Don’t panic about climate change

What’s Going On?Climate is changing. Temperature and other

climatic variables have gone up and down in the past decades. Over the last century, it is estimated that the surface of the Earth has, on average, warmed by slightly more than a half a degree.

These facts should not surprise anyone. Climate has always changed, and always will.

The concern, however, is that there is something unusual about recent changes-namely that they have been induced by human activities, and that they have the potential to be harmful. Note that they have not been harmful as yet.

So, why shouldn’t you worry?First of all, the case for human beings dominating

recent climate change through emissions of Greenhouse Gases is not quite as strong as some would lead you to believe. We can be certain that we have had an impact, but it is difficult to distinguish from natural noise.

Second, there is abundant evidence that the catastrophic scenarios are in many ways significantly exaggerated,

Third, the impacts of future change would not be universally bad-and again, much of the claimed catastrophe is just exaggeration.

Notice that I use the word exaggeration. I do not contend that the theory of catastrophic AGW is entirely or definitely wrong, just that in many ways it is implausible or less serious than claimed.

Addressing point one“…there is overwhelming evidence that the

planet has warmed during the past century. But could this warming be due to natural dynamics? Given what we know about the complexity, long-term persistence, and non-linearity of the climate system, it seems the answer might be yes.”

Cohn, T. A., and H. F. Lins (2005), Nature’s style: Naturally trendy, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L23402, doi:10.1029/2005GL024476.

This is but one of many papers expressing a similar sentiment

If not us, then what?"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a

nail.” We have measurements of Greenhouse Gases, but not other important variables, so everything in the climate system looks like it was caused by…what we happen to have measurements of.

Alternatively, think of a man who loses his wallet at night, and is found searching for it under the streetlight. Why? Because that’s where there is enough light to see!

But just because we don’t have measurements of small changes in cloud cover that could have caused warming doesn’t mean they didn’t happen

Finally, there are a few theories as to what, other than Greenhouse Gases, could have caused most of the changes we see.

What is the evidence for AGWBefore we get into possible alternative

explanations for at least some of Global Warming, I want to discuss the evidence for a large Greenhouse contribution.

The evidence consists of the following three points, which are not disputed, and a fourth piece of evidence, of dubious significance. There are other lines of “evidence” cited, which will be addressed.

The evidence…CO2 and other Greenhouse gases have increased.Theory tells us that there should be some warming

as a consequence.We have observed warming. (We aren’t crazy!)There is one other point, which is used to promote

alarmist prophecies in particular: Computer models designed to mimic the way we think that climate works can only reproduce the magnitude of observed temperature changes when large anthropogenic factors are included.

But… Well, where to start? The “Natural” effects here consist of solar brightness

changes (mostly inferred and not consistent) and volcanic eruptions-possibly ignoring important solar and other natural effects-like internal variability (This will require explanation, however, for now note that the gray spread represents internal variability well below that suggested by observations) and the Anthropogenic effects could also be erroneous. This is basically curve fitting!

As we shall see later, these same models aren’t so good at matching other observations besides the GMST.

The Anthropogenic effect contains forcing by aerosols, which are a highly uncertain negative forcing (or even positive!), in order to compensate for the fact that models would otherwise over-predict 20th Century warming-you see, according to models, doubling CO2 concentration leads warming of about 3 degrees Celsius (generally, some predict more, others less. Also, note that doubling always leads to the same amount of warming, so the relationship is logarithmic.) and the 20th Century saw an increase in radiative forcing by all GHG’s equivalent to 2/3’s of this forcing already-but only two tenths of the temperature increase!

Why do they do that? Because models assume that nature acts to enhance any external perturbation of climate (positive feedback) rather than dampen it.

The IPCC’s most recent forcing estimates are already proving to be wrong. A recent study found the Black Carbon forcing to be as much as sixty percent that of CO2. Does that look like 60% to you? Its more like 6%, or one tenth the new estimates.Ramanathan, V., G. Carmichael, 2008. Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon. Nature Geoscience 1, 221-227 doi:10.1038/ngeo156

IPCC soot forcing~6% that of CO2

The Solar FactorRemember that climate is determined by incoming

sunlight and outgoing infrared radiation. Increasing the former should have the same effect as decreasing the latter (presumably warming).

We know that solar brightness changes, while well correlated with climate, are too small to have been the main cause of the temperature increases.

