Tree Ring Circus

Gordon C. Jacoby, Rosanne D'Arrigo, Tsevegyn Davaajarnts Science 1996;273:771-773

The United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that historic temperature data suggests a discernible human influence on global climate. The IPCC points to the global climate warming by 0.3 degrees Celsius to 0.6 degrees Celsius over the past 100 years.

BUT, according to renowned climatologist Dr. Fred Singer:

Most of this warming (up to 0.5 degrees Celsius) occurred between 1910 and 1940. And it has been during the last 50 years that about 80 percent of greenhouse gases have been added to the atmosphere.

The IPCC's own data shows essentially no warming over the last 25 years.

Now, with a little help from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences, trees have a story to tell as well. And it doesn't jibe with the IPCC claim.

Tree rings indicate tree growth. Each ring represents one year of growth. The wider a ring, the more growth that occurred that year.

Jacoby et al. measured tree rings in 500-year old trees in Mongolia. Because the sampling location was that of a typical tree-line site where temperature should be the factor that limits tree growth, Jacoby et al. concluded that the wider tree ring widths were due to the warming of the global climate.

Specifically, Jacoby et al. found that:

On average, tree ring widths have been getting wider (and the global climate warmer) since the mid-1800s, before significant accumulation of greenhouse gases.

Tree ring widths peaked in the 1960s, indicating no increased growth (and no increased global warming) since then.

Will the IPCC (and their junk environmental scientists)l be had by the very trees they hug? What irony!

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