Here's the full text of my Guardian comment on Western Sahara...
For which I was attacked, (as always) on Serbia and Kosovo.
What wall? What occupation?
It's time to stop Morocco's prevarication over Western Sahara.
Ian Williams
April 13, 2007 4:00 PM | Printable version
It's not double standards, it's no standards at all. The world has let scoff-law Morocco ride roughshod over international law and the UN Charter. It helps to have friends!
Their territory split by a huge wall built at enormous expense, an occupied Arab population suffers under police raids and arbitrary imprisonment while the occupiers try to swamp the territories with settlers from their own population. In response, the locals are beginning an intifada, but face a much larger, better-equipped military force, the beneficiary of substantial overseas aid. Refugees living in camps are refused the right to return to their homes.
Despite clear decisions of the International Court of Justice and the UN Security Council, the occupiers hedge whenever it comes down to the question of a peace settlement that grants independence even when American emissaries try to nudge them towards serious talks.
Welcome to Western Sahara, the occupation that admittedly has lasted only three decades compared with Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, but which has excited much less media interest.
This week, the issue came back to what passes for the fore in this forgotten conflict, when the Polisario, on behalf of the Sahwaris and the Kingdom of Morocco both submitted their plans for the resolution of the problem.
The Moroccan one is superficially attractive after all these decades, offering Scottish-style devolution. But their track record on keeping promises is far from stellar. Over 15 years ago, Morocco accepted a peace deal that involved the referendum on self-determination. The cash-strapped UN has spent hundreds of millions on keeping a force there to monitor the cease-fire and arrange a vote. But as soon as it became clear that Morocco would lose any vote that involved independence, the king and his father before him, gave prevarication a bad name. They tried to stack the voters' rolls, and when that failed, simply refused to allow a vote that asked the question.
Morocco's human rights record leaves much to be desired, as indeed did Polisario's in the old days. But the Moroccan reticence about allowing a vote is eloquent testimony to the government's assessment of the popular mood.
What is the secret of Morocco's success? In essence, it is choosing friends carefully.
Morocco claims Arab solidarity - and is one of the best friends of Israel in the Arab World. Immediately after the Moroccans occupied the territory despite the ICJ ruling that rubbished its territorial claims, the UN security council passed resolutions 379 and 380, which explicitly and unconditionally called on Morocco to withdraw. However, the French and Americans blocked the enforcing of these resolutions. According to then-US ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "the Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
While the US's anti-communist fervour has died down - with communism - France has remained an important and unprincipled supporter of the king. Despite all that Cartesian rhetoric with which it opposed the invasion of Iraq, over the Sahara it has a novel and disturbing principle: the security council cannot impose its decisions on parties if they disagree.
France has claimed there was a tradition of using consensus on Western Sahara, which was a bit like the apocryphal prisoner who had killed his parents and then asked for the court's sympathy because he was an orphan. Any such "tradition" developed in response to constant French and American attempts to railroad a pro-Moroccan position past the other security council members in defiance of all previous decisions.
Britain's attitude seems to be that it does not have a dog in the fight, so it is prepared to go along with the Americans and the French. But the standing of international law, the UN charter and principles are surely a dog worth backing in any foreign policy with - in Robin Cook's words - "an ethical dimension". In the end, the illegal Indonesia occupation of East Timor succumbed to the persistent refusal of the world to recognise it.
Polisario has made a very reasonable offer, which is in complete accordance with UN resolutions and international law. It could also offer, instead of a Scottish style solution with the Moroccan army and secret police still in occupation - a Canadian style solution. We will put King Mohammed on our coins and welcome an occasional royal visit - but nothing more.
But in any case, the UK, the EU, and the UN, should stop accommodating Morocco and France and step up the pressure on Rabat. It's the law.
1 comment:
Global Warming – Man Made or Natures Cycle R5
The debate: Is the observed global warming natural or man made?
Global Warming or natural climatic rhythm?
Global Warming Man made or natural cycle?