But there are mechanisms whereby solar could be amplified. In particular, Cosmic Rays have been shown to be correlated with Low Altitude Cloud Cover (so, anti-correlated with solar magnetism)

The “Svensmark Effect”Henrik Svensmark et al.

have proposed that cosmic rays, linked to cloud cover, can change the Earth’s reflectance, and thus climate.

There seems to be strong support for Cosmic Rays being linked to climate on all timescales, even independently of solar activity, suggesting this mechanism is the best explanation.

Estimates of the magnitude give values around ½ to 2/3’s of observed Global Warming

N. Shaviv & J. Veizer, "A Celestial driver of Phanerozoic Climate?", GSA Today 13, No. 7, 4, 2003

The last 500 million years show a good agreement between Cosmic Rays and climate, but none whatsoever with CO2!

Neff, U., Burns, S. J., Mangini, A., Mudelsee, M., Fleitmann, D. and Matter, A., 2001, Strong coherence between solar variability and the monsoon in Oman between 9 and 6 kyr ago: Nature, v. 411, p. 290-293.

Modified from Scafetta, N., and B. J. West (2007), Phenomenological reconstructions of the solar signature in the Northern Hemisphere surface temperature records since 1600, J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S03, doi:10.1029/2007JD008437. Includes measurements from the Lower Troposphere, uncontaminated by heat island and land use effects.

What else?It is unreasonable to expect there to be zero

change in the absence of external forcing. Models can’t produce the magnitude of inter-annual changes observed, which presumably results from internal oscillations-El Niños and other ocean/atmosphere circulation phenomenon appear to be the main reasons (and these are poorly simulated, if present at all in models!)

So, if we allow “internal variability” as a range whose magnitude reflects the largest change in a single year subtracted from and added to the base line, we should find the potential contribution of internal variability.

A simple climate model created by Roy Spencer shows how, if changes in just two ocean circulation patterns result in long term changes in cloud cover, they would lead to a pattern of warming and cooling similar to that observed (and account for most of the warming). The modes considered here, ENSO and its big brother the PDO, were studied by the IPCC and found to be natural oscillations. Similar work was also done by:Tsonis. A.A., K. Swanson, and S. Kravtsov, 2007: A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts. Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L13705, doi:10.129/2007GL030288.

Are the data reliable? Several papers have criticized the surface temperature measurements as having a

detectable warming bias due to urbanization, poor citing, improper adjustments, etc. de Laat, A.T.J., and A.N. Maurellis, 2004. Industrial CO2 emissions as a proxy for

anthropogenic influence on lower tropospheric temperature trends. Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L05204, doi:10.1029/2003GL019024.

de Laat, A.T.J., and A.N. Maurellis, 2006. Evidence for influence of anthropogenic surface processes on lower tropospheric and surface temperature trends, International Journal of Climatology, 26, 897–913.

McKitrick, R., and P.J. Michaels, 2004. A test of corrections for extraneous signals in gridded surface temperature data. Climate Research, 26, 159-173.

McKitrick, R. R., and P. J. Michaels, 2007. Quantifying the influence of anthropogenic surface processes inhomogeneities on gridded global climate data. Journal of Geophysical Research, 112, D24S09, doi:10.1029/2007JD008465.

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, S. Foster, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res., 112, D24S08, doi:10.1029/2006JD008229.

Singer S. F. 2005. Are sea surface temperature (SST) trends real. Abstract for the AGU Joint Assembly, May 25, 2005, New Orleans LA.This is a complex issue, but it is clear that data sets which are used to study AGW are far from perfect.

Other “evidence”For instance, it is claimed that CO2 changes in the

past have been correlated with “dramatic” temperature changes. Leaving aside that this is definitely not true of the Phanerozoic, correlations found in ice cores, when looked at with higher resolutions, imply that the cause and effect relationship goes the other way around-and the initial temperature increase must have been caused by something else entirely-so why not most of the change?

Temperatures are supposedly “unprecedented” in the last thousand years. Some studies suggest this, but they tend to be based off of suspect statistical methods and an overemphasis on dubious proxies-like tree rings, which respond to things other than temperature.

How unusual really?One study claimed to find

lower temperature variability than had previously been thought.

However, the statistical basis for this study was challenged.

The original authors still insist they did not error in there analysis, but it is well understood by now that the criticisms were spot on.

