as well, and what fluctuations in climate have been perceived of late seem to be within normal parameters.

The alarmism over these apparent non-issues is not driven by good science as much as it is by groupthink and backslapping. Now other scientists, those not so interested in harvesting a few “green” dollars along the way methinks, are speaking out against the alarmism, and it’s a good thing.

We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.

The list of only those scientists whose (last) names begin with ‘K’ has 1,495 entries. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that is a bit more than half the number of scientists who produced the latest IPCC report, no? And there are twenty-five more letters in the alphabet.

Related: It’s U.S. data, but April 2008 was fully one degree (F) colder than average in America, which makes it the coldest April on record in the last 11 years.

Apparently, the temperature decrease over the last twelve months has basically undone the previously observed rises in same (rises which were said, by Al Gore and others, to be “permanent”).

All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

…

The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn’t itself disprove that carbon dioxide [CO2] is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Others have demonstrated just how inconsequential CO2 is in the grand scheme of global average temperature. This new development merely serves as one more argument in favour of the suggestion that humanity really doesn’t have much at all to do with changes in that average temperature, especially not when compared to the big glowing ball in the sky.

Which seems reasonable to suggest, given that the Sun is…well…our star (and thus responsible for basically all the energy that the atmosphere traps, thus making this chunk of rock we call Earth a habitable place), and given that other planets in the Solar System also show warming and cooling trends that match the changes in how energetic the Sun is.

Of course, now we’re likely to be told that humanity is causing the globe to head for a new ice age, and that we need to ratify the Kyoto Protocols immediately in order to stave off the impending “big chill.”