Global warming: non-science

By Floy Lilley, J.D., Program Director

Clint W. Murchison Chair of Free Enterprise

University of Texas at Austin

While one ocean researcher passes on, another is systematically passed over.

Dr. Jacques Cousteau's death was headline news. Considering that Cousteau had stated that "In order to stabilize world population, we must eliminate 350,000 per day," isn't it possible that he was truly happy about his own demise? Dr Robert Stevenson is never headline news. And that's the problem. The problem is getting published in scientific journals, nearly all of which have become "politically correct."

An oceanographer and former scientific liaison officer for the Office of Naval Research, Dr. Stevenson recently threw more buckets of cold water on the raging fires of global warming in a presentation titled "The Non-Science of Global Warming" at the 15^th Annual Meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in San Diego, California.

Let's face it. Kyoto protocols shall, as intended or unintended consequences, devastate farming, petroleum refining, chemical, paper products, iron and steel, aluminum and cement industries. So, this is not lightweight public policy being bandied about. For hot air, it is pretty heavy.

What did he say and why does he say it, if he knows no one is listening?

Stevenson made six good points for one good reason. Each of the six points was gleaned by him from papers given by 450 oceanographers and atmospheric physicists/chemists on research conducted since 1991. Each was reconfirmed by him in 1995 at the 21^st General Assembly for Physical Scientists of Oceans to which 700 oceanographers from 81 countries contributed.

Stevenson's points were:

(1) There is no warming trend in the oceans, and has not been in the past 50 years. Periods of warming and cooling closely correlate to 11-year sunspot cycles.
(2) There is no warming trend in the Arctic, and there has been no warming there since 1937. The Arctic was supposed to reveal the first fingerprint of global warming. In 1994 all the Arctic stations were revisited. No warming.
The Arctic ice pack has neither retreated nor thinned. Ninety-seven percent (97%) of all water is already in the oceans. If all Arctic ice pack were to melt, sea level would go down. If all land ice in the Northern Hemisphere were to melt, sea level would go up four inches. That would require tremendous warmth, because its temperature now is minus ten degrees Celsius.
The mean high temperature in the Antarctic is minus fifty-five degrees Celsius. If the temperature could rise by 55 degrees, it would have to stay at zero degrees for 1,000 years to melt the ice.
The English Permanent Commission on Mean Sea Level in 1996 reported that sea level continues to rise as it has for the past 190 years at a rate of 1 mm per year, or 11 cm in 100 years. Coral reefs are growing at a rate of 24 cm per decade. So, 11 cm per century versus 24 cm per decade leaves the coral reefs in good shape.
(3) There is increasing evidence that the computer model calculations of the ocean's absorption of anthropogenic CO₂ may be seriously biased.
The ocean's summer warming, or warming by water-mass intrusions, or El Ninos, makes the ocean a source of CO₂ rather than a sink. There is far more ocean-produced CO₂ in the atmosphere than previously considered.
(4) An EL Nino does not produce weather. The weather comes first, then comes the El Nino.
(5) The prime source of global weather lies in the tropics. The Asian monsoons play significant roles in the formation of El Ninos, droughts, and extreme weather.
(6) Through a facinating slide show of the planet, Dr. Stevenson brought home his sixth point. It is that we do not really understand all the interactions, the vagaries, the complexities, and the products of the atmosphere, the oceans and the earth.

Natural chlorine and other products are conducted into the stratosphere by cumulus clouds, typhoons, hurricanes and volcanic eruptions. Unlike Jacques Cousteau's dire warnings of a dead Mediterranean Sea, the Med is full of natural organic biological "debris" which speaks volumes about the large amount of biologial activity there. Sediment flowing into oceans is a good thing, not a bad thing. Sun glittering on a million rice paddies reflects the abundant life from the mud brought down by rivers along the China Coast and Peru.

These are Dr. Stevenson's six points. His single good reason is truth. He says it is time to get on with real science. In an article written by him in the winter of 1996-1997, he knowingly reflected:

"...despite the cries of Jim Hansen, Carl Sagan, Stephen Schneider, James Anderson, Susan Solomon, Rowland and Molina, Robert Redford, Barbra Streisand, Jimmy Carter, the Club of Rome, the United Nations Environment Program, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the Montreal Protocol, and Worldwatch, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund, Prince Philip, or even Al Gore, the human population of the Earth has not reached untenable numbers, has not become a geophysical force, and has not established practices nor products leading to global warming."

His is definitely not a politically correct position. He still garners no headlines, but this unsung researcher valiantly continues to douse the UNEP, IPCC, and WMO flames of misinformation while he seeks to save the truth about the climate change issue of global warming.