Antarctica hasn’t warmed as much over the last century as climate models had originally predicted, a new study finds. Climate change’s effects on Antarctica are of particular interest because of the substantial amount of water locked up in its ice sheets. Should that water begin to melt, sea levels around the globe could rise and inundate low-lying coastal areas.

The new study, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, marks the first time that researchers have been able to give a progress report on Antarctic climate model projections by comparing climate records to model simulations (these comparisons have been done for the other six continents). Information about Antarctica’s harsh weather patterns has traditionally been limited, but temperature records from ice cores and ground weather stations have recently been constructed, giving scientists the missing information they needed.

“This is a really important exercise for these climate models,” said study leader Andrew Monaghan of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Co. Monaghan and his team found that while climate models projected temperature increases of 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.75 degrees Celsius) over the past century, temperatures were observed to have risen by only 0.4 F (0.2 C). “This is showing us that, over the past century, most of Antarctica has not undergone the fairly dramatic warming that has affected the rest of the globe,” Monaghan said.

The gap between prediction and reality seemed to be caused by the models overestimating the amount of water vapor in the Antarctic atmosphere. The cold air over the southernmost continent handles moisture differently than the atmosphere over warmer regions.
Read more here.

In the May 5, 2008 edition of Newsweek, there is an article by science writer Sharon Begley trying to convince us that “global warming isn’t good for crops after all”. Her first example is that a glacier in the Himalayas called the Gangotri glacier. She writes that over the last 25 years the glacier has shrunk about half a mile, “a rate three times the historical norm”. The implication is, of course, that this was caused by increasing atmospheric CO2 produced by human activities. Since this glacier supplies 70% of the flow to India’s Ganges River during the dry season, loss of the glacier would cause great harm to India’s crop irrigation.

However, this article in the Times of India, contains the following quote: According to Geological Survey of India data, between 1935 and 1996, Gangotri glacier receded at an average 18.80 metres per year. Studies by other institutions show that yearly recession dropped to 17.5 metres during 1971-2004 and further to 12.10 metres in 2004-05. The river flow may be falling and the glacier retreating, but is it really three times the historical norm? The Indian government calls it a “natural phenomena” that may have been exacerbated by the building of four dams.

Her next example is that of a diminishing snowpack in the United States, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. Was she out of the country this winter? Take a look at these snow depth comparisons from the Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center in Seattle,Washington. You can see that this year’s snow pack in the Northwest was between 133% and 330% above normal. In many locations in the central Rockies, the midwest and northern New England, the highest snowfall amounts of any year were recorded. Of course, one year does not make a trend, but since the Pacific Decadal Oscillation has gone negative, this may indeed be the beginning of a trend.

In this last example, she quotes a Linda Mearns from the National Center for Atmospheric Research who says in reference to climate zones moving north that “the sun will not move with the climate”. That is true, but she then says “the Dakotas will always have less daylight than Kansas.” How can anyone who knows anything about climate make that statement? During the growing season, which is what she is talking about, the Dakotas do indeed have more daylight than Kansas. Between the spring equinox and the fall equinox, there is more daylight the farther north you go. Assuming you could find the correct temperatures, you could never grow apples at the Equator because there are only 12 hours of daylight in that location. At the Summer Solstice, Bismarck, North Dakota has almost 16 hours of daylight, which is over an hour more than Wichita, Kansas. You can easily find the sunrise/sunset times for any city at this web site, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story? Read full blog here.

There is a remarkable quote on the Nature.com blog website. On that website it is written:

“The NY Times wraps up its main piece [by Andy Revkin] with a useful quote from Kevin Trenberth, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research: ‘Too many think global warming means monotonic relentless warming everywhere year after year. It does not happen that way.’”

This is an amazing error. Global warming does require a more-or-less monotonic increase in warming (in the absence of a major volcanic eruption) as illustrated in all available multi-decadal global model runs (e.g. see the Figure in this post on Climate Science ; and see Figure 1 in Barnett et al, 2001). This essentially monotonic report is even emphasized in the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers (see Figure SPM.4)!

Climate Science published a proposed test of the multi-decadal global model predictions (see A Litmus Test For Global Warming - A Much Overdue Requirement).  Clearly, so far, the models are failing to skillfully predict the rate (and even the sign for the most recent years) of global warming. Andy Revkin should follow up his article to document what the models predict in terms of global warming (in Joules) over different time periods, and what do the observations actually show. This would be excellent investigative (much needed) journalism. See Roger’s post here and his regularly updated site here.

