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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSS2 - Newport Harbor Entrance Tidal Gate Correspondencess2- y -q -13 PER'SP'ECTIVE . Warming Threat Is Overblown, Latest. Climate Findings shoW :.... ............................... PAUL C. KN'APPENBEPOER resident Obamais determined to do some - thing.about global warming, telling :Con - gress in his State ofthe Union address that if theywon't acton it, he will. The president's refrain is familiar, buiunfortu- nate. Obama continues to ignore new science suggesting that the threat posed by human- caused climate change is substantially less than previouslythought. i .. Obama's brand -new pick to head the EPA, Qina:MeCarthy, is afresh signal ihat the admin 'i'stiatioh favors knee -jerk policies to restrict emissions, even when they are unsupported by available data and would hamper the economic. recovery. , Congress, with its wait -and -see attitude, has Taken the right approach. Now, if onlythe presi- dent and his EPAwould see the light. Agood place to start is ajust - published study by a research team led by Dr. Peter Stott, a cli'- mate expert from the U.K.'s Met Office Hadley Center, which finds that climate model projec- .tions of an alarming'temperature rise are incon- sistentwith past observations. When Stott and his colleagues forced the amount of global warming predicted by climate models.to.:equal the amount of warming that has actuallybeen observed, the future tempera - ture'rise Q,rojected to accompany human green- fioiise gas efiiissions dropped rather substantial- ly. In other words, the better climate models match the past, the less scary the future looks: Big surprise: My colleagues and I published" the Same thing in the scientific literature more thanl0yearsago. What makes the new findings particularly in- teresting is that Dr. Stott was an author of the nmostrecent climate assessment report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (TPCC). Stott specifically con -. tributed to the chapter on global climate projec- tions, which included the possibility that human greenhouse gas emissions could lead to rapid increases in global temperatures. - His hewvbork now indicates that theIPCC cll- . niate projections have been exaggerated on the high side. Stott is not alone in -his findings. Within just .the pasttwo years, no fewerthan seven peer -re- viewed studies havebeen published in the scien- tific. literature that have concluded that the earth's climate sensitivity—that is, how much warming that will accompany a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration - 4 likely to be substantially lower than the IPCC's determination. All of these studies have largely ruled out en- drely the IPCC's high -end values. James Annan, a leading researcher into con- straints on estimates of climate sensitivity, and author of several of the new studies on the topic, has long thought that the IPCC high -end climates Tisitivity valueswereunjustified, . Annan ' suggests 'that the IPCCis increasingly acting in a wholly unscientific manner, accus- ing the IPCC of "having firmly wedded them- selves to their politically convenient long tail of high values; their response to new evidence is little more than sticking their fingers in their ears and singing9ala.laI can'thearyou.. "' This would perhaps be amusing if the IPCC were not considered by many — including the president and the EPA — to be the leading au- thority of climate' change, past; present and fu- ture. To base its findings that greenhouse gases ",threaten the public health and welfare of cur rentand futuregenerations" and to justify regu- lations on greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA relies stf onglyon the IPCC reports, When tile_ president says that it'is "the over - whelmingiudgnientofscience "thatourgreen', house gas emissions are making all manner of extreme weather worse, he'is referring largely to the IPCC reports. Since the IPCC is erring on the high side of things, so too must be'the EPA and the presi- dent. This situation is unacceptable. It is time to stepback and take stock, not rush into action. The earth's uverage temperature has largely remained unchanged over the past 16 years. Duringthis sameperibd, the annualglobal emis- sions of greenhouse gases have increased by nearly50 %.' Together, this combination is straining the credibility of climate change alarmismpredicat- ed.on the idea that the earth's climate is ex- tremely sensitive to greenhouse gas emissions from the consumption of fossil fuels to produce. our primary energy supply. Increasingly, both Mother Nature and the sci- ence of her behavior are telling us that climate 'change and its impacts will be moderate, mak- -ingglobal "lukewarming' themore apt descrip- tion. Adaptation is a more prefetable course than mitigation. The more time we give,climate science the chance to explain climate observations, the bet - ter and more accurately informedwe become. New science is telling us that the old science was unjustifiable' and overly extreme. We 'should make 'sure that any attempts at climate action don'tprove to be the same. 17 Knappenberger is the assistant director of the. Center for the Study of Science at the Cafo Institute.