PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet CLIMATE SCARES & CLIMATE CHANGE, 5 June 2002
--------------------------------------------------
"In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United
States has
sent a climate report to the United Nations detailing specific
and
far-reaching effects that it says global warming will inflict on
the
American environment. In the report, the administration for the
first time mostly blames human actions for recent global warming.
It says
the main culprit is the burning of fossil fuels that send
heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."
--Andrew Revkin, The New York Times, 3 June 2002
"There still is considerable uncertainty on the scientific
causes of
global warming."
--White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, 4 June 2002
(1) BUSH WITHHOLDS BACKING OF EPA REPORT ON WARMING
The Washington Post, 5 June 2002
(2) CLIMATE CHANGING, U.S. SAYS IN REPORT
The New York Times, 3 June 2002
(3) IS EPA GLOBAL WARMING REPORT ILLEGAL?
Competitive Enterprise Institute, 3 June 2002
(4) IS BUSH PLAYING TREATY "CHICKEN"?
Washington Times, 4 June 2002
(5) GET OUT THE OUIJA BOARDS
Tech Central Station, 4 June 2002
(6) "GLOBAL WARMING CAUSING FLOWERS TO BLOOM EARLIER IN
SPRING"
Yahoo! News, 30 May 2002
(7) "INCREASED PRECIPITATION AND HUMIDITY CAUSING FLOWERS TO
BLOOM EARLIER
IN SPRING"
Harvey Leifert <hleifert@agu.org>
(8) HISTORICAL DATABASE OVERSETIMATES U.S. TEMPERATURE RISE
Harvey Leifert <hleifert@agu.org>
(9) GLACIER MASS BALANCE TRENDS: UP OR DOWN?
CO2 Science Magazine, 5 June 2002
(10) HOLOCENE CLIMATE RECORD IN NORTH AMERICA
CO2 Science Magazine, 5 June 2002
======
(1) BUSH WITHHOLDS BACKING OF EPA REPORT ON WARMING
>From The Washington Post, 5 June 2002
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61082-2002Jun4.html
a Washington Post Staff Writer
President Bush appeared to distance himself yesterday from a
report by his
administration that says human activities are mostly to blame for
recent
trends in global warming, which many scientists predict will
seriously
disrupt the environment.
The report, prepared by the Environmental Protection Agency and
submitted
last week to the United Nations, for the first time put the
administration
on record as saying that the burning of coal, oil and other
fossil fuels is
the main cause of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
Until now, Bush administration officials have insisted there was
too much
uncertainty in climate change research to accurately assess
blame.
The White House opposes the Kyoto protocol, an international
treaty that
would impose mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gas
emissions. While the EPA report spotlighted the impact of burning
fossil
fuels, it suggested nothing beyond the administration's proposals
for
voluntary actions by industries and others to address the
problem.
Asked about the EPA report, Bush replied dismissively, "I
read the report
put out by the bureaucracy." He said he continues to oppose
the
international treaty and mandatory controls.
"The Kyoto treaty would severely damage the United States's
economy, and I
don't accept that," the president told reporters. "I
accept the alternative
we put out, that we can grow our economy and, at the same time,
through
technologies, improve our environment."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer later told reporters there
still is
"considerable uncertainty" on the scientific causes of
global warming.
An EPA spokesman said, "Basically, we have put forth our
comprehensive plan
for how to deal with this [global warming] issue and the report
isn't
suggesting anything different from that."
Meanwhile yesterday, Japan ratified the international global
warming
agreement. It urged the United States and other countries to join
efforts to
fight global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Last Friday, the European Union's 15 members jointly ratified the
treaty,
and Russia has committed to ratification "as soon as
possible." That raises
the likelihood that the pact will become law before the end of
the year,
despite U.S. opposition.
"President Bush is likely to hear some very harsh words from
his allies" at
an earth summit in South Africa this summer, said Philip J.
Clapp, president
of the National Environmental Trust. "His efforts to stop
Kyoto ratification
have all failed, and he still hasn't lived up to his repeated
promise to
propose an alternative to it."
The EPA report warned that the United States will feel
substantial climate
change in the next few decades. It said the impact very likely
would include
the disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat
waves and the
permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal
marshes, for
example.
