The New Math on Global Warming....

Is the tide turning on the science???

My favorite temperature proxy is North America's fossil pollen, which shows our continent has had nine complete shifts in its trees and plants over the past 14,000 years—or one every 1650 years. In my native Michigan, the pollen says the forests during the warmings have been dominated by warmth-loving beech trees, with more oak trees intruding as the climate cools, followed by more pine trees. Today, 150 years into a warming, the pine trees are giving way again to the oaks, and the beech trees are waiting their turn.

Coifman is still talking about the planet passing a "crisis tipping point." He doesn't seem to realize that the existence of this natural cycle profoundly changes the math on global warming. The eco-movement and Al Gore have been repeating the mantra that "the earth has warmed 0.6 degree C in the last century." They claim this has been due to more human-emitted CO2, and project Big Warming on that basis. When we plug in the 1,500-year cycle, however, we have to take away from the scary computer models the 0.5 degrees of warming that occurred before 1940—and thus before much human-emitted CO2.

The earth has warmed only a net 0.2 degrees C of net warming since 1940. Human-emitted CO2 gets the blame for only half of that—or 0.1 degree C of warming over 65 years! We've had no warming at all since 1998.