Climate Change 101

Danish researchers analysed ancient pieces of driftwood in north Greenland which they say is an accurate way to measure the extent of ancient ice loss.

"In the 1770s the Lunar Society of Birmingham, England, whose members were some of the leading thinkers of the era, regularly gathered to discuss their concerns about global climate change. They were interested in the scientific aspects of the change, but being entrepreneurs as well as thinkers, they also formulated plans to cope with it. Their basic strategy was to stop the cooling of the earth by dragging icebergs away from the Arctic regions to let them melt in the tropics."

This article reports on a study finding that "that cattle grazed on the grasslands of China actually reduce another greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide."

S. Fred Singer said in an interview with the National Association of Scholars (NAS) that 'the number of skeptical qualified scientists has been growing steadily; I would guess it is about 40% now.'

FOR those who question whether global warming is really happening, it is necessary to believe that the instrumental temperature record is wrong. That is a bit easier than you might think.

"Late for a party? Miss a meeting? Forget to pay your rent? Blame climate change; everyone else is doing it. From an increase in severe acne to all societal collapses since the beginning of time, just about everything gone wrong in the world today can be attributed to climate change. Here’s a list of 100 storylines blaming climate change as the problem."

Something's not quite right with the climate. Over the past few years, while global CO2 emissions have continued to swell, the global temperature rise has leveled off.

A recent study authored by Mark Crowell of the Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that in the U.S., climate change will increase the area subject to flooding by 45 percent in 2100. But to get this number, the study used estimates of sea-level rise that were more than 200 percent higher than the estimates of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport.

"President Obama and his congressional allies’ domestic climate change agenda—'cap and trade'—failed in the last Congress due to extensive opposition to its costly regulations and barriers to growth. Having failed to enact draconian climate change legislation domestically, however, President Obama has quietly shifted some of these efforts overseas by funneling millions of U.S. foreign aid dollars to left-wing causes in poor countries, whose populations largely live on less than $1 a day."

The solutions to global warming are not based on proven science and that the economic cost of implementing those solutions is likely to be massive.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a climatologist to realize this has been a killer weather year. Snowmaggedons in the east; deadly super cell tornados pummeling towns across the Midwest and South; record spring floods throughout the Midwest and Gulf; droughts and deadly fires racing through tinder-dry towns in Texas. Now we're on track to have a possible record-breaking number of hurricanes; three cyclones now spinning in the Atlantic and Gulf could threaten our rain-soaked coasts and waterways.

To help out, I’ve whipped up some commonly asked questions and their answers (below) on global warming to help you better understand the issues involved. As you will see, the science of global warming is far from ‘settled’. It is only because of the political and financial ramifications of global warming that so many people (mainly politicians and those who have vested interests) are trying to convince you otherwise.

Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned.

Carbon taxes are not likely to be politically feasible in the U.S. for addressing climate change in the short term, according to Robert Hahn and Peter Passell. The time is now ripe for the U.S. to consider adopting a cap and trade approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Scientists know more than ever before about how the Earth's climate is changing and what that will mean for people, habitats and wildlife across the planet.

Changes in the sun's magnetism and in the reconstructed northern hemisphere's land temperature are highly correlated. The sun's magnetic changes are associated with changes in its total energy output.

Emissions of CO2, which accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gases, grew at an average annual rate of around 2½% between 1950 and 2000.

"This graph is based upon 18 previously published temperature proxies, and so provides the most robust estimate available to date. It can be seen that significant warming and cooling periods of 50 to 100 years in duration seem to be the rule, rather than the exception."

The chart shows the global average sea-surface temperature from 1850 to 2008.

Greenland borehole temperatures present temperatures consistent with the thesis of those on the climate change side of the debate. In this case, Greenland has been warmer in the past and has been much cooler in the past.

Sea level curve for the last 5000 years for the Maldives.

The chart shows the temperature histories of the northern and southern hemispheres from 1998 to 2010.

One of the most obvious conclusions from Figure 3 is that the satellite observations and climate models display markedly different time-dependent behaviors in their temperature versus radiation variations, especially over the oceans (Figure 3(b)) which are of great interest in climate change studies due to their inherently long time scales of variability.

A comprehensive archive of charts and graphs that reconstruct "past climatic conditions derived from paleoclimate proxies.