For an overview see:http://www.uoguelph.ca/~r

mckitri/research/trc.htmlBy now, this story is well

known enough that I don’t need to go in depth, I hope.

Hockey Stick

Not so unusual Literature reviews of single proxy studies

tend to find a great deal of variability. Soon, W. and Baliunas, S., 2003, Proxy

climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years: Climate Res., v. 23, p. 89-110.

Soon, W., Baliunas, S., Idso, C., Idso, S., Legates, D.R., 2003, Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal: Energy & Environment, Vol. 14, Issue 2 & 3, pp. 233-296

See also co2science.org’s Medieval Warm Period Project

Different Multi-proxy methods lead to greater variation.

Esper, J., E.R. Cook, and F.H. Schweingruber, 2002. Low frequency signals in long tree-ring chronologies for reconstructing past temperature variability, Science, 295, 2250-2253.

Moberg, A., et al., 2005. Highly variable Northern Hemisphere temperatures reconstructed from low- and high-resolution proxy data. Nature, 433, 613-617.

Not Unusual at all The results of these studies make

it more likely that climate change is mostly a 1500 year DO cycle (Singer and Avery).

By excluding tree rings altogether and only using pre-calibrated temperature proxies, present temperatures about the same as or slightly lower than peak MWP temperatures are seen.

Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 18, 1049-1058.

Loehle, C. and J.H. McCulloch. 2008. Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 19, 93-100.

Its all about perspectiveWarming and cooling recur-

there seems to be a 1500 year periodicity, to

We know for certain Greenland was warmer during the MWP than the present (heck, it was warmer in the 1930’s than the present) because of the farming done there by the Vikings as well as ice core evidence.

China used to grow OrangesBritain had a thriving wine

industryEvery thing that should be

destroyed by AGW survived past warmings. Go figure.

Vostok ice core data for changes in temperature (in units of 0.1 K), carbon dioxide atmospheric concentration (in ppmv), and dust aerosols (in arbitrary units normalized to value of one for an average Holocene concentration), and relative changes in summer solar insulation (in W/m2) at the latitude of 65°N (dashed line). A solid thick black line shows a five point running average of dust aerosol concentration.Clearly the situation is more complicated than implied by just the CO2 temperature correlation.

Observations versus the ModelsGreenhouse theory makes certain predictions-significant

warming by GHG’s is almost always characterized in the following ways

More warming when it is coldest (winters, nights)-observedStratospheric Cooling- Observed, but also caused by Ozone

depletion.More warming where it is coldest and driest-Not Observed-

Antarctica has cooled recently (Ozone Hole?) and the Arctic is about as warm as it was in the 1930’s, in spite of rapid warming in the last thirty years. Warming fits a pattern of industrialization (greatest in the NH mid latitudes) that indicates either a spurious warming of the thermometers, a strong warming effect of aerosols (black carbon soot), or some other mechanism

More (faster) warming in the atmosphere than at the surface (especially the tropics)-Observations show the opposite, and even slight cooling in certain parts of the tropical troposphere

Observations versus the Models

The US Climate Change Science Program tried to address the issue of tropical trends, and their figures showed the obvious glaring inconsistency (Above, figure 1.3F from CCSP 2006, p.25 and figure 5.7E from CCSP 2006, p.116) but bizarrely downplayed it-the logical conclusion is that the models are overestimating Greenhouse Warming-that, or the data are wrong, which grows more unlikely as they come under greater and greater scrutiny.

Observations versus the Models“the models that show best agreement with

the observations are those that have the lowest (and probably unrealistic) amounts of warming” (CCSP, p. 11)

Is anyone else bothered by the bracketed statement? Should not realism be defined by closeness to reality?

Observations versus the Models“On the whole, the

evidence indicates that model trends in the troposphere are very likely inconsistent with observations that indicate that, since 1979, there is no significant long-term amplification factor relative to the surface. If these results continue to be supported, then future projections of temperature change, as depicted in the present suite of climate models, are likely too high.”

Douglass, D.H., J.R. Christy, B.D. Pearson, and S.F. Singer. 2007. A comparison of tropical temperature trends with model predictions. International Journal of Climatology, DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651.

Observations versus the Models

Climate models do a fair job of getting mean and especially minimum temperature trends, but their performance is less impressive with maximum temperatures, and change in the Diurnal Temperature Range.Braganza, K., D.J. Karoly, and J.M. Arblaster, 2004, Diurnal temperature range as an index of global climate change during the twentieth century, Geophysical Research Letters, 31, L13217, doi:10.1029/2004GL019998, 2004.