Compiled by Yehuda Draiman, Energy Analyst
There are numerous pros and cons as to the cause of Global Warming.
After some study and research I share with you the various opinions.
This consensus in this on-line article represents the views of some researchers and forecasters, but does not necessarily represent the views of all scientists. It was not the intention of this article to discount the presence of a human-induced global warming element or to attempt to claim that such an element is not present. There is a robust, on-going discussion on climate change within the scientific community.
It takes a certain kind of gumption to stand up to the status quo.
Folks who challenge the mainstream media and popular culture are subjected to some of the nastiest insults and character assassinations. And such retribution is nowhere more severe than for those who take issue with popular views about global warming.
There are a number of very bright climatologists and meteorologists out there who believe that this century’s warming trend is neither critical nor man made. Now you can agree or disagree with these folks. But you can’t pretend that these folks are crazies or ill informed or just in it for the money. They believe that the models used by the “We’re all going to die!” global warming worriers are far too severe and fail to take enough natural factors into consideration in their climate models. For their audacity to take on the status quo, they have been censured, excoriated and labeled as lackeys for the oil companies.
One degree. On a thermometer, it doesn't seem like much at all. But that degree has sparked intense debate among experts who monitor the temperature on Earth.
In a new report issued by a leading group of scientists and meteorologists, research shows the planet has warmed one degree during the last 100 years. That report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change asserts that Earth will continue to warm between 2 and 10 degrees during the next century.
Those researchers believe that global warming could be boosting the planet's temperature. Global warming is a phenomenon of temperatures rising on Earth. Scientists have said that some human activities cause gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide to build up in the atmosphere. Those gases trap heat closer to Earth's surface giving the planet a worldwide fever.
Many experts say two chemicals -- carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide -- are most responsible for global warming. Cars, trucks and factories around the world emit those chemicals everyday. Once in the atmosphere, those chemicals act as big reflectors, bouncing back sun rays to the Earth and warming the planet.
But there are scientists, climatologists and weather watchers who believe that the warming trend is not an aberrant threat, but part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling on Earth. "We just haven't been around long enough to know if it's a fact," said CNN weather anchor Orelon Sidney. "The Earth is more than 4 billion years old and humans haven't been around that long. So this could just be a part of cycle."
The scientists who believe the Earth is warming say years of research are needed to determine why.
Dr. Lonnie Thompson, a researcher at the Byrd Polar Research Center located at Ohio State University, is among those attempting to discover the causes of global warming. He spends many months away from his home in search of answers.
Thompson's latest trek to the Andes Mountains showed substantial changes in a glacier.
"The glacier we have been studying has been melting at an unbelievable rate," Thompson said. "Where there was once ice, there is now a lake." Thompson photographed the new lake and glacier to show "obvious changes in our world because of temperature increase," he said. Thompson said a warmer earth could lead to more erratic weather. "If energy in the system -- the heat on the Earth's climate system --increases, then you're going to have more water vapor. More water vapor feeds more storms -- larger hurricanes, maybe larger snowstorms too."
As a meteorology student at the University of Maryland, Antony Chen is among those who would watch for those weather changes. He is part of the next generation of researchers who will have to figure out what's behind the cause of the temperature bump.
Chen says we have to look at the big picture then determine what changes people should make on the local level. "We need to know what's going on in the atmosphere, the magnitude of changes we are making to our climate system," Chen said. "Then we can start coming up with solutions."
Professor Bruce Doddridge is one of Chen's professors and is encouraged by the caliber of young people he's seen entering the earth sciences. "I'm impressed with the variety of smart and intelligent people coming through that can do this work," he said.
Doddridge concedes that there are many potential causes of global warming, but said he believes the new technology could help assess and solve the problem. "The issues are becoming more complicated," Doddridge said, "but I think the tools we have to work with are becoming more sophisticated."