"For much of the last decade public opinion polls have shown that Americans have increasingly acknowledged the existence of climate change. This growth in belief was particularly pronounced between 2007 and 2008 when numerous polls converged in showing that Americans were more likely than ever before to express belief in global warming. But this trend shifted markedly in more recent years. Numerous surveys, including those of the NSAPOCC, have shown a declining percentage of Americans expressing belief that temperatures on Earth have been increasing (see Table 1). In this study we find a slight rebound in levels of belief among U.S. residents with belief levels increasing from 52 percent to 58 percent between March and December 2010."

This timely report addresses a big gap in the current public debate about climate change and how we should respond to it. There has been much legitimate concern about economic consequences and the risks to property, jobs and export earnings, but there has been a failure to discuss the consequences of climate change for human wellbeing and health.

Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it's a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.

This report is divided into 4 chapters that address the impact climate change has on: health, death rates, on agriculture and forestry, and the political economy. The report also offers a series of policy recommendations.

"This collection of eight articles and reports on Al Gore’s film, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' was assembled for parents, taxpayers, teachers, principals, and school board Members by Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, an independent nonprofit organization. It includes the complete text of Justice Michael Burton’s October 2, 2007 British High Court decision, which found Gore’s film was “partisan” and “propaganda” and should not be shown to students without a guidance document pointing out Gore’s mistakes and exaggerations."

"This 880-page rebuttal of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), three years in the making, was released in June 2009 by The Heartland Institute. Coauthored and edited by S. Fred Singer, Ph.D., and Craig Idso, Ph.D. and produced with contributions and reviews by an international coalition of scientists, it provides an independent examination of the evidence available on the causes and consequences of climate change in the published, peer-reviewed literature examined without bias and selectivity."

The following report summarizes results drawn from national level surveys in the United States and Canada that examine public perceptions regarding various aspects of climate change.

Scientific debate continues regarding the extent to which human activities contribute to global warming and what the potential impact on the environment might be.

The data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998, "MBH98" hereafter) for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects. We detail these errors and defects.

"The popular notion that polar bears are declining or already expatriated worldwide has been initiated and perpetuated by environmental organizations and individuals who apparently believe that current subpopulation numbers and trends are an insufficient basis for an appropriate status determination."

The IPCC is the international body of scientists charged with investigating the global warming issue. Policy makers look to IPCC reports as the authoritative word on global warming and rely on them to make the difficult choices between the uncertain consequences of global warming and the certain economic harm that will come from minimizing human use of resources that emitgreenhouse gases.

"In the last two years, a remarkable amount of disturbing news has been published concerning global warming, largely concentrating on melting of polar ice, tropical storms and hurricanes, and mass extinctions. The sheer volume of these stories appears to be moving the American political process toward some type of policy restricting emissions of carbon dioxide.

Climate change is mainly projected to add to existing problems, rather than create new ones. Of particular significance are four categories of hazards to human health and safety which have frequently been cited as major reasons for controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

This online global warming primer offers one of the more balanced presentations of the complexity of the science.

This is an annotated bibliography of recent peer-reviewed papers that shed light on the various factors influencing earth's climate.

Dr. Christy gives a very understandable overview of climate study and its relation to global warming. A couple of takeaways: 1) Climate is always changing. 2) Climate cannot be adjusted in a predictable way.

The main point of this paper is simply to illustrate why serious and persistent doubts remain concerning the danger of anthropogenic global warming despite the frequent claims that ‘the science is settled.’

"Boston University's Robert Kaufmann and colleagues recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examining the causes of the recent dearth of 'global warming.' They concluded that it's simply natural variability, augmented by increasing sulfate emissions from dramatically growing coal consumption by China."

Two extensive critiques of the Stern Review by various economic and climate change experts.

Understanding Climate Change aims to provide a comprehensive but easily readable summary of the current state of climate change science. It is intended to be more informative and thorough than popular news stories, but not as technical as research reports such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.

Understanding the concept of geologic time and some basic science can give a new perspective on climate change and the energy future.

In this podcast, Patrick J. Michaels discusses the 2009 G20 summit and the worldwide struggle over climate change and emission issues.

In this clip, Al Gore ... [compares] skeptics of climate change to racists during the Civil Rights Movement. Gore was sitting down for an interview with Alex Bogusky of the Climate Reality Project, and suggested that young people today whose parents do not believe in climate change are asking the same questions now that race-conscious young people in the 60s asked their parents.