Observations versus the Models

Models predict that the Sierras should warm faster than the valley in California.Observations show the opposite.Christy, J.R., W.B. Norris, K. Redmond and K. Gallo, 2006: Methodology and results of calculating central California surface temperature trends: Evidence of human-induced climate change? J. Climate, 19, 548-563.

Observations versus the ModelsMean Surface Temperature Trend °C/decade, Southeast USA 1899-2003

No models have replicated observed cooling in Southeast USJohn Christy, Personal Communication

Observations versus the Models

http://people.iarc.uaf.edu/~sakasofu/pdf/Earth_recovering_from_LIA_R.pdf

Climate SensitivityThis is the main issue-do models overestimate the

effect of doubling CO2, thus exaggerating the “problem”? I believe so. I believe that exaggerated sensitivities (2 to 6 degrees C for 2xCO2) result from neglecting important dampening processes-negative feedbacks in the climate system-while including unproven positive feedbacks.

My own best estimate at this point would be .6 degrees C for 2xCO2

See supporting material: http://timetochooseagain.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/update-climate-sensitivity-and-models/

First, however, I want to deal with the basic theory.

Scientists do agree on the basic theory that CO2 can cause some warming. The GHE is real, and CO2 increasing leads to radiative imbalance, which, in theory, changes the temperature.

But How Much?If the Earth were a perfect emitter and

absorber of radiation (blackbody) a unit change the radiative flux reaching a unit area on Earth would result in .21 degrees Celsius of warming, or about .8 degrees per CO2 doubling.

The supporting calculations follow

In equilibrium, each unit area facing the sun receives a total radiative flux of

Thus, the total radiation absorbed by Earth is

which is the flux times the cross-section of the surface pointing to the sun. The total radiated flux is:

which is the total surface area of Earth times the flux emitted per unit surface area. σ is the Stephan-Boltzmann constant. In equilibrium, the total absorbed flux equals the radiation emitted, hence,

We can now obtain the climate sensitivity, if we differentiate the black body equilibrium temperature of Earth:

But…The Earth is not a blackbody, but more of a gray-

body. Taking the Earth’s albedo into account, the sensitivity becomes .3 degrees C, or 1.1 degrees C for doubling CO2

This neglects the possible effect of feedbacks-for example, a warmer world would have more evaporation and theoretically more water vapor in the atmosphere-water vapor is a greenhouse gas, therefore that would be a positive feedback. However, there are also expected to be cloud feedbacks, which could be strongly negative.

Models almost all say more warming from clouds-but models aren’t very good at replicating observed cloud behavior-in fact, clouds are one of the single largest sources of uncertainty in predicting Global Warming.

Individual model's hindcast of cloud cover averaged by latitude as well as observed distribution (black).Gates, W. L., J. Boyle, C. Covey, C. Dease, C. Doutriaux, R. Drach, M. Fiorino, P. Gleckler, J. Hnilo, S. Marlais, T. Phillips, G. Potter, B.D. Santer, K.R. Sperber, K. Taylor and D. Williams, 1999: An overview of the Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project (AMIP). Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 80, 29-55.

More on Clouds In 2001, Richard Lindzen of MIT

proposed the controversial idea that the Earth had a powerful stabilizing negative cirrus cloud feedback, called the “Iris Effect”. It was soon disparaged as being based on inadequate evidence.

Lindzen, R.S., et al., 2001. Does the Earth have an adaptive infrared iris? Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 82, 417-432.

In 2007, however, Roy Spencer and fellow investigators, while examining cloud interactions during Tropical Intraseasonal Oscillations, found strong evidence for the Iris Effect.

Spencer, R.W., Braswell, W.D., Christy, J.R., Hnilo, J., 2007. Cloud and radiation budget changes associated with tropical intraseasonal oscillations. Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L15707, doi:10.1029/2007/GL029698.

“Essentially, the … infrared adaptive iris … opens up and closes down the regionsfree of upper-level [ice] clouds, which more effectively permit infrared cooling, in such a manner as to resist changes in … surface temperature.” ~ Lindzen 2001

"To give an idea of how strong this enhanced cooling mechanism is, if it was operating on global warming, it would reduce estimates of future warming by over 75 percent,“ ~ Roy Spencer, 2007

But wait, there’s more! Spencer and his colleague Danny Braswell decided to investigate a problem

that had been bugging them-modelers claim to see evidence of positive cloud feedbacks when they looked at higher time scales-but how do they know that they aren’t getting cause and effect mixed up?

