THE WEATHERMEN

Art Horn

From Energy Tribune
Global Warming is Neither

We have heard the dire predictions from many different sources. Magazine articles have warned that in the coming years the Earth will warm rapidly. Television shows portray dramatic and alarming images of rising sea levels and animal extinctions. Network news programs report the latest scary forecasts from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These predictions are said to be undeniable and are believed by most climate scientists. Studies from major colleges and universities say burning of fossil fuels will produce “tipping points” and after reaching these points there will be no turning back the heat. Coastal cities will be flooded. Polar bears will drown or starve and will soon be gone. Deserts will spread and cover vast areas of farm land. Fires will burn out of control and the Amazon rainforest will burn to a crisp. Hurricanes will explode with unheard of devastation. Climate Armageddon will mean the end of our world as we know it.

This all sounds pretty scary. What if you’re in the business of energy? What effects will global warming have on the industry 5, 10, 15 to 20 years from now? The predictions of future climate are made by computer models. A computer model is made of line after line of computer code that is written in a way to attempt to simulate what the real climate of the Earth will be in the future. Information about what the real atmosphere is doing is fed to the model and the model attempts to predict the Earth’s climate. These predictions are saying that the Earth’s average temperature will rise 6 to 12 degrees by the year 2100. If we take an average of an 8 degree rise by 2100 we come up with an increase of 1 degree every 10 years for the next 90 years. But is this actually happening or going to happen? Let’s see how they have done so far.

The early results are not very good. In 2001 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that by 2009 the average temperature of the Earth would be one degree warmer than it was in 2001. That is a very big number. In fact it is equal to all the warming that has taken place over the last 100 years. But it did not happen. In fact the average temperature of the Earth in 2009 is about one-half degree cooler than it was in 2001. This is such a bad forecast that it is the equivalent of saying we will have a sunny day with highs in the 90s and instead we get a snowstorm with temperatures in the 20s. And yet these are the same forecasts that we are relying on to make future energy policy for entire nations.

Temperature readings from around the world tell us there has been no increase in temperature for 11 years. The average temperature of the Earth has been going down for the last 8 years. But you will never see this on any news program, read it in any newspaper or hear it on any radio show. There are five institutions that track global temperature: The Hadley Center in England, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, the Remote Sensing Systems of California, the University of Alabama at Huntsville and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). All of these centers show no warming for 11 years and all show the temperature falling for the last 8 years at varying degrees.

Many people read magazines and newspapers and listen to morning or evening news programs on television. These publications and news programs point to things like the melting of glaciers to prove global warming is real. The melting of glaciers is not new. It began over 250 years ago when the Earth began to warm from a deep freeze know as “The Little Ice Age.” During that time the Earth’s temperature bottomed out in the 1600s. Since then, the Earth has been warming.

What about the polar bears? I speak in many schools to young students about weather and climate. When I ask for all of those who believe the polar bears are drowning to raise their hand they all go up. This is unfortunate because the truth is far different. The 1960s population estimation of polar bears was 5,000. Today that number is 25,000. That does not sound like a creature going extinct. There are predictions about what will happen to polar bears but the reality is that they are thriving.

Rising sea level is one of the biggest threats from human-made global warming. Business man and carbon entrepreneur Al Gore predicts sea level will rise 20 feet by 2100. In reality sea level has been rising ever since the last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago. It is now rising about eight inches per century and there has been no acceleration of that rise. The reason there has been no acceleration of sea level rise is because the Arctic, Greenland and the Antarctic are not melting. We have only been able to measure the amount of ice at the top and bottom of the world for 30 years. Polar orbiting satellites were launched in 1979 to take pictures of the ice. Arctic ice is highly variable and in 2007, it hit a low volume. The ice has been increasing for the last 2 years and is 17 percent above what is was in 2007. The amount of ice in the Arctic and in Greenland is largely regulated by the 60-year water temperature cycle of the North Atlantic Ocean. The water was warming in the 1980s up until about 2005. The Atlantic is now beginning to show a cooling trend. There is more ice in Antarctica now than there was 30 years ago. Fifty years ago the average annual temperature at the South Pole was 49 degrees below zero. Today, the average annual temperature at the South Pole is 49 degrees below zero. All of the highest world record temperatures by continent were set before 1943 except for Antarctica where it reached 59 degrees on January 5, 1974.

