Global Warming: A Scientific Overvie · humans are causing a global warming crisis. Global Warming...

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By James M. Taylor Senior Fellow The Heartland Institute [email protected] Global Warming: A Scientific Overview

Transcript of Global Warming: A Scientific Overvie · humans are causing a global warming crisis. Global Warming...

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By James M. TaylorSenior Fellow

The Heartland [email protected]

Global Warming: A Scientific Overview

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The Earth’s Climate History – Part I

• The Earth’s climate is never static, temperatures are always warming or cooling

• For the past 3 million years, the Earth has been in an unusually cold ice age epoch, though we are currently in a brief interlude

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Interglacials and

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The Earth’s Climate History – Part II

• Since the end of the last ice age glaciation 10,000 years ago, the Little Ice Age, which lasted from roughly 1300 to 1900, brought the coldest global temperatures in our current interglacial period

• The Earth warmed merely 0.6 degrees Celsius during the 20th

century, as we recovered from the Little Ice Age

• It is important to remember the context of our current warming, coming from such an unusually cold baseline

• Today’s temperatures are neither unprecedented or unusual

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Holocene Temperature History –GRIP Greenland Ice Core

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Earth’s Temperature History

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20th Century Temperature and Carbon Dioxide

• Years CO2 Temperature

• 1900‐1945 Minimal Rising

• 1945‐1977 Rising Cooling

• 1977‐1998 Rising Rising

• 1998‐2008 Rising Cooling

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Solar Output: A Better Fit

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U.S. Temperature Fluctuations Correlate with Solar Changes

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The Sun is more likely the dominant driverof the recorded Arctic temperature variations

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But What about the Computer Models?

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How Have Computer Predictions Fared?

• IPCC, 2001 ‐ During the next 20 years, temperatures will rise 0.2 to 0.4 degrees Celsius per decade. 

• Let’s check this prediction against real‐world data.

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Global Temps Since 2001

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IPCC vs. Real World ‐ Christy

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Global Temperatures Since 1979

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Why Computer Models Fail – Part I

• Scientists agree doubling CO2 = 1.1 degree C

• CO2 has risen only 40 percent since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution until today

• How do computer models predict 3.0 degrees C of warming in 21st century?

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Why Computer Models Fail – Part II

• Computer model predictions of rapid temperature rise are based on speculative “positive feedbacks”

• The “positive feedbacks” assume that a small rise in CO2 warming will cause further rises in:

– Water vapor (causing much more warming)

– Upper level clouds (causing much more warming)

• Upper level clouds warm the earth

• Lower level clouds cool the earth

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Let’s Check the Real‐World Evidence

• In March 2001, MIT atmospheric physicist Dr. Richard Lindzen reported data indicating global warming was causing fewer cirrus clouds, creating a “negative feedback” so strong that it canceled all “positive feedbacks.”

• Hurricane expert Dr. William Gray has for decades been reporting lower atmospheric relative humidity.

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Testing the Computer Model Assumptions

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What Has Aqua Satellite Found?

• 1) Relative humidity is DECLINING, not increasing• Gray right, Computer modelers wrong!

• 2) Upper Level Clouds are DECLINING, not increasing

• Lindzen right, computer modelers wrong!

• This eliminates the vast majority of projected warming in the computer models.

• This explains why temps rose only 0.6 C during the entire 20th century, and have not risen in over a decade.

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NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory

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What about the Scientific Consensus?

Doesn’t the media tell us that all or nearly all scientists agree that we are causing a global warming crisis?

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Scientific Consensus

• 32,000 scientists say no crisis (oism.org)

• 500 climate scientists surveyed by Institute of Coastal Research– Survey question: “Natural scientists have established enough physical evidence to turn the issue of global climate change over to social scientists for matters of policy discussion.”

– Less than half agreed

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What Do Others Say about Consensus?

• American Physical Society, July 2008 – “There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion….”

• New York Times lead science reporter Andrew Revkin – “For every PhD, there is an equal and opposite PhD.”

