Climate Change Science

Compiled by Ken Gregory,
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
email: kgregory@shaw.ca
Revised May 9, 2008  (Revision history)

Table of Contents

          Introduction
          The Science in Summary
          Greenhouse Gas Effect
          Climate Is Always Changing
          CO2 - Temperature Correlation
          CO2 Changes Do Not Lead Temperature Changes
          Sun Activity Does Correlate with Temperature
          Sun and Cosmic Rays
          Heating of the Troposphere
          Stratospheric Cooling
          Warming on Other Planets
          CO2 Versus the Sun/Cosmic Ray Warming Theories
          CO2 Greatly Increases Plant and Forest Growth
          IPCC and Model Projections
          The IPCC Hockey Stick
          Urban Heat Island Effects
          Falsified Historical CO2 Measurements
          No Consensus
          Effects of Warming
              Global Sea Level Rise Is Not Accelerating
              Severe Weather
              Warming Is Good for Your Health
              Warming Effects on Animals
          Kyoto Protocol - Misallocation of Funds
          An Inconvenient Truth
          Warnings of Global Cooling

Introduction

One of the goals of the Friends of Science Society is to educate the public through dissemination of relevant, balanced and objective technical information on the scientific merit of the Kyoto Protocol and the global warming issue. The science of climate change is complex. Unfortunately, politics and the media has affected the science. Climate research institutions know that they must present scary climate forecasts to receive continued funding - no crisis means no funding. The media presents stories of climate disaster to sell their products. Scientific research that suggests climate change is mostly natural does not receive much if any media coverage. These factors have caused the general public to be seriously misled on climate issues resulting in wasteful expenditures of billions of dollars in an ineffective attempt to control climate. This document gives an overview of climate change issues as determined by a comprehensive review of the state of climate science.


The graph above shows the temperature changes of the lower troposphere from the surface up to about 8 km as determined from the average of two analyses of satellite data. The best fit line from January 2002 to April 2008 indicates a decline of 0.20 Celsius/decade.  Surface temperature data is contaminated by the effects of urban development. The Sun's activity, which was increasing through most of the 20th century, has recently become quiet, causing a change of trend. The green line shows the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.


The Science in Summary

The history of the Earth tells us that the climate is always changing; from warm periods when the dinosaurs flourished, to the many ice ages when glaciers covered much of the land. Climate has always changed due to natural cycles without any help from people.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a political organization promoting a theory that recent minor temperature increases may be caused largely by man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. CO2 is an infrared gas, and increasing concentrations can potentially increase the average global temperature as the gas absorbs radiation from the Earth and emits the absorbed energy at longer wavelengths. However, the warming ability of CO2 is limited because much of the absorption spectrum is near or fully saturated. When CO2 concentrations were ten times greater than today the Earth was in the grips of one of the coldest ice ages.

The history of climate and CO2 concentration shows that temperature changes precede CO2 changes and can not be a significant driver of climate. Temperature changes over different time scales have been well correlated to solar cycles, cosmic ray flux and cloud cover. Recent research shows that cosmic rays act as a catalyst to create low clouds, which cool the planet. When the Sun is more active, the solar wind repels the cosmic rays, reducing low cloud cover allowing the Sun to warm the planet.

Computer model results presented in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report shows that if CO2 is the main climate driver, the temperature profile in the atmosphere will show a unique and distinctive pattern - a CO2 fingerprint of global warming. Actual temperature data shows no such CO2 fingerprint. Therefore, the computer model data proves that CO2 is not the main climate driver. In atmosphere layers near 5 km, the modelled trend from 1980 is 100 to 300% higher than observed. Real world data shows that high clouds cause a strong negative feedback on climate, but climate models assume that clouds cause a positive feedback.

Several planets and moons have warmed recently along with the Earth, confirming a natural warming trend. Over longer time periods, as the solar system moves in and out of the galactic arms the cosmic ray flux changes, causing ice ages and warm ages. A comparison of temperature and solar activity proxy data suggests that solar effects can explain at least 75% of the surface warming during the last 100 years.

CO2 is plant food and the increase in the CO2 concentration may have increased the global food production by 15% since 1950 resulting in huge benefits for people. For Canada, any CO2 warming effect would also benefit us by reducing our space heating costs and making a more pleasant climate.

The IPCC predicts that global average temperatures will increase by 0.17 to 0.38 ^oC per decade to the end of the century depending on the rate of CO2 growth in the atmosphere and other assumptions. The projections assume that no action is taken to limit CO2 emissions. However, these predictions are unrealistic because they falsely assume that the recent temperature changes are driven solely by CO2 and that the Sun has little effect on climate. A recent study of past climate change used by the IPCC has been shown to be wrong due to using a faulty algorithm, and the inappropriate selection of data.

The land temperature record is contaminated by the urban heat island effect. Fully correcting the land temperature record would reduce the warming trend from 1980 to 2002 in half. The IPCC historical CO2 record may be incorrect due to inappropriate adjustments to the ice core data, and ignoring direct historical CO2 measurements. The IPCC selects and adjusts data to conform to its CO2 warming hypothesis and ignores alternative climate theories. This is the wrong way to do science. Many scientists strongly disagree with the IPCC conclusions.

Sea level data shows no acceleration in the sea level rise and no increase in the rate of sea level rise is expected over the next hundred years. There has been no detected increase in severe storms and there is no reason to expect an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes resulting from a slight expected warming due to human caused CO2 emissions.

Any increase in temperatures due to human caused CO2 emissions will likely be beneficial to human health. The CO2 fertilization effect will increase the rate of forest growth and CO2 induced crop yield increases will reduce the pressures to cut down forests for farmland expansion. This will greatly benefit animals by slowing habitat destruction.

The benefits of CO2 emissions greatly exceed any likely harmful effects. Several authorities who have studied solar cycles have warned that the Earth may soon enter a cooling phase as the Sun is expected to become less active. The atmosphere may warm because of human activity, but if it does, the expected change is unlikely to be more than 1º C, and probably less, in the next 100 years.

Greenhouse Gas Effect






This graphic shows the exchange of energy among Space, the Sun, the atmosphere and the Earth. Greenhouse gases are primarily water vapour, carbon dioxide and ozone. Greenhouse gases are mostly transparent to incoming solar radiation, but absorb outgoing long wavelength radiation. The absorbed energy is then transferred to cooler molecules or radiated at longer wavelengths than the energy previously absorbed. This process make the Earth warmer than it otherwise would be without the greenhouse gases (but with the atmosphere and clouds) by about 33 degrees Celsius. See here for a graphic of the energy transfers expressed in Watts per square meter (W/m²).

Water vapour and clouds together account for over 70% of the total current greenhouse effect. However, in terms of changes to the greenhouse effect due to human activities, water vapour is generally considered a feedback and not a forcing agent. See here for a discussion of CO2 versus water's contribution to the greenhouse effect.

                                      Absorption Spectrum









The graph at the left shows the absorption spectra of the greenhouse gases. Where the black shading extends from 0 to 1, it indicates that at that wavelength the energy is fully absorbed. Adding more gas of that type will not absorb any more energy as that wavelength is fully saturated. Comparing the CO2 and H20 absorption spectra shows that much of the CO2 spectrum overlaps with that of water. Parts of the CO2 spectrum are already fully saturated. Adding more CO2 will result in ever diminishing effects as more of the available wavelengths become saturated. The temperature response to adding CO2 to the atmosphere depends on the amount of positive and negative feedbacks from water vapour, clouds and other sources. The temperature effect of increasing CO2 concentration is approximately logarithmic. This means if doubling the CO2 concentration from 300 ppm to 600 ppm causes the temperature to rise by 1 ^oC, a further doubling can be expected to add only 0.5 ^oC temperature gain. See here.




Climate Is Always Changing

The Earth's history shows that the climate has always been changing, over both short-term and long-term time scales. These changes have sometime been abrupt and severe, without any help from humans. Climate temperature reconstructions are determined from a variety of sources, such as from tree ring width studies and ocean floor sediments.  During the last 2 billion years, the Earth has alternated between cool periods like today, and warm periods like when the dinosaurs roamed the planet. The figure below on the left is a temperature reconstruction of the Earth over 2 billion years. Temperatures over this time frame are determined by mapping the distribution of ancient coals, desert deposits, tropical soils, salt and glacial deposits, as well as the distribution of plants and animals that are sensitive to climate, such as alligators, palm trees & mangrove swamps. See here for further information.

Temperature Over Geological Time
                                                Holocene Optimum

The graph above shows the northern hemisphere temperature history since the last ice age.


                                           Temperature History from North Atlantic Ocean Sediments
     

The graph above right shows temperature variations of the past 3,000 years (during recorded history), as determined from ocean sediment studies in the North Atlantic. [Keigwin, 1996]. Note the rapid variations, as well as the much warmer temperatures 1,000 and 2,500 years ago. See here for further information.

