The idea that there is a scientific "consensus" regarding anthropogenic global-warming has its roots in the controversial article written in 2004 by Naomi Oreskes purporting to have established consensus among peer-reviewed climatologists and, second, from statements of the U.N. climate-study steering committee (IPCC) charged with investigating the case for AGW and determining likely impacts.
Read just about any newspaper, magazine, professional journal or opinion website, and you will find statements and headlines of the type:
“There is consensus in the scientific community that Earth's climate is heating and that human activity is the cause.”
“Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are causing the Earth’s climate to change and warm, which will have catastrophic results if we do not act to reduce them. Carbon dioxide emissions are about 40% higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution and at their highest levels in recorded history, covering over 650,000 years.”
“With this system, organizations can assess the climate-change impact of their buildings.”
“. . . largest private solar roof in Manhattan, which will . . . eliminate carbon dioxide, and . . .”
“. . . Improves gas mileage and emissions. A great way to shrink your carbon footprint; increases fuel economy up to 35%. Only $39.95. Guaranteed!”
“Offsetting your carbon footprint allows you to become part of the solution to climate change by supporting the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions equal to your carbon emissions.”
“Land and sea temperatures . . . have risen sharply under the influence of climate change . . . a government report said.”
"Such warmer waters fuel the formation and ferocity of hurricanes. Warmer oceans are an inseparable by-product of global warming, and it's foolish to ignore the link to the burning of fossil fuels."
“. . . glaciers melting in Greenland prove the planet is warming . . . man-made CO2 responsible . . .”
“Global Warming Threatens Polar Bears with Extinction!”
“The World Health Organization said Thursday an estimated 77,000 deaths are recorded annually in the Asia-Pacific region due to health problems arising from global warming.”
There is a battle brewing over anthropogenic global-warming (AGW), and, as in all wars, the first casualty is truth. All of the above statements have in common that they are, in full or part, untrue. It is, so far, only theorized that greenhouse gases (GHG) and ozone depleting substances (ODS) are the primary culprits of observed warming – not proved. It is only hypothesized that warming bodes large scale climatic disasters. And, it is wishful thinking of a tall order that the data and models available are sufficient to determine the true state and change in climate. The remaining statements are all predicated on the single notion that global warming has been proved beyond dispute and is a human artifact; and is, therefore amenable to or answerable for a wide body of secondary effects.
At most, you can prove those deaths in Asia-Pacifica were weather related. One of the statements is an improbable product-endorsement (for reasons other than AGW). But, hey, if you are already stretching the truth, what’s a little piling on of feel-good, political-correctness going to hurt? And, some are just plain ignorant of what AGW is all about, such as New York’s mayor installing solar panels on rooftops in part to “eliminate carbon dioxide” from our atmosphere (gee, I sure hope not, because, last time I checked, plants still need it and we’d have some difficulty exhaling).
This article does not propose to dispute the merits of AGW theory. My object is to dispute the notion that the science is settled and there is no more need of debate.
A. There is no scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is significant.
The claim of consensus is a distortion of the judgment of the scientific community; one that has caused considerable rancor within the community itself and harm to its reputation; and not a little harm to polite discourse. It has two sources. First, is the controversial article written in 2004 by Naomi Oreskes purporting to have established consensus among peer-reviewed climatologists and, second, from statements of the U.N. climate-study steering committee (IPCC) charged with investigating the case for AGW and determining likely impacts.
Oreskes searched the on-line scientific literature to establish a "consensus exists among climatologists" by counting up those scientists who wrote abstracts for or against anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Her study only looked at the abstracts of these studies, not the full text or any qualifiers contained therein. She did not query the scientists directly whether they thought AGW was real or whether their studies represented prevailing scientific opinion. Regardless of whether a majority of all relevant scientists strongly or partly agree that AGW exists, her survey is insufficient by itself to establish that.
The survey was flawed in other respects; for example: placement of scientists into ‘for-against’ categories were, in many cases, a matter of her personal judgment rather than any measurable criteria.
A skeptic (Peiser) repeated her meta-search using similar criteria and came up with 1,247 hits as against her 938 (1,117 matching Oreskes later-amended criteria). Peiser also came to an entirely different conclusion. These suggests that either Oreskes was too "selective" or that any study purporting to establish consensus in this manner is inherently subjective. Oreskes charged that Peiser did not follow her protocol precisely, and included many articles that were not peer reviewed; and that these deficiencies invalidate his challenge. Nonetheless, the quality of Peiser’s additional articles and his more rigorous treatment are sufficient to dispute her "consensus." Peiser concedes some of her points, yet contends her assignments in the 'for' and 'against' columns are dubious.
Oreskes timed the release of her study to coincide with the 10th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-10); suggesting an agenda (supported by other papers she's published and known environmentalism). Tellingly, no one has come forward, even among AGW proponents, to demonstrate her research is repeatable. At least one other survey finds that, among all climate scientists, the breakdown is 9.4% strongly for AGW, 9.7% strongly against, with the rest voicing varying degrees of weak partisanship to non-judgment. This distribution seems more probable than Oreskes' survey, given the embryonic state of climate knowledge and tendency of scientists to guard their reputations.
In a more recent study of U.S. state climatologists only (direct polling), the split was 17% for and 44% against (17:44), virtually identical with Peiser’s result (13:34).
The other source of this myth is the United Nations IPCC steering committee, an organization more political than scientific, with a clear AGW agenda, and biased toward climate modeling over other research outcomes. Modelers are but one group of scientists in the AGW debate, but they have a huge investment of time, funding and position in proving that AGW is real and potentially catastrophic (the minute it is proven otherwise, their funding is apt to vanish; ditto for the IPCC).
One report has the IPCC steering committee thrice publishing its own summary report overriding and embellishing the actual findings of its contributor scientists. Some of these scientists have since complained that IPCC misrepresented their findings to overstate the case for AGW.
Not every scientist has complained against the committee, but enough to discredit IPCC as an impartial body. Each time this happened, the committee published its synopsis many months prior to publishing the scientists’ reports in an apparent bid at steering public policy. By the time the real report was published, the committee had stolen a march on media opinion and Governments were trapped in policies no one wants to disavow. In each instance, their summaries claim the data (when presented) would support the committee's contention that global warming is man-made and potentially disastrous; and, most recently, that the evidence is undeniable. In each instance, scientists countered that their evidence is no better than suggestive of AGW; only to be ignored. The findings (when eventually published) provided only weak support for AGW and, in some cases, supported alternative explanations.
In none of these cases has the public been apprised of the distortions. Instead, the media and Al Gore repeat and propagate disinformation as though there was no remaining doubt; Gore is now parroted by reputable professional organizations and climate reporters.
Having created a myth of consensus, we see an unfortunate tendency among scientists, engineers, and technical professionals to concede an AGW victory. Worse, they feel an altruistic obligation to participate in costly makeshift "solutions." However, on what basis do they concede and what relevance would it have, even if true? If they do not study climate or have not taken time to study the findings, what matters their opinion more than a stockbroker or Hollywood diva?
I query people how they came by this certain knowledge without ever having studied the science, evidence, models, and debate. Overwhelmingly, the answer I get is: because they have heard or read it so reported in the media or government pronouncements, and because they no longer hear anyone disputing it. So today, among non-climatologic scientists, it may very well be true there is such a consensus or convergence; but, if so, it must be a consensus of apathy, defeat, or conformity. It still does not make a consensus among those who specifically study climate. More to the point, there is even less possibility for determining this is the opinion of the general scientific community; or just a general impression of that opinion shaped in the absence of an effective challenge.
The purported consensus has been fueled partly by browbeating the public and limiting the terms of debate, partly by tarring those who object, partly by the desire to profit from anxiety, and partly by restricting who counts as an expert or dismissing substantial experts as irrelevant. The deliberate attacking and smearing of skeptics-of-note has gone on for sometime, usually silencing debate by portraying those who object as heedless and exploitative of the environment, sustainability, the future, and that perennial dialog douser, "the children." Most recently, we are portrayed as being "in denial" (likened to Holocaust deniers).
Of what are we supposed to be in denial? Going along? Dread of being labeled contrarian is irrational yet powerful. Many people (including scientists) are jumping on the AGW bandwagon for that reason and no other. The irony being that, by jumping on for the wrong rather than right reasons, they are behaving irrationally . . . like so many stampeded cattle.
Oreskes’ study is an instance of restricting who counts, whereby she limits her search to peer-reviewed abstracts only. The choice to limit this way may have been calculated because she was already conversant with this particular literature and knew that, by carefully choosing her criteria, she could disproportionately fetch affirming abstracts or, at least, those she could "assign" as positive. It is even possible she tried out a variety of criteria until reaching an optimal result. One way to test for this would be to vary her criteria to see if still more positive results are attainable. Given the high-subjectivity of her criteria (as demonstrated by Peiser) and growing scientific complaint against consensus, this speculation has some merit.
Censorship is further reinforced by marginalizing or outing scientists who publicly object, as happened to Dr. William Gray (Professor Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State and a leading hurricane predictor), Dr. S. Fred Singer, and Dr. Roy Spencer (former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA-Huntsville); and, to a lesser extent Dr. Chris Landsea (former Science & Operations officer at the NOAA National Hurricane Center and an IPCC research contributor). All four scientists have unimpeachable credentials and should be listened to. Instead, all four have been marginalized as "cranks" and/or "cronies in the pay of Big-Oil." The reality is money goes to those willing to research AGW's potential; while those critical of it go unfunded, under-funded, and their reputations are sullied. In this climate, many scientists may find it risky voicing views contradicting the well-orchestrated but unscientific narratives of the wider public, administration, media, and activists. How, then, can there be meaningful consensus where there is no room for dialog.
Far fewer people bother refuting nonsense than ignore it. This, however unfortunate, is both normal and proper because they have better things to do with their time. People join causes out of passion or fear, and only those vested with such passion or driven by fear contribute significant time and energy. We don't waste ourselves combating those we regard as fools; we cultivate those we regard as sensible. Because of this, it is far easier exciting foolishness than reason. Most are too occupied with more immediate pursuits and willing, therefore, to concede anything that does not disturb them. This leaves the field open to fanatics, fools, and scoundrels, who drive the rest of us crazy until we capitulate.
B. Consensus is not the right measure of validity.
Only proof is capable of that. Does it matter that 99 of 100 experts say the sun rises in the east and sets in the west when the truth is the sun does no such thing (the earth spins, making it appear the sun rises and sets). 400-years ago, a lone genius peering through a new instrument shattered that conceit, yet we persist in viewing the Earth centrically. AGW is another such conceit: the conceit that our activities are more significant than nature, and that even a small perturbation to a planet like ours is enough to disrupt a system robustly stable and favorable to life for some 3.8-billion years. Thirty years ago the consensus was the earth was cooling and we'd soon plunge into an ice-age. Forty years before that the consensus was for warming and in 1908 it was for cooling. This is just the latest lurch in scientific conjecture; and media speculation more than scientific consensus.
Here is what Michael Crichton, scientist and noted author, says about consensus:
As most of you have heard many times, the consensus of climate scientists believes in global warming. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.
. . . the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science . . . requires only one investigator who happens to be right; which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science, consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
If you haven’t read Crichton’s novel State of Fear, by all means do so. It not only describes the motives behind hype and data-manipulation; it is also good storytelling.
Mark Twain said, "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
Because there are alternatives, because the all-important models are concededly flawed, because we don't know the balance between positive and negative feedbacks, because the sun’s contribution has been left out, because the data is spotty, because no one knows the actual long-term impacts, and because AGW is 9/10ths political, any claim made of consensus on the order described is a monumental conceit.
C. AGW is not the best predictor of events.
The current state of comprehension admits of alternative explanations, with more alternatives existing for natural causes of climate change than supporting it as man-made. The most probable is also the oldest and most readily understood – the variability of our sun, our distance from it, and factors affecting how much of its energy reaches our surface (including trapping, aerosols, and albedo). An effective model will include these extraterrestrial components as well as atmospheric and terrestrial components, and will give each the correct weighting.
Although the AGW climate models have been tweaked to resemble the 35-year historical record, they do so at the expense of introducing disputable "fudge factors." These are correction-algorithms used to improve fit. Some are valid positive feedback mechanisms, but others have no other basis for being in the model other than providing correction or as "place holders" for missing elements. Among these, valid negative feedbacks (those that damp response to inputs) have been given insufficient weight. The models have been made sharply sensitive to some fudge factors, especially those tied to positive feedbacks; and it is these that are driving high rates of warming in the predictions. If this weighting is wrong, then there is little cause to believe we have a usable model. To my thinking, these models are only good for extrapolating future global temperature on the assumption that other factors can be held constant and the weighting for GHG is about right; giving us some better understanding of the GHG contribution, but not telling us the net result.
The better correlation between surface and solar data brings into sharp focus whether the models tell us anything really useful. The long-term historical trend shows excellent correspondence between solar flux reaching the Earth's surface and global temperature as recorded in ice and soil strata. Yet, this is ignored in favor of GHG models as an explanation for both recorded and predicted temperatures. Solar flux appears to provide a very good fit to the long-term data and may be the better candidate for predicting near-term trends. Even better, it does not require the complexity necessary to the AGW models. Solar flux would also explain recent ice cap melting on Mars (though this could be coincidental); which Earth-based AGW models cannot possibly explain. The obvious drawback to a solar-based model is predicting occasional anomalies. Used retroactively for geological time-scales, AGW models predict rather poorly while solar variation tracks quite well.
The models cannot be "proven" in any meaningful sense for decades to come (by which time the modelers will all be safely dead and the models will have been altered beyond recognition). The same, of course, can be said of solar and other alternate theories, but the point is not that one or the other prevails . . . it is that none so far are more than suggestive.
The other big problem with the AGW climate models, as Dr. Richard Lintzen points out, is that they depend too much on a rate of economic expansion at the extreme of what can occur. Coupled with this is an improper assumption that: as economies expand, so must atmospheric CO2 increase. Historically, this is easily shown to be false other than for emerging economies, and only if fossil fuel continues to be abundant. Real economies tend to rein in waste as they mature, driven by shortage and quality concerns toward greater efficiency. Thus, we see in mature economies a tendency for conservation (and, hence, lower per capita CO2 emissions), at least until some replacement energy can be found. As the only other energy capable of sustaining us post-fossil-fuel is nuclear, the CO2 question ultimately becomes moot.
