While I agree that Global Warming is a serious issue and that we are facing our warmest year ever, I do feel that certain issues are being overlooked or trivialized. One such issue being the massive tsunami that devastated southern asia. A tsunami of that magnitude had to be created by a significant earthquake. An earthquake of that magnitude must surely have had an effect on the planet earth itself.
Our globe is spinning in space and orbitting the sun. The earth is wobbling on its axis and is not the most stable item in the universe. The massive earthquake must surely have affected this "wobble" and even it caused a fraction of a degree of change, this would then afrfect the weather patterns we are now seeing. Couple that with the el nino effect to occur and tie it all in with other major forces, then surely our patterns of weather this winter are as a result of the earth changing it s"tilt" and "wobble" on its axis.

Iben Browning wrote a book in the 1970s, "Climate and the Affairs of Man." He showed that not only solar activity but also the earth's volcanic activity affects the earth's temperature. He also showed that tidal pressure on the earth changes with the proximity to the moon and sun. Even planetary allignments add to this time table of when the earth warms and cools. The tidal pressure ramps up this decade with 2008 the highest in something like 100 years but general increasing pressure ongoing. (December 26, 2004's Tsunami occurred at the last high tidal point.) The temperature would be expected to cool. Normally, cooling climate is associated with wars, famines, disease, etc. Warming temperatures are associated with prosperity. I think the Great Climatic Optimum was 5000-3000BC, so was an even longer period of pleasant temperatures. We're really very lucky to have enjoyed a warm period of the earth's history.
As ever, Craig

Laura,
You skewed Mr. Abdusamatov's take on Global Warming and Green house gases. A quote from Rediff India Abroad article on Mr Abdusamatov-
"The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti.

"He said that the global temperature maximum has been reached on the Earth and it will decline to a climatic minimum even without the Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions."

He is not in direct opposition with IPCC, but rather sees global cooling as the more appropriate issue to address.

I guess there are strawmen at accuweather too!

Below is an article that references the IPCC's determination to ignore the WMP. Being a programmer, I can make any software model say anything I want it to by adjusting assumptions and deciding which "facts" to take into account.

The sun is clearly the 1.988 435�1030 kg (332,946 Earths) gorilla in the room that everyone with a political motivation to destroy freedom and capitalism is trying to ignore. Once the northern tree limit exceeds the northern tree limit of the WMP, let me know. Until then, it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter. And sometimes records are broken.

So stop being a chicken little or worse pursuing the old soviet justifcation for the loss of freedom, namely, that there is an enemy out there and we need to control everything in order to protect ourselves.

And remeber a bridge without moorings a simply flotsam.

Anyway, here's the article.

Climate Change During Medieval Warm Period Very Similar to 20th Century Rise in Temperature

By Brian Carnell

Sunday, March 24, 2002

Science published a study last week claiming that a tree ring analysis found striking similarities between 20th century increases in global temperature and the Medieval Warm Period -- a period lasting from 1330 AD to 1600 AD which saw similar increases in temperature.

Researchers examined ancient tree rings at 14 sties on three continents. According to Edward Cook of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory,

We don't use this as a refutation of greenhouse warming, but it does show that there are processes within the Earth's natural climate system that produce large changes that might be viewed as comparable to what we have seen in the 20th century.

Not surprisingly, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's climate models simply ignore the Medieval Warm Period. The models simply compare current temperatures to those of the immediately preceding pre-industrial societies. It is almost as if the Medieval Warm Period simply never happened as far as the IPCC is concerned (which makes it a lot easier to claim the current warming trend is completely unprecedented and, therefore, must be due to human-induced changes in the climate.

Source:

Tree Ring Study Shows Warm Cycles. Paul Recer, The Associated Press, March 21, 2002.

Laura, I don't know why you think Abdusamatov is incorrect. Your favorite greenhouse website says this, "The atmosphere emits radiation for the same reason the Sun does: each has a finite temperature." And Abdusamatov isn't the only scientist to say that our upper atmosphere emits heat back into space almost as fast as it collects it. I've read it elsewhere.

However, your greenhouse site also says this, "Curiously, the surface of the Earth receives nearly twice as much energy from the atmosphere as it does from the Sun. Even though the Sun is much hotter, it does not cover nearly as much of the sky as does the atmosphere. A great deal of radiation coming from the direction of the Sun does not add up to as much energy as does the smaller portion of radiation emitted by each portion of the atmosphere but now coming from the whole sky. (It would take about 90,000 Suns to paper over the whole sky)." I'm tempted to say this is one of the stupidest statements I have read. because the sun is a globe and emits radiation in every direction. Also, the atmosphere acts like a battery storing the heat delivered by the sun, and the storage is helped by clouds. That is why a clear winter night is colder than an overcast winter night. The other problem I have with this site, your greenhouse site, and many like it, and apparently YOU ignore the fact that our planet has a molten core and generates a considerable amount of its own heat - it isn't just the sun. We are not living on a dead rock.

