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Climate facts to warm to

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The Austrailian published a transcript of an interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Excerpt:

Duffy: “Can you tell us about NASA’s Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we’re now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?”

Marohasy: “That’s right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you’ve got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you’re going to get a positive feedback. That’s what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite … (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they’re actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you’re getting a negative rather than a positive feedback.”

Duffy: “The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?”

Marohasy: “That’s right … These findings actually aren’t being disputed by the meteorological community. They’re having trouble digesting the findings, they’re acknowledging the findings, they’re acknowledging that the data from NASA’s Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they’re about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide.”

Duffy: “From what you’re saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable …”

Marohasy: “That’s right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer’s interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point.”

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

Read more Climate facts to warm to

Comments
The claims by Marohasy about global temperature leveling off or dropping are unfounded. A simple email to her source, Roy Spencer at NASA, can clear it up. Which is what I did. Roy says that Marohasy is confused. He states that the data is not from the much vaunted Aqua satellite project as Marohasy claimed, and is not global average but a much smaller sample of 20 degrees either side of the equator. Paper published by Roy Spencer can be found here: http://www.weatherquestions.com/Spencer_07GRL.pdf Now for some clearly needed Ad hominem. Marohasy, the scientist who has misrepresented the information in the interview, appears to have published only a dozen scientific papers or so in areas such as biological control. Her expertise is clearly not climate. She has had a long association with banking, industry and anti-conservation environmental groups that advocate actions like whale hunting. Not the person I would be quoting on climate change. Check out Marohasy's web site: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/about.php Finally, the author of the article, Pearson, complains about The Age leaving out some phrases that soften the claims of one of their climate change articles. Pearson has done the exact same thing in this article. See the quoted paragraph from the readily available transcript of the interview from the unashamedly right wing Counterpoint program on the Radio National web site. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/counterpoint/stories/2008/2191714.htm "Jennifer Marohasy: It is extraordinary, though I perhaps should pick you up on 'global warming has stopped'. It has stopped for the last ten years, but that's a very short timeframe. If you look over the last 100 years, it's mostly been warming over the last 100 years but there was some cooling from 1940 through to 1975 and now there appears to be some cooling since 1998. But if you look at the longer timeframe, say, since the last glacial maximum, well, that's going back, say, 16,000 years, then there actually has been significant warming, and sea levels of course have risen over 100 metres over this period. So the last eight to ten-year dip may just be a dip, and there may be continued warming into the future, or it could be the end of this interglacial warm period and we could go into another ice age. We don't know what the future holds."neoporcupine
April 16, 2008
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Amen! Hope everyone is having a safe and happy Easter. God bless you all.PannenbergOmega
March 23, 2008
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"Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience." Can we get a good "amen" from that? ;-) As well as the show of hands? It's about time the consensus science community gets what it deserves - a huge public outcry. A revolt at all the BS these consensus scientists and their media worshipers proclaim as pure truth but that isn't. A public revulsion at scientists in general, as I've said before, is the best thing that could happen in the West and Europe. Once the public discovers just how deeply they have been "taken down the garden path" and "sold a bill of goods" - ripped off - there ought to be a serious outcry against this kind of "science". Then perhaps there will be new and greater openings for the truth about Darwinism as well. That could be one of the major catalysts in the ultimate downfall of Darwinism. And without it, that downfall will only be postponed (in spite of the science and simple common sense that should have already put Darwinism in it's rightful coffin). I said in the thread Dave put up on this topic that the atmosphere is self-correcting. That is in evidence here once again. I think that the complexity of a self-correcting atmosphere will be found to be as profound and full of ingenious unexpected mechanisms as DNA. ID is a unit. It applies to everything.Borne
March 23, 2008
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DaveScot, This is great science in action. We need to follow the evidence where it leads and not allow or let "logic" get in the way of science. We may logically think such and such should occur, but if our logic isn't backed up by emperical science, then our logic is wrong. I too am suprised by the results found by Aqua satellite. It sounds like global warming has been based too much on computational models. I'm a computational physicists, and I've always believed strongly that computational models are only as good as the experimental results. A certain set of equations may be the wrong set for describing a certain physical scenario. In addition, initial conditions and boundary conditions need to be constrained by experiment also. There's an old saying: GIGO (garbage in, garbage out).DrDan
March 23, 2008
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You can listen to Roy Spencer Audio explain this "Infrared Iris" himself to the 2008 International Climate Change Conference. He expects it will take three to four years before it is professionally acknowledged. Spencer has discovered a major negative feedback. This is a very strong -6.5 W/m2/K NEGATIVE feedback. (Compare total CO2 "forcing" of 1.6 W/m2) Listen especially to Spencer's comments on his 2nd submitted paper (Dec. 2007) describing "the world's smallest climate change model". His 3 term equation shows temperature variations due to climate "noise" such as random cloud variations. Climate system "noise" comes from its being a non-linear dynamic system. The "noise" that has been assumed irrelevant turns out to give substantial "structural" variations in the climate. Spencer shows that some feedbacks assumed as positive may actually be negative feedbacks. e.g. "Tropics warm - fewer clouds" - Which is cause and which the effect? If tropics warm to fewer clouds = "positive feedback" Spencer says precipitation systems are the most important phenomena. They deal with the most important greenhouse gas - water vapor. Earth's natural cooling process is 3.3 W/m2/K. If climate has higher positive feedbacks then unstable & tipping points. Temperature variability from random components gives an error in feedback - in direction of positive feedback every time. Climate modeling positive feedback comes from assumptions fundamentally tied to mixing up cause and effect. Two key reviewers said Spencer was right, one saying his own paper was wrong. Real climate is less sensitive than all climate models. This will be a major paradigm change. I look forward to seeing Spencer's paper.DLH
March 22, 2008
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If the earth's climate did not have negative feedback mechanisms it would be inherently unstable and warming would have run away in the past when temperatures rose and carbon dioxide was released from the oceans, in which case we wouldn't be here to get hysterical over global warming.GilDodgen
March 22, 2008
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P.S. Can I see a show of hands of everyone who ISN'T "shocked" by the new satellite data? [DaveScot's hand goes up]DaveScot
March 22, 2008
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