A new look on global warming

Remove all ads!

Joacquin, your question is easy to answer: the fear mongers. Those who can convince everyone else that some horrible disaster is about to happen and only they can avert it tend to get elected, funded, etc. There are economic and political reasons for someone to support either side.

 

NOG, the problem in that lies in the fact that in pretty much everywhere the parties who'd benefit from such fearmongering lie in the minority and most of them in opposition. How these parties would manage to convince the established institutions, that benefit next to nothing from such an agenda and only damage themselves by opening the political market for new enviormental parties. Now the funding part I suppose could be accepted since I'm sure the funds towards global warming research have most probably increased by quite a lot, still a global conspiracy of climatologists seems somewhat unfeasable to me, I'd like to think that most scientists have more integrity than spout out outright lies in a desperate attempt to get more funds.

Personally I play with the odds on this one. The overwhelming majority of climatologists and scientists with actual competence on the area agree with global warming. I myself don't know almost anything and have more important things (from my personal perspective) to study than global warming, so I'm going to have to accept that the odds of the 90% having right is higher than the 10% having right. This thinking is further increased by the consequences of either prediction. If the global warming folks have it all wrong we only risk cutting our growth somewhat and gain some more focus on enviormental issues and probably invest more to enviormental friendly technology, if they have it right and we choose to ignore it however the costs will be quite significant and the humanitarian disaster following would quite horrible. In this light it's not a very difficult choice for me, but I'll accept that I don't know for sure if global warming is true or not since I most certainly lack the competence of observing and testing it myself.

 

the last 2 are the best

"In sum, a strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate state is not possible." -- Final chapter, Draft TAR 2000 (Third Assessment Report), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

"Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward)." -- Climate Change Science - An Analysis Of Some Key Questions, p1 (Committee on the Science of Climate Change, National Research Council) ISBN 0-309-07574-2.

"The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change." -- James Hansen, "Climate forcings in the Industrial era", PNAS, Vol. 95, Issue 22, 12753-12758, October 27, 1998.

"Reducing the wide range of uncertainty inherent in current model predictions of global climate change will require major advances in understanding and modeling of both (1) the factors that determine atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and (2) the so-called “feedbacks” that determine the sensitivity of the climate system to a prescribed increase in greenhouse gases." -- Climate Change Science - An Analysis Of Some Key Questions, p1 (Committee on the Science of Climate Change, National Research Council) ISBN 0-309-07574-2.

"The consensus is that major advances are needed in our modelling and interpretation of temperature profiles . . . and their analysis by the scientific community worldwide." -- David Parker, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, Berkshire.

"Because climate is uncontrollable . . . the models are the only available experimental laboratory for climate. . . . However, climate models are imperfect. Their simulation skill is limited by uncertainties in their formulation, the limited size of their calculations, and the difficulty of interpreting their answers that exhibit almost as much complexity as in nature." -- Climate Change Science - An Analysis Of Some Key Questions, p15 (Committee on the Science of Climate Change, National Research Council) ISBN 0-309-07574-2.

"For the global mean [temperature], the most trusted models produce a value of roughly 14 Celsius, i.e. 57.2 F, but it may easily be anywhere between 56 and 58 F and regionally, let alone locally, the situation is even worse." The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature (SAT) (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

"At this point in the debate, it is intellectually dishonest and borders on fraudulent to continue to maintain that there is any reasonable basis to fear a coming climate apocalypse. Yet the scientific establishment continues to grind out tortured "studies" to prove black is white. Those involved in this charade are doing lasting damage to science and the reputations of scientists. Hell, you are no different than the worst lawyers - you will say whatever people want you to say so long as you are paid." -- Fred Palmer, president of the Greening Earth Society.

AND THIS

This year of 2008 is starting out cold—but according to the "consensus" climate watchers it's still likely to be one of the "top 10 warmest" in the thermometer record before it's over. After all, the Greenhouse gasses continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.

