Fact vs Fiction on Global Warming

Here is an interesting graphic from Clive Best's blog showing the divergence between the 1990 IPCC global warming predictions versus measurements:
Click to Enlarge

Figure 2: Comparison of yearly HadCru &
UAH data with IPCC 1990 predictions
Best's conclusion:

Following a gradual rise of about 0.2 degrees from 1990 to 2000, global temperatures have stopped increasing and have actually fallen slightly. The only IPCC prediction which remains consistent with the current data is the lower prediction of a 0.7 degree rise from 1990 to 2030. The “Best” IPCC estimate and the higher 1.5 degree rise are ruled out by the data.

CO2 levels in the atmosphere have continued to rise over the last 10 years (see overlay to temperature comparison below in Figure 3) but temperatures have not risen since 2000. This implies that CO2 is not the main driver of global temperatures on these time periods and that other natural mechanisms are at least as important. No evidence of any positive temperature feedback with increasing CO2 levels is found.

Go read the whole post by Clive Best to get at the other data and graphs.

What makes the above even more significant is that the latest meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) has released an announcement that the sun appears to be going into a dormant period, an extended solar minimum, which is associated with a cooling climate and "little ice ages". From Space.com:

Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years.

The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated.

...

"The solar cycle may be going into a hiatus," Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory's Solar Synoptic Network, said in a news briefing today (June 14).

The studies looked at a missing jet stream in the solar interior, fading sunspots on the sun's visible surface, and changes in the corona and near the poles. [Photos: Sunspots on Earth's Star]

"This is highly unusual and unexpected," Hill said. "But the fact that three completely different views of the sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."

...

Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle's period of maximum activity. However, the recent findings indicate that the activity in the next 11-year solar cycle, Cycle 25, could be greatly reduced. In fact, some scientists are questioning whether this drop in activity could lead to a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun showed virtually no sunspots.

From Wikipedia:

The Maunder Minimum coincided with the middle — and coldest part — of the Little Ice Age, during which Europe and North America were subjected to bitterly cold winters. Whether there is a causal connection between low sunspot activity and cold winters has not been proven; however, lower earth temperatures have been observed during low sunspot activity. The winter of 1708–9 was extremely cold.

So while the IPCC hysterics have been running around with doomsday predictions scaring governments into expensive programs to cut CO2 and cut economic growth to combat a "perceived global warming", the truth appears to be the exact opposite. We are headed back into a Little Ice Age where the Thames river and the rivers of the Netherlands froze and people skated during the coldest winters in human memory. I would love to gloat with "I told you so" but this is very bad news and instead of wasting money cutting CO2 and planning for global warming, governments should be investing more in fundamental science and preparing for a far worse future: a Little Ice Age.

For another opinion, here is a post by James A. Peden, who has some relevant scientific qualifications since he spent some of his earlier years as an Atmospheric Physicist at the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh and Extranuclear Laboratories in Blawnox, Pennsylvania, studying ion-molecule reactions in the upper atmosphere, read about his foray into the world of "global warming" hysteria and read the "primer" he has put together to help those with open minds to look at the issue with "fresh eyes".

Here is Peden's conclusion in his "primer" that identifies what is causing cycles of ice ages and global warming:

So what's really causing the endless cycles of warming and cooling, if it isn't a constantly changing "Greenhouse Effect" - with man to blame? Man wasn't producing much CO2 in the past million years, so he hasn't simply been turning the greenhouse up and down at will. Just look up - one of the most likely culprits is our old friend, the Sun.

Canadian climatologist Tim Patterson says the sun drives the earth's climate changes—and Earth's current global warming is a direct result of a long, moderate 1,500-year cycle in the sun's irradiance.

Patterson says he learned of the 1,500-year climate cycle while studying cycles in fish numbers on Canada's West Coast. Since the Canadian West had no long-term written fishery records, Patterson's research team drilled sediment cores in the deep local fjords to get 5,000-year climate profiles from the mud. The mud showed the past climate conditions: Warm summers left layers thick with one-celled fossils and fish scales. Cold, wet periods showed dark sediments, mostly dirt washed from the surrounding land. Patterson's fishing profiles clearly revealed the sun's 87 and 210-year solar cycles—and the longer, 1500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles found since the 1980s in ice cores, tree rings, and fossil pollen.

"Even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate changes. Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered," says Patterson.

"In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2000, Vizer, Shaviv, Carslaw and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies ... varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system... These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation, which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet."

"When the sun is less bright, more cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form and the planet cools... This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere ... was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age."

The Canadian expert concludes, "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales. Instead, Earth's sea surface temperatures show a massive 95 percent lagged correlation with the sunspot index."

Do yourself a favour. Do your own investigation into "global warming" and see whether you agree with the IPCC or with the "skeptics". Don't let yourself be railroaded by so-called expertise. Remember, the IPCC has guilty of egregious errors:

• Claiming that the glaciers in the Himalayas would be gone in 30 years because they transcribed a date wrong. But worse, they took that number not from a vetted scientific study but from "unchecked research".


• Claims that global warming is causing massive and rapid deforestation in the Amazon basin has been shown to be based not on science but from claims by an "environmental advocacy group".


• The Climategate scandal with a clear trail of e-mails in which data is fudged and scientists with opposed views are bullied by refusing funding and refusing to publish their papers.


• The phony "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures by Michael Mann.

There whole field of climatology is currently a cesspit that needs to be cleaned out. Funding needs to be reviewed. An emphasis on fundamental science is needed. The endless, near useless climate models should have their funding slashed. Scientists who acted as a cabal to suppress other scientists should have their careers cashiered. Young, new scientists with an open mind should be encouraged to enter the field. As can be seen above, there is probably going to be a very big need for them as the world will reel as we go from a misperceived "global warming" to a "little ice age". Real science needs to be done on this to prepare politicians for the kind of investments required to deal with that "climate change".