Excellent rebuttal to global warming alarmists

books:

	• Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition S. Fred Singer, Dennis T. Avery Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008 - 264 pages average customer review:based on 172 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Excellent rebuttal to global warming alarmists

Within the week before this writing, scientists concluded that the disappearing snows of Kilimanjaro are not the result of any "global warming", while another scientific team disputed the UN's claim that sea levels would rise and, in fact, claimed that the authors of the UN reported doctored their data.

Despite the provably false claims of "scientific consenus", more and more bonafide scientists are disputing alarmist claims of anthrogenic global warming. Typically global warming alarmists demonize and denigrate any scientist who refuses to march in their parade.

It's more difficult in the case of S. Fred Singer, whose credentials are rock-solid. Still the alarmists try.

Essentially Singer and colleague Avery argue that there is a 1,500 year solar cycle responsible for warming and cooling the global climate. They support their argument and rebut the fallacies of global warming alarmists by referencing real science.

Quite an interesting read for anyone determined to cut through the propaganda and attempt to understand the argument about global warming. Singer and Avery do an excellent job of debunking the alarmists.

Jerry

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The rational book on climate change

I had always been rather skeptical of global warming. Whenever I hear people like Al Gore and the other global warming almarists talk about how everything is doomed if we don't act now, I always think of the story of chicken little and how he would always say the sky is falling. After reading this book you can't help but think you are being swindled by crazy politicians and even academics. The authors of this book go through and refute every item of man made global warming. They don't argue that warming hasn't happened a bit but they give so many examples of why the current hype is not believable. A big part of their evidence lies in the vast array of physical evidence of past climate changes that shows the earth's climate in a constant state of flux. Just within the past century there was a period even warmer than today called the Medieval Warming Period. There is too much information in this book to comment on in a short review but it is a quality book with well documented sources that will give you a much clearer and rational picture of global climate change than you will get in the news.

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Important reading

No topic has been given more attention than global warming: few topics have been so distorted. Very little of what you read in the media can be trusted when it comes to man made global warming (GW). Data that would cast doubt is simply ignored. For example, a key point of this book is that warming periods, similiar to ours, have been going on every 1,500 years or so for hundreds of thousands of years. During these warming periods CO2 has lagged the temperature rise by 800 years. Thus CO2 was not the cause. So what was then? We don't know for sure. It might be the sun and the periodic cycles that are fundamental to its fluid dynamics. The problem is that the model builders cannot predict these past heatings and coolings. If they cannot, when the historical record is known, why should we believe they can predict the future? Until we understand the mechanisms that are involved, we should be vary careful about assuming that we understand very much about man made GW. (The other day I saw a prediction that in 20 years we would be heading for another ice age.) Read this book for the bacground information you need to be an informed observer of the GW debate. We many not know the answer about what is causing GW today, but this book will help you understand that most of what you read is either a half truth or wrong.

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Parts are excellent

(Note: This was a review of the first edition,
originally posted here on June 14, 2007.
The "updated and expanded" edition has removed or corrected
some of the issues raised here.)

Check out the reference to Fred Singer in the Wikipedia
entry for Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan was famously out-forecasted
by Fred Singer on the effects of the Gulf War oil
fires. The authors deserve a careful reading.

The book does fabulously well in debunking some really
bad global warming science. The saga of the Golden
Toad extinction is particularly noteworthy. The book
makes an excellent case for bias, or just bad science,
in some other extinction studies, interpretation
of temperature trends, and use of tree ring data.
The book also sets the record straight about the
role of temperature in the range of malaria. The
fact that malaria outbreaks have occurred as far
north as the Arctic Circle was news to me.

The authors note the much of the warming in Alaska
in recent decades could be due to the Pacific Decadal
Oscillation. They make a cautious forecast that Alaska
may be due to begin cooling as part of the natural
cycle of the PDO. Will this forecast prove to be
as famously correct as the oil fire forecast?

Having effectively dismissed some bad extinction
studies, the authors become a bit glib in misrepresenting
other global warming science. For example, they display
their ignorance in claiming that global climate models
cannot predict what ended the constructive vegetative
feedback that caused the Sahara to revert to dry
conditions after having been wetter 8000 years ago.
A bit of scholarly search would have revealed an
article "Soil feedback drives the mid-Holocene North
African monsoon northward in fully coupled CCSM2
simulations with a dynamic vegetation model". So
when the authors state "The computer's don't know",
they really should have stated "Research about that
issue has not been read by us". Despite extensive
references in this book, there are very few references
to the original research articles based on global
climate models.

The book has a typo on page 214 where the "global
power consumption" is quoted to be "12 trillion watt-hours
per year". The typo is repeated twice more on page
214 and 215. This power consumption converts to 0.0014
TW (or Terra Watts). The International Energy Agency
states in the 2006 "Key World Energy Statistics"
that global electrical power production is 1.99 TW.
The Wikipedia article on "World Energy Consumption"
gives the the global power consumption to be 15 TW,
of which 5 TW is used to produce 2 TW of electrical
power consumption. So perhaps the authors probably
intended 12 trillion kilowatt-hours per year.
(Page 246 in the updated and expanded edition now reads
"kilowatt-hours", rather than "watt-hours").
12 trillion kilowatt hours is 1.4 TW,
a number close to the world electrical power
consumption. On page 215 we read "The Hoffert team
is suggesting that 10 trillion watt-hours per year
of biofuels would require..." But the Hoffert team
actually does a calculation with 10 TW. Google reveals
that some of the book's supporters are quoting the
trillion watt-hours units, not realizing they are
erroneous. Unfortunately, the book loses an opportunity
to inform about the truly Herculean challenge of
reducing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere by
using renewable energy.

More damage is done on page 210, where we read the
EIA projects that "wind energy will provide just
0.0025 percent of U.S. electricity generation in
2020". The EIA document "Annual Energy Outlook 2007"
states, in reference to a projection for U.S. electricity
generation: "generation from wind power increases
from 0.4 percent of total generation in 2005 to 0.9
percent in 2030". Wind power currently produces 20%
of electrical power in Denmark, 9% in Spain, and
7% in Germany. Where did the 0.0025% come from for
a U.S. projection?

The radiative forcing, or augmentation of the greenhouse
effect, that would be caused by adding additional
CO2 to the atmosphere is known with great certainty.
The authors are correct to point out the uncertainty
in some of the feedbacks that have been proposed
to amplify the effect of warming caused by CO2. But
on page 36 we read a sentence "This is especially
true if the current CO2 levels have already used
up almost all of the trace gas's ability to heat
our planet. (Each additional increment of CO2 causes
less warming)." Why not set the set the record straight
and state that an additional 60 ppmv of CO2 added
to 600 ppmv will cause the same radiative forcing
as 30 ppmv of CO2 added to 300 ppmv? And then why
not tell us the numerical value of that radiative
forcing? The ability of CO2 to cause warming hasn't
been "used up".

So the books suffers from the lack of an accurate
presentation of the greenhouse effect and its anthropogenic
modification. The discussion of the 1500 year oscillation
is fascinating. Perhaps as we learn more about the
1500 year oscillation and the PDO, some of IPCC statements
will turn out to be less than optimally worded. Perhaps
the word "most" in the 2007 statement "Most of the
observed increase in globally averaged temperatures
since the mid-20th century is very likely due to
the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse
gas concentrations" wasn't the best bet.

Does acknowledgement of the 1500 year oscillation
lead us to conclude the IPCC forecast for 2100 and
beyond is invalid? Actually, this book could lead
us to believe that the IPCC projections for global
warming may have been underestimated.

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reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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