| | Datum: | 19.11.04 | | Titel: | Fred Singer: Arctic Warming? | | Link: | | | Details1: | Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 07:38:27 -0500
To: financialTimes
From: "S. Fred Singer"
Subject: Arctic Warming?
Cc:
Dear Editor
I have just returned from a week in UK delivering seminars at Imperial College, Oxfd, and Cambridge. I now find that my earlier Letter (Nov 8) provoked some discussion (Nov 10, 11) that requires comments.
More important, just before flying to London I attended a Wash DC press briefing on an Arctic Council report that may be based on bogus data. This is a serious matter.
I have therefore prepared a Letter addressing these issues. I hope you will find space to use it
Sincerely, SFS
PS For yr convenience, I have also attached my Nov 8 letter on the Arctic Ice Cap
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Arctic Warming: Is it Bogus? (11/18/04)
The Arctic Council’s alarms of impending disaster are all based on one crucial piece of evidence: its claim that Arctic temperatures are rising rapidly, at twice the global rate. In fact, they are not rising at all; according to the best temperature records the highest values occurred around 1940.
The Council’s evidence is a single graph purporting to show observed Arctic temperatures from 1900 to 2000. It gives no author or reference to any scientific publications. With its source unknown, there is no way to verify its authenticity. At a Nov 8 press briefing in Washington DC, I asked the two Council scientists present about this crucial graph; they were unable (or unwilling) to cite its provenance.
In any case, there are numerous articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals by many reputable authors (Kahl, Polyakov, Przybylak, etc), which confirm that the Arctic is not warming. [Further references can be seen on the website www.CO2science.com]
I must conclude therefore that the Arctic Council’s evidence for warming, presumably from thermometer readings, is either bogus or, more charitably, is based on selected or mistaken data. It is incumbent on the governments that sponsored and paid for the Arctic study to investigate and for the media to ask some hard questions.
In a related matter, my earlier letter (Nov 8) on the Arctic Ice Cap provoked some comments that deserve reply. Contrary to Mr Nick Beresford (Nov 11), the melting of floating sea ice will not raise sea levels -- as Archimedes demonstrated long ago. Contrary to Mr Nick Brooks (Nov 10), thinning of the ice cap does not prove current warming. Ice generally responds to a temperature change with a considerable time lag; and it certainly is warmer today than 100 years ago thanks to the strong pre-1940 warming (which is of natural origin).
To sum up: The scientific argument is not about whether human-caused climate change is happening, but whether greenhouse warming is large enough to be significant – or even detectable. Many of us have concluded that it is not.
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S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric physicist, is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service
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S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.
President, The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
1600 S. Eads St., Suite 712-S
Arlington, VA 22202-2907
e-mail: singer@sepp.org Web: www.sepp.org
Tel: 703-920-2744
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"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses
to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism
is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."
> Thomas H. Huxley
**********
"If the facts change, I'll change my opinion. What do you do, sir? "
>J. M. Keynes
***********
S. Fred Singer, Ph.D.
President, The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
1600 S. Eads St., Suite 712-S
Arlington, VA 22202-2907
e-mail: singer@sepp.org Web: www.sepp.org
Tel: 703-920-2744
******************************************
"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses
to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism
is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin."
> Thomas H. Huxley
**********
"If the facts change, I'll change my opinion. What do you do, sir? "
>J. M. Keynes
***********
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