In describing the rise in the Earth's temperature, the report
says, "The
changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly
due to
human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant
part of these
changes is also a reflection of natural variability."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
=============
(2) CLIMATE CHANGING, U.S. SAYS IN REPORT
>From The New York Times, 3 June 2002
http://www.nyt.com
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States
has sent a
climate report to the United Nations detailing specific and
far-reaching
effects that it says global warming will inflict on the American
environment.
In the report, the administration for the first time mostly
blames human
actions for recent global warming. It says the main culprit is
the burning
of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.
But while the report says the United States will be substantially
changed in
the next few decades - "very likely" seeing the
disruption of snow-fed water
supplies, more stifling heat waves and the permanent
disappearance of Rocky
Mountain meadows and coastal marshes, for example - it does not
propose any
major shift in the administration's policy on greenhouse gases.
It recommends adapting to inevitable changes. It does not
recommend making
rapid reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming, the
approach favored
by many environmental groups and countries that have accepted the
Kyoto
Protocol, a climate treaty written in the Clinton
administration that was rejected by Mr. Bush.
The new document, "U.S. Climate Action Report 2002,"
strongly concludes that
no matter what is done to cut emissions in the future, nothing
can be done
about the environmental consequences of several decades' worth of
carbon
dioxide and other heat-trapping gases already in the atmosphere.
Its emphasis on adapting to the inevitable fits in neatly with
the climate
plan Mr. Bush announced in February. He called for voluntary
measures that
would allow gas emissions to continue to rise, with the goal of
slowing the
rate of growth.
Yet the new report's predictions present a sharp contrast to
previous
statements on climate change by the administration, which has
always spoken
in generalities and emphasized the need for much more research to
resolve
scientific questions.
The report, in fact, puts a substantial distance between the
administration
and companies that produce or, like automakers, depend on fossil
fuels. Many
companies and trade groups have continued to run publicity and
lobbying
campaigns questioning the validity of the science pointing to
damaging
results of global warming.
The distancing could be an effort to rebuild Mr. Bush's
environmental
credentials after a bruising stretch of defeats on stances that
favor energy
production over conservation, notably the failure to win a Senate
vote
opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploratory oil
drilling.
But the report has alienated environmentalists, too. Late last
week, after
it was posted on the Web site of the Environmental Protection
Agency,
private environmental groups pounced on it, saying it pointed to
a jarring
disconnect between the administration's findings on the climate
problem and
its proposed solutions.
"The Bush administration now admits that global warming will
change
America's most unique wild places and wildlife forever,"
said Mark Van
Putten, the president of the National Wildlife Federation, a
private
environmental group. "How can it acknowledge global warming
is a disaster in
the making and then refuse to help solve the problem, especially
when
solutions are so clear?"
Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman, said, "It is
important to move
forward on the president's strategies for addressing the
challenge of
climate change, and that's what we're continuing to do."
Many companies and trade groups had sought last year to tone down
parts of
the report, the third prepared by the United States under the
requirements
of a 1992 climate treaty but the first under President Bush.
For the most part, the document does not reflect industry's
wishes, which
were conveyed in letters during a period of public comment on a
draft last
year.
The report emphasizes that global warming carries potential
benefits for the
nation, including increased agricultural and forest growth from
longer
growing seasons, and from more rainfall and carbon dioxide for
photosynthesis.
But it says environmental havoc is coming as well. "Some of
the goods and
services lost through the disappearance or fragmentation of
natural
ecosystems are likely to be costly or impossible to
replace," the report
says.
The report also warns of the substantial disruption of snow-fed
water
supplies, the loss of coastal and mountain ecosystems and more
frequent heat
waves. "A few ecosystems, such as alpine meadows in the
Rocky Mountains and
some barrier islands, are likely to disappear entirely in some
areas," it
says. "Other ecosystems, such as Southeastern forests, are
likely to
experience major species shifts or break up into a mosaic of
grasslands,
woodlands and forests."
Despite arguments by oil industry groups that the evidence is not
yet clear,
the report unambiguously states that humans are the likely cause
of most of
the recent warming. Phrases were adopted wholesale from a
National Academy
of Sciences climate study, which was requested last spring by the
White
House and concluded that the warming was a serious problem.
A government official familiar with the new report said that it
had been
under review at the White House from January until mid-April, but
that few
substantive changes were made.
