THE GLOBAL WARMING "CRISIS"
DATA
In spite of continued warm-mongering by the UN, the Media, Al Gore, and many other politicians, Nature refuses to cooperate.
Since 1998, there has been no global warming. Since 2002, the world has cooled. You can see below the record, by month, of worldwide temperature observed by NOAA satellites since 1979.
The "global warming crisis" hoax began in June 1988, when James Hansen of NASA testified before a Senate committee. As you can see, the world is about the same now as then - approximately 0.3 C above the 20 year average (1979-1998). It has occasionally been warmer, and cooler. The natural variability, year to year (+.75, -0.5 C) is greater than any trend. The cooling between January 2007 and now is unexplained. At this time (November 09), a moderate El Nino (oceanic warming) is underway. Carbon dioxide (CO2) content has continued to increase since the beginning of this record.
You can see the most current global atmospheric temperature here.
You might wonder what kind of data this is. Since 1979, NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has been flying weather satellites with microwave sensors that can measure atmospheric temperature (microwave sensors "see" through clouds). Data from these sensors is processed and reported by the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH); it's also processed by a private company, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) of Santa Cruz, CA. The satellite data is the best measurement of worldwide temperature we have, since much of Earth is covered by oceans, where there aren't any weather stations. Even on land, many weather station measurements are distorted by heat from cities, from asphalt pavements, from heat exhausts, and other un-natural heat. It's referred to as "the urban heat island" (UHI) effect ; at best, we can only try to correct for it. Satellites don't have that problem either.
And this Summer in the US? Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania just experienced their coolest July on record. Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Michigan each had their second coolest July on record, while Minnesota and Tennessee had their third coolest July on record. The number on each state gives the rank in the 115 year climate history. "1" is the coldest ever for the states so marked. Colorado, at 64, is close to average (57). Summer 09, across the 48 states, was #34 out of 115 years of US climate history; October 09 was the third coldest in US history. You can examine climatic data from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) here
Since it became apparent after 1998 that atmospheric temperature (measured by NOAA satellites) wasn't going up, and was even starting to go down, the alarmists began claiming [Hansen et al, Science 308 , 1431 (2005)] that the heat being held back by CO2 was going into the oceans. Hansen's paper calculates how much heat the oceans must be gaining; it's a tremendous number, since water has a very large heat capacity. Hansen's figures tell us that the oceanic heat must be increasing by 1.39 x 10^22 Joules per year (J/yr).
Instead, the heat content of the oceans has been decreasing since 2004, as calculated by Joshua Willis at Jet Propulsion Lab. We taxpayers support a worldwide network of oceanographic buoys, which report ocean temperatures down to 700 meters (2100 feet) below the surface. The figure is fully explained in a paper by
Prof. Roger Pielke Sr.
our formost Colorado climatologist. Briefly, he points out that if CO2 is trapping infrared heat emissions, the oceans ought to be increasing their heat content (and you thought climate science was difficult!). The theoretical models from NASA (James Hansen, Gore's favorite scientist) require that the heat content increase by more than 10^22 Joules/year. Instead, Willis's calculations show a trend DOWN of 0.12x10^22 Joules/year.
So, the NOAA satellites tell us the atmosphere is cooling, and the NOAA ocean buoys tell us the oceans are losing heat. What does this mean:
- In spite of claims by politicians that we are threatened by "global warming,", the real threat is "global cooling." In the 1970's, thousands of people in the Sahel Region of Africa starved when the African Monsoon, which brings rain to the Sahel grassland, did not arrive. Cold weather - not warming - stopped the African Monsoon. Another global cooling will kill far more.
- Models of climate - the ONLY support for claims of "global warming/change - are wrong. Data rules; models of climate are trash.
One of the high points in Mr. Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" propaganda is his claim that sea level is going to rise by 20 feet or so and drown major coastal cities - supposedly in this century. Here's what actual sea level has been doing for the last century - the century of warming that Mr. Gore warns about.
That's the last century of mean sea level rise. You might notice that there isn't any single place you can go and measure "the" sea level; sea level is calculated from many independent measurements around the world. Some records rise while other records fall. Since 1992, sea level has been measured by satellite altimeters, and processed by the University of Colorado at Boulder (http://sealevel.colorado.edu/). Sea level rise has slowed since 2004, after many centuries of slowly rising (about 2 millimeters (mm) per year.) Two mm per year is about 8 inches per century. The oceans have been rising since the most recent Glacial Age, which ended 20,000 years ago. The oceans rose because they were warming after the Glacial Age (water expands as it warms). Twenty feet doesn't seem likely anytime soon. Another of many alarmist lies.
Man, you wimpy Americans are nothing like us Norsemen. I'm kind of ashamed of you - since, in a sense, I 
was the First American. We Norse found this continent a thousand years ago. Now you're letting Socialist politicians - like the ones I left behind in Europe - take it away from you. Lucky Leif
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Rev. Feb 09