The EPA's role is to develop regulations based on science from laws passed by Congress to protect human health and the environment.

A dedicated, unabashed, free market capitalist, T. J. Rodgers takes a businessman's and engineer's view of global warming.

It is an honor for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. All of you would not be here unless you, like me, were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, it is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. This much we know.

As Congress and the Administration considered new legislation to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change over the last year and a half (a process that has now stalled), the Environmental Protection Agency simultaneously began to exercise its existing authority under the Clean Air Act to set standards for GHG emissions. The Administration has made clear that its preference would be for Congress to address the climate issue through new legislation. Nevertheless, it is moving forward on several fronts to define how the Clean Air Act will be used and to promulgate regulations.

Produced by the English Parliament, this piece of climate change legislation seeks, among other things, "to set a target for the year 2050 for the reduction of targeted greenhouse gas emissions; to provide for a system of carbon budgeting; to establish a Committee on Climate Change; [and] to confer powers to establish trading schemes for the purpose of limiting greenhouse gas emissions or encouraging activities that reduce such emissions or remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere...."

The legitimate questions that have been raised about the processes used to generate climate change science and policy have thus far been cast aside. The reluctance to engage in conversations with people who have doubts or question the veracity of climate science is at the heart of the wrong doing that undermines trust in climate change science.

Commonly known as the Lieberman-Warner bill, this document sought "To direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases, and for other purposes." The bill, however, failed to pass the U.S. House and Senate.

The recommendations that this distinguished organization makes can have a profound effect on the world's environmental and economic policy. By being here today, I hope to underscore my country's and my own personal concern about your work, about environmental stewardship, and to reaffirm our commitment to finding responsible solutions. It's both an honor and a pleasure to be the first American President to speak to this organization, as its work takes shape.

This report summarizes the science of climate change and the impacts of climate change on the United States, now and in the future.

The main activity of the IPCC is to provide at regular intervals Assessment Reports of the state of knowledge on climate change. The latest one is "Climate Change 2007", the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.

"The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012."

Here the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency must develop automobile carbon dioxide (C02) emissions standards because the relationships of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses to global warming pose "a risk..."

"The validity of the manmade global warming alarm requires the support of scientific forecasts of (1) a substantive long-term rise in global mean temperatures in the absence of regulations, (2) serious net harmful effects due to global warming, and (3) cost-effective regulations that would produce net beneficial effects versus alternatives such as doing nothing."

Christy describes the continuing uncertainty in the scientific modeling and interpretation of those models used to predict/explain climate change and the perverse effects of many of the proposed solutions to slow/end climate change.

Gore testifies about what he believes is "... a planetary emergency - a crisis that threatens the survival of our civilization and the habitability of the Earth."

The aim [of this document] is to give a new as yet unnamed U.N. body the power to directly intervene in the financial, economic, tax and environmental affairs of all the nations that sign the Copenhagen treaty.

Despite convincing evidence that observed climate changes do not portend a calamitous future, global warming alarmism is invading nearly every aspect of our society.

Lomborg presents us with a second generation of thinking on global warming that believes panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity's problems, not just global warming.

This book refutes the widespread belief that increased industrial activity is causing potentially catastrophic global warming.

Sure, it's fiction, but it also made quite an impact on the public's perception of the global warming debate. Crichton subtly takes aim at politicized science in this techno-thriller about eco-terrorism.

This link features the Congressional Budget Office's research and analysis on climate change and its economic impacts.

The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change was created to disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climatic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content.

The site's goal is to engage in a national public debate on the scientific merit of Kyoto and the Global Warming issue, and to educate the public through dissemination of relevant, balanced and objective technical information on this subject.

"The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of 'settled science' and an overwhelming 'consensus' in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change.

National Review Online’s Planet Gore blog was launched in February 2007 to track the news, data, and misinformation that feed the global-warming/climate-change debate. The blog additionally serves as a resource for accurate information about fossil fuels, alternative energy, environmental activism, the climate-change political process, and Al Gore’s carbon footprint.

The Climate Institute is a non-partisan, independent research organisation that works with community, business and government to catalyse and drive the change and innovation needed for a low pollution economy and culture.

Climate change is a problem that is affecting people and the environment. Greater energy efficiency and new technologies hold promise for reducing greenhouse gases and solving this global challenge. EPA's website provides information on climate change for communities, individuals, businesses, states, localities and governments.