Without a news release or announcement, the new report was
shipped last week
to the United Nations offices that administer the treaty and
posted on the
Web (www.epa.gov/globalwarming/publications
/car/). A senior administration
official involved in climate policy played down the significance
of the
report, explaining that policies on emissions or international
treaties
would not change as a result.
Global warming has become a significant, if second-tier,
political issue
recently, particularly since James M. Jeffords, the Vermont
independent,
became chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee last
year. Mr. Jeffords has criticized the president's policy.
The new report is the latest in a series on greenhouse gases,
climate
research, energy policies and related matters that are required
of
signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change,
which was signed by Mr. Bush's father and ratified by the Senate.
The convention lacks binding obligations to reduce gas emissions
like those
in the Kyoto Protocol.
Mr. Bush and administration officials had previously been careful
to avoid
specifics and couch their views on coming climate shifts with
substantial
caveats. The president and his aides often described climate
change as a
"serious issue," but rarely as a serious problem.
The report contains some caveats of its own, but states that the
warming
trend has been under way for several decades and is likely to
continue.
"Because of the momentum in the climate system and natural
climate
variability, adapting to a changing climate is inevitable,"
the report
says. "The question is whether we adapt poorly or
well."
Several industry groups said the qualifications in parts of the
report were
welcome, but added that the overall message was still more dire
than the
facts justified and would confuse policy makers.
Dr. Russell O. Jones, a senior economist for the American
Petroleum
Institute who wrote a letter to the Environmental Protection
Agency a year
ago seeking to purge projections of specific environmental
impacts from the
report, said it was "frustrating" to see that they
remained.
"Adding the caveats is useful, but the results are still as
meaningless,"
Dr. Jones said.
Copyright 2002, The New York Times
=============
(3) IS EPA GLOBAL WARMING REPORT ILLEGAL?
>From Competitive Enterprise Institute, 3 June 2002
http://www.cei.org/gencon/003,03032.cfm
EPA GLOBAL WARMING REPORT VIOLATES WHITE HOSE AGREEMENT TO SETTLE
LAWSUIT
Report Relying On Discredited Science Previously Disavowed As
Official
Policy
by CEI Staff
June 3, 2002
Washington, D.C., June 3, 2002-The Environmental Protection
Agency's latest
report on global warming to the United Nations, Climate Action
Report 2002,
violates an agreement between the White House and the Competitive
Enterprise
Institute, three members of Congress, and other non-profit
advocacy groups,
struck in settlement of a lawsuit. The report relies in
part on the
discredited National Assessment on Climate Change.
As a result of the lawsuit filed in October 2000, the Bush
Administration
ultimately agreed in September 2001 to withdraw the National
Assessment and
stated that its unlawfully produced conclusions are "not
policy positions or
official statements of the U.S. government." EPA has
ignored this agreement
in issuing its report to the United Nations.
"Through Freedom of Information Act inquiries, we learned
that the National
Assessment was hurriedly slapped together in an incomplete and
inaccurate
form," said Christopher C. Horner, CEI counsel who filed the
lawsuit. "The
current Climate Action Report inappropriately cites the disgraced
National
Assessment, in clear violation of the spirit and letter of our
agreement
with the White House in return for withdrawing our suit."
Adds Myron Ebell, director of global warming policy at CEI:
"The
Administration has recognized that the National Assessment is the
worst sort
of junk science. For the EPA now to accept the National
Assessment's
findings as valid undermines and contradicts President Bush's
global warming
policies. The EPA needs to be told that the Clinton
Administration is gone
and Al Gore did not win the election."
The lawsuit against the White House's flawed climate science was
brought
jointly by CEI, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Representatives Joe
Knollenberg
(R-MI) and Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), and other non-profit advocacy
groups.
CEI's pleadings in the case can be found in the docket at the
federal
District Court for the District of Columbia (CV 00-02383).
=========
(4) IS BUSH PLAYING TREATY "CHICKEN"?
>From Washington Times, 4 June 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20020604-28631219.htm
Christopher C. Horner
As one of the first manifestations of President George W. Bush's
supposed
campaign of foreign policy "unilateralism," last year
he rejected, withdrew
from or otherwise abandoned the Kyoto Protocol on "global
warming" - right?
