ROFL... Gaia Hypothesis?
Manny, 50% of the U.S. population lives close to a beach, your talking about massive population relocation, and food supplies could be affected as America's bread-basket moves further North in Canada along with rain patterns. Forget the good-parts about global warming, with the water and oil wars that will result we will take care of the overpopulation problems through war.
Learn some science...
and you wonder why they want to keep you stupid.
umm... so that graph tells me that there is less ice when it's warmer...
rofl...
Thank you Dan, I'm so much smarter now..
You're a dip ... you have no idea what Gaia hypothesis is, and yet you just preached it to all of us.
You have any thoughts on that Dihydrogen Monoxide problem i mentioned in the earlier post?
Last edited by Sec24Row7; 04-13-2007 at 03:48 PM.
Dihydrogen monoxide frequently reaches its saturation limit in the atmosphere. Beyond a certain concentration, this compound will precipitate out as a liquid or solid, depending upon ambient conditions. This phenomenon is colloquially known as "rain" or "snow."
However, as the atmosphere warms, the saturation limit for dihydrogen monoxide in the atmosphere increases, as does the vapor pressure. This means as a little warming takes place due to another compound, such as CO2, if there were for some reason large liquid pools of dihydrogen monoxide on the surface of the earth, they would tend to evaporate a little more and augment the warming effect further until a new equilibrium was reached.
I understand the Earth does in fact have such large liquid pools of dihydrogen monoxide on its surface; in fact they cover the majority of the surface; I believe they are called "oceans."
rofl.
Thank you for telling him what it was so he didnt have to google it.
Some more of that blasted global warming, if you don't mind.
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX
324 PM CDT SAT APR 14 2007
LLANO-BURNET-WILLIAMSON-VAL VERDE-EDWARDS-REAL-KERR-BANDERA-
GILLESPIE-KENDALL-BLANCO-HAYS-TRAVIS-BASTROP-LEE-KINNEY-UVALDE-
MEDINA-BEXAR-COMAL-GUADALUPE-CALDWELL-FAYETTE-MAVERICK-ZAVALA-
FRIO-ATASCOSA-WILSON-KARNES-GONZALES-DE WITT-LAVACA-DIMMIT-
INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...LLANO...BURNET...GEORGETOWN...DEL RIO...
ROCKSPRINGS...LEAKEY...KERRVILLE...BANDERA...FREDE RICKSBURG...
BOERNE...BLANCO...SAN MARCOS...AUSTIN...BASTROP...GIDDINGS...
BRACKETTVILLE...UVALDE...HONDO...SAN ANTONIO...NEW BRAUNFELS...
SEGUIN...LOCKHART...LA GRANGE...EAGLE PASS...CRYSTAL CITY...
PEARSALL...PLEASANTON...FLORESVILLE...KARNES CITY...GONZALES...
CUERO...HALLETTSVILLE...CARRIZO SPRINGS
324 PM CDT SAT APR 14 2007
...ANOTHER COLD NIGHT IN THE 30S EXPECTED ACROSS MUCH OF SOUTH
CENTRAL TEXAS...
A COLD DENSE AIRMASS WILL CONTINUE TO SPILL SOUTH ACROSS THE
SOUTHERN PLAINS STATES TONIGHT...RESULTING IN ANOTHER THREAT TO
TENDER VEGETATION IN SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS. CLEAR SKIES AND LIGHT
WINDS ARE EXPECTED TO DEVELOP BY MIDNIGHT WITH THE DRY LOW LEVEL
AIR MAKING FOR EFFICIENT OVERNIGHT COOLING.
MORNING LOWS ARE EXPECTED TO DROP INTO THE 33 TO 36 DEGREE RANGE
IN VALLEYS ALONG AND NORTH OF THE BALCONES ESCARPMENT...WITH UPPER
30S EXPECTED ACROSS MANY ADJACENT AREAS OF SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS.
RAIN MOISTENED SOILS SHOULD ALSO CREATE A FAVORABLE ENVIRONMENT
FOR THE FORMATION OF FROST. TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO REBOUND
QUICKLY AFTER SUNRISE SUNDAY.