• Summary – There is no scientific consensus that humans are causing a global warming crisis

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Global Warming Alarm Debunked

• Antarctica – Cooling, ice pack growing

• Arctic sea ice – Regional wind patterns

• Mt. Kilimanjaro – Temps cooling, deforestation

• Hurricanes – NHC, NOAA  report no increase

• Tornadoes ‐ Declining

• Drought – 20th century soils more moist

• Floods – More precipitation, but less floods

• Greenland – Extremely cold 

• Gulf Stream – No threat of shutdown

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Thank you!

James M. Taylor

Senior Fellow, Environment Policy

The Heartland Institute

[email protected]

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Drought – The Media

Environmental News Service, April 5, 2007: “Global Warming Brings Perpetual Drought to U.S. Southwest”

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Drought – The Science

International Journal of Climatology, July 2004: Study of soil moisture throughout the Northern Hemisphere. “The terrestrial surface is both warmer and effectively wetter … A good analogy to describe the changes in these places is that the terrestrial surface is literally becoming more like a gardener’s greenhouse.”

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Drought – The Science

Geophysical Research Letters, May 25, 2006 ‐“An increasing trend is apparent in both model soil moisture and runoff over much of the U.S. … This wetting trend is consistent with the general increase in precipitation in the latter half of the 20th century. Droughts have, for the most part, become shorter, less frequent, and cover a smaller portion of the country over the last century.”

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Drought – The Science

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) website: “A number of tree‐ring records exist for the last two millennia which suggest that 20th century droughts may be mild when evaluated in the context of this longer time frame.”

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Drought – The Science

Climatic Change, July 2007: During the Little Ice Age, there occurred three “very large‐scale drought[s] more severe and sustained than any witnessed during the period of instrumental weather observations” [i.e., the 20th century]. 

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Drought – The Science

• “Evidence indicates that summer soil moisture content has increased during the last several decades at almost all sites having long‐term records in the Global Soil Moisture Data Bank.” – Journal of Hydrology, 2006 

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Drought (U.S. precipitation – NCDC)

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Drought – The Science

What we see from the scientific record is that droughts have become less frequent and less severe during our recent global warming. Asserted trends to the contrary are decidedly short term, limited in geographic reach, and quite minor when compared to droughts that have dominated colder climatic conditions.

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Snowpack – The Media

Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2008 ‐ “Decline in Snowpack is Blamed on Warming

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Snowpack – The Science

University of Washington climate scientists, Feb. 2007 ‐ Snowpack in the Cascades have increased during the past 30‐plus years 

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Snowpack – The Science

July 2008 ‐ Scientists at the University of California at Santa Cruz report that the snowpack at Mt. Shasta has been growing for the last century, including 30 percent growth in the past 50 years 

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Snowpack – The Science

2006 Proceedings of the Western Snow Conference ‐ Alpine snowpack throughout Utah has not declined at all during recent years

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Snowpack – The Science

Utah Blue Ribbon scientific panel on Climate Change, July 2007 ‐ Snowpack in the Intermountain West has not been shrinking at all

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The Cost of Global Warming Plans

The average retail price of electricity in states with renewable power mandates is 42% higher than the price of electricity in states without such mandates. (Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration)

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The Cost of Global Warming Plans

Business Week magazine reports that the true price of wind power is $91 per megawatt hour, after factoring in the $40 per megawatt hour of federal subsidies. By contrast, coal costs merely $37 per megawatt hour. Wind power is 2 ½ times more expensive than coal power. And solar power is far more expensive than wind power. 

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The  Cost of Global Warming LawsIowa by 2030 

40,000 lost jobs

$7,000 reduction in annual disposable income per household

153% increase in electricity prices from baseline

140% increase in gasoline prices from baseline

Illinois would be much worse

Source: Science Applications International Corp, 2008

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The Cost of Global Warming Laws

• According to a 2007 study conducted by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a mere 15 percent would cost the average household nearly 3 percent of its income. A family making $50,000 per year would be forced to pay an extra $1,400 every year for the same goods and services it purchases today. 

• "Most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline.”

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The Cost of Global Warming Laws

A 2007 study by economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reached similar conclusions. According to the MIT study, mandatory greenhouse gas reduction schemes similar to those most popular in Congress and the state legislatures would cost typical families of four close to $5,000 each and every year.

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The Cost of Global Warming Laws

A 2003 study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) found that mandatory greenhouse gas reductions similar to the most frequently proposed federal and state legislation would result in a 27 percent increase in gasoline prices and a 46 percent rise in electricity prices. 