D. There is an accumulation of data . . . Yes, but it does not unequivocally support AGW.
The terms "climate change," "global-warming" and "man-made" are frequently and improperly used as though synonymous. Climate change has always been with us and will be with us as long as our planet has an atmosphere. The fact that the gathered data shows change only affirms what we have always known – climate varies. What would be novel would be for it to not change. The only thing the data (both older and recent) shows is that, yes, something is changing at locations where measurements are taken. One criticism made is that too much of this data represents urban heat-islands, and that that is skewing the picture. AGW model defenders dispute this has been the case, but have yet to show it has been adequately accounted for in the models.
Global warming exists to roughly the same extent as global cooling; that is, to about the same extent but in different parts of the planet; and, as such, is not truly global. Glaciers melting do not prove global warming, as glaciers have always melted somewhere even as they form elsewhere or some other heat sink balances things out. Each year, we get a tiny new bit of data to add to the growing pile. The new data indicate much the same trends as the old data (except where humans muddy the waters). Recent data has sometimes been manipulated to produce a semblance of acceleration (e.g., the infamous "hockey-stick"), and the reliability of corrections made to surface data are in constant dispute. Global stratospheric data does not confirm the surface trend, suggesting that the latter may constitute localized effects not representative of the larger mass. Some heat islands show flat or even declining temperatures; and, in some cases, have been corrected to explain them away (at least in public presentations).
The surface data mesh is far too coarse and badly distributed to say with certainty what even the surface trend is, making stratospheric and satellite data, so far, the better indicators. Yet, it is surface data that is relied on as "proof" for AGW. Because we do most of our data gathering in large, urban areas in the most developed parts of the planet, there are huge regions for which we have little or no surface and columnar data, and cannot say with certainty that the data is representative of the entire planet. Because the data increasingly includes concentrations of heat, there may only be an appearance of man-made climate change, proving only a tendency of people to cluster. It has been argued that the stratosphere may be sluggish or decoupling heat transfer at the interface between stratosphere and troposphere and that this is masking the true situation, giving surface and columnar data the appearance of greater relevance. However, this is only valid for the dismissive reason that the upper atmosphere is not registering heat that climate modelers insist must be there; which, for all its elegance, is also unproven.
A recent report in Nature Magazine says one of the fundamental assumptions in ozone-hole theory is flat wrong, reducing the rate of breakdown by a factor of ten and sending scientists scurrying to find alternate, hence "natural," explanations for 60% of the annual dissipation formerly attributed to man-made CFCs (meanwhile, government gleefully maintains it has fixed the problem). If scientists are this far off on something as elementary as ozone, what’s the chance the far more intricate and patched up AGW models are flawed?
I think these guys are impressive having created models this complex; and the exercise has certainly enhanced our understanding of climate. I just don’t think we are there yet, not even close. A single year's accretion of new data is not terribly significant when contemplating weather for the next century and beyond. We need far more detailed data, better models, and much faster computers before we can predict on this scale. I’ve read objections that it is actually easier predicting broad-stroke, decades-long climate changes than it is predicting next week’s local weather; and there is some truth in that – given you’ve got a proven prediction model (which we don’t). Currently, we have about 35 years of moderately accurate data, but only covering a fraction of the planet. In addition, we have 15 years of truly global stratospheric data and a model incapable of relating conflicting data to forcing mechanisms; then outputting a verifiable global temperature.
The modelers admit having discounted the stratospheric data on the premise it contradicts the near-surface data – a questionable practice in any science. With what little we do have, we can barely predict the next three days of weather, much less the next century of climate. We can make some rough predictions (right about 1/4 of the time, and not all that much better than we could a quarter-century ago) regarding how many hurricanes, snowfalls, or rainfalls we'll have in one pass around the sun. Beyond that, it would be nothing less than miraculous for these dire predictions to prove true.
If you only go looking for global warming, that is all you will find because the evidence for it abounds (in the right places). Evidence equally abounds of its opposite, but is "inconvenient" to those seeking but the one sort.
E. Not established warming is environmentally disastrous.
Even among scientists who agree the trend is toward warming, there is considerable disagreement as to what that portends. Only a minority of activist-scientists concur with climate-alarmists. Geologists and at least two major hurricane trackers are telling us warm eras in the past may have been milder, and the link between global temperature and storms is overstated. Warming does not impact all regions of the earth equally, affecting the poles more than tropics. Therefore, it is probable that places like Canada, Russia, Siberia, southern Chile, and Greenland will benefit as they did in the Medieval Warm Period; while the tropics and subtropics will fare a little worse.
Chris Landsea believes global warming plays only a minor role in spawning larger and more frequent storms, and that the scenarios presented by alarmists like Gore are grossly exaggerated. The real problem with hurricanes and tsunamis is people are increasingly nesting in their path. Desertification is known to be increased more by cold and glacial periods than warm ones. Plant growth is surging from milder temperatures and longer growing seasons, absorbing some of the excess CO2 and binding more water that would, otherwise, go into the atmosphere. The net cost of heating and cooling of buildings from warming is slightly less, and the cost of transportation without having to clear snow, endure stormy runways, and heating car interiors is a big plus. Therefore, it may be global warming is a net benefit rather than disaster for the planet.
F. The Big-Oil conspiracy – boiling skeptics in oil?
Perfectly reasonable statement typical of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists:
Policies that attempt to manage climate change, particularly in the face of uncertainty, without considering its consequences to energy security or which prematurely alter economic vitality will adversely impact our ability to implement technological solutions to a wide range of issues. Such policies may limit our ability to adapt to the inevitable impact of an increasing world population and associated environmental problems.
AGW's proponents make a big fuss about "oil interests spending huge sums distorting reality;" thereby spoiling an otherwise "perfect" consensus. This is one of their most persuasive straw-men reinforcing the notion it is greedy oil companies driving denial; and that, but for them, the debate would be over and we could get on with the important business of arresting growth. They neglect to mention oil money spent disputing AGW is insignificant compared to the money, support-base, vested interests, profits, and benefits accruing to the other side. Careers have been built on the basis that AGW exists: credentials enhanced by substantiating it, government expanded to deal with it, taxes imposed allegedly to stifle it, TV & newspaper circulations and reputations padded, environmentalist coffers filled by it, carbon-credits dispensed absolving those guilty of it (at an obscene profit), insurance companies’ risk reduced by it, movies marketing it, and product ads promising they’ll fix it . . . just to name a few.
They fail to mention oil companies spend most of this money downplaying their role in AGW rather than disputing it. Most oil companies go so far as to endorse AGW in the reasonable expectation their product will be favored in an environmentally "friendly" market. This is because Big Oil long ago realized this is a fight they can't win. This makes oil-company targeting a ruse for disarming remaining skeptics (of whatever origin), not of combating exploitation. Just about anyone still "in-denial" is routinely accused of being "in the pay or pocket of oil companies" (in case you wonder, I haven’t worked for an oil company in decades and harbor less than a warm-fuzzy for the one I quit).
I sometimes liken climate-change hysteria to a comic routine I once saw. In that burlesque, a man strolls to the middle of the road and suddenly stops because, far down the road, a slow-moving steamroller is headed at him with the driver soundly asleep at the stick. The man in the roadway is struck insensible by this, and yelps for help. He doesn’t move a muscle to extricate himself however – like some deer caught by headlights. Sidewalk-bystanders begin wringing hands and imploring each other what to do. Meanwhile, the steamroller plods mindlessly forward. The mob, soon, has lost all semblance of reason as first one and then all shout at the steamroller and push their hands in its direction as if that might make it stop. Meanwhile, the man in the road gets more and more frantic. We (in the audience) know all he has to do is step out of the road or have one of the crowd pull him out; yet all behave as though incapable of reasonable action. Several minutes are wasted in this manner until, predictably, the steamroller grinds the poor slob into the pavement and rolls quietly stage left. Briefly, the crowd moans pityingly at the victim before dispersing.
A warming Earth may well portend change, but we needn’t react hysterically to it or with gestures that accomplish nothing. Change is a given. Like the hand-pushing of the comedy, carbon-credits, caps and tax disincentives are expensive empty gestures that do nothing to stop change, regardless of our tiny contribution. We can’t make a measurable dent that way, and the attempt would bankrupt us in any case. The appropriate solution, therefore, is to step out of the steamrollers’ path – when and if that proves more than a delusion of our fevered brains.
For a fresh look at AGW from a skeptical perspective, I recommend the following links:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=8497
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/about/mission.jsp
http://www.sepp.org/about%20sepp/abtsepp.html
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=c6a32614-f906-4597-993d-f181196a6d71
http://www.lifeethics.org/www.lifeethics.org/2007/07/global-warming-no-debate-reporting-bias.html
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/index.html
http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html
http://mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070522_isdo.pdf
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/docs/20070321_ball.ppt
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-06-09/dangers.htm
http://www.cei.org/pages/ait_response-book.cfm
http://www.cei.org/pdf/ait/chXVII.pdf
http://www.cei.org/pdf/5288.pdf
http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba378/ba378.pdf – especially read Conclusion
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=544
http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/offset_calc.htm – explanation of carbon-credit fallacy and outright fraud.
http://www.alternet.org/story/49025/ – criticism of carbon trading (credits, offsets, &c) by an AGW believer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html – outing of Dr. Gray
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n12_v46/ai_15544248 – Gore’s attacks on scientists Singer, Happer, & Ellsaesser
http://www.federalobserver.com/archive.php?aid=9358 – Chris Landsea’s reasons for quitting prestigious NOAA position
See also "Consensus' What Consensus" at http://mclean.ch/climate/What_consensus_col.pdf .
In this article you will find that the consensus started out as an exaggeration (or was it fabrication?) by the media and the then head of the IPCC. Surveys of meteorologists and climatologists have indicated that a majority, but hardly an "overwhelming majority", believe that humans have had a substantial influence on climate. The survey by Oreskes assumed a level playing field for all climatologists whatever their views and directions of research, which is patently false, and it used a search text that is more likely to be used by one side of the debate.
The only consensus from the IPCC comes from the handful of authors who wrote any particular section of text and from the government representatives that approved the document prior to publication. Only 5 expert reviewers explicitly supported the claim that human activity has had a significant influence on climate since 1950.
Bob: Great article! Since this year is the coldest in quite some time, and has in fact "erased" the last 100 years of global warming (using the same logic and statistics that gave us GW in the first place), I wonder if the "consensus" will now return to a new ice age? Good thing we haven't removed too much CO2 from the atmosphere. We're going to need it to keep warm … until the next round of man-made hysteria.
Well written, but silly.
There is no mention of the recent data taken from Antarctic ice cores which confirm that present GHG concentrations are much higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. They began their dramatic increase, as we would expect, with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and have run away from our control. I refuse to believe that it is necessary to be a 'denier' to be a legitimate conservative. A mechanical engineer should sit and listen politely when atmospheric scientists are talking. Astronomers have already discounted any possibility that the orbit of the earth has anything to do with observed conditions. They also dismiss the suggestion that the sun is causing the present phenomena by radiating additional energy.
Of course those practitioners who fail to conform to well established peer review standards within the climatology community will find that their papers are not published in the best journals. They, along with the occasional biologist who rejects evolutional theory, earn and deserve the same fate that a mathematician who rejected Euclid would endure.
I recommend, as soon as you have time, that you enter "arctic ice melting' into Google, and spend a week reading what you find there.
Google is not a source authorty. It's a trashpile of popular opinion that can be useful if you actually search the content instead of simply count the number of references. If you searched "WMD and Iraq" prior to 2002, you would have seen absolute certainty that Iraq possessed WMD. Google, in and of itself, does not define the truth of an issue.
But since we need to look at 'additional data' for some reason, I recommend "Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age" by Lorne Gunter, National Post Published: Monday, February 25, 2008
Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."
China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them. (South America had one of its coldest winters ever in 2007 and International Falls, Minnesota set a new January low temp record of 40 below zero…Brrr…Janc)
There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.
In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.
According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona — two prominent climate modellers — the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.
"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.
But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.
Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."
He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.
The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbors froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.
It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too.
You cite an article containing a man's opinion, but which tell us nothing about the man. Thus we cannot determine wether he is to be trusted as a source.
What do you have to say about the following scientific source of actual data?
I call your attention to the particular sentence I cite below.
"The analysis highlights the fact that today’s rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, at 380 parts per million by volume, is already 27 percent higher than its highest recorded level during the last 650,000 years,"
The entire article follows and may be found at the cited address.
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2005/1128ice.shtml.
New Research in Science Shows Highest CO2 Levels In 650,000 Years
With the first in-depth analysis of the air bubbles trapped in the “EPICA Dome C” ice core from East Antarctica, European researchers have extended the greenhouse gas record back to 650,000 years before the present. This 210,000-year extension of atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane records — encompassing two full glacial cycles — should help scientists better understand climate change and the nature of the current warm period on Earth.
The record may also aid researchers in reducing uncertainty in predictions of future climate change and help to clarify when humans began significantly changing the balance of greenhouse gasses in Earth’s atmosphere.
EPICA is the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica. The new ice core, initially described in 2004, is from a site in East Antarctica known as EPICA Dome C. This work represents a long-term European research collaboration and appears in two studies and an accompanying “Perspective” article in the 25 November 2005 issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS.
One study chronicles the stable relationship between climate and the carbon cycle during the Pleistocene (390,000 to 650,000 years before the present). The second one documents atmospheric methane and nitrous oxide levels over the same period.
The analysis highlights the fact that today’s rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, at 380 parts per million by volume, is already 27 percent higher than its highest recorded level during the last 650,000 years, said Science author Thomas Stocker of the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, in Bern, Switzerland, who serves as the corresponding author for both papers.
“We have added another piece of information showing that the timescales on which humans have changed the composition of the atmosphere are extremely short compared to the natural time cycles of the climate system,” Stocker explained.
