Wash. Times publishes op-ed promoting discredited "global cooling" claim
SUMMARY: The Washington Times published an op-ed by Richard Rahn promoting the discredited claim that the Earth has gone through a period of "global cooling" during the past decade.
On July 2, The Washington Times published a "commentary" by Cato Institute senior fellow Richard Rahn criticizing Congress for passing "the largest tax increase in American history this past Friday, under the claim it was a vote to save the climate." In the op-ed -- which was referring to the cap-and-trade energy bill recently passed by the House -- Rahn stated that "proponents claim this tax bill will reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, which are purported to cause global warming" and then responded to that claim, in part, by asserting: "None of the climate models predicted the unexpected global cooling of the last decade." However, climate experts reject the idea that relatively cooler global temperatures during the past decade are any indication that global warming is slowing.
As Media Matters for America has noted, annual global average temperatures have both risen and fallen over the past 11 years, and there have been some relatively cooler years during that period -- including a decline in each of the past three years relative to the year before. But climate scientists have identified a long-term warming trend spanning several decades that is independent from the normal climate variability -- which includes relatively short-term changes in climate due to events like El Niño and La Niña -- to which they attribute the recent relatively cooler temperatures.
From Rahn's July 2 Washington Times op-ed:
Why did a bare majority (219-212) of the members of the U.S. Congress vote for the largest tax increase in American history this past Friday, under the claim it was a vote to save the climate?
Before you answer the question, consider the following facts. The proponents claim this tax bill will reduce U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, which are purported to cause global warming. First, despite the claims of President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many in the media, there is no consensus in the scientific community about how much climate change, other than the normal cycles, is taking place, nor how severe it will be, and how much man-made CO2 is responsible. None of the climate models predicted the unexpected global cooling of the last decade.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/05/is-global-warming-happening-three-different-temperature-perspectives.html
Global cooling since 1998, etc. If I pick and choose my data and my assumptions I can pretty much "prove" anything I want.
BTW C3 sure looks like a GWD site to me. If you want to present "data", please try to submit from sources who don't have an axe to grind. Yes, I know that pretty much everyone is looking out for their own opinion, that is why you need to parse all the data and not just accept what one person throws at you.
Again, climate cycles need to be looked at over the LONG term, not 11 years.
If you have links that show something different, please show them.
Longer term climate cycles show both warming and cooling long before the industrial revolution. Here is another link with lots of charts. Pick your time frame. There are some that show the temperature oscillation of the past Thousand years and those that show it over millions of years. I hope you enjoy them.
http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/lectures/climate.htm
As stated in this blog posting, global temps has fluctuated between warm & cooler over the past 10 years. That does not mean the overall trend is false.
It would nice if that were true and we could all hide our heads in the sand.
The graph is from NASA data with Paul Krugman published: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/27/temperature-trends/
Again, I really do wish the numbers were made up. Honest, I do.
Of course, you could always do the research yourself to verify these things instead of just posting comments on the blog.
But, hey, you do what you will with your own time.
Where does the Goddard graph come from?
It comes from three different data sets: 1) the world weather records, kept at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington; 2) the global historical climate network at Goddard Institute of Space Studies; and 3) the U.S. historic climate network at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
They take the monthly means of the weather stations of the three data sets.
After calculating the monthly means, they study
the history of the stations—whether they are near airports, in cities, or whether they have been moved. And from that, the modelers decide how the data have to be “corrected” for the so-called heat island effect, missing years of data entry, and other methods of calculating means (because there is no uniform standard for collecting means; each country has its own way of doing it).
Then, the yearly mean temperature is calculated from the
monthly means.
...Climate models are out of sync with observational data. The last chapter of the latest IPCC report even discusses a couple of examples of this.
...Unless you have the data sets, and the factors the modelers used to select the monitoring stations, it is not possible to replicate this figure.
It should be noted that the modelers claim that they are using statistical correcting methods to compensate for the poor quality of the data, but they have not made their methods public, so it is not possible for other scientists to check this.
“The computer models used for the IPCC projections do
not use any observed temperature data directly. They are instead calculations from close to first principles just using the distribution of solar irradiation over seasons, the shape of the continents, and changes in atmospheric composition, i.e., greenhouse gases. Everything else is calculated
As for today’s 1,200 U.S. weather stations: They are monitored by volunteers, some of whom are retired Weather Service officials. The stations are in disrepair, because of budget cuts at the National Weather Service. And many of them are located bizarrely between airport runways, or near air-conditioning
exhausts, or near trash incinerators (see photos)—
hardly representative locations for judging the temperature!
