Paultastic Musings

A bit of a history lesson...

(CNSNews.com) - People sweltering from a heat wave in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. might find cold comfort in the fact that the temperatures of the past few days are not the hottest on record. That "honor" belongs to a summer 76 years ago -- decades before the controversy over "man-made global warming" began.

"From June 1 to August 31, 1930, 21 days had high temperatures that were 100 degrees or above" in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service. "That summer has never been approached, and it's not going to be approached this year."

Between July 19 and Aug. 9 of that year, heat records were set on nine days and they remain unbroken more than three-quarters of a century later. "That's hot," added Michaels, who also serves as professor of natural resources at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

The summer of 1930 also marked the beginning of the longest drought of the 20th century. In 1934, dry regions stretched from New York and Pennsylvania across the Great Plains to California. A "dust bowl" covered about 50 million acres in the south-central plains during the winter of 1935-1936.

However, the first six months of this year were the hottest across the nation since the federal government began keeping records in 1890, according to Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who told NBC News that about 50 all-time high-temperature records were broken during the month of July.

But Michaels noted that high temperatures are common in the middle of the summer.

"Climatologically, the last week in July is the warmest week of the year on average, and when the atmospheric flow patterns get into anomalously warm configurations during this time of the year, temperatures will skyrocket," he said.

Along with an unusual upper-air pattern, the Washington, D.C., area "was exceedingly dry" during the summer of 1930, Michaels stated.

"Generally speaking, when the ground is moist here, temperatures cap out in the high 90s," he noted. "That's because the sun's energy is divided into evaporating water and directly heating the surface. If the surface is dry, then everything goes into heating the surface, and you get exceedingly hot temperatures like you saw in 1930.

"Big cities are getting warmer -- with or without global warming -- because the bricks and the buildings and the pavement retain heat," Michaels added. For that reason, he prefers to compare temperatures in nearby rural areas. "There's been very little change" in those areas, "so we trust the record to be a reliable indicator of base climate."

Residents of the nation's capital can look forward to some relief, as weather forecasts for the weekend call for a cooling trend. "If we were going to go into the 100s -- the 103 and 104 degree range -- we would have done it, but there's just a little bit too much moisture in the surface to allow that to happen," Michaels said. He noted, however, that temperatures are expected to rise again next week.

The mid-summer temperatures have provided more opportunities for environmentalists subscribing to the theory that man is responsible for the current global warming.

Jay Gulledge, senior research fellow for science and impacts at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told NBC News on Wednesday that "this heat wave and other extreme events we've seen in recent years are completely consistent with what we expect to become more common as a result of global warming, even though we can't be definitive on any single event."

Michaels acknowledged that "global temperatures have been warming slightly for several decades" and noted that the surface of the world "is a little bit warmer than it was in the 1930s" even though "temperatures dropped between 1940 and 1975."

"Usually, the way the jet stream breaks out is very hot in the East and relatively cool in the West or vice versa," he said. "This time around, it looks more like the summers of the 1930s," but he dismissed the idea that the extreme temperatures of that time were caused by man-made "global warming" since "it wasn't around then."

Although the recent heat wave have not convinced Michaels that "global warming" is a severe problem, it was apparently enough to make a "convert" out of conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson.

"We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels," Robertson said during his "700 Club" broadcast on Thursday. The high temperatures in some regions of the U.S. East are "the most convincing evidence I've seen on global warming in a long time," he added.

I'm surprised that I'm not shocked by this. People disgust me.

From dailymail.co.uk.

The ethical storm over abortions has been renewed as it emerged that terminations are being carried out for minor, treatable birth defects.

Late terminations have been performed in recent years because the babies had club feet, official figures show.

Babies are being aborted with only minor defects.
Other babies were destroyed because they had webbed fingers or extra digits.

Such defects can often be corrected with a simple operation or physiotherapy.

The revelation sparked fears that abortion is increasingly being used to satisfy couples' desire for the 'perfect' baby.

