February 3, 2010

Richard Somerville, Ph.D. is a distinguished professor emeritus and research professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He has told San Diego "City Beat" that KUSI promised to present his full statement on-air but didn’t. He was talking about my January 14th hour long program "Global Warming: The Other Side". KUSI contacted Scripps seeking a response to the program for our 10 PM newscast that night. Scripps referred our Producer to Somerville. The Producer who had that assignment assures me that no "promise" was made. But according to the nasty City Beat editorial that slam-bams the program, Somerville said the station didn't run his written statement and included only a couple of “garbled” sentences from a lengthy interview during a 10 p.m. newscast. He called KUSI and me "unethical."

I object to his remarks to "City Beat" and take particular exception to being called unethical.

First, I was aware the station was seeking a response from Scripps but unaware that it had been obtained until shortly before the program aired. The production of the program had already been completed and it was never intended that a response would be included in the program. Rather it was intended to be seen in the newscast immediately following the program. I scrambled to get some of the Somerville video on the newscast. I was told to use less than a minute of the Somerville interview and to read the entire statement from NASA. No one even mentioned a written statement from Somerville. I was attempting to accomplish good journalism. I don't know that I totally accomplished that, but I am sure that KUSI and I were not unethical.

I am now going to go through the video of the Somerville interview done by one of our cameramen using questions written by one of our producers to see if I can put together a segment for our second global warming special scheduled for later this month. I think that will help give more balance.

But please understand, equal time is not required or justified here. The media, including the KUSI newscasts, carry frequent reports supportive of the global warming claims and agenda. The media frequently carries programs about the dire global warming predictions. "An Inconvenient Truth," shown over and over again in the schools, is totally one-sided. Our one and only program debunking global warming falls far short of balancing the overall budget of global warming coverage on television or even KUSI.

Here are the first three of Dr. Somerville's six points about the skeptical side of the global warming debate from the Scripps website. After each of his points, I offer a response (in blue).

A Response to Climate Change Denialism

Richard Somerville, UC San Diego, issued the following statement (in italics below) in response to a recent request to address claims recently made by climate change "denialists":
The use of any form of the word "denier" when referring to another person or group of people is generally regarded as the strongest insult possible because the word has been only widely used in the past sixty years to describe people who deny the Holocaust of millions of Jewish people by the German Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s. I am offended by the use of this word by Dr. Somerville and the other Global Warming "Alarmists", (A word first used by my friend Joe D'Aleo to refer to those who support the Global Warming science and agenda.) I would urge the professor to soften his prose and use the word "skeptic" when referring to those of us who regard man-made global warming as bad science.

1. The essential findings of mainstream climate change science are firm. This is solid settled science. The world is warming. There are many kinds of evidence: air temperatures, ocean temperatures, melting ice, rising sea levels, and much more. Human activities are the main cause. The warming is not natural. It is not due to the sun, for example. We know this because we can measure the effect of man-made carbon dioxide and it is much stronger than that of the sun, which we also measure.

This is, indeed, the heart of the debate. Dr. Somerville, Al Gore, et al, regard the science settled and proven. To me this couldn't be further from the truth. First, the carbon dioxide greenhouse gas theory relies on a concept called radiative forcing by which the minor atmospheric gas CO2 interacts with water vapor, the primary greenhouse gas to cause significant warming. I have read, and understand, the scientific papers that present this hypothesis. Presenting a theory, arguing its case, calculating what impact it will have if correct; none of these are proof. And, peer review is not proof, either. It only means there are others who find the theory compelling. A vote of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is not proof either. The cadre of scientists who are on that panel are all totally dependent on the global warming issue for their livelihoods, professional status and the stability of their institutions. It would be very difficult for them to vote down this theory. By the way, researchers into the IPCC found that not many of the members of the panel are scientists and of those that are, few actually studied the radiative forcing research papers. So what do they have for proof? Computer models that use the radiative forcing theory to project future temperatures have projected steadily rising temperatures. The modelers used 1980 as the starting year so they could compare the forecast temperature rise against the actual rise since 1980. Into the late 1990's they claimed the rise in temperatures matched the forecast and therefore radiative forcing had been proven. However, I see a couple of things wrong with this. One is that the temperatures stopped rising in 1998 and have been in a decline since (according to the best data I can find). The computer model predicts continued warming, but the temperatures go into decline. That seems to side track that so called "proof". And, now there is another big problem with this computer model based "proof". The new climategate findings, first reported on our television program, show there is extensive manipulation of the temperature data at the National Climate Data Center. It is the temperature data from there that the computer modelers rely on for their proof. So their proof is now under a serious cloud of doubt.

Dr. Somerville refers to Ocean temperatures as proof. Yet the new Argus buoys immediately detected cooling for their first four years. The record of what data from the oceans has been used by the Hadley, NCDC and GISS centers in their global reconstructions is full of shoddy practices and manipulations. Argos data is not being used. There are several detailed reports on this issue available. Ocean water temperatures go up and down over time and I don't believe he can show a connection with our human activities. I don't think the ocean's temperatures provide proof of man-made global warming.

And neither does melting ice or sea level rise. The South Pole is frozen more solid than ever with the greatest extend of ice as far back as our records go. The North Polar ice is all sea ice since there is no land mass under it. It is therefore more volatile. Long time accounts indicate it has come and gone with the “northwest passage” opening to boat traffic a half a dozen times in the last 600 years. In the last 40 years with the satellite measurements now available, we have watched as the ice has varied up and down. It reached a minimum for the last 40 years in 2007 and the global warming alarmist issued dire predictions. IIt has been increasing since. So far for the winter of 2009-10 the North Polar Sea Ice has increased by 500,000 square miles over the year before. That has somewhat quieted the alarmist shouts.

