global warming: a scientific overview

By James M. TaylorSenior Fellow, Environment

PolicyThe Heartland Institute

taylor@heartland.org

A Little Context Goes a Long Way

.

Global Temperatures Since 1979

Carbon Dioxide and Temperature

Years CO2Temperature

1900-1945 Minimal Rising1945-1977 Rising Cooling1977-1998 Rising Rising1998-2009 Rising Cooling

Solar Output: A Better Fit

Earth’s Temperature History

U.S. Temperatures and Solar Changes

Ocean Cycles and Global Temperature

What About the Computer Models?

How Have Computer Predictions Fared?

IPCC, 2001 – Computer models predicted temperatures will rise 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade.

Nearly a decade has passed. Let’s verify the predictions.

Computer Models vs. Reality

Why the Computer Models Fail

Scientists agree that, all other things being equal, doubling atmospheric CO2 will cause merely 1.1 degree Celsius of warming

Yet CO2 has risen only 40 percent since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution

Computer models assume “positive feedbacks” will cause much more warming than the CO2 itselfRelative humidityCirrus clouds

Let’s Check the Real-World Evidence

Hurricane expert Dr. William Gray has for decades been reporting declining atmospheric relative humidity.

In March 2001, MIT atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen reported declining cirrus clouds, creating a negative feedback so strong that it canceled all positive global warming feedbacks.

Testing the Computer Model Assumptions

What Has Aqua Satellite Found?

• 1) Relative humidity is DECLINING, not increasing

• Gray right, Computer modelers wrong!

• 2) Cirrus clouds are DECLINING, not increasing

• Lindzen right, computer modelers wrong!

• This eliminates the vast majority of projected warming in alarmist computer models.

• This explains why temps rose only 0.6 C during the entire 20th century, in line with CO2 physics.

NOAA Humidity Measurements

Cloud Assumptions Defy Real-World Science

Dr. Roy Spencer, co-director of NASA’s satellite temperature data program – “What is peculiar about all of the IPCC climate models now producing positive cloud feedbacks is that it is well known in the climate business that the average effect of clouds on the climate system is one of cooling…not warming.”

Longwave Radiation Evidence

MIT Professor of Meteorology Richard Lindzen - “With the warming after 1989, the observations characteristically exceed 7 times the model values. … If the observations were only 2-3 times what the models produce, it would correspond to no feedback. What we see is much more than this – implying strong negative feedback.”

Why Computer Models FailIn the real world higher CO2 concentrations are

resulting in declining relative humidity and fewer cirrus clouds.

While computer models assume that positive feedbacks dominate the climate, negative feedbacks dominate in the real world.

This is why 20th and 21st century warming has been so gradual and benign.

Florida Temperature HistorySource: U.S. National Climatic Data Center

Florida Merely Average Solar Potential

Florida Poor Wind Potential

U.S. vs. Global CO2 EmissionsSource: U.S. EPA, EIA

Levelized Electricity CostsSource: Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University (2006)

Production costs per kWh in tax regime providing no investment preferences:Coal: 3.79Clean coal: 4.37(+ 15 %)Natural gas: 5.61(+48 %)Nuclear: 5.94(+57 %)Wind: 6.64(+75 %)Solar thermal: 18.82 (+570 %)Solar photovoltaic: 37.39 (+887 %)

U.S. Energy Information Administration

The average retail price of electricity in states with renewable power mandates is 42% higher than the price of electricity in states without such mandates.

Obama’s Plan in His Own WordsInterview, San Francisco Chronicle, 2008 –

“I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers under my plan of a cap-and-trade system. Electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

“If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them”

Economics

“The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent … the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year,” – CBSNews.com, Sep. 15, 2009.

EconomicsDept. of Treasury, Sep. 18, 2009 – Carbon

offsets could cost consumers $300 billion per year [nearly $3,000 per household per year].

What Would a 70% Cut in CO2 Cost?2008 Lieberman-Warner would have cut

emissions 70% by 2050, versus Waxman-Markey 83% cut

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) ran the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System on Lieberman-Warner

SAIC ran a low-cost and high-cost model

Millions of Jobs Lost, Lieberman-WarnerSource: SAIC, EIA Model

Percent Rise in Baseline Gasoline Prices Source: SAIC, EIA Model

Percent Rise in Baseline Electricity Prices

Lost Annual Household Income(in constant 2007 dollars)

Percent Loss in Annual GDP

Supporting Studies

A number of other studies from leading economists and economic institutions largely agree with the SAIC-Energy Information Administration assessment.

