Climate Change Science
reprinted with permission from Friends of Science
One of the goals of the Friends of Science Society is to educate the public through dissemination of relevant, balanced and objective technical information on the scientific merit of the Kyoto Protocol and the global warming issue. The science of climate change is complex. Unfortunately, politics and the media has affected the science. Climate research institutions know that they must present scary climate forecasts to receive continued funding – no crisis means no funding. The media presents stories of climate disaster to sell their products. Scientific research that suggests climate change is mostly natural does not receive much if any media coverage. These factors have caused the general public to be seriously misled on climate issues resulting in wasteful expenditures of billions of dollars in an ineffective attempt to control climate. This document gives an overview of climate change issues as determined by a comprehensive review of the state of climate science.
The graph above shows the temperature changes of the lower troposphere from the surface up to about 8 km as determined from the average of two analyses of satellite data. The best fit line from January 2002 to November 2010 indicates an increase of 0.03 Celsius/decade. The sharp temperature spikes in 1998 and 2010 are El Nino events. Surface temperature data is contaminated by the effects of urban development. The Sun’s activity, which was increasing through most of the 20th century, has recently become quiet. The magnetic flux from the Sun reached a peak in 1992. The high magnetic flux reduces cloud cover and causes warming. Since then the Sun has become quiet, however it continues to cause warming for about a decade after its peak intensity due to the huge heat capacity of the oceans. So we expect the warming to peak at about 2002. The green line shows the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The ripple effect in the CO2 curve is due to the seasonal changes in biomass. There is a far greater land area in the northern hemisphere than the south that is affected by seasons. During the Northern hemisphere summer there is a large uptake of CO2 from plants growing causing a drop in the atmospheric CO2 concentration.