In a piece by Jad Mouawad, Tuesday’s NY Times reports that Oil Price Rise Fails to Open Tap. He identifies a number of reasons for the lack of responsiveness on the supply side. Surprisingly, in an otherwise decent article, absent from this report is the credit that is due to the New York Times itself (and like-minded entities) in their long-standing efforts decrying the search for oil and gas within the US. A search of the Times site for the words “editorial drilling oil gas” (sans quotes) over the past few years reveals a constant stream of editorials in the Times decrying efforts to drill for oil and gas. Examples include:
(a) Leave Bristol Bay Alone, December 6, 2006.
(b) Regulatory Games and the Polar Bear, January 15, 2008.
(c) Losing Patience, August 21, 2007.
(d) Protecting a Monumental Sculpture, February 18, 2008, etc
(e) Drain America First, July 25, 2006

And of course the NY Times has been in the forefront of opposition to any drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge based on the logic that it would supply only six months of US oil consumption while forever sullying the Wildlife Refuge (an arguable claim). Using this logic we could shut down every farm in the U.S. - and the world - since no single farm provides more than a few hours’ worth of food, and food production is the single greatest threat to terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity worldwide. This is not to say that drilling - or farming, for that matter - is acceptable everywhere, but reflexive opposition to energy production is not. Read more here.

Indur M. Goklany has worked with federal and state governments, think tanks and the private sector for over 30 years, and written extensively on globalization and environmental issues including sustainable development, technological change, food and health. He has represented the United States at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in the negotiations that established the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. He was chief of the Technical Assessment Division of the National Commission on Air Quality and a consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Policy, Planning, and Evaluation. He is the author of The Precautionary Principle and Clearing the Air: The Real Story of the War on Air Pollution.

Parts of North America and Europe may cool naturally over the next decade, as shifting ocean currents temporarily blunt the global-warming effect caused by mankind, Germany’s Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences said.

Average temperatures in areas such as California and France may drop over the next 10 years, influenced by colder flows in the North Atlantic, said a report today by the institution based in Kiel, Germany. Temperatures worldwide may stabilize in the period.

The study was based on sea-surface temperatures of currents that move heat around the world, and vary from decade to decade. This regional cooling effect may temporarily neutralize the long- term warming phenomenon caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases building up around the earth, said Richard Wood, a research scientist at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a U.K. provider of environmental and weather-related services.

“Those natural climate variations could be stronger than the global-warming trend over the next 10-year period,” Wood said in an interview. “Without knowing that, you might erroneously think there’s no global warming going on.” If we don’t experience warming over the next 10 years, it doesn’t mean that greenhouse-gas warming is not with us,’’ Keenlyside said in an interview. “There can be natural fluctuations that may mask climate change in the short term.” Natural variations over the next 10 years might be heading in the cold direction,’’ Wood said.  “If you run the model long enough, eventually global warming will win.”

The world will become at least 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer by 2100, compared with the pre-industrial period, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in March. “We thought a lot about the way to present this because we don’t want it to be turned around in the wrong way,” Keenlyside said. “I hope it doesn’t become a message of Exxon Mobil and other skeptics.”

Icecap Note: Read here why the real causes of climate change are the oceans and the sun. The coincidental parallel change of CO2 and temperatures from the 1890s to the 1930s and again from the 1970s to 1990s does not a correlation make. The correlation was negative from the 1940s to 1970s and the lack of correlation since 1998 suggest CO2 is not the primary driver. See also this document and links from Dr. Tom Segalstad that shows why CO2 greenhouse warming is greatly exaggerated and thus the future warming from the IPCC long term models.

Over a span of just eight days and with minimal funding, a grassroots petition to Stop Climate Alarmism and the coming $1.2 trillion Carbon Tax rallied more signers than Al Gore’s highly-touted $300 million ad blitz. 100,000 Sign Petition Opposing $1.2 Trillion Carbon Tax, eclipsing Gore’s high-profile effort over the same span.

“Despite the media’s spin and Al Gore’s rants, many Americans don’t believe the Climate Alarmist agenda and strongly oppose the coming $1.2 trillion Carbon Tax,” says Steve Elliott, President of Grassfire.org. “I think it is significant that, over a span of eight days, our petition rallied more signers than Al Gore’s effort which included expensive ad buys and has been heavily promoted by the media. People are beginning to question the coming $1.2 trillion Carbon Tax.”

