posted 01-01-2004 02:47 PM               

"There is no such thing as "scientific consensus" on anything. Scientists have NEVER HAD ANY CONSENSUS ON ANYTHING."

"Of course the instrumental record NASA_GISS refer to are artificial temperatures measured in artificial environments like cities and international airports. They are climatically irrelevant due to urban heating from concrete jungles. The only uncontaminated record of atmospheric temperature comes from the satellites, operating since 1979."

What I note Eduardo, is despite your claims of the accuracy of temperature monitoring by satellite, you have no response to the article Global Warming Trend of Mean Tropospheric Temperature Observed by Satellites as corrorborated by CLIMATE CHANGE:The Causes of 20th Century Warming .

posted 01-01-2004 06:33 PM               

You said nothing to Monnin et al., study showing CO2 increases came AFTER a natural warming of Antarctica induced by the South Sea. And so on. I will go back and trace all the subjects I posted and you had nothing to say or contradict them with your famed press releases.

So, Who has been in a stunned silence? Or a stubborn negation of facts? Anyway, here it is:

quote:

---

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Causes of 20th Century Warming
Francis W. Zwiers, and Andrew J. Weaver

Science 290: 2081-2083 (Perspectives).
F. W. Zwiers is at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis, Victoria, BC. E-mail: francis.zwiers@ec.gc.ca

ABSTRACT:
… Two distinct periods of warming, from 1910 to 1945 and since 1976, were separated by a period of very gradual cooling. The authors highlight the work by Stott et al., who have performed the most comprehensive simulation of 20th century climate to date.

---

quote:

---

The agreement between observed and simulated temperature variations strongly suggests that forcing from anthropogenic activities, moderated by variations in solar and volcanic forcing, has been the main driver of climate change during the past century.

---

quote:

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CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been measured at an altitude of about 4,000 meters on the peak of Mauna Loa mountain in Hawaii since 1958. The measurements at this location, remote from local sources of pollution, have clearly shown that atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are increasing.

---

posted 01-01-2004 06:44 PM               

They have a nice tool there where you pass the cursor over regions in the world, and they show at the bottom of the browser temperature anomalies. Most of them show cooling. Strange, isn't it?

quote:

---

"It is virtually certain that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will cause global surface climate to be warmer," the AGU council statement says.

---

quote:

---

"The complexity of the climate system makes it difficult to predict some aspects of human-induced climate change: exactly how fast it will occur, exactly how much it will change, and exactly where those changes will take place."

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posted 01-01-2004 11:06 PM               

I'm patient.

Remember, it was Eduardo who said that ONLY satellites provide reliable temperature measurements. In this case however, the satellite data contradicts his primary thesis:

"Science says the slight warming from 1880 to present days is nothing strange and absolutely natural. It says that warming from 1800 to present days is nonexistent, so the rest of the litany is pure propaganda, politically motivated by groups whose interests are geopolitical – not humanitarian."

But what data does he base such a claim on? What is his foundation for such a broad based assertion?

Why, none other than surfaced-based thermometer measurements ... and from one station in the Alps no less (HOHENPEISSENBERG weather station)!

So you see, that's the way it is with Eduardo...on one hand he is willing to take a SINGLE location and extrapolate a temperature trend for the ENTIRE PLANET! and yet discount data from a vastly greater area of coverage.

Quite amazing isn't it? Consistency hasn't been his strong suit, only inconsistency when it comes to promoting his agenda.

His agenda? Let's remember, it was Eduardo who extolled the benefits of increased levels of CO2 on December 26, 2003.

"Welcome, CO2! (as improver of agricultural yields)"

His statement follows along the same theme of Sherwood Idso who created a $250,000 video for Western Fuels in 1991 titled "The Greening of Planet Earth" which touts the virtues of global warming. The highly misleading video – which claims that global warming is good for humanity was paid for by the coal industry and was the subject of Congressional Hearings in the early 1990s.

Maybe YOUR helpers are taking a bit of a winter vacation Eduardo.

Like I said, I'm patient.

In the meantime why not take a stab at the geophysical rationale for increases of CO2 being an effect, rather than a cause, of increases in temperature.

posted 01-01-2004 11:25 PM               

Bush Plans On Global Warming Alter Little

By Guy Gugliotta and Eric Pianin
Washington Post Staff Writers

Two years after President Bush (news - web sites) declared he could combat global warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports and interviews.

