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[fazoolius]

AHHHH GLOBAL WARMING!!!

http://www.accuweather.com/news-top-headline.asp?partner=accuweather&traveler=0


Global warming — right on schedule

By PETER FRIEDMAN
Conservative Corner
February 21, 2008 6:00 AM

http://junkscience.com/blog_js/2008/02/21/global-warming-right-on-schedule/

Although there are many uncertainties in climate science, we do know with reasonable assuredness that the earth is currently experiencing a modest warming trend. We also know that CO2, which is a small contributor to the "greenhouse effect," is increasing in concentration in the atmosphere.

The short-term confluence of these trends has led many to disregard the more convincing longer-term data and jump to a conclusion that there is a cause-and-effect relationship. But while the media have decided that the science is settled, many in the scientific community are skeptical — and with good reason.

Much of the current panic began when Dr. Michael Mann and his coauthors published their now-discredited "hockey stick" temperature plot — so named for its shape that showed a long trend of steady temperature over a thousand-year period and a sudden rise since the early 1900s. Dr. Mann’s hockey stick became the foundation for policy leaders advocating mandatory emissions caps.

Fortunately for mankind (but unfortunately for the professional reputation of Dr. Mann), the hockey stick was convincingly shown to be an artifact of his flawed statistical methodology, which exaggerated recent data and smoothed older data. Stephen McIntyre even demonstrated that Dr. Mann’s erroneous methodology generated hockey stick plots even when random data were inserted.

In contrast with Dr. Mann’s conclusion, the current modest temperature trend is consistent in both magnitude and timing with the natural temperature cycles that the earth has been experiencing for millions of years, and it is nothing to fear.

The earth’s climate cycles result from a number of long- and short-term driving forces. Long-term cycles, which include a 100,000-year orbital eccentricity cycle, a 41,000-year axis tilt angle cycle and a 23,000-year orbital "wobble" cycle, are responsible for major ice ages and interglacial periods.

Superposed on top of the long-term climate fluctuations are smaller and shorter climate cycles that have a period of roughly 1,500 years, theorized to result from solar variation.

Convincing evidence for these short-term cycles has been found all over the world. Originally, these 1,500-year cycles were discovered by studying radioactive isotopes in ice cores taken from Greenland, which provided a 250,000-year geologic record. Similar results have been uncovered on the opposite side of the world in Antarctic ice cores.

Hundreds of peer-reviewed articles in the world’s leading scientific journals have documented additional evidence using a variety of proxies from all over the world. These include coral samples, cave stalagmites, tree rings, ocean glacial deposition, pollen deposition, bore holes and fossils, as summarized by renowned scientist and skeptic of the current CO2 hysteria, Dr. S. Fred Singer, in his recent New York Times best seller, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years."

Historical records from a broad geographic sampling corroborate the physical evidence. For example, records showed that the agricultural range of temperature-sensitive plants expanded and contracted in a manner consistent with the temperature cycle.


Just another viewpoint.

-faz