This is an excellent summary for policy makers on many of the technical issues surrounding "global warming".
Those quotation marks are a reminder that the proponents of global warming have recently changed the term to "climate change". This change is largely driven by the fact that while CO2 is been increasing a few percent since 1998, global temperatures have not been increasing, and even declining since 2002.
This undermines their hypothesis that man-made CO2 "causes" global warming. It obviously doesn't. Such a vague term has the added advantage of being invoked during periods of warming, cooling, floods, droughts, hurricanes, calms, heat waves, blizzards, etc. For the users of the term it conveniently explains all of our climate tragedies in terms of abuses from capitalist nations.
Dr. Fred Singer, an atmospheric and space physicist with lengthy credentials, has assembled contributions world wide, from 17 nations and 23 "world class" scientists, all of whom are major contributors to climate science. Dr. Singer's 28-page summary contains 167 references to the scientific literature and a list of 40 texts recommended for study. The summary contains an abundance of climate information, along with an extensive listing of backup references.
As time passes, more scientists have begun to focus on the hypothesis of man-made global warming, and are discovering that the hypothesis fails their massive scrutiny as well as the basic requirements of science. In many cases, such as surface temperature data, the data quality is impressively poor.
When looking for temperature changes of 0.5deg C per century (or 0.005 deg C/yr), high quality data is required, but for many surface temperature stations the data are quite poor. For this and numerous other reasons described in Dr. Singer's booklet, the hypothesis does not hold up.
The hypothesis fails since it cannot explain observations of the real world. In the scientific world, if the hypothesis can not explain real world observations, such as climate observations and evidence, it simply is wrong and must be modified or abandoned.
In science it doesn't make any difference whose hypothesis it is, how smart he is, or how powerful he is. If it can't explain the real world observations, it is simply wrong. So say most scientists including Nobel physicist Richard Feynman. Additionally, replication of the experiments and findings is also a very important test in science.
The findings from the 167 literature references in this summary resulted from the process of explaining observations, and pointing out that the global warming hypothesis does not explain them. The findings are extremely useful for decision makers in dealing with global warming issues. It we get the science wrong, we'll certainly get the policy wrong.
The global warming issue has its origins within the United Nations and by definition is highly political in nature. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the driving force and is most assuredly is not a scientific organization---it conducts no science of its own.
According to Dr. Singer the IPCC has been an "activist enterprise from the very beginning." The first leader of the IPCC was Sir John Houghton, of the UK Meteorological Office. A famous quote of his is worth remembering: "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen". These are hardly the words of a disinterested scientist.
Of utmost importance to the reader, the Foreword explains that "the IPCC is preprogrammed to produce reports to support the hypothesis of man-made global warming and the control of greenhouse gases, as envisioned in the Global Warming Treaty".
To be very clear, it has not been the mission of the IPCC to understand how the climate works, the driving forces, such as the Sun, the Pacific Decadal Oscillations, the historical cycles of warming and cooling, or the effects of the other greenhouse gases. The IPCC effort has been limited to considering a singular link between climate and man-made emissions, and ignoring the impacts of natural forces such as the Sun.
As stated in the Foreword, the IPCC has issued 4 reports since 1990. Singer points out:
* 1. "The 1990 IPCC Summary completely ignored satellite data, which showed no warming." This is also known as "data selection" by those who do not choose to include data uncongenial to the hypothesis.Because of the limited IPCC scope of study, which has been restricted to finding only the man-made effects on climate, the scientific case for human effects on climate change simply has not been demonstrated. In fact the case against any significant human role is large and growing. As one scientist recently said "I don't know why people think CO2 is a cause for warming. It has never done so in the past!"
* 2. "The 1995 report was notorious for the significant alterations made to the text AFTER it was approved by scientists---in order to convey the impression of a human influence."
* 3. "The 2001 IPCC report claimed the twentieth century studies showed "unusual warming" based upon the now discredited "hockey-stick" graph".
* 4. "The latest IPCC report of 2007 completely ignores the climate contributions caused by changes in solar activities, which are likely to dominate any human activity".
The real values in this booklet are the scientific cases made in 8 subject areas:
* How much of modern warming is anthropogenic (caused by human activity)?The case for significant man-made global warming is questionable for a number of reasons. There is just too much evidence in the climate record showing decades of cooling while CO2 increases. There are too many instances where temperature increases preceded CO2 increases, eliminating CO2 as the possible cause of the warming. Think about that.
* Most of modern warming is due to natural causes
* Climate models are not reliable
* The rate of sea-level rise is unlikely to increase
* Do anthropogenic greenhouse gases heat the oceans?
* How much do we know about the CO2 in the atmosphere?
* The effects of human CO2 emissions are uncertain
* The economic effects of modest warming are likely to be positive
Does CO2 cause warming, or cooling, or neither. If so, how much, and is it significant? These data suggest that it is not significant, if it exists at all. There too many instances showing that the man-made CO2 hypothesis doesn't explain the observations. The rules of science say that just one example of this falsifies the man-made hypothesis. Yet there are many in the climate record.
At this time in 2008 there has been no warming since 1998, and slight cooling since 2002. Observed cooling is difficult to explain with a hypothesis that predicts warming.
The hypothesis failed to predict the last 10 years of no warming, even as CO2 increased, and the observed cooling for the last 6 years. A new hypothesis is needed; the old one has been conclusively failed and failed repeatedly.
Michael R. Fox, Ph.D., a science and energy reporter for Hawaii Reporter and a science analyist for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, is retired and now lives in Eastern Washington. He has nearly 40 years experience in the energy field. He has also taught chemistry and energy at the University level. His interest in the communications of science has led to several communications awards, hundreds of speeches, and many appearances on television and talk shows. He can be reached via email at mike@foxreport.org
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