CARE SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PROTECT TENDER VEGETATION AND YOUNG
ANIMALS FROM THE COLD AND FROSTY CONDITIONS. ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS
WILL BE ISSUED AS CONDITIONS WARRANT.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Texas right now is getting colder weather than Central Europe. Weird.
It's going to be like 77 in Zurich tomorrow.
Oh My, tell me one more time about all this global warming.
http://news.rgj.com//apps/pbcs.dll/a...4010/1002/NEWS
Cold, rain cuts short global warming rally
MARTIN GRIFFITH ([email protected])
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 14, 2007
More than two dozen demonstrators braved cold, wet weather Saturday in Reno to attend a rally designed to draw attention to global warming.
The event was cut short by heavy rain and sleet, said organizer Lisa Stiller of the Northern Nevada Coalition for Climate Change.
“It’s kind of disappointing that the weather kept people away,” Stiller said. “But we still think it (climate change) is something that people should talk about.”
The storm prevented the use of solar ovens for a potluck picnic, Stiller said, and caused the planned two-hour demonstration to break up after about an hour.
‘Step It Up’
More than 1,300 events were organized in every state under the banner Step It Up 2007 to push Congress to require an 80 percent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.
In downtown Reno’s Brick Park, demonstrators listened to speeches urging Nevadans to do their part to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Dale Brabham, a chemistry instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, said people can reduce gas use by buying more fuel-efficient vehicles or eliminating the need for owning a vehicle.
People also can tune up vehicles for maximum gas mileage, make homes energy efficient and convert to non-incandescent lighting, he said.
“The evidence is strong and clear. The conclusion is that life as we know will change soon, very likely in our lifetime,” Brabham warned. “Everyone must shoulder the responsibility of meeting the challenge of delaying the change by reducing their impact on the environment. Our survival depends on it.”
‘Green Summit’
Reno City Councilman Dave Aiazzi talked about the city’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and urged residents to attend its “Green Summit” on Thursday. The event is designed to develop plans to reduce emissions and improve energy efficiency.
Local activist Bob Tregilus gave a demonstration of his electric motorcycle and urged people to consider such alternative modes of transportation.
“Americans need to wean themselves from the pump and adopt the plug,” he said.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Don't you have to wonder sometimes if Mother Nature is trying
to tell people something.......
It's 85 degrees in Buenos Aires when we are well into fall (avg temp for April is 65).
And it's full of ing mosquitoes.
Study: Global Warming Could Hinder Hurricanes
Study: Global Warming Could Hinder Hurricanes
By Andrea Thompson
LiveScience Staff Writer
posted: 17 April 2007
06:01 pm ET
Global warming might not fuel more intense hurricanes in the Atlantic after all. Despite increasing ocean temperatures that feed the monstrous storms, climate change may also be ramping up the winds that choke off a hurricane’s development, a new study claims.
“The environmental changes here do not suggest a strong increase in tropical Atlantic hurricane activity during the 21st century,” said study team member Brian Soden of the University of Miami.
Hurricanes form as storms shoot off the coast of Africa and pull energy from the warm, moist air over the oceans. As the hurricane intensifies, it begins to rotate. But when winds vary in speed and direction at different heights in the atmosphere, a phenomenon known as wind shear, they prevent the organization of the storm’s circulation, stopping its development or intensification.
Other studies have found that global warming will increase ocean temperatures over the coming century, fueling more intense hurricanes, but this study is the first to suggest that wind shear may also increase and counteract the effects of ocean warming.
“Wind shear is one of the dominant controls to hurricane activity, and the models project substantial increases in the Atlantic,” said study leader Gabriel Vecchi of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Based on historical relationships, the impact on hurricane activity of the projected shear change could be as large—and in the opposite sense—as that of the warming oceans.”
Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research who was not affiliated with the study, pointed out that the model predictions in the new study were averaged. For a given four-year period, for instance, three years could yield suppressed hurricane development, while the fourth could turn out like 2005 (the season that generated Hurricane Katrina), he said.
The models used in the study, detailed in the April 18 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, did show that global warming could lead to a more favorable environment for hurricanes to develop in other regions, including the western tropical Pacific.