A leading doctor said people were right to be 'totally shocked' that abortions were being carried out for such conditions.

Campaigners warned we are turning into a society that can no longer tolerate imperfection. Doctors were recently told they can now screen IVF embryos to try to weed out inherited cancers.

Ethical groups fear parents are opting for abortions because they are not told of the support and help available if they continued with the pregnancy.

Details of the terminations emerged as new figures revealed an alarming rise in the use of an abortion pill that has been linked to 10 deaths.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that between 1996 and 2004, 20 babies were aborted after 20 weeks because they had a club foot.

It is one of the most common birth defects in Britain, affecting one in 1,000 babies each year. That means around 600 to 700 babies are born annually in the UK with the problem, which causes the feet to point downwards and in severe cases can cause a limp.

However it can be corrected without surgery using splints, plaster casts and boots. Naomi Davis, a leading paediatrician at Manchester Children's Hospital who specialists in correcting club feet, said: 'I think it is reasonable to be totally shocked that abortion is being offered for this.

'It is entirely treatable. I can only think it is lack of information.'

Babies are being aborted with only minor defects

Figures also show that four babies were aborted since 1996 because they were found to have webbed fingers or extra digits, which can be sorted out with simply surgery.

Remarkable pictures recently have revealed how at just 23 weeks baby in the womb appears to smile, yawn and flinch in pain.

In 2004 it emerged a baby was aborted at 28 weeks after scans showed it had a cleft palate. Curate Joanna Jepson tried to ensure criminal charges were brought against the two doctors involved but the authorities last year decided against prosecution.

She however vowed to continue in her fight to make terminations illegal after 24 weeks and to ensure cleft palates were not included within the term 'serious handicap' and used to justify late abortions.

Ms Jepson reacted angrily to news of the club foot abortions.

'The law was not designed for this,' she said. 'Actions like these are fostering a disposable attitude to human life and I'm extremely concerned it is going on.

'I am appalled that the medical profession is allowing or even suggesting abortions for these conditions.'

Sue Banton, founder of the group Steps for parents of children with foot disorders, said last year one couple decided to terminate a pregnancy at 25 weeks after discovering their baby would have a section of foot missing.

'We gave them other families to talk to, but they just didn't want to know,' she said. 'It is terrible.

'I know lots of perfectly nice people with this condition and you just can't imagine them not being here.'

Pippa Spriggs from Cambridge, whose son Isaac is celebrating his second birthday in July, was dismayed when as scan showed her baby had a club foot.

'Abortion certainly was not openly advised but it was made clear to me it was available,' she said.

'In fact he has been treated and the condition has now slowed him down at all.'

Julia Millington, of the Alive and Kicking Campaign, said: 'It is all about our perceptions of perfection.

'Increasingly things are moving along the lines where nothing is good enough.

'It seems we can no longer tolerate any imperfection.

'Babies are at the mercy of ultrasound scans and what they may disclose.'

Michaela Aston, from the pro-life group LIFE, said: 'One sympathises for many of the parents of these unborn children aborted after disability has been detected.

'What information are they being given by healthcare professionals so that they can make a truly informed choice?

'We suspect that many parents make the decision to opt for abortion in complete ignorance of the help and support available to children with disabilities and their families.

'For this, health care professionals must shoulder a large part of the blame.

'If, as a society, we are truly committed to equality for people with disabilities then such blatant discrimination against the disabled unborn must stop.'

But Jane Fisher of the charity Antenatal Results and Choices defended the right of parents to terminate pregnancies when defects are found. 'This is not part of a move towards designer babies,' she said.

'These are difficult and painful issues.'

A great post by Mollie on GetReligion:

Billie Stanton says her journalism profs at the University of Arizona 30 years ago were relentless about balance and objectivity. “Every angle must be covered, and if you had any bias, it better not show,” she writes. “This credo served me well for many years. When some talented Denver Post reporters covered an anti-gay referendum later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, their bias showed. Repeatedly I demanded rewrites to give the homophobes’ side equal credence.”

