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McCain-Lieberman (S.139) 

S.139 was defeated 55 to 43 but Senator McCain plans to reintroduce the bill that would control green house gasses.

The issues leading to its defeat are listed here.

Issue: Big bureaucracy to administer? (See below)

Issue: Government decides winners and losers? (See below)

Issue: Will interference with oil imports create shortages? (See below)

Issue: Will it tie US economy to foreign economies?

Issue: Will it subjugate U.S. inexorably to United Nations UNFCCC? (See below)

Issue: Will de facto rationing hurt economy, cost jobs and be regressive? Will penalties add additional burden on U.S. competitiveness? (See below)

And

Issue: Is it needed? (See below)

The bill required lowering GHG emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 and then to 1990 levels by 2016: The difference between S.139 and Kyoto was that it merely postponed meeting most of Kyoto's requirements by 4 years, from 2012 to 2016. (Kyoto required GHG 5% below 1990 levels while S.139 only requires meeting 1990 levels; therefore, S.139 required about a 25% rather than a 30% reduction in GHG by the U.S.)

Issue: Bureaucracy?

The bill requires the EPA Administrator to promulgate regulations to limit the greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity generation, transportation, industrial, and commercial economic sectors (essentially every sector except residential and agriculture).

It required establishing an immense National Greenhouse Gas Database which would contain an inventory of emissions and registry of reductions for all covered parties in the U.S. All entities would be required to report their GHG emissions thereby incurring large costs.

Issue: Government decides winners and losers?

The Secretary of Commerce would determine the amount of allowances to be given away or "grandfathered" to covered entities and the amount to be auctioned. 

Issue: Ties U.S. to foreign economies?

The bill required the government to decide whether mandated actions result in stabilizing GHG emissions at a level that will prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

EU leaders have already said that it will require reducing GHG by 60% to achieve stabilization. Does this mean that this bill is only the first step in an ever tightening set of restrictions?

Also any U.S. entity would be allowed to satisfy up to 15% of its total allowance requirements by submitting allowances from another nation's market in GHG's: And an entity that agreed to emit no more than its 1990 levels by 2010 would be allowed to meet up to 20% of its requirement through international credits.

Issue: Subjugates U.S. economy to United Nations UNFCCC?

The Commerce Department would biennially re-evaluate the level of allowances to determine whether it was consistent with the objective of the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, thereby tying the US to the UNFCCC.

Issue: Interference with oil imports?

Each petroleum refiner or importer would be required to submit an allowance for each unit of petroleum product sold. Administrator would determine the method of calculating the amount of GHG emissions associated with combustion of petroleum products.

Issue: Will penalties stifle economy? Hurt U.S. competitiveness?

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average household's energy bill, including the cost of fuel for personal transportation, would rise by 13 percent per year in 2025, or $444 more than what would be paid without S.139: Over the same period of time, gasoline prices would rise by 40 cents per gallon and electricity costs would increase by 46 percent.

Any covered entity not meeting its emissions limits would be fined for each ton of GHGs over the limit at the rate of three times the market value of a ton of GHG. 

Opponents of the bill use irrefutable logic that says: Restricting energy usage means reducing economic output which results in loss of jobs.

Issue: Is S.139 necessary?

Russian scientists have joined 17,000 other scientists stating that GHG are not causing any significant global warming. If this is true, then McCain Lieberman S.139 is not needed and could do considerable harm.

Senator Inhofe has summarized the opponent’s position by saying “The science underlying the bill has been repudiated, the economic costs are far too high and the environmental benefits are non existent.”

Note: The bill was modified during debate to lure more YES votes but still required tremendous reductions in GHG. It is unknown how McCain plans to proceed but the above issues remain none the less.

November 2, 2003  

Wind Patterns.

Detailed examination of winds in the Northern Hemisphere over the last half of the 20th Century show that changes in winds and temperature are most likely in the range of natural climate variability. A paper by Oliver Frauenfeld (National Snow and Ice Data Center ) and coauthor Robert Davis ( University of Virginia climatologist) in the Journal of Geophysical Research found that the circumpolar vortex has undergone fairly major changes during their study period (1949–2000).