The new work confirms the stable relationship between Antarctic climate and the greenhouse gasses carbon dioxide and methane during the last four glacial cycles. The new ice core analysis also extends this relationship back another two glacial cycles, to a time when the warm “interglacial” periods were milder and longer than more recent warm periods, according to the European researchers.
The fact that carbon dioxide and methane levels were lower during the relatively mild warm periods of the two additional cycles, compared to the warmer warm periods of the last 400,000 years, is especially interesting for the study of climate sensitivity, which is a measure of how the climate system reacts when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations double, explained Science author Dominique Raynaud from LGGE in Grenoble, France.
The new atmospheric and climate records from the EPICA Dome C ice core also indicate that the response of the natural carbon cycle to climate warming remains the same over time — in terms of the mechanism involved and the degree to which greenhouse gasses further amplify climate change, explained Science author Jean Jouzel from LSCE and Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in France.
The EPICA Dome C ice core contains hundreds of thousands of years’ worth of atmospheric air samples within tiny bubbles trapped in the ice. The air bubbles form when snowflakes fall, and they contain a record of global greenhouse gas concentrations.
The new ice core record described in the two Science papers provides some overlap with a similar record from the Vostok ice core — now, the second longest ice core record — and extends the Vostok record by 210,000 years.
The nitrous oxide record in EPICA Dome C is more fragmented and less clear than the carbon dioxide and methane records due to artifacts in the ice that appear related to the dust levels.
The new ice core analysis provides insights on our present interglacial warm period through a glimpse into Antarctic climate and greenhouse gas concentrations during the most recent warm period that is relatively similar to our current warm period. Known as Marine Isotope Stage 11 or MIS 11, this analog warm period occurred between 420,000 and 400,000 years and is not completely covered by the Vostok record.
The similarities between our current warm period and MIS 11 are primarily due to a similar configuration of the orbits of the Earth around the Sun: the relative positions of the Earth and Sun are thought to be the key driver of ice age cycles.
“MIS 11 shows us that the climate system can indeed reside in a warm period for 20,000 or 30,000 years, something that we can’t say based on the last three warm phases which are no longer than about 10,000 years each,” said Stocker.
We are now about 10,000 years into our current warm period.
The new papers also document MIS 13 and 15 — two warm periods more distant than MIS 11 that may have been about as long. The idea that MIS 13 and 15 were long warm periods contrasts the argument scientists have made in the past suggesting that our current warm period is exceptionally long.
The authors note, however, that the records for MIS 13 and 15 are not as clear as they are for MIS 11. One complicating factor is that the ice core records do not exactly match records from marine sediments that are used to help date the ice core data.
New insights important for understanding the impact early human activities such as land clearing and rice culture had on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, the topic of several recent studies, are also now available, thanks to the methane and carbon dioxide records from the EPICA Dome C ice core. The new record shows that natural variability can result in significant oscillations in greenhouse gasses during some interglacial periods and raises the possibility that early human activities may not be responsible for the greenhouse gas variability seen as early as 10,000 years ago, writes Ed Brook from Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon in a related “Perspective” article.
The greenhouse gas record from EPICA Dome C during past ice ages also provides indirect evidence for abrupt climate change in the past, the authors found. This suggests that abrupt climatic events on time scales relevant to societies may be common features of the last climatic cycles.
The stable relationship between carbon dioxide, methane and Antarctic climate over the last 650,000 years highlights one of the major unsolved mysteries of climate change — the origins of climate-greenhouse gas relationships. Organic decomposition in subtropical wetlands remains a strong candidate for explaining the climate-methane relationship. On the other hand, oceans seem to play a critical role in the climate-carbon dioxide relationship; and the new work strengthens the idea that high latitude Southern Ocean processes are important for controlling glacial-interglacial variations in carbon dioxide, according to the “Perspective” author who says that retrieval and analysis of even older ice cores may provide more definitive answers.
“Stable Carbon Cycle-Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene,” by U. Siegenthaler, T.F. Stocker, E. Monnin, D. Lüthi, J. Schwander and B. Stauffer at University of Bern in Switzerland; D. Raynaud and J.-M. Barnola at Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l'Environnement (CNRS) St Martin d'Hères Cedex, France; H. Fischer at Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany; V. Masson-Delmotte and J. Jouzel at LSCE and Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in France.
“Atmospheric Methane and Nitrous Oxide of the Late Pleistocene from Antarctic Ice Cores,” by R. Spahni, T. Stocker, G. Hausammann, K. Kawamura, J. Flückiger and Jakob Schwander at University of Bern, in Bern, Switzerland; J. Chappellaz, L. Loulergue and D. Raynaud at Laboratoire de Glaciologie et de Géophysique de l'Environnement (CNRS) in St Martin d'Hères Cedex, France; V. Masson-Delmotte, J. Jouzel at LSCE and Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in France. K. Kawamura is now at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California- San Diego in La Jolla. J. Flückiger is now at Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder.
The accompanying “Perspective” article “Tiny Bubbles Tell All,” is by E. Brook from Oregon State University in Corvallis, Ore.
The work described in the Siegenthaler et al. and Spahni et al. Science papers is a contribution to the “European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica” (EPICA), a joint ESF (European Science Foundation)/EC scientific program, funded by the European Commission and by national contributions from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The researchers acknowledge long-term financial support by the Swiss NSF, the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Agency of Energy, and EC Project EPICA-MIS. Support was also provided by the French program PNEDC (INSU-CNRS).
This news release is available in German and in French.
Daniel B. Kane
28 November 2005
The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is of no real consequence while there is no evidence that it makes a significant contribution to warming.
The IPCC's so-called evidence for its claim that human activity (i.e. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel) has caused significant since 1950 (why not before?) is pitifully weak. See http://mclean.ch/climate/IPCC_evidence.pdf .
"The IPCC’s so-called evidence for its claim that human activity (i.e. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel) has caused significant since 1950 (why not before?) is pitifully weak."
If it is a real question, the answer is easily found.
Feedback and albedo acting together.
From Scientific American
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1404/features/thermostat.htm
The Ice-Albedo Effect
The Arctic is a unique landscape, covered by snow and ice for much of the year. And paradoxical as it may seem, it's precisely this frozen quality that helps make it more susceptible to warming.
Snow and ice are white and very reflective. They have what scientists call a very high albedo – that's a measure of how much light a surface reflects. Between 70 and 80 percent of the sun's rays that hit this kind of frozen surface are bounced right back out into space. So the land or water beneath the snowy blanket doesn't get a chance to absorb much of that solar radiation.
Now imagine that a little bit of heat is added to the system. That's exactly what is happening in the real world; scientists say that the average temperature in Alaska has risen 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s. With warmer temperatures, some of the snow and ice melts, exposing the darker land or water underneath. These surfaces have much lower albedos – open water reflects less than 10 percent of the solar energy that hits it, for example. So more heat is absorbed by the landscape.
Then a feedback loop kicks in. More heat is absorbed by the darker surface, so more snow and ice melt. More of the darker surface is exposed, leading to the absorption of even more heat, more snow and ice melt, and so on. Just a small temperature rise can set this feedback cycle into motion. The opposite effect is possible too; a small temperature decrease would lead to more snow and ice, would lead to more solar radiation being bounced back to space, would lead to colder temperatures, would lead to more snow and ice, and so on. Scientists describe the onset of past ice ages in this way.
The very fact that the Arctic is frozen a good part of the year makes it fragile and easy to be drastically affected by global warming. Adding freshwater to the oceans as it melts from glaciers on the land surface will change the salinity of the seas, which can affect global ocean circulation patterns. Ecosystems are very different when frozen or thawed. Current conditions in many parts of the Arctic are fairly waterlogged, with water held close to the surface of the land. That's because just below ground level lies frozen soil, the so-called permafrost layer. But as permafrost thaws, water drains more easily and the landscape becomes more productive. The treeline migrates northward. As temperatures warm, the undecomposed peat in the landscape will begin to breakdown and emit the carbon that has been locked in the ground for millennia. It's another feedback system; warming will lead to increased levels of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere where it can act as a greenhouse gas and lead to more warming. The cycle is complex, though, and scientists aren't sure how the variety of factors involved will interact.
Arctic Meltdown, Earth Meltdown?
Scientists say the Arctic is changing right now. They point to rises in temperatures, decreases in the extent of annual snow and ice cover, thinning of glaciers and sea ice. That's too bad for the Arctic, but does it really affect the majority of us who live at lower latitudes and may never see the land of the midnight sun? In a word, yes. Polar regions play a major role in the climate of the entire planet.
On average, the north and south poles receive less solar radiation than areas near the equator. Because of the tilt of our spherical planet's axis, the sun's rays hit the poles at a more oblique angle than they do in the tropics. And because of albedo, the icy polar regions are also reflecting more of whatever solar radiation reaches them back to space than are equatorial regions. There's more solar radiation leaving the atmosphere in the arctic than there is entering. So the atmosphere at the Earth's surface in the Arctic will be colder, on average, than it is at lower latitudes. This global temperature gradient causes atmospheric circulation, with heat flowing from the equatorial regions toward the poles. The atmosphere strives for equilibrium, that is, for all areas on the globe to be about the same temperature. Warm ocean currents also carry heat to the higher latitudes.
Basically all of the earth's weather is caused by these circulation patterns. And they're driven by the fact that the poles are currently heat sinks. If the Arctic warms up, the temperature gradient from the equator to the North Pole would get weaker, and that would cause weaker circulation patterns. The weather is notoriously hard to predict – just think about your local five-day forecast – so it's impossible to say what a future with weaker atmospheric circulation will look like. But it will definitely be different than the world we live in now.
If you want to claim that albedo is a major factor then the first one to look at is cloud cover. The pattern of cloud cover in the exotropics (latitude more than 20 degrees either N or S and beyond to the respective poles) started changing in about 1999. (see http://mclean.ch/climate/cloud_cover_main.htm )
Cloud tends to suppress radiation but whether that means a warming or cooling influence depends on which way the (net) radiation was going. Cloudy days tend to be cooler, unless you are in the Arctic regions where cloud might mean the days are warmer.
It seems extraordinary that so little cloud data is available and yet it has a substantial impact on temperature.
Ah well, faith is an uncontrollable thing I see.
Do you imagine that you consideration has not been fully considered by those of us who spend all day, every day, studying this problem in depth? Every time we refine our data with better evidence, the problem is shown to be much worse than we previously thought.
I wonder, do you have grandchildren? Do you love them?
This is an interesting recent article on your problem from Salon.
I wish I had written it.
Enjoy!
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/print.html
The cold truth about climate change
Deniers continue to insist there's no consensus on global warming. Well, there's not. There's well-tested science and real-world observations.
By Joseph Romm
Feb. 27, 2008 | The more I write about global warming, the more I realize I share some things in common with the doubters and deniers who populate the blogosphere and the conservative movement. Like them, I am dubious about the process used by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to write its reports. Like them, I am skeptical of the so-called consensus on climate science as reflected in the IPCC reports. Like them, I disagree with people who say "the science is settled." But that's where the agreement ends.
The science isn't settled — it's unsettling, and getting more so every year as the scientific community learns more about the catastrophic consequences of uncontrolled greenhouse gas emissions.
The big difference I have with the doubters is they believe the IPCC reports seriously overstate the impact of human emissions on the climate, whereas the actual observed climate data clearly show the reports dramatically understate the impact.
But I do think the scientific community, the progressive community, environmentalists and media are making a serious mistake by using the word "consensus" to describe the shared understanding scientists have about the ever-worsening impacts that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are having on this planet. When scientists and others say there is a consensus, many if not most people probably hear "consensus of opinion," which can — and often is — dismissed out of hand. I've met lots of people like CNBC anchor Joe Kernen, who simply can't believe that "as old as the planet is" that "puny, gnawing little humans" could possibly change the climate in "70 years."
Well, Joe, it is more like 250 years, but yes, most of the damage to date was done in the last 70 years, and yes, as counterintuitive as it may seem, puny little humans are doing it, and it's going to get much, much worse unless we act soon. Consensus of opinion is irrelevant to science because reality is often counterintuitive — just try studying quantum mechanics.
Fortunately Kernen wasn't around when scientists were warning that puny little humans were destroying the Earth's protective ozone layer. Otherwise we might never have banned chlorofluorocarbons in time.
Consensus of opinion is also dismissed as groupthink. In a December article ignorantly titled "The Science of Gore's Nobel: What If Everyone Believes in Global Warmism Only Because Everyone Believes in Global Warmism?" Holman W. Jenkins Jr. of the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote:
What if the heads being counted to certify an alleged "consensus" arrived at their positions by counting heads?
It may seem strange that scientists would participate in such a phenomenon. It shouldn't. Scientists are human; they do not wait for proof. Many devote their professional lives to seeking evidence for hypotheses, especially well-funded hypotheses, they've chosen to believe.
Less surprising is the readiness of many prominent journalists to embrace the role of enforcer of an orthodoxy simply because it is the orthodoxy. For them, a consensus apparently suffices as proof of itself.
How sad that the WSJ and CNBC have so little conception of what science really is, especially since scientific advances drive so much of the economy. If that's what Jenkins thinks science is, one would assume he is equally skeptical of flossing, antibiotics and even boarding an airplane.
(Note to WSJ: One reason science works is that a lot of scientists devote their whole lives to overturning whatever is the current hypothesis — if it can be overturned. That's how you become famous and remembered by history, like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein.)
In fact, science doesn't work by consensus of opinion. Science is in many respects the exact opposite of decision by consensus. General opinion at one point might have been that the sun goes around the Earth, or that time was an absolute quantity, but scientific theory supported by observations overturned that flawed worldview.
One of the most serious results of the overuse of the term "consensus" in the public discussion of global warming is that it creates a simple strategy for doubters to confuse the public, the press and politicians: Simply come up with as long a list as you can of scientists who dispute the theory. After all, such disagreement is prima facie proof that no consensus of opinion exists.
So we end up with the absurd but pointless spectacle of the leading denier in the U.S. Senate, James Inhofe, R-Okla., who recently put out a list of more than 400 names of supposedly "prominent scientists" who supposedly "recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming."
