Sun, Not Man, Main Cause of Climate Change, New Study
Says
By Monisha Bansal
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
December 11, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - According to a new study on global warming, climate
scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of
Alabama, and the University of Virginia found that the climate
change models based on human influence do not match observed
warming.
That is contrary to the views held by former Vice President Al
Gore, who accepted the Nobel Prize on Monday along with the U.N.'s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and who thinks
that climate change is largely caused by human action.
Gore wants nations to tax carbon dioxide emissions and not build
any new coal plants, among other steps. "It is time to make peace
with the planet," Gore said in his Nobel speech, as reported by the
Associated Press. "We must quickly mobilize our civilization with
the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when
nations mobilized for war."
The new report, which challenges the claims of Gore and the IPCC,
was published in the December 2007 issue of the International
Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society.
The report was written by David Douglass at the University of
Rochester, John Christy at the University of Alabama, and Benjamin
Pearson and S. Fred Singer at the University of Virginia.
"Our findings basically are that fingerprints - that is to say the
pattern of warming - that's predicted by greenhouse models does not
match the fingerprints of observations, so there is a disconnect
between greenhouse models and the actual reality of observations,"
Singer told Cybercast News Service.
"This means that the greenhouse effect - while real - is not very
important in producing climate change," he said. "It's a lot
smaller than what the models calculate."
Singer said the reason why the models "overestimate the
effectiveness of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is that
the models ignore what are called negative feedbacks which occur in
the atmosphere, such as clouds, which reduce the effect of the
greenhouse gases."
"Their models just don't consider them properly," he said.
But Bracken Hendricks, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for
American Progress, told Cybercast News Service, that the study is
"radically out of step with the complete scientific
consensus."
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not just a
report. It's not just a random gathering of scientists. It's the
largest scientific body ever assembled," he said. "Their most
recent assessment determined that there's 90 percent certainty that
global climate change is happening and that it is caused by human
beings."
But Singer said, "We have to remember that the climate has always
been changing ever since we have records, and we have geologic
records going back millions and millions of years. We know that
there have been huge climate changes on the earth long before human
beings actually came into existence.
"We are fairly sure that what's causing the warming are changes in
the sun," he said. "These are very subtle changes that are very
difficult to observe. The sun is really a quite variable
star."
Hendricks, however, said because of the IPCC report, "the assertion
that this is caused by increased solar activity or these sorts of
things is out of step with the vast consensus."
"It's dangerous to get into a game of dueling science," he added.
"We don't want to be gambling with the fate of the planet."
But Singer said because global warming is a natural event. "There
is little point to try to control emission of greenhouse gases like
carbon dioxide, which means that all of this legislation and all of
these efforts to find substitutes for fossil fuels are pointless,
useless and very, very expensive," he said.
Hendricks countered, saying that alternative energy will be a
multi-billion dollar industry and "an opportunity to revitalize our
global competitiveness" through innovation and job creation.