“This study does not, in any way, undermine the widespread consensus in the scientific community about the reality of global warming,” Soden said. “In fact, the wind shear changes are driven by global warming.”
Global.Stick.Shift.
right here, suck it.
pfffffffffftttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!!!
=====}~~
Aggie CHoade Bloatations.
ABC NewsEven "moderate additional" greenhouse emissions are likely to push Earth past "critical tipping points" with "dangerous consequences for the planet," according to research conducted by NASA and the Columbia University Earth Ins ute.
With just 10 more years of "business as usual" emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, "it becomes impractical" to avoid "disastrous effects."
... The forecast effects include "increasingly rapid sea-level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones," according to the NASA announcement.
By heralding the new research paper, NASA is endorsing science that places considerably more urgency on the need to reduce emissions to avoid "disastrous effects" of global warming than was evident in the recent reports from the world's scientists coordinated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
I guess they didn't get the memo:
NASA's Top Official Questions Global Warming
Then Michael Griffin, NASA talking-head, comes out minimizing the issue...
Space DailyMichael Griffin NASA Administrator has told America's National Public Radio that while he has no doubt a trend of global warming exists "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."
In an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep that will air in Thursday's edition of NPR News' Morning Edition, Administrator Griffin explains: "I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."
..and we wonder why wing-nuts are so confused about important issues....
Who is confused? There is NO conculsive evidence man is causing
the problem. Why didn't you post the whole story.
Here is the whole story:
ABC News
NASA's Top Official Questions Global Warming
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin Questions Need to Combat Warming
By CLAYTON SANDELL and BILL BLAKEMORE
May 31, 2007 —
NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency's preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.
In an interview broadcast this morning on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program, Griffin was asked by NPR's Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.
"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," Griffin told Inskeep. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."
"To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said. "I guess I would ask which human beings where and when are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."
Griffin's comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist at the Goddard Ins ute for Space Studies in New York.
"It's an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement," Hansen told ABC News. "It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change."
Hansen believes Griffin's comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to.
"It's unbelievable," said Hansen. "I thought he had been misquoted. It's so unbelievable."
News media inquiries to NASA headquarters about Griffin's comments prompted the space agency to make the unusual move of issuing a news release late Wednesday night.
"NASA is the world's preeminent organization in the study of Earth and the conditions that contribute to climate change and global warming," Griffin said in a statement. "The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet's evolving systems. It is NASA's responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA's mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies. As I stated in the NPR interview, we are proud of our role and I believe we do it well."
Hansen, featured prominently in Al Gore's global warming do entary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has been warning of the potential dangers of climate change since the 1980s.
In late 2005, he accused NASA of trying to improperly censor him after he warned that Earth's climate might be approaching a dangerous "tipping point."
The agency later fired a public affairs employee, a political appointee of the Bush administration, over the incident.
Last year, many NASA scientists were upset when reports surfaced that the agency had quietly deleted the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from the NASA mission statement. The scientists believe research on issues like climate change will suffer as NASA shifts priorities toward exploration missions to the moon and Mars.
"Earth has always been central to NASA's science," Hansen said.
Copyright © 2007 ABC News Internet Ventures
Are we to assume, you a dyed in the wool Socialist, are the
sole source of the perfect tempreature. Did you read my post
the other day? No I didn't think so.
In it, the arthur stated that where the melting snow and ice in
alps in Switzerland has receded they have found evidence of
mining and water projects.
Anyhow for your education and another side of the argument
I am re-posting the article here for you. I hope you read it
this time.
The Faithful Heretic
A Wisconsin Icon Pursues Tough Questions
Some people are lucky enough to enjoy their work, some are lucky enough to love it, and then there’s Reid Bryson. At age 86, he’s still hard at it every day, delving into the science some say he invented.
Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology—now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences—in the 1970s he became the first director of what’s now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Ins ute of Environmental Studies. He’s a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor—created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment.” He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Ins ute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.
Long ago in the Army Air Corps, Bryson and a colleague prepared the aviation weather forecast that predicted discovery of the jet stream by a group of B-29s flying to and from Tokyo. Their warning to expect westerly winds at 168 knots earned Bryson and his friend a chewing out from a general—and the general’s apology the next day when he learned they were right. Bryson flew into a couple of typhoons in 1944, three years before the Weather Service officially did such things, and he prepared the forecast for the homeward flight of the Enola Gay. Back in Wisconsin, he built a program at the UW that’s trained some of the nation’s leading climatologists.
