stick to sports, Frank

This column about climate change in the Friday Detroit News by Frank Beckmann (best known for his broadcasts of U-Mich football games) should be sacked in the end zone for a safety.

It sets forth invective, ignorance and illusion in a disoriented arrangement like a gridiron with random stripes.

For example:

Bad news for the alarmists promoting the myth of manmade climate change. Even their most ardent political sponsors are bailing out on an important issue, highlighting the hypocrisy of the crowd led by former Vice President Al Gore.

He alludes to new concerns being raised about the wisdom of ethanol as an answer to global warming, particularly in light of rising food prices. Apparently he's unaware that large agribusiness conglomerates, not advocates of climate protection, have been the primary force behind the rise of ethanol production. The 'alarmists' he's so concerned about have been warning us for at least three or four years that corn-based ethanol makes no sense for our economy or environment.

Then:

What we have learned from scientific observation -- not computer model guesses -- is that temperatures on earth have been cooling since 1998, Arctic sea ice is growing, the Antarctic summer thaw began later because of cold temperatures and a report in Nature projects that cooler ocean currents are going to cause at least a decade of colder weather. This has come on the heels of two straight mild hurricane seasons.

Need a reminder be necessary, we just completed a particularly harsh winter in the United States and Canada that included Michigan's deepest snowfall in 50 years, despite a continuing rise in emissions of carbon dioxide.

Uh, yeah. A harsh winter in the U.S., and a warmer than average March globally. As Ralph Maughan says in his post (which links to Science Daily):

I am posting this news because the winter of 2007-8 has been colder than normal in the United States, and once again some people are confusing the weather with climate, and in an irritatingly parochial way confusing the United States with the world.

Low temperatures and heavy snow in the United States and Europe were more than offset by high temperatures in Asia. The area of snow coverage in North America and Europe was the most extensive on record. Nevertheless, warm temperatures in March in Europe led to rapid snow melt. In Europe snow coverage for March was the lowest on record — the change was extreme.

There are more inaccuracies in Beckmann's writeup, but let's leave it there for now.

Comments

[Heraldblog]

How incredibly annoying. Frank should have held off another week so he could read this report:

CO2 'highest for 650,000 years'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4467420.stm

By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website

Current levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher now than at any time in the past 650,000 years.

That is the conclusion of new European studies looking at ice taken from 3km below the surface of Antarctica.

The scientists say their research shows present day warming to be exceptional.

Other research, also published in the journal Science, suggests that sea levels may be rising twice as fast now as in previous centuries.

Treasure dome

The evidence on atmospheric concentrations comes from an Antarctic region called Dome Concordia (Dome C).

Over a five year period commencing in 1999, scientists working with the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica) have drilled 3,270m into the Dome C ice, which equates to drilling nearly 900,000 years back in time.

Gas bubbles trapped as the ice formed yield important evidence of the mixture of gases present in the atmosphere at that time, and of temperature.

"One of the most important things is we can put current levels of carbon dioxide and methane into a long-term context," said project leader Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

"We find that CO2 is about 30% higher than at any time, and methane 130% higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for CO2, 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years."

Stable relationship

Last year, the Epica team released its first data. The latest two papers analyse gas composition and temperature dating back 650,000 years.

This extends the picture drawn by another Antarctic ice core taken near Lake Vostok which looked 440,000 years into the past.

The extra data is crucial because around 420,000 years there appears to have been a significant shift in the Earth's long-term climate patterns.

Before and after this date, the planet went through 100,000 year cycles of alternating cold glacial and warm interglacial periods.

But around the 420,000 year mark, the precise pattern changed, with the contrast between warm and cold conditions becoming much more marked.

The Dome C core gives data from six cycles of glaciation and warming; two from before this change, four from after.

"We found a very tight relationship between CO2 and temperature even before 420,000 years," said Professor Stocker.

"The fact that the relationship holds across the transition between climatic regimes is a very strong indication of the important role of CO2 in climate regulation."

Epica scientists will now try to extend their analysis further back in time.

Water rise

Another study reported in the same journal claims that for the last 150 years, sea levels have been rising twice as fast as in previous centuries.

Using data from tidal gauges and reviewing findings from many previous studies, US researchers have constructed a new sea level record covering the last 100 million years.

[direfloyd]

CO2 has nothing to do with global warming. The truth comes out more and more each day! As little as a year ago papers would not allow alarmist destroying articles like Frank's at all. Sorry, soon you'll have to find a new religion.

[Heraldblog]

My bad, Floyd. I was talking about warming on the Planet Earth. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

Which planet are you from?

[direfloyd]

LOL! I don't want to be struck down by your god Al Gore so I will leave with one graph
http://blogs.woodtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/screenshot_01.jpg

Where is the correlation exactly?