As it turned out, the list is both padded and laughable, containing the opinions of TV weathermen, economists, a bunch of non-prominent scientists who aren't climate experts, and, perhaps surprisingly, even a number of people who actually believe in the consensus.
But in any case, nothing could be more irrelevant to climate science than the opinion of people on the list such as Weather Channel founder John Coleman or famed inventor Ray Kurzweil (who actually does "think global warming is real"). Or, for that matter, my opinion — even though I researched a Ph.D. thesis at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on physical oceanography in the Greenland Sea.
What matters is scientific findings — data, not opinions. The IPCC relies on the peer-reviewed scientific literature for its conclusions, which must meet the rigorous requirements of the scientific method and which are inevitably scrutinized by others seeking to disprove that work. That is why I cite and link to as much research as is possible, hundreds of studies in the case of this article. Opinions are irrelevant.
A good example of how scientific evidence drives our understanding concerns how we know that humans are the dominant cause of global warming. This is, of course, the deniers' favorite topic. Since it is increasingly obvious that the climate is changing and the planet is warming, the remaining deniers have coalesced to defend their Alamo — that human emissions aren't the cause of recent climate change and therefore that reducing those emissions is pointless.
Last year, longtime Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn wrote, "There is still zero empirical evidence that anthropogenic production of CO2 is making any measurable contribution to the world's present warming trend. The greenhouse fearmongers rely entirely on unverified, crudely oversimplified computer models to finger mankind's sinful contribution."
In fact, the evidence is amazingly strong. Moreover, if the relatively complex climate models are oversimplified in any respect, it is by omitting amplifying feedbacks and other factors that suggest human-caused climate change will be worse than is widely realized.
The IPCC concluded last year: "Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely (>90 percent) caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years. This conclusion takes into account … the possibility that the response to solar forcing could be underestimated by climate models."
Scientists have come to understand that "forcings" (natural and human-made) explain most of the changes in our climate and temperature both in recent decades and over the past millions of years. The primary human-made forcings are the heat-trapping greenhouse gases we generate, particularly carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas. The natural forcings include fluctuations in the intensity of sunlight (which can increase or decrease warming), and major volcanoes that inject huge volumes of gases and aerosol particles into the stratosphere (which tend to block sunlight and cause cooling).
A 2002 study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warned, "Abrupt climate changes were especially common when the climate system was being forced to change most rapidly." The rapidly growing greenhouse warming we ourselves are causing today thus increases the chances for "large, abrupt and unwelcome regional or global climatic events."
Over and over again, scientists have demonstrated that observed changes in the climate in recent decades can only be explained by taking into account the observed combination of human and natural forcings. Natural forcings alone just don't explain what is happening to this planet.
For instance, in April 2005, one of the nation's top climate scientists, NASA's James Hansen, led a team of scientists that made "precise measurements of increasing ocean heat content over the past 10 years," which revealed that the Earth is absorbing far more heat than it is emitting to space, confirming what earlier computer models had shown about warming. Hansen called this energy imbalance the "smoking gun" of climate change, and said, "There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed warming."
Another 2005 study, led by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, compared actual ocean temperature data from the surface down to hundreds of meters (in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans) with climate models and concluded:
A warming signal has penetrated into the world's oceans over the past 40 years. The signal is complex, with a vertical structure that varies widely by ocean; it cannot be explained by natural internal climate variability or solar and volcanic forcing, but is well simulated by two anthropogenically [human-caused] forced climate models. We conclude that it is of human origin, a conclusion robust to observational sampling and model differences.
Such studies are also done for many other observations: land-based temperature rise, atmospheric temperature rise, sea level rise, arctic ice melt, inland glacier melt, Greeland and Antarctic ice sheet melt, expansion of the tropics (desertification) and changes in precipitation. Studies compare every testable prediction from climate change theory and models (and suggested by paleoclimate research) to actual observations.
How many studies? Well, the IPCC's definitive treatment of the subject, "Understanding and Attributing Climate Change," has 11 full pages of references, some 500 peer-reviewed studies. This is not a consensus of opinion. It is what scientific research and actual observations reveal.
Ignoring all the evidence, doubters and deniers keep asserting that the cause of global warming isn't human emissions, but is instead natural forcings, primarily the sun. Last year, brief presidential candidate Fred Thompson commented on claims that planets like Mars were supposedly also warming — an idea debunked by RealClimate. Thompson said sarcastically:
I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn't even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There's a consensus. Ask Galileo.
The view that the sun is the source of observed global warming seems credible mainly to people who are open to believing that the entire scientific community has somehow, over a period of several decades, failed to adequately study, analyze and understand the most visible influence on the Earth's temperature. Such people typically cannot be influenced by the results of actual research and observations. Those who can should visit Skeptical Science, which discusses deniers' favorite arguments. In one discussion, the site explains that the "study most quoted by skeptics actually concluded the sun can't be causing global warming." Doh!
And that brings us to a recent study by the Proceedings of the Royal Society, which examined "all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate," such as sunlight intensity and cosmic rays. The study found that in the past 20 years, all of those trends "have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures."
Those trying to prove the sun is the sole cause of warming have a double challenge. First they would have to show us a mechanism that demonstrates how the sun explains recent warming, even though the data shows solar activity has been declining recently. (In the past, increased warming was associated with an increase in solar activity). They would also have to find an additional mechanism that is counteracting the well-understood warming caused by rising emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. The doubters have done neither.
But then the doubters aren't interested in things like data and observations and peer-reviewed research. If they were, why would they keep pointing out that, historically, global temperature rise precedes a rise in carbon dioxide emissions by a few hundred years — as if that were a reason to cast doubt on the impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases? Rep. Joe Barton said to Al Gore:
I have an article from Science magazine that explains a rise in CO2 concentrations actually lagged temperature by 200 to 1000 years. CO2 levels went up after the temperature rose. Temperature appears to drive CO2, not vice versa. You're not just off a little. You're totally wrong.
Yes, historically, glacial periods appear to end with an initial warming started by changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. This in turn leads to increases in carbon dioxide (and methane), which then accelerate the warming, which increases the emissions, which increases the warming. That amplifying feedback in the global carbon cycle is what drives the global temperature to change so fast.
But while this fact seems to make doubters less worried about the impact of human emissions, it makes most scientists more worried. As famed climatologist Wallace Broecker wrote in Nature in 1995:
The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges.
That is, you need a trigger to start the process of rapid climate change. Historically, that has been orbital changes, or sometimes, massive natural releases of greenhouse gases.
Now humans have interrupted and overwhelmed the natural process of climate change. Thanks to humans, carbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been for millions of years. Even more worrisome, carbon dioxide emissions are rising 200 times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years.
If the "Earth's climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts to even small nudges," what will happen to people foolish enough to keep punching it in the face?
That brings us to another problem with the word "consensus." It can mean "unanimity" or "the judgment arrived at by most of those concerned." Many, if not most, people hear the second meaning: "consensus" as majority opinion.
The scientific consensus most people are familiar with is the IPCC's "Summary for Policymakers" reports. But those aren't a majority opinion. Government representatives participate in a line-by-line review and revision of these summaries. So China, Saudi Arabia and that hotbed of denialism — the Bush administration — get to veto anything they don't like. The deniers call this "politicized science," suggesting the process turns the IPCC summaries into some sort of unscientific exaggeration. In fact, the reverse is true. The net result is unanimous agreement on a conservative or watered-down document. You could argue that rather than majority rules, this is "minority rules."
Last April, in an article titled "Conservative Climate," Scientific American noted that objections by Saudi Arabia and China led the IPCC to remove a sentence stating that the impact of human greenhouse gas emissions on the Earth's recent warming is five times greater than that of the sun. In fact, lead author Piers Forster of the University of Leeds in England said, "The difference is really a factor of 10."
How decent of the IPCC not to smash the last hope of deniers like Fred Thompson, whose irrational sun worshiping allows them to ignore the overwhelming evidence that human emissions are the dominant cause of climate change.
How else does the IPCC lowball future impacts? The 2007 report projects sea level rise this century of 7 to 23 inches. Yet the IPCC itself stated that "models [of sea level rise] used to date do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedbacks nor do they include the full effect of changes in ice sheet flow."
That is, since no existing climate models fully account for the kinds of feedbacks we are now witnessing in Greenland and Antarctica, such as dynamic acceleration of ice sheet disintegration or greenhouse gases released by melting tundra, the IPCC is forced to ignore those realities. The result is that compared to the "consensus" of the IPCC, the ice sheets appear to be shrinking "100 years ahead of schedule," as Penn State climatologist Richard Alley put it in March 2006
According to both the 2001 and 2007 IPCC reports, neither Greenland nor Antarctica should lose significant mass by 2100. They both already are. Here again, the conservative nature of the IPCC process puts it at odds with observed empirical realities that are the basis of all science.
It's no surprise then that three scientific studies released in the past year — too late for inclusion by the IPCC — argue that based on historical data and recent observations, sea level rise this century will be much higher than the IPCC reports, up to 5 feet or more. Even scarier, the rate of sea level rise in 2100 might be greater than 6 inches a decade!
And it's no surprise at all that sea-level rise from 1993 and 2006 — 1.3 inches per decade as measured by satellites — has been higher than the IPCC climate models predicted.
The deniers are simply wrong when they claim that the IPCC has overestimated either current or future warming impacts. As many other recent observations reveal, the IPCC has been underestimating those impacts.
Since 2000, carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than any IPCC model had projected.
The temperature rise from 1990 to 2005 — 0.33°C — was "near the top end of the range" of IPCC climate model predictions.
"The recent [Arctic] sea-ice retreat is larger than in any of the (19) IPCC [climate] models" — and that was a Norwegian expert in 2005. Since then, the Arctic retreat has stunned scientists by accelerating, losing an area equal to Texas and California just last summer.
"The unexpectedly rapid expansion of the tropical belt constitutes yet another signal that climate change is occurring sooner than expected," noted one climate researcher in December.
This last point, though little remarked on in the media, should be as worrisome as the unexpectedly rapid melting of the ice sheets. As a recent study led by NOAA noted, "A poleward expansion of the tropics is likely to bring even drier conditions to" the U.S. Southwest, Mexico, Australia and parts of Africa and South America. Also: "An increase in the width of the tropics could bring an increase in the area affected by tropical storms." And finally: "An expansion of tropical pathogens and their insect vectors is almost certainly sure to follow the expansion of tropical zones."
Why are recent observations on the high side of model projections? First, as noted, most climate models used by the IPCC omit key amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle. Second, it was widely thought that increased human carbon dioxide emissions would be partly offset by more trees and other vegetation. But increases in droughts and wildfires — both predicted by global warming theory — seem to have negated that. Third, the ocean — one of the largest sinks for carbon dioxide — seems to be saturating decades earlier than the models had projected.
The result, as a number of studies have shown, is that the sensitivity of the world's climate to human emissions of greenhouse gases is no doubt much higher than the sensitivity used in most IPCC models. NASA's Hansen argued in a paper last year that the climate ultimately has twice the sensitivity used in IPCC models.
The bottom line is that recent observations and research make clear the planet almost certainly faces a greater and more imminent threat than is laid out in the IPCC reports. That's why climate scientists are so desperate. That's why they keep begging for immediate action. And that's why the "consensus on global warming" is a phrase that should be forever retired from the climate debate.
– By Joseph Romm
JDBishop,
You call my article silly, presumably because it failed to convince you AGW theory is, in any degree, bogus. More likely you came to this debate already convinced and with a mission of debunking anything we ‘deniers’ have to say. However, if you read my statement of purpose at the start of the article, you know I never set out to settle this argument because it is not yet one that can be settled by anyone. If anything, my purpose is to stimulate debate; not end it. You make some good points and some bad ones, and are as guilty as the rest of us in making statements exceeding proof.
For example, you are correct that ice core data indicate CO2 levels may be at an all time high. However, that data disagrees with geological and tree data indicating there have been periods of higher CO2. The one distinct advantage the ice cores have is they represent data that is far older than trees and more coherent than rock samples. Yet, trees may prove the better barometer in near-time. Most of the geological data tends to be more jumbled than ice cores, making it harder to pin down exact sequence when CO2 was higher. However, that does not invalidate the point that, in at least some of these samples and at some point in the geologic past as expressed in those samples, CO2 almost certainly was higher than it is today. The ice cores are being taken to prove a negative, but the rocks and trees say otherwise. Taken together all this may tell us is that CO2 entrapment in these various deposits may depend on mechanisms besides atmospheric CO2 content, especially the ice cores. Assume all these samples were exposed to the same CO2 levels. It stands to reason that some of them captured CO2 more efficiently and some of them less. In that case, the ones indicating higher levels are the more probably accurate as they cannot capture CO2 that is not there. The only way to test for that is to wait to see if the known (and assumed higher) CO2 content of today produces higher tree, rock, and ice CO2 several hundred years into our future. In any case, this just underscores my point the science isn’t mature enough to give a definitive answer and is constantly revising.
I agree with you that the lag of CO2 with respect to temperature in the past does not preclude it acting as a positive feedback mechanism now. What I dispute is it has been in any manner proven as powerful a determinant as portrayed. The modelers make it one simply because it is the only significant candidate they can actually model with the tools they have available, but only in terms of how much CO2 is and perhaps will be in the atmosphere. What they haven’t been able to show is it has driven global temperature in the near past. They studiously ignore the sun as a better candidate for this primarily because we don’t have enough information or tools with which to model the sun; an effort many times more challenging than modeling our atmosphere. I have no doubt if they had the tools and data to do that, CO2 would be quickly discarded as just too uninteresting. Thus, our science sometimes takes its direction from what we are capable more than what we can hypothesize.
The bottom line is skeptics don’t have to disprove AGW – you have to prove it. You demand we turn our world on its head to satisfy your fear. It is you who insist we pay whatever it takes and put limits on our activities on the flimsiest of evidence. So it is you who are going to have to convince us of the need. All we have to prove is AGW theory is riddled with questions that haven’t been answered and hijacked by people with agendas other than just science.
