Global warming debate heats up - NASA scientists duel over interpretation of data

WASHINGTON – While one NASA scientist says man-made catastrophic climate change will cause an apocalypse, another says hysterical pronouncements about carbon dioxide emissions are unwarranted and overblown.

James Hansen, a political ally of former Vice President Al Gore, who has popularized the notion the planet is on the verge of calamitous changes as a result of higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, says: "We do have a planetary emergency, but it is difficult because you don't see that much happening. … If we don't bring this under control, we're going to destroy creation."

Hansen told a Kansas wind and renewable energy conference last month global warming inevitably will bring about droughts, melting ice caps, rising sea levels and mass extinctions.

But Roy Spencer, U.S. science team leader for NASA's collection of satellite temperature data and principal research scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville's Earth System Science Center, says the climate system is not as sensitive to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide as computer models suggest. (WorldNetDaily)

Bad weather was good for Alaska glaciers - Two hundred years of glacial shrinkage in Alaska, and then came the winter and summer of 2007-2008.

Unusually large amounts of winter snow were followed by unusually chill temperatures in June, July and August. (Anchorage Daily News)

Where they say "unusually" that is true for the last few decades but not in the longer term. Goes on to mention a lot of things warmers would rather you weren't reminded of in a generally well-balanced article.

Multidecadal Ocean Cycles and Greenland and the Arctic (Joe D'Aleo, Intellicast)

Don’t Panic - The Arctic has survived warmer temperatures in the past - Since we are in the season of comparing charts, graphs and interpretations of the summer Arctic ice melt, it may be useful to pause and consider the history of Arctic temperatures in the Holocene. There is an abundance of data compiled by hardworking field researchers over the years. Before everybody got so excited about global warming, it was understood that the Arctic was considerably warmer in earlier parts of the Holocene than in the present. The evidence for these warmer periods seems to have been forgotten in an age when satellite data causes us to fixate on the last thirty years. (Climate Sanity)

Take the greenhouse gasbags with a grain of salt - HAVE you noticed how environmental campaigners almost inevitably say that not only is global warming happening and bad, but also that what we are seeing is even worse than expected?

This is odd, because any reasonable understanding of how science proceeds would expect that, as we refine our knowledge, we find that things are sometimes worse and sometimes better than we expected, and that the most likely distribution would be about 50-50. Environmental campaigners, however, almost invariably see it as 100-0.

If we are regularly being surprised in just one direction, if our models get blindsided by an ever-worsening reality, that does not bode well for our scientific approach.

Indeed, one can argue that if the models constantly get something wrong, it is probably because the models are wrong. And if we cannot trust our models, we cannot know what policy action to take if we want to make a difference.

Yet if new facts constantly show us that the consequences of climate change are getting worse and worse, high-minded arguments about the scientific method might not carry much weight. Certainly, this seems to be the prevailing bet in the spin on global warming. It is, again, worse than we thought and, despite our failing models, we will gamble on knowing just what to do: cut CO2 emissions dramatically.

But it is simply not correct that climate data are systematically worse than expected; in many respects, they are spot on, or even better than expected. That we hear otherwise is an indication of the media's addiction to worst-case stories, but that makes a poor foundation for smart policies. (Bjorn Lomborg, The Australian)

No significant global warming since 1995 - The recovery of the earth's climate from the little ice age started about 200 years ago, but the concentration of the atmospheric carbon dioxide started to increase significantly as late as in the 1950s, probably due to rapidly increased burning of fossil fuels.

The climate recovery is still an ongoing process today. A natural warming rate of roughly 0.5 deg C /100 years has been the baseline for more than 100 years, but both short (a few years) and long (20 years) fluctuations around the baseline have occurred for natural but highly speculative reasons, for example a rapid warming in the 1930s followed by a cooling period, and recently again warming until about 1998. (Jarl R. Ahlbeck, Facts and Arts)

Global Warming – Man-made or Natural? - Abstract: One of the most interesting global questions today is whether the climate is changing and, if it really is, whether the reasons are man-made (anthropogenic) or natural - or maybe even both. The United Nations appointed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has on several occasions warned that the climate is rapidly warming and that the reason for this is mostly the increased amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. This is an example of an "anthropogenic" effect. Former US Vice President Al Gore is known for advocating his "inconvenient truth" about the changing climate and forthcoming catastrophes and that the "science is settled". But the question still remains: is this so called greenhouse effect by the CO₂ gas really of importance? How big is the effect on global warming? What other factors (or "forcings") are involved? Can we trust the IPCC and Al Gore? IPCC talks about a "science consensus" that the CO₂ is to blame. But is this really true? Some say "No". There is an increasing group of "climate sceptics" comprising various professionals, non-professionals, scientists, economists, etc., who ask questions and do not accept that scientific issues can be solved by a consensus vote. (Kenneth Rundt, Facts and Arts) | Download full paper.