Mollie asks:

[H]ow fair of a shake can you give people when you believe their legislative opinion is based on an irrational fear of homosexuality?

But not only that, several members of the media attack Stanton, not for calling Christians and Conservatives "Homophobes," but instead liken her to giving the Ku Klux Klan equal time.

Objectivity — never a great idea in journalism in the first place — posits that we shouldn’t make value judgments as to the people involved in the story or their views. But I think we can, and should. It may not be universally accepted, but homophobes’ views are NOT equally as legitimate as the views of those who preach tolerance, just as segregationist views are not equally as legitimate as those who preach racial harmony.

Tolerance, huh? The thought police will decide for you what is tolerable, everything else is intolerable.

(From http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/bigphotos/11590977.html)

How sensitive is Earth's climate? Sufficient to warm by at least several degrees in response to greenhouse gas pollution but perhaps not as sensitive as some scientists have feared, according to a new study.

Climate sensitivity is a measure of how much the global temperature will warm in response to greenhouse gas emissions, explained Gabriele Hegerl, a climate scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

The measure specifically estimates how the climate might respond to a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that humans release by burning fossil fuels in cars and power plants.

"If [climate sensitivity is] high, we have a strong response not only to carbon dioxide but to any greenhouse gas. If it's low, we have a weak response. So we would really like to know what it is," Hegerl said.

Hegerl and her team measured climate sensitivity by studying temperature changes in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 700 years.

The study's results refute recent research suggesting that the climate may be susceptible to extreme increases in temperature. But Hegerl cautions that the findings do not diminish the threat of global warming.

"[The finding] means the climate does react significantly to greenhouse gases," she said.

"In other words," she added, "we have really detected greenhouse warming, and we are really concerned it is not small."

Climate Sensitivity

In 1979 meteorologist Jules Charney made the first modern estimate of climate sensitivity using two climate models. He concluded that the Earth would warm within a range of 2.7º to 8.1ºF (1.5º to 4.5ºC) if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere doubled.

That range has become the generally accepted value of climate sensitivity and is used in international climate-change research.

But some estimates over the past five years have suggested that the temperature change may be much higher.

Several studies have found that the temperature change may be higher than 16.2ºF (9ºC). One estimate put it at 19.8ºF (11ºC).

To obtain their estimate, Hegerl and her colleagues used reconstructions of the climate in the Northern Hemipshere over the past 700 years, which were made using data about ancient volcanic eruptions, changes in solar radiation, and greenhouse gas levels.

They then used a simple computer model to determine what type of climate conditions led to those temperatures, tweaking different variables such as volcanic ash and solar radiation.

On the basis of this model, they found a climate sensitivity of 2.2º to 15.5ºF (1.2º to 8.6ºC).

In addition, the team used a different model using climate data from only the 20th century and came up with a similar result.

"We have two lines of evidence, basically," Hegerl said.

When the team combined the two estimates, the researchers found that the climate sensitivity range narrowed even further to 2.7º to 11.2ºF (1.5º to 6.2ºC).

These findings are similar to the conclusions reached by Charney in 1979, rather than the more extreme ranges estimated in recent studies.

The results are reported in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature.

Controversial Results

Gavin Schmidt is a climate modeler with the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. He said the study is the first to formally confirm scientists' assumptions about climate sensitivity.

"Basically no one really believes that those really high sensitivities [measured in the past five years] are possible," he said.

But Michael Schlesinger, a professor of meteorology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and co-author of a 2001 paper on climate sensitivity, is wary of the new study's methodology.

In particular, Schlesinger questions the effects of comparing climate sensitivity based on the 20th century record with another estimate based on a 700-year record.

"If they chose a different [record]—if they chose our [study] or any others—and had done this, I do not see how [the range] gets narrowed," Schlesinger said.

"I'm not comfortable with the results."

On the other hand, James Annan, a climate modeler with the Frontier Research Center for Global Change in Kanagawa, Japan, said the sensitivity range should be narrowed even further, based on the results of his own work published in March.

