Al Gore, Global warming, Inconvenient Truth

Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe
"The Inconvenient Truth" is indeed inconvenient to alarmists

By Tom Harris
Monday, June 12, 2006

[Note: When Alarmists post data, all data is torqued
to account for warming in '06 and still today.]

"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the
truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An
Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since
Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts
actually think about the science of his movie?

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James
Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a
surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak
that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his
film, are commanding public attention."

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny
cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast
majority of scientists" Gore cites?

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental,
non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the
hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing
significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative
term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is
immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in
the climate field.

Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of
climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from
insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled
researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the
causes of global climate change," explains former University of
Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us
only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they
conduct their studies."

This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate
change cause experts, only climate impact experts.

So we have a smaller fraction.

But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the
causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on
designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures.
"These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios,"
asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not
"predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in
letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making
forecasts."

We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to
understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and
extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community,
there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.

Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable
Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist
Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation
between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time
frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they
are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of
the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson
asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone
still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels
would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and
"hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very
good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial
phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological
Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of
Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers
collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally
occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier,"
says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to
prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has
to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough
icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography
and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some
small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just
like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of
Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change
in the position of the low pressure systems."

But Karlen clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive
- more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball
explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice
dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When
Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is
considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not
much of an effect," KarlEn concludes.

The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of
years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the
foreseeable future.

Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous
drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice
cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore
cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the
month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the
cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of
September, using a wholly different technology."

Karlen explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska
professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where
rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed
fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several
published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karlen

Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological
Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K.
gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in
the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The
Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was
average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a
sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to
slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30%
occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady
increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."

Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out
that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of
cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of
the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean;
the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New
Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the
IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year
average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator
(which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the
Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in
balance."

Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all
time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy
Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in
Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the
thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records,"
he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in
the U.S. were not unusual."

Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an
embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of
whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda
crusade is mostly based on junk science."

In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime
Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of
climate change, something that has never happened in Canada.
Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you
believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his
opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.