So where does this leave us? When humans burn fossil fuels they create a small amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the air. Carbon dioxide levels have been rising for at least 150 years, yet there is no relationship in the long-term temperature record. The Earth’s temperature rose from about 1908 to 1943. Carbon dioxide levels were rising as well. Then from 1944 to 1977, the Earth’s temperature fell. Carbon dioxide levels continued to rise during this time. From 1978 to 1998 the temperature rose again while carbon dioxide levels continued to increase. Since that time, the temperature has not increased, despite the fact that carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise. How can this be? According to global warming theory if the amount of carbon dioxide increases, so must the average global temperature.

The reason is because the theory is wrong. Studies of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show that the temperature of the Earth rises first then carbon dioxide levels rise. The increase in carbon dioxide levels in the air is the result of warmer temperature, not the cause of it. The ice core record proves this. Al Gore had it backwards. This is not surprising since he is not a scientist. He is an activist business man selling a product.

As global temperature continues to fall over the next decade the world will wake up. This will eventually have deep and profound effects on energy markets. Hydrocarbon-based products will become more valuable. The value of alternative energy sources like wind, solar and bio fuels will collapse. In step with that collapse will be the demise of carbon credits originating from cap and trade policies. Just when this will happen depends of the severity of the next several winters. The depth of the cold of the coming winters will change the social and political climate in ways that only nature can orchestrate.


Art Horn is a meteorologist with 25 years of television experience with NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS. His company, The "Art" of Weather, presents programs about weather and climate to adults and students. He lives in Connecticut.


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THE WEATHERMEN

Rich Apuzzo Chief Meteorologist and Chief Operating Officer at Skyeye Weather LLC

The science and politics of climate change

I am the Voice of America...

From the beginning, the premise of man-made or anthropogenic global warming was part of a political movement designed to increase government regulation and to push tax dollars toward special interest groups. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out many years ago, the environmental movement is the new home of socialism, although we’re seeing that philosophy being practiced by many outside the movement in the U.S. government…

In the mid to late 1970s we heard about global cooling and scientists were certain that the next ice age was about to begin. You may not recall this, but the cooling was also blamed on man, but not because of CO2. At that time it was particulate, dust, smoke, etc. that we were putting into the air. It was supposed to be dimming the incoming sunshine leading to colder ground, colder air, more snow and ice and a rapid shift into the next ice age, and the cold winters of the 1960s and 70s were a sure sign that the ice age had begun…not quite. A change to warmer summers and winters began in the 1980s and continued through the 1990s, but that didn’t deter the people with a mission to restrict our freedoms, attack capitalism and infuse the American culture with an increasing array of Marxist – Socialist policies.

Climate change and the propaganda supporting it was part of the new “Green Movement”, the next home for the 1960s radicals after the war protests started to fade away in the early 1970s…though the change began on April 22, 1970 during our first “Earth Day”. Not surprisingly, it was a government official that proposed Earth Day and kicked started the environmental movement which has expanded in so many directions today.

Like so many laws and regulations that have shifted our society further from our nation’s roots, on the surface the idea of clean air and clean water was something no one could oppose, and there were many people who believed that this was the true goal behind environmentalism. Who could be against it? Who (politically) could possibly say no to measures that force corporations to use less energy and put out cleaner water and air? Who doesn’t want cleaner cars and more efficient light bulbs? These are all great things, but not when mandated by government. The free market has always been an excellent catalyst for change because it works off of trial and error. If we try a new technology and it falls flat, we move on…we don’t impose it on people despite its potential weaknesses or hazards (compact fluorescent bulbs) and then regulate the old industry out of business. The natural demand for better technology would have produced a growing economy and cleaner cars, fuels, water and air just because the consumer wanted it, and there would have been a gradual shift from the old technology to the new, allowing workers to get educated and assume new roles instead of being cast out as their industry disappeared almost overnight.More...