And, I do study this science very closely and have been following it now for two decades. As you can see above, I give it credit where credit is due. As an engineer and long-time science-junkie I have the deepest respect for real-science. However, there is a difference between respecting science and worshipping it, between skeptical inquiry and blind obedience. I do not surrender my objectivity to someone more credentialed just because climate happens to be his specialty, I require proof. Or at least enough of it that enduring those costs make sense.
I have a low opinion of those who offer no argument of their own but quote the work o fothers at great length. It seems that the forum poster cannot think for his/herself and wants to present an "argument by proxy".
Joseph Romm's article, which is quoted above, says that consensus is irrelevant in science. That's true and anyway as I showed earlier there is no demonstrable consensus among scientists.
Romm also says "The IPCC concluded last year: 'Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely (>90 percent) caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years. This conclusion takes into account … the possibility that the response to solar forcing could be underestimated by climate models.' " As I also noted above, the evidence for that claim is woeful.
Anecdotal evidence of warming is not an issue, it's the attribution to human activities that is unsupported. There is very solid case for natural climate forces to be responsible for warming since at least 1950. Why would the IPCC be reluctant to admit that? One reason might be that its charter directs it to assess the risk, impacts and mitigations with respect to "human-induced climate change".
In other words the IPCC was biased from the start, which of course means that it has gathered other scientist of similar thinking into what is essentially a government-funded lobby group that tells governments what to do. That's what you get for buying in to UN organisations! More about the IPCC's failings at http://mclean.ch/climate/IPCC.htm .
I have no time to respond to every comment in Romm's article but his comments about sea level caught my eye. "And it’s no surprise at all that sea-level rise from 1993 and 2006 — 1.3 inches per decade as measured by satellites — has been higher than the IPCC climate models predicted."
That's odd. The IPCC Third Assessment Report (2001) said there had been no change but the Fourth says a sudden jump from 1993, which was when the satellite-based measurement began . Why did the TAR not mention the change from 1993? Maybe it's because the historical sea level data was poor. It was only after 2001 that a method was developed for estimating(!) historical sea levels. This involves correlating recent measured sea level with weather observations and then that relationship with historical weather observations to estimate the sea level.
I can find no information to suggest that the method is accurate but I am very suspicious about its ability to deal with sea level change due to large oscillations (e.g. west and east Pacific during La Nina and El Nino) and it is clear that the method cannot handle the vertical movement of the measurement equipment due to land masses rising and falling, or changes due to marine construction work.
In more recent times I question the accuracy of the satellite-based measuring because it is wide beam microwave. It is calibrated mainly against small islands in the mid Pacific but how well does it perform with sea level between islands of greater size and height, and how well across the entire range of temperatures? The altitude of the satellite must be determined to one part in a billion. That altitude will change due to the gravitational attraction of the mass of water beneath it, but that's the very thing being measured.
JDBishop5 said "Every time we refine our data with better evidence, the problem is shown to be much worse than we previously thought."
My problem is that every time I look closely at an argument for man-made warming I find that one or more of the data, assumptions and techniques are highly suspect and that the evidence supporting the argument in question is much weaker than previously thought.
"The bottom line is skeptics don’t have to disprove AGW – you have to prove it. You demand we turn our world on its head to satisfy your fear. It is you who insist we pay whatever it takes and put limits on our activities on the flimsiest of evidence. "
You should get out more! Visit the Arctic, Antarctic, at least 25 major glaciers (both mountainous and coastal), and spend some extended time with some of us here in China. Unless you are an idiot, which you clearly are not, you will need no more proof. Apparently you are one of those who cannot accept facts unless you see them for yourself. The proof you demand is all about you, and easily found.
I wonder if you have calculated the 'cost' of your being so slow to understand what is going on? Again I ask, do you have grandchildren? Do you love them? Depending on where you live, the 'cost' may very well include the deaths of those grandchildren as it is clearly now demanding, and will continue to demand, the deaths of growing multitudes worldwide.
A personal story and experience of mine may bring some of this home. In the summer of 1985 I landed a de Havilland Beaver at the foot of the Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound, Alaska and gathered a few small pieces of floating ice for our group's cocktails. Today the foot of that glacier is over 14 kilometers back up its valley. Such change is outrageously rapid, and is occurring without significant exception globally.
Recently the world price of cereals went up by 25% in one day. Cereal, rice, and wheat production has been dropping throughout the world every year for a long time. The ice and snow burden of the Himalayas will lose at least 80% of its mass during the next 22 years. Contemplate the 'cost' of that hard data for a moment.
"My problem is that every time I look closely at an argument for man-made warming I find that one or more of the data, assumptions and techniques are highly suspect and that the evidence supporting the argument in question is much weaker than previously thought."
*** Exactly! We have a scientific "consensus" based on "assumptions" with "data" that, at best, spans a few decades, that purports to tell us with certainty that man is responsible for global climate change (ice age or global warming, take your pick).
Even completely reliable data devoid of dubious assumptions/modeling that spans several centuries is a blink of an eye in geological terms. And yet, like the arguments in the 1970s that we can't wait to act against the coming ice age, we're told today that we can't wait to act against the coming global warming. Only, nature isn't completely cooperating with the year-to-year anecdotal observations upon which we all base our "knowledge", so now we just talk about "climate change" so either cooling or heating will support these assumptions.
Once again I refer you to the article I wrote 18 months ago in the IC archives on “An Even More Inconvenient Truth” that talks about the political agendas behind many of these assumptions.
But hey, why let common sense get in the way of action? Let’s all get together and do something NOW, because, you know, it will show we all really really really care about things, even if our actions have no practical impact other than to screw up people’s lives. At least Al Gore won’t think we’re bad people.
"Recently the world price of cereals went up by 25% in one day."
*** So, for 100 years of daily, relentless (except for those years when it didn't rise) "global warming", the increase in world temperature (assuming it could be accurately measured world-wide before the space age) had NO REAL EFFECT on cereal prices, then WAMMO, in ONE DAY it went up by 25% due to GLOBAL WARMING!!!
I'm convinced! And here I thought that biofuels were impacting world food prices. Silly me.
"A personal story and experience of mine may bring some of this home."
*** This is why it's pointless to discuss GW with the True Believers. Anyone who would use "personal experience" to prove or disprove climate change has no friggin idea of what the issue is all about. Look at the edge of a glacier and see it retreat. It must be melting. Forget that the ice may have thickened elsewhere. Same amount of ice, maybe even more, just distributed differently.
But hey, when science is all about "consensus", then it's just the accumulation of opinions that matter. If we think it's melting, and enough people agree, it MUST be melting. No further investigation, critical thought, or study is necessary.
Proponents of man-made global warming believe this as a matter of faith. And like any religious belief, objective thought, actual facts (vs. "consensus" opinions), are irrelevant to the True Believers.
Biofuels are impacting world food prices, and they require much more energy to produce than they provide.
So, also, is the global shortage of water which is dramatically affecting cereal production and will soon nearly eliminate agriculture in the "breadbasket" of China, Southeast Asia, and India. That is the major food supply for nearly 3 billion people. The shortage of water, and the changing weather patterns we are seeing world wide, are, arguably, the result of disruptions in atmospheric circulation patterns caused by the melting and disappearance of Arctic Ocean ice.
The assertion above that 'Arctic ice is back' is not supported by very recent satellite data available from the Ice Center in Colorado, free, for the asking.
http://nsidc.org/news/press/2007_seaiceminimum/20071001_pressrelease.html
In fact, September 2007 measurements revealed a shocking loss of about 20% of the ice cap between 2005 and the same period two years later. Perhaps some of you think NSIDC has a political agenda? Maybe they have doctored the data?
This discussion has become tedious as many participants here seem ready to ascribe political motivations to those with whom they disagree. Additionally, few of you seem willing to investigate the actual data. None, for example, have referenced the European Antarctic Ice Core Records I mentioned above some days ago. In the face of that 650,000 year library of information, several of you prattle on about the scientific data containing only a brief 'snap shot.' It would be illuminating for several of you to venture on to an accredited campus, and attend regular lectures for several years.
"Once again I refer you to the article I wrote 18 months ago in the IC archives on “An Even More Inconvenient Truth” that talks about the political agendas behind many of these assumptions."
OK. I've read it carefully.
I must tell you in all honesty. You article has no scientific merit whatever and would earn you a ticket out of any graduate program I can think of. In fact, it is an intellectual disgrace. I would give you an F in even my most introductory classes, and wonder how you had gotten past the admissions process. You have pasted together a collection of smart remarks and statements of feeling and have not supported your thesis, whatever that may be, with any data at all.
It is authentic right wing gibberish. You display a modicum of intelligence. Abandon your glands and go to school.
I have commented before, but will do so for the benefit of JDBishop5 who seems to be new to the party here, that among the MANY dubious "facts" of AGW is this notion that the models used to create these predictions are robust, proven, and beyond questioning. In other words, as long as the data input to the models is trustworthy, then the output of these models is rock solid and represents an irrefutable foundation upon which to create public policy.
Baloney.
JDBishop5, if you have an extensive background in mathematical modeling including boundary condition assumptions, model sensitivity, model predictive capacity and variability, and all the other aspects that comprise the discpline of building robust models, then I'm all ears. But until then, even if you can demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of the variables that are used as inputs to our climate models are accurate to within a few parts per thousand, it really doesn't matter. The models give results that are barely to be believed within an order of magnitude. Indeed, the models cannot even reliably take HISTORICAL data and accurately predict HISTORICAL results. For example, they can't even take data from 1900-1950 and predict with a high degree of certainty the temperatures in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. In plain English, the models can't give the right answer even when we already know the answer they should arrive at. This is known as model validation and the climate models can't even pass that test.
The industries I work in (hydrocarbon processing) are pretty unforgiving when it comes to the models they used for advanced predictive control: if your process control model can't validate itself using historical data, let alone predicting current conditions, you can pack your bags. Nobody is going to entrust a one-million-dollar-per-day refinery to you.
Now, remind me again why would I start radically impacting a global economy worth trillions based on a half-baked climate model?
Not so long ago we had an actual climate scientist (username Paul_Bovis) comment on another AGW essay posted here on IC.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/11/16/how-to-increase-your-carbon-footprint/
Interestingly, Mr. Bovis expressed significant skepticism as well, and confirmed what we have all heard anecdotally; namely, that it is not "fashionable" for a climate scientist to express doubt in AGW. Consequently, this myth of "consensus" hasn't been bolstered by a legitimately convinced majority…it has been bolstered by those within the climate sciences who are legitimately afraid to speak up for CL (Career Limiting) reasons.
If the only ones speaking out are AGW proponents – because the rest are afraid for what it will mean to their career – then of course there will be an "apparent" concensus. Kind of like a Soviet election.
Steve Saban,
We may never know which of us has the superior understanding of climate modeling.
As you say, and is surely obvious, climate modeling does not rise to the standard of that we have available for the controlled chemical reaction proceeding within a refinery where inputs are measured with precision.
However, to answer you question, "Now, remind me again why would I start radically impacting a global economy worth trillions based on a half-baked climate model?"
It is because as we tighten our admittedly inadequate initial predictive capabilities regarding this problem, we continue to discover that our estimates were incorrect on the conservative side. Thus, the cost of taking your approach, "wait and see," seems to be the starvation death of billions of people, and a continued acceleration of what we now know to be the most rapid extinction of species in the world's history.
Of course, I am asking you to find other work. Aye, there's the rub.
Bishop — Reread my article again, more carefully. It's about how POLITICAL AGENDAS distort the MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING DEBATE!
Since you’ve questioned my ability to provide this analysis, here are my credentials: I have a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago, a Masters Degree in public policy from the State University of New York at Albany (full scholarship — room, board, and tuition), and a BA from SUNY Albany (graduating Magna Cum Laude). I’ve taught graduate level courses on public policy at DePaul University and the University of Chicago. I’ve worked in Washington DC for the top political firm (Cassidy and Associates), reporting to Bob Beckel who ran Walter Mondale’s campaign, Jimmy Carter’s Press Secretary, a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, several former congressmen of both political parties, and two former cabinet officers. I was the primary staff support for the final negotiations of an international treaty, dealing directly with individuals like John Negroponte. I also ran the government affairs office of a Trade Association for 11 years, dealing with state as well as national issues. I’ve been personally briefed on legislation by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and gave expert testimony before a Federal Judge on a civil rights case. I was staff to a US congressman during his election campaign (I wrote his speeches and developed his issues). I was the chief of staff to the committee that re-wrote the charter for the City of Dallas. I was Executive Director of 6 public-private sector management studies of governmental institutions that documented $125 million in taxpayer savings, certified by a Big 8 accounting firm. For this I was invited to the White House twice to receive personal recognition from two different Presidents of the United States, whose staff used my program to help develop a national template for other communities to follow.
This is the education and experience I draw upon to frame my judgments. Now kindly illuminate us as to YOUR credentials. For the record, just exactly what is your training/background in global climatology that allows you to speak with authority on this subject anyway, particularly from the point of confusing personal observations with scientific analysis?
Oh, and when you do, kindly tell us all why you know more about this subject than the following people:
• Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: “[T]he recent warming trend in the surface temperature record cannot be caused by the increase of human-made greenhouse gases in the air.” Baliunas and Soon wrote that “there is no reliable evidence for increased severity or frequency of storms, droughts, or floods that can be related to the air’s increased greenhouse gas content.”
• Reid Bryson, emeritus professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison: “It’s absurd. 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.”
• Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia: “The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown.”
• George V. Chilingar, Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California: “The authors identify and describe the following global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate: (1) solar radiation …, (2) outgassing as a major supplier of gases to the World Ocean and the atmosphere, and, possibly, (3) microbial activities … . The writers provide quantitative estimates of the scope and extent of their corresponding effects on the Earth’s climate [and] show that the human-induced climatic changes are negligible.”
• Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: “That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation – which has a cooling effect. … We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly… solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle.”
• Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University: “global warming since 1900 could well have happened without any effect of CO2. If the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end soon and global temperatures should cool slightly until about 2035″
• William M. Gray, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University: “This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential.” “I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people.” “So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more.”
• George Kukla, retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an interview: “What I think is this: Man is responsible for a PART of global warming. MOST of it is still natural.”