Climate is always changing, as the history of Europe's temperature over the last thousand years shows in the two graphs below:
                               Temperature History in Europe
   

                      1000 Years Temperature History IPCC 1990


The temperature history shown at the left was published in the first IPCC report in 1990, based on Lamb's estimated climate history of Central England.
Clearly, human activity could not have had a significant effect on the temperature changes before 1900. These changes are the result of natural processes.
See here.

See here for NASA's GISS temperature graphs since 1880.




CO2 - Temperature Correlation

The temperature of the Earth has warmed slightly, about 0.7 degrees Celsius, over the last hundred years. Over this time, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has increased, mostly due to the increased use of fossil fuels. However, the Sun has increased in intensity since 1900 which may have induced much of the observed warming since then. Scafetta and West estimate that the Sun may have caused 10 to 20% of the increase in CO2 during the last century. (See page 2 of their paper here.)  A short-term correlation does not imply that the CO2 increase caused the temperature increase. Causation can be inferred if there is a correlation over several cycles of CO2 concentration changes, with the CO2 change preceding the temperature change. The actual climate history shows no such correlation, and there is no compelling evidence that the recent rise in temperature was caused by CO2. Temperatures have been variable over time, and do not correlate to CO2 concentration. When CO2 concentrations were 10 times higher than they are now we were in a major ice age. As a greenhouse gas, CO2 is vastly outweighed by (natural) water vapour and clouds, which accounts for over 70% of the greenhouse effect. Human-related CO2 emissions soared after 1940. Yet most of the 20th century's world-wide temperature increase occurred beforehand.

The CO2 growth rate is given below.

                                     CO2 Growth Rate








The actual increase of CO2 concentration averaged 0.5% per year since 1990.






                            World Temperature Trend MSU Data 1979 - 2006













This graph was created from the MSU Data from www.CO2Science.org. The MSU Satellite data set is a product of the NASA and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.  The MSU data set represent the temperatures of a layer of the atmosphere that extends from the surface to approximately 8 kilometres (5 miles) above the surface.  The data are obtained from microwave sounding units (MSUs) on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's TIROS-N satellites, which relate the intensity or brightness of microwaves emitted by oxygen molecules in the atmosphere to temperature.

The trend line indicates a warming of 0.13 Celsius per decade.

CO2 Changes Do Not Lead Temperature Changes

Fischer et al. (1999) examined records of atmospheric CO2 and air temperature derived from Antarctic Vostok ice cores that extended back in time across a quarter of a million years. Over this immense time span, the three most dramatic warming events experienced on earth were those associated with the terminations of the last three ice ages; and for each and every one of these tremendous global warmings, Earth's air temperature rose well before there was any increase in atmospheric CO2.  In fact, the air's CO2 content did not begin to rise until 400 to 1,000 years after the planet began to warm. Ice cores provide a detailed record of local temperature and CO2 concentrations. A study by Caillon et al. (2003) finds that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 ± 200 years. The authors measured the isotopic composition of argon40 and CO2 concentration in air bubbles in the Vostok core during the end of the third most recent ice age (Termination III), 240,000 years before the present. The argon40 isotope is found to be an excellent proxy for temperature.

                Vostok Ice Core Data over End of Third Ice Age BP
         The CO2 and Argon (Temperature) Age Scales are Shifted 800 Years










The CO2 concentration shown by the black line is plotted against age in years before present (BP) on the bottom axis, and the Argon40, a temperature proxy, shown by the grey line is plotted against age on the top axis. The age scale for the CO2 has been shifted by a constant 800 years to obtain the best correlation of the two data sets. The correlation shows that temperature changes precede CO2 concentration changes by about 800 years.

These findings confirm that an increase in CO2 has never initially caused an increase in temperature during a deglaciation. Temperature increases cause the oceans to expel CO2, increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere. When temperature is at its maximum in each cycle and starts to fall, CO2 concentrations continue to increase for another 800 years!  As CO2 increases, temperatures fall. This is the opposite of what one would expect if CO2 were a primary climate driver. The ice core data proves that CO2 is not a primary climate driver. One must invoke reverse time causality to claim the ice core data shows CO2 causes temperature change, like suggesting actions taken today can affect the conquests of Mongol leader Genghis Khan. Logic demands that cause must precede effect. Increases in air temperature drive increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and not vice versa.
See here for more information.  See here for a graph of Vostok ice core data.  See here for the Cailion et al (2003) paper.

Sun Activity Does Correlate with Temperature

Numerous papers published in major peer-reviewed scientific journals shows the Sun is the primary driver of climate change.  There is a very strong correlation between the Sun activity and temperature.

Early in the nineteenth century, William Herschel (1738-1822), discoverer of Uranus, found that five periods of low number of sunspots corresponded to high wheat prices when the temperatures were cold. (Cold climate reduces the supply of wheat causing its price to rise.) See here.

E. Friis-Christensen and K.Lassen have shown that the length of the mean 11 year Sunspot cycle correlates to the northern hemisphere temperature during the past 130 years.  The length of the Sunspot cycle is known to vary with solar activity, whereas high solar activity implies short sunspot cycle length. See here for further information.

See here for an updated plot based on Friis-Christensen and Lassen's methodology.

Here is a correlation of the sunspot cycle length, global temperature and CO2 concentrations.
                              Sunspot Cycle Length Temperature and CO2










The red squares on the graph represents the sunspot cycle lengths. One point is the cycle length from the time of the maximum number of sunspots to the time of the maximum number of sunspots of the next cycle, and the following point is the cycle length from the time of the minimun number of sunspots to the time of the minimun number of sunspots of the next cycle. The sunspot cycles are back filtered using weighting 1,2,3,4 applied to each cycle point, both min to min and max to max. This assumes that the current cycle has the most effect on temperature (weight 4), and previous half cycles affect current temperatures in declining amounts, but future cycles have no effect on the current temperature. The temperature curve in blue used the HadCRUT3 land and sea data to 1978, the MSU satellite data from 1984 to 2006, and the average of the datasets for 1979 to 1983. This eliminates much of the urban heat island effects. The temperatures are unfiltered annual. The CO2 concentrations (ppmv) from 1958 to 2007 are derived from air samples collected at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. CO2 concentrations prior to 1958 are uncertain.

Note that there is a correspondence between sunspot cycle length and temperature. Both the temperature and the cycle length curves begin to rise at 1910, and temperatures fall after 1945 to 1975 when the cycle length curve falls, and both curves rise again after 1975.  Temperatures have been increasing since 1980 faster than can be explained by the sunspot cycle length, indicating a possible human CO2 contribution. The recent increase of the cycle lengths explains why there has been no warming since 2002. Temperature changes are expected to follow Sun activity changes due to a time lag resulting from the large heat capacity of the oceans.

N. Scafetta of Duke University, Durham, NC and B.J. West of the US Army Research Office, NC studied the solar impact on 400 years of the Northern Hemisphere temperatures since 1600. They find good correspondence between temperature and solar irradiance proxy reconstructions up until 1920 as shown on the graph below.

                    Northern Hemisphere Temperature vs Solar Irradiance 400 years











The temperature curve is derived from proxy records to 1850 by Moberg et al. [2005], and from instrumental surface temperature data from 1850 to about 1980. The surface temperature record includes the urban heat island (UHI) and land use changes effects. The Northern Hemisphere MSU lower troposphere record is shown from 1979 in blue, which eliminates most of the UHI effects. Two different solar irradiance proxy reconstructions are shown: Lean, 2000; Wang et al., 2005. Both curves merge the ACRIM satellite data since 1980 with the proxy data. By assuming ACRIM, the solar activity has an increasing trend during the second half of the 20th century.  This graph is modified from the version created by Scafetta and West, which uses the contaminated instrument record after 1979 instead of the satellite data.  See the original version here.

Note the low solar activity periods occurring during the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715, the Little Ice Age) and during the Dalton Minimum (1795–1825).

Note the excellent correlation from 1600 to 1900 when humans were unlikely to effect climate. During the 20th century one continues to observe a significant correlation between the solar and temperature patterns:  both records show an increase from 1900 to 1950, a decrease from 1950 to 1970, and again an increase from 1970 to 2000.

A divergence of the curves from the Scafetta and West original graph indicates that the Sun is responsible for 56% using Lean 2000, and 69% using Wang 2005, of the northern hemisphere warming from 1900 to 2005. The authors estimate the error at 20%.

There are two solar composites available from satellite data. The ACRIM is obtained directly from the satellite data, while the PMOD assumes that Nimbus7/ERB satellite data covering the ACRIM gap (1989–1992) are still significantly corrupted and require additional severe adjustments. The ACRIM data shows higher solar irradiance during solar cycle 22 - 23 than the PMOD data.  Using the PMOD data and the original graph, the Sun likely has contributed 50% of the surface warming from 1900 to 2005.

The authors did a similar analysis using the Mann and Jones 2003 temperature reconstruction. This temperature history shows little variation before 1900 and shows a hockey stick shape. This reconstruction has been severely criticized for several reasons. See The IPCC Hockey Stick section of this essay.  The authors found that the Mann and Jones 2003 reconstruction (when compared to the Lean 2000 data) results in an unphysical zero response time to solar forcing. The ocean's large heat capacity should result in a time lag of surface temperatures with respect to long time solar changes of several years, so this reconstruction cannot be correct.