The “circumpolar vortex.” is the pattern of winds as they meander in snakelike fashion around the North Pole.

From 1949 to about 1970, the vortex systematically expanded by moving southward; since then, there has been an excursion northward: But overall, there is no significant long-term trend.

The vortex latitude in the 1990s is quite similar to that of the 1950s, a time when greenhouse gas concentrations were markedly lower.

A more thorough explanation of this study can be found at www.co2andclimate.org/index.html

Sunday August 31, 2003  

Earth Track June 2003 

Monthly track of temperatures in the northern and southern hemispheres show little if any global warming. There is a miniscule .3 degree C increase in the northern hemisphere and no change in the southern hemisphere since 1980 June 2003’s global average temperature departure was -0.01°C. The Northern Hemisphere’s temperature departure was 0.167°C and the Southern Hemisphere’s -0.187°C

These graphs are published as data becomes available by The Greening Earth Society, www.co2andclimate.org

This temperature update presents the NASA satellite measurements of monthly temperature anomalies – the difference between the observed values and the 1979–1998 mean values.

Monthly Satellite Temperatures – Northern Hemisphere

Monthly Satellite Temperatures – Southern Hemisphere

Trend lines indicate statistically significant changes only.

August 24, 2003

Global Warming Refuted in Senate.  

In a two hour speech Senator Inhofe, Chairman Committee on Environment and Public Works, reviewed the scientific evidence refuting the claim that man made emissions are causing global warming: He said the motives for Kyoto are economic not environmental. He cited some of the many scientists (listed below) who have concluded that natural variability, not CO2, is the overwhelming factor in any climate change. 

Dr. S. Fred Singer, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Virginia, who served as the first Director of the US Weather Satellite Service (which is now in the Department of Commerce) and more recently as a member and vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA)

Dr. Tom Wigley, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who found that if the Kyoto Protocol were fully implemented by all signatories, it would reduce temperatures by a mere 0.07 degrees Celsius by 2050, and 0.13 degrees Celsius by 2100.  What does this mean?  Such an amount is so small that ground-based thermometers cannot reliably measure it.

Dr. Richard Lindzen, an MIT scientist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, who has specialized in climate issues for over 30 years.

Jerry Mahlman, Director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, who points out that when regional climate models, of the kind relied upon by the IPCC, attempt to incorporate such factors as population growth "the details of future climate recede toward unintelligibility."

Gerald North of Texas A&M University in College Station , agrees that the IPCC's predictions are baseless, in part because climate models are highly imperfect instruments.  As he said after the IPCC report came out: "It's extremely hard to tell whether the models have improved" since the last IPCC report. "The uncertainties are large." 

Peter Stone, an MIT climate modeler, said in reference to the IPCC, "The major [climate prediction] uncertainties have not been reduced at all."

Dr. David Wojick, an expert in climate science, who recently wrote in an article in Canada 's National Post, "The computer models cannot...decide among the variable drivers, like solar versus lunar change, or chaos versus ocean circulation versus greenhouse gas increases. Unless and until they can explain these things, the models cannot be taken seriously as a basis for public policy."

Climate modelers from four separate climate modeling centers who wrote in the October 2000 edition of Nature that, "Forecasts of climate change are inevitably uncertain." They go on to explain that, "A basic problem with all such predictions to date has been the difficulty of providing any systematic estimate of uncertainty," a problem that stems from the fact that "these [climate] models do not necessarily span the full range of known climate system behavior."

NASA scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy whose satellite data, validated independently by measurements from NOAA balloon radiosonde instruments, show that the atmosphere has not warmed as alarmists theorize.

Dr. Thomas R. Karl, senior scientist at the National Climate Data Center , who corrected the U.S. surface temperatures for the urban heat-island effect and found that there has been a downward temperature trend since 1940. This suggests a strong warming bias in the surface-based temperature record.