At the heart of the president's strategy is "Climate Leaders," a program that recruits the nation's industrial polluters to voluntarily devise ways to curb their emissions by 10 percent or more in the coming decade. Scientists believe these greenhouse gas emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, are contributing to a troubling rise in the earth's temperature that could disrupt weather patterns and cause flooding.

Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with pollution problems -- 50 in all -- have joined Climate Leaders, and of the companies that have signed up, only 14 have set goals. Many of the companies that are volunteering say they did so either because reducing emissions makes good economic sense or because they were being nudged by state and federal regulators.

Industry groups, meanwhile, have crafted their own programs under a Bush administration initiative called "Climate VISION," but none of the programs requires individual companies to either enlist in the program or set goals for emission reductions.

Many of the companies with the worst pollution records have shunned the voluntary programs because even a voluntary commitment would necessitate costly cleanups or possibly could set the stage for future government regulation, according to industry insiders.

Most of what the administration hopes to accomplish in terms of reduced emissions will not become apparent for many decades to come, experts agree. The president's more immediate goal, announced on Valentine's Day (news - web sites) 2002, is to reduce greenhouse gas intensity -- the amount of gas put into the atmosphere per unit of economy -- by 18 percent over the next 10 years. Congress's research arm, the General Accounting Office (news - web sites), concluded in October that Bush's plan would reduce overall emissions only 2 percentage points below what the nation would achieve with no federal program whatsoever.

These findings have further fueled a debate in Congress and along the campaign trail over whether voluntary efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are useful.

Bush promoted his voluntary initiatives after he abandoned a campaign pledge to impose mandatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions and then formally disavowed the 1997 accord negotiated by the United States and 158 other countries in Kyoto, Japan, which would impose mandatory caps on greenhouse emissions in developed countries. The Bush administration argued that mandatory controls would hinder economic growth. The U.S. rejection means that the treaty will die unless Russia, which also has expressed concerns about the economic impact, decides to ratify. Moscow has not yet said what it will do.

The administration followed the 2002 announcement of the voluntary program with a flurry of press events, scientific conferences and research initiatives.

"There are a lot of activities, a lot of initiatives, but I don't think it amounts to very much in the short to medium term -- over, say, the next 10 years," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, which does advocacy and research on the issue. "We don't think that the goal of the president's program is ambitious. We think it's pretty much business as usual."

She and other skeptics say most of the other initiatives are spruced-up holdovers from previous administrations or long-term research undertakings with little immediate impact.

But James L. Connaughton, the White House environmental policy chief, said recently that the Bush program is working, and that private-sector companies and groups that strongly opposed the Kyoto treaty "are now coming forward in what we would say is a more economically rational and more sensible policy environment."

"They are stepping up to the plate in a way they never have -- never did in the 1990s. That's a huge step," Connaughton said.

Much of what the administration hopes to accomplish through the plan could pay dividends in coming decades. Initiatives announced by the president include promoting a better world network for climate observation, combating illegal overseas logging that destroys carbon-absorbing forests, and encouraging research in fuel cells and nuclear fusion technology.

These "public-private partnerships and the U.S.-international partnerships in scale and scope far outstrip what we've seen in the past," Connaughton said, and are designed to produce results for the near , mid- and long term.

The Problem With Pollution

Although controversy surrounds research on global warming, a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (news - web sites) concluded in June 2001 that it is a real problem caused at least in part by man-made pollution building up in the atmosphere and trapping heat like a blanket. At present rates, the trend could well have a "serious adverse" impact on the climate by the end of the century, the panel said.

The United States is responsible for about a quarter of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, U.S. emissions are nearly 12 percent above the 1990 level and will continue to climb, although in 2001 they dipped by 1.2 percent, largely as the result of an economic slowdown and an unseasonably warm winter that sharply reduced demand for fossil fuels.

Bush has repeatedly opposed mandatory controls, including a bill sponsored by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) to impose caps on greenhouse gas emissions from utilities and other industries. That bill was rejected in the Senate late last year, by a vote of 55 to 43.

Instead, the president called for more research and voluntary measures. "My approach recognizes that economic growth is the solution, not the problem," Bush said in his Valentine's Day speech.

Besides the Climate Leaders program for individual companies and Climate VISION for industry and trade groups, the new initiatives included:

• New guidelines for companies to disclose voluntarily their efforts to reduce emissions.

• Financial incentives for farmers who plant trees or cultivate crops in such a way that soil retains carbon dioxide.

