Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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335 of 382 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
1,500 year cycle spikes anthropogenic global warming, December 20, 2006
Singer and Avery have put together an amazing summary of research from an extremely wide variety of sources that bear on the question of the Earth's temperature variations. They pay particular attention to the 1,500 year (+/- 500) cycle discovered by Willi Dansgaard, Hans Oeschger, (in Greenland ice cores) and the Claude Lorius team (in Antarctic ice cores).
Since the 1,500 year cycle was discovered in the early 1980's it's general characteristics have been confirmed by measurements in: tree rings (living, preserved and fossilized), pollen, coral, glaciers, boreholes, stalagmites, tree lines, and sea sediments. The most recent cycles have been recorded in human history with forced migrations, starvation, and disease during the cold portion of the cycle and greater population, expanded farm land, greater crop variety, and extra building during the warm portion.
The causes of the 1,500 year cycle are not well understood although 600 of them have been identified in the last million years. This permits us to be relatively confident that we have been moving into the warm phase of the cycle for the last 150 years. It also suggests that we may have one or two degrees more warming if we are to get to the typical high of the warm phase.
Although the warm phase of the cycle has been typically more regular than the cold phase, it does not move steadily to a peak and then fall off, but rather moves abruptly higher at the start of the warm phase followed by highly irregular (but modestly higher) temperatures for hundreds of years.
The range of evidence the authors bring in to characterizes the 1,500 year cycle is stunning and their end-of-chapter notes (over 500) make this book the obvious starting point to study the whole issue of global warming / cooling. They have also included a well written 11 page glossary.
The chapter on "The Sun-Climate Connection" was probably written before the publication of Hendrik Svensmark and team's experimental paper on low level cloud formation "Experimental evidence for the role of ions in particle nucleation under atmospheric conditions" (17 August 2006). Although they cite his previous work this latest paper adds experimental verification under controlled laboratory conditions for the solar winds participation in the formation of low level (high albedo) clouds. Once again carbon dioxide was conspicuous as a non-participant.
The authors include a chapter on the Kyoto Protocol and to no ones surprise predict it's unlamented expiration in 2012. They also offer a scenario for why the Russians adopted the Protocol in spite of knowing that it is environmentally worthless.
Those who have adopted the religion of anthropogenic global warming will not like the material presented in this summary, however science does march on and experimental evidence overrules hypotheses even if embodied in expensive computer simulations.
Everyone interested in global temperature trends will be well rewarded by reading this book.
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107 of 124 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's the Sun., January 7, 2007
Authors make the case:
1. Global warming is real.
2. Global warming is mild, not severe, as the "climate alarmists" claim. The major points for the "Man-made Warming activists" are based on Computer modeling results and surface temperature measurements. The temperature measurement problem is challenged in chapter 9 and 11, and alternative long-term temperature theories are presented in Chapter 9, from proxies such as ice cores, tree rings, seabed sediment deposits, et al. The Computer Modeling problem is challenged in Chapter 11.
3. Global warming is slow, not rapid, as the "climate alarmists" claim. Trend is up by 0.125 degrees C per decade. (Pg. 11)
4. Global warming is not primarily caused by CO2. (Both the "Roman Warming" of 200BC - 600AD and the "Medieval Warming" of 900AD - 1300AD were warmer than the current "Modern Warming" of 1850AD to present. Since "about 80% of the carbon dioxide from human activities entered the air after 1940". Therefore, those earlier warming periods were NOT caused by burning fossil fuels and thus not related to increased CO2 levels. The Greenhouse Theory of man-induced high CO2 levels as the cause of the Modern Warming is thereby shown to be most unlikely.
5. Global warming periods (and global cooling periods) are primarily caused by energy out-put changes from the local star. (The major problem with this theory is that humans know incredibly little about the long-term variations in solar properties.) One scientist "reported that the sun's radiation has increased by nearly 0.05 percent per decade since the late 1970's." He has "used data from three different NASA ACRIM satellites monitoring the sun to assemble a twenty-five year record of total solar radiation from 1978 to 2003. The trend is significant because the total energy output is so huge. A variation of 0.05 percent in its output is equal to all human energy use." (pg. 192)
6. The solar heat radiance fluctuations are extremely small, 0.1% over 20 years, but this small variance is amplified by earths' atmosphere. This amplification process is "by at least two factors: (1) cosmic rays creating more or fewer of the low, cooling clouds in the earth's atmosphere; and (2) solar-driven ozone changes in the stratosphere creating more or less heating of the lower atmosphere." Pg. 192.
7. The solar heat fluctuations are cyclic, and are corresponding to a 1470 year climate cycle. This cycle is apparently related to the known sun-spot cycles of 87 and 210 years respectively.
8. The 1470 year climate cycle is verified by historical evidence, and by scientific evidence such as ice cores, tree rings, seabed sediment deposits, et al.
The positive aspects of this book are:
1. Many scientists and scientific organizations and their works are quoted and referenced. The Chapter Endnotes total 524.
2. The history is interesting.
3. The authors are scientists not journalists, per se.
4. The writing is clear, and the main points are easy to grasp.
5. There are no cheap-shots or name-calling toward persons or groups that are in the so-called "climate alarmists" camp. There are only a few minor rhetorical swipes that, in my view, are warranted.
The negative aspects are:
1. Too much ground to cover. (Although I could say this was a positive, since its sometimes limited explanations allowed good readability.)
2. Too little direct evidence of the solar-influence-on-climate theory, but that evidence may not be available until after hundreds or thousands of years of sun-study.
Overall: Highly recommended.
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89 of 107 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review - Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1500 Years, March 2, 2007
Book Review - "Unstoppable Global Warming--Every 1500 Years."
The authors are S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. Singer, a veteran climatologist and author of numerous books, monographs and technical papers, is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia and also serves as Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University.
Among many other accomplishments, he was the first director of the US National Weather Satellite Service. Avery is a senior research fellow at the Hudson Institute (a conservative think tank)and has written on environmental matters for many years.
Singer and Avery accomplish two objectives in this book. First, they explain a new theory of climate change, originated by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark (his book "The Chilling Stars" is also highly recommended). This theory proposes that the earth's temperature is strongly influenced by small, recurring changes in solar intensity. These periodic changes, in conjunction with cosmic ray activity, cause variability in the earth's cloud coverage, an important factor in determining average temperature.
Second, and equally important, the authors shatter the claims of the global warming alarmists by systematically disproving every extreme claim, including rapidly rising sea levels, devastating drought, species extinction, increased incidence of disease, the "tipping point" argument--you name it. In addition to demonstrating that there is no scientific "consensus" on climate change (as if that were even important) the book also exposes the disgusting dishonesty of the environmentalists, politicians, and business leaders who are using global warming hysteria to gain power.
The book's greatest virtue is its authors' use of concrete evidence. Singer and Avery cite over 100 scientific papers, pointing out that they excluded hundreds of others due to lack of space. These references cite physical evidence found in polar ice cores, sea sediment from all the oceans, fossilized plankton and pollen, tree rings, cave stalagmites, and even the tooth enamel of dead Vikings. All the evidence points to a definite temperature cycle of approximately 1500 years. Within these cycles, there are many temperature variations, more extreme than the current modest warming, that obviously have nothing to do with industrial carbon dioxide. The authors even cite strong evidence that we may be on the verge of another multi-decade cooling cycle.
Read "Unstoppable Global Warming" if you are interested in the science and politics of climate change.
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