Much is made by global warming alarmists about the melting of Greenland. That turns out to be reaching for straws. There the ice comes and goes on a more less cyclical basis. There is the famous story of the medieval warm period when the ice on Greenland and Iceland melted so extensively that the Norsemen established farms there. Glaciers are melting. This is an interglacial period. That is when the temperatures warm up and the glaciers melt. It has been going on for 10,000 years. Who is to say the glacial extent of 1940 or 2000 is the "normal" or "natural" one. The recent admission of error in the outrageous claims about the melting of ice in Himalayas in the 2007 report of the IPCC is an example of the non-scientific claims of the global warming alarmists. And, never has any proven connection been established between the activities of man and the melting of the glaciers. The alarmists simply assume the connection. Sea level rise is continuing at the same snail's pace of the last thousand years. Clearly melting of glaciers leads to sea level rise. But the oceans show no sign of rising at the increased rate of the IPCC predictions much less the totally off the wall dire threats that Al Gore so gleefully tells us will flood our citizens and displace millions. There is absolutely no evidence in support of this and I am sure not even Dr. Somerville and his fellow IPCC authors would endorse that silliness.

Dr. Somerville makes a flat statement that human activities are causing all of the things detailed above and that the global warming is not natural. If that is so Professor, then how did the pre-historic warm periods between previous ice ages occur.

Are you suggesting there were civilizations during the prior interglacial periods? That would be a huge bit of scientific conjecture. If you look at the chart there is nothing distinguished about this particular warm period during the current interglacial.

If the activities of man did not cause these warm periods, what reason do we have to assume with panic that man caused this one? There is no reason I can see, except an agenda of trying to scare us into abandoning fossil fuels. It could be said that this warm period is to some extent the result of man's activities, because the Climategate scandal is showing clear evidence that the hand of man is very involved in recent data of a warming trend. What Dr. Somerville is thinking about in his definitive conclusion that carbon dioxide is the ultimate greenhouse gas and CO2 from our industrialized society has a specific signature, and Keeling curve shows it is increasing in the atmosphere and temperatures are warming. Never mind cause and effect, the lack of proof and the highly questionable nature of recent warming, that is his conclusion and he is going to hold to it forever. He told our cameraman that he is a fully accredited research scientist and I am only a meteorologist so I can't even read and understand his research. It is clear that I am not going to change his position. He makes his remark about CO2 being stronger than the sun, I suspect in part, as a response to this chart of Willie Soon's that I show illustrating that temperatures in recent years have more paralleled the number of sunspots than the increase in carbon dioxide.

That ends my response to Dr. Somerville's first point.

2. The greenhouse effect is well understood. It is as real as gravity. The foundations of the science are more than 150 years old. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere traps heat. We know carbon dioxide is increasing because we measure it. We know the increase is due to human activities like burning fossil fuels because we can analyze the chemical evidence for that.

Dr. Somerville is absolutely correct about the greenhouse event being well understood and we all know, I am sure he would agree, that water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas in our atmosphere.

And, I agree with Dr. Somerville, unequivocally, that carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere as a result of burning of fossil fuels. The measurement of that by the father and son team of Keelings under the auspicious of The Scripps Institution of Oceanography is a quality and important piece of science. But, I totally reject the implied direct connection between that increase in CO2 and any significant warming, past, present or future. I say again, I am convinced there is no significant warming taking place and what warming there is seems to be largely the result of natural not man-made climate changes.

3. Our climate predictions are coming true. Many observed climate changes, like rising sea level, are occurring at the high end of the predicted changes. Some changes, like melting sea ice, are happening faster than the anticipated worst case. Unless mankind takes strong steps to halt and reverse the rapid global increase of fossil fuel use and the other activities that cause climate change, and does so in a very few years, severe climate change is inevitable. Urgent action is needed if global warming is to be limited to moderate levels.

No, Dr. Somerville, your predictions are not coming true. In fact, all of the IPCC forecasts are failing miserably. Globally, temperatures stopped rising in 1998 and have been falling since 2001 as illustrated in these two charts.

All the anecdotal snow and cold stories worldwide from the United States to even places such as Buenos Aires, southern Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and South China belie the warming prediction. All of these places have set all-time record snowfall. Such events were not predicted.

The global Accumulated Cyclone index from Florida State, a measure of global tropical activity reached a 30-year low this year. This is in total contrast to the IPCC prediction of more and stronger hurricanes and other tropical storms.

For strong tornadoes (F3-F5) the trend is down last 50 years.

There is no trend in droughts. Though rainfall and cloudiness have increased slightly ---- indicative of cooling not warming.

Record heat peaked in the 1930s. Twenty-four of the 50 all-time state records were set in the 1930's, 37 before 1960.

Monthly state records show the same 1930s peak.

Arctic ice rebounded 26% from the 2007 minimum.

A new record for Antarctic ice extent was set in 2007.

Sea levels have slowed, and the University of Colorado ice center says the sea levels have leveled off since 2006 and are not accelerating.

The latest NOAA analysis using the ARGO buoys says ocean heat content is declining, which is consistent with ocean cooling.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/31/nodc-revises-ocean-heat-content-data/

All are exact opposite to what the IPCC "science fiction novel" told us.

Some of this material will be in the new TV program. Details are to be announced.

John Coleman

To watch the KUSI Special Report - Global Warming: The Other Side - click here.

http://www.kusi.com/weather/colemanscorner

http://www.kusi.com/home/78477082.html?video=pop&t=a

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