Many experts say two chemicals -- carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide -- are most responsible for global warming. Cars, trucks and factories around the world emit those chemicals everyday. Once in the atmosphere, those chemicals act as big reflectors, bouncing back sun rays to the Earth and warming the planet.
But there are scientists, climatologists and weather watchers who believe that the warming trend is not an aberrant threat, but part of a natural cycle of warming and cooling on Earth. "We just haven't been around long enough to know if it's a fact," said CNN weather anchor Orelon Sidney. "The Earth is more than 4 billion years old and humans haven't been around that long. So this could just be a part of cycle."
The scientists who believe the Earth is warming say years of research are needed to determine why.
Dr. Lonnie Thompson, a researcher at the Byrd Polar Research Center located at Ohio State University, is among those attempting to discover the causes of global warming. He spends many months away from his home in search of answers.
1. The authors of Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1,500 Years, say that history, ice core studies and stalagmites all agree on a natural cycle at roughly that interval that is superimposed on the longer, stronger ice ages and interglacial phases.
They point as evidence of this natural cycle to the “Climate Optimum” - a period of warmer and wetter weather than the present Earth’s climate, which took place 9,000 years ago to 5,000 years ago, and a cooling event 2,600 years ago.
During the Roman warming period from 200 BC to around AD 600 North Africa and the Sahara were wetter and supported crops. In more recent times they point to the medieval warming of 900 to 1300, when Eric the Red’s descendant’s colonized Greenland and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1850 which saw the Norse dairy farmers on Greenland grow short from malnutrition and eventually die out.
Mr. Avery, a former US agriculture official whose celebrated earlier book was Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High Yield Farming suggests that the natural cycle of warming and cooling may come from variations in cosmic rays which have been linked to cloud formation.
This theory was validated in a recent paper in a Royal Society journal by scientists from the Danish National Space Centre who showed that sub-atomic particles - cosmic rays from exploding stars - play a major role in making clouds. During the past century cosmic rays became scarcer as vigorous activity by the sun forced them away. So there was less cloud cover to reflect away sunlight and a warmer world, according to the Danish scientists.
2. Policymakers have been arguing for nearly a decade over what to do about global warming. Noticeably missing from this debate has been any mention of the fact that natural fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature, not Man, are the likely explanation for any recent warming.
Proponents of the global warming theory repeatedly cite a 1.5° F temperature increase over the last 150 years as evidence that man-made CO2 is dangerously heating up the planet and will cause huge flooding, severe storms, disease and a mass exodus of environmental refugees. Based on this, the Clinton Administration and its environmental allies want Congress to ratify a treaty that will hike consumer prices 40 percent and cost the American economy $3.3 trillion over 20 years. But the apocalyptic predictions on which they justify these drastic steps are totally unsubstantiated and ignore some fundamental truths about the Earth's climatic behavior.
The fact is, the planet's temperature is constantly rising and falling. To put the current warming trend in perspective, it's important to understand the Earth's geological behavior.
Over the last 700,000 years, the climate has operated on a relatively predictable schedule of 100,000-year glaciations cycles. Each glaciations cycle is typically characterized by 90,000 years of cooling, an ice age, followed by an abrupt warming period, called an interglacial, which lasts 10,000-12,000 years. The last ice age reached its coolest point 18,000 to 20,000 years ago when the average temperature was 9-12.6° F cooler than present. Earth is currently in a warm interglacial called the Holocene that began 10,700 years ago.
Although precise temperature readings over the entire period of geologic history are not available, enough is known to establish climatic trends. During the Holocene, there have been about seven major warming and cooling trends, some lasting as long as 3000 years, others as short as 650. Most interesting of all, however, is that the temperature variation in many of these periods averaged as much as 1.8° F, .3° F more than the temperature increase of the last 150 years. Furthermore, of the six major temperature variations occurring prior to the current era, three produced temperatures warmer than the present average temperature of 59° F while three produced cooler temperatures.