The authors' analysis shows the Sun has contributed 50 to 69% of the surface warming depending on the reconstructions utilized. The remainder may be due to CO2, UHI and land use changes. The authors compare the Sun's irradiance to the Northern Hemisphere land surface temperatures, which are contaminated with the urban heat island effect. The global MSU satellite temperatures, which are not contaminated by the UHI effect, have increased by half as much as the North Hemisphere temperatures since 1980. If the Scafetta and West analysis used the uncontaminated satellite data since 1980, the results would show that the Sun has contributed at least 75% of the global warming of the last century. See more about the UHI effect later in this essay here. See here for the November 2007 article.

A group of NASA and university scientists have found convincing evidence of a link between the Sun activity and climate by comparing the records of the historical water level of the Nile River to the number of auroras observed in northern Europe and the Far East between 622 and 1470 AD. Auroras are bright glows in the night sky following solar flares, and are an excellent means of tracking solar activity.  See this link for further information.
      
A study by WJR Alexander et al, published June 2007 compared hydrometeorological data to solar variability. The study looked at rainfall, river flow and flood data. The authors conclude that there is "an unequivocal synchronous linkage between these processes in South Africa and elsewhere, and solar activity." The study included an analysis of the level of Lake Victoria, which has been carefully monitored since 1896. In the early 1960s a dramatic rainfall increase significantly raised the lake level, and the level since then has been falling at about 29 mm per year. The decline has been removed from the data plotted below.  The plot shows two periods of strong correlation between lake level and sunspot number, corresponding to periods of high levels of volcanic dust.

                                 Lake Victoria Water Level and Sunspot Number

See the paper "Linkages between solar activity, climate predictability and water resource development" here.

Recently, Tim Patterson, an adviser to the FOS,  has studied high-resolution Holocene climate records from fjords and coastal lakes in British Columbia and demonstrates a link between temperature and solar cycles.










The spectral analysis shown here is from sediment cores obtained from Effingham Inlet, Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The annually deposited laminations of the core are linked to the changing climate conditions. The analysis shows a strong correlation to the 11-year sunspot cycle.

See here for a powerpoint slide show by Tim Patterson.


N. Shaviv and J. Veiser using seashell thermometers shows a strong correlation between temperature and the cosmic ray flux over the last 520 million years.
               
       Cosmic Ray Flux and Tropical Temperature Variation Over the Phanerozoic 520 million years












The upper curves describe the cosmic ray flux (CRF) using iron meteorite exposure age data. The blue line depicts the nominal CRF, while the yellow shading delineates the allowed error range. The two dashed curves are additional CRF reconstructions that fit within the acceptable range. The red curve describes the nominal CRF reconstruction after its period was fine-tuned to best fit the low-latitude temperature anomaly. The bottom black curve depicts the smoothed temperature change (ΔT) derived from calcitic shells over the Phanerozoic. The red line is the predicted ΔTmodel for the red curve above. The green line is the residual.  The top blue bars indicate ice ages.





Sun and Cosmic Rays

During the 20th century the Sun has continued to warm and may have contributed directly to a third of the warming over the last hundred years. The change in solar output is too small to directly account for most of the observed warming. However, the Sun-Cosmic Ray connection provides an amplification mechanism by which a small change in solar irradiance will have a large effect on climate.

A paper by H. Svensmark and E. Friis-Christensen of the Center for Sun-Climate Research of the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen has shown that cosmic rays highly correlate to low cloud formation. Changes in the intensity of galactic cosmic rays alter the Earth’s cloudiness. 

A recent experiment in 2005 shows the effect of cosmic rays in a reaction chamber containing air and trace chemicals found over the oceans. Electrons released in the air by cosmic rays act as a catalyst in making aerosols. They significantly accelerate the formation of stable, ultra-small clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules, which are the building block for the cloud condensation nuclei.

Data from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project and the Huancayo cosmic ray station shows a remarkable correlation between low clouds (below 3 km) and cosmic rays. There are more than enough cosmic rays at high altitudes, so changes in the cosmic rays do not effect high clouds. But fewer cosmic rays penetrate to the lower clouds, so they are sensitive to changes in cosmic rays. 

                   Cosmic Rays and Low Clouds







The blue line shows variations in global cloud cover collated by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project. The red line is the record of monthly variations in cosmic-ray counts at the Huancayo station.

Low-level clouds cover more than a quarter of the Earth's surface and exert a strong cooling effect on the surface. A 2% change in low clouds during a solar cycle will change the heat input to the Earth's surface by 1.2 watts per square metre (W/m²). This compares to the total warming of 1.4 W/m² the IPCC cites in the 20th century. (The IPCC does not recognize the effect of the Sun and Cosmic rays, and attributes the warming to CO2.)

Cosmic ray flux can be determined from radioactive isotopes such as beryllium-10, or the Sun’s open coronal magnetic field. The two independent cosmic ray proxies confirm that there has been a dramatic reduction in the cosmic ray flux during the 20th century as the Sun has gained intensity and the Sun's coronal magnetic field has doubled in strength.

                      Cosmic Ray Flux Since 1700











Changes in the flux of galactic cosmic rays since 1700 are here derived from two independent proxies, 10Be (light blue) and open solar coronal flux (dark blue) (Solanki and Fligge 1999). Low cloud amount (orange) is scaled and normalized to observational cosmic-ray data from Climax (red) for the period 1953 to 2005 (3 GeV cut-off). Both scales are inverted to correspond with rising temperatures. Note that high cosmic ray flux around 1700 is at the end of the Little Ice Age. Also note the increase in cosmic ray flux after 1780 at the time of the Dicken's Winters.





The graph below shows a correlation between the cosmic ray counts and the global troposphere temperature radiosonde data. The cosmic ray scale is inverted to correspond to increasing temperatures. High solar activity corresponds to low cosmic ray counts, reduced low cloud cover, and higher temperatures. The upper panel shows the troposphere temperatures in blue and the cosmic ray count in red. The lower panel shows the match achieved by removing El Nino, the North Atlantic Oscillation, volcanic aerosols and a linear trend of 0.14 Celsius/decade.

The negative correlation between cosmic ray counts and troposphere temperatures is very strong, indicating that the Sun is the primary climate driver. H. Svensmark and E. Friis-Christensen published the above graph in a paper October 2007 in response to a paper by M. Lockwood and C. Frohlich, in which they argue that the historical link between the Sun and climate came to an end about 20 years ago. However, the Lockwood paper had several deficiencies, including the problem that they used surface temperature data that is contaminated by the urban heat island effect (see below). They also fail to account for the large time lag between long-term solar intensity changes to the climate temperature response.

See the Svensmark rebuttal of the Lockwood paper here, and a critique by myself here.

Over the 20th century the Sun has increased activity and irradiance intensity, directly providing some warming. The graph below from here show the rising solar flux during most of the twentieth century.

                                  Open Solar Flux


When the Sun is active it has a higher number of sun spots and emits more solar wind - a continuous stream of very high-speed charged particles. The increased solar wind and magnetic field repels cosmic rays that otherwise would hit the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in less aerosols in the lower atmosphere thereby reducing low cloud formation. The low clouds have a high reflectivity and have a strong cooling effect by reflecting sunlight back into space.

In summary, the process is:
More active Sun  -->  more Sunspots --> more solar wind --> less cosmic ray --> less aerosols --> less low clouds --> more sun light to the surface --> global warming.

The theory of CO2 warming implies that the arctic and Antarctica should be warming about the same, and the polar regions should be warming more that the rest of the Earth. However, Antarctica has not warmed since 1975, which is a big problem for the CO2 theory.  The ice covering Antarctica has even higher reflectivity than low clouds, so fewer low clouds cools Antarctica, while fewer low clouds warms the rest of the planet. (Greenland's ice sheet is much smaller and is not so reflective.) This Antarctica temperature trend is strong evidence that the Sun, not CO2, is the primary climate driver.

          Antarctica and North America Temperature Trends











The top curve is the North American surface temperature and the bottom curve is the Antarctica (64 S - 90 S) surface temperature over the past 100 years. The Antarctic data have been averaged over 12 years to minimize the temperature fluctuations. The blue and red lines are fourth-order polynomial fits to the data. The curves are offset by 1 K for clarity, otherwise they would cross and re-cross three times.




The cosmic ray flux is not only influenced by the solar wind, it also varies with the position of the solar system in the galactic arms. The solar system passes through the arms of the Milky Way galaxy roughly every 140 million years. When the solar system is in the galactic arms the intensity of cosmic rays increases, as we are closer to more supernovas that give off powerful bursts of cosmic rays. The variations of the cosmic ray flux due to the solar system passing through four arms of the Milky Way galaxy during the last 550 million years is ten times greater than that caused by the Sun. The correlation between cosmic rays and temperatures over 520 million years by N. Shaviv and J. Veiser was shown previously. Below is a similar graph based on their work, but with the times of the galactic arm crossings shown.

