Global Warming:

A Scientific Overview

By James M. Taylor

Senior Fellow, Environment Policy

The Heartland Institute

Presented at the Pittsburgh Association of Petroleum Geologists & Society of

Petroleum Engineers Joint Meeting – Radisson Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA

May 1, 2008

The Earth’s Temperature Is Always Fluctuating

• Past 10 years: Slightly cooling

• Prior 20 years: Warming

• Prior 30 years: Cooling

• Prior 90 years: Warming

• Prior 900 years: Cooling

• Prior 900 years: Warming

Temperatures Since 2003

20th Century Temperature and Carbon Dioxide

• Years Temps Carbon Dioxide

• 1900-1945 Rising Minimal

• 1945-1977 Cooling Rising

• 1977-1998 Rising Rising

• 1998-2008 Cooling Rising

Holocene Temperature History

Earth’s Temperature History

A Poster Child of Unethical Deceit

McIntyre, McKitrick Revision

Solar Output: An Embarrassing Truth

Scientists Consensus

• 19,000 scientists say no crisis (oism.org)

• 500 climate scientists surveyed by Institute of

Coastal Research

– Survey 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

Scientific Consensus

IPCC Flaws

• Not 2,600 “scientists”

• Selected by political bodies, not scientific bodies

• Greepeace, Environmental Defense in: William

Gray out

• Only a handful of lead authors produce final

document

• Over 10,000 critical comments

Extraterrestrial SUVs?

• Global warming on Earth

• Global warming on Mars

• Global warming on Jupiter

• Global warming on Pluto

• Global warming on numerous planetary

moons

NASA Aqua Satellite

Doubling CO2 = Only 1.1 Degree Warming

• 3 Major Assumptions in Alarmist Models:

• 1) Humidity Should Increase

• 2) Upper Level Clouds Should Increase

• 3) CO2 Stays in Atmosphere for Centuries

Aqua Satellite Has Confirmed

• 1) Humidity is DECLINING

• 2) Upper Level Clouds are DECLINING

• 3) (CO2 Stays in Atmosphere for Only 5 to 7

years)

Antarctica

• “Antarctic Warming Alarms Scientists - Most

Serious Thaw Since End Of Last Ice Age 12,000

Years Ago” – CBS News headline, May 14,

2002

• “A canary in the coal mine” of global warming

– An Inconvenient Truth

Antarctica: The Truth

Antarctica is in a prolonged and dramatic cold

spell. Temperatures have been dropping 1.2

degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1978. -

Nature magazine, Jan. 13, 2002

Antarctica: The Truth

“The decline is alarming. … These cooling

repercussions may have a long-term effect.” –

Antarctic Researcher Diana Wall, Colorado

State University: Nature, Jan. 13, 2002

Antarctica: The Truth

“Mass gains from accumulating snow,

particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and

within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic

loss from West Antarctica.” - July 2006,

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal

Society

Antarctica: The Truth

Antarctica: The Truth

The Arctic

• CNN.com (Sept. 15, 2007)– A “steady,

worldwide decline in ice cover” … is “an early

warning of a changing climate.”

• Asserts glaciers from the Arctic, Greenland,

Antarctica, Mt. Kilimanjaro have been

vanishing due to global warning

The Arctic

“All time low record” merely means since

1979, when satellites first began measuring

Arctic sea ice

The Arctic

• Clearly much warmer during World War II

• 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 Arctic

NASA: Since October 2007, Arctic sea ice has

grown faster than at any point in recorded

history.

Mt. Kilimanjaro

Associated 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

Nature magazine 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

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.”

Drought

Environmental News Service, April 5, 2007:

“Global Warming Brings Perpetual Drought to

U.S. Southwest”

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

“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.” - Geophysical

Research Letters, May 25, 2006

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 (U.S. precipitation – NCDC)

Drought

What we see from the scientific record is that

droughts have become less frequent and less

severe during our recent global warming.

Asserted trends to the contrary are decidedly

short term, limited in geographic reach, and

quite minor when compared to droughts that

have dominated colder climatic conditions.

Hurricanes

USA Today, March 31, 2008: “Hurricanes and

other weather events are expected to last

longer and be more intense. That would mean

bigger storm surges, more damage to

buildings and roads, and contaminated food

and water.”

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

Hurricanes

Geophysical Research Letters, April 18, 2007:

Global warming will cause more upper

atmosphere wind shear, which will prevent

hurricanes from forming. “The environmental

changes found here do not suggest a strong

increase in tropical Atlantic hurricane activity

during the 21st century."

Hurricanes

• Bulletin 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…” – Kerry Emanuel, lead author

• Mixed results regarding intensity. Perhaps a small increase in intensity in some areas.

Hurricanes

How does the media report such a finding? --

Science Daily, April 19, 2008: “Climate Change

Likely to Intensify Storms, New Study

Confirms”

Tornadoes

“An Inconvenient Truth” claims global

warming is causing more tornadoes

Tornadoes

Greenland

New York Times, Jan. 16, 2007: “All over Greenland and the Arctic, rising temperatures are not simply melting ice; they are changing the very geography of coastlines. Nunataks —“lonely mountains” in Inuit — that were encased in the margins of Greenland’s ice sheet are being freed of their age-old bonds, exposing a new chain of islands, and a new opportunity for Arctic explorers to write their names on the landscape.”

Greenland

2006 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

• December 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.”

Greenland

Greenland

• Temperatures must warm SOMETIME…. We

hope.

• When it does, keep Babe Ruth in mind.

Africa

BBC News Online, August 20, 2002:

• “Global Warming Threatens Africa”

• “Reduced rainfall in the semi-arid Sahel region

south of the Sahara desert is another example

of the effects of pollution and climate change

on Africa in the WWF report.”

• Incorporated into “An Inconvenient Truth”

Africa

• New 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

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

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.

Any Questions?

James M. Taylor

taylor@heartland.org