Earth Day and the environmental movement are all about political correctness and good intentions, but remember the age old saying that “Hell is paved with good intentions”. For a little background on Earth Day and its founder, here is an excerpt from the Earth Day website:

Earth Day -- April 22 -- each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Apollo 13, the Beatles' last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, the birth of Mariah Carey, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina -- an incident not acknowledged for 18 years.

It was into such a world that the very first Earth Day was born.

Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest "to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda." "It was a gamble," he recalls, "but it worked."

At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.

Earth Day 1970 turned that all around.

On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Sound familiar? A government backed movement?

Less than a decade later, the same scientists and movement organizers who blamed man for causing cooling were faced with an end to the cold winters of the 70s and were having to confront the reality of a warmer climate as the sun became more active and a number of strong El Ninos (above normal ocean temperatures) developed in the Pacific Ocean. To fit their agenda, they needed a new man-made cause, and the natural target was big oil, gas and coal…carbon, or more specifically carbon dioxide. However, there were a number of critical steps in going from cooling to warming, and you may be surprised to learn that part of the shift happened overseas under the leadership of a Conservative in England…Margaret Thatcher. This article explains most of it rather well: http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm

Then again, she was hardly alone. Here in the United States, the environmental movement and supportive politicians initiated the procedures within the United Nations to create the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Like every story, it is complex and has many layers, but if you read slowly and carefully, and re-read some parts, this article really spells out the amazing series of events in our culture that led to the IPCC and the subsequent findings from that panel which guide policy-making today.

http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=157&Itemid=1

However, there have been big changes since the founding of the IPCC…one of the biggest being the World Wide Web, and unlike the 1970s with only the government and left-leaning media for our information, we now have numerous sources of alternative media such as talk radio and thousands of pages of information on the internet. Scientists from all over the world can now communicate immediately online and new studies are published more easily, making them available to the public in minutes instead of printed studies which took weeks or months to be released.

This time around we’re smarter and not being blindly led by the media or environmentalists and we’re pushing back…standing up for science and common sense. Instead of having to print out long articles, I can simply link you to them for you to read whenever you wish…and that’s what I have done below. I have also listed my favorite websites for getting new information every day. Remember, we now surround them! The environmentalists are right about one thing, we do need a cleaner environment, but it starts by cleaning up the corruption in Washington D.C.

Here are some of the problems with the claims of man-made global warming. We only have about 200 years of good surface temperature data, and the most reliable was from the last 100 years. In other words, we’re talking about 100 years of generally reliable daily data on a planet that’s more than 4 billion years old. That’s less than a blip on the geologic time scale. We couldn’t discern a trend from such a short period if we wanted to, but it gets worse.

Did you know that we’re getting data from only 1/6 the number of reporting stations we had back in the 1970s? That’s right…the surface temperatures used in the global dataset come from just over 1,000 stations now, but back in the 1970s that number was over 6,000! Some stations have been closed but many others are just being ignored, and it won’t surprise you that many of those stations are in rural and colder areas of the world. Check out this amazing animation of the disappearing weather stations.

Here’s more about the missing data: Surface stations are disappearing…


Station Data Missing Worldwide article…

Station Data missing for some NASA stations…

The stations that are still being used are primarily in or near urban areas, so naturally they have higher readings over time since most cities continue to grow and are directly affected by the Urban Heat Island effect. In addition, many stations used in the annual dataset are not properly sited, which means that the thermometers are improperly placed near roads, buildings, and large heating or air conditioning units. Meteorologist Anthony Watts has done extensive research on this problem:

http://www.surfacestations.org/

Not only that, but a much more reliable source of global temperature data (satellites) shows a different picture of the past 30 to 40 years, and more importantly, we’re seeing a departure in temperature trends when comparing satellite data to the biased surface data I discussed above. You’ll also learn more about the disappearing weather stations in this post.

