RE: [riskanal] Re: Nuclear Power Des NOT Need Gobal Warming Hoax!

["Dukelow, James S Jr" <jim.dukelow@PNL.GOV>]

Maury Siskel wrote:

-----Original Message-----

From: Maury Siskel [mailto:maurysis@ev1.net] 

Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2004 6:22 PM

To: Mailing List for Risk Professionals

Cc: radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu

Subject: [riskanal] Re: Nuclear Power Des NOT Need Gobal Warming Hoax!





John, your caution may or may not be warranted. The fact remains, 

however, that a large number of scientists including those active in 

atmospheric research remain quite skeptical of the anthropomorphic 

account for climate change; this in sharp contrast with claims by IPCC 

heads and other advocates of that position. Most of the "global warming"



claims still rest on the results of computer models which remain 

inconsistent  with records of (observed) past temperature changes. 

Science ultimately derives from observations, not from computer models. 

Thus, the world muddles on in spite of political decisions. And the 

muddling is accompanied by continuous changes in the models to 

accommodate old and new data.

 

   <snip>



=====================



Actually there is quite a bit of evidence of global warming that has

nothing to do with computer models, especially in the northern

hemisphere extratropics.  For instance, using the Idso's

anti-global-warming website and their World Temperatures calculator,

anyone can discover that the MSU satellite temperature trend for 20N to

90N is 0.233 deg C per decade -- highly statistically significantly

different from a zero trend -- for the 25 years of data.  The MSU

satellite data is widely trumpeted by those arguing against global

warming, since its global average over the same time period shows only

0.08 deg C warming -- not statistically significantly different from a

zero trend.  The geographic divergence of warming is interesting, but

the strong warming is happening in the part of the world with 75-80% of

the world's population and roughly the same fraction of its agriculture.



The data cited -- and I suspect also the data Maury is referring to with

his "inconsistent with records of (observed) past temperature changes"

phrase -- uses the Spencer/Christy algorithm for turning the MSU

"brightness temperatures" into weighted average temperatures for lower

troposphere.  Other scientific teams that have analyzed the same raw

brightness temperatures have come up with atmospheric temperature trends

that show quite a bit more warming than the Spencer/Christy analysis.



The strong NH warming suggested by the MSU data is strongly supported on

the ground and in the Arctic Ocean by a wide variety of physical and

biological phenomena: thinning sea ice, decreasing sea ice area, melting

permafrost, northward migration of taiga into areas that were formerly

tundra, early lake/river ice melt, late lake/river freezing, and many

others.



Best regards.



Jim Dukelow

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Richland, WA

jim.dukelow@pnl.gov



These comments are mine and have not been reviewed and/or approved by my

management or by the U.S. Department of Energy.

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