The south west of WA is drying up - climate change everywhere

Old Man Col should we listen to the Government reports that put N.T intervention into place?Or do we pick and choose the one's we like you can't have it both ways Col LOL

Col I am in Melbourne and this summer was cold where do you live that you thought it was hotter than years gone by?I feel colder any one else feel the same way?

Maybe you are getting old Col

Takver good to hear from you again,I thought you had see the light and dropped your Alarmist rubbish that has been going on for years. (and we are all still here) Over the last century major media have predicted an impending global climate crisis 4 different times warning that entire countries would be wiped out or that lower crop yields would mean "billions will die." In 1895 the panic was over an ice age occuring, in the late 1920s when the earth’s surface warmed less than half a degree the media jumped on a new threat global warming, which continued into the late 1950s. Then in 1975, the New York Times' headline blared, "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable." Then in 1981 it was back to global warming, with the Times quoting seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an "almost unprecedented magnitude."

Some 1855 to 1980 New York Times reports of changing climate

March 27th, 2007 by Warwick Hughes
Some perspective on media reporting of complaints that the climate is not perfect, assembled by John Shotsky.

January 5, 1855, Wednesday

As the climate of every country has an inseparable relation with the physical character of its inhabitants, the attention of the Government was directed, some few years since, to the collection of correct meteorological statistics throughout the whole of the United States.
THIS CLIMATE OF OURS; WHY THESE OPEN WINTERS AND TEMPERATE SUMMERS? THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ALTERNATE PREVALENCE OF A SEMITROPICAL ATMOSPHERE.

June 23, 1890, Wednesday

Is our climate changing? The succession of temperate Summers and open Winters through several years, culminating last Winter in the almost total failure of the ice crop throughout the valley of the Hudson, makes the question pertinent. The older inhabitants tell us that the Winters are not as cold now as when they were young, and we have all observed a marked diminution of the average cold even in this last decade.
Warming Arctic Climate Melting Glaciers Faster, Raising Ocean Level, Scientist Says

May 30, 1947, Friday

By GLADWIN HILLSpecial to THE NEW YORK TIMES.

LOS ANGELES, May 29 — A mysterious warming of the climate is slowly manifesting itself in the Arctic, engendering a “serious international problem,” Dr. Hans Ahlmann, noted Swedish geophysicist, said today.
A WARMER EARTH EVIDENT AT POLES; Arctic Findings in Particular Support Theory of Rising Global Temperatures

February 15, 1959, Sunday

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — The theory that the world is growing slightly warmer is receiving added confirmation from temperature data.
A WARMER EARTH EVIDENT AT POLES; Arctic Findings in Particular Support Theory of Rising Global Temperatures

February 15, 1959, Sunday

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — The theory that the world is growing slightly warmer is receiving added confirmation from temperature data
EARTH’S WEATHER GROWING COLDER; U.S. Among the Exceptions, Rome Symposium Hears

October 8, 1961, Sunday

ROME, Oct. 7 — The earth, with few regional exceptions, is undergoing “a persistent cold wave” that began in the Nineteen Forties, a United States weather man told a symposium on climate this week.
Weathermen Try to Explain the Why of Spring That Never Was in 1967

May 31, 1967, Wednesday

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

In the year 1816 the year without summer, they called it snow fell in New England and parts of New York in June, July and August. Crops failed. People were impoverished and mystified.
Expert Says Arctic Ocean Will Soon Be an Open Sea; Catastrophic Shifts in Climate Feared if Change Occurs Other Specialists See No Thinning of Polar Ice Cap

February 20, 1969, Thursday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

Col. Bernt Balchen, polar explorer and flier, is circulating a paper among polar specialists proposing that the Arctic pack ice is thinning and that the ocean at the North Pole may become an open sea within a decade or two.
U.S. and Soviet Press Studies of a Colder Arctic; U.S. and Soviet Press Arctic Studies