    Cosmic Ray Flux and Temperature Changes with Galactic Arm Crossings



















Four switches from warm “hothouse” to cold “icehouse” conditions during the Phanerozoic are shown in variations of several degrees K in tropical sea-surface temperatures (red curve). They correspond with four encounters with spiral arms of the Milky Way and the resulting increases in the cosmic-ray flux (blue curve, scale inverted). (After Shaviv and Veizer 2003)



Temperature changes over this time range can not be explain by the CO2 theory.

                   CO2 Concentrations 500 Million Years





The graph shows CO2 concentration over the last 500 million years. The CO2 does not correlate with temperature. Note when CO2 concentrations were more than 10 times present levels about 175 million years ago and 440 million years ago, the Earth was in two very cold ice ages.




See here for a paper on CosmoClimatology by Henrik Svensmark.
See here for a discussion of the Shaviv and Veizer 2003 paper by Tim Patterson. See here for their paper.

Heating of the Troposphere

Computer models based on the theory of CO2 warming predicts that the troposphere in the tropics should warm faster than the surface in response to increasing CO2 concentrations, because that is where the CO2 greenhouse effect operates. The Sun-Cosmic ray warming will warm the troposphere more uniformly.

The UN's IPCC fourth assessment report includes a set of plots of computer model predicted rate of temperature change from the surface to 30 km altitude and over all latitudes for 5 types of climate forcings as shown below.

                           Computer Model Predicted Temperature Change














    The six plots show predicted temperature changes due to:
           a) the Sun
           b) volcanic activity
           c) anthropogenic CO2 and other greenhouse gasses
           d) anthropogenic ozone
           e) anthropogenic sulphate aerosol particles
           f) all the above forcings combined

The rate of temperature change is shown by the colour in degrees Celsius per decade.

It is apparent that plot c) of warming caused by greenhouse gasses is strikingly distinct from other causes of warming. Plot f) is similar to plot c) only because the IPCC assumes that CO2 is the dominant cause of global warming.

The computer models show that greenhouse warming will cause a hot-spot at an altitude between 8 and 12 km over the tropics between 30 N and 30 S. The temperature at this hot-spot is projected to increase at a rate of two to three times faster than at the surface.

However, the Hadley Centre's real-world plot of radiosonde temperature observations shown below does not show the projected CO2 induced global warming hot-spot at all. The predicted hot-spot is entirely absent from the observational record. This shows that most of the global temperature change can not be attributed to increasing CO2 concentrations.

                         HadAT2 Radiosonde Data 1979 - 1999

               
The left scale is atmosphere pressure in hPa. The right scale is altitude in km.
Source: HadAT2 radiosonde observations, from CCSP (2006), p116, fig. 5.7E
See Greenhouse Warming? What Greenhouse Warming? by Christopher Monckton

This graph compares the annual temperatures of the troposphere to the surface measurements in the tropics from 30 degrees North to 30 degrees South. .













The MSU curve is the Microwave Sounding Unit satellite measurements. It measures the temperature of the troposphere up to approximately 8 km.

The GHCN curve is the Global Historical Climatology Network data set of land surface temperatures from the National Climatic Data Center.

The HadCRUT3 curve is the Land and Sea-Surface Temperatures data set from UK Met Office.

The three curves are scaled so that the average of the first 5 years are the same.

A comparison of the records show that the surface has warmed faster than the troposphere, the opposite of what is predicted by the theory of CO2 warming. Observations agree with the Sun-Cosmic ray warming theory.

The response of the troposphere temperatures in the tropics is sometimes called the fingerprint of the CO2 contribution to warming.


This graph shows two analyses of Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) satellite temperature measurement data of the troposphere over the tropics from 20 degrees North to 20 degrees South. The UAH analysis is from the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the RSS analysis is from Remote Sensing Solutions. The two analyses use different methods to adjust for factors such as orbital decay and inter-satellite difference. The overall trend lines to April 2008 shows increasing temperatures at 0.06 C/decade for UAH and 0.16 C/decade for RSS. However, since January 2003, the temperatures have been declining at 0.64 C/decade for UAH and 0.73 C/decade for the RSS data. The IPCC projections do not agree with the data.

Stratospheric Cooling

The graph "HadAT2 Radiosonde Data 1979 - 1999" in the previous section shows that the stratosphere (above 16 km) has cooled, which might appear to indicate a greenhouse gas effect. However, stratospheric cooling is predicted to occur due to both greenhouse gasses and ozone depletion. The ozone concentration in the stratosphere has declined from 1970 until 1995, and has not declined at all since then due to the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, which limits the emission of ozone reducing CFCs. See here. The stratosphere temperatures are given below from here.


The lower stratosphere temperature has not declined at all since 1995 (when the ozone levels are stable or slightly increasing), so the data does not indicate any greenhouse gas cooling of the stratosphere. In fact, it appears that there has been a slight warming of the lower stratosphere since 1995, the opposite of what is predicted by computer models of the greenhouse gas effects. The stratosphere cooling indicated by the radiosonde data is caused by the changing ozone concentration, not by greenhouse gasses.


Warming on Other Planets

If the Sun is the primary driver of climate change, one should expect to see evidence of recent warming on other planets. As the Earth has warmed over the last 100 years, so too has Neptune, Mars and Pluto.

 
                                                   Neptune Warming













Neptune is the furthest planet from the Sun (Pluto is now a dwarf planet) and orbits the Sun at 30 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth. In the recent article, Hammel and Lockwood, from the Space Science Institute in Colorado and the Lowell Observatory, show Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980; furthermore, infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that the planet has been warming steadily from 1980 to 2004.

In the figure, (a) represents the corrected visible light from Neptune from 1950 to 2006; (b) shows the temperature anomalies of the Earth; (c) shows the total solar irradiance as a percent variation by year; (d) shows the ultraviolet emission from the Sun. All data has been corrected for the effects of Neptune's seasons, variations in its orbit, the apparent tilt of the axis as viewed from the Earth, the varying distance from Neptune to Earth, and changes in the atmosphere near the Lowell Observatory.

See here for more information.



A recent study shows that Mars is warming four times faster than the Earth. Mars is warming due to increased Sun activity, which increases dust storms. The study's authors led by Lori Fenton, a planetary scientist at NASA, says the dust makes the atmosphere absorb more heat causing a positive feedback. Surface air temperatures on Mars increased by 0.65 C (1.17 F) from the 1970s to the 1990s. Residual ice on the Martian south pole, they note, has steadily retreated over the last four years.  Thermal spectrometer images of Mars taken by NASA's Viking mission in the late 1970s were compared with similar images gathered more than 20 years later by the Global Surveyor.

Mars polar ice cap

See here or here or here for more information.

The demoted planet Pluto is also undergoing warming according to astronomers. Pluto's atmosphere pressure has tripled over the last 14 years, indicating rising temperatures even as the planet moves further from the Sun. See here for further information.

CO2 Versus the Sun/Cosmic Ray Warming Theories

The following table sets out a comparison of the predictions of two climate theories - the CO2 warming theory and the Sun/Cosmic Ray theory - and actual real world data.

Issue	Prediction - CO2 Theory	Prediction - Sun/Cosmic Ray Theory	Actual Data	Which Theory Wins
Antarctic and Arctic Temperatures	Temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic will rise symmetrically	Temperatures will initially move in opposite directions	Temperatures move in opposite directions	Sun/Cosmic Ray
Troposphere Temperature	Fastest warming will be in the troposphere over the tropics	The troposphere warming will be uniform	The surface warming is similar or greater than troposphere warming	Sun/Cosmic Ray
Timing of CO2 and Temperature Changes at End of Ice Age	CO2 increases then temperature increases	Temperature increases then CO2 increases	CO2 concentrations increase about 800 years after temperature increases	Sun/Cosmic Ray
Temperature correlate with the driver over last 400 year	na	na	Cosmic ray flux and Sun activity correlates with temperature, CO2 does not	Sun/Cosmic Ray
Temperatures during Ordovician period	Very hot due to CO2 levels > 10X present	Very cold due to high cosmic ray flux	Very cold ice age	Sun/Cosmic Ray
Other Planets' Climate	No change	Other planets will warm	Warming has been detected on several other planets	Sun/Cosmic Ray

CO2 Greatly Increases Plant and Forest Growth

CO2 is a major plant fertilizer. The increase in CO2 emissions have caused increased crop yields and faster growing plants and forests, thereby greening the planet. Estimates vary, but somewhere around 15% seems to be the common number cited for the increase in global food crop yields due to aerial fertilization with increased carbon dioxide since 1950. This increase has both helped avoid a Malthusian disaster and preserved or returned enormous tracts of marginal land as wildlife habitat that would otherwise have had to be put under the plow in an attempt to feed the growing global population. Commercial growers deliberately generate CO2 and increase its levels in agricultural greenhouses to between 700 ppm and 1,000 ppm to increase productivity and improve the water efficiency of food crops far beyond those in the somewhat CO2 starved atmosphere. CO2 feeds the forests, grows more usable lumber in timber lots meaning there is less pressure to cut old growth or push into "natural" wildlife habitat, makes plants more water efficient helping to beat back the encroaching deserts in Africa and Asia and generally increases bio-productivity.  See here

Bigtooth Aspen Growth Response to Enhanced CO2 and Temperature


Jurik et al. (1984) exposed bigtooth aspen leaves to atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 325 ppm and 1935 ppm and measured their photosynthetic rates at a number of different temperatures. At 25°C, where the net photosynthetic rate of the leaves exposed to 325 ppm CO2 is maximal, the extra CO2 of this study boosted the net photosynthetic rate of the foliage by nearly 100%; and at 36°C, where the net photosynthetic rate of the leaves exposed to 1935 ppm CO2 is maximal, the extra CO2 boosted the net photosynthetic rate of the foliage by a whopping 450%. These results are similar to studies of many other plants.

