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July 14, 2009

Bill O'Reilly Falls For Junk Science, Embraces Global Warming Hoax

Topics: Climate Change, Political News and commentaries

It was indeed, as Gateway Pundit suggests, "a sad night for the Spin Zone," as Bill O'Reilly embraced the global warming hoax and made a point to tell viewers on Monday that since 2001 we have witnessed "7 of the hottest years" on record. That statement is patently untrue, and his implication of man having anything to do with global warming, or that any trend in warming has been anything other than temporary and part of a natural trend of the earth's history of cooling and warming, is simply not true. Individual temperature records commonly used by climatologists and paleoclimatologists show that the past 1,000 years have been marked by periodic warm and cold periods, not by a uniform climate trend.

In fact, earth's temperatures continue a chill that began 11 years ago:

"There has been no significant global warming since 1995, no warming since 1998, and global cooling for the past few years," former U.S. Senate Environment Committee spokesman Marc Morano writes at ClimateDepot.com. "Despite his dire warnings, the Earth has cooled 0.74 degrees F since former Vice President Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006."

Earth's temperatures fall even as the planet spins within what global-warmists consider a thickening cloud of toxic carbon dioxide. This capsizes the carbon-phobic global-warmist argument. So, to defeat so-called "global warming," there is no need for the $864 billion Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Kyoto Protocols or U.N. guidelines. Instead, let the cold times roll.

As for O'Reilly's statement of "hottest years on record," Gateway Pundit points out:

It is well documented that there has been a cooling downtrend since 2001. In fact, the Earth has (plunged) cooled .74°F since former Vice President Al Gore released "An Inconvenient Truth" in 2006.

Furthermore, Dr. Leonard Weinstein, who worked 45 years at the NASA Langley Research Center, finishing his career there as a Senior Research Scientist, and presently a Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute of Aerospace, and who is now a critic of the anthropogenic theory of global warming, had detailed analysis that shows that man has contributed less than 0.30C of warming and by the year 2100 may contribute less than 0.40C additional warming. This is much less than what the United Nations IPCC has predicted and of course a small fraction of what alarmists such as Al Gore and James Hansen have predicted.

His research clearly shows that the temperature goes up and down 1.50C to 20C about every thousand years. The present increase is not higher than several other times in the period examined, and the speed of change is typical. Curves can be seen here.

While we clearly have recently experienced a period of warming, the last several years have actually been dropping! There is no indication that the period of warming was unusual based on comparison over a reasonable time scale! If the present were unusual, then all previous times of rapid change and high levels would also have to be unusual, and where is the anthropogenic causes for those times.

From Dr. Weinstein's paper, Disproving The Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) Problem:

[...] ... that the largest part of the last 150 year increase in CO2, which is blamed on human activity, did not occur until after 1940, so the largest temperature rise effects should have occurred in that time period. The proponents of AGW have generally used the time period from 1970 to 2000 as the base line for an indicator of the rapid warming. In that base line period, the average temperature rose about 0.50C, which averages to 0.160C per decade. The claim was then made that this would accelerate due to continuing increases in CO2 level. However if we look at the temperature change from 1940 through 2008, the net increase is only 0.30C. This is due to a drop from 1940 to 1970 and a slight drop from 2000 through 2008. Now the average rise for that period is only 0.040C per decade. If the time period from 1850 through 2008 is used as a base, the net increase is just under 0.70C and the average rise is also 0.040C per decade. It is clear that choosing a short selected period of rising temperature gives a misleading result. It is also true that the present trend is down and expected to continue downward for several more years before reversing again.

[...] The drop in temperature from 1940 to 1970 was claimed to have been caused by "global dimming" caused by aerosols made by human activity. This was stated as dominating the AGW effects at that time. This was supposed to have been overcome by activity initiated by the clean air act. In fact, the "global dimming" continued into the mid 1990's and then only reduced slightly before increasing more (probably due to China and other countries increased activity). If the global dimming was not significantly reduced, why did the temperature increase from 1970 to just past 2000?

[...] The computational models that show that the increasing CO2 and CH4 cause most of the present global warming all require that the temperature of the Stratosphere drops while the lower atmosphere and ground heat up. It appears from the above figures that the volcanic activity clearly caused the temperature to spike up in the Stratosphere, and that these spikes were immediately followed by a drop to a new nearly constant level in the temperature. It is clear from the Mauna Loa CO2 data (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/) that the input of CO2 (or CH4) from the volcanoes, did not significantly increase the background level of this gas, and thus, this cannot be the cause of the drop in the Stratosphere temperature. The ramp up of atmospheric CO2 also cannot explain the step down then level changes in high altitude temperature. Since the surface temperature rise is supposed to be related to the Stratosphere temperature drop, and since a significant surface rise above the 1940 temperature level did not occur until the early 1980's, it may be that the combination of the two (or more) volcanoes, along with Solar variability and variations in ocean currents (i.e., PDO) may explain the major causes of recent surface temperature rises to about 2002. In fact, the average Earth temperature stopped rising after 2002, and has been dropping for the last few years. While this somewhat confusing result data does not clearly falsify the claim 6, it also does not support it.

The final question that arises is what prediction has the AGW made that has been demonstrated, and that strongly supports the hypothesis. It appears that there is NO real supporting evidence and much falsifying evidence for the AGW hypothesis as proposed. That is not to say there is no effect from Human activity. Clearly human pollution (not greenhouse gases) is a problem. There is also very likely some contribution to the present temperature variations from the increase in CO2 and CH4, but it is almost certainly a small effect and not a driver of future climate. Any reasonable scientific analysis must conclude the basic AGW hypothesis fails.

Among the many scientists that agree with Dr. Weinstein is Dr. Larry Vardiman, who concludes in his piece titled, "Does Carbon Dioxide Drive Global Warming?":

Individual temperature records commonly used by climatologists and paleoclimatologists show that the past 1,000 years have been marked by periodic warm and cold periods, not by a uniform climate trend. The recent warming trend since about 1850 appears to be the continuation of the warming following the Little Ice Age, rather than a sudden upsurge after a long period of relatively uniform temperatures. The detailed temperature record since 1850 shows a temperature decline between 1940 and 1970, which flies in the face of the explanation that a continuous exponential increase in carbon dioxide causes global warming. And the simultaneous record of temperature and carbon dioxide concentration in ice cores indicates that carbon dioxide concentration changes after temperature changes, not before, indicating that carbon dioxide is the result, not the cause, of global warming.

Bill O'Reilly would do well to recognized that, as we've previously written, while Team Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress make their "rush to shackle the economy with taxes and regulations," we should recall (and Team Obama should recognize) that 31,000 scientists across the U.S. - including more than 9,000 Ph.D.s in fields such as atmospheric science, climatology, Earth science, environment and dozens of other specialties have signed a petition stating "There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate." Howver, given that the rush has more to do with an agenda to expand government control over all of our lives and re-distribute wealth, we can expect more of the same.

Bill O'Reilly should know better than to fall for the liberal spin.

Related:
Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring About 'Global Governance'
The Ice Age Cometh: Experts Warn of Global Cooling
Climate change: The sun and the oceans do not lie
Top Scientists: 'Warming Is Not Caused By Human Activity'

Posted by Richard at July 14, 2009 7:47 AM

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