Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate

1. Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate Prof. S. Fred Singer University of Virginia/SEPP <singer@sepp.org> Keynote talk, March 3, 2008 International Climate Conference Marriott Marquis Hotel, Times Square, NYC A Report of NIPCC [Non-Governmental International Panel on Climate Change]

2. Basic Issue: Is Global Warming Human-Caused or Natural? • Human-Caused: CO2 is a greenhouse (GH) gas and is increasing • Natural Climate Variation: Climate has always been warming or cooling • Q: So how can one tell the cause? • A: Compare calculated pattern of warming with observed pattern. Do the ‘fingerprints’ match or differ?

3. “The science is settled” – Al Gore • But not in the way he imagined it: Global Warming is mostly of natural origin. The human contribution is not significant • Therefore climate change is unstoppable • We look at the warming pattern calculated from GH models and compare with the pattern measured by weather balloons

4. CCSP 1.1 – Chapter 1, Figure 1.3F PCM Simulations of Zonal-Mean Atmospheric Temperature Change

5. CCSP 1.1 – Chapter 5, Figure 7E

6. A more detailed view of the disparity: Douglass, Christy, Pearson, Singer - 2007

7. NO significant anthropogenic warming seen in the data • NIPCC vs. IPCC: • What NIPCC did was to ‘connect the dots’ -- using the available information from model results and observations • The same information was available to the IPCC from published work, including also from the US Government’s CCSP Report [2006] • But IPCC chose to ignore these facts, because they conflicted with the conclusion that GW is anthropogenic

8. Two further questions • Q: Why do climate models over-estimate the warming effects of greenhouse gases? • A: The models ignore ‘negative feedbacks’ from clouds and likely also from water vapor. • Q: Then what are the principal causes of climate variations (on decadal time scales)? • A: Likely variability of solar activity (solar wind and magnetic fields affecting cosmic rays – and thereby cloudiness)

9. Solar-Activity Changes are the Main Cause of Climate Change • Stalagmites provide a convenient record: • The stalagmite record shows a remarkably close correlation between C-14 and O-18 over a period of more than 3,000 years • Carbon-14 is generated in the atmosphere by cosmic rays and is a proxy for solar activity • Oxygen-18 is a proxy for temperature

10. [Neff et al 2001]

11. What About Sea Level Rise? • Predictions of the IPCC – from 1990 to 2007 --have decreased dramatically. • Their 2007 value is 18 - 59 cm by 2100. • James Hansen (and Al Gore) predict 600 cm! • Our best value is 18 - 20 cm -- based on the absence of acceleration during the 20th century • But since 18 cm/century rise has been ongoing for centuries, we expect no incremental rise in SL – no matter what the cause of warming.

12. Sea Level Rise to 2100 H R S

13. CO2 Mitigation is Not Needed • Cap & Trade: pointless, political, expensive • Ethanol: ineffective and wasteful; subsidized • Wind, Solar: marginally useful, with subsidies • Carbon Capture: not needed and very costly. • Instead: • Generate Electric power from secure and low-cost coal/nuclear: phase out natural gas and use as transportation fuel, feedstock, etc