             Young Eldarica Pine Tree Growth Response to CO2


Young Eldarica pine trees were grown for 23 months under four CO2 concentrations and then cut down and weighed. Each point represents an individual tree. Weights of tree parts are as indicated. See here.

                                    Wheat Yield Response to CO2


















This graph shows the response of wheat grown under wet conditions and when the wheat was stressed by lack of water. These were open-field experiments. Wheat was grown in the usual way, but the atmospheric CO2 concentrations of circular sections of the fields were increased by means of arrays of computer-controlled equipment that released CO2 into the air to hold the levels as specified. Average CO2-induced increases for the two years were 10% for wet and 23% for dry conditions.

Since atmospheric CO2 is the basic "food" of nearly all plants, the more of it there is in the air, the better they function and the more productive they become. For a 300 ppm increase in the atmosphere's CO2 concentration above the planet's current base level of slightly less than 400 ppm, for example, the productivity of earth's herbaceous plants rises by something on the order of 30% (Kimball, 1983; Idso and Idso, 1994), while the productivity of its woody plants rises by something on the order of 50% (Saxe et al., 1998; Idso and Kimball, 2001). Thus, as the air's CO2 content continues to rise, so too will the productive capacity or land-use efficiency of the planet continue to rise, as the aerial fertilization effect of the upward trending atmospheric CO2 concentration boosts the growth rates of nearly all plants.

The world's population is 6.6 billion and increasing at 1.18% per year. People will require increasing quantities of food and more natural ecosystems will be lost to crops and pastures. The resulting loss of habitat may result in species extinctions if crop yields are not significantly increased. Unfortunately, the rate of increase of crop yields is declining as crops are approaching the genetic yield limits. Increasing crop yields on existing farmlands would help to save lands for nature. If crop yields fail to increase, humans will suffer more frequent famines. Fortunately, the increase in CO2 concentrations will substantially enhance crop yields and is essential to prevent or delay the destruction of habitat and animal species, and may allow us to produce sufficient agricultural commodities to feed the growing population. Any action taken by us to slow or reverse the increase in CO2 concentration in the air may result in more frequent famines and species extinctions.

See here from CO2Science.

IPCC and Model Projections

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents projections of climate change, which are based on computer models. The projections given in the Summary for Policy Makers are based on six scenarios, which include different assumptions of population growth, economic growth, technological change and CO2 emissions. The scenarios assume that no climate change mitigation actions are taken, and they do not assume implementation of the Kyoto protocol. The IPCC does not assign any probability or likelihood to any of the scenarios, and the middle scenarios should not be interpreted as the most likely.

The initial growth rate of the projected CO2 concentrations range from 0.45 %/year to 0.65 %/year. The CO2 concentrations of the six projections increased from 370 ppm in the year 2000 to a range of 540 ppm to 940 ppm in the year 2100. The table below shows the Fourth Assessment Report projections.

	Temperature Change		at 2090-2099
	(°C at 2090-2099 relative to 1980-1999)		From 2006	Rate of	CO2	CO2
Scenario	Best Estimate	Likely Range	Best Estimate	Change	Concentration	Average Growth
	oC	oC	oC	oC/Decade	2100	%/year
B1	1.8	1.1 – 2.9	1.5	0.17	540	0.38
A1T	2.4	1.4 – 3.8	2.1	0.23	560	0.42
B2	2.4	1.4 – 3.8	2.1	0.23	600	0.48
A1B	2.8	1.7 – 4.4	2.5	0.27	695	0.63
A2	3.4	2.0 – 5.4	3.1	0.32	825	0.81
A1FI	4.0	2.4 – 6.4	3.7	0.38	940	0.94

The temperature changes "Best Estimate" given in the second column are from the average surface temperatures in the period 1980 to 1999. The "Best Estimate" from 2006 given in the fourth column is reduced by 0.3 ^oC to account for the actual temperature change to 2006 from the average of 1980-1999. The average CO2 growth rates of the last two scenarios at 0.81 and 0.94 %/year appears to be unrealistic considering the actual CO2 growth rate 1990-2006 is 0.5%/year, and fossil fuels are expected to become more expensive as it becomes increasingly difficult to replace depleting oil and gas reserves.



Kevin Trenberth is head of the large US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and one of the advisors of the IPCC. Trenberth asserts ". . . there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at all. And there never have been". Instead, there are only "what if" projections of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios. According to Trenberth, GCMs ". . . do not consider many things like the recovery of the ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents. None of the models used by IPCC is initialised to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate." However, Scott Armstrong and Kesten Green audited the relevant chapter in the IPCC's latest report. They find that "in apparent contradiction to claims by some climate experts that the IPCC provides 'projections' and not 'forecasts', the word 'forecast' and its derivatives occurred 37 times, and 'predict' and its derivatives occur 90 times" in the chapter. Consequently, it is not surprising that the public has this misimpression that the IPCC predicts future climate.

The computer models predict that the 20th century temperatures should have increased by 1.6 to 3.74 Celsius, while the actual observed 20th-century temperature increase was about 0.6 Celsius. A model that fails to history match is useless for predicting the future.

The IPCC Third Assessment Report projected a surface temperature increase from 1990 to 2100 of 1.4 C^o to 5.8 C^o, corresponding to 0.13 C^o/decade to 0.53 C^o/decade. The IPCC low estimate corresponds to the actual temperature warming rate as measured by satellite data.

The IPCC assumes that the Sun has little effect, even though observational evidence clearly shows the Sun has a significant effect on climate.

The models assume the 20th century temperature rise is caused by CO2 increases, and parameters are set in the models to make the temperature rise in response to the CO2. The direct effect of increasing CO2 concentration on global warming is very small. All the models amplify an initial increase in temperature due to CO2 by employing water vapour and clouds as a large positive feed back. However, there is no evidence that water vapour and clouds provides a large positive feed back. They may provide a negative feed back.

Climate models are limited by our understanding of cloud formation. While scientists have a basic understanding of cloud formation, the details controlling how bright they are, how dense and how large they become is poorly understood. We lack the detailed understanding of clouds required to make accurate climate models. Clouds have a major role in climate by reflecting sunlight back into space, trapping heat, and producing precipitation.

As the Earth warms, there is more evaporation from the oceans, therefore more water vapour in the atmosphere available for cloud formation. But low clouds reflect sunlight back into space resulting in a strong cooling effect, negating most of the initial temperature increase.

Researchers at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) reported in August 2007 that individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping [high altitude] cirrus clouds, says Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist in UAHuntsville's Earth System Science Center.











"All leading climate models forecast that as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in high altitude cirrus clouds, which would amplify any warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases," he said. "That amplification is a positive feedback. What we found in month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system was a strongly negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease. That allows more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space."

"While low clouds have a predominantly cooling effect due to their shading of sunlight, most cirrus clouds have a net warming effect on the Earth," Spencer said. With high altitude ice clouds their infrared heat trapping exceeds their solar shading effect.  If computer models incorporated this enhanced cooling effect from high clouds, "it would reduce estimates of future warming by over 75 percent," Spencer said.

See the UAH News article here, and a report in ScienceDaily here. The paper abstract is here. See  Roy Spencer's article, Global Warming and Nature's Thermostat here, which describes how precipitation systems controls the magnitude of the greenhouse effect.

The amount of solar energy the Earth recieves depends on the Earth's albedo, or reflectivity. The greater the albedo, the more sunlight is reflected and the less solar energy is absorbed by the Earth. Project "Earthshine" being done at the Big Bear Solar Observatory measures the Earth's albedo by observing the amount of sunlight reflected by the Earth to the dark side of the Moon and back to Earth. The process is shown below.



The results show that the Earth albedo has gradually fallen up to 1997, likely causing most of the global warming through 1998. Since 2001 the albedo increased rapidly, which has stopped the warming and resulted in the current global cooling. The recent dimming of the Earth is likely due to increased low cloud cover. The albedo is shown below.