Dale: "He said that the global temperature maximum has been reached on the Earth." I don't understand how he can say this when we have geological evidence that the earth has been much warmer than this at other times in the past. That doesn't mean that I think global warming, if it is real, is a problem - I don't.

al taglieri: Excellent reference Al. You can rest assured you will never see it referenced on this global-warming-biased site. I've also made the same point about modeling as you have, even referred to a similar lament made by Laura herself, and all have been ignored. I am no longer able to find the post by Laura where she stated that she KNOWS how inaccurate the models are but still believes the nonsense predictions anyway.

The worse part though is how the global warmers are trying to convince people that being warm and comfortable is a bad thing.

The sun?...Warms the earth???...Really???....Go figure that one....I thought is was us evil humans and our automobiles......

This scientist is not a meteorologist which explains how he is so wrong about convection. GHGS do nothing to boost convection as the lapse rates under any concentration would remain virtually the same. The atmosphere would retain its state of equilibrium - a warmer atmosphere but not a more dynamic one.

The ice caps on Mars are shrinking too. How is man responsible for that?

Laura,

you sure dropped the studied "PC" veil when you abused your bully Accu-pulpit to diss a fellow-professional: "one of a small number"?

Do you even know - or care - that the entire Russian Academy of Sciences has refused to kow-tow to "Kyoto"...or that Putin's former personal adviser on such issues, Andrei Illarionov http://www.carnegie.ru/ru/pubs/media/69475.htm, has quite explicitly done the same (and probably was fired because P. felt wooing EU support for his WTO bid mattered more than mere facts)?

True, only at his peril does scientist Abdusamatov joust with Mann's "hockey-stick" contrivance, bought by the IPCC just 5 years after that body had last deferred to now politically INconvenient FACTS of climatic history (contrast Fig. 1 vs. 4 at http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm). The IPCC, homegrown fan professional-pol Al and their groupies, after all, have scores of climatologically illiterate glitterati to bankroll their potPOURRI of hot air and chutzpah.

Next to that elite array, what're a mere 14,000-plus fellow-SCIENTISTS (http://sharpgary.org/TheSun.html) who've called on world leaders to QUESTION the New Orthodoxy?!

Claiming that our Sun actually governs our climate - it's our cosmic neighborhood FURNACE, but so what?! - is pretty far-out fringe stuff. Sure, without Ole Sol there'd be NO terrestrial "climate" nor ANY of us to talk about it, but, hey, it hasn't fried us nor let us freeze..lately, it's constant..enough, so why let it distract us?

HUK

Hi Laura:

The Greenhouse Effect is not a misnomer if properly used by physical scientists. More than atmospheric gases with radiative properties, the Greenhouse Effect is a collaborative consequence of water, meteorology, geophysics and should be correctly described as such. Having worked in greenhouses over the years, I am bewildered to see this analogy misapplied by scientists, including those at the University Corporation of Atmospheric Research. Apparently having never experienced the pleasure of greenhouse employment, many physicists continue to incorrectly describe the Greenhouse Effect, a practice that became commonplace after World War II with the rising concern about atmospheric carbon dioxide and its potential impact upon global temperatures. Additionally, this may reflect inadequate training in aqueous chemistry and organismal physiology for atmospheric scientists and climatologists.

Verbally, the radiative contribution of atmospheric gases should be correctly identified as the Radiative Gas Effect, not the Greenhouse Effect. The potential radiative impact of these gases on planetary temperatures is a seperate but affiliated process linked to the aqueous Greenhouse Effect. Contrary to popular opinion, globally or in a greenhouse, these other gases do NOT create or regulate the Greenhouse Effect, despite their radiative properties. Globally or in a greenhouse, water and water vapor moderate and regulate climate, not carbon dioxide and other atmospheric gases.

Scientifically, it is appropriate that a discussion of the planetary Greenhouse Effect should also include ornamental greenhouses. Unequivocally, water is vitally important to both kinds of greenhouses. Without it, the physiological regulation of the carbon cycle by biological organisms cannot occur. Analogously, the ornamental greenhouse is a smaller version of the massively larger planetary system within which it resides. Microcosmically, greenhouse glazing prevents the drafty loss of humidity, not heat, to the exterior atmosphere. Macrocosmically, Earth's stratosphere and magnetosphere prevent a similar advective loss of global humidity into the solar wind and its ionized dispersal to the outer Solar System and beyond.

