Global Warming Strangeness

Every time there is a report or news story released about "global warming" it appears as front page news with fear-inspiring headlines like: Study Says Earth's Temp at 400-Year High.

Reading through the article, you can see that the National Academy of Sciences was chartered to do this study to see about trends in Earth surface temperatures. I would encourage you to go the the National Academy of Sciences webpage after you read the story, because the article makes a number of mistakes.

The article claims that average Earth surface temperatures have risen 1 degree over the past century. This is untrue, as the report clearly states the true temperature increase amount - .6 degrees.

The article then claims that while natural forces have influenced climate in the past, they "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas." Actually, the report says:

...but it is currently estimated that the temperature variations caused by these forcings were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas forcing since the mid 19th century. · Climate model simulations indicate that solar and volcanic forcings together could have produced periods of relative warmth and cold during the preindustrial portion of the last 1,000 years.

In fact, 1991's eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines lowered global temperatures up to .73 degrees - more than the total temperature increase over the entire century!

Ok, let's get back to the point. The article claims that this year is the warmest in the past 400 years. The report also clearly describes what climatologists call the "little ice age" (it's on the History Channel a lot) that started about 400 years ago and is just ending now. So it is obvious that global temperatures are at a 400 year high - because they just came off of a 400 year (natural) slump!

The report goes on the estimate that this year is the warmest in 1,000 or even 2,000 years. This information would be of note, except that the Earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old.

If we use the warmest year in 400 number, that means that scientists are predicting global climate patterns using roughly .0000088% of the worlds climate history. If you assume that this year is the warmest in 2,000 years, then that percentage drops to .000044%.

People also claim, as the report does, that the industrialization starting in the 1850's is when carbon dioxide levels began to rise on the Earth, which rules out the whole previous 4.5 billion years. This would be a valid point, but as I've said before, climatologists use the year 1850 to begin their predictions because we have no measured global climate information from before then. Any idiot can find out that the Industrial Revolution started in the 1790's - not the 1850's.

Not to mention that the current theory of man-caused global warming completely ignores hundreds of past ice ages and warm spells over Earth's history, and claims that .000044% of the Earth's climatological history that has a .6 degree average temperature increase proves that humans are destroying the Earth.

Did you get that?

Update: Uh oh... It seems that it might be a bit to convenient for this study to have reached the conclusion it did. The lead researcher of the study, a Michael E. Mann, has been researching global warming for years based on tree ring and ice core evidence. It seems that this paper, headed by him, conveniently proves all of his former theories about global warming, theories whose research and methodology (which Dr. Mann never released) have been highly criticized. And who says there's no bias in science...?