'Consensus' on man-made warming is shattering

The "consensus" on man-made global warming may have received a mortal wound.

Physics & Society, the journal of the 46,000-member American Physical Society, just published "Climate Sensitivity Revisited" by Viscount Christopher Monckton, an avowed man-made warming skeptic and former science adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Viscount Monckton contends that the climate alarmists have mistakenly preprogrammed their computer models with equations that overstate the earth's sensitivity to carbon dioxide by 500 to 2,000 percent, creating a senseless First World panic that itself threatens the future of society.

Physics & Society says: "There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution. Since the correctness or fallacy of that conclusion has immense implications for public policy and for the future of the biosphere, we thought it appropriate to present a debate within the pages of P&S."

The journal then offers both the Monckton paper and a response by David Hafemeister and Peter Schwartz of the California Polytechnic Institute. P&S also issued an open invitation to "further contributions from the physics community."

It had to happen. Too much evidence has mounted against CO2 as a cause of the modern warming. Sea ice is expanding globally, not retreating (especially in the Antarctic). The oceans have stopped rising and actually have started to fall. That might be because they "stopped warming 4-5 years ago" according to NASA, based on data from the 3,000 new Argo floats now scattered worldwide. The number and intensity of hurricanes, cyclones and tornadoes hasn't increased. Rain has returned to Australia, reminding us again it is naturally the driest continent on earth.

The crowning blow: After nine years of nonwarming, the planet actually began to cool in 2007 and 2008 for the first time in 30 years. The net warming from 1940 to 1998 had been a minuscule 0.2 degree Celsius. The United Kingdom's Hadley Centre says Earth's temperature has dropped back down to about the levels of 100 years ago. Thus, there has been no net global warming within living memory.

The current cooling doesn't mean another ice age is looming. There is massive global evidence of a 1,500-year warming cycle, going back a million years. It may be driven by the slightly varying distance between Earth and the sun. The sunspot index has had a 79 percent correlation with Earth's thermometer record since 1860. During this time, the temperature correlation with CO2 is a dismissive 22 percent.

NASA's Jason satellite tells us the Pacific Ocean has entered a cool phase. Historically, these phases have lasted 25 to 30 years. After that, there may be some additional warming. However, the 1,500-year cycles typically shift abruptly. We should already have most of this one's warming. When will we get the inevitable cooling? Probably centuries from now.

The warming debate is far from over, but an actual debate looks likely. Reputations and huge bundles of cash have been bet on man-made warming, including billions in government funding for climate research. The U.N.'s reputation — and perhaps its future — are on the line.

The American Physical Society itself has issued a statement. It stands by its belief that human-emitted CO2 is "changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the earth's climate" and notes that Physics & Society is not peer-reviewed. Nonetheless, the debate is finally and openly joined, after 20 years of the Greens proclaiming humanity's guilt for wrecking the planet as beyond sane discussion.

Now, we look forward to a full-scale exploration of the science. We have heard quite enough from the computers.

Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., and is director of the Center for Global Food Issues.