Meanwhile, water moderates the greenhouse atmosphere, preventing extreme temperatures that can be physiologically impairing. Convectionally trapped at the high roof line of a well-designed contemporary greenhouse, thermostatically vented when necessary, water vapor will condense during the night or on cold days and rain back to the greenhouse floor, releasing its latent energy as heat. Truthfully, a greenhouse is humidified and thermally moderated by water, not carbon dioxide. Constructed with lower ceilings, older greenhouse designs confine less interior space and restrict convectional cooling. Structurally, modern greenhouses are designed to enhance convectional evaporative cooling, condensation, and prevent the loss of humid, interior air to the outside.

In reality, the discomfort associated with greenhouses is a consequence of humidity and the copious perspiration that uncomfortably accumulates on clothing. Vitally, evaporative cooling and condensation protect us and the plants within a greenhouse from overexposure to solar radiation. The essential process of convectional evaporative thermostasis for a greenhouse and global climate is entirely overlooked by physicists who describe the Greenhouse Effect solely as a consequence of radiative atmospheric gases and atmospheric physics. Revealingly, people living in warm humid climates wear less clothing for comfort than desert inhabitants. Compare the clothing of Saudi Arabians to the garments of people living in the Amazonian rain forest of Ecuador. Somehow, these vaporous facts about water, its protective greenhouse benefits, and the cybernetic regulation of carbon never condense into factual accounting by physicists or climatologists, despite their intense investigations of carbon dioxide.

Like the Earth, greenhouses readily radiate their heat back to space. Glass does NOT prevent the radiative loss of energy from a greenhouse without special design considerations. Consequently, greenhouses in cold climates require mechanical heating systems to prevent catastrophic freezing. I have witnessed freeze damage in an unheated greenhouse after a night of radiational cooling following a bright, arid sunny day. Like the atmosphere, glass does NOT stop the transmission of infrared radiation, unless treated with coatings or installations having double or triple panes with insulating layers of air between each pane. Frankly, physicists who promote this nonsense need to go back to school, not teach it. Like our planet's stratosphere and magnetosphere which prevent the advection of the Earth's atmosphere into the Solar Wind, greenhouse glazing prevents the ready advection of humidity within its confined space to the outside atmosphere ... no more.

Stay warm! Sadly, we had significant freeze damage on plants here in our garden, especially those that were actively growing just prior to the weekend freeze. Time will tell the extent of plant damage, whether it's simply foliar or has destroyed the conductive tissues of stems. I suspect the latter on some plants. I'll know better once warm days return: that's when freeze damage really becomes apparent. Regardeless, I'll have lots of pruning to do come springtime. Even at noon, ice deposited by sprinkler systems remained on shaded sidewalks. We live approximately ten miles west of AccuWeather's Ken Clark, who resides in nearby Rancho Cucamonga.

Laura, I hope you find my comments useful and helpful. They are intended in that spirit.

Hayes Galitski
Claremont, CA

Dear Laura:

Myopically, climate change to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change means global warming not climate cooling, even though our current epoch is negatively impacted by fire-plagued drought, winter snow, ice, and glaciation. You will not find discussions at their many websites about our current ice age, since this organization is dominated by individuals from subtropical and tropical countries, many of whom have probably never experienced truly bitter, ecologically damaging winters, such as those of the 1970's in the eastern United States.
Initiated by the United Nations in 1988, the IPCC became a subsidiary to two previously existing agencies within the world organization, the United Nations Environmental Program and the World Meteorological Organization. Both are administratively headquartered in toney Geneva, Switzerland. Although cloaked in science, the IPCC is clearly a political organization selectively using scientific data to achieve the narrow, self interests of a majority of its warm weather members. Wrongfully, the UNEP seems to ignore and discourage objective scientific discussions regarding climate, preferring to place a subjective, negative spin on the potential hazards of global warming while ignoring the current impact of cold, drought, and wildfires on our planet and the Human Ecosystem.

Truthfully, warmer average temperatures mean less ice, higher regional humidities, more liquid precipitation, and more freshwater for the world's expanding terrestrial ecosystems, their respirational activity having increased in response to increases in average regional humidities and temperatures, especially in north boreal latitudes. Currently, ninety per cent of Earth's freshwater is biologically unusable, since it is stored as glacial ice in the snow dome of Antarctica's eastern hemisphere. Additionally, this total does not include that portion of freshwater locked as temporary or permanent frost in the soils of temperate and boreal climates.

