For a number years, Dr. John Christie has done tremendous scientific work aimed at increasing our understanding of the climate.

Where many climatological efforts are focused on computer modeling of climate and reaching conclusions based on those models, rather than on analysis and testing of real world phenomena, Christie and several other scientists have turned to the real work of actually observing and measuring the real world.

In a new paper [PDF] accepted in August for publication in the journal Energy and Environment, Christie, of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and collaborator David H. Douglass of the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester in New York, examine some of their recent findings.

Much of the current worry over climate change is based on climate models that predict increasing temperatures world wide. Those climate models are based on the hypothesis that increased levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere cause the atmosphere to retain heat.

Because the increased CO₂ is attributed to human activity, it is thought that that human activity causes global warming. As a case in point, Douglass and Christie point out that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that "most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

Contrary to the IPCC, Douglass and Christie argue that something else is driving climate change. In their new paper, Limits on CO₂ Climate Forcing from Recent Temperature Data of Earth, temperature anomalies are not primarily caused by atmospheric CO₂. They write: "These effects do not have the signature associated with CO₂ climate forcing."

After detailing their research, Douglass and Christie conclude that recent warming can not simply be attributed to anthropogenic green house gases. "The recent atmospheric global temperature anomalies," they note, "have been shown to consist of independent effects in different latitude bands."

After pointing out that climate forcing from CO₂ is much less than commonly believed, they note that their results conflict with statements made by the IPCC. In the dry approach customary to scientific papers, they write: "These conclusions are contrary to the IPCC [2007] statement: '[M]ost of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.'"

The UN, foreign governments, the media, and many international agencies and NGO's have been eager to promote the idea of anthropogenic global warming, because to do so is lucrative and supports the creation of internationalist solutions to a perceived problem. As recent research like that conducted by Douglass and Christie shows, however, that problem is in all likelihood as vaporous as the gases environmentalists worry so much about.

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