For example, when the Holocene began as the Earth was coming out of the last Ice Age around 8700 B.C., the average global temperature was about 6° F cooler than it is today. By 7500 B.C., the climate had warmed to 60° F, 1° F warmer than the current average temperature. However, the temperature fell again by nearly 2° F over the next 1,000 years, settling at an average of 1° F cooler than the current climate.
Between 6500 and 3500 B.C., the temperature increased from 58° F to 62° F. This is the warmest the Earth has been during the Holocene, which is why scientists refer to the period as the Holocene Maximum. Since the temperature of the Holocene Maximum is close to what global warming models project for the Earth by 2100, how Mankind faired during the era is instructive. The most striking fact is that it was during this period that the Agricultural Revolution began in the Middle East, laying the foundation for civilization. Yet, Greenhouse theory proponents claim the planet will experience severe environmental distress if the climate is that warm again.
Since the Holocene Maximum, the planet has continued to experience temperature fluctuations. In 900 A.D. the planet's temperature roughly approximated today's temperature. Then, between 900 and 1100 the climate dramatically warmed. Known as the Medieval Warm Period, the temperature rose by more than 1° F to an average of 60° or 61° F, as much as 2° F warmer than today. Again, the temperature during this period is similar to Greenhouse predictions for 2100, a prospect global warming theory proponents insist should be viewed with alarm. But judging by how Europe prospered during this era, there is little to be alarmed about. The warming that occurred between 1000 and 1350 caused the ice in the North Atlantic to retreat and permitted Norsemen to colonize Iceland and Greenland. Back then, Greenland was actually green. Europe emerged from the Dark Ages in a period that was characterized by bountiful harvests and great economic prosperity. So mild was the climate that wine grapes were grown in England and Nova Scotia.
The major climate change that followed the Medieval Warm Period is especially critical as it bears directly on how to assess our current warming period. Between 1200 and 1450, the temperature plunged to 58° F. After briefly warming, the climate continued to dramatically get colder after 1500. By 1650, the temperature hit a low of 57° F. This is regarded as the coldest point in the 10,000-year Holocene geological epoch. That is why the era between 1650 and 1850 is known as the Little Ice Age. It was during this time that mountain glaciers advanced in Switzerland and Scandinavia, forcing the abandonment of farms and villages. Rivers in London, St. Petersburg and Moscow froze over so thoroughly that people held winter fairs on the ice. There were serious crop failures, famines and disease due to the cooler climate. In America, New England had no summer in 1816. It wasn't until 1860 that the temperature sufficiently warmed to cause the glaciers to retreat.
The significance of the Little Ice Age cannot be overestimated. The 1.5° F temperature increase over the last 150 years, so often cited as evidence of man-made warming, most likely represents a return to normal temperatures following a 400-year period of unusually cold weather. Even the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the chief proponent of the Kyoto Protocol global warming treaty signed in December 1997, concludes that: "The Little Ice Age came to an end only in the nineteenth century. Thus, some of the global warming since 1850 could be a recovery from the Little Ice Age rather than a direct result of human activities."
Leading climate scientist Dr. Hugh Ellsaesser of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory says we may be in for an additional 1.8° F of warming over the next few centuries, regardless of Man's activities. The result would be warmer nighttime and winter temperatures, fewer frosts and longer growing seasons. Since CO2 stimulates plant growth and lessens the need for water, we could also expect more bountiful harvests over the next couple of centuries. This is certainly not bad news to the developing nations of the world struggling to feed their populations.
Thus, far from being a self-induced disaster, global warming is the result of natural changes in the Earth's climate that promises to yield humanity positive benefits. In the geological scheme of things, the warming is not even that dramatic compared to the more pronounced warming trends that occurred during the Agricultural Revolution and the early Middle Ages. Moreover, there is strong evidence that this long-needed warming is moderating. All things considered, global warming should be viewed for what it is: A gift from the often fickle force of Nature. Enjoy it while you can.
3. Global warming is a natural geological process that could begin to reverse itself within 10 to 20 years, predicts an Ohio State University researcher.