July 18, 1970, Saturday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

The United States and the Soviet Union are mounting large-scale investigations to determine why the Arctic climate is becoming more frigid, why parts of the Arctic sea ice have recently become ominously thicker and whether the extent of that ice cover contributes to the onset of ice ages.
Climate Experts Assay Ice Age Clues

January 27, 1972, Thursday

PROVIDENCE, R. I., Jan. 26 — After invading Nebraska and Colorado, the armadillos, faced with increasingly frigid weather, are in retreat from those states toward their ancestral home south of the Mexican border. The winter snow accumulation on Baffin Island has increased 35 per cent in the last decade.
Record of a Little Ice Age Is Discovered

February 5, 1972, Saturday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

From a study of ice extracted from deep within the Greenland ice sheet it appears that 89,500 years ago something catastrophic changed the climate from being warmer than today’s to that of a full-fledged ice age.
Scientist Fears Equable Climate Around World Could Be Ending

October 31, 1972, Tuesday

By BOYCE RENSBERGER

The current 12,000-year-old era of comfortable climates around the world may be coming to an end, closing another chapter in what a University of Miami scientist believes has been a history of frequent and relatively short-lived ice ages and warm ages.
CLIMATE CHANGES CALLED OMINOUS; Scientists Warn Predictions Must Be Made Precise to Avoid Catastrophe

January 19, 1975, Sunday

By HAROLD M. SCHMECK Jr. Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 Changes in the earth’s climate are inevitable and mankind must learn to predict these variations to avoid potential catastrophe, a group of prominent scientists has concluded after a two-year study.
Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead; Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable

May 21, 1975, Wednesday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

DISPLAYING FIRST PARAGRAPH – The world’s climate is changing. Of that scientists are firmly convinced. But in what direction and why are subjects of deepening debate.
WARMING TREND SEEN IN CLIMATE; Two Articles Counter View That Cold Period Is Due

August 14, 1975, Thursday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

Articles in two scientific journals have questioned widely publicized predictions that, in coming decades, the world climate will deteriorate severely affecting food production and, perhaps, initiating a new ice age.
Experts Fear Great Peril If SST Fumes Cool Earth

December 21, 1975, Sunday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

A federally sponsored inquiry into the effects of possible climate changes caused by heavy supersonic traffic in the stratosphere has concluded that even a slight cooling could cost the world from $200 billion to 500 times that much in damage done to agriculture, public health and other effects.
2 Climate Experts Decry Predictions of Disasters; Drought in Africa

February 22, 1976, Sunday

By WALTER SULLIVAN Special to The New York Times

BOSTON, Feb. 21–Two authorities on climate change have termed irresponsible recent predictions of an impending ice age or other climatic disaster. The also said that any global effects of man-made air pollution on the climate to date remained obscure.
International Team of Specialists Finds No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend in Northern Hemisphere

January 5, 1978, Thursday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

An international team of specialists has concluded from eight indexes of climate that there is no end in sight to the cooling trend of the last 30 years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere.
Climate Specialists, in Poll, Foresee No Catastrophic Weather Changes in Rest of Century; Warning About Carbon Dioxide

February 18, 1978, Saturday

By WALTER SULLIVAN Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17–A poll of climate specialists in seven countries has found a consensus that there will be no catastrophic changes in the climate by the end of the century. But the specialists were almost equally divided on whether there would be a warming, a cooling or no change at all.
Scientists at World Parley Doubt Climate Variations Are Ominous; Forgetting the Past Major Shifts in Past

February 16, 1979, Friday

By WALTER SULLIVAN Special to The New York Times

GENEVA, Feb. 15 This winter Chicago was paralyzed by snow. Last winter it was Boston. European Russia has just suffered its coldest December in a century. In Britain and Western Europe, the summer of 1976 was the hottest in 250 years.
A Vast ‘Interdisciplinary Effort’ To Predict Climate Trend Urged; Neutralization Needed