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The Cost of Global Warming Laws

In 2007, Wake Forest University Economics Chair Robert Whaples surveyed a random selection of American Economic Association Ph.D. economists. Whaples asked the economists what the impact of projected global warming will be on U.S. Gross Domestic Product by the end of the 21st century. Fully 59 percent projected that even 100 years from now global warming will have a neutral or positive impact on the U.S. economy

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The Cost of Global Warming Laws

In 2004, Yale University economics professor Robert Mendelsohn concluded that the benefits of global warming will outweigh the harms until temperatures surpass 2.5 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today. At current warming rates, temperatures will not surpass 2.5 degrees Celsius until at least the 24th century.

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All for Very Little Effect

Fully 3/4 of all emissions growth is coming from China, India, and other developing nations. Costly global warming legislation does little other than economically punish U.S. citizens for no real‐world effect, even if global warming is a real concern.

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Federal Electricity Subsidies Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

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Non‐Electric Federal SubsidiesSource: U.S. Energy Information Administration

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Antarctica – The Media

• CBS News headline, May 14, 2002 – “Antarctic Warming Alarms Scientists ‐Most Serious Thaw Since End Of Last Ice Age 12,000 Years Ago”

• “A canary in the coal mine” of global warming – An Inconvenient Truth

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Antarctica – The Science

Nature, Jan. 13, 2002 – Antarctica is in a prolonged and dramatic cold spell. Temperatures have been dropping 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1978. 

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Antarctica ‐ The Science

“The decline is alarming. … These cooling repercussions may have a long‐term effect.” –Antarctic Researcher Diana Wall, Colorado State University: Nature, Jan. 13, 2002

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Antarctica ‐ The Science

July 2006, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society – “Mass gains from accumulating snow, particularly on the Antarctic Peninsula and within East Antarctica, exceed the ice dynamic loss from West Antarctica.”

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Antarctica – The Science

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Antarctica – The Science

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The Arctic – The Media

• CNN.com headline, Sept. 11, 2007 – “Arctic sea ice cover at record low”

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The Arctic – The Science

“All time low record” merely means since 1979, when satellites first began measuring Arctic sea ice

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The Arctic – The Science

• The Arctic was clearly much warmer during World War II

• How do we know? Squadron of P‐38 and B‐17 bombers found under 268 feet of snow and ice

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The Arctic – The Science

"Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic. …When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.” ‐ NASA, Oct. 4, 2007

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The Arctic – The Science

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The Arctic – The Science

NASA: Since October 2007, Arctic sea ice has grown faster than at any point in recorded history.

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Global Sea Ice

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Mt. Kilimanjaro – The MediaAssociated Press, May 14, 2007:

“Global warming [is] …the glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro disappearing.”

“Planes used to take people through Kilimanjaro to see the snows, now it's only at the very top.”

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Mt. Kilimanjaro – The Science

Nature online, November 24, 2003: “Although it’s tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain’s foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests’ humidity, previously moisture‐laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine.”

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Mt. Kilimanjaro – The Science

American Scientist, July‐August 2007:“Warming fails spectacularly to explain the behavior of the glaciers and plateau ice on Africa's Kilimanjaro massif.”

“The disappearing ice cap of the ‘shining mountain,’which gets a starring role in the movie, is not an appropriate poster child for global climate change.”

“Kilimanjaro, a trio of volcanic cones that penetrate high into the cold upper troposphere, has gained and lost ice through processes that bear only indirect connections, if any, to recent trends in global climate.”

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Hurricane Myths

USA Today, March 31, 2008: “Hurricanes and other weather events are expected to last longer and be more intense. That would mean bigger storm surges, more damage to buildings and roads, and contaminated food and water.”

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Hurricanes

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Hurricanes

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), November 29, 2005, regarding Hurricane Katrina and active 2005 hurricane season: "NOAA attributes this increased activity to natural occurring cycles in tropical climate patterns near the equator. … NOAA research shows that the tropical multi‐decadal signal is causing the increased Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995, and is not related to greenhouse warming." 

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Hurricanes

“We don’t see any new trend. There’s no link to global warming that you can see at all.” –Dr. Chris Landsea, National Hurricane Center, May 1, 2007, Miami Herald

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Hurricanes

• Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, March 2008: “A new technique for deriving hurricane climatologies from global data, applied to climate models, indicates that global warming should reduce the global frequency of hurricanes…”

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Floods

• Study of Great Plains precipitation and flooding finds more precipitation during past few decades. However, the best of all worlds: "fewer dry years over the last 10 years, as opposed to an increase in very wet years, were the leading cause of the observed wet conditions.” – Journal of Hydraulic Engineering, 2002

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Floods

• Mega‐floods "almost certainly larger than historical floods in the Mississippi watershed”have occurred 4700, 3500, 3000, 2500, 2000, 1200 and 300 years ago. – Paleoceanography, 1999

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Floods

• Scientists report a moderate rise in overall precipitation during the 20 century but a decline in extreme weather events, such as floods. 

• “The conterminous U.S. is getting wetter, but less extreme.“– Geophysical Research Letters, 1999

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Upper Mississippi Floods

• Scientists report overall water flow in the Upper Mississippi River is increasing, but the average water flow during maximum flow events is declining. Once again, the best of both worlds. – Quaternary Science Review

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Floods (U.S. precipitation – NCDC)

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Tornadoes

“An Inconvenient Truth” claims global warming is causing more tornadoes

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Tornadoes

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Sea Level

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Sea Level Rise is Not Accelerating

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Greenland

2006 study, Journal of Geophysical Research: Researchers at the Danish Meteorological Institute reported that temperatures during the last two full decades in Greenland were colder than any decade since the 1910s.

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Greenland

• December 2005, Journal of Glaciology: Scientists analyzed 10 years worth of data and reported, “the Greenland ice sheet is thinning at the margins and growing inland, with a small overall mass gain.”

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Greenland

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Africa

BBC News Online, August 20, 2002: 

• “Global Warming Threatens Africa”

• “Reduced rainfall in the semi‐arid Sahel region south of the Sahara desert is another example of the effects of pollution and climate change on Africa in the WWF report.”

• Incorporated into “An Inconvenient Truth”

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Africa

• New Scientist, September 18, 2002: – “Africa’s deserts are in ‘spectacular’ retreat.”

– “The southern Sahara desert is in retreat, making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa. ... Burkina Faso, one of the West African countries devastated by drought and advancing deserts 20 years ago, is growing so much greener that families who fled to wetter coastal regions are starting to go home.”

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Africa

Africa is currently “experiencing an unusually prolonged period of stable, wet conditions in comparison to previous centuries of the past millennium. … The patterns and variability of 20th century rainfall in central Africa have been unusually conducive to human welfare in the context of the past 1400 years.” ‐Geology, January 1, 2007

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Africa

This phenomenon of a greening planet is not limited to the southern Sahara desert. Satellite data from 1981‐1999, reported in the September 16, 2001 issue of Journal of Geophysical Research, found an 8‐to‐12 percent increase in vegetation across North America and Eurasia. A subsequent comment in the same journal, Journal of Geophysical Research, concluded that a concurrent rise in atmospheric CO2 was primarily responsible for the increased vegetation. 

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Natural CO2 levels

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Relative Funding

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Iowa Summer Record Highs

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All‐Time Record Highs – 50 States

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Day‐By‐Day Record High Temps

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Global High Temperature Records

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Current Temps vs. 30 Years Ago

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U.S. GHG emissions (in teragrams of CO2 equivalent – source EPA)

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IPCC Major Flaws

• Only 2,600 members (vs. 32,000 Oregon Petition)• Not 2,600 “scientists”• Selected by political bodies, not scientific bodies• Only a handful of lead authors produce the final document

• Greenpeace, Environmental Defense, Environment Canada the lead authors

• Over 10,000 critical comments by IPCC members themselves

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Fact vs. Fiction

“We can say with high confidence that the earth will warm from 0.7‐2.2 degrees Fahrenheit over the next 30 years.” – Des Moines Register, June 21, 2002

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Natural Variability?

“The human‐made greenhouse gas climate forcing is now relentlessly, monotonically, increasing at a rate that overwhelms variability of natural climate forcings.” –James Hansen, August 2008.

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Thank You!

Any Questions?

James Taylor

[email protected]

941‐776‐5690