Although Climate Leaders represents the cutting edge of Bush's strategy, it has a budget of $1 million a year and a full-time staff of three, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites), which runs the program. And although some "Leaders" are big names in manufacturing -- among them General Motors Corp., Caterpillar Inc., U.S. Steel Corp. and Raytheon Co. -- most are perennial "good citizens" who were participating in "green" programs years before Bush called for volunteers.

Fetzer Vineyards, for example, switched to organic farming in the 1980s and has powered its headquarters with a solar array since 1999.

Another firm that signed up for Climate Leaders is Milwaukee-based We Energies, the biggest utility in Wisconsin, but it is taking no new emissions-reducing actions as a result. Anticipating pressure from state and federal regulators, the company had planned to curb other polluting emissions from nine coal- and natural-gas-burning plants. As a result, the plants would also spew less carbon dioxide -- a major greenhouse gas.

Company executives reasoned: Why not get credit for that as well -- at no added expense? Joining Climate Leaders was an easy call.

We Energies and Ohio-based Cinergy Corp. -- two of the six utility companies participating in Climate Leaders -- had established track records of emissions reduction and were relatively easy to recruit.

"It just made sense to put [our efforts] into a program," said Kris McKinney, manager of environmental policy for We Energies. "Given the range of activities we're involved in and our level of interest in the issue, we had been looking for something we could participate in."

But the administration has made no headway signing up big utility companies with the worst emissions records. Many of those companies vigorously opposed mandatory controls. Now they are refusing to take part in voluntary measures that set targets, largely for fear that those programs eventually will lead to government regulation.

"Some just see it as a slippery slope," said a lobbyist for several major utilities.

No Specific Goals

Most of the 190 major U.S. utility companies represented by the Edison Electric Institute prefer to participate in an industry-created program called "Power Partners," which does not require companies to commit to specific goals.

"Under Power Partners, there's obviously greater flexibility, and it encourages companies to do what they can, recognizing that some can do more than others," said Dan Riedinger, a spokesman for the utility industry group. "But it tries not to leave any company behind just because they can't make a specific numerical commitment at this point."

"Energy conservation is good business because it helps us avoid costs," said Jack Azar, vice president for environment, health and safety at Xerox Corp., a member of Climate Leaders and a volunteer in federal energy programs for nearly a decade. "And we're not averse to the publicity, if we can get a couple of nice statements about what we've done."

Climate VISION, run by the Energy Department, holds out hope for a broader assault on global warming. It seeks to enlist participants from 12 industrial sectors and trade groups, which represent the vast majority of the nation's industrial greenhouse gas emitters.

The commitments vary widely. The Semiconductor Industry Association had an agreement already in place to reduce emissions of perfluorocarbons, a greenhouse gas, and the American Iron and Steel Institute pledged to reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 10 percent by 2012.

But the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives of 150 of the country's biggest corporations, sought only to get its members to endorse the program. The Nuclear Energy Institute simply wants people to use more emission-free nuclear power, a controversial goal because of the unresolved problem of disposing of radioactive waste.

In no case have the trade associations compelled participation, let alone compliance with industry-wide goals, although some groups have reported a strong response from their members. To date, no Climate VISION activity has led to a surge in corporate interest in Climate Leaders, but Xerox's Azar acknowledged that Business Roundtable seminars helped pique his company's interest.

A Tougher Registry
Meanwhile, the Energy Department has drawn up more stringent guidelines for the voluntary reporting of steps taken by private companies and other "entities" to reduce emissions. The registry, begun in 1994, gives companies a federal database in which they can "bank" their emissions-control accomplishments, should a national or international regulatory regimen take effect.

The registry had 228 participants in 2001 and 2002, a modest number that could fall when the tougher guidelines kick in.

"We envision a rigorous registry, accurate and reliable for the participants," Energy Undersecretary Robert G. Card said. "There could be an initial decline [in participation] before there's a gain. Our view is that industry is not necessarily going to be happy with the registry, [but] those who take it seriously will be."

Finally, the 2002 farm bill added $17.1 billion to federal conservation programs over 10 years, and the Agriculture Department, for the first time, is including greenhouse gas mitigation as a criterion for granting incentive payments for such activities as planting hardwood trees and harvesting methane from livestock manure.

"The approach we take in any individual program is going to be slightly different," said William Hohenstein, director of the Agriculture Department's global change program. "Considering greenhouse gases in how we set conservation priorities is a big step for us."

Some administration critics give the USDA high marks for paying attention to global warming, but they note that the new money came not from the administration but from legislation passed by Congress. The critics contend that much of the funding was meant for clean-water programs that the White House simply endorsed and repackaged as greenhouse gas initiatives.