• David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware: “About half of the warming during the 20th century occurred prior to the 1940s, and natural variability accounts for all or nearly all of the warming.”
• Marcel Leroux, former Professor of Climatology, Université Jean Moulin: “The possible causes, then, of climate change are: well-established orbital parameters on the palaeoclimatic scale, … solar activity, …; volcanism …; and far at the rear, the greenhouse effect, and in particular that caused by water vapor, the extent of its influence being unknown. These factors are working together all the time, and it seems difficult to unravel the relative importance of their respective influences upon climatic evolution. Equally, it is tendentious to highlight the anthropic factor, which is, clearly, the least credible among all those previously mentioned.”
• Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: global warming “is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities. The atmosphere hasn’t changed much in 280 million years, and there have always been cycles of warming and cooling. The Cretaceous period was the warmest on earth. You could have grown tomatoes at the North Pole”
• Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: “There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth’s temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century’s modest warming?”
• Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology, The University of Adelaide: “We only have to have one volcano burping and we have changed the whole planetary climate… It looks as if carbon dioxide actually follows climate change rather than drives it”.
• Frederick Seitz, retired, former solid-state physicist, former president of the National Academy of Sciences: “So we see that the scientific facts indicate that all the temperature changes observed in the last 100 years were largely natural changes and were not caused by carbon dioxide produced in human activities.”
• Nir Shaviv, astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: “[T]he truth is probably somewhere in between [the common view and that of skeptics], with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. … [A]bout 2/3’s (give or take a third or so) of the warming [over the past century] should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes.” His opinion is based on some proxies of solar activity over the past few centuries.
• Fred Singer, Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia: “The greenhouse effect is real. However, the effect is minute, insignificant, and very difficult to detect.” “It’s not automatically true that warming is bad, I happen to believe that warming is good, and so do many economists.”
• Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: “[T]here’s increasingly strong evidence that previous research conclusions, including those of the United Nations and the United States government concerning 20th century warming, may have been biased by underestimation of natural climate variations. The bottom line is that if these variations are indeed proven true, then, yes, natural climate fluctuations could be a dominant factor in the recent warming. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed.”
• Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London: “…the myth is starting to implode. … Serious new research at The Max Planck Institute has indicated that the sun is a far more significant factor…”
• Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center: “Our team … has discovered that the relatively few cosmic rays that reach sea-level play a big part in the everyday weather. They help to make low-level clouds, which largely regulate the Earth’s surface temperature. During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up. … most of the warming during the 20th Century can be explained by a reduction in low cloud cover.”
• Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, Professor Emeritus from University of Ottawa: “At this stage, two scenarios of potential human impact on climate appear feasible: (1) the standard IPCC model …, and (2) the alternative model that argues for celestial phenomena as the principal climate driver. … Models and empirical observations are both indispensable tools of science, yet when discrepancies arise, observations should carry greater weight than theory. If so, the multitude of empirical observations favours celestial phenomena as the most important driver of terrestrial climate on most time scales, but time will be the final judge.”
Scientists in the following section conclude it is too early to ascribe any principal cause to the observed rising temperatures, man-made or natural.
• Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks: “[T]he method of study adopted by the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is fundamentally flawed, resulting in a baseless conclusion: Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. Contrary to this statement …, there is so far no definitive evidence that ‘most’ of the present warming is due to the greenhouse effect. … [The IPCC] should have recognized that the range of observed natural changes should not be ignored, and thus their conclusion should be very tentative. The term ‘most’ in their conclusion is baseless.”
• Claude Allègre, geochemist, Institute of Geophysics (Paris): “The increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere is an observed fact and mankind is most certainly responsible. In the long term, this increase will without doubt become harmful, but its exact role in the climate is less clear. Various parameters appear more important than CO2. Consider the water cycle and formation of various types of clouds, and the complex effects of industrial or agricultural dust. Or fluctuations of the intensity of the solar radiation on annual and century scale, which seem better correlated with heating effects than the variations of CO2 content.”
• Robert C. Balling, Jr., a professor of geography at Arizona State University: “[I]t is very likely that the recent upward trend [in global surface temperature] is very real and that the upward signal is greater than any noise introduced from uncertainties in the record. However, the general error is most likely to be in the warming direction, with a maximum possible (though unlikely) value of 0.3 °C. … At this moment in time we know only that: (1) Global surface temperatures have risen in recent decades. (2) Mid-tropospheric temperatures have warmed little over the same period. (3) This difference is not consistent with predictions from numerical climate models.”
• John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports “I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never “proof”) and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time.”
• William R. Cotton, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University said in a presentation, “It is an open question if human produced changes in climate are large enough to be detected from the noise of the natural variability of the climate system.”
• Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland: “There is evidence of global warming. … But warming does not confirm that carbon dioxide is causing it. Climate is always warming or cooling. There are natural variability theories of warming. To support the argument that carbon dioxide is causing it, the evidence would have to distinguish between human-caused and natural warming. This has not been done.”
• David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma: “The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause–human or natural–is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria.”
• Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences: “We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 °C higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But–and I cannot stress this enough–we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future.” “[T]here has been no question whatsoever that CO2 is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas — albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in CO2 should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed.”
• Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville: “We need to find out how much of the warming we are seeing could be due to mankind, because I still maintain we have no idea how much you can attribute to mankind.”
Phil,
You, me, Mr. Stapler, John McL are all at a distinct disadvantage relative to JDBishop5 for at least five reasons:
1) We don't spend "…all day, every day" (post 9) poring over the overwhelming evidence for AGW. Consequently, we haven't put in the requisite time in order to form an informed opinion.
2) We simply don't care as much (post 12) about this issue.
3) We don't have grandchildren (post 9) – or if some of us do, we're willing to sell their future down the river so that we don't have to overly inconvenience ourselves now. We can't bring ourselves to trade in the SUV for a Prius. How unconscionable. But hey, whatever we drive, it is surely much worse than that de Havilland Beaver used to sightsee, make armchair assumptions about the global state of glacial retreat or advancement, and gather ice for cocktails (post 12).
4) We don't read Salon (post 9), that bastion of definitive science.
5) And, the mother of all trump cards when it comes to ending the discussion: BECAUSE THE END OF HUMANITY IS AT STAKE (post 19) with "…the starvation deaths of billions of people." We prefer whistling in the dark or fiddling while Rome burns.
So take THAT you greedy conservative purveyor of oversized carbon footprints.
JDBishop5,
"We may never know which of us has the superior understanding of climate modeling."
This statement alone reinforces that you have no idea what you are talking about. I make no claim to being able to model the climate. Nor do many other reputable climate scientists, per post #20 above.
THAT IS THE POINT: WE DON'T HAVE A RELIABLE MODEL! AND YET WE ARE USING IT TO TRY AND PROJECT DECADES INTO THE FUTURE.
This is not a war over whose model is better. One side of the debate is honest enough to simply admit that the models we have are so flimsy as to be useless, while the other side wants to use these models to project best/worst case scenarios that are really quite meaningless.
If you have been doing your reading, you will have notice the subtle sleight of hand that was done several years ago. First, it was "Global Warming." Now, however, it is "climate change."
Translation: whatever happens, man is the cause.
Rationale: We know that the climate changes constantly from one year to the next, one decade to the next. So if we have a priori decided that man must be the cause of all change, then let's hedge our bets and simply refer to it as climate change. That way, when certain parts of the earth get colder, and others get warmer, we can point the finger back at man regardless.
This isn't science. It's brilliant marketing.
Mr. Jackson
It is an impressive resume, although, significantly, lacking in any academic scientific background.
Thank you for your service to our country.
I don't know how many people here have access to Science magazine so I will attach an article from that magazine that some may find useful.
I hope you are all correct in your assessment of global warming science. Certainly I have nothing to gain from being right, if I am. Of course, we all have a huge price to pay if you are wrong.
Science 3 December 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686
DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618
Prev | Table of Contents | Next
ESSAYS ON SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
Also see the archival list of the Essays on Science and Society.
BEYOND THE IVORY TOWER:
The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
Naomi Oreskes*
Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, "As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change" (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.
The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy. … [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations" [p. 21 in (4)].
IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise" [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue" [p. 3 in (5)].
Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).
The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies' members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords "climate change" (9).
The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.
Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.
This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.
The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.
Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.
References and Notes
A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1.
S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003).
See http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.
J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).
National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).
American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).
See http://www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.
The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put "climate change" in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.
This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, "Consensus in science: How do we know we're not wrong," presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions.
Mr. Bishop:
Since my comments are directed toward the political manipulations of the Man Made Global Warming debate, which you now acknowledge is within my range of core competence, perhaps we can move on to a further acknowledgment that the comments I offer on this subject might hold a tad bit of credibility?
As for my lack of scientific degrees, it is for this reason that I rely on the learned opinions of Dr.’s Baliunas, Bryson, Carter et.al. to discuss the dubious substance of the man-made GW issue.
I’m still waiting to hear exactly what your credentials are to offer the kinds of scientific evaluations you’ve treated us to. You accused me of being an “intellectual disgrace” for commenting on the political manipulations of the NRDC and other GW advocates, for no other reason that my analysis contradicts your opinions. The fact that you won’t tell us what gives you the intellectual right to make scientific pronouncements on global climate change leads me to believe that you’re a complete and utter fraud, one who confuses personal opinion with an objective look at the data.
All you’ve done is impugn the intellect and intentions of anyone who disagrees with you, including noted members of the scientific community who actually study this issue. Tell us all now what substance informs your opinions?
The fact that you haven’t responded no doubt means that you’re just another empty suit who likes to lecture people on why we need to act NOW to just do SOMETHING quick because, you know, if we don’t it might be really bad — but you’re not real sure yourself because there’s no real incontrovertible evidence, just a lot of conflicting opinions.
Maybe someone should write an essay or two on how the weak data is being used by people to advance their own “consensus”-driven political agendas; you know, like Bob and I did?
Steve: Bishop is a True Believer. Man made global warming via consensus science is his religion. You're asking him to deny his god and give up his faith, which is why he has no objection to the non-scientist Al Gore making scientific pronouncements, but objects to non-scientists who doubt his religion.
I think Bishop needs to update his reading lists …
"All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change every recorded, either up or down. […] Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile — the list goes on and on. No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously."
Live by the anecdote, die by the anecdote.
Yes, that has been spattering about the Internet for a while.
Somethings else to think about.
The most recent statments on this subject from two of the sources mentioned in your post are cited below.
Hadley
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20071213.html
Another warm year as Bali conference ends
13 December 2007
The Met Office Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia have today released preliminary global temperature figures for 2007, which show that the top 11 warmest years all occur in the last 13 years.
The provisional global figure, using data from January to November, currently places 2007 as the seventh warmest on record since 1850.
The announcement comes as the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Michel Jarraud, speaks at the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Bali.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/
GISS Surface Temperature Analysis
Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation
The year 2007 tied for second warmest in the period of instrumental data, behind the record warmth of 2005, in the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis. 2007 tied 1998, which had leapt a remarkable 0.2°C above the prior record with the help of the "El Niño of the century". The unusual warmth in 2007 is noteworthy because it occurs at a time when solar irradiance is at a minimum and the equatorial Pacific Ocean is in the cool phase of its natural El Niño-La Niña cycle.
Some friends of mine have combined a series of polar sat. images that may interest some readers. It is called "2007 sea ice minimum animation" and can be downloaded here, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/, for free.
There is a wealth of other instructive data there as well. It is very current, and all offered for review and download free of charge.
For anyone still following along…
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=348
British Antarctic Survey
Issue date: 28 Feb 2008
Number: 05/08
Boulders the size of footballs could help scientists predict the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s (WAIS) contribution to sea-level rise according to new research published this week in the journal Geology.
Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Durham University and Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) collected boulders deposited by three glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment – a region currently the focus of intense international scientific attention because it is changing faster than anywhere else on the WAIS and it has the potential to raise sea-level by around 1.5 metres.
Analysis of the boulders has enabled the scientists to start constructing a long-term picture of glacier behaviour in the region. An urgent task is to put recent ice sheet changes into a historical context, and determine if these are part of a natural retreat since the end of the last glacial period (about 20 thousands years ago), or if they are a result of recent human-induced climate change.
Lead author Dr Joanne Johnson of BAS says,
“Until now we didn’t know much about the long-term history of this part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet because the region is incredibly remote and inaccessible. Our geological findings add a new piece to the jigsaw and will be used for improving computer models – the most important tools we have for predicting future change.”
Initial results show that Pine Island Glacier has ‘thinned’ by around 4 centimetres per year over the past 5,000 years, while Smith and Pope Glaciers thinned by just over 2 cm per year during the past 14,500 years. These rates are more than 20 times slower than recent changes: satellite, airborne and ground based observations made since the 1990s show that Pine Island Glacier has thinned by around 1.6 metres per year in recent years.
Bishop lectures me on my supposed lack of my credentials to offer an analysis of the political manipulations of the man made global warming debate, yet he STILL refuses to tell us what makes his "scientific" opinions worth considering.
Actually, I think we have our answer. Just another empty suit.
Hmm..
OK. Since my name has been mentioned in the comments section, I think that I should at least put my two cents in. I have not yet read the whole article or the comments as it is very busy here in the forecast office today. The short term numerical model we use didn't have any snow in Edmonton, Canada and there's at least an inch of it in the parking lot as we speak. So much for that.
As I have said before, I find it annoying to no end that the numbers published in the general media make almost no mention of the errors inherent in the models that they getting these numbers from. This continues unabated. Although they are getting better every day, long range climate models are still highly simplified, highly idealized representations of the earth atmosphere system. This is especially true at the near surface layer (or boundary layer). This layer is still highly parameterized even in short range models running out to 5 days. None of this is mentioned. Standard error, the most basic of errors, is not mentioned ect. None of this will change.
As I have also said before, I do believe that AGW is occurring and yes, there are many graphs that indicate that certain chemical constituents have rapidly increased in atmospheric concentration since the Industrial Revolution. That does not close the case. If anything, it is just the beginning of scientific research. The IPCC does have some very valid findings and it is not all bunk. HOWEVER, just because the IPCC says that AGW is occurring and that is all our fault does not close the book on this issue. This is just one body out of many that is investigating AGW. Don't the other agencies deserve equal voices yay or nay? Obviously not because that violates the law of consensus science.
