Jim - That is a pretty graph, but it is hard to examine it because it is so small. Are they measuring tenths of a degree? O.K. I am a skeptic. I don't feel I have anything to prove, just want to show that there is another side. I do see a strong public relations campaign which the media loves because it is alarmist, makes good copy, and use charts that are scaled to scare the crap out of people. Summer is upon us and we are going to feel warm. But don't panic, we will all cool off again come next Fall (...am now inserting head into sand...).
The organization behind this is Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. sponsored committee that started the Kyoto Accord hysteria. Yes, this outfit is not exactly unbiased. They do no original research. They read and peer review scientific papers, which is not bad, just want to disclose how they work.
The Bible says there must be opposition in all things, so.....
....a little opposition. Just want to show there is another side that doesn't make exciting magazine stories:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change
.....Debate over Climate Change 1995
Most scientists involved in climate research believe that the IPCC reports accurately summarise the state of knowledge. Few scientists have objected and made public comments to that effect.
The report formed the basis of negotiations over the Kyoto Protocol.
A December 20, 1995, Reuters report quoted British scientist Keith Shine, one of IPCC's lead authors, discussing the Policymakers' Summary. He said: "We produce a draft, and then the policymakers go through it line by line and change the way it is presented.... It's peculiar that they have the final say in what goes into a scientists' report". It is not clear, in this case, whether Shine was complaining that the report had been changed to be more skeptical, or less, or something else entirely.
Dr. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and past president of the National Academy of Sciences, has publicly denounced the IPCC report, writing "I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report". He opposed it in the Leipzig Declaration of his Science and Environmental Policy Project.
In turn, Seitz's comments were vigorously opposed by the presidents of the American Meteorological Society and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, who wrote about a systematic effort by some individuals to undermine and discredit the scientific process that has led many scientists working on understanding climate to conclude that there is a very real possibility that humans are modifying Earth's climate on a global scale. Rather than carrying out a legitimate scientific debate... they are waging in the public media a vocal campaign against scientific results with which they disagree [39].
S. Fred Singer disseminated a letter about what he learned about changes to Chapter 8, interpretations of the IPCC Summary's key conclusion, and some policy implications [40]:
Chapter 8 was altered substantially in order to make it conform to the Summary;
Three key clauses-- expressing the consensus of authors, contributors, and reviewers-- should have been placed into the Summary instead of being deleted from the approved draft chapter;
The ambiguous phrase "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate" has been (mis)interpreted by policymakers to mean that a major global warming catastrophe will soon be upon us;
The IPCC report and its authors are being (mis)used by politicians and others to push an ideologically based agenda.......
......Criticism of IPCC
Landsea
In January of 2005 Christopher Landsea resigned from work on the IPCC AR4, saying:
"I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound. As the IPCC leadership has seen no wrong in Dr. Trenberth's actions and have retained him as a Lead Author for the AR4, I have decided to no longer participate in the IPCC AR4" [42].
IPCC processes
"The IPCC is monolithic and complacent, and it is conceivable that they are exaggerating the speed of change" (John Maddox, a former editor of the journal Nature, quoted by David Adam in The Guardian, 28 January 2005).
UK House of Lords Science and Economic Analysis and Report on IPCC for the G-8 Summit, July 2005:
"We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations. There are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCC’s emissions scenario exercise, in particular, the high emissions scenarios. The Government should press the IPCC to change their approach. There are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports; the Government should press the IPCC to reflect in a more balanced way the costs and benefits of climate change. The Government should press the IPCC for better estimates of the monetary costs of global warming damage and for explicit monetary comparisons between the costs of measures to control warming and their benefits. Since warming will continue, regardless of action now, due to the lengthy time lags." [43]......
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy
....Reasons given by opponents of the global warming theory
Some of the assertions made in opposition to the global warming theory include:
IPCC draws firm conclusions unjustified by the science, especially given the acknowledged weakness of cloud physics in the climate models. For example, even those who accept that there is a warming trend point out that there is a big difference between correlation and causality. In other words, just because temperatures have generally been rising since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that doesn't necessarily mean that the Industrial Revolution has caused the change in temperature (see post hoc, ergo propter hoc argument). On the other hand, the period since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has indeed produced ever-growing "urban heat islands" (see below) that could be skewing temperature measurements that indicate the recent warming.
Using "consensus" as evidence is an appeal to the majority argument rather than scientific discussion (see consensus science). Ergo, because the issue has become so politicized, it is suspected that climatologists who disagree with the consensus as it is may be afraid to speak out for fear of losing their positions or funding.
Consensus is further compromised in this field of study due to students being attracted to the field by their belief that something should be done about global warming. They complete their education and add their voices to the consensus, which gives a perceived bias.
Earth's climate has been both colder and warmer than today, and these changes are adequately explained by mechanisms that do not involve human greenhouse gas emissions.
There is no significant global warming relative to the expected natural trends.
CO2 in the atmosphere is mainly volcanic in origin, accounting for 97% of the CO2 found in the atmosphere, most of which travels to the oceans. Estimates at CO2's effectiveness as a greenhouse gas vary, but are generally around 10-100 times lower than water weight for weight, leaving a "net" greenhouse effect of man-made CO2 emissions at less than 1% [9]
Climate science can not make definitive predictions yet, since the computer models used to make these predictions are still evolving and do not yet take into account recently discovered feedback mechanisms (see GIGO).
Climate models will not be able to predict the future climate until they can predict solar and volcanic activity.
Some global warming studies have errors or have not been reproduced.
Global temperatures are directly related to such factors as: sunspot activity (an 11-year cycle).
The concern about global warming is analogous to the concern about global cooling in the 1970s. The concern about global cooling was unnecessarily alarmist. The concern about global warming is equally alarmist.
Some opponents of global warming theory give more weight to data such as paleoclimatic studies, temperature measurements made from weather balloons, and satellites which they claim show less warming than surface land and sea records, though early balloon records have been shown to be possibly erroneous due to mechanical design flaws in the sensors.
Opponents tend to define themselves in terms of opposition to the IPCC position. They generally believe that climate science is not yet able to provide us with solid answers to all the major questions about the global climate.
Opponents frequently characterise supporters arguments as alarmist and premature, so as to emphasise what they perceive as the lack of scientific evidence supporting global warming scenarios.
Opponents also say that if global warming is real and man-made, no action need be taken now because:
Future scientific advances or engineering projects will remedy the problem before it becomes serious and for less money.
A small amount of global warming would be benign or even beneficial, as increased carbon dioxide would benefit plant life, thus potentially becoming profitable for agriculture world-wide.
There is a distinct correlation between GDP growth and greenhouse gas emissions. A cutback in emissions might lead to a decrease in the rate of GDP growth.
