(S. Fred Singer is professor emeritus at the University of
Virginia and a founding director of the Science & Environmental Policy
Project; in 2014, after 25 years, he stepped down as president of SEPP.
His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. An expert in remote
sensing and satellites, he served as the founding director of the US Weather
Satellite Service and, more recently, as vice chair of the US National Advisory
Committee on Oceans & Atmosphere. He is an elected Fellow of several
scientific societies and a Senior Fellow of the Heartland Institute and the
Independent Institute. He co-authored the NY Times best-seller Unstoppable Global
Warming: Every 1500 years. In 2007, he founded and has chaired the
NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change), which has
released several scientific reports [SeeNIPCCreport.org].
For recent writings see http://www.americanthinker.com/s_fred_singer/ and also
Google Scholar)
Maybe you've heard or read somewhere that all kinds of terrible disasters will happen if the (global mean surface) temperature rises just 2⁰C above the pre-industrial level; according to some datasets, we are already more than halfway there. Further, activists want to lower the threshold to 1.5⁰C -- thus advancing the date of the “apocalypse.”
Note,
however, that these same activists never bother to define “mean temperature” or
tell you how to measure it -- if indeed that makes sense. Temperatures
vary not only geographically, mainly with latitude and altitude, but also with
season, time of day, and weather conditions.
Have you ever wondered where the 2⁰C number comes from? Does it sound like the Y2K scare
all over again? Well, let me tell you, because I have something to do
with provoking its original publication………….
(Full
text at link below)
Perhaps to balance this story, I should
tell you about another myth -- one believed by only few "Climate
Deniers." Some of them argue that the human contribution to CO2 levels in the atmosphere is only 3% to what is already a minute concentration of
about 400 parts per million.
There are also two additional myths
that are sometimes put forward. One of them is that the observed increase
in CO2 is a fraud or some sort of
conspiracy. And that in any case, the observed increase in CO2, if taken to be real, is due to warming of the
ocean. Wrong again.
A
side argument, also wrong, that the concentration of CO2 is
just too small to have any effect on the atmosphere . It is after all
just a trace gas; so how can it possibly be the cause of a real change in
climate. Well, it turns out that CO2 is
an extremely effective absorber of Infrared Heat Radiation and therefore a true
greenhouse gas.
But to
finish this story, I go back to the major error of the UN climate panel, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They have been claiming
in all their 5 major reports that CO2 increases are the cause
of warming. I am of the opinion, and have tried to back it up with
publications, that these arguments don't hold water and that their evidence
does not exist.