[June 07, 2009] EDITORIAL: Cool it on warming Tweet Jun 07, 2009 (Boston Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- New analyses of satellite data could mean that the scenario of a global warming disaster without large reductions in emissions of earth-warming gases could be about to shrink like a cheap suit in the rain. Fourteen months ago we called attention to data from NASA's Aqua satellites suggesting that clouds act to dampen the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions, not amplify them as specified in all 20 computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- the orthodox church of global warming belief. This work and a re-examination of older data from NASA's Earth Radiation Budget Experiment satellites provide estimates of a crucial parameter -- how much Earth will warm on average if the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration doubles by 2100. The IPCC estimated this warming as anywhere from 2.7 degrees to 9 degrees. The new analyses put it at about 0.9 degrees -- meaning roughly that global warming is at most one-third the problem the alarmists claim and most probably less. The two approaches were described in Washington last week at the Third International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank. Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, drawing on his work and that of four other groups, derived the 0.9 degree figure from the fact that the ERBE satellites found far more infrared radiation escaping to space. Professor Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, in charge of the Aqua experiments, believes that the models confuse cause and effect -- that cloud variations cause warming or cooling. Global warming fundamentalists have largely ignored this work, but it should make clear that costly -- and economy-dampening -- emissions reductions are quite unjustified. To see more of the Boston Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bostonherald.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Boston Herald Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]