Worldwide there used to be 5,000 weather stations, but phase-outs have left only about 3,600. This is a sorry situation, especially given the level of hype for the cataclysmic nature of global warming.
ttp://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles%202007/GW_voodoo.pdf
So, by all means, you have the right to live in your world of denial. I just hope that the sky is a pretty blue and it is always near 75 degress in your world ...
Then there are people like AA, right ON, POV. These are guys that can debate (because they really believe in whatever they believe in).
What I find sad is that these guys just cut and paste from non-authoritative sources, or repeat Limbaugh's talking points to make their, sometimes sincere, points.
What I think you mean is "...that does not mean the over trend is down".
What you leave out, and I posted this before, is that you do not provide any link to your chart. You do not define who created it nor how this chart came about it's numbers. Therefore the chart as it stands is meaningless.
Check this out from Lorne Gunter at the National Post, October 20, 2008:
"... weather-satellite scientists David Douglass of the University of Rochester and John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville nonetheless dealt the True Believers a devastating blow last month.
For nearly 30 years, Professor Christy has been in charge of NASA's eight weather satellites that take more than 300,000 temperature readings daily around the globe. In a paper co-written with Dr. Douglass, he concludes that while manmade emissions may be having a slight impact, "variations in global temperatures since 1978 ... cannot be attributed to carbon dioxide."
Moreover, while the chart below was not produced by Douglass and Christy, it was produced using their data and it clearly shows that in the past four years -- the period corresponding to reduced solar activity -- all of the rise in global temperatures since 1979 has disappeared.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2008/10/20/lorne-gunter-thirty-years-of-warmer-temperatures-go-poof.aspx
If you are honestly intent on using a sample of data from the past 4 years as any evidence of a trend then you are either not looking at the entire data set or are intentionally just trying to justify your position.
The smoothed line is proof that during the 120 year set of data, the TREND is upward even though during decade snapshots, there were colder and warmer fluctuations.
As I mentioned before, the recent data is used to counter the claim of MMFA that there is not a short term downward trend.
There are so many problems with data sets, some of which I just posted above, to raise my suspicions.
People are mislead to think global warming is a hard science, when it is fraught with uncertainty, bad data, incomplete data, modeling bias, and what are only guesses about the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere.
It hasn't even been determined if CO2 is the agent of GW or a byproduct of it.
The anomolies that the IPCC and Goddard use are not real temperatures. They are simply mathmatical constructs. To even try to argue that one can measure the "mean" temperature of the planet each year borders on the incredulous. There are way too many factors. Heck, half the planet is dark at any given time and half is either tilting toward the sun or the opposite.
All of these projections are based on computer models and they won't tell you how the models work or how they aggregate the temperature. Nor will they tell you how they "adjust" them. If that isn't a classic con artist discription, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
This data is absolutely true and has been verified!!!
Actually, that's not the topic of this thread. Global cooling over 11 years, which is weather, is not the same as anthromophic global climate change, or global warming.
AA was wrong. I was right.
If you take away the word liberals from above, I am with you.
I smoke, outdoors. Which non-liberal has made my life easier? The cost of a pack of cigarettes has only gone up, past 16 years.
You are conflating your talking points. Weather is what is happening on a day to day basis. Measuring over an 11 year period, although very short in the geologic time scale, is perfectly acceptable when discussing GCC and short term trends. Both the AGW side and the AGW deniers use time frames such as this.
If you'll take off the rose colored glasses, you'll see that MMFA also uses that time frame in this discussion.
No scientist who believes in global warming looks at any individual data points. Not days, not years, not even decades. It's trends.
MMfA is not using this data in the way you suggest. They said "But climate scientists have identified a long-term warming trend spanning several decades that is independent from the normal climate variability." "Normal climate variability" is weather. The variability is weather.
Can I ask you what your educational or professional qualifications are, as they relate to meteorology, statistics, geology?
Thanks.
I rarely comment on any of the Climate Change threads anymore. There's too much well-funded denier propaganda out there, and the Faithful will link, paste and paraphrase for hours, ignoring reality with every bit of strength they have.
I do read them, though. It's pretty funny to see people discussing science and statistics that they don't seem to understand at all as if they're experts.
"You don't even have to burrow into yesterday's budget fine print to discover the "climate revenues" section, where the White House discloses that it expects $78.7 billion in new tax revenue in 2012 from its cap-and-trade program. The pot of cash grows to $237 billion through 2014, and at least $646 billion through 2019. If this isn't tax revenue, what is it? Manna from heaven? The offset from Al Gore's carbon footprint?
