Tuesday, May 10, 2005
Debunking global warming...again!
Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jay Lehr points out that the “global warming” crowd, which in my estimation includes the MSM taken as a whole, is simply ignoring actual facts, while pandering to the fears of the gullible public with scientifically meaningless publicity stunts:
In early May, newspapers across the country reported that a team of "adventurers" from Minnesota was setting off to "document climate change" at the North Pole.
According to newspaper reports, they aim to "draw [attention to] the gradual warming of Earth's climate" and "hope to convince skeptics, especially in the Bush administration, that global warming is real...."
In other words, this summer will bring a barrage of misinformation about the Earth's ice structures provided by non-scientists who make casual observations and then claim they know what caused the situations they are observing.
There is real scientific data available for consideration, such as a lengthy study of the “melting glaciers” we hear so much about. But we don’t hear about the scientific data, because it simply doesn’t support the whole “humans are destroying the earth with global warming” tale:
A few years ago, R.J. Braithwaite's peer-reviewed article in Progress in Physical Geography described a "mass balance analysis" he conducted of 246 glaciers sampled all around the world between 1946 and 1995. That's 50 years of data. Braithwaite found some glaciers were melting, while a nearly equal number were growing in size, and still others remained stable. He concluded, "There is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years."
But if your goal is to frighten the public into thinking humans are causing global warming with potentially catastrophic consequences, there is no shortage of melting glaciers to report upon. By some estimates, 160,000 glaciers exist on Earth. Only 63,000 have been inventoried, and only a few hundred have been studied in the detail described by Braithwaite.
Likewise, the highly publicized cry that “the arctic ice shelves are disappearing because of global warming” is simply unsupported by the real scientific data:
The scaremongers also point out as many as seven ice shelves have broken off the Antarctic continent over the last 50 years. They blame global warming, rather than address the inconvenient confounding evidence -- that the continent is actually cooling dramatically. Between 1986 and 2002, the continent cooled by 0.7 degrees Celsius per decade. There also has been a statistically significant increase in sea ice area, as well as an increase in the length of the sea ice season, since 1990.
There’s much good factual information in the piece, it is well worth the time to read it all.
And before you switch to candles and a bicycle in order to save the planet, keep in mind that thirty-five years ago, scientists were certain that the earth was going to be destroyed in a new ice age brought on by global cooling!
In early May, newspapers across the country reported that a team of "adventurers" from Minnesota was setting off to "document climate change" at the North Pole.
According to newspaper reports, they aim to "draw [attention to] the gradual warming of Earth's climate" and "hope to convince skeptics, especially in the Bush administration, that global warming is real...."
In other words, this summer will bring a barrage of misinformation about the Earth's ice structures provided by non-scientists who make casual observations and then claim they know what caused the situations they are observing.
There is real scientific data available for consideration, such as a lengthy study of the “melting glaciers” we hear so much about. But we don’t hear about the scientific data, because it simply doesn’t support the whole “humans are destroying the earth with global warming” tale:
A few years ago, R.J. Braithwaite's peer-reviewed article in Progress in Physical Geography described a "mass balance analysis" he conducted of 246 glaciers sampled all around the world between 1946 and 1995. That's 50 years of data. Braithwaite found some glaciers were melting, while a nearly equal number were growing in size, and still others remained stable. He concluded, "There is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt in recent years."
But if your goal is to frighten the public into thinking humans are causing global warming with potentially catastrophic consequences, there is no shortage of melting glaciers to report upon. By some estimates, 160,000 glaciers exist on Earth. Only 63,000 have been inventoried, and only a few hundred have been studied in the detail described by Braithwaite.
Likewise, the highly publicized cry that “the arctic ice shelves are disappearing because of global warming” is simply unsupported by the real scientific data:
The scaremongers also point out as many as seven ice shelves have broken off the Antarctic continent over the last 50 years. They blame global warming, rather than address the inconvenient confounding evidence -- that the continent is actually cooling dramatically. Between 1986 and 2002, the continent cooled by 0.7 degrees Celsius per decade. There also has been a statistically significant increase in sea ice area, as well as an increase in the length of the sea ice season, since 1990.
There’s much good factual information in the piece, it is well worth the time to read it all.
And before you switch to candles and a bicycle in order to save the planet, keep in mind that thirty-five years ago, scientists were certain that the earth was going to be destroyed in a new ice age brought on by global cooling!
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