But wait. Something isn't following the Greenhouse script. The oceans, which contain 80 to 90 percent of the planet's heat, have recently stopped warming!

Over the past 4-5 years, "there has been a very slight cooling, but not anything really significant," Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently told National Public Radio.

Nothing very significant—except the ocean warming trend has stopped?! This, in the midst of the biggest furor over global temperatures and climate overheating in human history?

Willis monitors the data from a nifty new set of Argo ocean buoys. They not only record sea surface temperatures but periodically dive 3,000 feet under water and record sub-surface temperatures as they rise back up. These wonderful new Argo floats say the oceans have been cooling slightly for the past 4-5 years, instead of accentuating a continuing global warming trend.

But how can the ocean warming stop? Greenhouse gases have continued to spew from Chinese factories. Even Europe's Kyoto-bound economies are still increasing their greenhouse emissions. There should be no relief from the planet's heating.

Except that over the last 13 months, the earth's thermometers have dropped for the first time in 30 years. Three global monitoring sites measured a decline of 0.5 to 0.7 degree C.

Now we learn that the ocean warming stopped even earlier, 4-5 years ago.

We should have been expecting this, because the sunspot index turned down nine years ago. There's a 79 percent correlation between the sunspots and the earth's sea-surface temperatures—with roughly a ten-year lag.

Is ten years the time required for the oceans to respond to changes on the sun?

There is nothing in the climate record that ties the earth's temperatures to CO2 levels. Al Gore's movie showed Antarctic ice core temperatures and CO2 moving closely together through four different Ice Ages. Gore implied that more CO2 leads to higher temperatures. But Gore reversed cause and effect. Three different Antarctic studies show the temperatures change 800-1200 years before the CO2 levels. Higher temperatures cause more CO2 in the air, not the other way around.

The big question is what warms the oceans. It it CO2 or sun? For the past nine years, CO2 has continued to rise in the atmosphere, but the earth hasn't gotten warmer. The sun is winning the debate.

NPR asked Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmosphere Research where "all the extra heat from the CO2" was going. He said it was probably going into outer space, through the "natural thermostats, including clouds," which can either trap solar heat in earth's atmosphere, or deflect it out back out into space.

Thank you, Dr. Trenberth, for finally admitting that the earth does, indeed, have natural thermostats such as clouds. And what seems to control those natural thermostats? The level of activity on the sun, through varying numbers of cosmic rays that create more or fewer of the low, wet clouds that deflect solar heat back into space.

It's unthinkable, but what if there's no "extra heat" being trapped by CO2 right now? What if CO2 levels don't matter much? What if the earth is starting to cool in response to the sun's declining level of activity? What an inconvenient truth.

Dennis T. Avery is a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC and is the Director for the Center for Global Food Issues. He was formerly a senior analyst for the Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years, Readers may write him at PO Box 202, Churchville, VA 2442 or email to cgfi@hughes.net.

 

Yes, the part about the author being a "fellow of the Hudson Institute." The "institute" was founded by Herman Kahn, who was one of the inspirations for the movie "Dr. Stangelove." He is more widely known for having coined the term "Magadeath," from which the rock band "Megadeth" drew its name (but let's not hold that against them). Nevertheless, the Hudson Institute is somewhat interesting in that it labels itself as "futuristic" and advocates the "colonization of space." They seem to think that "space" would be a great place to expand the "free market."

But wait, they all want to leave the earth. This is from the other guy's (S. Fred Singer's) "institute," the SEPP:

Now, one of the stated goals of the SEPP is to refute the "alarmist" nature of global warming advocates. But, let's stop worrying about global warming and get ready for the next "Impact." It COULD happen anytime. It can happen...as long as Al Gore or Hillary doesn't say it can....

http://www.sepp.org/










--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

As misinformation goes, that op-ed is pretty blatant.

 

But what about the other eight quote Chandos?

You only attacked one out of nine quotes. I think they were pretty good as a package.

 

I agree. Remember, anyone who doesn't agree, must be wrong.