Scientists from the Scripps Institution for Oceanography who concluded that the temperature rise comes first, followed by a carbon dioxide boost 400 to 1,000 years later.  This contradicts everything alarmists have been saying about man-made global warming in the 20^th century.

University of Illinois researchers who reported "a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000."  In some regions, like the McMurdo Dry Valleys , temperatures cooled between 1986 and 1999 by as much as two degrees centigrade per decade.

Dr. Paul Reiter who convincingly debunks the claim that higher temperatures will induce more deaths and massive outbreaks of deadly diseases in a 2000 study for the Center for Disease Control. 

Dr. David Legates, a renowned professor at the University of Delaware and world's leading expert in the hydrology of climate.

Over 4,000 scientists, 70 of whom are Nobel Prize winners, who signed the Heidelberg Appeal, which says that no compelling evidence exists to justify controls of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

A 1998 recent survey of state climatologists, which reveals that a majority of respondents have serious doubts about whether anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases present a serious threat to climate stability.

Drs. Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas Astrophysicists who have just completed the most comprehensive review of temperature records ever.

Dr. Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences, and a professor emeritus at Rockefeller University .

Over 17,000 independently verified signers of the Oregon Petition.

Kenneth Green, D. Env., is Chief Scientist and Director of the Risk and Environment Centre at The Fraser Institute. He most recently wrote Global Warming: Understanding the Debate.

George H. Taylor, who is the State Climatologist for Oregon , and a faculty member at Oregon State University 's College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, manages the Oregon Climate Service, the state repository of weather and climate information.  Mr. Taylor is a member of the American Meteorological Society and is past president of the American Association of State Climatologists.

Pat Michaels is a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and visiting scientist with the Marshall Institute in Washington , D.C. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society.  Michaels has authored tests on climate and is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  According to Nature magazine, Pat Michaels may be the most popular lecturer in the nation on the subject of global warming.

Freeman Dyson, professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University , since 1953, is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Science, and has received numerous international awards;

Robert Balling, Jr., Professor & Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University who received his Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma , has authored three books on climate;

Professor Chris Essex of the University of Western Ontario and of the Niels Bohr Institute's Orsted Laboratory and the Canadian Climate Center co-authored Taken by Storm with Professor Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph and the Fraser Institute in Vancouver ;

Dr. John Reilly, of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, who established the benefits of CO₂ on flora;

Sunday August 3, 2003

Solar Rays And Global Warming 

Two scientists have established a link between the Earth’s climate and solar activity, supernovas and spiral galaxies. They have demonstrated a correlation between these activities and climate change; and that these celestial activities may be the dominant influence on climate change.

The role of green house gasses in this context is not known but the study is one of many that are challenging prior assumptions.

The paper was published by the Geological Society of America. The authors are Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at Racah Institute of Physics ( Hebrew University , Israel ) and Jan Veizer a geochemist at the University of Ottawa ( Canada ) and Ruhr University ( Germany ).

 July 20, 2003  

Global Warming Science Not Settled 

James Schlesinger, in a recent speech said “There is an idea among the public that the science is settled. …[But] that remains far from the truth”… and “the CO 2 /climate-change relationship has hardened into orthodoxy -- always a worrisome sign -- an orthodoxy that searches out heretics and seeks to punish them.”

He pointed out that beyond a few facts, namely that CO2 has increased and the earth’s temperature has risen 1 degree C in the past 100 years, “science remains unable either to attribute past climate changes to changes in CO 2 or to forecast with any degree of precision how climate will change in the future”.

He cited recent history when there was fear of a new ice age. He pointed out that in 1974 the National Science Board, stated: “During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade.” And, In 1971 the board had observed: “Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next glacial age."

He cited the many uncertainties surrounding climate change and said: “Any approach to policy formation under conditions of such uncertainty should be taken only on an exploratory and sequential basis. A premature commitment to a fixed policy can only proceed with fear and trembling.”

President Carter appointed Schlesinger Secretary of the newly established Department of Energy in 1977.

James R. Schlesinger made these and other comments at the 25th anniversary of the Energy Department's C0 ₂ /climate change program. His complete article was published in the July 7 edition of the Washington Post and is highly recommended.