"I don't want to begrudge the administration," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group. "But what they're doing is misleading, because they're double-counting those dollars for different environmental purposes."

********************************************* http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040101/sc_afp/philippi nes_weather_040101081817

Philippines minister cites global warming as reason for disasters

MANILA (AFP) - A senior aide of President Gloria Arroyo blamed global warming for the series of landslides and floods that wrought death and destruction in the central and southern Philippines last month.

The disasters killed more than 200 people on the islands of Panaon, Leyte, Mindanao and Bohol shortly before Christmas.

Environment Secretary Elisea Gozun said that while the massive loss of forest cover and geologic factors were partly responsible, these areas had so far avoided landslides even though farmers started clearing upland areas in 1928 for coconut and other cash crops.

She said the new elements were the record heavy rains that fell on Panaon and the Surigao region in Mindanao.

"One should, however, point out that this unusually heavy rain is one concrete manifestation of climate change," Gozun wrote in the Philippine Star newspaper.

"Indeed, weather patterns all over the world have been changing -- brought about by man's excessive release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.

"This is exacerbated by the fact that there are fewer trees which serve as carbon sinks and absorb the carbon dioxide."

Meanwhile, Arroyo's spokesman said the government was providing medium- and long-term solutions in the disaster areas.

"Now were talking about relocation, the houses to which the disaster victims will transfer to because the places from which they came are now hardly habitable," Ignacio Bunye said.

The government will build houses for some of the disaster victims on Panaon using bamboo and logs confiscated from illegal loggers, he said.

Bunye also said the government would engage in "massive reforestation" in these areas, using high-school and college students to plant trees as a matter of course prior to graduation.

posted 01-02-2004 12:06 AM               

One station in the Alps.

For comparison, consider:

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2003b/mann2003b.html

Global Surface Temperatures over the Past Two Millennia

Geophysical Research Letters
Vol. 30, No. 15, 1820, August 2003

Michael E. Mann (1) and Philip D. Jones (2).

1 Department of Environmental Sciences,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville VA, USA

2 Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

ABSTRACT:

We present reconstructions of Northern and Southern Hemisphere mean surface temperature over the past two millennia based on high-resolution 'proxy' temperature data which retain millennial-scale variability. These reconstructions indicate that late 20th century warmth is unprecedented for at least roughly the past two millennia for the Northern Hemisphere. Conclusions for the Southern Hemisphere and global mean temperature are limited by the sparseness of available proxy data in the Southern Hemisphere at present.

Figure 1. Comparison of proxy-based NH temperature reconstructions [Jones et al., 1998; Mann et al., 1999; Crowley and Lowery, 2000] with model simulations of NH mean temperature changes over the past millennium based on estimated radiative forcing histories [Crowley, 2000; Gerber et al., 2002--results shown for both a 1.5°C/2*CO2 and 2.5°C/2*CO2 sensitivity; Bauer et al., 2003). Also shown are two independent reconstructions of warm-season extratropical continental NH temperatures [Briffa et al., 2001; Esper et al., 2002] and an extension back through the past two thousand years based on eight long reconstructions [Mann and Jones, 2003]. All reconstructions have been scaled to the annual, full Northern Hemisphere mean, over an overlapping period (1856-1980), using the NH instrumental record [Jones et al., 1999] for comparison, and have been smoothed on time scales of >40 years to highlight the long-term variations. The smoothed instrumental record (1856-2000) is also shown. The gray/red shading indicates estimated two-standard error uncertainties in the Mann et al. [1999] and Mann and Jones [2003] reconstructions. Also shown are reconstructions of ground surface temperatures (GST) based on appropriately areally-averaged [Briffa and Osborn, 2002; Mann et al., 2003] continental borehole data [Huang et al., 2000], and hemispheric surface air temperature trends, determined by optimal regression [Mann et al., 2003] from the GST estimates. All series are shown with respect to the 1961-90 base period.

********************************************

Of course, you could disregard all of these data and stick with Eduardo's single site in the Alps.

posted 01-02-2004 12:31 AM            

.....Analyze the graph. See the warming by natural causes, the cooling area during alleged big CO2 increases, the size of error bars (do you know what they are, don't you?), and the final part at the extreme right, showing their data is contradicted by MSU satellite records. Are they lying, or simply they are too stupid?.....