Spencer, R.W., and W.D. Braswell, 2008: Potential biases in cloud feedback diagnosis: A simple model demonstration. J. Climate, in press.

Spencer and Braswell found that previous estimates of cloud feedback are potentially significantly biased in the positive direction.

“The two reviewers of the manuscript (rather uncharacteristically) signed their names to their reviews. To my surprise, both of them (Isaac Held and Piers Forster) agreed that we had raised a legitimate issue. While both reviewers suggested changes in the (conditionally accepted) manuscript, they even took the time to develop their own simple models to demonstrate the effect to themselves.”

“Of special note is the intellectual honesty shown by Piers Forster. Our paper directly challenges an assumption made by Forster in his 2005 J. Climate paper, which provided a nice theoretical treatment of feedback diagnosis from observational data. Forster admitted in his review that they had erred in this part of their analysis, and encouraged us to get the paper published so that others could be made aware of the issue, too.”

They agree with him that the previous estimates are biased-it’s a consensus!

OutlookAccording most models,

once warming starts under a midrange emissions scenario, it continues at constant rate.

Well, that is precisely what has happened so far. But if we extrapolate the observations out, they wind up at the low end of the model predictions! The low end predictions are associated with low end impacts, or even net benefits.

Media

Possible

Likely

Satellite Lower Troposphere Temperature Anomalies,January 1998 to January 2009

Very slight cooling trend over this period, which starts with an El Nino and ends with a La Nina. I’m not sure that this really portends anything, but I don’t think

anyone is capable of predicting even the sign of future trends with anywhere near the certainty needed for policy.

Many scientists believe that heat content changes in the oceans are the metric to measure global warming. But since 2003, there has been no accumulation of heat in the oceans at all!Pielke Sr., R.A., 2003: Heat storage within the Earth system. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 84, 331-335.Pielke Sr., R.A., 2008: A broader view of the role of humans in the climate system. Physics Today, 61, Vol. 11, 54-55.

ImpactsSea level rise

estimates have been continually lowered by the IPCC-a few “contrarian” Alarmists give high estimates, but its quite clear that rational analysis has prevailed-a modest rise is to be expected, not accelerating catastrophe

NIPCC SPM, figure 19

ImpactsHurricane connections are dubious at best.

However, this issue is too complicated to treat in depth. So I’ll just put forth one point-if climate projections are realistic and if some of the suggested links are real, most increase in damages would come from continuing overdevelopment of the coasts.

Even if the Hurricane-Climate connections are all wrong, or even backwards, we’d still expect damages to increase unless coastal development is stopped. Of course, ultimately its up to people whether they want to continue build on the coasts or not.

ImpactsPolar Bears have been doing fine-every species

around on the planet today has a Climate Change coping strategy-if they didn’t, they’d be extinct.

Warming occurs when it is coldest as well as where-so especially taking into account the fact that cold kills more than heat, Warming should reduce deaths due to temperature extremes. Anyway, we know, empirically, that people adapt to the heat.

We would get longer growing seasons from mild warming.

Extreme Events?It is often claimed that warming is resulting

in more “extreme” weather events. There is no evidence of this-indeed, there is an abundance of evidence to the contrary.

Most (though not all) data on extremes I will present comes from the US. However, where the data are available, trends are similar all over.

China: Less Hail

Mean Annual Hail Days variations and trends, respectively, in the whole of China, south of China, and north of China during 1960–2005Xie, B., Q. Zhang, and Y. Wang (2008), Trends in hail in China during 1960–2005, Geophysical Research Letters, 35, L13801, doi:10.1029/2008GL034067.

US: No Change in Snow Storms

The frequency of severe snow storms (> $35 million in losses; year 2000 dollars, thick line) and the amount of losses (dashed line) for 4-year periods during 1949-2000.Changnon, S.A. and D. Changnon. 2006. A spatial and temporal analysis of damaging snowstorms in the United States. Natural Hazards, 37, 373-389.

