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Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years

Iqbal Latif - 12/6/2006

This is a new book that is bound to be controversial in public policy and environmental circles says that the Earth has a moderate, natural warming roughly every 1,500 years caused by a solar- linked cycle. The current Modern Warming may be mostly due to that natural cycle and not human activity, say the book's authors, well-known climate physicist Fred Singer and Hudson Institute economist Dennis Avery. The authors clearly state that global warming has been with us for millions of years, a natural cycle much more likely caused by solar activity than greenhouse gases. The problem with the current "science" on the topic is that it is currently more akin to hysteria and not based upon much proven fact.

The myth of "global warming" starts with an accurate observation: The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. It is now about 360 parts per million, vs. 290 at the beginning of the 20th century, Reasonable estimates indicate that it may eventually rise as high as 600 parts per million. This rise probably results from human burning of coal, oil and natural gas, although this is not certain. Earth's oceans and land hold some 50 times as much carbon dioxide as is in the atmosphere, and movement between these reservoirs of carbon dioxide is poorly understood. The observed rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide does correspond with the time of human release and equals about half of the amount released.

Carbon dioxide, water, and a few other substances are "greenhouse gases." For reasons predictable from their physics and chemistry, they tend to admit more solar energy into the atmosphere than they allow to escape. Actually, things are not so simple as this, since these substances interact among themselves and with other aspects of the atmosphere in complex ways that are not well understood. Still, it was reasonable to hypothesize that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels might cause atmospheric temperatures to rise. Some p eople predicted "global warming," which has come to mean extreme greenhouse warming of the atmosphere leading to catastrophic environmental consequences.

"Unstoppable Global Warming-Every 1500 Years" (Rowman & Littlefield,
276 pages, $24.95) assembles physical and historical evidence of the
natural climate cycle that ranges from ancient records in Rome, Egypt, and China; to 12,000 antique paintings in museums; to Vikings' tooth enamel in Greenland cemeteries; and to high-tech analyses of ice cores, seabed sediments, tree rings, fossil pollen and cave stalagmites. "The Romans wrote about growing wine grapes in Britain in the first century," says Avery, "and then it got too cold during the Dark Ages. Ancient tax records show the Britons grew their own wine grapes in the 11th century, during the Medieval Warming, and then it got too cold during the Little Ice Age. It isn't yet warm enough for wine grapes in today's Britain. Wine grapes are among the most accurate and sensitive indicators of temperature and they are telling us about a cycle. They also indicate that today's warming is not unprecedented." "We have lots of physical evidence for the 1,500-year cycle," says Singer. "Yet we don't have physical evidence that human-emitted CO2 is adding significantly to the natural cycle. The current warming started in 1850, too early to be blamed on industries and autos."

Singer notes that humanity learned of the 1,500-year cycle only recently, from the first Greenland ice cores brought up in 1983. The cycle was too long and moderate to be observed by earlier peoples without thermometers and written records. The Greenland ice cores showed the 1,500-year cycle going back 250,000 years. It raises temperatures at the latitude of New York and Paris by 1-2 degrees C for centuries at a time, more at the North and South Poles, with a global average of 0.5 degrees C.

In 1987, the first Antarctic ice core showed the cycle extending back
through the last 400,000 years and four Ice Ages-and demonstrated the cycle was indeed global. There is also evidence of the 1,500-year cycle in seabed sediments from six oceans, in ancient tree rings from around the Northern Hemisphere, in glacier advances and retreats from Greenland to New Zealand, and in cave stalagmites from every continent including South Africa. The North American Pollen Database shows nine complete reorganizations of the continent's trees and plants in the past 14,000 years, or one every 1,650 years.

"The deepest seabed sediment cores show the cycle has been going on for at least a million years," says Avery. Sunspot observations over the past 400 years, along with modern analysis of carbon and beryllium isotopes, link the 1,500-year cycle to variations recently detected by satellites in the sun's irradiance.

Antarctic ice studies show global temperatures tracking closely with atmospheric CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. However, Singer and Avery note the studies also show that temperature changes preceded the CO2 changes by about 800 years. Thus, more warming has produced more atmospheric CO2, rather than more CO2 producing global warming. This makes sense, say the authors, because the oceans hold vastly more CO2 than the air, and warming forces water to release some its gases.

Singer and Avery say that the science of the natural cycle runs counter to what many believe and fear will happen as a result of man-made global warming.

Wild species won't become extinct in our warming because they've been through at least 600 previous warmings, including the Holocene Warming just 5,000 years ago that was much warmer than today. The seas won't rise to drown New York before the next cooling, because 90 percent of the world's remaining ice is in the melt-resistant Antarctic. Even a 5 degree C warming would decrease its ice mass by only 1.5 percent, over centuries.

Warming won't bring famine, because it brings what crops like –longer growing seasons, more sunlight, and few untimely frosts. More CO2 also stimulates plants' growth, and enhances their water use efficiency.