Re: "the final part to the extreme right" - I'm assuming that the drop in temperature between the years 1991 and 1994 represents the aerosol-induced cooling of the upper atmosphere pursuant to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. In which case it looks to me like the satellite data are accurate as indicated for at least this section of the graph.

It seems to me that the real challenge involved in sorting through this issue of "warming" has more to do with quantifying the influences of aerosols and greenhouse-gases other than CO2 than with anything else. I would think the increasingly ubiquitous presence of aviation cirrus [which has been determined thus far to have a net warming effect on surface temperature] would have to be included in this quantification process. Whether the continuous aircraft-generated crappification of our upper troposphere is exclusively a result of increased air traffic since the mid-90's [can we say "Trade Agreements"?] or the result of an aerosol geo-engineering project in-progress - or both - I don't think any examination of possible climate change catalysts is valid without the inclusion of this particular phenomenon.

If you want to keep limiting discussion to endless argument over the "exact" role of a single component of the Big Picture - i.e. CO2 - go ahead. I think most of us know there's a lot more involved here. And I will say that in my opinion the issue is more one of increasing instability than of warming exclusively.

posted 01-02-2004 01:42 AM               

Analyze the graph. See the warming by natural causes, the cooling area during alleged big CO2 increases, the size of error bars (do you know what they are, don't you?), and the final part at the extreme right, showing their data is contradicted by MSU satellite records. Are they lying, or simply they are too stupid?

posted 01-02-2004 01:55 AM               

4) CHANGES in INSTRUMENTATION

Surface temperature records have also not been audited regarding changes in instrumentation. These changes include change of thermometers, and the instalation of automatic recording devices (they give a higher reading because the cabinet door is never opened), and changes in the station location. As an example, this is the Vardo, Norway, station record:

Clearly, something happened in 1920 that resulted in a sudden rise in temperatures reported at Vardo. We don't know which was the change there, if it was a new thermometer or the station displacement to a new location, but the result is more than evident.

Without correction, the average surface temperature record shows erroneously almost a full degree centigrade increase in a century. After the correction, the increase is barely 0,12º C in 100 years.

Summing up, satellite records highlight the great amount of problems that ground station records have, revealing some errors directly, and pointing indireclty to others. Considering this, the surface temperature records cannot be considered reliable.

Warming and Greenhouse Gases

In addition to some errors revealed in surface temperature data, satellite data can also tell us something about the observed change in temperatures.

Here is the satellite data, along with the trend line for the data:

There are a pair of noteworthy items shown in this graph. Firstly, temperature increased more in the north, and less in the south. In fact, Antarctic regions, from 50ºS down to the South Pole, have cooled,not warmed.

This support the idea that the warming is not caused by CO2, because the greenhouse gases theory predicts a greater temperature increase in colder regions. This has not happened, and in a very clear way by all means, and this real result (cooling in the south, warming in the north) is not predicted by any computer model used by the IPCC.

For instance, the IPCC says that "It is expected that Polar environmental changes will be greater than for other places in Earth". (IPCC 1996, WG II, Section 7.5).", and "The projected warming in Polar regions is greater than the projected warming for many other regions in the world". http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/regional/508.htm

However, both surface station and satellite records agree that this "prophesized" South Pole warming has not taken place.

Second: tropics are areas of great worrying if the "global warming" were occurring, since those regions already are the warmest on the planet. Any additional warming there would be a danger for those regions. But, far from warming, tropical regions have cooled during the last 24 years. again, this has not been foreseen by any computer model used by the "greenhouse industry". Here is a graph of the areas in the world that have warmed and those who have cooled:

Source: Graph by RSS
Temperatures by Christy, http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature/

It must be noted that the RSS graph above uses color in a subtle and misleading way. The light and dark reds really mean little or NO warming. Colors in the graph create a perception of a generalized warming (by a subconscious association with fire and heat), and many people will not notice the color bar at the bottom of the graph, that says red really means "no change"!)

Note by Eduardo Ferreyra - president of FAEC, Argentinean Foundation for a Scientific Ecology: Using a graphic design program, such as Corel's "Photo Paint", I have used the menu function "Image > Adjust > hue/saturation/density", to automatic and proportionally shift the color scale towards values that provide a better visual idea (more real) of temperature changes shown in the graph. The "subconscious" hot red has disappeared, being replaced by a dark blue shade, and the "real" warming is represented by purple shades, that shows more clearly the regions that have really warmed. It should be noted, also, that black means cooling, and black, along with dark and medium blues (no change) are predominant. Compare with the color bar at the bottom.