Even with the warm bias and diminishing number of weather stations used in the yearly global survey, temperature trends were not going the way that global warming believers expected, so reports were being released with bad data, clearly favoring an agenda and not the facts, and these reports came from sources we’re supposed to trust, NASA and the National Weather Service (NOAA). Here is one example.

NASA was wrong about warmest years…

In late 2008 we learned that October 2008 was the warmest on record, but then learned that bad data was used to make that claim, which has since then been dismissed.

More recently we saw the same bad claim about global ocean temperatures which were supposedly the warmest on record for July…but now we know better.

Between the short duration of surface station data available on earth (200 years or less in most areas), an even shorter period for satellite data (since the 1960s) and even less time for reliable ocean measurements (1980s for satellite data and 2000 for good ocean buoy data), and now knowing that there are biases in some of that data, we really don’t have a handle on any kind of temperature trend, warming or cooling. Even with tree rings and sediment samples from oceans and lakes the data is sparse for the billions of years leading up to today, but there is something to be learned from the data we have. We know that the planet has been much warmer in the past and levels of CO2 have been much, much higher.

4 Billion Years of Climate Change

Chart showing the warmest years since 1920

A little more about historic CO2 levels

There is even some thought that CO2 Causes Cooling

Knowing that CO2 levels are nowhere close to what we have seen in Earth’s past, and even if we allow that temperatures were rising in the 80s and 90s, and have been steady or falling since 2002, there is so much more to understand about the bad claims being made by the believers and beyond that, there is even more that we simply don’t know or don’t understand.

Here is another claim about man’s effect on climate…the oceans will rise and flood coastal cities. Well, the ocean has not risen in nearly 10 years and the overall rate for the past century is well below the official IPCC forecast, and orders of magnitude below Al Gore’s predictions:

Slowdown in Sea Level Rise?


More on the Sea Level Rise…it is not!

Maldives are not being overrun by sea level rise

The oceans are not rising and our cities will not flood, and speaking of oceans, our hurricanes are not more numerous or stronger as had been predicted. In fact, we’re in our third straight year of below average tropical activity, not only in the Atlantic Ocean, but around the world. Here is the report from 2008.

In a related story, we’re not seeing disappearing ice in the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Here is a recent story dispelling rumors of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets collapsing. There is even a video showing ice cycles and growth of the ice sheets at the South Pole. Here is a study that shows a predominantly icy period over the past 1 million years across the globe…and we’re headed that way again sooner than you think. The changes at the North Pole are also normal and there have been times in the past with very little ice in the Arctic Circle and times when navigation was impossible. Here is a look back at what the British faced in the 1700s and 1800s. Here are some great videos showing how Arctic sea ice is driven as much by winds as any other force, and you can see the big swings in ice cover since the late 1970s (scroll down to the end of the article). Here is another great video showing ice being pushed from the Arctic Circle into the Atlantic Ocean by strong winds, not warming.

So let’s see where we stand. Air temperatures have been stable or cooling for 7 years, ocean temperatures have varied, mainly due to the influences of El Nino, but we’re seeing no warming. In fact, the Pacific Ocean has slipped into a long-term cooling pattern known as the negative phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and that means our planet’s largest ocean is getting cooler. Sea levels are not rising at any level that we need to worry about, storms are not any stronger or more deadly and CO2 and temperature levels have been much higher in the past. The ice sheets at the North and South Poles are not disappearing (they’re getting larger) and Polar Bears are not declining in numbers…they’re increasing!

Here is a recent article that hits on a number of the topics covered above, and it’s an easy read.

Posted on Aug. 18, 2008

By Joseph D’Aleo, executive director of Icecap

12 Facts about Global Climate Change That You Won’t Read in the Popular Press


And here’s another great article putting the debate in political context:

09/01/2009

Dr. Syun Akasofu: 20 points of context on global warming, politics, and the economy of the world.

