World May Not Be Warming, Says Scientists

According to U.N.'s climate panel IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), "global warming" is "unequivocal".

Britain's Times Online tells us part of what kind of science has been behind the global warming: thousands of weather stations around the globe, monitoring the temperature change over the past 150 years.

You would think that's the solid, scientific data that you can't dispute. Far from it, it turns out.

World may not be warming, say scientists
(Jonathan Leake, Times Online 2/14/2010)

"The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

"In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

"It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

"“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.

"The doubts of Christy and a number of other researchers focus on the thousands of weather stations around the world, which have been used to collect temperature data over the past 150 years.

"These stations, they believe, have been seriously compromised by factors such as urbanisation, changes in land use and, in many cases, being moved from site to site. " [The article continues.]

Good, now even the scientists are talking about "urban heat island", which has been dismissed as urban myth, or worse, crackpot pseudo-science.

The article mentions different ways the weather stations could have distorted the number:

• weather stations sitting right next to air conditioning units
• weather stations on waste treatment plants
• weather station at Rome airport, catching jet exhaust fumes
• weather station next to an incinerator
• weather station surrounded by heat-generating buildings

What kind of science behind global warming? Is it a science?

By the way, if you are still worried about Himalayan glaciers melting away by 2035, as IPCC told you in 2007, rest assured. It was a typo that no one at IPCC caught. The person at IPCC who copied the original study must be dyslexic. It was 2350, not 2035. Duh.

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