Not exactly. That which is required to withdraw from unratified
treaties was
recently demonstrated regarding the Treaty of Rome. Mr. Bush
formally told
the United Nations that this agreement establishing a permanent
international criminal court would not involve the United States,
despite
our having signed it (see the instrument to that effect,
http://www.state.gov/
r/pa/prs/ps/2002/9968.htm).
The president has undertaken no similar action to withdraw from
Kyoto, the
U.N. effort at rationing energy use among developed nations. Now,
his State
Department having just denied a petition that it in fact reject
Kyoto, Mr.
Bush makes clear he has no such intention. Thus the rap on Mr.
Bush of
getting tough with the maniacally green Europeans, regarding the
unfair and
unwarranted Kyoto, is fiction. The stranger truth is that Kyoto
is alive,
well, and as likely as not headed to the Senate at the behest of
a
Republican.
That's right. Not only did Mr. Bush not abandon Kyoto, his
administration
now expressly rejects the concept.
In April, the anti-Kyoto Competitive Enterprise Institute alerted
the State
Department that its rumored, pending withdrawal from the Rome
Treaty raises
questions about their intent as regards other signed
but-not-ratified
treaties, specifically Kyoto. Previously, in rebuffing several
informal
requests, State Department officials pooh-poohed the idea of
actually
withdrawing on the basis that "our lawyers tell us that
signing a treaty
doesn't mean anything." The Rome exercise of course put the
lie to such
nonsense.
As the Rome action loomed, Competitive Enterprise Institute
formally
petitioned the State Department, walking through the strategic
and legal
arguments necessitating withdrawal from Kyoto. In sum, until a
signatory
nation formally communicates its exit, it remains party to
agreements such
that it must abide treaty objectives if not the specific
language. By not
withdrawing we plead for a better offer. Also at best, increasing
coal-fired
energy production and even Mr. Bush's regrettable "climate
change" offering
- dignifying climate alarmism yet allowing greenhouse gases to
increase -
both remain subject to challenge in the World Court in The Hague.
CEI deemed California's recent electricity rationing as
instructive
regarding the importance of energy availability and requested
Kyoto join
Rome on the scrap heap, given the administration considered the
latter
treaty's strictures too serious to duck via a "we haven't
ratified it"
straddle. The State Department has now denied that petition,
though in an
unserious fashion. That is, State would not even dignify CEI's
detailed
arguments - likely because the case is fairly ironclad - but
merely claimed
it sees no need to further clarify their Kyoto position of
disparaging the
treaty yet remaining a party.
This is alarming, as there must be some logic behind a president
being
loathe to actually do that for which he is repeatedly savaged in
the
establishment press as having done - withdraw from Kyoto.
Foremost, this odd
strategy seemingly confirms what the greens have giddily
whispered among
themselves for months. Purportedly some pal in the White House
tells them
that, far from abandoning Kyoto, Mr. Bush will at
"worst" merely not be the
president to endorse it by sending the treaty to the Senate for
ratification.
The greens see a best-case scenario, which State's response
actually casts
as logically likely, of Mr. Bush instead engaging the Euros in a
game of
treaty "chicken" such that he can gain concessions
facilitating our
"re-entry" into an agreement we refuse to actually
leave. Under this vision,
Mr. Bush would play the conquering hero of both greenness and
sovereignty,
who resuscitated then made an unfair treaty palatable, etc. He
would
assumedly ship it down the street to make it the Senate
Democrats' burden,
conveniently handcuffing any member of such body who may win the
Dem
nomination. Climate hawks and would-be candidates John Kerry and
Joe
Lieberman specifically come to mind. Further, according to this
view, Mr.
Bush would also preempt anti-green and "unilateral"
attacks.
To clarify, Mr. Bush has not withdrawn from Kyoto, nor otherwise
rejected
it. The State Department's recent denial of a formal request to
reject the
treaty instead hints that, by expressing disdain while remaining
formally a
"party" to Kyoto, the administration is instead playing
chicken with the
Europeans. If true, the Bush administration gambles it can
leverage its role
under Kyoto's terms to extract a deal more to Mr. Bush's liking,
while the
Europeans believe they can pressure the United States into
ratifying the
agreement that to this day, rhetoric notwithstanding, bears our
valid
signature.