Congressional Budget Office - 2007According to a 2007 study conducted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 15 percent would cost the average household nearly 3 percent of its income. A family making $50,000 per year would be forced to pay an extra $1,400 every year for the same goods and services it purchases today.

Congressional Budget Office - 2007"Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline.”

Congressional Budget Office - 2007"A CO2 cap would worsen the negative effects" of "existing taxes that dampen economic activity…. The higher prices caused by the cap would lower real (inflation-adjusted) wages and real returns on capital, indirectly raising marginal tax rates on those sources of income."

CRA International - 2007 By 2030, typical greenhouse gas

legislation will cost:

4.9 million lost jobs$1,700 in lost household annual income4.0 percent loss in annual GDP

Massachusetts Institute of Technology - 2007

A 2007 study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reached similar conclusions. According to the MIT study, mandatory greenhouse gas reduction schemes similar to those most popular in Congress and the state legislatures would cost typical families of four close to $5,000 each and every year.

Wake Forest University - 2007 In 2007, Wake Forest University Economics

Chair Robert Whaples surveyed a random selection of American Economic Association Ph.D. economists. Fully 59 percent projected that even 100 years from now global warming will have a neutral or positive impact on the U.S. economy

Yale University - 2004 In 2004, Yale University economics professor

Robert Mendelsohn concluded that the benefits of global warming will outweigh the harms until temperatures surpass 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today. At current warming rates, temperatures will not surpass 2.5 degrees Celsius until at least the 24th century.

Green Jobs at What Cost?

Spanish StudyKing Juan Carlos University, April 2009 –

Study of Spain’s “green” jobs program frequently cited by Barack Obama as a model for his priorities: For every 1 job created by renewable power subsidies and other “green” jobs programs, 2.2 other jobs are destroyed in the process.

Scare Scenarios DebunkedAntarctica – Cooling, ice pack growingArctic sea ice – Local wind patterns causing retreatMt. Kilimanjaro – Temps cooling, deforestation the culpritHurricanes – NHC, NOAA report no increaseTornadoes - DecliningDrought – 20th century soil gaining moistureFloods – More precipitation, but fewer floodsGreenland – Cooling for most of 20th centuryOceans – Higher CO2 benefits almost all speciesSea level – Very minor, gradual risePolar bears – Populations rising, not falling

Thank you!

James M. Taylor

Senior Fellow, Environment Policy The Heartland Institute

taylor@heartland.org

Africa DroughtNational Geographic News, July 31, 2009 – “Desertification, drought, and despair—that's what global warming has in store for much of Africa. Or so we hear.”

“Emerging evidence is painting a very different scenario, one in which rising temperatures could benefit millions of Africans in the driest parts of the continent.

“Scientists are now seeing signals that the Sahara desert and surrounding regions are greening due to increasing rainfall. If sustained, these rains could revitalize drought-ravaged regions, reclaiming them for farming communities.

“This desert-shrinking trend is supported by climate models, which predict a return to conditions that turned the Sahara into a lush savanna some 12,000 years ago.”

Africa DroughtNational Geographic News, July 31, 2009 – “The green shoots of recovery are showing up on satellite images of regions including the Sahel, a semi-desert zone bordering the Sahara to the south that stretches some 2,400 miles (3,860 kilometers). “

“Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal Biogeosciences.

“The study suggests huge increases in vegetation in areas including central Chad and western Sudan.”

Africa DroughtNew Scientist, September 18, 2002:

“Africa’s deserts are in ‘spectacular’ retreat.”“The southern Sahara desert is in retreat,

making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa. ... Burkina Faso, one of the West African countries devastated by drought and advancing deserts 20 years ago, is growing so much greener that families who fled to wetter coastal regions are starting to go home.”

Africa Drought

Africa is currently “experiencing an unusually prolonged period of stable, wet conditions in comparison to previous centuries of the past millennium. … The patterns and variability of 20th century rainfall in central Africa have been unusually conducive to human welfare in the context of the past 1400 years.” - Geology, January 1, 2007

Africa Drought

This phenomenon of a greening planet is not limited to the southern Sahara desert. Satellite data from 1981-1999, reported in the September 16, 2001 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research, found an 8-to-12 percent increase in vegetation across North America and Eurasia. A subsequent comment in the same journal, Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded that a concurrent rise in atmospheric CO2 was primarily responsible for the increased vegetation.