  July 13, 2003  

Development Affects Warming Data 

A second new study shows that development, urban and agricultural, affects surface temperatures and that CO2 has a much smaller impact on warming than assumed by the IPCC. “By comparing surface temperatures deduced from a 50-year reconstruction of global climate with actual temperatures recorded in urban and rural areas across the United States, Kalnay and Cai calculate that half the observed change in daily temperature range is due to urban and other land-use change. In addition, their estimate of 0.27 °C mean surface warming per century due to land-use change is twice as high as previous estimates based on the effect of urbanization alone.” (Quote is from Nature highlights)

This latest study, together with Dr David R. Streutker’s study on the Urban Heat Island effect (see What’s News June 15, 2003), demonstrates that global warming forecasts due to anthropogenic causes are highly inaccurate and that there may be little, if any, global warming attributable to CO2.

Eugenia Kalnay and Ming Cai of the University of Maryland in College Park . Eugenia Kalnay’ is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and served as director of the Environmental Modeling Center of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction of the National Weather Service, 1987 through 1997

Reference: Kalnay, E. & Cai, M. Impact of urbanization and land-se change on climate. Nature, 423, 528 - 531, (2003).

See http://www.nature.com/nsu/030527/030527-6.html

See http://www.co2andclimate.org/wca/2003/wca_1b.html for a more complete article on this subject.  

June 22, 2003

Heat Island Effect Skews Warming Data 

Ground temperature readings from urban growth areas have shown significant warming: This warming can now be attributed to the heat island effect. In short, the heat island effect is responsible for a false global warming trend. 

While ground temperature readings have been higher, satellite readings have shown no significant warming since 1979. This study by Dr David R. Streutker, establishes that satellite readings should be the basis for determining the extent of global warming, if any beyond the return from the little ice age.

Surface temperature growth of Houston, TX was determined by comparing two sets of heat island measurements taken 12 years apart. Eighty-two nighttime scenes taken between 1985 and 1987 were compared to 125 nighttime scenes taken between 1999 and 2001. Over these 12 years “the mean nighttime surface temperature heat island of Houston increased 0.82 ± 0.10 [ºC].” Dr. Streutker said, “the growth of the UHI [urban heat island], both in magnitude and spatial extent, scales roughly with the increase in population, at approximately 30%.”

It has long been suspected that ground temperature reading stations have been overtaken by urban growth. Temperature reading stations that were in the country twenty-five years ago are now adjacent to suburbs and urban centers. As a result, the naturally higher temperatures associated with human built structures (concrete, asphalt, and other heat absorbing structures that radiate heat at night) have caused higher temperature readings and these readings have skewed the ground temperature record and given a false trend in so far as global warming is concerned.

The report “Satellite-measured Growth of the Urban Heat Island of Houston, Texas,” by Dr David R. Streutker, can be found in the May 30  Vol 85 – 3 issue of Remote Sensing of Environment, a research journal for environmental scientists, Rice University Department of Physics and Astronomy and purchased online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00344257

Global Warming Forecasts in Error.  

Two key experts recently said the report on which all Global Warming forecasts are based is flawed: Simply put, the IPCC report is “technically unsound”. A major flaw in the report overstates the existing gaps between rich and poor nations and the rapidity with which these gaps are closed: This results in overstating GDP at the end of the forecast period and also the amount of green house gasses produced from the development of poor countries; this in turn overstates the global warming projections.

Ian Castles of the National Center for Development Studies at Australia’s National University and formerly the head of Australia’s national office of statistics, and David Henderson of Westminster Business School and formerly the Chief Economist of OECD, have both come down hard on the IPCC for its flawed forecast of global warming.

They point out that Algeria, North Korea and other currently poor nations are forecast to have average income greater than the United States by 2100. The IPCC makes exceptionally optimistic projections about economic growth in the developing world which, in turn, must result in overstating temperature rise and global warming.

Another flaw, these experts point out, is that the IPCC ignored actual data from 1990 to 2000 that clearly negated the data contained in the IPCC report. By ignoring actual history the IPCC overstated its forecast of temperature rise.