Apparently, the IPCC's scientific consultants have failed to alert them to these simple facts. Maybe they have, and the politically appointed bureaucrats purposely choose to ignore them. Ironically, the IPCC may be headed towards enabling the very outcomes it hopes to prevent ... climate impacts upon the Human Ecosystem via increasing atmospheric oxygen, lower humidities, more wildfires, and the restriction of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a primary nutrient absolutely required by terrestrial plants, including forests and food crops. Although wildfires would appear to make carbon dioxide available for photosynthesis, they truly rob Peter to pay Paul by destroying the living biomass of existing, fire-plagued ecosystems, such as the chaparral here in southern California. Rightfully, should the IPCC's participating academic scientists and professional bureaucrats be liable for civil or criminal prosecutions if the climate grows colder and plunges the Earth into another era of maximum glacial advance as a consequence of the reduction of radiative gas emissions to the atmosphere?

Consequently, the pragmatic Russian approach to climate change is entirely understandable and announcements such as those of Dr. Abdusamatov are not surprising. As a voting board member of the IPCC, Russia is protecting its people and resources from the political agenda of this organization, since the negative impacts of our current climate are rarely addressed or even acknowledged by the IPCC. With the possible exception of Canada's 32 million residents, no country has more to lose ecologically than Russia if continental ice returns. However, with its population primarily crammed along the US border, Canada's relatively wealthy population is much smaller than the 150 million, mostly impoverished citizens of Russia.

Fairly, the Kyoto Protocol should contain a clause clearly indemnifying the IPCC's activities in the event of cooling, drought, and glaciation, such as that of the ecologically destructive Little Ice Age that ended just a short century ago. Rightfully, tropical countries directly benefiting from ice reduced global competition should provide necessary remunerations as damages to temperate and boreal countries negatively impacted by transgressing continental ice. Seriously, any executor of the Kyoto Protocol must fully consider the current and long-term ethical consequences of their actions before signing this treaty. Even Canada's current prime minister has had second thoughts about this treaty, which his country signed during a previous administration.

Here's a thought. Perhaps the evolution of Homo sapiens for the last several million years is a direct consequence of a colder, drier global environment and the protective measures necessary for self-preservation. Uniquely, we have evolved the ability to control external combustion and heat our immediate, frigid surroundings with fire. Undoubtedly, our ancestors had plenty of opportunities to directly observe drought initiated wild fires. Consequently, our cultural activities maybe a natural cybernetic response to the physiological problems and morbidity frequently associated with global cooling, drought, and ice.

The climate process is much larger than the Human Ecosystem. Very likely, the Kyoto Protocol will have little to no impact upon global climate, since the target of its efforts, atmospheric carbon dioxide, has no correlative relationship to planetary temperature but is a direct consequence of biological respiration and its thermal influence by atmospheric water and water vapor. It's highly unlikely the IPCC will pursue the control of water vapor emissions to the atmosphere through the treaty process. Even hydrogen fuel cells, a widely touted beneficial technology, will waste water vapor into the atmosphere.

Bewitched by ice, too many arctic scientists have become emotionally vested in global warming. Would these same scientists have been emotionally troubled by the demise of lushly forested, organismally diverse Arctic and Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems as they were annihilated by ice during the Eocene and subsequent epochs? Too many scientists have deluded themselves and the public into thinking that prior to the industrial era the planet experienced a stable global climate. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Climatologists rarely report to the media and public that tectonic processes are also contributing to climate change as Greenland and the Canadian Arctic are being extended to the southwest away from the North Pole while the north Atlantic and Arctic basins widen allowing warm tropical waters to move along the Prime Meridian toward the International Date Line and Pacific Ocean. Similarly, Antarctica is being rifted and shifted away from the South Pole. Eventually, tectonic processes may diminish the powerful, isolated Circumpolar Current which refrigerationally isolates Antarctica, allowing ocean water to more easily circulate between the tropics and polar regions. As demonstrated by colored depth profiles of ocean water temperatures from the Global Ocean Data Analysis Project and World Ocean Circulation Experiment, the Circumpolar Current prevents the effective exchange of tropical Pacific waters with icy waters of the Southern Ocean. Currently, the Circumpolar Current of the Southern Ocean and the shallowly flooded continental shelf of the Bering Sea prevent adequate circulation of warm Pacific waters. They may be the basis for the periodic El Nino phenomenon of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Such a phenomenon has apparently not been measured in the tropical Atlantic Ocean, since it is able to effectively transfer heat to the Arctic basin.