If it brings in revenue that the government then spends, it's a tax, and politicians should start referring to it as such. The Administration in fact projects that these "climate revenues" will become the sixth largest source of federal receipts by 2019, outpaced only by individual and corporate income taxes, payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare and (barely) excise taxes. We're supposed to be living in a new era of fiscal honesty, so let's start with cap and trade."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123569802712289113.html
Now tell me again this is not a tax revenue bill.
The cap and trade bill taxes people and industry by the billions.
a bill that taxes = a tax bill.
Now that is simple.
That's it. Since you and your ilk deny global warming and any human impact on global warming, you will claim there is no benefit.
So to you, it is just a tax bill.
To the rest of us, it is necessary and if corporations charge their customers more for energy, that is a decision they corps have made.
This liberal update brought to you by the same folks who've been so right about so much that....they can't keep it all in one brain.
Funny how few actual liberals, are sources of information about liberals. We are the swiss army knives of political opposition.
As the Col notes, what you have is a series of characatures with the liberal label on them.
As I ride around in my limousine , between picking up my welfare check and collecting my Cap & Trade dividends, as I try to organize my Totalitarians and my Anarchists, trying to make them get along with the Left Wing Nazis and the Liberal Racists, it's sometimes tough for me to remember which of the right wing imaginary and contradictory cartoon characters I'm supposed to be on any given day.
You just won't admit it.
I think it was your undeniable proof that global warming is fake and your terrific argument that man has no effect on the climate and that this bill has no benefits.
Thanks, AA, you truly are Another American!
You just can't understand it.
There is no Global Warming----> There is Global Warming, but it's not affected by Man -----> OK, it's affected a little bit by humans -----> All right, maybe it's real, but we shouldn't do too much about it -----> MY TAXES MIGHT GO UP A LITTLE BIT !!!
I think they're conditioning the base to focus on the tax propaganda at this point. The rightys are generally about 10-50 years behind normal people in science and on social issues, but I think all but the most easily manipulated and well-compensated are having a tough time denying the science on Climate Change.
But, :sigh: once again:
1. There are natural, short-term (on the order of several years) climate variations. Any of you nanny-nanny naysayers who are jumping up to go "Aha!" can sit back down: No one ever said otherwise, at least no one who has a clue on the matter. If you think anyone did, you are simply proving yet again that you don't know what you're talking about.
2. It is widely agreed among climatologists and atmospheric scientists that it takes about 30 years of data to have enough such data to smooth out the effect of those natural variations in order to reveal an overall trend. Therefore, 11 years of data is simply not enough to make any claims of "global cooling." The claim is bogus. Period.
3. What's more, there isn't 11 years of such data. The "11-year cooling trend" claim is silly on its face since the supposed "downward trend" is only about three or four years long - and 2008 tied with 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record.
4. The "11 years" is based entirely, solely, completely, on the fact that 1998, a year of an exceptionally strong El Nino (such years tend to be warmer than others), was the warmest on record. Thus, the naysayers say, since we haven't set a new record every single year, global warming doesn't exist and in fact we're going the other way. Such an argument is infantile.
5. The claim - sometimes made, sometimes just implied - that global warming models predicted a steady, year-by-year increase in average global temperature is utterly, childishly, false; it reveals a profound ignorance of the subject at hand. (Remember the agreed need for 30-year spans to smooth out natural variations and reveal an overall trend.)
6. The other claim being made here, the one that "no one predicted" the supposed "cooling trend," is false in two ways: One, there is, again, no evidence of such a "cooling trend - or, more precisely, no evidence sufficient to even approach meeting scientific standards. Perhaps more importantly, yes, it was predicted both in the general sense of there being no prediction of a steady upward increase and in the specific sense of predictions that warming could stall for a few or even several years before resuming a clearly upward trend.
The reason for that is important: As noted, there are natural cycles of warming and cooling. In fact, the Earth is in a natural cooling cycle now. It has been since about the mid-1990s. But wait again, naysayers: This fact doesn't deny AGW, it confirms it. How?
Because if what we were seeing was natural variations, the temperature would have started dropping about 15 years ago instead of continuing an upward trend. In fact, it means that the upward forcing of AGW is strong enough that for a time it overwhelmed the downward forcing of the natural variation and right now the two are roughly balanced. When that natural cooling cycle turns around in a few more years, you very likely could see and very likely will see a clear upward trend returning with a vengeance with the only difference being that we may have wasted a few more years before doing anything about it.
I had to laugh at Rule #6 (I think that's the one about not answering a question), as I just popped over here from this thread.