Your final question first: I’ve been researching climate science since June 2007. For most of the past three years I’ve read about little else, apart from what’s required for my teaching duties. I did what investigative journalists do; I read others’ research. I’m not a climatologist. But, then, neither is Al Gore or a horde of other journalists writing about climate change.

As for your other questions: warming may be “human-amplified,” but that’s it. Humans may be amplifying a warming that is already occurring but to say we are causing warming is absurd. And here is what I consider definitive proof: the planet is not warming right now and hasn’t since the late 1990s. That’s more than a decade of non-warming at a time when (yes, largely human-caused) CO2 has been increasing. If we were the main source of warming, the planet would be warming.

NOAA has an interesting site that allows you to compare temperatures for any range of dates between 1895 and 2010. It’s the temperatures for the U.S., which is considered to have the best temperature data, but the results are probably applicable globally, too. The website URL is http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html.

Put in 1997-2010, “Average” temperature, and what you’ll see is a very definite cooling trend.

As for melting glaciers: we are in an interglacial. During interglacials, by definition, glaciers melt. At worst, we are accelerating this natural interglacial melting by a percentage point or two. This interglacial, according to the IPCC, is expected to last 30,000 years. Whether humans were here or not, the glacial ice would be gone if the planet was warm for that many years and the sea levels would be, say, 50 feet higher. Sea levels were 400 feet lower a mere 15,000 years ago. There is nothing unnatural or human-caused about sea level rises and falls.

I hope this answers your questions. My book, False Alarm, is coming out in May and perhaps it will answer other questions, and raise still more.

Paul

“Indeed, it’s possible (although unlikely) that human-amplified warming, far from tripping the switch, is postponing the return of the glaciers. In that case, we should be grateful for anthropogenic global warming, rather than trying to stop it.”

I don’t believe that “human-amplified” warming is postponing the return of glaciers; rather it is ELIMINATING glaciers. There are evidence that glaciers are receding at a rapid rate and ice shelves breaking off Antarctica. The resulting melted ice-water, doesn’t it also contribute to sea level rising?

Finally, I wanted to ask what evidence you have to say that global warming is false. I’m curious if you’ve conducted your own personal research and records. If it’s based on other people’s research, then how do you know the data is credible? How do you know if these data are not understated, compared to your claim that global warming research data are gravely exaggerated?

This is just a feedback on the article out of curiosity. By no means is this meant to retort with disrespect at you.

I’m not sure what your question is. Higher concentrations of greenhouse gases don’t, as far as I can tell, postpone drops in temperature. Beyond a certain level, greenhouse gases don’t do much at all in determining temperature.

The whole point here is that carbon dioxide, in particular, isn’t as strongly tied to temperature as the greenhouse theory suggests. For example, 50 million years ago, CO2 levels were at least five times today’s levels (so, about 1,500 parts per million or more) and temperatures were 8-10 degrees Celsius higher than today. Yet, despite all that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the planet began to cool, to the point where, today, we are in an ice age, the coldest the planet’s been in 250 million years. If high levels of carbon dioxide kept the planet warm, this cooling wouldn’t have occurred.

The reason for the cooling? Mainly tectonic change–the shifting continents and the resulting mountain formation and changes to ocean and air currents.

Hope this is helpful.

Mr. MacRae makes for a very transparent denier and only reinforces uneducated opinion in the hope of selling a book.

“Weak” would be too kind a word to describe his position.

Regardless of the facts and speculation based upon them, what does ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ have to do with it?

Science should not be about partisan politics. You do a disservice to the facts presented above and turn the debate into something it should not be.

That is a false dichotomy. Going back to the stone age and not doing anything about potential climate change are not the only two available options.

Simply put, doing more research on the topic seams to be the most logical course of action. It would take a lot of hubris on the part of anyone to say that we are 100% certain that man made global warming does not exist, epsecially since the skeptics readily admit there are many factors we don’t understand.