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Let me say this - I try to remain unbiased in the matter, basing my assertions off science, not politics - which this situation seems to have become nationwide. Bottom line is if one does the research - one will find that there is much, much more to this debate than the media portrays. And by that I mean the following: at the very least, there's sound meteorological evidence to doubt the IPCC's "forecast" for doom and gloom down the road.
Just a brief background on climate:
1) Little Ice age occurred in the mid 1600s-1700s - most probable answer is due to very low solar activity. If one looks back at the sunspot cyles, you'lll note that flares/radiation was essentially nil throughout that period.
2) Earth emerged from the LIA in the 1800s. Global temperatures began rising well before the onset of the industrial evolution in the early 1900s.
3) C02 concentrations and temperatures have risen/fallen significantly in the past - long before humans existed. In fact there's a 400 year lag; temperatures increase first, then C02 about 400 yrs later -- completely opposite of what mainstream anthropogenic warmingista's assert.
4) In the 1940s-70s, global temps cooled slightly, even with an increasing CO2 level. Best explanation for this is natural oceanic cycles -- the PDO (pacific decadel oscillation) was in a cold phase in this time. Will illustrate later with map.
5) The 1980s-90s featured drastic warming - which media suggests is due mostly or wholly to CO2. However, (now here's the new part), since 1998, temps have leveled off, and fallen since 2000 -- the most significant temp drop-off in over a decade happened just this past year -- 2007 to 2008.
How could this be if CO2 is responsible for global warming?
Notice on the graph below -- the light blue line indicative of CO2 concentrations continuing upward. But the pink line is global temps -- steadily downward the past few years. Apparent disconnect between the two.
In the past - CO2 levels would rise after temps - why? - because once the interglacial period begins, all that ice slowly melts, allowing CO2 from the carbon sinks in oceans and over land to diffuse back into the atmospere.
You may ask - now that we're adding CO2 with our industrial activity, how would that effect temps? Well - note the graph below, C02 is far from the main atmospheric gas. In fact it accounts for less than 0.1%:
This next graph depicts CO2 and it's relation with other dominant gases in our atmosphere. Note that water vapor accounts for more than 95% in terms of contribution to the greenhouse effect, while CO2 is less than 1%, and the anthropogenic part of that is even lower, around 0.117%! It's the water vapor that does the warming, not the CO2 IMO.
You be the judge here -- examine the following two graphs.
First one is temperatures VS. CO2 over the past decade. Remember CO2 is the green line going upward.
Now here's temperatures VS. solar activity since 1550:
Which one has a stronger correlation to temp (CO2 or solar)?
It's funny as I've read some articles claiming that "the sun accounts for less than 30% of climate change, and is a small factor in the overall picture."
Really? So you're telling me if we turn off the sun tonight - none of us will know, becuase we're in this hot greenhouse due to the anthropogenic/industrial activity.
Back to the cool period from the 1940s-70s. Below is a graph of the Pacific decadal oscillation. Note it's cold phase in exactly that period. Makes sense to me, as it does thousands of others.
One last comments regarding current climate. I've already shown the graph of temps decreasing rapidly over the couple past year.
We also have something interesting going on w/ the Sun. The present sunspot cycle has been virtually inactive over the past year-15 months -- the weakest it's been for this duration for several decades. We're in cycle 23 right now - note the graph below. Our current sunspot cycle -- depicted by the purple line -- is lower than the past 4 cycles:
As mentioned earlier in the post -- low sunspots cycles have correlated to colder periods in Earth's history. I'm not saying we're headed for an ice age, but I do believe global temps will continue to cool due to the following factors:
1) PDO cold cycle re-emerging (last cold cycle was 40s-70s).
2) Possible weakening solar constant as shown above -- big key -- if the next sunspot cycle is even lower than the current one, it's essentially a lock that global temps will be on the downward slope.
3) Third factor - not as important as the others, but we are beginning to enter the negative cyclic phase of the NAO-AO (as seen from the late 40s-late 70s).
What I'm saying is this -- there is more than reasonable doubt concerning the human-induced global warming theory, which the media continues to push. Please don't get me wrong w/ this post - I'm all for renewable energy sources and green ideas; however, I believe the politics are unfortunately taking the forefront in this debate, which is a shame.
Anyway -- at the very least, global temps look to be leveling off/slowly decreasing from the past couple decades. We've already seen the Earth "turn the corner" with the cooling since 2000-2002, and particularly over the past year. The doomsday warming is based upon climate forecast models which 1) Only know as much as we put into them, 2) Cannot grasp the intricate interactions and processes that transpire in our atmosphere. 3) Co2 is less than 0.1% of the atmosphere, far too miniscule to have a significant impact on global climate. Main drivers here IMO are solar and natural-terrestrial cycles. Water vapor is the primary heat-holding gas - well accepted in the meteorological community.
*Just as an FYI - but even if Al Gore was correct for some strange reason - our climate system has numerous ways to counteract any human induced warming.
1) Increase in temps leads to more water vapor, thus more clouds, thus a negative feedback cycle begins -- cooling the earth due to cloudcover/precipitation.
2) Gulf stream - if the entire northern ice cap melts as predicted by some, the thermohaline circulation of the Atlantic would shut-down, causing the northern hemisphere to cool drastically, thereby plunging us into another ice age.
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