February 24, 1979, Saturday

By WALTER SULLIVAN Special to The New York Times

GENEVA, Feb. 23–After exchanging views here for two weeks, the people who know more about climate than anyone else in the world have concluded that climate’s future trends can be predicted in a meaningful way only after “an interdisciplinary effort of unprecedented scope.”
Scientists Reviving Speculation on Climate and Slipping Antarctic Ice; Theory of Linked Events Evidence in Bones Volcanic Dust Theory In Less Than a Century

March 9, 1980, Sunday

By WALTER SULLIVAN

Scientists are reviving the controversial notion that millions of cubic miles of Antarctic ice can sometimes abruptly slip off the continent into the sea, resulting in extreme increases in global ocean levels and precipitating a dramatic chilling of the world’s climate.

Sometimes you have to look backwards to see where you are heading….this may be such a time.

Regards,

John Shotsky

http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=101

So you see takver we have been bullsitted to by Alarmist scientist for years so they can have a job and keep the grants comming to pay their wages,But we are still here

Israel: Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has authored almost 70 peer-reviewed studies and won several awards. "First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!"
Russia: Russian scientist Dr. Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences has authored more than 300 studies, nine books, and a 2006 paper titled "The Evolution and the Prediction of Global Climate Changes on Earth." "Even if the concentration of ‘greenhouse gases' double man would not perceive the temperature impact," Sorochtin wrote. (Note: Name also sometimes translated to spell Sorokhtin)
Spain: Anton Uriarte, a professor of Physical Geography at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and author of a book on the paleoclimate, rejected man-made climate fears in 2007. "There's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study [climate change], but there's no need to be worried," Uriate wrote.
Netherlands: Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes, "I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting - a six-meter sea level rise, fifteen times the IPCC number - entirely without merit," Tennekes wrote. "I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."
Brazil: Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo - Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil declared himself a skeptic. "The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming," Hackbart wrote on May 30, 2007.
France: Climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux, former professor at Université Jean Moulin and director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risks, and Environment in Lyon, is a climate skeptic. Leroux wrote a 2005 book titled Global Warming - Myth or Reality? - The Erring Ways of Climatology. "Day after day, the same mantra - that ‘the Earth is warming up' - is churned out in all its forms. As ‘the ice melts' and ‘sea level rises,' the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized, lulled into mindless ac­ceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!"
Norway: Geologist/Geochemist Dr. Tom V. Segalstad, a professor and head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the UN IPCC: "It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere. It is all a fiction."
Finland: Dr. Boris Winterhalter, retired Senior Marine Researcher of the Geological Survey of Finland and former professor of marine geology at University of Helsinki, criticized the media for what he considered its alarming climate coverage. "The effect of solar winds on cosmic radiation has just recently been established and, furthermore, there seems to be a good correlation between cloudiness and variations in the intensity of cosmic radiation. Here we have a mechanism which is a far better explanation to variations in global climate than the attempts by IPCC to blame it all on anthropogenic input of greenhouse gases," Winterhalter said.
Germany: Paleoclimate expert Augusto Mangini of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, criticized the UN IPCC summary. "I consider the part of the IPCC report, which I can really judge as an expert, i.e. the reconstruction of the paleoclimate, wrong," Mangini noted in an April 5, 2007 article. He added: "The earth will not die."
Canada: IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist, a scientist with the Natural Resources Stewardship Project who has over 45 years experience in climatology, meteorology and oceanography, and who has published nearly 100 papers, reports, book reviews and a book on Ocean Wave Analysis and Modeling: "To my dismay, IPCC authors ignored all my comments and suggestions for major changes in the FOD (First Order Draft) and sent me the SOD (Second Order Draft) with essentially the same text as the FOD. None of the authors of the chapter bothered to directly communicate with me (or with other expert reviewers with whom I communicate on a regular basis) on many issues that were raised in my review. This is not an acceptable scientific review process."
Czech Republic: Czech-born U.S. climatologist Dr. George Kukla, a research scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. "The only thing to worry about is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid," Kukla told Gelf Magazine on April 24, 2007.
India: One of India's leading geologists, B.P. Radhakrishna, President of the Geological Society of India, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. "We appear to be overplaying this global warming issue as global warming is nothing new. It has happened in the past, not once but several times, giving rise to glacial-interglacial cycles."
USA: Climatologist Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and one of the climatologists who gathered at Woods Hole to review the National Climate Program Plan in July, 1979: "Al Gore brought me back to the battle and prompted me to do renewed research in the field of climatology. And because of all the misinformation that Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change I have decided that ‘real' climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem."
Italy: Internationally renowned scientist Dr. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists and a retired Professor of Advanced Physics at the University of Bologna in Italy, who has published over 800 scientific papers: "Significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming."