The blue lines are the observed earthshine data for 1994-1995 and 1999-2003. The black line is the reconstructed albedo from partially overlapping satellite cloud data with respect to the mean of the calibration period 1999 to 2001. The vertical red line shows the cumulative climate forcing of the increase in greenhouse gases over the 20th century of 2.4 W/m2 according to the IPCC. Note that the change of the albedo's climate forcing in W/m2 is much greater than that due to greenhouse gases. Current climate models do not show such large albedo variability.  See an article by Anthony Watts here for further information.  See the project Earthshine site here.

Climate models utilize large grid blocks to simulate climate, which are too large to include thunderstorms or hurricanes, so they use parameterization to account for these. These parameterizations ignore real-world transfers of energy, moisture and momentum that could significantly alter the results and severely limits the usefulness of climate model projections. Computer models employ approximations to represent physical processes that cannot be directly computed due to computational limitations. Because many empirical parameters can be selected to force a model to match observations, the ability of a model to match observations cannot be cited as evidence that the model is realistic and does not imply it is reliable for forecasting climate.  See the Fraser Institutes Independent Summary For Policy Makers.

Atmospheric methane concentrations have been declining in recent years. Methane is a significant greenhouse gas. Climate models assume that methane concentrations increase with temperature, and it is not known why its concentration is declining. Aerosols play a key roll in climate, with a potential impact of more than three times that of CO2 emissions, but their influence is very poorly understood. Aerosol's effect on cloud formation is poorly understood and clouds are very crudely modelled. Aerosols exert an overall cooling effect on climate but estimates of the effect vary by a factor of ten. Models used in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report assume aerosols have a large cooling effect, thereby attributing a large warming effect to CO2.

Only 2 of the 23 models used by the IPCC account for varying Sun intensity, and these models do not assume the Sun affects the cosmic ray flux and cloud formation. Only 2 of the models account for land use changes.

Computer models predict warming at the north and south poles to be symmetrical, but there is a warming trend at the North Pole but not at the South Pole. They also predict that the polar surface regions will warm more than the surface at the tropics. Winter temperatures will warm more than summer temperatures; night-time temperatures will warm more that day-time temperatures. Therefore, according to the CO2 warming theory, winter nights in the arctic will warm, but there will be little summer day time warming in the tropics.

A team of four researchers from three American universities led by David Douglass compared the troposphere temperature trends in the tropics predicted from climate models to actual satellite and radiosonde observations. In a paper published in December 2007 by the Royal Meteorological Society, Douglass et al analysed the simulation results from 22 climate models at the surface and at 12 different altitudes. The simulation results were compared to the temperature trends determined from two analysis of satellite data and four radiosonde datasets for the period January 1979 through December 2004.

                   Computer Model Temperature Trends versus Observations

The above diagram shows the comparison of temperature trends from 1979 through 2004 of climate models and actual satellite and radiosonde observations, expressed as degrees Celsius per decade versus altitude and atmospheric pressure. The left panel shows four radiosonde results as IGRA, RATPAC, HadAT2 and RAOBCORE. The thick red line shows the mean of the 22 computer model results, and the models' 2 times standard error of the mean are shown as the two thin red lines.  Temperature trends from three surface measurement datasets are identified in the legend by Sfc and are plotted on the left axis. The RSS and UAH analysis of satellite data are plotted on the right panel at two effective layers: T2lt represents the lower troposphere with a weighted mean at 2.5 km, T2 represents the mid troposphere with a weighted mean at 6.1 km altitude. A trend is the slope of the line that has been least-squared fit to the data. Synthetic model values corresponding to the effective layers of the satellite data are shown in the right panel as open red circles.

An essential place to compare observations with greenhouse computer models is the layer between 450 hPa and 750 hPa atmospheric pressure where the presence of water vapour is most important, and is called the "characteristic emission layer". In this layer, the observations are all outside the 2 times standard error test. The radiosonde and satellite trends are inconsistent with the model trends at all altitudes above the surface. Douglass et al. conclude that “Model results and observed temperature trends are in disagreement in most of the tropical troposphere, being separated by more than twice the uncertainty of the model mean. In layers near 5 km, the modelled trend is 100 to 300% higher than observed, and, above 8 km, modelled and observed trends have opposite signs.” Therefore any projections of future climate from the models are very likely too high, and these projections should not be used to form public policy. See the paper "A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions" here.

Many important inputs to climate models are very uncertain and real world observational evidence does not support them, so it is foolish to rely on their projections to make expensive policy decisions.

A scorecard listing the success of models is here.


The IPCC Hockey Stick

The IPCC published the "Hockey Stick" graph from Mann, Bradley and Hughes (MBH 1998), in its Third Assessment Report, which shows little change in temperatures for hundreds of years then a sharp increase recently in the last hundred years. This temperature history was given bold prominence in the IPCC reports, distributed to all Canadian households and used to support major policy decisions involving the expenditure of billions of dollars. The IPCC argues that there was little natural climate change over the last 1000 years, so that the temperature change over the last 100 years is unusual and likely caused by human activities. A senior IPCC researcher said in an email "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." Christopher Monckton says "They did this by giving one technique, measurement of tree-rings from bristlecone pines, 390 times more weighting than other techniques but didn't disclose this. Tree-rings are wider in warmer years, but pine tree rings are also wider when there's more carbon dioxide in the air: it's plant food. This carbon dioxide fertilization distorts the calculations. They said they had included 24 data sets going back to 1400. Without saying so, they left out the set showing the medieval warm period, tucking it into a folder marked "Censored Data". They used a computer model to draw the graph from the data, but two Canadians [Ross McKitrick and Stephen McIntyre] later found that the model almost always drew hockey-sticks even if they fed in random, electronic "red noise" because it used a faulty algorithm."  The MBH 1998 report was never properly peer reviewed before the IPCC used it in their publications. 
See here for comments from Christopher Monckton.

McKitrick and McIntyre say in their paper "the dataset used to make this construction contained collation errors, unjustified truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, incorrect principal component calculations, geographical mislocations and other serious defects. These errors and defects substantially affect the temperature index. The major finding is that the values in the early 15th century exceed any values in the 20th century. The particular “hockey stick” shape derived in the MBH98 proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components."  See here for their paper.

The IPCC hockey stick is shown below, along with the corrected version. The error ranges are not shown here.


The dispute over the hockey stick caused the United States Congress to decide to investigate the matter. The US National Research Council (NRC) held public hearings and prepared a report in 2006 for the US House of Representatives Committee on Science.  The NRC Report made no criticism of the McKitrick and McIntyre papers. The report concludes "strip-bark samples should be avoided in temperature reconstructions." These strip-bark Bristlecone/Foxtail samples are responsible for the sharp increase in the graph in the twentieth century, but the growth spurt is not related to temperatures. It also confirmed that Mann's algorithm, which used non-centered principal component analysis, mines for hockey stick shapes from random red noise data as previous shown by McKitrick and McIntyre, and notes that "uncertainties of the published reconstructions have been underestimated."

Meanwhile, the US House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce had independently commissioned a study from Edward Wegman who is chairman of the NAS Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. The Wegman Report states "Overall, our committee believes that Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.” It also states "In general, we find the criticisms by [the McKitrick and McIntyre papers] to be valid and their arguments to be compelling. We were able to reproduce their results and offer both theoretical explanations (Appendix A) and simulations to verify that their
observations were correct.” The study also studied the social network of the group of scientists who publish temperature reconstructions. The study found that they collaborate with each other and share proxy data and methodologies, so that the "independent" studies are not independent at all. See the Wigman Report here.

Both of these reports were public six months before the IPCC began the release of the Fourth Assessment Report; however, the 4AR makes no mention of the Wegman Report, gives only one citation of the NRC Report, and ignores the findings and recommendations of the reports.

David Holland wrote a comprehensive history and discussion of the hockey stick affair.  See Holland's paper - "Bias and Concealment in the IPCC Process: The 'Hockey Stick' Affair and its Implications" published by "Energy & Environment", October 2007 here.

David Holland says "it is scandalous that the WGI Chapter 6 authors ignored most of its [NRC Report]  substantive findings.  Despite the clear analysis in Wegman et al. showing the lack of independence between the various temperature reconstructions, the authors of AR4 WGI Chapter 6 persisted with their reliance on a “spaghetti” diagram of reconstructions in Figure 6.10(b) to continue to justify the claim that “Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century were likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years.”
 
Urban Heat Island Effects

The urban heat island effect is caused by the heat-retaining properties of concrete and asphalt in urban areas that artificially increase local temperatures. It is the effect that humans have on local surface temperature such that the temperatures in or near urban centres are warmer that rural areas.

                        Surface Temperature Trends in 47 California Counties

This graph shows the size of the effect on surface temperatures and the problems associated with objective sampling. The surface temperature trends determined from ground stations for the period 1940 to 1996 were averaged for each county. The trends were grouped by county population and plotted as closed circles along with the standard errors of their means. The straight line is a least-squares fit to the closed circles. The points marked ''X'' are the six unadjusted station records selected by NASA GISS for use in their estimate of global temperatures. Note that 5 of the 6 selected stations are in populous counties. Note also that extrapolating the straight line to a county population of 10,000 gives a temperature trend of zero. See here.

Here is an example of a weather station used by the IPCC to record temperature rise.