Africa Drought“[S]atellite images from the last 15 years do

seem to show a recovery of vegetation in the Southern Sahara” – BBC News, July 16, 2009

“The broader picture is reinforced by studies carried out in the Namib Desert in Namibia. … In the last decade they have seen the local river, a dry bed for most of the year, experience record-high floods. All this has coincided with record-high temperatures.” BBC News, July 16, 2009

Antarctic Temps Since 1979

Antarctica

July 2006, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society – “Mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic loss from West Antarctica.”

Antarctica

Nature, Jan. 13, 2002 – Antarctica is in a prolonged and dramatic cold spell. Temperatures have been dropping 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1978.

The Arctic

“All time low record” for Arctic sea ice merely means since 1979, when satellites first began measuring Arctic sea ice.

The Arctic

The Arctic was clearly much warmer during World War II

How do we know? Squadron of P-38 and B-17 bombers found under 268 feet of snow and ice

The Arctic

"Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic. … When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.” - NASA, Oct. 4, 2007

The Arctic

"The multi-year ice in the polar pack didn't melt in the Arctic Ocean. It moved out and what's left in the Arctic is thinner than it was.“ - Jane Eert, science coordinator of the Three Oceans Project, a federal study of Canada's Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific oceans, July 18, 2009, Toronto Star.

The Arctic

Arctic sea ice has been regenerating since October 2007, often growing at a record pace.

The Arctic

Global Sea Ice

Crop Production“Favorable weather has helped farmers

produce what could be a huge [corn] harvest, with projections calling for 13 billion bushels. That would be just shy of the 13.04 billion bushels harvested in 2007.” – Sep. 16, 2009, Associated Press

Crop ProductionIn 2008, the U.S. harvested its largest soybean

crop ever. – USDA, Crop Production Historical Track Records, April 2009

In 2008, U.S. wheat, bean, peanut and sugar beet production recorded their highest yields per acre ever.

In 2007, U.S. cotton, potatoes, rice, and sorghum recorded their highest yields per acre ever.

Also in this decade, U.S. barley, canola, corn, flaxseed, and sunflower production recorded their highest yields per acre ever.

What about the IPCC Scientific “Consensus”?

IPCC Flaws• Not a body of 2,600 “scientists”• Selected by political bodies, not scientific

bodies• Only 20% are climate scientists• Only a handful of lead authors produce the

final document• Greenpeace, Environmental Defense,

Environment Canada the lead authors• Over 10,000 critical comments

A More Accurate Scientists Consensus

31,000 scientists say no crisis (oism.org)500 climate scientists surveyed by Institute

of Coastal ResearchSurvey question: “Natural scientists have

established enough physical evidence to turn the issue of global climate change over to social scientists for matters of policy discussion.”

Less than half agreed

Is This “Consensus”? American Physical Society, July 2008 – “There is a considerable

presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion….”

Polish Academy of Sciences, Feb 12, 2009 – “The phenomenon observed today, in particular the temporary rise of global temperature, is the result of the natural rhythm of climate change.”

New York Times lead science reporter Andrew Revkin – “For every PhD, there is an equal and opposite PhD.”

Danish National Space Center, 2007 – “We have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years.”

Russian Academy of Sciences, 2008 – “The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases. … Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean. Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster.”

Consensus - IndiaFinancial Times, July 24, 2009 – “India rejected key scientific findings on global warming … “Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.”

“He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming. “

“ ‘We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,’ he said.”

“Mr Ramesh said the rate of retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas varied from a “couple of centimetres a year to a couple of metres”, but that this was a natural process that had taken place occurred over the centuries. Some were, in fact, growing, he said.”

“The glaciers – estimated by India’s space agency to number about 15,000 – had also been affected by debris and the large number of tourists, he said.”

Drought

International Journal of Climatology, July 2004: Study of soil moisture throughout the Northern Hemisphere. “The terrestrial surface is both warmer and effectively wetter … A good analogy to describe the changes in these places is that the terrestrial surface is literally becoming more like a gardener’s greenhouse.”

Drought

Geophysical Research Letters, May 25, 2006 -“An increasing trend is apparent in both model soil moisture and runoff over much of the U.S. … This wetting trend is consistent with the general increase in precipitation in the latter half of the 20th century. Droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century.”