How Little We Know
Bryson is a believer in climate change, in that he’s as quick as anyone to acknowledge that Earth’s climate has done nothing but change throughout the planet’s existence. In fact, he took that knowledge a big step further, earlier than probably anyone else. Almost 40 years ago, Bryson stood before the American Association for the Advancement of Science and presented a paper saying human activity could alter climate.
“I was laughed off the platform for saying that,” he told Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News.
In the 1960s, Bryson’s idea was widely considered a radical proposition. But nowadays things have turned almost in the opposite direction: Hardly a day passes without some authority figure claiming that whatever the climate happens to be doing, human activity must be part of the explanation. And once again, Bryson is challenging the conventional wisdom.
“Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,” he told us in an interview this past winter. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?”
“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”
Little Ice Age? That’s what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after they’d farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way. What’s called “proxy evidence”—assorted clues extrapolated from marine sediment cores, pollen specimens, and tree-ring data—helps reconstruct the climate in those times before instrumental temperature records existed.
We ask about that evidence, but Bryson says it’s second-tier stuff. “Don’t talk about proxies,” he says. “We have written evidence, eyeball evidence. When Eric the Red went to Greenland, how did he get there? It’s all written down.”
Bryson describes the navigational instructions provided for Norse mariners making their way from Europe to their settlements in Greenland. The place was named for a reason: The Norse farmed there from the 10th century to the 13th, a somewhat longer period than the United States has existed. But around 1200 the mariners’ instructions changed in a big way. Ice became a major navigational reference. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers.
Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”
We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.
“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”
What Leads, What Follows?
What is normal? Maybe continuous change is the only thing that qualifies. There’s been warming over the past 150 years and even though it’s less than one degree, Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the “greenhouse effect,” various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.
We ask Bryson what could be making the key difference:
Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?
A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?
Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…
A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.
This begs questions about the widely publicized mathematical models researchers run through supercomputers to generate climate scenarios 50 or 100 years in the future. Bryson says the data fed into the computers overemphasizes carbon dioxide and accounts poorly for the effects of clouds—water vapor. Asked to evaluate the models’ long-range predictive ability, he answers with another question: “Do you believe a five-day forecast?”
Bryson says he looks in the opposite direction, at past climate conditions, for clues to future climate behavior. Trying that approach in the weeks following our interview, Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News soon found six separate papers about Antarctic ice core studies, published in peer-reviewed scientific journals between 1999 and 2006. The ice core data allowed researchers to examine multiple climate changes reaching back over the past 650,000 years. All six studies found atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations tracking closely with temperatures, but with CO2 lagging behind changes in temperature, rather than leading them. The time lag between temperatures moving up—or down—and carbon dioxide following ranged from a few hundred to a few thousand years.
Renaissance Man, Marathon Man
When others were laughing at the concept, Reid Bryson was laying the ground floor for scientific investigation of human impacts on climate. We asked UW Professor Ed Hopkins, the assistant state climatologist, about the significance of Bryson’s work in advancing the science he’s now practiced for six decades.
“His contributions are manifold,” Hopkins said. “He wrote Climates of Hunger back in the 1970s looking at how climate changes over the last several thousand years have affected human activity and human cultures.”
This, he suggests, is traceable to Bryson’s high-school interest in archaeology, followed by college degrees in geology, then meteorology, and studies in oceanography, limnology, and other disciplines. “He’s looked at the interconnections of all these things and their impact on human societies,” Hopkins says. “He’s one of those people I would say is a Renaissance person.”
The Renaissance, of course, produced its share of heretics, and 21 years after he supposedly retired, one could ponder whether Bryson’s work today is a tale of continuing heresy, or of conventional wisdom being outpaced by an octogenarian.
Without addressing—or being asked—that question, UW Green Bay Emeritus Professor Joseph Moran agrees that Bryson qualifies as “the father of the science of modern climatology.”