"If they had looked at a greater range of evidence, then the limits would have been even tighter," he said.

Regardless of the numbers, most scientists seem to agree that the study confirms that the climate remains susceptible to global warming.

The top of the range found in Hegerl's study is higher than that found in 1979, Schlesinger points out.

"[That] means climate sensitivity is larger than we thought for 30 years," he said. "So the problem is worse than we thought. This doesn't give us any solace."

Great opinion article on Global Warming

There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998

By Bob Carter
(Filed: 2006-04-09)

For many years now, human-caused climate change has been viewed as a large and urgent problem. In truth, however, the biggest part of the problem is neither environmental nor scientific, but a self-created political fiasco. Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?

Since the early 1990s, the columns of many leading newspapers and magazines, worldwide, have carried an increasing stream of alarmist letters and articles on hypothetical, human-caused climate change. Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as "if", "might", "could", "probably", "perhaps", "expected", "projected" or "modelled" - and many involve such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts and principles, that they are akin to nonsense.

The problem here is not that of climate change per se, but rather that of the sophisticated scientific brainwashing that has been inflicted on the public, bureaucrats and politicians alike. Governments generally choose not to receive policy advice on climate from independent scientists. Rather, they seek guidance from their own self-interested science bureaucracies and senior advisers, or from the IPCC itself. No matter how accurate it may be, cautious and politically non-correct science advice is not welcomed in Westminster, and nor is it widely reported.

Marketed under the imprimatur of the IPCC, the bladder-trembling and now infamous hockey-stick diagram that shows accelerating warming during the 20th century - a statistical construct by scientist Michael Mann and co-workers from mostly tree ring records - has been a seminal image of the climate scaremongering campaign. Thanks to the work of a Canadian statistician, Stephen McIntyre, and others, this graph is now known to be deeply flawed.

There are other reasons, too, why the public hears so little in detail from those scientists who approach climate change issues rationally, the so-called climate sceptics. Most are to do with intimidation against speaking out, which operates intensely on several parallel fronts.

First, most government scientists are gagged from making public comment on contentious issues, their employing organisations instead making use of public relations experts to craft carefully tailored, frisbee-science press releases. Second, scientists are under intense pressure to conform with the prevailing paradigm of climate alarmism if they wish to receive funding for their research. Third, members of the Establishment have spoken declamatory words on the issue, and the kingdom's subjects are expected to listen.

On the alarmist campaign trail, the UK's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King, is thus reported as saying that global warming is so bad that Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century. Warming devotee and former Chairman of Shell, Lord [Ron] Oxburgh, reportedly agrees with another rash statement of King's, that climate change is a bigger threat than terrorism. And goodly Archbishop Rowan Williams, who self-evidently understands little about the science, has warned of "millions, billions" of deaths as a result of global warming and threatened Mr Blair with the wrath of the climate God unless he acts. By betraying the public's trust in their positions of influence, so do the great and good become the small and silly.

Two simple graphs provide needed context, and exemplify the dynamic, fluctuating nature of climate change. The first is a temperature curve for the last six million years, which shows a three-million year period when it was several degrees warmer than today, followed by a three-million year cooling trend which was accompanied by an increase in the magnitude of the pervasive, higher frequency, cold and warm climate cycles. During the last three such warm (interglacial) periods, temperatures at high latitudes were as much as 5 degrees warmer than today's. The second graph shows the average global temperature over the last eight years, which has proved to be a period of stasis.

The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.

The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Intern-ationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.

As mooted recently by Tony Blair, perhaps the time has come for Britain to join instead the new Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (AP6), whose six member countries are committed to the development of new technologies to improve environmental outcomes. There, at least, some real solutions are likely to emerge for improving energy efficiency and reducing pollution.

Informal discussions have already begun about a new AP6 audit body, designed to vet rigorously the science advice that the Partnership receives, including from the IPCC. Can Britain afford not to be there?

• Prof Bob Carter is a geologist at James Cook University, Queensland, engaged in paleoclimate research