Drought

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website: “A number of tree-ring records exist for the last two millennia which suggest that 20th century droughts may be mild when evaluated in the context of this longer time frame.”

Drought

Climatic Change, July 2007: During the Little Ice Age, there occurred three “very large-scale drought[s] more severe and sustained than any witnessed during the period of instrumental weather observations” [i.e., the 20th century].

Drought

“Evidence indicates that summer soil moisture content has increased during the last several decades at almost all sites having long-term records in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank.” – Journal of Hydrology, March 15, 2006

Drought - U.S. Precipitation Trends

Drought: Even The Alarmists Concede

Gavin Schmidt, January 29, 2009, Christian Science Monitor – “If you look at model projections of rainfall in arid regions – the American Southwest, the Sahel [in Africa], India, China – for 2050 or 2100, half the models say one thing, half the models say another thing.”

All for Very Little Effect

Fully 3/4 of global emissions growth is coming from China, India, and other developing nations.

Even if the U.S. completely eliminated all of its emissions, in less than a decade the new growth alone in Chinese emissions alone would outweigh the eliminated U.S. emissions.

U.S. and Indiana CO2 cuts will have no real-world impact on temperatures, but would have a very real, and very negative, impact on the Indiana and U.S. economies.

FloodsScientists report a moderate rise in overall

precipitation during the 20 century but a decline in extreme weather events, such as floods.

“The conterminous U.S. is getting wetter, but less extreme.“– Geophysical Research Letters, 1999

FloodsJournal of the American Water Resources Association – April, 2009“There is broad evidence … for increased magnitudes of low and moderate flows both regionally and nationally.” While “trends in high flows have been much less evident.” “At a national scale, only a small proportion of the gages measuring dominantly natural streamflow … show upward trends in the annual maximum average daily discharge.”

Floods

Floods

Floods - U.S. PrecipitationSource: National Climatic Data Center

Greenland2006 study, Journal of Geophysical Research: Researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that temperatures during the last two full decades in Greenland were colder than any decade since the 1910s.

Greenland’s temperatures during the 1980s and 1990s averaged a full 1.5 degrees Celsius lower than average annual temperatures during the 1930s and 1940s.

GreenlandDecember 2005, Journal of Glaciology: Scientists analyzed 10 years worth of data and reported, “the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain.”

Hockey Stick

Congress asked Dr. Edward Wegman, chair of the National Academy of Sciences’ (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, to assess the “hockey stick” data on a pro bono basis. Dr. Wegman assembled a committee of statisticians, including university professors and the Board of the American Statistical Association, to assist him.

Hockey Stick“[O]ur committee believes that Dr. Mann’s assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis.” – Wegman report

Hockey Stick

“In general, we found MBH98 and MBH99 [the hockey stick methodologies] to be somewhat obscure and incomplete and the criticisms of [the hockey stick assertions] to be valid and compelling.” – Wegman report

Hockey Stick

“As statisticians, we were struck by the isolation of communities such as the paleoclimate community that rely heavily on statistical methods, yet do not seem to be interacting with the mainstream statistical community. The public policy implications of this debate are financially staggering and yet apparently no independent statistical expertise was sought or used.” – Wegman Report

Hockey Stick

“In our further exploration of the social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction, we found that at least 43 authors have direct ties to Dr. Mann by virtue of coauthored papers with him. Our findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus ‘independent studies’ may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface.” – Wegman Report

Hockey Stick

“It is important to note the isolation of the paleoclimate community; even though they rely heavily on statistical methods they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community. Additionally, we judge that the sharing of research materials, data and results was haphazardly and grudgingly done.” – Wegman Report

Hockey Stick

“Sharing of research materials, data, and results is haphazard and often grudgingly done. We were especially struck by Dr. Mann’s insistence that the code he developed was his intellectual property and that he could legally hold it personally without disclosing it to peers. When code and data are not shared and methodology is not fully disclosed, peers do not have the ability to replicate the work and thus independent verification is impossible.” – Wegman Report

The Hockey Stick is BentSource: Loehle, Energy & Environment, 2008

Hurricanes

Hurricanes

Hurricanes

Hurricanes National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA), November 29, 2005, regarding Hurricane Katrina and active 2005 hurricane season: "NOAA attributes this increased activity to natural occurring cycles in tropical climate patterns near the equator. … NOAA research shows that the tropical multi-decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming."