The researcher suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide -- often thought of as a key "greenhouse gas" -- is not the cause of global warming. The opposite is most likely to be true, according to Robert Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conservation in Ohio State's Department of Mechanical Engineering. It is the rising global temperatures that are naturally increasing the levels of carbon dioxide, not the other way around, he says.
Essenhigh explains his position in a "viewpoint" article in the current issue of the journal Chemical Innovation, published by the American Chemical Society.
Many people blame global warming on carbon dioxide sent into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels in man-made devices such as automobiles and power plants. Essenhigh believes these people fail to account for the much greater amount of carbon dioxide that enters -- and leaves -- the atmosphere as part of the natural cycle of water exchange from, and back into, the sea and vegetation.
"Many scientists who have tried to mathematically determine the relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature would appear to have vastly underestimated the significance of water in the atmosphere as a radiation-absorbing gas," Essenhigh argues. "If you ignore the water, you're going to get the wrong answer."
How could so many scientists miss out on this critical bit of information, as Essenhigh believes? He said a National Academy of Sciences report on carbon dioxide levels that was published in 1977 omitted information about water as a gas and identified it only as vapor, which means condensed water or cloud, which is at a much lower concentration in the atmosphere; and most subsequent investigations into this area evidently have built upon the pattern of that report.
For his hypothesis, Essenhigh examined data from various other sources, including measurements of ocean evaporation rates, man-made sources of carbon dioxide, and global temperature data for the last one million years.
He cites a 1995 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel formed by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme in 1988 to assess the risk of human-induced climate change. In the report, the IPCC wrote that some 90 billion tons of carbon as carbon dioxide annually circulate between the earth's ocean and the atmosphere, and another 60 billion tons exchange between the vegetation and the atmosphere.
Compared to man-made sources' emission of about 5 to 6 billion tons per year, the natural sources would then account for more than 95 percent of all atmospheric carbon dioxide, Essenhigh said.
"At 6 billion tons, humans are then responsible for a comparatively small amount - less than 5 percent - of atmospheric carbon dioxide," he said. "And if nature is the source of the rest of the carbon dioxide, then it is difficult to see that man-made carbon dioxide can be driving the rising temperatures. In fact, I don't believe it does."
4. Is human activity warming the Earth or do recent signs of climate change signal natural variations? In this feature article, scientists discuss the vexing ambiguities of our planet's complex and unwieldy climate
Newspaper headlines trumpet record-breaking temperatures, dwindling sea ice, and retreating glaciers around the world. Concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for scalding temperatures on Venus and at least 33 degrees C of normal warming here on Earth, are on the rise. Our planet seems destined for a hot future!
But is it really? Or are we simply experiencing a natural variation in Earth's climate cycles that will return to "normal" in time?
Correlations between rising CO2 levels and global surface temperatures suggest that our planet is on a one-way warming trend triggered by human activity. Indeed, studies by paleoclimatologists reveal that natural variability caused by changes in the Sun and volcanic eruptions can largely explain deviations in global temperature from 1000 AD until 1850 AD, near the beginning of the Industrial Era. After that, the best models require a human-induced greenhouse effect.
In spite of what may seem persuasive evidence, many scientists are nonetheless skeptical. They argue that natural variations in climate are considerable and not well understood. The Earth has gone through warming periods before without human influence, they note. And not all of the evidence supports global warming. Air temperatures in the lower atmosphere have not increased appreciably, according to satellite data, and the sea ice around Antarctica has actually been growing for the last 20 years.
It may surprise many people that science -- the de facto source of dependable knowledge about the natural world -- cannot deliver an unqualified, unanimous answer about something as important as climate change.
Why is the question so thorny? The reason, say experts, is that Earth's climate is complex and chaotic. It's so unwieldy that researchers simply can't conduct experiments to check their ideas in the usual way of science. They often rely, instead, on computer models. But such models are only as good as their inputs and programming, and today's computer models are known to be imperfect.