                            Temperature Trends of Major City Sites and Rural Sites
















Peterson (2003)  is an influential study cited by IPCC Fourth Assessment Report purporting to show that the urbanization effect is negligible.

The IPCC  relied heavily on this flawed study, where Peterson states "no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures." However, Steve McIntyre using Peterson's data shows that "actual cities have a very substantial trend of over 2 deg C per century relative to the rural network - and this assumes that there are no problems with rural network - something that is obviously not true since there are undoubtedly microsite and other problems." Peterson uses two lists of stations in his study, one labelled Urban and one labelled Rural. However an analysis of the lists shows that the Urban list includes many rural sites and the Rural list includes many urban sites. These results are discussed in a Climate Audit article here.

Most scientist agree that many tempertature station measurements are contaminated by urban heat island effects, but they argue that the major global temperature indexes are adjusted to correct for these effects. There is a "Urbanization Adjustment" to correct for the effects of urbanization, a "Time of Observation Bias Adjustment" to correct for changed to the time of day when measurements are taken, and there is a "Coverage Adjustment" to account for the loss of measurement stations. These adjustments are intended to produce a record of what the temperatures would be if nobody lived near the measurement stations. If the adjustments were adequate, there should be no statistically significant correlation between the temperature record and social economic indicators.

Ross McKitrick and Patrick Michaels published a paper in 2004 in which they analyse the pattern of warming over the Earth's land surface compared to local economic conditions. They found a statistically significant correlation between the adjusted temperature data and economic development, meaning that the adjustments are not adequate to remove the urban heat island effects. They conclude "If the contamination were removed, we estimated the average measured warming rate over land would decline by about half."

Dutch meteorologists, Jos de Laat and Ahilleas Maurellis using different testing methodologies came to similar conclusions. They showed that there is a statistically significant correlation between the spacial pattern of warming in the adjusted temperature data and the spacial pattern of industrial development. They concluded it adds a large upward bias to the measured global warming trend. They also show that climate model predictions show no correlation between temperature and industrial development.

The IPCC acknowledges the correlation between the warming trends and social economic development, but dismisses it as a mere coincidence, due to unspecified “atmospheric circulation changes.” This nonsense claim contradict the IPCC widley advertised claim that recent warming can not be attributed to natural causes, and the Laat and Maurellis research shows it to be false.

McKitrick and Michaels published an updated paper in December 2007 using a larger data set with a more complete set of socioeconomic indicators. They discussed two types of contamination; anthropogenic surface processes, which are changes to the landscaped due to urbanization or agriculture, and inhomogeneities, i.e. equipment changes, missing data, poor quality control, etc. They showed that the spatial pattern of warming trends is tightly correlated with indicators of economic activity.  They present a battery of statistical tests to prove that the result is not a fluke or spurious correlation. They conclude "The average trend at the surface in the post-1980 interval would fall from about 0.30 degrees (C) per decade to about 0.17 degrees." Removing the net warming bias due to urban heat effects in surface temperature data could explain as much as half the recent warming over land.

                                       Bias of IPCC Temperature Data

The graph above is from the McKitrick and Michaels December 2007 paper. Each square is colour-coded to indicate the size of the local bias. Blank areas indicate that there was no data available. See the Background Discussion on the paper here.

The graph "Surface and Troposphere Temperature Trends" presented in the Heating of the Troposphere section of this essay shows temperature trends of the land, of the land and sea, and of the troposphere in the tropics. The land surface temperature trend has the highest rate of increase because it is contaminated by the heat island effect. The land and sea surface temperature trend is lower that the land trend because the sea temperature data does not have any heat island effect. The troposphere shows the lowest rate of temperature increase. We know that the CO2 theory of climate change requires the troposphere to warm faster than the surface, but the opposite has happened. It is illogical to believe that CO2 is the primary temperature driver and concurrently believe that the surface measurements used to the IPCC are accurate. If the surface temperature data were fully adjusted to remove the effects of urbanization by reducing the warming rate by half, it would closely match the troposphere warming trend.


Falsified Historical CO2 Measurements

The IPCC uses a CO2 concentration history that shows a low pre-industrial CO2 content which increases during the industrial era. The IPCC may have used corrupted CO2 data in its analysis of climate change. Their conclusions and projections of climate change are all based on the assumption of low CO2 concentrations in the pre-industrial atmosphere based on ice core studies. Unfortunately, ice cores do not form a closed system. In the highly compressed deep ice, CO2 combines with liquid water to form gas hydrates, or clathrates, which are tiny crystals. When the ice core is brought to the surface, the pressure falls causing the clathrates to decompose to the gas form, exploding in the process as if they were microscopic grenades, forming tiny cracks in the ice. Other cracks are formed by the ice decompression. Gas escapes through these cracks as the ice core is brought to the surface, but since CO2 forms clathrates at lower pressures than other gases, CO2 is preferentially lost leading to depletion of CO2 in the gas trapped in the ice core. Consequently, the measured CO2 concentration from deep ice cores is less than the CO2 concentration of the originally trapped air.










The graph on the left shows the IPCC history of CO2 concentration in air.





Data from shallow ice cores such as from Siple, Antarctica, show that the CO2 concentration of pre-industrial ice (from depths too shallow for clathrate formation) are much higher than that measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 1960. As the actual measurements show ice deposited in 1890 AD is 328 ppm, not the 290 ppm required to fit the IPCC human caused increasing CO2 concentration and global warming hypothesis, the average age of air was arbitrary decreed to be exactly 83 years younger than the ice in which it was trapped.

 Actual Siple, Antarctica Ice Core and Mauna Loa Data






Data from shallow ice cores such as from Siple, Antarctica, show that the CO2 concentration of pre-industrial ice (from depths too shallow for clathrate formation) are much higher than that measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 1958.

Note that the measured concentration declines with increasing load pressure and depth.





Shifted Siple, Antarctica Ice Core and Mauna Loa Data





 As the actual measurements show ice deposited in 1890 AD is 328 ppm, not the 290 ppm required to fit the IPCC human caused increasing CO2 concentration and global warming hypothesis, the average age of air was arbitrary decreed to be exactly 83 years younger than the ice in which it was trapped.

The “corrected” ice data were then smoothly aligned with the Mauna Loa record, and reproduced in countless publications as a famous “Siple curve”. Only thirteen years later, in 1993, glaciologists attempted to prove experimentally the “age assumption”, but they failed.



        CO2 Measurements between 1800 and 1955






IPCC modellers ignored the direct measurements of CO2 concentration indicating that the 19th century CO2 concentration was 335 ppm.

The encircled values were arbitrarily selected by Callendar for estimation of 292 ppm as the average 19th century CO2 concentration.



A study of stomatal frequency in fossil leaves from Holocene lake deposits in Denmark, showing that 9400 years ago CO2 atmospheric level was 333 ppm, and 9600 years ago 348 ppm, falsify the concept of stabilized and low CO2 air concentration until the advent of industrial revolution.
See here for more information.

Recently, Ernst-Georg Beck has summarized 90,000 accurate chemical analysis of CO2 in air since 1812. The historic chemical data reveal that changes in CO2 track changes in temperature, and therefore climate in contrast to the simple, monotonically increasing CO2 trend depicted in the post 1990 literature on climate change. Since 1812, the CO2 concentration in northern hemispheric air has fluctuated exhibiting three high level maxima around 1825, 1857 and 1942 the latter showing more than 400 ppm.










Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction. Following Callendar (1938), modern climatologists have generally ignored the historic determinations of CO2, despite the techniques being standard textbook procedures in several different disciplines. Chemical methods were discredited as unreliable choosing only few which fit the assumption of a climate CO2 connection.

Ernst-Georg Beck calls the falsification of the CO2 record "The greatest scandal in the modern history of science".

See here for a summary of the Beck paper, or here for the paper

See here for Beck's Berlin presentation of May 30, 2007.

See here for CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time, by Zbigniew Jaworowski, Spring/Summer 2007 21st CENTURY Science & Technology.


No Consensus

Author Michael Crichton warned of the dangers of "consensus science" in a 2003 speech. He says "Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus."

In an open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, 61 prominent scientists called for an open climate science review. The letter states "Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural "noise.""

The Petition Project was organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.
The petition states in part:
 "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses 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."

So far the petition has received 19,700 signatures. Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields. Approximately 2,400 individuals have signed the petition who are trained in fields other than science or whose field of specialization was not specified on their returned petition. See here.

The Heartland Institute has conducted an international survey of 530 climate scientists in 2003. The survey asked if “the current state of scientific knowledge is
developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases.” Two-thirds of the scientists surveyed (65.9 percent) disagreed
with the statement, with nearly half (45.7 percent) scoring it with a 1 or 2, indicating strong disagreement. Only 10.9 percent scored it with a 6 or 7, indicating strong agreement. See here for the full survey results.