There are other ways (again, as I have said before) and reasoning to cut emissions. Take near surface pollution for instance. Now, there's something we do know quite a bit about. This is a topic that has been around since at least the 1930's. By cutting the nitrous oxides and volatile organic compounds (or VOCs), which are anthropogenic byproducts, there would be less smog in our cities. By cutting the sulphurous emissions from industry, there would be less acid rain. We DO know how much of this pollution we contribute WAY better than we know how much GHG we are contributing to AGW yet only a fraction is being spent on it. Go figure. I'll write more when I have read more.
Since credentials do matter, I am a weather forcaster/researcher for Environment Canada with an undergraduate degree and Masters degree in Atmospheric Science.
Paul:
Good to hear from you again. What's your take on the Hadley, NASA’s GISS, UAH, RSS data I noted in Comment 26. From what I gather, El Nino is responsible for a shift in weather patterns that accounts for some of this cooling. If so, doesn't it suggest that an absence of El Nino would account for some/part of increased temperatures (leaving the whole issue aside, for the moment, of whether data collected in 1900, or even 1950, is accurate/reliable enough to produce a 100+ year "trend" to measure against)?
And a related question. Assuming we have accurate multi-decade temperature measurements, just how long a period of time do we need to discern a "trend"? We had a "little ice age" several centuries ago that lasted for a few hundred years. Assuming we had the same measuring instruments then that we have now, at what point would we have known that the cooling temperatures were an abberation and not an indication of "global climate change". In other words, if humans are in the middle of a multi-decade, or even multi-century fluctuation in a longer trend, exactly how are they supposed to discern the fluctuation from the climate change?
Mr. Bovis,
Very reasonably put and deeply respected. This has been a lively debate and just what we need to sort out fact from fantasy. I didn't expect quite this much of a brawl, but am enjoying it despite myself. Welcome to the party.
JDBishop,
Anecdotal observation is not the same as careful data taking everywhere simultaneously. It is simply all we sometimes have to go on.
As a matter of fact, I have been to the Artic – care of the U.S. Navy with whom I once served. I have been to a good many other places also, and venture I ‘get out’ enough to have an appreciation of the world I inhabit. However, it does not take an actual trip to a glacier or outer-space or slogging through Amazonian miasmas to put the pieces together any more than it takes being a climatologist to follow the scientific debate. What it does take is an ability to differentiate what is true from what is merely suggestive, and a willingness to let go of things that don't add up.
No one is denying glaciers have receded or even they are receding now a little faster. Hand in hand with this the world has become warmer. No argument. But, recession is what is observed to happen to glaciers naturally in every warm epoch, with the greatest recession occurring near peak temperatures. We see this same pattern on every snow covered mountain. A snow pack recedes faster the greater the difference between temperature and freezing point. Ergo, it matters less to observed melting how fast things warm up than it does this temperature difference and how long it is sustained. All this really tells us is that, right now, it is warmer than it was 120 years ago, and warm enough to see greater melting than when it was when too cold to melt at all.
You may want to consider this calculation of how much ice melting can reasonably be attributed to AGW (http://junkscience.com/Greenhouse/sea_level_calc.html). Note this calculation is based on an IPCC model, not on a contrarian model devised to repudiate IPCC claims. It does not pretend to be exact, but is clearly conservative (though less conservative than using later IPCC CO2 models. Before any ice can melt it first has to be warmed to the freezing point. Water-born ice (most Arctic) does not count as this calculation pertains to how high the sea will rise and ice already in the water does not impact sea level, and is not included in the calculation for that reason. The article goes on to point out most land-based ice is well below freezing, including most of its surface, making it highly unlikely the 0.6C change we’ve so far experienced can be blamed for the glacial recession you witnessed. Only a thin region at the boundary between cold and frozen climes is even subject to this melting.
The recent increase on the cost of cereal you mention similarly has nothing to do with global warming. Crop yields are higher than they have been precisely because it has been warmer, growing seasons longer, and higher CO2 only translates into faster growth. What has happened to cause higher cereal prices is the artificial emphasis on diverting corn and other cereal grains to ethanol production in the belief this makes us more energy independent, combined with higher oil prices driving up the cost of planting, watering, harvesting, packaging, and shipping.
(cont.)
(cont.)
You have invoked the ‘precautionary principle’, so let’s explore that. It is conservatively estimated the cost to prevent a planetary warming of 1-deg-C by year 2100 is $100-trillion dollars (http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Kyoto_Count_Up.htm). Again the numbers are based on IPCC claims. Temperature still increases some 3-degrees (assuming the models are correct) and we are still doomed. To halt it entirely is many thousand times more costly, but what the heck it’s someone else’s money – right? Now, let’s say that while we’re paying all this attention to global warming, we totally ignore some probabilistically more devastating problem like, I don’t know, malaria? After all, we’ve only got so much to spend on all these disasters in the making, so we choose to fixate on the less probable but far more titillating Al Gore super-sized global warming (excuse me, we’ve dropped global-warming in favor of climate-change to avoid embarrassing discrepancies in the science and claim victory no matter which way the temperature goes).
General equilibrium models estimate impact on select European economies from adopting Kyoto targets by 2010 as:
Germany: -5.2% GDP, -1,800,000 jobs
Spain: -5.0% GDP, -1,000,000 jobs
UK: -4.5% GDP, -1,000,000 jobs
Netherlands: -3.8% GDP, -240,000 jobs
The precautionary principle says we cannot afford to ignore global warming. However, we can hypothesize any number of similarly devastating scenarios, none of which are particularly true but each of which is subject to the same force of illogic. The precautionary principal applies to every scenario, however improbable; with relative probability of occurring having no bearing on the consideration it must be prevented at all costs. Merit is, thus, determined solely on its severity. Ergo, if we can hold nothing back in the effort to prevent global warming, how much more vital is it we prevent a comet from smacking into the Earth at some unforeseen time, or preventing the Sun from going nova, or preventing a sudden eruption of deadly galactic gamma rays, or a black-hole falling into the core of the earth, or a super-virus capable of wiping out every creature bigger than a cockroach, &c. There is absolutely nothing we can do to prevent most of these things and essentially nothing we can do to prevent the planet from warming.
(cont.)
(cont.)
Let’s say that instead of continuing to heat up, things cool down in a few more years. CO2 continues to climb in total disregard of theory. By then governments have committed us to an irrevocable program of austerity with steep penalties on those refusing participation. Heating oil is heavily taxed and rationed to cap emissions; and all those old folks we worry must choose between heat and medications now can’t have either. Prohibitions on gasoline discourage unnecessary travel, which translates into collapse of the service and entertainment industries. Power plants are easy to regulate, so no more plants are built and the only upgrades allowed are those improving efficiency though not particularly capacity. Growth is not only halted, we have a worldwide depression. Third world famine is way up and, even in cushy America, there are shortages worse than in the Great Depression.
Forgetting for the moment we may be near the peak of a natural temperature increase, a realistic look at the pluses and minuses of a slightly warmer climate are no where near as dire as Al Gore & Company would have us believe. Even assuming the 5-degree increase of the IPCC model, we are looking at conditions comparable to the Medieval Warm Period; regardless which era is eventually proved the warmer. What matters is the MWP was a period of significantly greater migration, crop yields, and better overall living conditions when compared to the much colder centuries immediately preceding and following. Viking ventures into the open Atlantic at high latitudes may have been as much encouraged by an abatement in ocean storms as aided by improved ship design. Not only Vikings, but older seafaring peoples and some newcomers (including Arabs) were suddenly making frequent lengthy voyages in pursuit of trade and plunder; a trend that decreased again as temperatures fell. This brief period saw Arab, Turk, Rus, Tatar and Mongol expansions in rapid succession, each made possible by warmer climates and made inviting by high crop yields and increased wealth among developed nations. Delving farther into the past, we note periods both warmer and significantly colder than today, and life has adapted through all of it. So whether the AGW zealots or deniers are proved right, we’ll be okay.
What is questioned here is whether those things you mention (and others) are due to human activity or occur naturally, not whether they portend some degree of change. What I have put before you is there is more evidence of natural than anthropogenic causes; and that it has been only an obsessive disregard for inconvenient evidence and a willingness to vilify anyone who gets in the way that has lead to current AGW favoring perception. We even have the declared statement of an IPCC steering committee member that truth must not be allowed to get in the way of policy. That alone should be enough to convince you not all is as portrayed.
Bob: Outstanding analysis. I'd just add one further comment. Unlike a comet striking the earth, global warming of the extent predicted by the worst case scenarios will not end life or even seriously threaten humanity. If true, it may affect certain local populations and perhaps some economies, but it won’t wipe out life as we know it. In fact, Russia is hoping that GW hysteria is true, since it will mean more farmland for them.
This is not a call to action because we supposedly ‘can’t wait’. Not every ‘crisis’ is a real crisis, no matter what the “consensus” of the hour is.
Tonight I had a craving for a nice, tall cup of coffee. With a Starbucks on every corner, I didn’t have far to travel. As I waited for the barista, I happened to glance at the "now playing" display. To my great relief, the CD cover assured me via sepia-toned photography and a tastefully artistic font that the entire album had been recorded using only solar power.
My bliss was complete. I didn’t have to feel guilty about buying a CD because this was no ordinary CD – it was an eco-friendly CD. (cue pan pipes and wind chimes)
Ah, but my bliss was short-lived.
The electricity to produce an audio recording probably represents about 1% of the total overall energy expenditure needed to bring it to the consumer. Polycarbonate plastic discs have to be made from refined hydrocarbons, and those hydrocarbons have to come from refineries powered by the burning of fossil fuels. The oil for those refineries is transported by tankers or pipelines burning fossil fuels, extracted from the ground by pumps that are typically electrically powered. The thin foil deposited on those same plastic discs is typically made in a smelter using electricity to refine the ore into aluminum. The aluminum ore itself is mined using machines that are electrically powered. Then, on to the stamping and injection molding machines for the CDs – electrically powered no doubt. Let's not forget the paper or plastic jewel case packaging to hold that CD. Paper machines are powered by steam turbines, in turn powered by the burning of fossil fuels or wood chips or hydropower from some distant dam. Printing presses then do their work on that raw paper, powered by electricity. Shrink wrap machines for the final CD, ditto. Cardboard boxes and packing materials are needed to get our little bundles of eco-friendly music to the oh-so-environmentally-conscious wallet owner, said boxes and packaging manufactured with machines using electrical power. And of course the trucks used to transport the finished product to a distribution center and then on to the retail outlets? Fueled with hydrocarbons.
At last this musical testament to renewable energy arrives at my friendly little Starbuck's, all displayed on an artfully designed pedestal manufactured using electrical power and illuminated under halogen bulbs. But we aren't quite done: the transaction must then be consummated on an electrically powered cash register linked to a bank of computer servers that verify my credit card via the internet…again, all made possible by electricity – electricity that in all likelihood did not come from a bank of solar panels.
I share this little vignette because it is so indicative of the hysteria that has gripped us – most of it rooted in feelings rather than fact – when it comes to global warming. Just as with our little follow-the-electron story of bringing a CD to market, “doing something” is 99% perception and 1% reality when it comes to global warming. We continue to have no idea just how much contribution we are making to the currently observed increase in the earth’s temperature. Our contribution could be 1%. It could be 50%. The truth is, we have little more than conjecture because our models are so pitifully weak. As Mr. Bovis points out, the absence of error bars around the “projections” these models provide is conspicuously absent.
And I can assure you it is not because the error bars are so small as to be inconsequential. They are conspicuously absent because their inclusion would be an embarrassment. Indeed, we don't even know how many variables are required in order to faithfully and accurately model the climate, nor what overall contribution each variable makes to the model's output.
But, we certainly can't let such small details get in the way. The models may be extremely crude and produce results of unknown accuracy, but by golly we just might be headed for disaster and that's all we need to know. Twist those knobs, pull those levers, curb those carbon footprints. We can't just sit by and do nothing, even if it turns out those knobs and levers aren't actually connected to the climate in a meaningful way, and that the climate might just have a mind of its own in which man's influence is vanishingly small.
At least we'll have the visceral satisfaction of slamming on those brakes – even if they turn out to be disconnected as seems quite likely.
Oh, and about that CD? It’s still sitting on the shelf. If the music had been any good, I would have bought it. Cretin that I am, I judge my music by the quality of the music, not the number of Joules it took to produce that music or where those Joules came from.
Mr. Stapler,
Thank you for your polite and direct manner as you have put forward your position and your questions. A good deal of the strong feelings I have radiated above have been in response to what I have interpreted as a suggestion by some that the reason those of us who persist in exploring GW as a phenomena, and warning people about its dangers, do so because we are dishonest, venal, untrained, inattentive, imprecise, and /or unthoughtful. It may still be that we are wrong, but if we are not, we will not become rich and famous by being correct. We, and our progeny will suffer mightily, as will everyone on this forum and theirs.
On the possibility some may have missed it, I have placed a recent SA document on the Internet for free download by any who wish to do so, free of charge. I know it is well written and thorough, and answers most if not all of the questions you and others have raised above.
Enjoy?
http://www.mailbigfile.com/38eefdbca2d9d124b36a585d441fad63/listFiles.php
"A good deal of the strong feelings I have radiated above have been in response to what I have interpreted as a suggestion by some that the reason those of us who persist in exploring GW as a phenomena, and warning people about its dangers, do so because we are dishonest, venal, untrained, inattentive, imprecise, and /or unthoughtful. It may still be that we are wrong, but if we are not, we will not become rich and famous by being correct. We, and our progeny will suffer mightily, as will everyone on this forum and theirs."
** No, it's because people who actually think about issues don't confuse strong personal feelings with objective analysis. And, those of us who feel strongly about a subject, but have a modicum of intellectual honesty, wouldn't think of proposing drastic, mandatory change because something might possibly perhaps maybe be a real issue. And when making our case, we tend to speak in plain language instead of elevating our personal concerns to the level of “our progeny will suffer mightily”, when saying “our children might suffer” will do just as well. [It doesn’t sound as florid though; and when your case is built on hyperbole and emotion, I guess speaking plainly doesn’t have the same pseudo-emotional impact.]