Whoever wins, this scenario requires both to envision U.S.
participation in
Kyoto. If true, such machinations are not worthy of an otherwise
admirable
presidency. Instead of playing word games the administration
ought to come
clean on its intentions regarding one of the most dangerous
international
agreements to emerge in decades.
Christopher C. Horner is a senior fellow at the Competitive
Enterprise
Institute and counsel of the Cooler Heads Coalition.
© 2002 News World Communications, Inc.
==============
(5) GET OUT THE OUIJA BOARDS
>From Tech Central Station, 4 June 2002
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/envirowrapper.jsp?PID=1051-450&CID=1051-060402C
By Dr. Sallie Baliunas 06/04/2002
The president a year ago correctly rejected the Kyoto Protocol
that demands
intense reductions in U.S. energy use as a way to avert
hypothetical
human-made global warming that is forecast by computer
simulations. Bush's
sound statement called for intensive research on climate as the
proper base
for policy discussions. But now, in the new climate report issued
through
the Environmental Protection Agency, the administration says
climate science
is settled, and that global warming from human activities will
damage the
nation. Yet in the interim there has been no new science to cause
the shift
in viewpoint.
As a result of this waffling in position, the "third formal
national
communication" to the U.N. Convention on Climate Change has
created a field
day for media and environmental activists to play havoc again
with the
actual science of climate.
In his report for The New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin makes it
seem
something new and revelatory has been presented by the
administration about
the effect of global warming on the nation's resources. He claims
the report
details "specific and far-reaching effects"; says
"the United States will be
substantially changed"; warns "of the substantial
disruptions of snow-fed
water supplies, the loss of coastal and mountain ecosystems and
more
frequent heat waves." Unmentioned is that the forecasts give
dubious
regional results for weather phenomena that occur over small
spatial scales,
like precipitation. The paper's editorial page then chastises the
president
for admitting that man is causing climate change and then not
doing enough
about it. Such as? Well, "redesign(ing) our energy system so
as to reduce
America's dependence on carbon-based fuels."
The Times glosses over the fact that accomplishing such a
redesign would
take a Herculean effort. The Clinton Energy Department estimated
that it
would require annual reductions in growth equivalent to what we
now spend on
Social Security checks for retirees. And that would be to meet
the emission
cuts set by the Kyoto Protocol, which at best would produce a
0.011 of a
percentage point reduction in greenhouse gases - and a negligible
reduction
in global temperature according to the very models that forecast
the rising
temperatures.
But more important than revealing the futility of what the Times
so blithely
demands is the question of the validity of those rising
temperature
scenarios.
For despite all the scary scenarios being painted about what
might happen to
the nation's ecosystems, they are predicated upon "what
if?" fantasies. What
if rising levels of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels lead
to higher
temperatures? What then might those higher temperatures do to
weather and
ecosystems?
The National Academy of Sciences in its report to the president
last year
pointed out that the future scenarios about weather and changing
systems
were among the most uncertain areas of the unsettled science of
climate
change. Dr. Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of
meteorology at MIT
and a member of the NAS panel, put it more bluntly. He calls the
forecasts
"a children's exercise." It equals telling someone --
as Lindzen said of the
U.N. Climate Change report's section on impacts -- to "think
of all the bad
things that could be said that global warming might cause."
For what such forecasts deal with are two sets of speculation,
with the
second dependent on the occurrence of the first. Yet the
scientific evidence
finds little human-made global warming.
Panicky media hyperventilation starts with the correct
observation that
worldwide surface temperatures rose between 1 degree and 2
degrees
Fahrenheit over the last 20th century. That modest rise falls
within the
year-to-year variability of temperature change. More than that,
though, the
pattern of surface warming doesn't match the air's increased
greenhouse gas
content from human activities. The strongest period of warming
began in the
late 19th Century and peaked around 1940. Next, the temperature
decreased
from 1940 until the late 1970s. Only then did a third trend
producing a
modest warming from the late 1970s to the present.
Since about 80% of the carbon dioxide from human activities was
added to the
air after 1940, the early 20th Century warming trend had to be
largely
natural. So the surface temperature record is hardly conclusive.
Meanwhile, satellite temperature records over the last quarter
century,
verified by independent balloon data, show none of the
model-boasting
warming in the layer of air one mile to five miles above the
Earth's
surface. All models forecasting global warming from the burning
of fossil
fuels - and upon which all the scary ecological and weather
scenarios are
based - require that temperatures warm there first.
