Text 14665, 107 rader
Skriven 2005-08-19 05:31:00 av Jeff Binkley (1:226/600)
Ärende: Global warming
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166150,00.html

Global Warming Doubt Dispelled? Not Really 
Friday, August 19, 2005
By Steven Milloy
 
Is the debate now over for skeptics of global warming hysteria? Readers 
of USA Today may certainly have that impression. 

“Satellite and weather-balloon research released today removes a last 
bastion of scientific doubt about global warming, researchers say,ö 
reported USA Today on Aug.12.

Certainly the USA Today report was partially correct – the researchers 
did, in fact, “sayö [read “claimö] that “the last bastion of scientific 
doubtö had been removed. But claims and reality often don’t match up.

Three papers published in the journal Science last week purport to 
debunk an important argument advanced by skeptics of the notion of 
catastrophic, manmade global warming. The skeptics’ argument is that 
while temperatures measured on the Earth’s surface seem to indicate that 
global temperatures have increased at a rate of about 0.20 degrees 
Centigrade per decade (deg. C/decade) since the 1970s, temperatures 
measured in the atmosphere by satellite and weather balloons have shown 
only a relatively insignificant amount of warming for the same time 
period (about 0.09 deg. C/decade).

The implication of the skeptics’ argument is that whatever warming seems 
to be happening on the Earth’s surface, similar warming isn’t happening 
in the atmosphere. This might mean that any observed surface warming is 
more likely due to the urban heat island effect -- where the heat-
retaining properties of concrete and asphalt in urban areas artificially 
increase local temperatures -- rather than increasing atmospheric levels 
of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.

One of the new Science studies reported that the satellites had drifted 
in orbit, causing errors in temperature measurement. Corrections to the 
satellite data, according to the researchers, would increase the 
atmospheric warming estimate to 0.19 deg. C/decade -- more in line with 
the 0.20 deg. C/decade warming of the Earth’s surface. Another study 
reported that heating from tropical sunlight had skewed the balloon 
temperature measurements.

Ben Santer of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the 
studies’ authors, told USA Today that, “Once corrected, the satellite 
and balloon temperatures align with other surface and upper atmosphere 
measures, as well as climate change models.ö

So is it really game-set-match in favor of the global warming alarmists? 
Not so fast, say the skeptics.

When University of Alabama-Huntsville researcher Roy Spencer, a 
prominent climatologist, factored the newly reported corrections into 
his calculations, his estimate of atmospheric warming was only 0.12 deg. 
C/decade -- higher than the prior estimate of 0.09 deg. C/decade, but 
well below the Science study estimate of 0.19 deg C/decade and the 
surface temperature estimate of 0.20 deg. C/decade.

As to the claimed errors in the weather balloon measurements, Spencer 
says that no other effort to adjust the balloon data has produced 
warming estimates as high as those reported in the new study and that it 
will take time for the research community to form opinions about whether 
the new adjustments advocated are justified.

Climate expert Dr. Fred Singer of the Science and Environmental Policy 
Project says the temperature adjustments are “not a big deal.ö

“Greenhouse theory says (and the models calculate) that the atmospheric 
trend should be 30 percent greater than the surface trend -- and it 
isn’t,ö says Singer. “Furthermore, the models predict that polar 
[temperature] trends should greatly exceed the tropical values -- and 
they clearly don’t ... In fact, the Antarctic has been cooling,ö adds 
Singer.

Singer also had some related thoughts concerning the gloom-and-doom 
forecasts concerning future temperatures.

Last January, a study in the journal Nature estimated that a doubling of 
atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide would increase global temperatures 
anywhere from 1.9 degrees Centigrade to 11.5 degrees Centigrade by mid-
century. But Singer says the researchers “varied only six out of many 
more parameters necessary to model clouds… Their result confirms… that 
clouds are still too difficult to model and that climate models 
underlying the Kyoto Protocol have never been validated.ö

So it’s far from “case-closedö on global warming skepticism. Moreover, 
aside from the controversy over the satellite and weather balloon data, 
many key climate questions remain unanswered including: whether humans 
are causing significant warming; whether warming is undesirable; and 
whether anything be done to avert any undesirable warming.

Because of its prohibitive costs, alarm over global warming has been 
rejected numerous times by President Bush and the U.S. Senate. European 
nations are already discovering that their economies can’t live with the 
Kyoto Protocol that was just implemented in February.

Despite alarmist media reports, global warming-mania is melting. It’s no 
wonder the alarmists are in such a hurry to close the book on the 
science.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRwatch.com, is adjunct 
scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and is the author of 
Junk Science Judo: Self-defense Against Health Scares and Scams (Cato 
Institute, 2001).

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