Quote:
Originally Posted by Rags123
I have no dog in this fight, but this story is over FIVE YEARS OLD and has been debunked...see Snopes, Wikipedia or your fact check of choice.
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Sorry Rags - I've got so many of these hoax rebuttals saved. Try this more recent one:
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Opinion | Brainerd Dispatch...
By Rolf Westgaard
In 1988, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to evaluate world climate research, and to forecast global temperatures to the end of the 21st Century.
The IPCC is now funded by 195 countries who also contribute scientific personnel to the effort. Since 1988, the IPCC has issued four major Assessment Reports, the last in 2007, which projected continued global warming at 0.2C degrees per decade. The 2007 report stated that this warming was “very likely” due to human release of green house gases, and that one result would be storms such as hurricanes of greater intensity. The report also forecast a decline in Antarctic sea ice.
The IPCC is expected to release a summary of its widely anticipated Fifth Assessment Report on Friday. There are several problems for the IPCC as that report appears.
The most important is that since 1997, there has been no statistically significant increase in global temperatures, despite a continued rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the most important human generated global warming gas.
September 10 marked the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, and so far 2013 is one of the quietest hurricane seasons in memory. 2013 also marks the eighth consecutive year when no force 3 or stronger hurricane has made landfall on the U.S. mainland, the longest such period in a century.
A recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change by Francis Zwiers and colleagues at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, found that models such as those used by the IPCC have overestimated warming by 100 percent over the past 20 years.
A major calculation by the IPCC is the equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), the amount of warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The 2007 report gave a “likely” minimum figure of 2 degrees celsius (2C), with a probable value of 3C for the doubling of carbon dioxide. The preliminary 2013 Assessment lowers the “likely” minimum increase to 1.5C with no probable value forecast.
Finally, Antarctica sea ice extent set an all-time record of 19.51234 million sq km on Sept. 14, 2013. And at the other pole, as of Sept. 15, 2013, Arctic sea ice extent was approximately one million square miles greater than on the same date in 2012.
One of the new Assessment’s own authors, Professor Myles Allen, the director of Oxford University’s Climate Research Network, said recently that this should be the last IPCC assessment – accusing its cumbersome production process of ‘misrepresenting how science works.’ Dr Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, described leaked information from the new report as a ‘staggering concoction of confusion, speculation and sheer ignorance.’
Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, said the Fifth Assessment is showing that ‘the science is clearly not settled, and is in a state of flux.’ She added that the IPCC projections are ‘overconfident.’ especially given the report’s admitted areas of doubt.
Many of the sponsoring nations have already submitted concerns about the new Fifth Assessment, leading with the IPCC’s failure to account for the current warming pause. A meeting in Stockholm is being held by 40 of the Fifth Assessment’s authors with nation representatives to discuss possible revisions.
The unwieldy and expensive IPCC assessment process may have run its course. There is a strong case that climate forecasting is more art than science. We don’t even know if carbon dioxide is a warming threat, or simply photo synthesis plant food which contributes to increased agricultural productivity.
Rolf E. Westgard is a professional member of the Geological Society of America and teaches classes on climate and energy for the University of Minnesota Lifelong Learning program. His current class is “3 Billion Years of Minnesota Climate and Geologic History; from Volcanoes to Metals.”
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