New Zealand: IPCC reviewer and climate researcher and scientist Dr. Vincent Gray, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990 and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001: "The [IPCC] ‘Summary for Policymakers' might get a few readers, but the main purpose of the report is to provide a spurious scientific backup for the absurd claims of the worldwide environmentalist lobby that it has been established scientifically that increases in carbon dioxide are harmful to the climate. It just does not matter that this ain't so."
South Africa: Dr. Kelvin Kemm, formerly a scientist at South Africa's Atomic Energy Corporation who holds degrees in nuclear physics and mathematics: "The global-warming mania continues with more and more hype and less and less thinking. With religious zeal, people look for issues or events to blame on global warming."
Poland: Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, professor emeritus of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw and a former chairman of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and currently a representative of the Republic of Poland in UNSCEAR: "We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming-with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy-is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels."
Australia: Prize-wining Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia: "There is new work emerging even in the last few weeks that shows we can have a very close correlation between the temperatures of the Earth and supernova and solar radiation."
Britain: Dr. Richard Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant: "To date, no convincing evidence for AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been discovered. And recent global climate behavior is not consistent with AGW model predictions."
China: Chinese Scientists Say CO2 Impact on Warming May Be ‘Excessively Exaggerated' - Scientists Lin Zhen-Shan's and Sun Xian's 2007 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics: "Although the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated." Their study asserted that "it is high time to reconsider the trend of global climate change."
Denmark: Space physicist Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen is the director of the Danish National Space Centre, a member of the space research advisory committee of the Swedish National Space Board, a member of a NASA working group, and a member of the European Space Agency who has authored or co-authored around 100 peer-reviewed papers and chairs the Institute of Space Physics: "The sun is the source of the energy that causes the motion of the atmosphere and thereby controls weather and climate. Any change in the energy from the sun received at the Earth's surface will therefore affect climate."
Sweden: Geologist Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, professor emeritus of the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University, critiqued the Associated Press for hyping promoting climate fears in 2007. "Another of these hysterical views of our climate. Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate."
USA: Dr. David Wojick is a UN IPCC expert reviewer, who earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science and co-founded the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University: "In point of fact, the hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG (greenhouse gas) hypothesis does not do this." Wojick added: "The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates."
# # #
Background: Only 52 Scientists Participated in UN IPCC Summary
The over 400 skeptical scientists featured in this new report outnumber by nearly eight time the number of scientists who participated in the 2007 UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The notion of "hundreds" or "thousands" of UN scientists agreeing to a scientific statement does not hold up to scrutiny. (See report debunking "consensus" Recent research by Australian climate data analyst John McLean revealed that the IPCC's peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired. & (Note: The 52 scientists who participated in the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers had to adhere to the wishes of the UN political leaders and delegates in a process described as more closely resembling a political party’s convention platform battle, not a scientific process
Proponents of man-made global warming like to note how the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) have issued statements endorsing the so-called "consensus" view that man is driving global warming. But both the NAS and AMS never allowed member scientists to directly vote on these climate statements. Essentially, only two dozen or so members on the governing boards of these institutions produced the "consensus" statements. This report gives a voice to the rank-and-file scientists who were shut out of the process.
The most recent attempt to imply there was an overwhelming scientific "consensus" in favor of man-made global warming fears came in December 2007 during the UN climate conference in Bali. A letter signed by only 215 scientists urged the UN to mandate deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. But absent from the letter were the signatures of these alleged "thousands" of scientists.
UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri urged the world at the December 2007 UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia to "Please listen to the voice of science."
The science has continued to grow loud and clear in 2007. In addition to the growing number of scientists expressing skepticism, an abundance of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. A November 3, 2007 peer-reviewed study found that "solar changes significantly alter climate." A December 2007 peer-reviewed study recalculated and halved the global average surface temperature trend between 1980 - 2002. Another new study found the Medieval Warm Period "0.3C warmer than 20th century"
A peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists found that "warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." - Another November 2007 peer-reviewed study in the journal Physical Geography found "Long-term climate change is driven by solar insolation changes." These recent studies were in addition to the abundance of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007. - See "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears"
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport
Takver You wanted peer reviewed you got it, and if you need more quotes from scientists saying man made global warming is crap let me know I can post about 40,000 of them and that number is growing