Curiously, how did the greenhouse effect, global warming, and atmospheric carbon dioxide come to represent the climatological embodiments of social pariahs? Purposely, why are the potential benefits of global warming ignored? Deliberately, the process was cleverly seized during the 1980’s and politicized by lawyers, scientists, and public relations firms representing the interests of particular groups wanting to influence international energy policies, including the nuclear power lobby and the United Nations.

Doggedly persistent, they have patiently and skillfully manipulated the courts of scientific and public opinion to their clients’ advantages. Sadly, they have damaged scientific credibility and publicly compounded serious conceptual flaws in the physical sciences, including physics, chemistry, and geology. Ironically, they have highlighted an overall lack of comprehension by many scientists regarding organismal physiology, ecology, and aqueous chemistry. Wildly and irresponsibly, public relations specialists have spun the yarn of global warming into global alarming. Out of control, they have fraudulently duped many sincerely motivated people and corrupted the process of environmental stewardship. Publicly, their mis-spun yarn needs rewound into a tight, truthful ball of accurate science as soon as humanly possible.

Publicly, scientific speculations and opinions should be qualified in print or broadcast media as such and not casually presented to the public as scientific facts. Currently, there are no finer examples of this failure than the widely reported greenhouse effect and global warming. Holistically, these dynamic, very real planetary processes are prejudicially misrepresented, based upon both the naive and deliberate disregard of readily verifiable data from the investigations of meteorology, oceanology, geology, and organismal physiology. Yes, copy editors, you've been told the partial truth, the unwhole truth, and anything but all the truth, so help us God ... and the Internet.

Consequently, I want to thank AccuWeather and you for encouraging free discourse and the pursuit of truth in science.

Hayes Galitski
Claremont, CA

Laura,
I'd be careful relying on the IPCC for a purely scientific evaluation of our climate. Remember that the IPCC did a 180 degree turn when it adopted MBH98's 1000 year multi proxy temp reconstuction. As late as 1995 it was accepted that since AD500 there was a MWP as well as a LIA. MBH98 not only removed these 2 well known events, but also inserted a dramatic temp spike for the last 20 years of thier study. Dr Mann's use of the Foxtail Bristlecone proxy as well as his incorrect use of Principle Component Analysis wasn't caught by the IPCC, which gave MBH its imprimatuer in the peer review process. It wasn't until 2004 that serious questions were raised about the "science" of MBH98, and it wasn't climate scientists who raised them (the exception being Dr Hans von Storch), but 2 unknown statisticians.

I have no idea if the Russian Physicist is correct in his studies. However, there is a pretty good theoretical foundation that has painstakingly been laid. The science of what causes solar activity to wax and wane is pretty secure. Proxy evidence using sunspots is well documented. The coldest decades of the LIA (1610-1690) mirrored the paucity of sunspot activity. For the years 1645-1660 there were none. According to the Russians, the Sun has reached its solar maximum. Within the next decade solar activty will begin to diminish, and this could last up to 250 years. Solar cycles have only been charted accurately for 50 years, and the Russians have been preemminent in this field. One way or another we will get out answers.

The IPCC will publish soon thier estimation of AGW induced temps forecasts for the next 100 years. Someone leaked this info last summer. The leaked report scaled back earlier forecasts of 3-5 Deg C of warming. Most people expect they will publish on the lower end of this curve. Thier forecasts will most probably reflect GCM models massaged to reflect current trends (the Southern Hemishpere and East Asia have actually cooled since 1998, and the Oceans in general have cooled about 3 deg C since 2003. See Layman and Willis June 2006 NASA report). Also, I would keep an eye on the PDO. This year's ENSO is all messed up, and the cooling of North Pacific waters has obviously had a dampening effect on it. This hasn'y happened in many moons.

Man-made global warming, Yes we have man-made warming, but it isn't due to CO2. The warming is locally due to acres of asphalt and concrete absorbing heat from the sun. Rooftops and heat from I.C. engines burning fuel add to Urban Heat Islands. There are so many meteorologist stations close to heat islands the worldwide data is affected to the point of being unreliable.
The sun has been in a very active state since the
1950's and is about to enter into a quite phase
that will bring on colder winter temperatures. The winter ocean temperatures of the 1940's through the 1970's was cold, then warmed from 1980 through 2000. This had a cancelling effective
for the active sun, but helped drive the temps. higher after 1980. The change from hot to cold phases can be sudden, 1938 was one of the warmest years on record for the southeast, then 1940 was perhaps the coldest on record. This in only two years.