Most scientists agree that no single piece of data will likely resolve the global warming debate. In the end, the best we can expect is a scientific consensus based on a preponderance of evidence.
5. 30 Natural Global Warming Episodes Have Occurred During the Past 5,000 Years.
David Dilley of GWO has discovered a powerful natural forcing mechanism that controls global warming cycle, hurricane track landfalls, El Nino cycles and many other climate weather cycles.
David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations Inc., Ocala Florida, has completed groundbreaking research on Global Warming. This research found that the current global warming episode is a "Natural Recurring Cycle", and that this current cycle will begin to diminish as early as 2015, and no later than 2040.
Mr. Dilley’s 15-years of ongoing climate research has uncovered a very powerful external forcing mechanism that causes shifts in regional weather cycles, and the world’s climate. This forcing mechanism is called “the Primary Forcing Trigger Mechanism”, or PFM. The PFM is a cyclical forcing mechanism that can be forecast years in advance, or even traced back through the earth’s climate history. The major influence of the PFM on the earth’s climate is that it causes the world’s dominating regional high-pressure systems to shift position, or become displaced from their normal seasonal position.
Because the PFM is cyclical, the earth’s weather and climate is likewise cyclical. As an example of an induced PFM climate cycle, the subtropical high-pressure system in the central South Pacific normally causes the ocean’s water temperature to stay relatively cool in this region. Dilley’s El Niño research (see link) explains that the PFM cycle induces a shift in the position of the high-pressure system where El Niños form. The resulting wind shift then triggers the formation of an El Niño by inducing a rapid warming of sea surface temperatures. Dilley says that research going back to 1915 showed 24 such PFM cycles and 24 El Niño occurrences. This research is currently under peer review and will go to a leading climate journal this summer.
Further research by Dilley and Global Weather Oscillations, indicates that this same PFM forcing mechanism displaces high-pressure centers in such a way to control the tracks of hurricanes from one year to the next. (See hurricane link) Knowing how and why this forcing mechanism controls weather cycles opened the door to the ground breaking global warming research.
Mr. Dilley states that the current global warming cycle is without a doubt the result of a known external “natural” forcing cycle. According to Dilley, most government officials, climatologists and meteorologists are looking only at the increase in temperatures and carbon dioxide (CO2) levels over the past 50 to 100 years. These correlations and findings are only representative during global warming episodes. When you take into account nearly 30 other global warming episodes over the past 5 thousand years, it becomes very apparent that CO2 levels cannot be the forcing mechanism that has caused global warming, but rather Long-term PFM climate forcing cycles. These cycles likely displace high-pressure systems and the polar jet stream northward during an approximate 200-year recurring PFM forcing cycle.
the years 1050 to 1205 AD. The peak warming of this cycle lasted 90 years from 1090 to 1180 AD, as delineated by the red box. The second global warming cycle was from 1285 to 1415 AD, with a 65-year peak from 1315 to 1380. The third global warming episode was from 1440 to 1590 with a 50-year peak from 1520 to 1570. The fourth was from 1700 to 1845 with a 45-year peak from 1740 to 1785. Finally, the current global warming episode began about 1910 and the peak about 1950, or about 57 years ago.
The graph and research indicates that each global warming cycle has duration of 130 to 160 years, and the peak of each cycle has duration of 50 to 90 years. Analyses of the 5 warming cycles and the history of PFM cycles, indicates that the current cycle is about the same duration as the one that occurred about 900-years ago. Therefore, the current global warming cycle will run from 1910 to 2060, with the duration of the peak warming occurring between 1950 and 2015. The peak warming will level off around 2015 and then begin diminishing rapidly by no later than the year 2030 to 2040. Once cooling begins it will only take 20 to 30 years to cool to the lowest part of the cooling cycle, temperatures much like what was recorded in the 1800s.
