Global Warming: "Settled Science" With An Extremely Unsettling Anomaly

Earlier in the week, the Drudge Report linked to a very interesting and almost laughable story -- especially if you are like me and find it hard to believe that mankind's carbon output is truly responsible for global warming.

That story, Stagnating Temperatures - Climatologists Baffled by Global Warming Time-Out, explains how the world's climatologists are scratching their heads over a decade or more of backtracking on global warming; when, in fact, the world's carbon dioxide levels have been rising even faster than previously predicted.

They're baffled because, in their own arrogance, they can't believe that their "greenhouse theory" could be so wrong. But, theories are just that. They are "proposed explanations" for a given phenomenon and they are still subject to conjecture. Theories will remain theories until somehow they can be proven to be a valid prediction of fact. Until that time, no theory can be truly labeled as settled science. Unfortunately, the "time-out" in global warming is showing that their "CO2/Greenhouse theory" has some serious flaws because it has easily failed the predictability test in real life.

This should be no surprise; even for those "pro-global warming theory" climatologists. In 1990, when the first computer models were released by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they predicted that, by 2007, the world's temperatures would rise almost 6 tenths of a degree, as noted by the purple line in this chart (Click to view the chart as a popup window) prepared by the University of Colorado to reflect predicted IPCC versus actual temperature in the last 19 years. Then, in 1995, they "revised" their prediction and came up with the ocher line on that chart -- showing that temperatures would only rise by half of what had been previously estimated in 1990. Then, again, in 2001, they predicted that temperatures would rise another 1/2 of one-tenth of a degree higher than they had thought in 1995; but, still 2-1/2 tenths of a degree less than their 1990 prediction.

But, what was even more amazing is the fact that, in 2007, the IPCC came along with the brown line and said that temperatures had risen by almost .4 of a degree in the period of 1990 to 2007; even though 3 out of the 4 temperature monitoring agencies (RSS, UKMet, and UAH) had shown less increases than which the IPCC was stating as fact. Obviously, for what can only be defined as political reasons, they have decided to match their computer model to meet the highest of the actual temperature monitoring agencies and completely ignored the data that was compiled by the other 3.

If you look at that chart again, a lot of what went into the formation of the Kyoto Treaty on the control of carbon output was based on that distinctive blip that was seen in 1998. Literally, people like Al Gore used that anomaly to make the famous "hockey puck" prediction that said that temperatures would rise in almost a vertical fashion if carbon dioxide levels weren't controlled. In reality, temperatures have significantly abated since then. In fact, the world satellite monitoring equipment of the Remote Sensing System (RSS) project is now showing that temperatures have been almost flat since 1990; only up less than one tenth of a degree in 19 years.

I will believe in global warming when the IPCC starts making realistic predictions; and, not just those that seem warped to fit their apparent ideological, world-view of redistribution of wealth and resources.

This entire belief that mankind is so significant -- relative to the massive size of our earth -- is unbelievable. If you assume that, on average, each man, woman, and child -- standing -- takes up less than 2 square feet of the earth's surface (2 feet wide and 1 foot deep), you could theoretically pack about 13 million standing people in a square mile of space (5280 feet squared). While that may seem impossible, there are actually 27 million square feet in a square mile. Divided by 2, you would easily exceed the space needed for 13 million people. That also means that in 1,000 square miles, you literally could jam 27 billion people together. The world only has a population of less than 7 billion people (actually estimated at 6.6 billion in 2007). To further emphasize the insignificance of mankind, one of our smallest states, New Hampshire, has an area of only 9,230 square miles. That's large enough to hold 270 billion people or 40 times the space needed to theoretically hold the world's population. With that much leftover space in New Hampshire, all the world's people could bring their cars with them and still have space left over in this, one of our smallest states.

By contrast, the world's vegetation -- which eats carbon dioxide and coverts it to oxygen -- covers more than 90% of the world's inhabitable areas. Further, water and ice, which covers 71% of the world's surface, holds about 93% of this planet's carbon dioxide. Once again, mankind is dwarfed by the other mechanisms that control CO2 on this earth.

The world's weather system is much more complex than simply projecting CO2 levels. Temperatures are heavily influence by a variety of factors; including solar heating, wind patterns, ocean currents (like El Nino), and natural activities such as forest fires and volcanic activity. The obvious inability of the IPCC to accurately predict temperatures over seventeen years, as shown above), just proves that we aren't advanced enough to predict what will really happen in the future. Don't forget, in the 1970's, the going rage of the scientific community was that we were entering another ice age. To me, the baffling part of the current cooling trend of the earth is how all these climatologists seem to think they are "expert" enough to predict global warming. How egotistical!