The Climate Change That Isn't

Climate Change Reconsidered
06/05/09 - PowerLineBlog by John Hinderaker

The 880 page book Climate Change Reconsidered has been published by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC). At the highest level, these are the conclusions:

[edited] This is an authoritative and detailed rebuttal of the findings of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress are relying on bad conclusions from the IPCC.

The scholarship in this book demonstrates overwhelming scientific evidence that

• The warming of the twentieth century was moderate and not unprecedented.
• Its impact on human health and wildlife was positive.
• Carbon dioxide probably is not the driving factor behind climate change.

The authors cite thousands of peer-reviewed research papers and books that were ignored by the IPCC, plus additional scientific research that became available after the IPCC's self-imposed deadline of May 2006.

* The IPCC uses warming data from surface recording stations, yielding a 1905-2005 temperature increase of 0.74ºC. But, this temperature record is not corrected for the urban heat island (UHI) effect. [UHI is warming from streets, buildings, and roofs which are the sites for the temperature stations.] The UHI of even small towns dwarfs any greenhouse effect that might be present [making that data useless].

* Highly accurate satellite data, adjusted for orbit drift and other factors, show a much more modest warming trend in 1980-2000 and a dramatic decline in the warming trend in 2000-2009.

* The observed pattern of warming differs from the pattern predicted by global climate models based on CO2 greenhouse effects.

Data from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) is unequivocal. All greenhouse models show an increasing warming trend with altitude in the tropics, peaking around 10 km at roughly twice the surface value. But, the actual temperature data from balloons give the opposite result: no increasing warming, but rather a slight cooling with altitude.

* Temperature records in Greenland and other Arctic areas reveal that temperatures reached a maximum around 1930 and have decreased in recent decades. Longer-term studies show oscillatory cooling since the Climatic Optimum of the mid-Holocene (~9000-5000 years ago), when it was perhaps 2.5º C warmer than it is now.

* The average temperature history of Antarctica provides no evidence of twentieth century warming. The Antarctic peninsula shows recent warming, but several research teams have documented a cooling trend for the interior of the continent since the 1970s.