The strong feelings you have “radiated” are a reaction to the bilge you want to push about scientific consensus and global warming. Nothing Bob, nor I, nor anyone else says will dissuade you of your emotional attachment to the cause because you are a True Believer, and man made global warming via consensus science is your religion. As I said earlier, we’re asking you to deny your god and give up your faith, which is why you have no objection to the non-scientist Al Gore making scientific pronouncements, but object to non-scientists who doubt your religion.
JDBishop,
Because I regard you an earnest believer of AGW and not one of its hucksters, I will continue answering your arguments with civility in the hope I’ll convince you that you’ve been taken in by hysterical nonsense.
These movements are rarely started by con-men, but they do draw them like flies to you know what. AGW is not the first such hysteria and won’t be the last, and it seems each subsequent hysteria endeavors to top the previous for ultimate calamity. Among the many improbable, grossly exaggerated and/or endlessly postponed false alarms of the last half-century we can count: DDT, Dioxin, a number of similarly wrongly banned pesticides, anthrax, alien abductions, the great Y2K computer fizzle, species extinction, the obesity epidemic, mutation by microwave, radon, China syndrome, global freezing, ozone depletion, acid-rain (sorry, Paul but all those fish appear to have died from something else and not shown to harm any trees), cloned foods, lead-ingestion, bird flu, Alar, the Love Canal, deadly preservatives, fatty foods (can’t seem to make up our minds which are the bad fats), food dyes, caffeine, sugar, saccharine, salt, sulfites, entertainment violence, livestock feed supplements, SMZ in milk, whole milk, microwave packaging, irradiated foods, cosmic rays, MSG, mercury tainted seafood, mercury tainted vaccines, rubella scare, carbonization, fluoridation, chlorinated water, Sponge Bob Squarepants advertising, Anwar impacts, limits-to-growth, oil-spill impacts, alcohol causing breast cancer, silica, nuclear-winter, cell-phone radiation, sodium-azide in air bags, and landfill-limits. What all of these have in common is they each expanded rapidly from a mere suggestion to universal conviction, have been proved in some degree false, excited precautionary-principle demands they be banned, are enshrined irreversibly in law and regulation, cost enormous sums, continue to be believed by most people, and have been exploited for advantage, power, and profit. Thus, AGW is merely the last in a long line of calamities in urgent need of blind allegiance. Obviously, people crave calamity and our media thrives by satisfying this craving.
I think you miss my point completely. You keep citing the disaster you expect to befall, while ignoring disasters an adherence to Kyoto and other C02 restrictions will almost certainly inflict. The former is mostly speculative and improbable while the latter is an outcome we’ve already experienced (more than once), and would be even more ‘self-inflicted’ than AGW. To satisfy Kyoto, without bankrupting the global economy or shutting it down, we’d have to burn more rather than less fossil-fuel in trapping C02 that would otherwise go into the atmosphere; thus, depleting somewhat sooner our dwindling supply of oil. The disasters Gore has you believing must take place, and soon, depend on all or most land-based ice melting and on storm predictions which are strongly contradicted by what we know of past epochs and recent storm trends. Lacking this support for a worst-case scenario, the rest of the AGW argument falls apart; regardless whether global warming is occurring, and regardless of whether it is a human artifact. Basically, it is a big fuss over nothing at huge expense and causing far more harm than we can possibly prevent. If nothing else it is causing a lot of pointless anxiety. Some things are simply outside our control (for now), and the wise man knows to let it go. Perhaps someday we will have control over the weather and be able to set conditions for the planet the way we now set our home thermostats. That is cause for eager anticipation, not gloomy pessimism.
JDBishop,
Philip Mote, one of the scientists referenced in your MYBIGFILE, tells us the Kilimanjaro glacier (poster-child for the AGW movement) is not a victim of global warming at all, but rather of decreased precipitation. This suggests, at least in the area around Kilimanjaro, sunlight has increased significantly over what it was in the past (i.e., it is not melting faster, it is simply not getting replenished). Moreover, the fact Kilimanjaro has seen less precipitation anecdotally supports a different theory for why we’ve been warming; that we’ve had less cloud formation where formation is strongly influenced by ionization. Ionization, in turn, is linked to solar incidence and sunspot activity (see http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Cosmic_rays_and_climate.html). Solar warming advocates argue our temperature has risen recently and dramatically, in large part, due to an extended period of increased solar incidence that is damping cosmic particle bombardment and, thereby, reducing cloud formation. As the weight of ice above decreases, the movement of ice downward slows and we get a dramatic recession having nothing to do with ice melting any faster. It melts normally with nothing replenishing it.
I don’t bring this up to disprove AGW conclusively. I bring it up to illustrate how all of us jump to conclusions and then defend an untenable. For many months after glacial retreat was made a key feature of AGW, its advocates (including a good many climatologists) accepted uncritically the Kilimanjaro inclusion in the body of supporting evidence, and used it to sway public opinion. Many still argue for its retention. If this is true of Kilimanjaro, might it not also be true of other glaciers still defended as AGW proof. The Junk Science link I gave you regarding sea-level rise seriously undermines the global-warming-glacier-retreat argument, and even Dr. Mote is out on that limb (of his own making) in defending it.
Your article does nothing to prove AGW, it merely regurgitates the same logic proponents have been making for years:
a) GHGs trap heat (yes, but sensitivity unknown)
b) human-activities increase the amount of atmospheric GHG (does not account sufficiently for non-human GHG variations, including solar/cloud, plant growth acceleration, ocean, water-vapor, convection; all of which are improperly assumed unvarying)
c) a significant globally and temporally averaged temperature increase over the last half century (disregards temperature dropped for a good part of that time and did not increase in the first half of the century, neither of which fits the AGW assumptions and none of it backed by sufficient data)
d) net feedbacks enhance GHG effect (unproven)
e) extent of sea ice shrunk substantially (yes, but open to alternative explanations)
There are a number of things the article does not address or unjustifiably downplays, among them convection, aerosols, and albedo. The rest of the article breaks down into praise for the models, defense of theoretical weaknesses and assumptions, and the usual unsupported claims of calamity with unflinching certainty. The article admits a significant number of weaknesses, yet confidently predicts none of them (or all of them combined) will be capable of altering the picture; a contention that is far from obvious. If this is supposed to be a ‘scientific’ treatment of the subject by genuine scientist, it is a poor showing; one even an amateur like me can refute.
One of your arguments has been an insistence we skeptics show our 'credentials' before hearing our arguments. I would counter, and as the last post I made above suggests, if even rank amateurs like us can find holes in the theory and make them stick, the theory is in serious jeopardy.
Corollary to Murphy's Law: A dozen experts will exhaust themselves devising the perfect solution, only to have the village idiot point out its obvious flaws.
Bob: The subject is not science. It's religion. You can't disprove religion with science.
But for those of us who appreciate the difference between the two, keep up the good work.
Phil
" If this is supposed to be a ‘scientific’ treatment of the subject by genuine scientist, it is a poor showing; one even an amateur like me can refute."
Again, 'just silly." I was trying to make available a recent, popularized compendium of argument and data that a non-specialist could follow written by several respected scientists who have no financial axe to grind.
I guess 50% success is the best I could expect.
To quote the article.
The authors were participants in Working Group I of the 2007 IPCC assessment.
William Collins is a professor in residence in the department of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Robert Colman is a senior research scientist in the Climate Dynamics Group at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology Research Center in Melbourne.
James Haywood is the manager of aerosol research in the Observational Based Research Group and the Chemistry, Climate and Ecosystem Group at the Met Office in Exeter, England.
Martin R. Manning is director of the IPCC WG I Support Unit at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.
Philip Mote is the Washington State climatologist, a research scientist in the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, and an affiliate professor in the department of atmospheric sciences.
Read it again, slowly.
And Phil, what is your position on the Holocaust?
If any more proof was needed that we've been discussing religion with Bishop, not science, read post 45.
As for my position on the Holocaust: I'm against it.
Non sequiturs have now replaced anecdotes as the basis for forming religious positions on Man made Global Warming.
I'd write more but we're having a man made global warming snowstorm in Dallas right now, and need to pick up some supplies before it gets too dangerous to drive. I don't think we've ever had snow in March, at least not since I moved here almost 30 years ago. But then I forget. Man Made Global Warming causes both heat and cold, so whatever the weather is, it's more proof that man is responsible for global "climate change" (the new all-inclusive term).
Actually, the scientists you present us with most certainly do have an axe to grind. Considering the revelations we’ve had of deliberate manipulation by the IPCC steering committee, the fact your guys are members-in-good-standing with and supportive of that body does not exactly endear them to us as unbiased sources. These guy’s credentials appear to consist of: they’ve done some field work, wrote papers for IPCC (4 out of a field of 2500+ doesn’t make them top of the heap), and they have tenure in some extremely liberal establishments. These, and others you’ve cited, have wedded careers to and built reputations entirely on advancing global warming theory. Not exactly a neutral opinion. Arrayed against your guys, I have cited climatology heavyweights with platinum credentials and broader interests, some of whom still believe in AGW despite telling us IPCC is not to be trusted.
Conviction is an axe too, perhaps the biggest, and one far more common among those who believe than disbelieve. The idea advocacy is driven by concern while opposition is driven by greed is ludicrous. I’ve already shown how phony it is to insist the relatively few contrarians are ‘exploiting for profit’, while the many adherents are supposedly ‘toiling in the field of revealed truth at substantial wages’. Europe, Russia and Asia would like nothing better than we should shackle our economy to stopping global-warming, giving them a trade advantage. The Sierra Club and other environmentalists reap many times more in contributions (tax free and low overhead) than oil companies can possibly save by its campaign to soften the AGW drumbeat. Moreover, oil companies have hedged their bets by making large investments in ‘planet-saving’ technologies; thus, compromising their supposed ‘environmental obstructionism’. The ‘big oil conspiracy’ argument, therefore, is a red-herring with which to distract from the ones doing the real exploiting: the many environmentalists, socialists, academics, media, government, enterprises and individuals devoted to apocalypse, and those signing up to capitalize on the bonanza that creates. The rest of us are just trying to keep from being robbed. So, if there is anything ‘silly’ here, it is insisting on getting fleeced in blind faith to career scientists; some of whom are seriously compromised by ideology, some who are caught up in the excitement, and some who are just amoral enough to trade integrity for position, fame and cash.
If you only meant your MYBIGFILE to ‘bring us up to speed’ on the AGW debate, you could have spared us the insult as it is clear our sources of information and analysis are at least as good and a good deal more inclusive; as was clear to you before you posted it. I don’t need to reread it “slower” because there’s nothing in it the least bit challenging and have had little difficulty following the debate at this and higher levels. I not only read it, I gave you a full breakdown of its substance (or lack); which is more than you gleaned from reading it and more than your unwillingness to give our sources a similar reading. You cannot have meant it, therefore, to inform us better than you already know us to be. When the pro-AGW side has something new to offer, I will be among the first to take note. For your information, I have digested substantial amounts of all four IPCC reports, NASA’s very considerable presentation of the theory, NOAA analyses, Columbia University’s EdGCM climate models, U.S. Senate, British, and U.N. whitepapers, RealScience.com, WorldClimateReport.com, UNEP/GRIDA, GlobalWarming.org, and NRDC.org websites, countless pro-AGW scientific presentations, peer-reviewed papers, economic counter-arguments, Al Gore’s presentation-for-profit, and similar drivel (to name just a few). About the only thing I haven’t done is accepted or rejected AGW on the ridiculous basis of standing on some picturesque glacier in the middle of the Arctic listening to environmental lunatics droning on about rape of the planet and taking their word for it glaciers melt because we fart.
If 50% is the best you could expect from me, perhaps that is because you have been unwilling to traverse the half it takes two minds to find common ground.
Have read the foregoing comments with interest. I checked on galactic influences, found the following
From:
http://www.etheric.com/GalacticCenter/Galactic.html
Quote:
Galactic Cosmic Ray Volleys: A Coming Global Disaster
Galactic core outbursts are the most energetic phenomenon taking place in the universe. The active, quasar-like core of spiral galaxy PG 0052+251 (Figure 1-a), for example, is seen to radiate 7 times as much energy as comes from all of the galaxy's stars. Most of this is emitted in the form of high energy cosmic ray electrons accompanied by electromagnetic radiation ranging from radio wave frequencies on up to X ray and gamma ray frequencies.
A study of astronomical and geological data reveals that cosmic ray electrons and electromagnetic radiation from a similar outburst of our own Galactic core (Figure 1-b), impacted our Solar System near the end of the last ice age. This cosmic ray event spanned a period of several thousand years and climaxed around 14,200 years ago. Although far less intense than the PG 0052+251 quasar outburst, it was, nevertheless, able to substantially affect the Earth's climate and trigger a solar-terrestrial conflagration the initiated the worst animal extinction episode of the Tertiary period.
End quote.
Point is, the chances are much greater that factors outside our control to change will affect Earth's climate. Whether we're in for a period of warmer climate or colder, there are two things I think we need to address.
1. Should there be drastic climate change, energy conservation in a bid to forestall the need for vast amounts of power is simply kidding ourselves. Saving a MW or two of electricity isn't going to solve our energy needs, which are growing exponentially even without climate change factored in.
2. By far the worst aspect of the entire debate is that people feel free to lobby government to impose the views of some on everyone, thereby choking off independent investment in nuclear energy, intelligent recycling, and who knows what other inventions that would enable us to deal with whatever comes our way.
Being able to withstand dramatic climate change 10, 100 or 100 years from now is entirely within our reach, simply by allowing laissez-faire capitalism to operate, and preventing the fear-mongerers from getting at the controls to compel everyone to fall into their fear-motivated line. I realize that already that process is well underway, with the Great Lightbulb Scandal drawing closer every day. Is there no way to turn back this human-hating tide?
Damn typo. Meant to say 10, 100 or 1000 years from now … sorry.