The IPCC report forecast that temperatures would rise by 2100 by between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius. This forecast is the basis for the Kyoto Treaty and all the hysteria about global warming. If the forecast is overstated there is little reason to implement Kyoto or any other program to reduce greenhouse gasses.

This is essentially what 17,000 scientists have been saying all along. (go to “Global Warming Petition” for their signed statement.)

Sunday May 4, 2003

More Climate Model Flaws.  

Recent test observations with different radiosondes showed that instruments used until now to record high level water vapor severely underestimated the water vapor. This is extremely important as radiosonde data are used to run climate models. The new test data imply that current computer models are fundamentally flawed.

A new radiosonde, unveiled by Junhong Wang and colleagues at the American Meteorological Society's annual meeting, take more accurate measurements. The new radiosonde is to become the reference standard for adjusting the performance of other instruments.

"It is possible," says Richard Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, "that decades of climate records have underestimated the amount of cirrus clouds in the global atmosphere."

This suggests that the “scientific” basis for the Kyoto protocol is flawed, with computer models over estimating global warming.

(The above was adapted from an article by the Greening Earth Society at www.co2andclimate.org)

Reference: Wang, J., et al., 2003. A reference radiosonde system for improving water vapor measurement in IHOP_2002, 83rd American Meteorological Association Annual Meeting, J-3.5.

February 23, 2003

Smoke Affects Climate Models. 

Smoke has been thought to have an effect on climate but until now it had not been proven. One of the successful experiments on the Columbia shuttle proved that smoke dissipates cloud cover allowing more sunlight to enter. “Cameras aboard the space shuttle Columbia captured an image over Brazil that scientists said proved a scientific theory about how a major fire on Earth can alter global climate.”

The picture taken by Israeli astronaut IIan Ramon shows a large plume of smoke rising over the Brazilian rainforest on a cloudy day with cloud cover being dispersed.

Smoke joins a number of poorly understood factors that affect computer modeling of the Earth’s climate. These unknowns make all computer models of climate change suspect.

Tragically the Israeli astronaut taking these pictures was killed in the crash of the Columbia .

February 9, 2003

Is El Nino Key to Global Warming? 

Recent studies appear to indicate that El Nino has a 2000 year cycle affecting global weather. Scientists studying sediment from Lake Pallcacocha in southern Ecuador, were able to track major weather changes across the American continents.

Christopher Moy of Stanford University in California who participated in this study said that "El Nino operates within its own kind of 2,000-year rhythm, and because of that, we believe these periodic changes have had a major impact on global climate conditions over the past 10,000 years,"

"El Nino is an important part of our modern-day climate system. Likewise, our study shows it was also an important part of the earth's climate system 7,000 years ago," he added.

This raises the question again as to whether Carbon Dioxide is the cause of global warming since there were no industrial emissions 2000 years ago.

January 12, 2003

Antarctic Ice Sheet is Stable. 

The latest reports indicate that the West Antarctic ice sheet will not disintegrate any time soon.

The West Antarctic ice sheet has been contracting in fits and starts for 20,000 years. A few years ago scientists proclaimed the imminent complete disintegration of the ice sheet and that its disintegration would add 15 feet to sea levels. Alarmist reports such as this grabs headlines but frequently are toned down as more evidence is gathered.

Now the scientists believe the ice sheet is shrinking much more slowly and, at its current rate, will add about 1 foot to sea levels in 100 years.

December 29, 2002

Temperature increase is linear.  

Contrary to extremist reports that temperature increases are accelerating, the trend has been linear.

The Greening Earth Society has tracked the annual temperature increases since 1977, which is when the current trend started. The complete trend line can be seen on their web site http://www.co2andclimate.org/Articles/2002/vca36.htm.

This is continued proof that human activity is not causing global warming. The alarmist’s CO2 theory is that accelerated burning of fossil fuels is causing accelerated temperature increases. The slow steady linear increase during the recent period of warming disproves this so called anthropogenic theory.