Here is the Senator Inhofe (R-Okla.) statement I referred to at the VOA Rally:

08/31/2009


Climate bill delayed and in “disarray”
From the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works


Did you know that the computer models used to generate the future forecasts were programmed with faulty science? They were “too sensitive” to the effects of CO2. Learn more here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html

Finally, we’re in a period of low solar activity that no one living has ever witnessed. In fact, we’re experiencing the quietest sun in over 100 years and may be well on our way to the next Little Ice Age or even a full-blown ice age.

Here is a page showing the historic tracking of days without sunspots. The chart that really tells it all is “Periods with spotless days since 1849”. As of the creation of this article, we’re in the top 3 with 55 spotless days, and no signs of activity returning. Why is this important? It is important because the lack of sunspots indicates a “weaker” sun, which is putting out less energy. For our purposes it means less radiation for warmth on earth, and significant periods without sunspots in the past were directly tied to much colder periods, including the Little Ice Age, a time which featured at least 3 distinct stretches of a quiet sun. We’re on pace to match those quiet periods, or even set new records for a weaker sun and that may well mean brutal winters, reduced agricultural output, increases in illness and disease, and a much larger demand for energy for heating, especially in the northern hemisphere.

The sun not only provides energy to earth, but the solar wind protects our planet from deep space radiation, most notably, Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs). The weaker sun is allowing more Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) into our atmosphere. The GCRs are not dangerous…don’t worry about that…but they have been linked to an increase in low cloud development. If that’s true, then we can not only expect cooling because of a weaker sun, but more and thicker cloud cover which reflects incoming solar radiation, enhancing the cooling effect over time. You can keep track of the sun’s activity here.

As science finally takes the lead in this debate, you might enjoy this great list of everything blamed on global warming…you’ll be amazed.

One more thing before I let you go. There is so much that we don’t know about how our climate works, and there is probably even more that we don’t know that we don’t know…or more simply, things that are undiscovered, that we don’t realize are missing from our discussions and assumptions and calculations. On that note, did you know that the models being used to predict climate trends are outdated and unreliable? I am not a software expert, but this article is intriguing.

I am learning new things every week from scientists around the world. It is foolish to think that man can control climate on such a grand scale (but not for the lack of trying), and we waste a great deal of valuable time, energy and money trying to find blame instead of following the scientific path to truth. We’ll hit dead ends, sure, and we’ll overturn old thinking, but there is so much more to learn and attempting to make policy that will impact billions of people worldwide is just wrong, unethical and immoral. The movement was never about science, as we now know. It was and is about power, control and a progressive, socialist-Marxist agenda that is determined to overthrow the greatness of the United States and the founding principles. Their determination will fall short because, as Glenn Beck first said, “We Surround Them”! Keep sharing the knowledge and striving for truth good will defeat evil…

Here are some great sites I check almost daily for the latest studies and opinion:

Watts Up With That: http://wattsupwiththat.com/

Climate Depot: http://www.climatedepot.com/

ICECAP: http://icecap.us/index.php

Dr. Roy Spencer: http://www.drroyspencer.com/

Roger Pielke: http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/about_us/meet_us/roger_pielke/

SPPI: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/

Climate Audit: http://www.climateaudit.org/

An Honest Climate Debate: http://anhonestclimatedebate.wordpress.com/

About Richard Lindzen: http://www-eaps.mit.edu/faculty/lindzen.htm


This document was prepared by Meteorologist Rich Apuzzo at Skyeye Weather LLC


Rich Apuzzo

Chief Meteorologist

Skyeye Weather LLC

THE WEATHERMEN

Dave Dahl - Chief Meteorologist KTSP

FROM- Hudson Star-Observer

Meteorologist says man not cause of climate issue

Dave Dahl, chief meteorologist at KSTP in the Twin Cities, told Hudson Rotarians that man is not the culprit when it comes to global warming, or climate change, issues.

Dahl spoke to the Hudson Thursday Noon Rotary Club on July 9 and said what was called “global warming” is now tabbed “climate change” because temperatures on the planet have decreased in the past couple years.

“Over 30,000 scientists are now saying that humans are not causing changes in global conditions,” Dahl said. “The climate has ‘changed’ since the planet began.”

