Room For Intelligent Debate and Discussion

The Globe May Be Warming But.....

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change will take place on March 2 through 4, 2008 in New York City. I have been doing a ton of research on global warming for months and thought that this event might signal an opportunity to add some debate to the issue. This conference will be attended by hundreds of scientists, meteorologists, economists and public policy experts from around the world. It is the first major international conference to focus on issues and questions not answered by advocates of the theory of man-made global warming.

The International Conference on Climate Change has invited global warming experts who believe that it is ‘settled science' but none have agreed to attend and debate facts. Notably, Al Gore immediately upon invitation declined to attend and discuss the issue.

Before someone attempts to tie this conference to backing by energy companies, my research shows that it is not funded by any major corporation. The Heartland Institute, a non-partisan organization is hosting this conference but even Source Watch only ties them to big tobacco; not oil!

So, following are some facts that may raise the ire of those true believers in the man made Global Warming debate but in the end they demonstrate that the debate is not over.

I am not saying that we should not reduce carbon emissions and I am not saying that the climate may be changing, but, alarmists argument that there is no room for debate as it is settled science and that man is the primary problem might not fare well in much of the latest research and in many of the recent headlines.

Here are some recent headlines and news stories; information that you will not see reprinted with the zeal that the Monitor, NY Times and Washington Post report supporting the ‘doom and gloom' scenario of man made global warming.

Just tonight I heard on the news that all four of the monitoring stations showed that over the last year, temperatures have actually dropped by a fraction of a degree. Following are 15 headlines out of over 75 press pieces that I have researched during the last several months. They speak volumes about global warming and the fact that the science is not settled and the debate should not be considered 'over'.

"Arctic Ice Sheet Thicker Than In The Last 4 Years"- Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year."

"Winter in Nepal Worst Since 1925"- "In Nepal, the winter death toll is nearly 50, with the temperatures well below the normal mid-20s for this time of the year."

'50 dead' as snowstorm chaos hits Chinese prime minister-" China's prime minister rushed south from the capital to show his concern for millions of travelers stranded by snowstorms and blizzards, only to fall victim himself to the worst winter weather in China for half a century.

"Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says"-Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural, not human induced cause one scientist says. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun. "The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars," he said.

Renowned Scientist Defects From Belief in Global Warming - Caps Year of Vindication for Skeptics-Washington DC - One of the most decorated French geophysicists has converted from a believer in manmade catastrophic global warming to a climate skeptic. This latest defector from the global warming camp caps a year in which numerous scientific studies have bolstered the claims of climate skeptics. Scientific studies that debunk the dire predictions of human-caused global warming have continued to accumulate and many believe the new science is shattering the media-promoted scientific "consensus" on climate alarmism.

60 Scientists Debunk Global Warming Fears-Earlier this year, a group of prominent scientists came forward to question the so-called "consensus" that the Earth faces a "climate emergency." On April 6, 2006, 60 scientists wrote a letter to the Canadian Prime Minister asserting that the science is deteriorating from underneath global warming alarmists.

"Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future...Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary," the 60 scientists wrote.

"Global?" Warming Misnamed - Southern Hemisphere Not Warming-In addition, new NASA satellite tropospheric temperature data reveals that the Southern Hemisphere has not warmed in the past 25 years contrary to "global warming theory" and modeling. This new Southern Hemisphere data raises the specter that the use of the word "global" in "global warming" may not be accurate. A more apt moniker for the past 25 years may be "Northern Hemisphere" warming.

Study Shows Greenland's Ice Growing-A 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass.

Polar Bears Not Going Extinct-Despite Time Magazine and the rest of the media's unfounded hype, polar bears are not facing a crisis, according to biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut. "Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present," Taylor wrote on May 1, 2006.

Cosmic rays and climate of the Earth: possible connection - Abstract: Despite much evidence relating climatic changes on Earth to solar variability, a physical mechanism responsible for this is still poorly known. A possible link connecting solar activity and climate variations is related to cosmic rays and the physical-chemical changes they produce in the atmosphere. Here we review experimental evidence and theoretical grounds for this relation. The cosmic ray - climate link seems to be a plausible climate driver which effectively operates on different time scales, but its exact mechanism and relative importance still remain open questions. (I.G. Usoskin, G.A. Kovaltsov, C. R. Geoscience (2007)

Judge attacks nine errors in Al Gore's 'alarmist' climate change film-A controversial documentary on climate change which has been sent to thousands of schools has been criticised by a High Court judge for being 'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'. Justice Barton found 'nine scientific errors' in the film and accused Mr. Gore of "alarmism" and "exaggeration". Although he agreed that the film was "powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced," he said that it was a political film and was so "one-sided" that it needed to be accompanied with other materials that provided pupils with balance if the Government was to continue with its plans to distribute it to schools.

Solar Evidence Indicates Global Warming May Not Be Caused By Humans-It's getting harder and harder to blame mankind for causing the gradual increase in global temperatures that are now being seen in the climate record, scientists said today.

In a symposium today on the potential role of solar variability - increases in heat coming from the sun - held in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, experts in solar science, climate modeling, and atmospheric science explored the issues surrounding who or what is to blame for the rapid rate of change.

"Our star, the sun, is a variable star," said David H. Hathaway, a sunspot specialist from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "It varies by about one-tenth of one percent" in energy output. But "there are suggestions the sun" varies "more than that, because we see it has gone through some periods, such as the Maunder minimum." During the Maunder minimum, which lasted from 1645 to 1715 and is also known as the Little Ice Age, there was an absence or near-absence of sunspots and northern Europe experienced especially cold winters.

Bangladesh, coldest winter in recent history-Bangladesh- with 134 deaths, is the most affected Asian country by the winter of 2008. The northern Dinajpur and Rangpur regions, close to the Himalayan foothills, are facing the coldest winter in recent years.

So there you have a small fraction of facts and stories in the press that should make a thinking and intelligent person step back and ask: "wait a minute, we need more proof, consensus and debate" before we go off half cocked and shoot ourselves in the foot.

One newspaper article did stand out in my research. It was a Washington Post story with the headline:

"Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt"- Great masses of ice have now been replaced by moraines of earth and stones... at many points’ well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared.

WASHINGTON POST, November 2, 1922