In addition to the 5 global warming cycles found during the past 1000-years, it should be noted here that a total of approximately 30 global warming cycles have occurred during the past 5000 years, with the warmest cycle occurring approximately every 1000-years, and the peak of the warmest cycle having a duration of 60 to 90 years. Referring to the 5000-year graph, the present long-term warming cycle can be seen on the right hand side of the graph, and 4 other long-term warm cycles date back 5000-years on the left side of the graph.
Analyses of the 5000-year graph indicates that long-term warming cycles have durations as short as 500-years as seen in the 2 cycles labeled A, to as long as 1000-years as seen in cycle C nearly 4500-years ago. Further analyses of cycle durations indicates that if the current long-term warming cycle which began in the year 1500 AD was of the same duration as cycle A, the peak of the current warming would of ended back in the year 1750, and it did not. In addition, if the current cycle was the same duration as cycle B, the peak warming of our current global warming cycle would have ended in the year 1900, and it did not. Now let’s take a look at cycle C. in the next paragraph..
Further research by Research by Global Weather Oscillations indicates that the PFM climate forcing cycle normally occurs in cycles of 5. Therefore looking back 5 warming cycles and 5 PFM cycles, we find cycle C that occurred 4,500 years ago and had a 1000 - year duration of the entire warm cycle. Using the mid-point of this cycle (500-years), the current long-term warming that began around the year 1500 AD will peak around the year 2000 AD, and end by 2500 AD.
Reconstructed Carbon Dioxide CO2 and Temperature Proxies Past 400,000 Years.
The graph below shows reconstructed Ice Core temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations over the Antartica from near present time back 400,000 years. Of particular importance is that this graph shows 5 Natural Cycles during the past 400,000 years and as temperatures rise the carbon dioxide concentrations also naturally rise, thus mirroring the cyclical temperatures. It is well known throughout the scientific community that warmer temperatures can hold more water vapor, and water vapor absorbs and holds carbon dioxide. Thus these 5 Natural Cycles during the past 400,000 years mirror the 200-year global warming cycles shown early. Therefore, it is likely that the peak of all 30 global warming cycles during the past 4,000 years likewise had carbon dioxide concentrations very similar to the values found today.
Thus, carbon dioxide levels are not the cause of global warming....all global warming cycles are "Natural".
Natural Global Warming Cycles …. Putting it all together
The current long-term 1000-year warming cycle began about the year 1500 AD and will continue to near 2500 AD. This current long-term cycle will consist of 5 cyclical short-term global warming and cooling episodes. The world is now in the third of the 5 short-term cycles, and the warmest of the 5. The first short-term global warming episode peaked between 1520 and 1570 AD, followed by a cooling period until the next global warming episode peaked between 1740 and 1785. Temperatures remained cool throughout the 1800s to early 1900s, and then the third short-term global warming episode began. The peak of this current global warming episode began in earnest around 1950 and will level off as early as 2015, and no later than 2030-40. Then within 20 years temperatures will cool rapidly to the same levels as seen in the 1800s. The global warming cycles are approximate 200-year cycles, so the next global warming cycle will peak about 150-years after the end of the current cycle, or about the year 2200. This will be the 4th of 5 cycles within the current 1000-year primary warm cycle, and it will not be as warm as the current episode.
Global warming research has found 5 natural global warming cycles during the past 1000-years, and approximately 30 global warming cycles during the past 5 thousand years.
Actions - While we argue a lot about details on how bad global warming is and how responsible mankind is for it, we did agree that individuals acting on their own to conserve energy or clean the environment is always preferred to a government mandated, centralized policy of coercion. In that respect, I was able to support his project of working with Corporate America and other companies to give consumers incentives to buy energy-saving light bulbs—a private sector initiative that he claims will save a lot of energy and produce less CO2.
Cleaner burning energy that takes some of the profit out of the pockets of our “friends” the Saudis wouldn’t be such a bad thing. It may not be much, but it’s a start and a way to bring two divergent sides of the global warming debate together.
