Pretty interesting read from Hot Talk/Cold Science
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OAKLAND, California--In recent weeks, as delegations from 150 countries prepared to discuss stringent and mandatory measures to combat global warming at a December meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto, environmental activists and their bureaucratic allies have tried to stifle public debate by claiming that the evidence was "compelling" and the science "settled." But according to physicist S. Fred Singer, former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Program and chairman of the U.S. investigation into climate effects of the supersonic transport (SST), the science on global warming is neither settled, nor compelling, nor even convincing.
In Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate (Oakland, California: Independent Institute 1997), Singer presents a comprehensive assessment of scientific controversies on the climate change issue. Most disturbing, he says, is that the proposals being put forth at Kyoto are based on forecasts from flawed computer models of the Earth's climate, and not on actual observations. Although the models are improving over time (and their warming forecasts growing smaller), they still cannot simulate clouds, predict the occurrence of El Ninos nor adequately account for the climate effects of volcanic eruptions. In effect, he says, modelers are holding up a black box and saying: "Trust us. It's in there." Many atmospheric scientists are not so sure.
While global average temperatures have increased about 1 degree F in the last century, almost all of this occurred before 1940 and is considered by most atmospheric scientists--including respected Swedish meteorologist Bert Bolin, former chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--to be a natural recovery from the "Little Ice Age," a period of much colder temperatures between the years 1450 and 1850. In the last 50 years the temperature increase has been negligible; in the last 20 years, according to global satellite data, temperatures have actually fallen slightly.
Singer points out that the Earth's history, both recent and geologic, shows evidence of many natural and unexplained temperature fluctuations. Even over the last 3,000 years of recorded history, some of these changes were larger and more rapid than those forecast by the models. What is more, there is no evidence that recent droughts, floods, snowstorms or other severe weather-related phenomena are at all related to global temperature. Since 1950, the severity and frequency of hurricanes has actually been decreasing.
Recent research has raised important questions about the causes of natural climate change, and pointed to more cost-effective remediation for the build-up of CO2, should that be needed. Scientists have now uncovered potentially new climate mechanisms, most intriguing being the effect of variations over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. There are indications that contrails from commercial airline traffic--increasing at 5 percent per year--could be producing a slight regional warming over Europe and North America. Preliminary studies of ice cores and ocean sediment cores indicate that assumptions about warmer temperatures producing a rise in sea level could be false. Finally, successful experiments with ocean fertilization hold the promise of drawing down CO2 and using it to increase fish stocks.
The three reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change--each of them dense reading of 300 plus pages--have been good compilations of global warming science up to the point of publication. But few people read the IPCC reports, says Singer. Instead, they read the politically approved Policymakers Summaries, which have become notorious for consistently overstating the problem.
The reality is that the more scientists study climate, the more aware they are of its incredible complexity. "Theoretically, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide should be enhancing the greenhouse effect, says Singer, but that doesn't appear to be happening. We need to know why. Until we do, governments should not rush forward with ill-defined schemes that have no scientific foundation, will not reduce atmospheric CO2, and--as we have seen with the Montreal Protocol banning chlorofluocarbons--are globally unenforceable."