Hurricanes “We don’t see any new trend. There’s no link

to global warming that you can see at all.” – Dr. Chris Landsea, National Hurricane Center, May 1, 2007, Miami Herald

HurricanesBulletin of the American Meteorological

Society, March 2008: “A new technique for deriving hurricane climatologies from global data, applied to climate models, indicates that global warming should reduce the global frequency of hurricanes…”

Interglacial Temperatures

Science, July 6, 2007: Rich boreal forests covered much of Greenland just a few hundred thousand years ago, where now the ice is up to a mile thick. Temperatures were approximately 15 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today.

Interglacial TemperaturesUniversity of Alberta press release, July 5, 2007 –

“A team of international researchers has collected the oldest ever recovered DNA samples and used them to show that Greenland was much warmer at some point during the last Ice Age than most people have believed.”

“The ancient DNA was discovered at the bottom of a two kilometer thick ice sheet and came from the trees, plants and insects of a boreal forest estimated to be between 450,000 and 900,000 years-old.”

Mt. Kilimanjaro – The MediaAssociated Press, May 14, 2007:

“Global warming [is] … the glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro disappearing.”

“Planes used to take people through Kilimanjaro to see the snows, now it's only at the very top.”

Mt. Kilimanjaro – The Science Nature online, November 24, 2003:

“Although it’s tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests’ humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine.”

Mt. Kilimanjaro – The Science American Scientist, July-August 2007:“Warming fails spectacularly to explain the behavior

of the glaciers and plateau ice on Africa's Kilimanjaro massif.”

“The disappearing ice cap of the ‘shining mountain,’ which gets a starring role in the movie, is not an appropriate poster child for global climate change.”

“Kilimanjaro, a trio of volcanic cones that penetrate high into the cold upper troposphere, has gained and lost ice through processes that bear only indirect connections, if any, to recent trends in global climate.”

Himalayan GlaciersFinancial Times, July 24, 2009 – “Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers.”

“He dismissed scientists’ predictions that Himalayan glaciers might disappear within 40 years as a result of global warming. “

“ ‘We have to get out of the preconceived notion, which is based on western media, and invest our scientific research and other capacities to study Himalayan atmosphere,’ he said.”

“Mr Ramesh said the rate of retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas varied from a “couple of centimetres a year to a couple of metres”, but that this was a natural process that had taken place occurred over the centuries. Some were, in fact, growing, he said.”

Ocean AcidificationProceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, June

9, 2009 – “Sea star growth and feeding rates increased with water temperature from 5 °C to 21 °C. A doubling of current [CO2] also increased growth rates both with and without a concurrent temperature increase from 12 °C to 15 °C. … As in past studies of other marine invertebrates, increased [CO2] reduced the relative calcified mass in sea stars, although this effect was observed only at the lower experimental temperature.”

“Our findings demonstrate that increased [CO2] will not have direct negative effects on all marine invertebrates…”

Ocean AcidificationBiogeosciences, 2008 –Scientists subjected

marine organisms to varying concentrations of CO2, including abrupt changes of CO2 concentration. The ecosystems were “surprisingly resilient” to changes in atmospheric CO2, and “the ecosystem composition, bacterial and phytoplankton abundances and productivity, grazing rates and total grazer abundance and reproduction were not significantly affected by CO2-induced effects.”

Ocean Acidification

Global Change Biology, February, 2007 -- Scientists observed higher CO2 levels correlated with better growth conditions for oceanic life. The highest CO2 concentrations produced “higher growth rates and biomass yields” than the lower CO2 conditions. Higher CO2 levels may well fuel “subsequent primary production, phytoplankton blooms, and sustaining oceanic food-webs.”

Ocean Acidification Geophysical Research Letters, 2005 – Scientists examined trends in chlorophyll concentrations, which are the building blocks of ocean life. The French and American scientists reported “an overall increase of the world ocean average chlorophyll concentration by about 22 percent” during the prior two decades of increasing carbon dioxide concentrations.

Polar BearsEdinburgh Scotsman, Feb. 7, 2005 – “The world’s polar bear

population is on the increase despite global warming, which scientists had believed was pushing the animal towards extinction.

“According to new research, the numbers of the giant predator have grown by between 15 and 25 per cent over the last decade.

“A leading Canadian authority on polar bears, Mitch Taylor, said: "We’re seeing an increase in bears that’s really unprecedented, and in places where we’re seeing a decrease in the population it’s from hunting, not from climate change."

