Cooking the Climate Books (part one) by Tim Ball
POSTED 2006-03-29T13:48:32
March 20, 2006
Chairman Ted Stevens
Senate Commerce Committee
United States Senate
508 Dirkson Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Chairman Stevens:
My name is Tim Ball. I am a Canadian citizen with a PhD in climatology from the University of London England, and have studied climate change for over 40 years (a complete biography that lists my experience is attached to this letter).
Having studied climate and nature for four decades, I have learned that significant and rapid change is the norm, not the exception. And recent media stories regarding climate change, its impact on the Arctic, Greenland or Antarctic ice shelves, and the unsubstantiated conclusions that some are making around the cause of this phenomenon compels me to write you today.
Global warming is singled out as the cause of Greenland or Antarctic ice melting or collapsing, with potential to dramatically and disastrously raise sea levels. This warming is reportedly solely due to human addition of CO2 into the atmosphere, thus enhancing the greenhouse effect. These events are likely receiving increased attention at present for several reasons, including;
• The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which is in preparation
• Decisions on energy policies are in preparation in most countries, pressured by the recent dramatic increase in oil prices
• The Kyoto Protocol is effectively being abandoned by most countries, but environmentalists are pressuring for continuation or similar policies
• The original hypothesis that human addition of CO2 is the cause of warming is proving incorrect
Rather than react to policy developments or the latest report, the current situation on climate change must be examined in historical and geophysical context. For example few people know that approximately 10 million square kilometers -- or about 60% -- of arctic ice melts every single summer. However, the situation must also include explanation of the historic and scientific context of the CO2 hypothesis.
Ice amounts naturally vary over time and in different regions. Just 22,000 years ago half of North America was covered with an ice sheet, with similar sheets in Europe and Asia. Sea level was approximately 150 m lower than today. Since then, the Earth warmed as we entered an interglacial period, but the warming in the last 15,000 years was not continuous. Although the general trend was warming, there was variability as the Earth experienced periods warmer and colder than today. During the warmer periods, arctic ice conditions varied. For example, in the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) from 900 to 1200 AD the Vikings sailed in arctic waters that are now permanent pack ice, and farmed in Greenland soil that is now permafrost. Two centuries later in a period known as the Little Ice Age their descendants were dying as ice enclosed Greenland for decades at a time and the Norse colonies eventually failed.
There were also dramatic short-term events. An 1817 letter from the President of the Royal Society to the British Admiralty reports, It will without doubt have come to your Lordship's knowledge that a considerable change of climate inexplicable at present to us must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years greatly abated. This is a far more rapid and expansive change than is currently occurring.
Less than 30 years ago when global cooling was the scientific consensus, we read equally frightening and threatening reports. “The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age” reported “the ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere increased by 12 percent in 1971 – an increase equal to the combined area of England, Italy and France. This added ice has remained.” Lowell Ponte wrote in “The Cooling” (1976): This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. The CIA spent millions studying the impact on food production and the resulting political destabilization. In one report they used the word “climatocracy” to explain the way climate influences society mostly through food production.
A major problem is the failure to recognize how science works. First, scientists hypothesize. Then normal scientific progression is for testing of the hypothesis before it becomes a law. Newton’s theory of gravity took over 200 years. Einstein’s theory of relativity was 100 years old last year. Darwin’s theory of evolution is now 157 years old. The critical transition occurs when the theory makes accurate predictions.
The hypothesis of humans causing climate change -- and specifically warming by increasing atmospheric CO2 -- began in the mid 1980s. It was essentially entrenched as a fact by the testimony of James Hansen of NASA before the 1988 Senate Committee chaired by Senator Al Gore. This hypothesis assumes;
• CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that it allows solar energy to pass through the atmosphere but slows the rate at which heat energy from the earth is emitted to space
• If the amount of gas in the atmosphere increases the atmospheric temperature will rise
• The amount of CO2 will increase mainly because of human burning of fossil fuels
• As long as human production of CO2 increases the temperature will continue to rise
The theory of global warming became a law before research testing or accurate prediction. It was picked up by environmental groups and amplified by the media both of who ignore the science. As Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Richard Lindzen said, the consensus was reached before the research had even begun. Sadly, the normal scientific progression is blocked as scientists who raise legitimate questions about the theory and the evidence are labeled skeptics or more pejoratively deniers.
Evidence continues to accumulate that the hypothesis is untenable. First, the ice core record shows temperatures changes before CO2 – the complete opposite of the thesis. Temperature records for any time scale do not fit the CO2 record. It does match the variation in solar energy. All speculations (predictions) made by computer models of global climate (General Circulation Models) have failed. They even fail to recreate known past climates.
The evidence continues to grow that the hypothesis is wrong. Not only is human CO2 not the cause of change, but there is evidence the role of CO2 in total is of little significance. As a result, the proponents of the thesis, most of who have a political rather than a scientific agenda, become increasingly desperate.
Thirty years ago, global cooling was presented as a threat to the entire survival of humanity. Global warming is being presented similarly today, however, as with all change some benefit and others lose.
There are many such points in the last 18,000 years as we emerged out of the Ice Age. A more likely point was the Climatic Optimum when this White Pine, radiocarbon dated at 5000 years old, was growing 100 km north of the current tree line in temperatures much higher than today. As D. R. Muhs et al. Wrote in Quaternary Science Reviews wrote, The overall picture that emerges for Alaska and Yukon during the peak warmth of the last interglacial [as] a region with warmer-than-present summers, an absence of permafrost in the interior, and probably greater precipitation in the interior. Summer temperatures were at least 1-2°C warmer than they are presently, and in some locations summer temperatures may have been as much as 3-5°C higher than they are now.