Gore’s “Alliance for Climate Protection” launched its $300 million blitz on March 31, and claims “over 1 million” signers to its petition. It has added less than 100,000 since Grassfire launched its petition. Elliott says many citizens are becoming skeptical of a new government taxing scheme to solve a debatable crisis, especially in the current economic climate. “With the mortgage crisis, rising gas prices and a tightening economy, the last thing we need is another massive government bureaucracy that will stifle the economy, take more of our money and control more of our lives.” Read more here including how you can add your voice.

Fred Singer, one of the world’s renowned scientists, believes in Martians. I discovered this several weeks ago while reading his biography on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. “Do you really believe in Martians?” I asked him last week, at a chance meeting at a Washington event. The answer was “No.”

Wikipedia’s error was neither isolated nor inadvertent. The page that Wikipedia devotes to what is ostensibly Fred Singer’s biography is designed to trivialize his long and outstanding scientific career by painting him as a political partisan and someone who “is best known as president and founder (in 1990) of the Science & Environmental Policy Project, which disputes the prevailing scientific views of climate change, ozone depletion, and second-hand smoke and is science advisor to the conservative journal NewsMax.”

Innocent Wikipedia readers would be surprised to learn that Dr. Singer is no conservative kook but the first director of the U.S. National Weather Satellite Center; the recipient of a White House commendation for his early design of space satellites; the recipient of a commendation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for research on particle clouds; and the recipient of a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for the development and management of weather satellites. He is, in short, a scientist of the highest calibre, with a long list of major scientific achievements, including the first measurements, with V-2 and Aerobee rockets, of primary cosmic radiation in space, the design of the first instruments for measuring ozone, and the authorship of the first publications predicting the existence of trapped radiation in the earth’s magnetic field to explain the magnetic-storm ring current.

Honest accounts of Fred Singer and his accomplishments have been available on Wikipedia, and on hundreds of occasions. Those occasions don’t last long, however - often just minutes - before the honest accounts are discovered and reverted by Wikipedians who troll the site. Such trolls continually monitor Wikipedia’s 10 million pages to erase any hint that the science is not settled on climate change. Dissenters by the dozens have been likewise demeaned - to check for yourself, just look up Richard Lindzen, Paul Reiter, or any of the other scientists or organizations that have questioned the orthodoxy on climate change.

In contrast to the high-handed treatment that greet global warming skeptics, those who support the orthodoxy are puffed up and protected from criticism, their errors erased and their controversies hushed. This is the case with Naomi Oreskes, a scientist with a PhD who had arrived at an absurd finding: That no studies in a major scientific database questioned the UN view of climate change. 

The trollers insist on characterizing Fred Singer as believing in Martians, in reality it is the Wickipedian trollers who are from Mars. Read more on this here and as most honest professors do, discourage your children from relying on Wiki as an encyclopedia of truth on at least this issue. The Martians have turned it into yet another propaganda vehicle.

The mainstream media continues to write urgently about global warming. Last month NEWSWEEK asked on its cover which candidate will be the most green. On Sunday the New York Times Magazine produced a special issue on how to reduce your carbon footprint-from changing your light bulbs to walking more to eating “slow food.” Any reader of old-line mainstream media-the traditional news source of the upper middle class-would think that the country is rallying to a crisis.

But the disconnect persists. National polls show that the environment ranks fairly low as an issue that moves voters. In the Pennsylvania primary global warming was such a peripheral issue that exit pollsters did not even bother to measure voter attitudes toward it. Many younger voters wish the candidates would talk more about global warming. But most voters worry more about jobs and keeping fuel cheap. Aside from speaking in broad generalities and making vague promises, the candidates steer away from involved debate on global warming. (Enabled, it should be said, by political reporters. Of the more than 3,000 questions asked in the more than 20 presidential debates, fewer than 10 mentioned global warming.)

There is an enormous class divide on the subject. The chattering classes obsess about greenhouse emissions. The rest of the country, certainly the older and less well-off voters, can’t be bothered. Slow food to most people means that the waitress at the local IHOP is falling behind. The politicians duck the issue, or so it seems. It may be, though, that the politicians know something they are not saying-and that the green-conscious upper classes do not wish to confront. Making a serious dent in global warming would be hugely costly. Read more here.