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- With Congress about to take up sweeping climate-change legislation, expect to hear more in coming weeks from John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at University of Alabama-Huntsville.

A veteran climatologist who refuses to accept any research funding from the oil or auto industries, Christy was a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report as well as one of the three authors of the American Geophysical Union's landmark 2003 statement on climate change.

Yet despite those green-sounding credentials, Christy is not calling for draconian cuts in carbon emissions. Quite the contrary. Christy is actually the environmental lobby's worst nightmare - an accomplished climate scientist with no ties to Big Oil who has produced reams and reams of data that undermine arguments that the earth's atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate and question whether the remedies being talked about in Congress will actually do any good.

Christy's critics in the blogosphere assume his research is funded by the oil industry. But Christy has testified in federal court that his research is funded by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration and that the only money he has ever received from corporate interests - $2,000 from the Competitive Enterprise Institute for penning a chapter of a global warming book in 2002 - he gave away to a charity, the Christian Women's Job Corps.

His most controversial argument is that the surface temperature readings upon which global warming theory is built have been distorted by urbanization. Due to the solar heat captured by bricks and pavement and due to the changing wind patterns caused by large buildings, a weather station placed in a rural village in 1900 will inevitably show higher temperature readings if that village has, over time, been transformed into small city or a suburban shopping district, Christy says.

The only way to control for such surface distortions is by measuring atmospheric temperatures. And when Christy and his co-researcher Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist now teaching at UA-Huntsville, began analyzing temperature readings from NOAA and NASA satellites, they found much slighter increases in atmospheric temperatures than what was being recorded on the surface. Christy and Spencer also found that nearly all the increases in average surface temperatures are related to nighttime readings - which makes sense if bricks and pavement are in fact retaining heat that would otherwise be dispersed.

In testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee in February, Christy displayed a chart showing central California temperature trends for both the developed San Joaquin Valley and the largely undeveloped Sierra foothills. "The daytime temperatures of both regions show virtually no change over the past 100 years, while the nighttime temperatures indicate the developed Valley has warmed significantly while the undeveloped Sierra foothills have not," Christy told the committee.

I recently spoke with Christy about his controversial research.

Why did you help write the 2001 IPCC report and the 2003 AGU statement on climate change if you disagreed with their fundamental conclusions?

With the 2001 IPCC report, the material in there over which I had control was satisfactory to me. I wouldn't say I agreed with other parts. As far as the AGU, I thought that was a fine statement because it did not put forth a magnitude of the warming. We just said that human effects have a warming influence, and that's certainly true. There was nothing about disaster or catastrophe. In fact, I was very upset about the latest AGU statement [in 2007]. It was about alarmist as you can get.