¿Do you see any catastrophic warming here?

Summary:

Although the MSU satellite is only a short 24 years record there is not a single indication that there might be occurring a 2warming by greenhouse". The pattern for the present warming (shown above) it is not predicted by IPCC's computerized simulations for warming by CO2 and other grenhouse gases increase.

The entire satellite data for the whole world shows a warming during the 1979-2002 period of just 0.005º C by year, or 0.5º C in a century. This is, by far, much less than "prophesized" by the IPCC's "global warming" hypothesis for the recorded period, that was characterized by massive CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.

This demonstrates that there is no "global warming", as it demonstrates that there is no anomalous warming. Satellite records, the best available information we have, show the present warming trend - half a degree Celsius by century - is well within the range shown for the last few hundred years.

Addendum by FAEC:

Hohenpeissenberg Station

The Hohenpeissenberg weather station is located in the Bavarian Alps, south of Germany, and has kept temperature records - in the obsessive German tradition for accuracy - for an uninterrupted span of 222 years. According to its records, the chart below plots temperatures and the resulting trend of 0.6º C in 222 years, or 0.3º C by century. Hohenpeissenberg is located in a region that has remained virtually unaltered by industrial or urban development, so it is a surface station that does not suffer from "urban warming".

This is not just a "single station in the Alps", but one of thousand of stations around the world that can be used to show there is not a catastrophic trend. But the Hohenpeissenberg station is the one with the longest reliable data available, and is paradigmatic in the case of temperature trends. Trying to dismiss it, is acknowledging this data is too dangerous for the Apocalyptic predictions of the IPCC.

The graph also show the reason why the IPCC and their supporters have chosen 1879-1880 as their starting point for the trend in their graphs: it was the coldest year in many years, and a very convenient point for starting a trend that would show "significant" warming.

But seeing the picture in a wider time scale - 222 years - the trend is reduced to 0,3ºC by century, well within the natural variation induced by a more active Sun.

The lower temperatures in 1829 and 1816 (The Year Without a Summer - the Tambora volcano eruption of 1815, on the island of Sumbawa), were too far on the time scale, and would not render a steep warming trend as 1880 does. Clever (and dishonest people) out there.

The case has been presented with enough hard facts and sound reliable data available from the provided references and links. I hope this will not provoke a stunned and eloquent silence from Sore Throat. On the contrary, we must expect a new cataract of press releases from "politically correct" scientists in the IPCC's payroll, and other similar green organizations. Wanna bet?

posted 01-02-2004 01:59 AM               

Sorry, but it was not my fault. It took me about one hour to analyze the code, and find the error.

This thing of analyzing things to find errors is a nasty habit I have. And that must the reason for my skepticism about all those Science magazine papers. I began doing that, back in 1988, when a paper by S. Solomon et al., about the ozone levels over Thule and Greenland showed that the Abstract and the Conclusion (the only things that journalists - and perhaps peer-reviewers ever read) had nothing to do with the study contents. While the conclusion said CFC and chlorine coming from them were depleting the ozone layer all over the world, their paper stated quite clearly that chlorine atoms can only react with ozone molecules on the surface of ice crystals.

posted 01-02-2004 01:31 PM               

I am launching a more appropriately named thread here to carry on discussion.

To pick up where we left off:
http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/ubb/Forum14/HTML/000084-11.html

********************************************

SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra states:

"While the conclusion said CFC and chlorine coming from them were depleting the ozone layer all over the world, their paper stated quite clearly that chlorine atoms can only react with ozone molecules on the surface of ice crystals.

"As these crystals are found only in stratospheric polar clouds (sic), and these clouds are not found elsewhere outside the Antarctic Polar Vortex, their conclusions (and worse yet, their recommendations to politics to ban CFCs!) were an outright lie."

Well let's see...just who is "lying"?

This photograph shows polar stratospheric clouds lit from below near Kiruna, Sweden

********************************************

Observations of Polar Stratospheric Clouds by POAM II

Figure 1b. Locations of Northern Hemisphere POAM II occultation events between 1 Nov 1995 and 31 Mar 1996 along with those events which were found to be PSCs.
*********************************************

For someone who claims to be precise and accurate in his analysis of scientific data, we can only assume that Eduardo is making another intentionally patently false statement to support his agenda...one that is so easily disproved.

Case in point, stratospheric polar clouds do occur outside the Antarctic Polar Vortex, and they are being recorded at increasing frequency at lower latitudes and are contributing to ozone depletion in the northern hemisphere as well as in Antarctica.

