Monday, February 8, 2016

The Goldilocks Approach to Global Warming - By S. Fred Singer

(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 2C above the pre-industrial level; according to some datasets, we are already more than halfway there.  Further, activists want to lower the threshold to 1.5C  -- 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 2C 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.