US: Decreasing strong Tornadoes

US: Extreme precipitation

The observed exceedances of 1-year, 5-year, and 20-year recurrence intervals of 1-day precipitation across co-op observing stations in the United States. The more positive the Extreme Precipitation Index anomaly, the greater the incidences of extreme daily precipitation. The beginning and end of the record are not significantly different.

US: Heat waves, Cold waves

Heat Waves were very common in the US in the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, but there is littleTrend more recently, during the time of “unprecedented” warming.Cold Waves show variability, but no significant trend.

US: Records

Extreme temperature records, High and low, in the states, show no recent upward trends, especially relative to the past. Data are not biased toward earlier records, as a tie goes to the recent record. See:http://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2009/01/where-is-global-warming-extreme_19.htmlhttp://hallofrecord.blogspot.com/2009/01/do-extreme-records-favor-earlier-events.html

Europe: Stormy-ness

“North-Western European storminess starts at rather high levels in the 1880s, decreases below average conditions around 1930 and remains declining till the1960s. From then until the mid 1990s a pronounced rise occurs and values similar to those of the early century are reached. Since the mid 1990s storminess is around average or below. This picture—a decline that lasts several decades followed by an increase from the 1960s to the 1990s and a return to calm conditions recently, is to be found for the North European triangle as well. The increase, however, is far less pronounced. Central Europe features high-level storminess peaking around the turn from the nineteenth to the twentieth century which is followed by a rapid decrease. Since then a gradual increase prevails until the 1990s and most recent values show a return to average or calm conditions.”Matulla, C., W. Schöner, H. Alexandersson, H. von Storch, and X. L. Wang. 2007. European storminess: late nineteenth century to present. Climate Dynamics, DOI 10.1007/s00382-007-0333-y.In other words, storminess has not increased with warming!

World: Deaths

Models: Can’t make up there minds

Pick your model-will the Dakotas become a swamp or a desert? The truth is that models usual don’t predict more extreme events, but the substantial uncertainty in them allows advocates to claim that they do. But theory says that greenhouse warming will decrease the Equator-Pole temperature gradient, so extra-tropical storms, for instance, should decrease in strength and frequency.

Malaria (other Tropical diseases)? There is a widespread misconception that mosquito-borne diseases require

tropical temperatures, or at least the temperatures of the warmer temperate regions.

Few people are aware that it is less than forty years since the final eradication of malaria in Europe and the United States. Indeed, the disease was common in the period from the 16th to 18th centuries that climatologists term the Little Ice Age, and data from burial records around the Thames estuary reveal that mortality in "marsh parishes" of England was comparable to that in areas of transmission in sub-Saharan Africa today

In the 1880s, it was widespread in nearly all states east of the Rocky Mountains, from the semitropical Gulf Coast states to the northern border and into Canada. It was also present west of the Rocky Mountains, particularly in areas where rainfall is abundant. As living conditions improved, and anti-malarial drugs became more widely available, the incidence of the disease declined.

Simplistic reasoning on the future prevalence of malaria is ill-founded; malaria is not limited by climate in most temperate regions, nor in the tropics, and in nearly all cases, "new" malaria at high altitudes is well below the maximum altitudinal limits for transmission. Future changes in climate may alter the prevalence and incidence of the disease, but obsessive emphasis on "global warming" as a dominant parameter is indefensible

Global warming and malaria: knowing the horse before hitching the cart: http://www.malariajournal.com/content/7/S1/S3

Do something?Net Effect of 10% CO2 emission reduction to A1B Scenario(~1000 Nuclear Plants by 2020)

Yes, you read that correctly. In order to meet growing energy demand and reduce emissions by 10% (.07 degrees less warming by 2050, according to models) you would need to build A Thousand 1.4 gigawatt Nuclear power plants by 2020. John McCain (R) recently campaigned with the plan of building 45. (John Christy, personal comm.)

Finally, I offer you a choiceThe fact is, the world needs

energy, and barring a technological miracle, it needs to get it from fossil fuels-particularly the developing world. Activists say the Third World will be hit hardest-and yet simultaneously want to hold them back keeping them in their vulnerable state.

So, you pick-we can try to “do something” to “stop” climate change, which, if it is to be meaningful, requires keeping the Third World in poverty-or you can spend your cash on something really important

The DDT ban was a death sentence to millions. Radical Greens don’t care if the hurt the poor-the environment is worth it. But what are your priorities? Paul Driessen wrote a book exposing how environmentalists have hurt the Third World.