Thermageddon Postponed Indefinitely
The latest global temperature reading (June ‘09) has been released by by the Global Hydrology and Climate Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The estimate is based on sensor readings from the Microwave Sounding Unit aboard NASA’s AQUA satellite. AQUA is a spacecraft with on-board propulsion and thus has stable station-keeping (it is not subject to diurnal temperature drifts).
Here is a graph of the 1979 to 2009 troposphere temperature anomalies (variations from the average of 1979 to 1997):
UAH global temperature anomaly 1979 to June 2009. Graph courtesy Watts Up With That [here].
Note that the total global temperature change over the last 30 years is 0.15 degrees C (fifteen one hundredths of a degree Centigrade).
Over the last 30 years the globe has warmed an insignificant amount according to the most exacting and accurate global temperature measurement system known to man.
There has been no significant global warming for the last 30 years.
The Pacific Ocean experienced a strong El Nino in 1998. That oceanic oscillation caused a spike in global temperatures. However, the excess heat was radiated into outer space within a year. The Earth’s atmosphere will only hold so much heat. There is no ceiling on the Earth’s atmosphere. Excess heat is dissipated into the interplanetary void.
The atmospheric addition of a few parts per million of carbon dioxide over the last 30 years has had no appreciable effect on global temperatures. The global is not heating up. There is no looming Thermageddon.
Actions taken by Congress, and indeed by all the governments of the world combined, to limit CO2 are useless. They will not “solve” a non-problem. There is no anthropogenic global warming because there is no warming (and in any case, if there was warming it would be a boon to Life, not a detriment). Those government actions may, however, cripple the world economy and needlessly cause tremendous human suffering worldwide.
If there ever was a time when the human inhabitants of this planet needed to cast off the chains of authoritarian governments gone mad, this is it.