ARCTIC OZONE DEPLETION LINKED TO LONGEVITY OF POLAR STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS
http://amesnews.arc.nasa.gov/releases/2000/00_43AR.html

A significant decline in ozone over the Arctic last winter was due to an increase in the area and longevity of polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), according to a group of researchers who participated in a large, international atmospheric science campaign.

The ozone-destroying clouds are made of ice and nitric acid, said University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Owen B. Toon, one of five project scientists heading up NASA's SAGE III Ozone Loss and Validation Experiment, or SOLVE."

*********************************************

Polar Stratospheric Clouds

Danish Meteorological Institute
Division of Middle Atmosphere Research

Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSC) form during winter in both polar regions at altitudes between ~ 15 and 28 km when temperatures drop below ~ - 80°C. It has been recognized for several years that PSCs play a key role for strong chemical ozone depletion during late winter and early spring in both polar regions. The influence of the stratospheric particles on ozone depletions is two-fold: 1) the aerosol and cloud particles provide the surfaces where fast heterogeneous chemical reactions convert inactive halogen reservoir species into potentially ozone-destroying radicals, and 2) the cloud particles are composed of nitric acid and water; gravitational sedimentation of the particles may lead to a vertical redistribution of these species with irreversible denitrification and dehydration in the altitude range where the particles form, prolonging chemical ozone destruction by reactive chlorine.

Scientific concern is arising whether increased concentrations of greenhouse gases may cause lower winter temperatures in the stratosphere, a stronger and long-lasting Arctic polar vortex, and more widespread PSC formation. Such conditions may lead to increased ozone depletion, the potential for the formation of Arctic ozone holes, and a longer time for the ozone layer to recover after concentrations of CFC and Halon gases are expected slowly to decrease as a consequence of the Montreal protecol restrictions on the usage of these gases.

*********************************************

Polar Stratospheric Clouds and Ozone Depletion: The Role In Global Climate Change
http://dmiweb.dmi.dk/pub/PSC/documents/psc-climate-proposal.pdf

LARGE NITRIC ACID PARTICLES ABOVE ARCTIC STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS
http://www.cosis.net/abstracts/EAE03/13396/EAE03-J-13396.pdf

LIDAR STUDIES OF STRATOSPHERIC CLOUDS IN THE ANTARCTIC AND THE ARCTIC
http://ams.confex.com/ams/annual2000/lidar/abstracts/11528.htm

Excerpt: "Lately low stratospheric clouds have been observed also in the tropical region (Indian Ocean), during the APE-THESEO tropical campaign by means of LIDAR and other scatterometers systems installed on board of two aircraft the M-55 Geophysica and Falcon"

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Total ozone series in Arosa, Switzerland
The total ozone series of Arosa (1820 m a. s. l.) is the longest in the world. The measurements began in 1926 by F. W. P. Götz and were continued by G. Perl and then H. U. Dütsch from the Federal Institute of Technology from Zürich (ETHZ). Since 1988, the Swiss Meteorological Institute is responsible for operational measurements at Arosa (LKO).

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Ozone's Problem with Polar Stratospheric Clouds
http://www.shsu.edu/~chemistry/ESC440/PSC.html

Excellent summary (excerpt):

CFCs not only spread throughout the troposphere, they also diffuse into the stratosphere. The evidence for the presence of CFCs in the stratosphere is only argued against by people who have a vested interest

a) in suggesting that industrial chemicals are not near as damaging as the peer-reviewed scientific evidence suggests because "industry is the engine for the free enterprise system and what THAT produces is inherently good"; or

b) in suggesting that scientists are dishonest leaches sucking on the government teat and they have fabricated the evidence for the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere so that they can increase the amount of government grant money that would subsequently be applied to a "mythical problem"; or

c) in maintaining the ear of people who trumpet criticisms of the scientific process, the scientific process that has proven that CFCs are a very important component in the anthropogenic changes to the atmosphere.

This final reason is particularly insidious because it is based not on logical reasoning but instead on efforts to try to increase the profits (of, for instance radio stations and syndication networks) that pay nay-sayers salaries. Scientists should speak out against popular press indictments of well carried out scientific investigations and expose the process by which myth, superstition, and AM radio profits are made.

Arguing against the presence of CFCs in the stratosphere is a waste of time: CFCs have been detected in the stratosphere, their chlorine containing decomposition products have also been detected there, and their fluorine containing decomposition products have been detected in the stratosphere. Period. The data are overwhelming.