 

The following list includes more than 400 additional qualified scientists, with their home institutions, and the peer-reviewed studies they have published in professional journals, which reveal evidence of the moderate 1,500-year Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles. Together with a previous list released by Hudson on Sept. 12, 2007, this brings the total of scientific researchers who have published evidence of this natural cycle to more than 700. The lists also include dozens of authors who have published studies on the linkage of the 1,500-year cycle to variations in solar activity.

The Hudson lists include researchers from many of the world’s top scientific institutions, including the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory affiliated with Columbia University, the Scripps Oceanographic Institute, various branches of the University of California, Australia’s Macquarie University, Canada’s Simon Fraser University, the Geological Survey of Denmark, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, among many others.

The key question, of course, is whether the earth’ recent warming has been due to humans burning fossil fuels, or to the natural, moderate 1,500-year cycle discovered in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores in the 1980s. Willi Dansgaard of Denmark and Hans Oeschger of Switzerland discovered the climate cycle in the first long Greenland ice cores on which they reported in 1984. Claude Lorius of France led the Antarctic team which found the same cycle in the still-longer Vostok Glacier ice core in 1985. They shared the Tyler Prize—the environmental version of the Nobel—in 1996, but recently they have seldom been mentioned in the debate.

The Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle has also been found in seabed and lake sediments, ancient tree rings, boreholes, cave stalagmites, fossil pollen, historic records, ancient paintings, glacier movements and archeological artifacts all over the world. We rejoice that the existence of the cycle is now so widely supported, with additional evidence being published almost by the week.

This is not to imply that all of these authors would call themselves “skeptics” in regard to man-made global warming, and indeed there is room for both human and natural impacts in the recent climate record. However, the totality of the evidence shows that the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles have dominated the earth’s temperatures for the past 12,000 years and continue to do so today.

The evidence of these researchers, speaks for itself.

(Some of the authors in this list of studies have already been cited for other papers in Hudson’s list release September 2007. They are not included in the alphabetic listing nor are they double-counted in the author total.)

the full list
http://www.cgfi.org/wp-content/uplo...ts-have-found-the-1500-year-climate-cycle.pdf

the list includes scientists from : usa, russia, japan, norway, denmark, germany, uk, finland, estonia, australia, ireland, south korea, italy, new zealand, switzerland, india, china . . .thats just from the first 5 pages of names, also has the names & publication dates of their studies.

i dont expect chandos or any of the other climate alarmists on the boards to give it any credit as they always stick their heads in the sands when ANYTHING disagrees with their beliefs on the subject of the climate. just do a little research and look at the Dansgaard-Oeschger cycle & make up your own mind

 

from taluntain:
"I don't expect martaug or any of the other climate daredevils on the boards to give positions opposed to their own any credit as they always stick their heads in the sands when ANYTHING disagrees with their beliefs on the subject of the climate."

HMM, so the fact the middle of my post states:
"This is not to imply that all of these authors would call themselves “skeptics” in regard to man-made global warming, and indeed there is room for both human and natural impacts in the recent climate record."
means that I never post anything contrary to my own beliefs??
man, taluntain, grow up.

 

Martaug's post was more or less verbatim from this site, which is in turn run by this man. What neither Milloy nor Martie tell you is that The Committe on the Science of Climate Change

Context is a wonderful thing.

 

Tal, those quotes seemed perfectly well cited to me, they just didn't include a web address. If you're going to attack someone who's post disagrees with you, you could at least do it in an accurate manner.

 

Tal, not every quote need be linked. That's really never been a requirement in any debate I've been involved in -- sure, it's the courteous thing to do, but providing the name of the person quoted and often the source is more than adequate (after all, once the source is noted anyone can look it up). Many of the sources listed were ISBN's -- these do not often translate directly to a link (without a subscription).

I think charges of deliberate concealment are a bit harsh here. But I must say I really agree with this (edit: in the context of arguments in general on the boards):

There are so many debates on the boards where one person believes "he with most quotes, wins." Equally amusing is the "I don't don't agree with you so prove it with vast amounts of quotes" argument.

