Global Warming:—Messy Models, Decent Data, and
Pointless Policy
CEI Environmental Studies Program (Highlights)
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/pointlss.htm
The
earth's atmosphere has actually cooled by 0.13° Celsius since 1979 according to
highly accurate satellite-based atmospheric temperature measurements. By
contrast, computer climate models predicted that the globe should have warmed
by an easily detectable 0.4° C over the last fifteen years.
The
scientific evidence argues against the existence of a greenhouse crisis,
against the notion that realistic policies could achieve any meaningful
climatic impact, and against the claim that we must act now if we are to reduce
the greenhouse threat.
Current
computer climate models are incapable of coupling the oceans and atmosphere;
misrepresent the role of sea ice, snow caps, localized storms, and biological
systems; and fail to account accurately for the effects of clouds.
Temperature
records reveal that predictive models are off by a factor of two when applied
retroactively in projecting the change in global temperature for this century.
The amount
of warming from 1881 to 1993 is 0.54° C. Nearly 70 percent of the warming of
the entire time period — 0.37° C —occurred in the first half of the record — before
the period of the greatest build-up of greenhouse gases.
Accuracy
in land-based measurements of global temperatures is frustrated by the dearth
of stations, frequent station relocations, and changes in how ocean-going ships
make measurements.
Although
all of the greenhouse computer models predict that the greatest warming will
occur in the Arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere, temperature records
indicate that the Arctic has actually cooled by 0.88° C over the past
fifty years.
Corrective
environmental policies would have a minuscule impact on the climate. According
to its own projections, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's own
plan would spare the earth only a few hundredths of a degree of warming by
middle of the next century.