Arguing about regulating CFCs, however, though that regulation IS presently under way, may be worth the time.

Polar Stratospheric Cloud
http://remus.jpl.nasa.gov/info.htm

Polar Stratospheric Clouds Above Spitsbergen
http://www.awi-potsdam.de/www-pot/atmo/psc/psc.html

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The primary question remains...why was it necessary for SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra to make such a patently false statement:

"As these crystals are found only in stratospheric polar clouds, and these clouds are not found elsewhere outside the Antarctic Polar Vortex, their conclusions (and worse yet, their recommendations to politics to ban CFCs!) were an outright lie."

Handlers on vacation? ...or sheer desperation?

Neither are a pretty picture.

Here, however, is a rather pretty picture of a PSC in Sweden:

posted 01-04-2004 03:44 PM               

Results from Adelaide, Australia, weather station. Strangely, it is an urban station, suffering from the "urban heat island effect". If corrected for this bias, temperatures will be lower still:

The original chart is this:

Excell file with each month average temperature available on request to shuara@fullzero.com.ar

Editing this post: It seems the problem with posting still exists, as I made a post and it did not appear in the screen. In this post there is no strange html code, so it is not my fault!

posted 01-04-2004 03:56 PM               

Arctic Ozone:
The sensitivity of the Ozone Layer to Chemical Depletion and Climate Change

Excerpt:

Deep ozone losses over both the Arctic and Antarctic are the result of special conditions that occur over polar regions in the winter and early spring. As winter arrives in each hemisphere, a vortex of winds develops around the pole and isolates the polar stratosphere. Without milder air flowing in from the lower latitudes and in the absence of sunlight, air within the vortex becomes very cold. At temperatures of -80°C or less, clouds made up of ice, nitric acid, and sulphuric acid begin to form in the stratosphere. These are called polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), and they give rise to a series of chemical reactions that destroy ozone far more effectively than the reactions that take place in warmer air. The destruction of ozone begins with the return of sunlight in the spring and continues rapidly until the vortex dissipates and warmer temperatures prevent the formation of PSCs.

Over the Antarctic, these processes commonly lead to the formation of a massive ozone hole. Over the Arctic, however, ozone amounts have not yet fallen to the very low levels observed in Antarctica. This is partly because the Arctic has more ozone to start with, but it is also a result of the more variable atmospheric circulation of the Northern Hemisphere, which makes the Arctic vortex less stable. As a result, incursions of air from the south often keep the Arctic stratosphere too warm for PSC formation.

posted 01-04-2004 04:13 PM               

quote:

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Handlers on vacation? ...or sheer desperation?

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The technical problem experienced by this forum page seems to have been resolved (although I don't trust too much in Bill Gates technology, and we can expect more of this), as I can read your and see your beautiful images of polar clouds over the north pole and sourroundings. So the reason you couldn't post and I didn't see your posts is not mine, as well not yours. But thinking I didn't answer because I was "desperate" (perhaps you thought I was cutting my veins?) shows you are a bigger jackass than I prevously thought.

It is a fact that polar clouds did form over the North Pole, but only during very short periods of time, and in a very limited amount, because stratopsheric temperatures were not as low as in the Antarctic, something clearly and expressly stated by S. Solomon et al., in their 1988 paper in Science, about "ozone levels over Thule and Greendland".

Solar activity increased (following the 11 year sunspot cycle) in the 90s, and decreased (as it is happening now, despite one or two recent outburst of energy - the trend is toward a diminishing solar sunspot number count - stratopsheric temperatures over the North Pole decreased following the solar trend. conditions allowed for SPC to form again.

The main contention still stands clear: outside Polar vortices, there are no SPCs, so there is no significant ozone depletion over mid and low latitudes. By "significant depletion" it is meant depletions higher than those caused by natural factors, as solar activity. Or you thought that CFC were the only that depleted the ozone layer?

The temporary ozone depletion caused by these vortices (a couple of months, perhaps three) occurrs precisely in those regions with enormous levels of ozone, and means nothing to global ozone levels.

posted 01-04-2004 04:39 PM               

quote:

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At temperatures of -80°C or less, clouds made up of ice, nitric acid, and sulphuric acid begin to form in the stratosphere. These are called polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs), and they give rise to a series of chemical reactions that destroy ozone far more effectively than the reactions that take place in warmer air.

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quote:

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... by increasing accumulations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. By trapping more heat near the earth's surface, these gases cause the stratosphere to become cooler.

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