THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue # 75, March 7, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
NATURAL GLOBAL WARMINGS HAVE BECOME MORE MODERATE
By Dennis T. Avery
PREDICTING THE EARTH'S WARMING & COOLING TRENDS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: THE PLANET'S FUTURE
WARMING CYCLES WILL CONTINUE TO BE COOLER THAN THOSE IN PREVIOUS ERAS. HUMAN-EMITTED CARBON
DIOXIDE IS NOT LIKELY TO MAKE THE NATURAL WARMING CYCLES MUCH WARMER. FOR THE NEXT 25 TO 30
YEARS, THE EARTH WILL BE IN A COOLING PHASE, AFTER WHICH THE PLANET WILL RESUME GETTING SLOWLY &
ERATICALLY WARMER, BUT NOT MUCH WARMER. THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS WILL LOSE THEIR ABILITY TO
CREATE PUBLIC PANIC & THE ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT WILL DIE.
FULL STORY:
Next week, at the second International Conference on Climate Change, a gathering of man-made global warming
skeptics sponsored by the Heartland Institute in New York, I’ll predict the Earth’s warming/cooling trends for the
Twenty-first Century.
I will be among splendid company -- such as John Coleman, Founder of the Weather Channel; Ross McKitrick, who
debunked the “hockey stick” study; physicist Willie Soon; and many other presenters with brilliant credentials. A
thousand scientists, economists, and skeptics from every walk of life will meet to discuss the current climate
indicators.
I’ll use physical evidence of the more than 500 warmings in the past million years, which are found worldwide in ice
cores, seabed sediments, fossil pollen, and cave stalagmites. At least 700 scientists have published evidence on
these solar-driven Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles. The good news is that the D-O cycle’s warmings have been getting
somewhat cooler for the past 10,000 years — and there is no evidence that human-emitted carbon dioxide (CO2) will
make them much warmer.
This means that the Modern Warming will probably remain cooler than the Medieval Warming (950-1300). It was 0.3
degrees warmer than the 20th century, a conclusion based on Craig Loehle’s study of 2000 years of temperature
proxies. Willi Dansgaard’s 10,000-year reconstruction from ice cores shows the Roman Warming as warmer than the
Medieval Warming — but the two Holocene Warmings centered on 4,000 and 7,000 years ago were lots warmer than
either the Roman or Medieval Warming.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) rejects the cycle evidence. They have concluded that
the variability of the sun is “too small” to account for the Earth’s recent warming from 1976 to1998. They want us to
sacrifice trillions of dollars to displace fossil fuels based on computers that couldn’t even predict the current cooling.
In contrast, I’ll predict a cooling planet for the next 25 to 30 years, because of the D-O cycle’s solar linkage. The
sunspots began predicting cooling back in 2000, and it arrived a bit early, in 2007. CO2’s correlation with our
temperatures over the past 150 years is only 22 percent. The correlation with sunspots is 79 percent — What does
the UN think caused the 500 previous D-O cycles in the ice cores and seabed records?
There’s more. NASA, bless their hearts, reported last April that their Jason satellite confirms a cooling shift in the
Pacific, our biggest heat sink. Roseanne D’Arrigo’s tree ring and rainfall proxies from around the Pacific Rim tell us
that the earth’s temperatures have mirrored the Pacific’s cyclical shifts — in 25 to 40 year spurts — for at least the
past 400 years.
I predict that, after the current Pacific cooling is over, the Earth will resume getting slowly and erratically warmer. But
not much warmer. That’s because the D-O cycles are typically abrupt, delivering about half their temperature increase
in the first few decades. Remember, we’ve had no significant net warming since 1940.
If the moderating trend in the global warming cycles persists, then we will get less than 0.5 degree C more warming
over the next two centuries. If the Greenhouse Theory has any validity, we might get a bit more than 0.5 degree more
warming — but not much. We tend to forget that the climate forcing power of CO2 unquestionably declines
logarithmically, so the earth has probably already gotten three-fourths of the total.
As the earth cools, the U.S.A. will use its new natural gas surplus instead of biofuels, carbon taxes will die, and the
deliberate disruption of the economy will be stifled. Further warming 40 years from now will be too mild and erratic to
renew public panic. Environmental assessments will become more realistic — and useful.
SOURCES FOR THE FOREGOING ARTICLE:
Craig Loehle, “A 2000-year global temperature record based on non-tree ring proxies,” Energy and Environment
18 (7-8): 1059-1058 (2007).
S. Johnson, W. Dansgaard, et al., “Oxygen Isotope Profile Through the Arctic and Greenland Ice Sheets," Nature,
235:429-454 (1972)
Roseanne D’Arrigo et al., "Tree-ring Estimates of Pacific Decadal Climate Variability,” Climate Dynamics: Vol 18:
219-224, (2001).
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery is an environmental economist, and a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He
was formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable
Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years. Readers may write him at P.O. Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421.
Email: cgfi@hughes.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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