Polar Bears

London Telegraph, March 9, 2007 – “A survey of the animals' numbers in Canada's eastern Arctic has revealed that they are thriving, not declining …”

Polar Bears

According to the World Wildlife Fund there are approximately 22,000 polar bears in roughly 20 distinct populations.  Only two bear populations are decreasing, and they are in areas where temperatures have been declining. 

Polar BearsMitch Taylor, a scientist who has spent most of the past 30 years directing polar bear studies for the Nunavut indigenous nation, reports the polar bear population in Canada alone has increased 25 percent from 12,000 to 15,000 during the past decade, with 11 of Canada's 13 polar bear populations stable or increasing in number.

All-Time Record Highs – 50 States

Day-By-Day Record High Temps

Global High Temperature Records

Sea Level

The June 2007 issue of Global Planetary Change reports the total sea level rise from all sources – natural and anthropogenic – is currently at a pace of only 5 inches for the entire next century. This is well within historical natural parameters.

Sea Level

Sea Level Rise is Not Accelerating

Sea Surface Temps – NASA

Sea Temps, ARGO BUOYS

Sea Surface Temps

The Argo buoys, systematically and precisely measuring global ocean temperatures, have been operational since the end of 2003. Before that, ocean temperatures were gathered by spotty, unreliable methods, such as commercial ships sailing in popular commercial shipping lanes. The Argo buoy system has added uniformity and greater reliability to ocean temperature measurements.

Sea Surface Temps

“To enable them to make the case the oceans are warming, NOAA chose to remove satellite input into their global ocean estimation and not make any attempt to operationally use Argo data in the process. This resulted in a jump of 0.2C or more and ‘a new ocean warmth record’ in July [2009]. ARGO tells us this is another example of NOAA’s inexplicable decision to corrupt data to support political agendas.” – Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, First Director of Meteorology at The Weather Channel.

Snowpack – The ScienceUniversity of Washington climate scientists reported in Feb. 2007 that snowpack in the Cascades have increased during the past 30-plus years

Snowpack – The ScienceJuly 2008 - Scientists at the University of California at Santa Cruz reported that the snowpack at Mt. Shasta has been growing for the last century, including 30 percent growth in the past 50 years

Snowpack – The Science2006 Proceedings of the Western Snow Conference - Alpine snowpack throughout Utah has not declined at all during recent years

Snowpack – The ScienceUtah Blue Ribbon scientific panel on Climate Change, July 2007 - Snowpack in the Intermountain West has not been shrinking at all

Federal Electricity Subsidies Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Non-Electric Federal SubsidiesSource: U.S. Energy Information Administration

Tornadoes

Natural CO2 levels

What about Aerosols?Nature science journal, August 2, 2007 –

Asian “brown cloud” is a warming rather than cooling agent. The Asian brown cloud accounts for half of regional warming.

Science, August 15, 2008 – Aerosols are warming agents, except in the smallest concentrations

Next Ice Age Cancelled?Sep. 3, 2009 – The New York Times’ Andy

Revkin interviewed scientist Thomas Crowley of the University of Edinburgh:

“ ‘I would say that this is another piece of evidence that strengthens the argument that humans are now capable of preventing the onset of a future ice age,’ he told me [Revkin]. Another scientist holding this view is James E. Hansen of NASA, whom I interviewed about the timing of the next ice age in 2003.”

Next Ice Age Cancelled?“In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world's leading climatologists, predicts that if we continue to emit carbon dioxide we may eventually cancel the next ice age…”

This is a bad thing?

India, China Refuse to Cut“India will not accept any emission-reduction target –

period. This is a non-negotiable stand.” -- Jairam Ramesh, Indian Environment Minister, June 30, 2009

“It is natural for China to have some increase in emissions, so it is not possible for China to accept a binding or compulsory target.” -- Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang, June 2009.

“India cannot be pressured into taking commitments. There is no rational basis for asking India to do that." -- Raj Pachauri, IPCC Chairman, July 22, 2009

Conflict of Interest?As a former government employee, I am

familiar with the mindset. While the goal of a private sector job is to create wealth, the government employee’s main job is to spend as much of that wealth as possible. A government agency’s foremost goal is self preservation, which means perpetuating a public need for the agency. - Dr. Roy Spencer, 7-1-09

Thank you!

James M. Taylor

Senior Fellow, Environment Policy The Heartland Institute

taylor@heartland.org