OPINION/COMMENTARY

The One Percent Solution

Many of the scientific papers that have contributed to global warming alarmism over recent weeks (such as the study that predicted the ruin of California’s wine industry or the more recent study predicting stronger hurricanes by 2080) have depended on models that assume atmospheric increases of carbon dioxide concentrations by one percent per year from 1990 to the end of the century. This assumption is not backed up by the evidence, which has seen concentration increase by only 0.4 percent per year since 1990. University of Virginia climatologist Patrick Michaels drew attention to this problem in a Cato Institute op-ed published on October 6 (“Debunking the Latest Hurricane Hype,” available at www.cato.org). He commented, “Because carbon dioxide increases have been bouncing around four-tenths of a percent per year for three decades, why do climate modelers insist on using the wrong number? It seems peculiar that people who have the equivalent of doctorates in applied physics (which is what climate science is) would somehow be perfectly happy to do something they know is wrong....