- CO2 has usually been associated with temperature rise throughout the history of the Earth. It is indeed a greenhouse gas but it operates on a logarithmic function. The Earth’s natural processes also contribute, and remove, copious amounts of CO2. Since plants first appeared on the Earth, they have converted nearly all available CO2 to oxygen, fossil fuels, and other longterm removals from the atmosphere. Today 4/100 of 1% (417 ppm) of our atmosphere is CO2. This pales in comparison with other periods in Earth’s history. Common IPCC scenarios rely on an increasing supply of fossil fuels, yet we know that this is not possible and that production will peak at some point while prices will again rise. While improved detection and extraction (e.g., fracking) technologies keep pushing back the peak year, it is unrealistic to think CO2 emissions will rise for the duration of this century. Once supplies again decline and demand increases, they will combine to get more coal out of the ground, quicker, but it cannot continue forever. The Earth’s ability to absorb CO2 has apparently been underestimated and the climate models need revision per the 31 December 2009 validation of work by Wolfgang Knorr that shows “No Rise of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Fraction in Past 160 Years”.
- The projected temperature rise is unrealistic, given that the USA and global temperatures have risen by less than 1 deg. C in 130 years, perhaps mostly as a recovery from the preceding cold period. (revised, NOAA), (or 150 years using the full instrumented data set) during the height of industrial expansion. Even if all this rise is correct, and is attributable to human causes, it is a trivial amount in the natural variation of the Earth, and to suggest the rise would accelerate 5 fold (IPCC best estimate) in this century is incredible. Even after the release of the new data set and procedures by NOAA, which addressed some of the urban heat island issues and dropped the warming 44% (below IPCC 2007), significant other urban heat island issues still remain. There are also issues of calibration as measurement protocols have changed, issues about the design and placement of the temperature stations, and even the strongly held view by many skeptics that this is a natural rise as the Earth recovers from the Little Ice Age (circa 1300-1850), never mind the last glaciation that ended in phases from 8-20,000 years ago.
- Sea level rise may have increased recently, but other studies have consistently shown no increase. Even if there is an increase, it is in the order of 1 mm per year on top of the 1-2 mm per year that has been happening for the last century, this additional amount is 4 inches (10 cm) over the century. This is not trivial if you are in a low-lying region wrestling with land subsidence, but it is barely more than what would be coming anyway. The late John Daly, whose passing was hailed by the IPCC ClimateGate scientists, shows that the IPCC forecast is the result of modeling errors rather than from actual observations and that local land movement is more important than the relatively low rate of actual sea-level rise. In a 2009- study using GPS measurement to correct for local vertical movement of the Earth a “global rate of geocentric sea level rise of 1.61 ± 0.19mm/yr over the past century” was reported. Their study shows no acceleration and no changes in rate during warm or cold periods of the last 110 years. It is virtually a straight-line rate of increase, independent of Earth’s temperature. However, we must not forget that there is a lot of ice on land in Antarctica and Greenland that could slide into the water over the course of a year and cause a flood of Biblical proportions – Noah’s flood exists in several cultures’ legends around the world. I do not believe it is a coincidence. If we want to reduce sea level rise, let’s get the soot out of the air over the Arctic and glaciers. It is more manageable than CO2.
- The other forecasts, such as for hurricanes, rainfall, and snow cover, are not significantly different than under natural variability, and will advance more slowly than the decadal oscillations. In particular, if ocean acidity were a problem for shell formation, it would have shown up already in areas where there are naturally high levels of CO2. It has not. If problemmatic, shelled animals, including corals, would not have evolved when the CO2 was dozens of times higher than today. Further, the lead hurricane expert for IPCC, Chris Landsea, resigned over the misrepresentation of data by IPCC .