In an Open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and the head of states of many nations dated December 13, 2007, titled "UN Climate Conference Taking the World in Entirely the Wrong Direction", more than 100 specialists from around the world, many who are leading scientists, state that "It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages." The letter states than recent climate changes have been well with-in the bounds of known natural variability. It further states that climate models can not predict climate, that there has been no global warming since 1998, that the IPCC has ignored much significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming, and attempts to cut emissions will slow development, and is likely to increase human suffering from future climate change rather than to decrease it.  See here for the letter as published by the National Post.

A report to the USSenate lists 400 qualified scientists from around the world who dispute the claims by IPCC and others, that "climate science is settled" and that there is a "consensus". See here.

There is no consensus on whether or to what degree human activities are causing “the problem”, or even whether there is a problem. Global cooling, widely predicted in the 1970s, would have been much more dangerous than warming.

Effects of Warming

The IPCC and related groups have suggested several adverse effects of global warming. Real world data shows that these claims are mostly false. They ignore the huge benefits of warming and of CO2 emissions on plant growth.

      Global Sea Level Rise Is Not Accelerating

There has been no change in the rate of sea level rise in the last 100 years as shown below.
                   Sea Level Data







Mean global sea level (gsl) (top), with its shaded 95% confidence interval, and mean gsl rate (bottom), with its shaded standard error interval. Adapted from Jevrejeva et al. (2006). See here from CO2science.

The IPCC AR4 estimates that "Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3] mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003, about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8] mm per year." It also states "There is high confidence that the
rate of observed sea level rise increased from the 19th to the 20th century."

Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, who has spent a lifetime in the study of sea levels, says “There is a total absence of any recent ‘acceleration in sea level rise’ as often claimed by IPCC and related groups.”. Read his fascinating interview "Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud" June 22, 2007 EIR Economics 33.

Dr. Morner says the global sea level has been rising at 1.1 mm/year from 1850 to about 1940, then no increase to 1970. The IPCC uses a tide gauge in Hong Kong that shows 2.3 mm/year of sea level rise. The tide gauge is located where the land is known to be subsiding, so the record should not be used. Satellite altimetry data from the TOPEX/POSEIDON mission measures the sea level relative to the centre of the Earth (rather than relative to the coast) since 1992.


                        Satellite altimetry of TOPEX/POSEIDON

The graph above from Morner, 2004, shows the original satellite sea level data from 1992 to early 2000. Other than the effect of the 1997/98 El Nino, the data shows no sea level rise.

The satellite data shows no increase, but the IPCC adds a "correction factor" to the satellite data to make it agree with the tide gauge data at 2.3 mm/year. This data is presented as satellite data, but Morner says "it is a falsification of the data set".

                   Satellite Altimetry Data of TOPEX/POSEIDON Tilted Back to Original Level

The graph above from Morner, 2005, shows the satellite altimetry sea level data from 1993 to 2003 tilted back to the original level by excluding the tide-gauge factor. It shows variability around zero plus ENSO events.

See here for Dr. Morner's Memoradum paper, which was presented to the United Kingdom's House of Lords.

Satellite altimetry Topex/Poseidon data is adjusted by the University of Colorado for NASA to match the rate of sea level rise measured by a set of 64 tide gauges. Any difference between the raw satellite measurement and the tide gauge measurement is assumed to be the sum of satellite measurement drift error and the vertical land movement at the tide gauge location. A separate estimate of the land movement is made mainly by using "doppler orbitography and radiopositioning integrated by satellite" (DORIS) data at the tide gauge location. The raw satellite data is tilted by applying the satellite measurement drift as determined by the tide gauges. See here  and here for a description of how satellite data is calibrated from a set of tide gauges.

A famous tree in the Maldives shows no evidence of having been swept away by rising sea levels, as would be predicted by the global warming advocates. A group of Australian global-warming advocates came along and pulled the tree down, destroying the evidence that their “theory” was false.

The "INQUA Commission on Sea-Level Change and Coastal Evolution" led by Dr. Morner, prepared as estimate that the global sea level will rise 10 cm plus or minus 10 cm in the next 100 years. Dr. Morner has since revised his estimate to 5 cm per 100 years after considering data of the Sun activity suggesting that the warming trend may have ended and the Earth may be headed into a cooling trend.

It seems increasingly likely that a warming will increase precipitation and ice accumulation in the Polar Regions, and thus slow down or even reverse the ongoing sea level rise.
See here update 10.

The Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory estimates the rate of sea level rise at 1.42 plus or minus 0.14 mm/year for the period 1954 to 2003. This is less than the estimate of 1.91 plus or minus 0.14 mm/year for the period 1902 to 1953, indicating a slowing of the rate.
See here for an analysis of sea level rise by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory.

Wöppelmann et al used global positioning satellite (GPS) stations to correct tide gauge data for vertical land movements. In a 2007 paper, Wöppelmann et al analyzed data from 160 GPS stations that were within 15 km of tide gauges to determine the vertical movement of the tide gauges. They determined that the global average sea-level rise from January 1999 to August 2005, after correcting the tide gauge data by the vertical land movement, was 1.31 +/- 0.30 mm/year. Note that this estimate is 58% less than the estimate reported (1993 - 2003) in the IPCC AR4. See here from World Climate Report, and the study abstract here.

The movie "An Inconvenient Truth" (AIT) suggests that the Antarctic ice sheet could melt, but in fact the temperature of Antarctica has been declining over the last 25 years by 0.11 Celsius per decade. There has been no significant melting during previous warm periods when temperatures were warmer than today.

               Antarctica Temperatures 1979 - 2006 MSU Data Set (Latitude -90 to -70)









This graph was created from the MSU Data from www.CO2Science.org.

Antarctica ice sheet has been growing in thickness by 5 mm/year (1992 to 2003) according to a recent mass balance study. This net extraction of water from the global ocean, according to Wingham et al., occurs because "mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic mass loss from West Antarctica."





A similar story is found in Greenland. The warmest period was not the last quarter century. Rather, as Vinther et al. report, "the warmest year in the extended Greenland temperature record was 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s were the warmest decades." In fact, their newly-lengthened record reveals there has been no net warming of the region over the last 75 years. A study of the Greenland ice sheet by Johannessen et al. found that below 1500 meters, the mean change of ice sheet height with time was a decline of 2.0 ± 0.9 cm/year, qualitatively in harmony with the statements of Alley et al.; but above 1500 meters, there was a positive growth rate of fully 6.4 ± 0.2 cm/year. Averaged over the entire ice sheet, the mean result was also positive, at a value of 5.4 ± 0.2 cm/year, which when adjusted for an isostatic uplift of about 0.5 cm/year yielded a mean growth rate of approximately 5 cm/year, for a total increase in the mean thickness of the Greenland Ice Sheet of about 55 cm over the 11-year period, which was primarily driven by accumulation of increased snowfall over the ice sheet.

A recent study by Zwally et al. 2007 found the Greenland ice sheet have experienced a net accumulation of ice which is producing a 0.03 ± 0.01 mm/year decline in sea-level.

    Severe Weather

The IPCC claims that global warming will result in more severe weather. This doesn't make any sense, as most storms are caused by a difference in temperatures of colliding air masses. If CO2 warms the Polar Regions there will be smaller temperature differences, and less severe storms. All other things being equal, a warmer world should have fewer, not more, severe storms.

Unlike most storms, hurricanes are caused by difference in temperatures between the sea surface and the storm top.

Researchers Knutson and Tuleya examined a suite of climate models and found that they virtually unanimously projected that in a CO2-enhanced world, the middle and upper troposphere will warm at a faster rate than the surface, especially over the tropical oceans. More warming aloft than at the surface makes the atmosphere more stable and less conducive to storm formation. Thus, Knutson and Tuleya reported that the model-projected vertical stability increases in the future would temper (but not totally cancel out) the increase in storm intensity by rising sea surface temperature.

However, researchers Vecchi and Soden found that the climate models almost unanimously project that there will be an increase in the vertical wind shear during the hurricane season which also acts to inhibit tropical cyclone formation. The combined result is that any increase in hurricane intensity will be so small as to be largely undetectable. Incidentally, the actual vertical wind shear of Atlantic hurricanes have been declining since 1973, the opposite of the trend predicted by the climate models. See here.

There is absolutely no evidence of increasing severe storm events in the real world data. Here is a graph of hurricane intensity for the USA.


For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the World Meteorological Organization, "Reliable data ... since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased."

Gulev, et al (2000) employed NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data since 1958 to study the occurrence of winter storms over the northern hemisphere. They found a statistically significant (at the 95% level) decline of 1.2 cyclones per year for the period, during which temperatures reportedly rose in much of the hemisphere.

"Global warming causes increased storminess" makes for interesting headlines. It also violates fundamental scientific truth and the lessons of history.

    Warming is Good for Your Health

 The health benefits of a warmer planet are many times greater than any harmful effect. The positive health effects of heat have been well documented over the past quarter century.  The early studies of Bull (1973) and Bull and Morton (1975a,b) in England and Wales, for example, demonstrated that even normal changes in temperature are typically associated with inverse changes in death rates, especially in older people.  That is, when temperatures rise, death rates fall, while when temperatures fall, death rates rise.

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