December 22, 2002

Arctic Ice is not Thinning.

A report in the July issue " Journal of Climate" shows that errors in an earlier study created the misimpression that Arctic ice was thinning. 

An abstract from the Journal of Climate reads: "Reports based on submarine sonar data have suggested Arctic sea ice has thinned nearly by half in recent decades. Such rapid thinning is a concern for detection of global change and for Arctic regional impacts. Including atmospheric time series, ocean currents and river runoff into an ocean–ice–snow model show that the inferred rapid thinning was unlikely. 

The problem stems from under sampling. Varying winds that readily redistribute Arctic ice create a recurring pattern whereby ice shifts between the central Arctic and peripheral regions, especially in the Canadian sector. Timing and tracks of the submarine surveys missed this dominant mode of variability. Although model-derived overall thinning from the 1960s to the 1990s was less than hitherto supposed, there is also indication of accelerated thinning during the early–mid-1990s" 

In the authors words, "the volume estimated in 2000 is close to the volume estimated in 1950."

Though the earlier flawed study received wide coverage by the media this latest study has been largely ignored.

December, 15 2002

Climate Models Wrong Again. 

New "Lidar" technique shows temperature errors of 10 to 15 degrees centigrade in the upper atmosphere above Antarctica. These are huge errors. Physicists from the University of Illinois and ...NCAR took measurements for a period of almost two years, December 1999 to October 2001. Before now everything in the upper atmosphere had been modeled using computers. While this temperature information is primarily of interests to scientists it demonstrates, once again, how unreliable computer models have been. (Lidar is a laser radar system.)

The average person who is not a scientist should find this information very disturbing since environmentalists are asking everyone to make tremendous sacrifices in their living standards based on  unreliable computer forecasts of temperature change.

In depth information can be found at www.co2andclimate.org in their August 2002 World Climate Report. 

December, 8 2002

COP 8 Bad News for EU

The Council of Parties of the UNFCCC represented a setback for extreme environmentalists who have been pushing the Kyoto treaty. 

Developing countries stood against the European Union's notion of climate control when India 's Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, as reported in The New York Times, said developing countries could not be expected to invest in expensive efforts to curb their production of greenhouse gasses.

The EU backed down and signed a compromise agreement recognizing the primacy of economic development over the Kyoto treaty. In addition COP 8 set no deadlines or timetables for curbing emissions.

The National Council for Science and the Environment’s President, Ambassador Richard Benedick, said “future progress would be found in regional approaches to problems - "getting like-minded countries together to create regional, … incremental, partial solutions, and not try to solve everything for everyone at the same time."

It was reported he said "The United Nations is an industry now of empty declarations."

The NCSE has been working since 1990 to improve the scientific basis for environmental decision making. NCSE is supported by nearly 500 academic, scientific, environmental, and business organizations.
November 10, 2002

Skeptical Environmentalist Author Receives Appointment.

Bjørn Lomborg, appointed head of a new national Environment Evaluation Institute by Denmark's Minister of the Environment. 

The environmental institute is to look critically at environmental policies. Mr. Lomborg is author of "The skeptical environmentalist" which has refocused the debate on global warming and establishes that human activity has little effect on global warming.

Alaskan Glaciers Melting. 

Temperatures in Alaska have risen five times faster than the worldwide average which has resulted in the melting of glaciers at double the rate forty years ago. 

One theory for why temperatures are rising so much faster in Alaska than elsewhere is that there has been a temporary shift in Pacific Ocean warm water and wind patterns beginning in 1976 Meanwhile temperatures in the heart of Antarctica have fallen over the last fifty years.

Temperatures falling in Antarctica

Over the last 50 years, the temperatures in the interior of Antarctica appear to have been falling...not rising. University of Illinois researchers have reported, in Nature, on temperature records covering a broad area of Antarctica.  Their measurements show a net cooling on the Antarctic continent between 1966 and 2000. Indeed, some regions like the McMurdo Dry Valleys, the largest ice free area, appear to have cooled between 1986 and 1999 by as much as two degrees centigrade per decade.

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