Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Leftist Smear Campaign On Global Warming

The global warming juggernaut has just begun to start moving, and the ground is being cleared for it by a smear campaign against global warming "deniers." But those "deniers" are proving hard to get rid of. In fact, as the global warming hysteria builds, more and more such "deniers" are beginning to raise their voices.

In today's Times of London, a prominent oil executive points out the sheer mathematical and scientific absurdity of the claim that "renewable energy" will be able to replace oil and coal without requiring a massive sacrifice of human prosperity, especially in the emerging industrial economies of what used to be the Third World.
Ronbo directed my attention to an interesting article about a Swedish scientist who is a distinguished expert on measurement of sea levels—who denounces as a "falsification of the data" the claim that global warming will cause rising sea levels.

Below, I link to yet another article by a scientist claiming that the data actually shows—unsurpisingly—that global temperatures are determined by the intensity of radiation coming in from the sun. Note that this article also has a list with links to a long series in Canada's Financial Post showcasing the views of scientific opponents of the global warming hysteria.

All of this leads a commentator in the Washington Post to wonder whether the global warming scare campaign has over-reached and will be "brought low" by the failure of reality to live up to its over-hyped predictions. If we do win the global warming battle, I expect that this is how we will win it. Just as Communism collapsed when it lost all pretense to economic credibility, so environmentalism will collapse when it loses its pretense to scientific credibility.

"Read the Sunspots," R. Timothy Patterson, Financial Post, June 20 Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled."…

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change."…

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet….

My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords….

Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today….

Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle."

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change….

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada.

No comments: