“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”
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| World Average Temperature to 2012 |
Met Office releases new figures which show no warming in 15 years
The supposed ‘consensus’ on man-made global warming is facing an inconvenient challenge after the release of new temperature data showing the planet has not warmed for the past 15 years.
The figures suggest that we could even be heading for a mini ice age to rival the 70-year temperature drop that saw frost fairs held on the Thames in the 17th Century.
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997.
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| Frost fairs on the River Thames during the Little Ice Age |
River Thames frost fairs were held on the Tideway of the River Thames at London between the 15th and 19th centuries, during the period known as the Little Ice Age, when the river froze over. During that time the British winter was more severe than now, and the river was wider and slower.
During the Great Frost of 1683–84, the worst frost recorded in England, the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London. Solid ice was reported extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea (England, France and the Low Countries), causing severe problems for shipping and preventing the use of many harbours. Near Manchester, the ground was frozen to 27 inches; in Somerset, to more than four feet.
The skeptics have now counter-attacked Muller and BEST, in a controversy that could swell to Hockey-Stick dimensions.
On October 30, the UK’s Daily Mail interviewed Judith Curry, Muller's second-named co-author of the four Berkeley study papers. Professor Curry chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
She said that Muller's claim that he had proved warming skeptics wrong was a 'huge mistake' with no scientific basis. She said the Berkeley data showed that there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties. "This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting," she said. In fact the standstill in warming was making many non-skeptic scientists take the skeptic arguments more seriously, she said.
Curry was not consulted by Muller before Muller published his results to the media. "I think they have made errors and I distance myself from what they did," she said.
She said two of the four papers were not publication-ready and a graph given to the press by Muller involved a 'hide the decline' subterfuge. It was also misleading of Muller to claim that the urban heat island issue had been settled.
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High-profile anti-BEST scientist, Fred Singer, is an atmospheric and space physicist. He was, among other things, founding director of the US Weather Satellite Service. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal (November 3) that the BEST study merely re-works the same contaminated temperature data used by the Climategate team, covering less than 30% of the earth’s surface. Even so, a third of the BEST data series show cooling, while the absence of warming in the marine atmosphere suggest solar variability, not CO2, is the main climate driver.
Singer says global warming theory and modeling predict atmospheric warming but weather satellites and weather balloon radiosondes (two independent measures), show no atmospheric warming over the 1987-97 period. He concludes:The Berkeley team's research paper comments: ‘The human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.’ I commend Mr. Muller and his team for their honesty and skepticism.
