Help. I'm having a 'discussion' with a winger on a rightie site about global warming and he's offered the following research to back his position that no, there is nothing warming...
I've never seen this data before but if it's not accurate there must be some rebuttal data I can offer. Any of you seen these claims before and have links to offer to set the facts straight?
Summary: More recent studies of the polar ice caps show the polar ice caps are holding their own and actually growing slightly.
A study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate (Yuan, X. and Martinson, D.G., "Antarctic sea ice extent variability and its global connectivity," Volume 13: 1697-1717 (2005)) demonstrated the Antarctic polar ice cap has been expanding. According to the study, 18 years of satellite data indicate the mean Antarctic sea ice edge has expanded by 0.011 degrees of latitude toward the equator each year.
A later study, also published in Journal of Climate (Watkins, A.B. and Simmonds, I., "Current trends in Antarctic sea ice: The 1990s impact on a short climatology," Volume 13: 4441-4451 (2003)) reached a similar conclusion. The study reported significant increases in Antarctic sea ice between 1987 and 1996. The study further indicated the 1990s exhibited increases in the length of the sea-ice season.
Just off the Arctic polar ice cap, ice coverage in Greenland was also shown to be steady and likely increasing. A study in Journal of Geophysical Research (Comiso, J.C., Wadhams, P., Pedersen, L.T. and Gersten, R.A., Volume 106:
Viewed as a whole, the new ice cap studies indicate no global warming has occurred in recent decades, at least not in high latitudes. These findings also offer an important insight into one of the more significant controversies surrounding global warming theory.
Surface vs. satellite readings
Surface temperature readings taken by humans indicate the Earth has warmed by approximately 1 degree Fahrenheit over the past 100 years. This warming is certainly not much, but it is often cited as evidence that global warming is occurring, even if it is merely in its initial stages.
However, precise satellite readings of the lower atmosphere (a region that is supposed to immediately reflect any global warming) have shown no warming since readings were begun more than 20 years ago.
"We have seen no sign of man-induced global warming at all. The computer models used in U.N. studies say the first area to heat under the 'greenhouse gas effect' should be the lower atmosphere, known as the troposphere. Highly accurate, carefully checked satellite data have shown absolutely no warming," explained Tom Randall of the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Global warming skeptics have pointed out that most of the surface temperature readings indicating a warming have been taken in underdeveloped nations, where reliability and quality-control are questionable. In developed nations such as the United States, by contrast, the readings tend to show no warming. Moreover, skeptics note, surface temperature readings are influenced by artificial warming associated with growing urbanization, which creates artificial heat islands around temperature reading stations.
The recent polar ice studies, which measured surface rather than atmospheric temperature trends (and which were far removed from the effects of urban heat islands and questionable third-world temperature readings), lend weight to the argument that satellite readings, not surface monitoring stations, are correct.
"In considering all of the above results, it is likely that the global extent of sea ice is on the rise. Such observational evidence flies in the face of model predictions of global warming that say climate will change first and to the greatest extent in the Earth's polar regions," concludes CO2 Science Magazine.
CO2 Science suggests that self-regulating mechanisms, such as clouds, enable the Earth to keep a relatively steady climate despite the changes in CO2 concentration that have been a regular part of Earth's history.
Viewing the new data in conjunction with other studies that properly filter out the imperfections of human-collected temperature readings, CO2 Science concludes, "There has been no global warming for the past 75 years."