Perhaps a non-coercive method of voluntary action on CO2 emissions will work. The one thing we’re learning from the example of Europe’s Kyoto experiment is that government coercion doesn’t work. Freedom of choice is not only right, it’s practical!
In conclusion - let the reader make up his own conclusions.
Data compiled by Yehuda Draiman, Energy Analyst – 9/23/2007
P.S.
Global Warming scientist skeptics list is growing...
6/23/2007
Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose the perceived alarmism of man-made global warming.
The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics.
Once Believers, Now Skeptics
Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006.
...
Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997.
...
Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article.
...
Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote. “As Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added.
...
Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic. “I stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006. “I switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained.
...
Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added.
...
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006.
...
Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said.
...
Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” “After that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,” with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’Climate change is real’ is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause.
...
Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote.
...
Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added.
...
Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,” Clark said in a 2005 documentary "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.” “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun.
...
Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” Veizer wrote. .
Saturday, June 23, 2007.
The makers of the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle have made many science documentaries before. The thing they found most shocking when they started to make this one, was the weakness of the case for man made global warming, and the quantity and quality of the evidence which flatly contradicts it.
http://greatglobalwarmingswindle.co.uk/
La Nina threatens to wreck world’s weather
‘Fertilising’ oceans with iron may combat climate change | Damage to the planet ‘is already inevitable’
Experts predict a run of severe weather in the coming months, with devastating floods striking some parts of the world while severe droughts afflict other regions, as the climate phenomenon known as La Niña gathers momentum.
A chronic drought afflicting southern California and many southeastern states of America could be exacerbated, with Los Angeles heading for its driest year on record. In contrast, western Canada and the northwestern US could turn colder and snowier. Mozambique, southeast Africa, and northern Brazil may face exceptionally heavy rains and floods, while southern Brazil and much of Argentina suffer drought.
La Niña could even rearrange the pattern of sea ice around the Antarctic, pushing the ice pack towards the Pacific side of the continent. Already, torrential rains have triggered severe floods across a huge swath of Central Africa, stretching from Senegal in the west to Uganda in the east.
Related Links
Warm waters may trigger Mediterranean hurricane
Rupa Kumar Kolli, chief of world applications at the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) in Geneva, predicts that the worst of La Niña is yet to come. “This La Niña is now in its developing phase and getting stronger, and we can expect it to peak this coming December and January,” he said. Whether this episode of La Niña will make itself felt in Britain and continental Europe this winter is not certain. “We tend to get a mild end to winter with La Niña, but it’s not a strong signal,” said Adam Scaife, at the Hadley Centre of the Met Office in Exeter.
Met Office scientists have found that La Niña is likely to have played a part in the abysmal British summer. By upsetting the usual track of the high-altitude jet stream towards Britain, it delivered barrages of slow-moving Atlantic depressions with torrents of rain. La Niña may also have been involved in the spectacular Asian monsoon this summer, leading to floods that killed about 1,000 people in India and Bangladesh. And it allows hurricanes to develop - already this month the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico have experienced two monstrous Category 5 storms. Another hurricane broke the record for the fastest intensification of a storm.
La Niña occurs when the tropical seas of the Pacific off the coast of Latin America cool down, while the waters turn warmer towards Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia. That lurch in ocean temperatures can send weather systems into havoc over vast areas, delivering huge deluges of rain over the Far East and tropical Australia, while western parts of Latin America turn much drier than usual. This is the flip side of El Niño, although La Niña lasts for a shorter time, usually no more than a year.
The way that La Niña casts its spell over the globe, from the Pacific to the rest of the world, is known as a “tele-connection”. By disrupting sea temperatures, pressure systems and winds over the Pacific, it interferes with the atmospheric circulation around the tropics. This sends out waves in the atmosphere, like casting a stone into a pond, which can change the strength and position of jet stream winds several miles high. In this way the Pacific can have a huge impact on the weather far from the tropics.
Post a Comment