SOS Forests

George Taylor on Climate Change

Taylor speaks about warming

by Alex Paul, Albany Democrat-Herald, February 9, 2010 [here]

Like a fluctuating stock market, climate change is cyclical and should be looked at over the long-term, not just a few decades at a time, George Taylor president of Applied Climate Services, said this morning at the ninth annual Ag Appreciation Breakfast sponsored by the Albany Area Chamber of Commerce.

Taylor was state climatologist for 19 years before resigning after clashing with Gov. Ted Kulongoski about climate change issues.

“I believe in data. I trust data,” Taylor said at the Linn County Fair & Expo Center. “There are those who believe climate change can be predicted through modeling. I don’t.”

Taylor said environmental extremists like former vice-president Al Gore use specific time periods to try to convince the public that humans play a major role in climate change. Taylor believes human activities have a minor role in global warming.

“Alarmists are cherry picking,” Taylor said. “They pick their starting and ending dates to help make their point.”

For example, Taylor said alarmists say the Earth has warmed rapidly in recent years, but scientific data indicates otherwise. Over the last 100 years, Oregon was warmest in the 1930s, not 2007. Bend’s warmest year was 1934. Corvallis was warmest in 1939, with 1934 as the second warmest year.

Alarmists say the oceans are rising. Taylor said sea level has risen by 400 feet, but most of that increase happened before 6,000 years ago and was caused by the tailing off of the ice age.

“In the last 100 years, sea level has risen about 6 to 8 inches,” Taylor said. “On average, it is rising about 1 foot every 100 years.”

Al Gore predicts sea levels will rise more than 50 feet in the next 40 years, Taylor said.

Alarmists say the Arctic ice cap is melting, but Taylor said sea ice is increasing in Antarctica. They also say that as carbon dioxide emissions increase, temperatures go up, but data indicates it’s just the opposite. First comes temperature change, then carbon dioxide increases.

Taylor said for many years he was attacked by those who oppose his views about climate change, but that mood is changing, especially after e-mails indicating environmental extremists fudged data to help support their claims were made public.

“Thousands of scientists have begun to step forward and agree with me on this issue,” Taylor said.

Switching from carbon-based fuels to renewable sources based on incorrect global warming assumptions “will have huge costs,” Taylor said.

“There is so much we don’t know,” he said. “I have so many more questions today than when I started 40 years ago.”

Taylor said he likes to visit the following climate-oriented websites: http://www.icecap.us and http://www.co2science.org.

“I don’t think human-caused global warming is a big deal,” Taylor concluded. “But I do reserve the right to change my mind if the facts change.”