He said that the heating of the earth — which is mostly a good thing — is caused primarily by water vapor — about 98 percent. He said carbon and other elements account for about 2 percent of the mix. Of that 2 percent, human involvement represents only about 2 percent of that (.0004 percent).

“It is my feeling, and the opinion of more and more scientists, that the sun is the driving force behind climate changes — heating and cooling,” Dahl said. “Solar activity, including flares and sunspots, is usually quite active during warm stretches. The activity has been very quiet the past couple of years and the temperatures have dropped.”

He said last year’s solar activity was the quietest in 100 years. So far in 2009, the activity is even less.

“In the northern hemisphere, the 2007-08 winter was the coldest in 50 years and 2008-09 was the coldest in a century,” Dahl said.

Another flaw in the entire system is the recording of temperatures around the world, he said.

“The United States has the most reputable system, but the recording system in nearly nine out of 10 locations does not meet National Weather Service standards. Many of the sites are located on tar roofs, next to air conditioner exhaust fans, etc. The records are questionable.”

He said we should be using only satellite information, which shows that temperatures have been cooling for several years.

“Even believers of man-made ‘global warming’ have begun to realize that we do not face global warming — that’s why the terminology has been changed to ‘climate change,’” Dahl said.

Another key factor in the study of earth temperature is the sequence of events.

“People who believe in man-made global warming claim that an increase in carbon dioxide leads to global warming,” Dahl said. “Concrete scientific evidence shows throughout history that temperatures increase first, then carbon levels increase (carbon comes from many sources in addition to man-made pollution). That’s contrary to the claims made in the Al Gore movie (‘Inconvenient Truth’).”

Dahl claims that the Gore movie contains at least 50 factual errors — he called them absolutely false.

Dahl said that carbon spewed from one of the many volcanoes around the world adds much, much more carbon to the atmosphere than all the cars combined.

“I’m all for limiting pollution, but carbon is not necessarily a pollutant – plants would prefer more carbon,” Dahl said.

He noted that there has been much publicity about the shrinking of the polar ice cap.

“Evidence shows that the cap was much smaller in the 1930s when we went through a warm period,” Dahl said. “Siberian ice has grown 20 percent in the past two years.”

Dahl noted that throughout history there is evidence of warm and cold periods.

“It’s a recurring pattern and the sun in the key ingredient,” Dahl said. “The fact is, we could very well be headed for a cool period. Some scientists believe we are headed into a 20-30-year cooling trend based on historical patterns.”

He said it is unfortunate that the science of climate has been mixed in with political policy and political agendas.

“Many scientists are afraid to speak out because much of the funding comes from the government and they are afraid they will lose funding,” Dahl said.

“The political landscape endorses only one view — that humans are causing global warming. The policy-makers and media drive what people hear. People like to think that we can control our destiny — this is one thing we can’t control. People don’t like to hear that.”

Dahl hopes that what he considers to be the truth will become evident in the next five to 10 years

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THE WEATHERMEN

David Paul
Chief Meteorologist
KLFY

The Global Warming Debate

Where do you stand on the global warming debate? And why do you believe, what you believe? Have you done the research, or have you just heard what others say?

The mainstream media, movie-makers, and politicians are certainly trying to convince Americans the global warming debate is settled.

President Barack Obama: "There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy. It's happening."

Former Vice President al Gore: "...and the reality is that scientists have been warning us, with ever-greater clarity and ever-greater urgency, that we simply must start cutting the pollution that causes global warming."

But think again. Tens of thousands American scientists don't agree that anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming is threatening society as we know it.

A petition at www.petitionproject.com has the names of almost 32,000 American scientists as this report was put together.

Let's start with the basics. Is climate change real? Of course, the climate's been changing since the beginning of time. Are carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rising? Yes, but they've been much higher at times in the past, in fact, 20 times higher 500 million years ago. Is there a climate crisis? I say, absolutely not! But is the climate warming? Well, in recent decades, yes. But there's more to the story..."

The United States has perhaps the best climate monitoring system in the entire world. But the climate record is extremely short - only around 140 years for some of the longest stations. And in that time changes to the local environment and urbanization have undoubtedly given temperature readings a warm bias.

