Relevant

18 July 2012:  Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize Winner in Physics in 1973, resigned from the American Physical Society in 2011 over the society's position on global warming.  In his resignation letter he stated:

In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?  The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from 288.0 to 288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in the 'warming'period.

Dr. Giaever recently spoke at the 62nd meeting of the Noble laureates in Lindau, Germany.  His presentation is entertaining and filled with good science and common sense about global warming.  See the video here.  

17 July 2012:  The Heartland Institute sponsored the its 7th International Conference on Climate Change on May 21-23 in Chicago.  More than 45 speakers presented on the science of climate change and the public policy implications of misguided global warming policies.  Although invited, no speakers supporting the prevailing theory of catastrophic man-made global warming had the courage to come to the conference to present.  A highlight of the conference was the panel presentation by former astronauts and scientists from the National Aeronautic and Space Administration.  Access the presentations from the conference here.

27 February 2012:  Dr. David Evans, Australian mathematician, engineer, and climate change researcher, published an excellent essay summarizing the evidence that the climate models are wrong, and that the theory of man-made global warming is incorrect.

In his analysis, Dr. Evans points to five key empirical measures:

1. That NASA climate model forecasts of a rise in global temperatures from 1988 through 2011 over-estimated the actual temperature rise.

2. That IPCC climate model forecasts of a rise in global temperatures from 1990 through 2011 over-estimated the actual temperature rise.

3. That climate models forecasted a rise in sea level temperatures, but recent measurements from the ARGO system show no increase from 2002 to present.

4. That the atmospheric hotspot in the troposphere over the tropics predicted by all climate models is completely missing from measurements by weather balloons and satellites.  This indicates that model-predicted water vapor amplification of temperatures is not occurring.

5. That satellite measurements of outgoing radiation from Earth do not show that more heat is trapped by water vapor, as predicted by the climate models.

See Dr. Evans complete article here. 

2 January 2012:  The Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources held hearings on climate change on December 15, 2011. The testimonies are an excellent summary of scientific evidence showing that man-made emissions are not the primary cause of global warming.

Four scientists presented realistic science to the committee:

• Ross McKitrick, Professor, Department of Economics, University of Guelph
• Ian D. Clark, Professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
• Jan Veizer, Professor Emeritus, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
• Timothy Patterson, Professor of Geology, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University

Professor McKitrick stated:

The global warming issue is often described with emphatic claims that the "science is settled," the situation is urgent, and the necessary actions are obvious. The reality is that there are deep disagreements about underlying scientific issues, there is reason to believe the problem has been exaggerated, and most policy proposals simply do not pass objective cost-benefit tests."

Professor McKitrick's excellent written testimony can be found here and a video of the hearings can be found here. Both the testimonies and question sessions are well worth the viewing time. 

11 November 2011:  Matt Ridley, renowned British author, recently delivered the Angus Millar Lecture of the Royal Society of the Arts in Edinburgh.  The subject of his speech was scientific heresy and the "pseudoscience" of climate change, as he calls it.  Matt is a self-described "lukewarmer," accepting that CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, that the climate has been warming, and that man is at least partly responsible.

Matt succinctly summarizes the bankruptcy of the theory of man-made global warming:

"...there is no evidence that climate is changing dangerously or faster than in the past, when it changed naturally.  It was warmer in the Middle Ages and medieval climate change in Greenland was much faster.

Stalagmites, tree lines and ice cores all confirm that it was significantly warmer 7000 years ago.  Evidence from Greenland suggests that the Arctic ocean was probably ice free for part of the late summer at that time.  Sea level is rising at the unthreatening rate about a foot per century and decelerating.  Greenland is losing ice at the rate of about 150 gigatonnes a year, which is 0.6% per century.  There has been no significant warming in Antarctica, with the exception of the peninsula.  Methane has largely stopped increasing.  Tropical storm intensity and frequency have gone down, not up, in the last 20 years.  Your probability of dying as a result of a drought, a flood or a storm is 98% lower globally than it was in the 1920s.  Malaria has retreated not expanded as the world has warmed.

And so on.  I've looked and looked but I cannot find one piece of data - as opposed to a model - that shows either unprecedented change or change is that is anywhere close to causing real harm."

Ridley attacks the heart of the issue with a discussion about climate sensitivity.  Climate sensitivity is usually defined as the amount the Earth will warm from a doubling in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.  Climate sensitivity includes not only the affects of CO2 increase, but also the additional warming or cooling from other forces as Earth reacts to the doubling of CO2. Ridley points out that climate scientists generally agree that the warming from a doubling of CO2 alone would warm global temperatures about 1.2 degree C.  This rise by itself is not enough to cause the catastrophic impacts projected by many global warming doomsayers.  The big disagreement is in the size of the feedback, that is, how Earth reacts to the doubling.  The Global Circulation Models on which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change rely all conclude that a positive feedback will be added to CO2 rise, boosting global temperatures from 1.2 degrees C to an average of 3 degrees C. But, our modern rise in global temperatures does not support model predictions.  As the graph to the right shows, surface temperatures have risen about 0.6-0.7 degrees C in the last 150 years as atmospheric CO2 levels have risen from a pre-industrial level of about 285 ppm to today's level of 390 ppm.

Click on image above to see a larger view of this graph.

11 October 2011:  An article recently published in the journal Nature casts doubt on the IPCC's Carbon Cycle Model. Researchers at the Scripps Institute of Oceanograpy find that previous estimates of the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed annually by global vegetation may be low by as much as 45%.

A cornerstone of the theory of man-made global warming is the concept that emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are accumulating in the atmosphere.  In its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report, the IPCC states:

"The additional burden of CO₂ added to the atmosphere by human activities ... leads to the current 'perturbed' global carbon cycle ... these perturbations to the natural carbon cycle are the dominant driver of climate change because of their persistent effect on the atmosphere."

 The IPCC further claims that carbon dioxide remains for a long time in the atmosphere:

"About 50% of a CO₂ increase willl be removed from the atmosphere within 30 years, and a further 30% will be removed within a few centuries. The remaining 20% may stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years."

Should these new estimates be true, we can conclude that 1) annual emissions by mankind are a yet smaller part of Earth's carbon cycle, only about 2% of the flows, and 2) about 34% of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is exchanged with the biosphere and oceans each year. These findings further challenge the IPCC's assertions that mankind's relatively small emissions have "perturbed the carbon cycle" and that CO₂ "remains in the atmosphere for thousands of years."