What does that mean? All models forecast that the surface warming
must
follow from an unmistakable warming of the layer of air just
above the
surface. According to the precise and validated measurements,
that
bellwether layer of air shows no meaningful human-made global
warming trend.
Ergo, the surface warming recorded since the late 1970s cannot be
caused by
humans.
Science demands that ideas be tested. And the testing of the
human-made
global warming hypothesis fails to survive the test by the
scientific
method. Yet, the media and now the Bush administration, rather
than relying
on scientific evidence that global warming is not occurring, have
decided to
succumb to fears -- rejected by science -- of calamitous
U.S.-wide
ecological effects caused by human-made global warming.
Forsaking science as a guide has and will never solve any
environmental
problem. Dust off the Ouija boards and chant over tea leaves,
because policy
developed at odds with the scientific facts would make as much
sense.
© 2002 Tech Central Station
=============
(6) "GLOBAL WARMING CAUSING FLOWERS TO BLOOM EARLIER IN
SPRING"
>From Yahoo! News, 30 May 2002
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020531/ap_wo_en_fe/sci_climate___flowers_3
By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer
WASHINGTON - In a new measure of how climate warming is changing
biology,
British researchers have found that plants are blooming up to two
weeks
earlier in the spring and they forecast this trend will continue
as
temperatures rise.
A father and son team report in the journal Science that the
first flowering
in the spring of 385 species of British plants has advanced by 4
1/2 days to
15 days in a decade when compared with the flowering date of the
species
over the previous four decades.
"These data reveal the strongest biological signal yet of
climatic change,"
the authors write in a study to be published Friday. The
researchers are
Alastair Fitter of the University of York and his father, R.S.R.
Fitter, a
naturalist and author who lives in Cambridge, England.
The senior Fitter started 47 years ago recording the first
flowering date of
the British plants in south-central England. In the new study,
the
researchers compared the changes in first flowering date with
temperature
trends in the same area over four decades.
Alastair Fitter said that the mean temperatures for January,
February and
March - critical months for spring flowering plants - has warmed
in the
study area by 1.8 degrees F since the 1960s.
"Some predictions of climate warming are 4 to 5 degrees C
(7.2 to 9 degrees
F), which would mean that these effects are only the beginning of
a major
shift," he said.
For 16 percent of the species studied, the first flowering date
in the 1990s
shifted by an average of 15 days. The greatest change was for a
plant called
the white dead nettle. From 1954 to 1990, its average first
flowering date
was March 18. From 1991 to 2000, the plant's first flowering data
was around
Jan. 23, a shift of 55 days. Sun spurge, a wild flower found both
in the
United States and the United Kingdom, shifted its first flowering
date by
about 32 days, the researchers found.
Alastair Fitter said the study supports the notion that flowering
plants
will be the first indicator of a warming climate.
"Plants will respond (first) by flowering earlier,"
said Fitter. "The next
(thing) they will do will be to migrate, and I guess we will see
that very
soon."
He said some German studies already have shown that alpine plants
are moving
higher into the mountains in response to climate change.
Some other studies also have shown that the warming climate has
affected
insects. Alastair Fitter said he and his father found that plants
pollinated
by insects shifted their first flowering date more radically than
those that
are wind-pollinated. He said this suggests that these plants have
an
evolutionary history of tracking the climate-caused changes in
the behavior
of insects.
Stephen H. Schneider, a Stanford University climatologist and
environmental
biologist, said the Fitter research "is completely
consistent with other
studies that show climate change is not a theoretical construct,
but is
actually happening."
"This is precisely what you would expect in a climatic
warming trend," said
Schneider. "Warming is going on and nature does
respond."
However, Schneider said it is less certain how much of the
warming is caused
by a natural, global climactic cycle and how much is caused by
humans. Many
scientists believe that the planet is being warmed by an increase
in the
atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases
coming
from industry or from the burning of fossil fuels.