When you testified before Ways and Means, did you have any sense that committee members on either side were open to having their minds changed? Or are views set in stone at this point?

Generally people believe what they want to believe, so their minds will not change. However, as the issue is exposed in terms of economics and cost benefit - in my view, it's all cost and no benefit - I think some of the people will take one step backward and say, Let me investigate the science a little more closely.

In laymen's terms, what's wrong with the surface temperature readings that are widely used to make the case for global warming?

First is the placement of the temperature stations. They're placed in convenient locations that might be in a parking lot or near a house and thus get extra heating from these human structures. Over time, there's been the development of areas into farms or buildings or parking lots. Also, a number of these weather stations have become electronic, and many of them were moved to a place where there is electricity, which is usually right outside a building. As a result, there's a natural warming tendency, especially in the nighttime temperatures, that has been misinterpreted as greenhouse warming.

Are there any negative consequences to this localized warming?

It's a small impact, but there is an indication that major thunderstorms are more likely to form downwind of major cities like St. Louis and Atlanta. The extra heating of the city causes the air to rise with a little more punch.

Have you been able to confirm your satellite temperature readings by other means?

Weather balloons. We take satellite shots at the same place where the balloon is released so we're looking at the same column of air. Our satellite data compares exceptionally well to the balloon data.

During your House Ways and Means testimony, you showed a chart juxtaposing predictions made by NASA's Jim Hansen in 1988 for future temperature increases against the actual recorded temperature increases over the past 20 years. Not only were the actual increases much lower, but they were lower than what Hansen expected if there were drastic cuts in CO2 emissions - which of course there haven't been. [Hansen is a noted scientist who was featured prominently in Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."] Hansen was at that hearing. Did he say anything to you afterwards?

We really don't communicate. We serve on a committee for NASA together, but it only deals with specific satellite issues. At the Ways and Means hearing, he was sitting two people down from me, but he did not want to engage any of the evidence I presented. And that seems to be the preferred tactic of many in the alarmist camp. Rather than bring up these issues, they simply ignore them.

(Contacted by Fortune, Hansen acknowledges that his 1988 projections were based on a model that "slightly" overstated the warming created by a doubling in CO2 levels. His new model posits a rise of 3 degrees Celsius in global temperatures by 2100, vs. 4.2 degrees in the old one. Says Hansen, "The projections that the public has been hearing about are based on a climate sensitivity that is consistent with the global warming rate of the past few decades." Christy's response: "Hansen at least admits his 1988 forecasts were wrong, but doesn't say they were way wrong, not 'slightly,' as he states." Christy also claims that even Hansen's revised models grossly overestimated the amount of warming that has actually occurred.)

I know you think there's been something of a hysteria in the media about melting glaciers. Could you explain?

Ice melts. Glaciers are always calving. This is what ice does. If ice did not melt, we'd have an ice-covered planet. The fact is that the ice cover is growing in the southern hemisphere even as the ice cover is more or less shrinking in the northern hemisphere. As you and I are talking today, global sea ice coverage is about 400,000 square kilometers above the long-term average - which means that the surplus in the Antarctic is greater than the deficit in the Arctic.

What about the better-safe-than-sorry argument? Even if there's a chance Gore and Hansen are wrong, shouldn't we still take action in order to protect ourselves from catastrophe, just in case they're right?

The problem is that the solutions being offered don't provide any detectable relief from this so-called catastrophe. Congress is now discussing an 80% reduction in U.S. greenhouse emissions by 2050. That's basically the equivalent of building 1,000 new nuclear power plants all operating by 2020. Now I'm all in favor of nuclear energy, but that would affect the global temperature by only seven-hundredths of a degree by 2050 and fifteen hundredths by 2100. We wouldn't even notice it.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/05/14/magazines/fortune/globalwarming.fortune/