"We hope our book will help calm the rampant hysteria about global warming and the flawed Greenhouse models," emphasizes Avery. "We should be using our resources and technology to find the best ways to adapt to the inevitable but moderate warming to come, not to study one climate model after another, scare people to death, and pass crippling 'environmental' legislation that would deny the world the economic growth it needs to overcome poverty, the greatest problem of all."

His critics say that Fred Singer has previously worked for tobacco companies fighting and argued that there's no evidence that smoking is bad for your health; he then argued that there was no evidence that ozone was being depleted. Now he argues that there's no evidence that the globe is warming. With credentials like those, you know what you're going to get: mostly misleading scientific arguments, served with a side of outright fabrication, and a sauce of unsupportable value judgments.

His detractors also contest his theory of Britons growing grapes, according to his critics Avery contention is erroneous that "The Romans wrote about growing wine grapes in Britain in the first century,", "and then it got too cold during the Dark Ages. And ancient tax records show the Britons grew their own wine grapes in the 11th century, during the Medieval Warming, and then it got too cold during the Little Ice Age. It isn't yet warm enough for wine grapes in today's Britain."

According to them clearly he is unaware that there are at present nearly 400 operating vineyards in England and Wales, as the website English-wine illustriously makes clear. Avery anxiousness to peddle this book to as many as will take the bait, but if his cannot do elementary reality checking before making his case, his competency as an authority on this very complex and contentious issue is seriously suspicious.

However the fact remains that of course, it also may be possible to grow wine grapes in Siberia but not on any kind of commercial scale. For example, the total bearing acreage of the 400 operating vineyards in England is around 2000 acres, with most of the vineyards less than 5 acres and many less than one acre. To put this in perspective the state of Ohio, not noted for their wine grape production, had more bearable acres in wine grapes than the entire country of England in 2005. The state of Washington had close to 28,000 bearable acres. California had close to half a million acres in wine grapes! So I think Dennis T. Avery's statement than wine grapes are not grown in England anymore is true for most intents and purposes.

Undoubtedly, Avery and Singer provide an outstanding legible and predictable book on the global warming joke. This book is a precious source on the topic of global warming. The effort refers to a vast extent of scientific study in a wide diversity of journals representing that normal sunspot magnetic wave is causing what little global warming exists. Man created carbon dioxide has very little effect on the earth's climate.

Avery and Singer provide an in depth expose of the misleading investigation that allegedly supports human induced global warming. In particular the authors make a perceptive examination into the so called hockey stick hypothesis of unprecedented recent warming hoax widely enunciated by the UN's climate change panel. This swindle was first uncovered by two accomplished and daring Canadian researchers - McIntyre and McKitrick.

Pseudo scientists and others with a vested curiosity in controlling the overall economy by use of the global warming trick will hate this work. However well-versed readers concerned with human wellbeing and human advancement will find this book valuable.

The global-warming hypothesis, however, is no longer tenable. Scientists have been able to test it carefully, and it does not hold up. During the past 50 years, as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen, scientists have made precise measurements of atmospheric temperature. These measurements have definitively shown that major atmospheric greenhouse warming of the atmosphere is not occurring and is unlikely ever to occur.

The temperature of the atmosphere fluctuates over a wide range, the result of solar activity and other influences. During the past 3,000 years, there have been five extended periods when it was distinctly warmer than today. One of the two coldest periods, known as the Little Ice Age, occurred 300 years ago. Atmospheric temperatures have been rising from that low for the past 300 years, but remain below the 3,000-year average.

Why are temperatures rising? The first chart nearby shows temperatures during the past 250 years, relative to the mean temperature for 1951-70. The same chart shows the length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters--the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature--demonstrates, as do other studies, that the gradual warming since the Little Ice Age and the large fluctuations during that warming have been caused by changes in solar activity.

The highest temperatures during this period occurred in about 1940. During the past 20 years, atmospheric temperatures have actually tended to go down, as shown in the second chart, based on very reliable satellite data, which have been confirmed by measurements from weather balloons.

Consider what this means for the global-warming hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that global temperatures will rise significantly, indeed catastrophically, if atmospheric carbon dioxide rises. Most of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has occurred during the past 50 years, and the increase has continued during the past 20 years. Yet there has been no significant increase in atmospheric temperature during those 50 years, and during the 20 years with the highest carbon dioxide levels, temperatures have decreased.

In science, the ultimate test is the process of experiment. If a hypothesis fails the experimental test, it must be discarded. Therefore, the scientific method requires that the global warming hypothesis be rejected.

Why, then, is there continuing scientific interest in "global warming"? There is a field of inquiry in which scientists are using computers to try to predict the weather--even global weather over very long periods. But global weather is so complicated that current data and computer methods are insufficient to make such predictions. Although it is reasonable to hope that these methods will eventually become useful, for now computer climate models are very unreliable. The second chart shows predicted temperatures for the past 20 years, based on the computer models. It's not surprising that they should have turned out wrong--after all the weatherman still has difficulty predicting local weather even for a few days. Long-term global predictions are beyond current capabilities.