Copyright 2002, AP
============
(7) "INCREASED PRECIPITATION AND HUMIDITY CAUSING FLOWERS TO
BLOOM EARLIER
IN SPRING"
>From Harvey Leifert <hleifert@agu.org>
American Geophysical Union
AGU Journal Highlights - 4 June 2002
Precipitation and humidity increases in the United States over
the past
century have enhanced the growth of vegetation, which could slow
the growth
of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Nemani et al. ["Recent
trends in
hydrologic balance have enhanced the terrestrial carbon sink in
the United
States"] use an ecosystem model to show that a statistical
increase in the
hydrologic balance during the 20th century, particularly evident
in the past
50 years, has contributed to accelerate the growth of plant life
that can
act as a "sink" to absorb carbon dioxide. The
researchers report that
increases in water during the past century have had a far greater
impact on
reducing carbon dioxide than other long-term observations like
incremental
increases in temperatures and man-made nitrogen emissions. They
looked at
U.S. weather data collected since 1900 that shows increased rain,
humidity,
soil moisture and stream flows, including observably wetter fall
seasons and
signals that point toward the earlier reawakening of plant life
that marks
the beginning of spring.
Authors:
Ramakrishna Nemani, Swarna Reddy, and Steven Running, University
of Montana,
Missoula, Montana;
Michael White, Utah State University, Logan, Utah;
Peter Thornton, National Center for Atmospheric Research,
Boulder, Colorado;
Kenlo Nishida, University of Tsukuba, Japan;
Jennifer Jenkins, U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service,
Burlington,
Vermont.
Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper
10.1029/2002GL014867, 2002
====================
(8) HISTORICAL DATABASE OVERSETIMATES U.S. TEMPERATURE RISE
>From Harvey Leifert <hleifert@agu.org>
A widely used temperature database for the United States may
substantially
overestimate a surface warming trend over the 20th century.
Balling and Idso
["Analysis of adjustments to the United
States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) temperature
database"] show
that adjustments to the data set used to account for climate
variations near
the weather stations can produce a statistically significant, and
scientifically unsupportable, increase in its temperature
estimations. The
difference between the observed and adjusted temperatures shows a
clearly
rising trend in the nearly 75 years of USHCN data, they say. The
data set
shows regional temperature recordings adjusted to account for
changes like
growing urbanization, movement in the recording sites, and
missing data. The
researchers compared some of the multiple data sets within the
database to
recordings from previously recorded satellite- or balloon-based
readings.
While the authors suggest that the actual recordings provide a
far more
accurate glimpse of the temperatures than the modified database
information,
they caution that their findings apply only to measurements in
the United
States.
Authors: Robert C. Balling, Jr. and Craig D. Idso, Office of
Climatology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
Source: Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) paper
10.1029/2002GL014825, 2002
==============
(9) GLACIER MASS BALANCE TRENDS: UP OR DOWN?
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 5 June 2002
http://www.co2science.org/journal/2002/v5n23c1.htm
Reference
Braithwaite, R.J. 2002. Glacier mass balance: the
first 50 years of
international monitoring. Progress in Physical Geography
26: 76-95.
What was done
The author reviewed and analyzed mass balance measurements of 246
glaciers
from around the world that were made between 1946 and 1995.
What was learned
Braithwaite's analysis reveals "there are several regions
with highly
negative mass balances in agreement with a public perception of
'the
glaciers are melting,' but there are also regions with positive
balances."
Within Europe, for example, he notes that "Alpine glaciers
are generally
shrinking, Scandinavian glaciers are growing, and glaciers in the
Caucasus
are close to equilibrium for 1980-95." And when results for
the whole world
are combined for this most recent period of time, Braithwaite
notes "there
is no obvious common or global trend of increasing glacier melt
in recent
years."
What it means
"From the results of modeling," Braithwaite writes,
"it seems almost certain
that higher air temperatures, if they occur, will lead to
increasingly
negative mass balances." In terms of a global glacier
mass balance trend
over the period 1980-95, however, none is apparent. Hence, one is
left to
wonder whether (a) the modeling results are wrong, (b) there has
been no
global warming over the last two decades of the 20th century, or
(c) a and b
are both correct.
Copyright © 2002. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
===========
(10) HOLOCENE CLIMATE RECORD IN NORTH AMERICA
>From CO2 Science Magazine, 5 June 2002
http://www.co2science.org/subject/h/summaries/holocenenortham.htm
To determine if the Modern Warm Period was produced by the
historical rise
in the air's CO2 content, as climate alarmists typically claim it
was, we
need to determine if there were any prior periods of equivalent
or greater
warmth when the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was less than what
it is
today. If there were, for example, there would clearly be
no compelling
reason to ascribe today's warmth to today's higher CO2 levels, as
so many
people with a political axe to grind are trying to do.