“In his lifetime, in his career, he has shaped the future as well as the present state of climatology,” Moran says, adding, “We’re going to see his legacy with us for many generations to come.”
Holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Boston College, Moran became a doctoral candidate under Bryson in the late 1960s and early ’70s. “I came to Wisconsin because he was there,” Moran told us.
With Hopkins, Moran co-authored Wisconsin’s Weather and Climate, a book aimed at teachers, students, outdoor enthusiasts, and workers with a need to understand what the weather does and why. Bryson wrote a preface for the book but Hopkins told us the editors “couldn’t fathom” certain comments, thinking he was being too flippant with the remark that “Wisconsin is not for wimps when it comes to weather.”
Clearly what those editors couldn’t fathom was that Bryson simply enjoys mulling over the reasons weather and climate behave as they do and what might make them—and consequently us—behave differently. This was immediately obvious when we asked him why, at his age, he keeps showing up for work at a job he’s no longer paid to do.
“It’s fun!” he said. Ed Hopkins and Joe Moran would undoubtedly agree.
“I think that’s one of the reasons for his longevity,” Moran says. “He’s so interested and inquisitive. I regard him as a pot-stirrer. Sometimes people don’t react well when you challenge their long-held ideas, but that’s how real science takes place.”—Dave Hoopman
Why don't I ever see the believers of Man Made Global Warming ever tell us the science of suns output vs. earths temperiture.
I don't recall the numbers, but a 1% change in the suns output changes our temperiture by more than 2 degrees Farenheit. We haven't recorded that level of change in the sun, but we have only been able to monitor it for a couple decades, and we have seen something like a 0.2% change!
bumped for dan, cause I never source anything. Of course he
always give you the whole picture, not just his version....like fun.
I like the article where the guy talks about 80% of the IR being trapped in the first 30 feet. However, I think he misspoke. The idea is correct, and I don't have the numbers at hand, but 30 feet sounds exaggerated.
Anyway, CO2 only captures IR in three narrow bandwidths of the IR spectra radiated from earth. Water absorbs these same frequencies, and masks any absorption that CO2 can do. Not 100%, but the remaining energy at these bands becomes insignificant. Even on the driest of atmospheric conditions, CO2 absorbs nearly 100% of what it can in these bands! See this graph below:
What I don't like about this graph is the horizontal scale is not consistent. It starts logarithmic, then turns linear at the 10 μm point. Note however the CO2 absorption is near 100% in these three bands and that water vapor covers the same wavelengths. The 13 to 20 μm band should be as narrow as the other two without the expanded scale.
When it comes to the ice core data, when you correlate CO2 vs. temperature, for all practical purposes, the temperature has been relatively stable. Sure, it has about a 1500 years cycle, but for the last 8000 years has maintained within certain limits. No temperature changes can be correlated to CO2 levels considering they have not gone up like they did before the last 8000 years.
Note on the above graph the high and low temperatures in red, and the higher CO2 levels since industrialization has not changed the pattern of the 1500 year cycle. If CO2 caused temperature changes, then according to the graph, we should see much higher temperatures.
Consider this. At 180 ppm CO2, we have –8 Celsius on the graph. Pre-industrialization has us at about 265 ppm and zero on the graph. The graph peaks at about 285 ppm for I think the year 2004, but I haven't looked at this for some time. It might be older yet like 2000, or 2001. Anyway, if we stay true to the scale, we should see a 1.8 degree Celsius increase from the zero point, which I believe is reference to the 14 degree global average. Today, levels are said to be what. Help me out here. 360 ppm? is that right? Well at 360 ppm, we should be seeing temperatures on the scale equivalent to 8.9 on the graph, or a global average of 22.9 degrees!
Kinda blows the CO2 theory out the window if you ask me.
The below graph indicates how much radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere directly from the sun, and the reflected IR from the earth:
If you don't understand it with it's stand alone description, then I doubt I can explain it without teaching more science than I have the time to. For those with enough understanding of science, notice the wavelengths that are absorbed, and that are not, and consider how little the CO2 portion represents.
Ooops, I made a mistake on the numbers. I'm surprised nobody knew enough to catch my mistake before I did!
Anyone know where I went wrong?
Any peers out there?
