Energy Secretary Offers Dire Global Warming Prediction – FoxNews.com – By Major Garrett – April 19, 2009
FoxNews.com Excerpt: Caribbean nations face “very, very scary” rises in sea level and intensifying hurricanes, and Florida, Louisiana and even northern California could be overrun with rising water levels due to global warming triggered by carbon-based greenhouse gases, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Saturday. […] Conservative climate change skeptics immediately denounced Chu’s assessment of the threat and potential consequences of global warming. “Secretary Chu still seems to believe that computer model predictions decades or 100 years from now are some sort of ‘evidence’ of a looming climate catastrophe, said Marc Morano, executive editor of ClimateDepot.com and former top aide to global warming critic Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.
“Secretary Chu’s assertions on sea level rise and hurricanes are quite simply being proven wrong by the latest climate data. As the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute reported in December 12, 2008: There is ‘no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise.'” Morano said hurricane activity levels in both hemispheres of the globe are at 30 year lows and hurricane experts like MIT’s Kerry Emanuel and Tom Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “are now backing off their previous dire predictions.” He said Chu is out of date on the science and is promoting unverified and alarming predictions that have already been proven contrary. End Excerpt.
Full Fox News article here:
Sampling of scientific background of the latest sea level and hurricane data:
Sea Level:
‘No evidence for accelerated sea-level rise’ says Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute – December 12, 2008
Excerpt: In an op-ed piece in the December 11 issue of NRC/Handelsblad, Wilco Hazeleger, a senior scientist in the global climate research group at KNMI, writes: “In the past century the sea level has risen twenty centimeters. There is no evidence for accelerated sea-level rise. It is my opinion that there is no need for drastic measures. It is wise to adopt a flexible, step-by-step adaptation strategy. By all means, let us not respond precipitously.”
U.S. Senate Report on Scientists Counter Computer Model Sea Level Rise Fears – September 26, 2007
Excerpt: Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions.
Hurricane/Warming Link:
Florida State University: “Global [both Southern and Northern Hemisphere] Tropical Cyclone Activity [still] lowest in 30-years” – Updated April 17, 2009
Ryan N. Maue – Department of Meteorology – COAPS – Florida State University
Hurricane expert reconsiders global warming’s impact – Houston Chronicle – April 12, 2008
Excerpt: One of the most influential scientists behind the theory that global warming has intensified recent hurricane activity says he will reconsider his stand. The hurricane expert, Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, unveiled a novel technique for predicting future hurricane activity this week. The new work suggests that, even in a dramatically warming world, hurricane frequency and intensity may not substantially rise during the next two centuries.
Another Hurricane Expert Reconsiders Warming/Hurricane Link – Associated Press – May 19, 2008
Global warming isn’t to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject. Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday. In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic.
Related Link:
Excerpt: At the 18:54 mark at the CBC “Climate Wars” podcast here [MP3], John Holdren says this: …if you lose the summer sea ice, there are phenomena that could lead you not so very long thereafter to lose the winter sea ice as well. And if you lose that sea ice year round, it’s going to mean drastic climatic change all over the hemisphere.”