A comprehensive study by Anthony Watts reveals stunning problems. Eight hundred and fifty-four (854) of the 1221 official climate monitoring stations across the country were surveyed and nearly 90% are not properly sited.

Some are located next to buildings and heat-generating electrical equipment. This alone taints the climate record and leads to erroneous warming. Other changes have imparted irregular warming, such as changing the coating on the Stevenson screens, the shelters used to house thermometers, from a whitewash to latex paint in 1979.

An experiment by Watts proves the latex-painted shelters are slightly warmer than the whitewashed shelters. And then you have to account for the change in the actual thermometers, from those requiring manual readings to the new electronic version that's been gradually phased in since the mid 1980s.

But even with the warm bias in the records, it is safe to say we have seen a warming trend in recent decades. However, if you look at the temperature of the atmosphere just above the ground using satellite data, you'll actually see a gradual cooling trend since 2002. What's also worth pointing out is the global temperature spike in 1998 that was caused by a natural phenomenon - an historically strong El Nino in the Equatorial Pacific.

To figure out the climate record before thermometers and satellites we rely on ice core data, boreholes, tree ring analysis, and other means. Since the beginning of earth there have been distinct periods of warming and cooling. Well before man dominated the landscape.

So why the fuss lately about man-made global warming? The melting Arctic? Do you know we've only been monitoring the extent of Arctic ice via satellites since 1979? And while Arctic ice coverage has declined, it's actually been rising since 2006. And have you heard Antarctic sea ice has increased by nearly 14% since 1979?

The global warming crowd is quick to blame the release of carbon dioxide thru the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil, gasoline, natural gas, and coal, for warming our climate and setting us on a path for doom.

Since before the industrial revolution the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising, up to around 385 parts per million by volume today. That amounts to a miniscule 0.0385% of the atmosphere. Increased CO2 levels are beneficial to plants since they require carbon dioxide to grow. In this experiment, plants exposed to CO2 levels of 1,090 parts per million by volume by far exhibited the most growth.

So, does carbon dioxide drive the climate? The answer is no!

Natural cycles play a much bigger role with the sun at the top of the list. A look at total solar irradiance since 1600 shows a distinct correlation to temperature readings. Readings are higher now than anytime in the past 400 years!

Then there's El Nino Southern Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation, the Pacific-North American Teleconnection, Milankovitch forcing, ocean variations, and so on and so forth.

Is there any way to model all these variables? Again, the answer is no! The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, has tried and failed!

Back in 2001 the IPCC released a suite of computer model solutions depicting the future state of the atmosphere. These reports by the IPCC are used repeatedly to drive policy around the world. But, if you look at what's happened since then, global temperatures are actually on a downward trend, whether you look at actual thermometer readings across the world or satellite-derived temperatures. This when the IPCC models were predicting continued warming.

As a forecaster I'll tell you this. Forecasting in the short-term is fairly accurate compared to forecasting long-term. So if these climate models are so far off already, there's really little chance of them being right further out. That's because there's much more driving the climate than carbon dioxide.

There are so many variables at work, known and unknown, that not a single person, or computer model, can predict the future climate for sure.

Just know this; climate change has occurred in the past, is occurring now, and will occur in the future. Trying to pinpoint that change on carbon emissions and human activities...is really a stretch.

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THE WEATHERMEN

Bill Meck Chief Meteorologist WLEX TV, Lexington Kentucky

...Just for a bit of perspective, the first time I spoke of this was back in 1988 on a local show (Spartanburg, SC) called Clemson Today. This was in the midst of a horrific drought in the Carolinas and the first inklings of this current scare were just getting going. Keep in mind this is less than a decade after many of the same folks that were screaming that we're going to ruin the Earth were saying we were at the beginning of the next Ice Age (late '70s). By the way, when this scare first started we were supposed to be in climatic crisis by now...personally I haven't really noticed anything unusual. But it's important to note how the threshold of calamity keeps getting pushed more into the future...no verification....