Another article about the "deniers". The link to this article
is placed at the bottom.
Sunday » June 3 » 2007
They call this a consensus?
Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Al Gore's views have credible dissenters.
CREDIT: David McNew, Getty Images File Photo
Al Gore's views have credible dissenters.
"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."
S o said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.
Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.
More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.
My series set out to profile the dissenters -- those who deny that the science is settled on climate change -- and to have their views heard. To demonstrate that dissent is credible, I chose high-ranking scientists at the world's premier scientific establishments. I considered stopping after writing six profiles, thinking I had made my point, but continued the series due to feedback from readers. I next planned to stop writing after 10 profiles, then 12, but the feedback increased. Now, after profiling more than 20 deniers, I do not know when I will stop -- the list of distinguished scientists who question the IPCC grows daily, as does the number of emails I receive, many from scientists who express gra ude for my series.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility. In one case, a top scientist told me that, to his knowledge, no respected scientist in his field accepts the IPCC position.
What of the one claim that we hear over and over again, that 2,000 or 2,500 of the world's top scientists endorse the IPCC position? I asked the IPCC for their names, to gauge their views. "The 2,500 or so scientists you are referring to are reviewers from countries all over the world," the IPCC Secretariat responded. "The list with their names and contacts will be attached to future IPCC publications, which will hopefully be on-line in the second half of 2007."
An IPCC reviewer does not assess the IPCC's comprehensive findings. He might only review one small part of one study that later becomes one small input to the published IPCC report. Far from endorsing the IPCC reports, some reviewers, offended at what they considered a sham review process, have demanded that the IPCC remove their names from the list of reviewers. One even threatened legal action when the IPCC refused.
A great many scientists, without doubt, are four-square in their support of the IPCC. A great many others are not. A pe ion organized by the Oregon Ins ute of Science and Medicine between 1999 and 2001 claimed some 17,800 scientists in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. A more recent indicator comes from the U.S.-based National Registry of Environmental Professionals, an accrediting organization whose 12,000 environmental prac ioners have standing with U.S. government agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy. In a November, 2006, survey of its members, it found that only 59% think human activities are largely responsible for the warming that has occurred, and only 39% make their priority the curbing of carbon emissions. And 71% believe the increase in hurricanes is likely natural, not easily attributed to human activities.
Such diversity of views is also present in the wider scientific community, as seen in the World Federation of Scientists, an organization formed during the Cold War to encourage dialogue among scientists to prevent nuclear catastrophe. The federation, which encompasses many of the world's most eminent scientists and today represents more than 10,000 scientists, now focuses on 15 "planetary emergencies," among them water, soil, food, medicine and biotechnology, and climatic changes. Within climatic changes, there are eight priorities, one being "Possible human influences on climate and on atmospheric composition and chemistry (e.g. increased greenhouse gases and tropospheric ozone)."
Man-made global warming deserves study, the World Federation of Scientists believes, but so do other serious climatic concerns. So do 14 other planetary emergencies. That seems about right. - Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Ins ute and Consumer Policy Ins ute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation. Email: [email protected].
© National Post 2007
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Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
The series
Statistics needed -- The Deniers Part I
Warming is real -- and has benefits -- The Deniers Part II
The hurricane expert who stood up to UN junk science -- The Deniers Part III
Polar scientists on thin ice -- The Deniers Part IV
The original denier: into the cold -- The Deniers Part V
The sun moves climate change -- The Deniers Part VI
Will the sun cool us? -- The Deniers Part VII
The limits of predictability -- The Deniers Part VIII
Look to Mars for the truth on global warming -- The Deniers Part IX
Limited role for C02 -- the Deniers Part X
End the chill -- The Deniers Part XI
Clouded research -- The Deniers Part XII
Allegre's second thoughts -- The Deniers XIII
The heat's in the sun -- The Deniers XIV
Unsettled Science -- The Deniers XV
Bitten by the IPCC -- The Deniers XVI
Little ice age is still within us -- The Deniers XVII
Fighting climate 'fluff' -- The Deniers XVIII
Science, not politics -- The Deniers XIX
More on the environment
Go to link below and you can link to all the series give above.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/f...1-5c755457a8af
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