Hence, we here
review some studies of this subject based on proxy climate data
for the
Holocene - when the air's CO2 content was much lower than it is
today - that
were obtained in North America and from nearby ocean sediments.
Dahl-Jensen et al. (1998) used temperature measurements from two
Greenland
Ice Sheet boreholes to reconstruct the temperature history of the
region
over the past 50,000 years. The Medieval Warm Period and
subsequent Little
Ice Age were both evident in the data, with temperatures 1°C
warmer and
0.5-0.7°C cooler than at present, respectively. After the
Little Ice Age,
they report that "temperatures reached a maximum around 1930
A.D." and that
"temperatures have decreased during the last decades."
Wagner and Melles (2001) analyzed a sediment core taken from a
lake on an
island situated just off the east coast of Greenland, looking for
signs of
the presence of seabirds. Their data revealed sharp
increases in the values
of the parameters they measured between about 1100 and 700 years
before the
present, indicative of the summer presence of significant numbers
of
seabirds during what they called that "medieval warm
period," which had been
preceded by a several-hundred-year period of little to no bird
presence.
Thereafter, their data suggested another absence of birds during
"a
subsequent Little Ice Age," which they note was "the
coldest period since
the early Holocene." Finally, there was evidence of a
"resettlement of
seabirds during the last 100 years." However, values
of the most recent
biogeochemical measurements revealed a smaller presence of
seabirds than
what was characteristic of the Medieval Warm Period.
Darby et al. (2001) derived a 10,000-year record of climatic
change from
cores of a thick sequence of post-glacial sediments located on
the upper
continental slope off the Chukchi Sea shelf in the Arctic
Ocean. Their data
revealed "previously unrecognized millennial-scale
variability in Arctic
Ocean circulation and climate," along with evidence that
"in the recent
past, the western Arctic Ocean was much warmer than it is
today." Indeed,
they say that "Holocene variability in the western Arctic is
larger than any
change observed in this area over the last century" and that
"temperatures
may have been 5°C warmer only a few thousand years
ago." And, we hasten to
note, there is no evidence the air's CO2 concentration was either
higher or
fluctuated wildly during this period. In addition, similar
results were
obtained by Levac (2001) for Canada's Atlantic region using a
high-resolution palynological record from the Scotian Shelf.
In summary, we note that these several studies bear testimony to
the fact
that Holocene climate has fluctuated more or less continuously on
a
millennial timescale between alternating several-hundred-year
warm and cold
periods, independent of any changes in the air's CO2
content. These studies
also recognize the presence of a Medieval Warm Period centered at
approximately the end of the first millennium AD, as well as a
subsequent
Little Ice Age; and most of them suggest that the Medieval Warm
Period was
significantly warmer than the current Modern Warm Period.
We thus conclude there is nothing unusual about the global
warming of the
past century or so; it is merely the most recent upswing in a
persistent
climatic rhythm that has reverberated throughout all the glacials
and
interglacials we have been able to check for its presence.
Hence, there is
no compelling reason to conclude that any portion of our current
warmth is
derived from anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The planet would
likely be just
as warm as it is now if the internal combustion engine had never
been
invented.
References
Dahl-Jensen, D., Mosegaard, K., Gundestrup, N., Clow, G.D.,
Johnsen, S.J.,
Hansen, A.W. and Balling, N. 1998. Past temperatures
directly from the
Greenland Ice Sheet. Science 282: 268-271.
Darby, D., Bischof, J., Cutter, G., de Vernal, A.,
Hillaire-Marcel, C.,
Dwyer, G., McManus, J., Osterman, L., Polyak, L. and Poore,
R. 2001. New
record shows pronounced changes in Arctic Ocean circulation and
climate.
EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union 82: 601, 607.
Levac, E. 2001. High resolution Holocene
palynological record from the
Scotian Shelf. Marine Micropaleontology 43: 179-197.
Wagner, B. and Melles, M. 2001. A Holocene seabird
record from Raffles So
sediments, East Greenland, in response to climatic and oceanic
changes.
Boreas 30: 228-239.
Copyright © 2002. Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide
and Global Change
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