....Now we talk about the cycle of climate. Would it surprise you to know that the world's temperature, stopped warming in 1998, even though we've allegedly suffered through (again cue ominous music) "The hottest years on record...." the last couple of years. The Arctic has seen climate fluctuations in the recent past. The most recent scary thing is how the Gulf Stream is shutting down, which will send Europe into a climate more like Canada. However, what you don't hear is that this has happened before, and will happen again, with or without man's influence....

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THE WEATHERMEN

Bill Steffen, Chief Meteorologist WOOD-TV Grand Rapids Michigan

My observation is that TV meteorologists are more skeptical of two things…first the total emphasis on man/C02 to the almost total exclusion of anything else in this climate debate….and second the nightmarish scenarios that dominate media coverage and a very vocal part of academia. We are skeptical of these computer models, partly because we do deal with them on a daily basis and know their math and therefore their limitations…but we are also skeptical of some of the modelers who have a financial and political interest in policy decisions that would result from action taken in response to their alarm. TV meteorologists are not beholden to big oil/industry or to the government grants and far-left policies that drive many of the alarmists.
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THE WEATHERMEN

James Spann







Well, well. Some “climate expert” on “The Weather Channel” wants to take away AMS certification from those of us who believe the recent “global warming” is a natural process. So much for “tolerance”, huh?

I have been in operational meteorology since 1978, and I know dozens and dozens of broadcast meteorologists all over the country. Our big job: look at a large volume of raw data and come up with a public weather forecast for the next seven days. I do not know of a single TV meteorologist who buys into the man-made global warming hype. I know there must be a few out there, but I can’t find them. Here are the basic facts you need to know:

*Billions of dollars of grant money is flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story. Even the lady at “The Weather Channel” probably gets paid good money for a prime time show on climate change. No man-made global warming, no show, and no salary. Nothing wrong with making money at all, but when money becomes the motivation for a scientific conclusion, then we have a problem. For many, global warming is a big cash grab.

*The climate of this planet has been changing since God put the planet here. It will always change, and the warming in the last 10 years is not much difference than the warming we saw in the 1930s and other decades. And, lets not forget we are at the end of the ice age in which ice covered most of North America and Northern Europe.

If you don’t like to listen to me, find another meteorologist with no tie to grant money for research on the subject. I would not listen to anyone that is a politician, a journalist, or someone in science who is generating revenue from this issue.

In fact, I encourage you to listen to WeatherBrains episode number 12, featuring Alabama State Climatologist John Christy, and WeatherBrains episode number 17, featuring Dr. William Gray of Colorado State University, one of the most brilliant minds in our science.

WeatherBrains, by the way, is our weekly 30 minute netcast.

I have nothing against “The Weather Channel”, but they have crossed the line into a political and cultural region where I simply won’t go.

THE WEATHERMEN

Joseph D’Aleo

Joe D'Aleo was the first Director of Meteorology for The Weather Channel, a former Professor of Meteorology, former Chief Meteorologist at Weather Services International Corporation and Senior Editor of “Dr. Dewpoint”.

Perhaps what Joe D'Aleo is best known for though, may be the formation of International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project-ICECAP. Perhaps the most vital of all realist Web Sites. ICECAP has become the go to site for climate realist and the open minded to check on current events and commentary. In a sense this clearinghouse of information is to Climate Realist what the Drudge Report is to news junkies. For this contribution and the tremendous science and meteorological analysis he shares with his readers Joe D'Aleo dererves the respect and gratitude of the climate realist community.

ICECAP

THE WEATHERMEN

JOHN COLEMAN


"it is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. "

Founder of the Weather Channel currently a forecaster with KUSI in San Diego.

As much as any single indvidual John Coleman is responsible for publicizing the fact that there is opposition to the alarmist view on global warming. When he went public with his opposition to the increasing alarmist view of global warming in late 2007 it provided a break to the relentless media bombardment and caused many to take a look at the entire global warming mantra anew. For this he is deserving of tremendous gratitude from the realist community.


John Coleman's Corner