 

Tal, you (and many others) are completely missing the point. This has nothing to do with proving we are right and you are wrong as to what was causing global warming. Instead all of these quotes are instead "shining the light" onto the fraud of the "scientific consensus". Way to many people have been "Shouting down" anyone who has a dissenting opinion. Quotes like "Mountains of material" are a serious problem. You are making a great leap of faith that these mountains exist because you are parroting the party line and want to believe them. It is no more valid a claim than if I say "There are canyons filled with material showing that your mountains were created with faulty science."

 

So much silly to unpack here...

Finding outliers that disagree with the vast majority does not suddenly make the vast majority fraudulent. If 9 doctors say a patient is dying from a gunshot wound and 1 doctor insists otherwise because no bullet was found, would you want them to stand around and do nothing while the patient bleeds out because the concensus is only close to unanimous?

Bullsh*t. No one is "shouting" anyone down. No one here has told global warming skeptics to shut up and go away. Points are presented and refuted. It's more like "shooting" down because, as has been demonstrated, the arguments against climate change are, almost exclusively, full of logical or evidentiary holes, lack integrity due to who's behind them and the financial motivations they have in furthering climate change skepticism, or are motivated purely by a political agenda and would rather argue for something contrary to their self interest than be forced to agree with a liberal about something. Climate change supporters are of course not immune to any of these either, but they too are in the vast minority.

The easiest way to prevent being either shouted or shot down is to present a superior argument. Whining about being shouted down is not a good start.

These mountains are readily available to anyone who bothers to look. There's no leap of faith required.

Party line? Are you suggesting that Tal is a Democrat or something? From Slovenia?

EDIT: I'd just like add that I think that it's the skeptics, not their opponents, who are missing the point. Whether you think the world is going to be destroyed tomorrow or whether you just don't want your children to be the earth's last generation to see a glacier, anyone who's looked upward in a major city can see the damage human activity is doing to our planet. Whether your goal is merely to reduce pollution or to slow or reverse the effects of catastrophic climate change, the reparitive measures are exactly the same: conserve more, consume less, think about the impact of your actions. Global warming skeptics have yet to come up with a compelling reason why polluting the earth as much as you want is GOOD for the planet, our society or our future. Until they do, those heeding the warnings of the scientific and climatological super-majority will continue to have both the intellectual AND moral high ground. Those of us who believe we have a responsibility to fix what we've broken will have no choice but to conclude that your motivation seems to be nothing more than the eventual gratification reaped from proving liberals wrong.

 

The point is that the more we look at this, it isn't 9 out of 10 doctor's saying the patient is dying from a gunshot wound, no matter how many times 1 of the doctors wants everyone to believe that.

What you claim is shooting down, I do not agree. Just look at this thread and we are a bunch of nobodies. For a long time anyone brave enough to ask a question was shouted down. Even in your own response you assume that anyone who disagrees is a political hack or are being paid off.

The mountains of evidence are starting to look like molehills. It is starting to look like those mountains were nothing but politically motivated "bad science" As time goes on they are getting smaller and smaller, yet people still claim to see them.

By party line, I didn't mean to imply that Tal was a Democrat. I would never say something so insulting to the Alpha and Omega

As a last comment, I admit I'm retarded and can't figure out the multi-quote thing. Someone needs to make a Youtube video or PM me instructions.

 

Snook,

I assume no such thing. I'm merely pointing out the fact that, in this thread, when a global warming skeptic has posted a link to evidence or a study refuting global warming, 2 minutes worth of digging reveals that said source is, in fact, either politically motivated or funded by the energy industry. That's not in and of itself dispositive, all it means is you're going to have to do better than provide evidence that wouldn't even hold up in small claims court. I don't assume that you, NOG and martaug are political hacks or are being paid off (well, actually, all I'm sure of is that you're not being paid off) nor is that what I claim. I'm suggesting that if you insist on linking to them to support your argument, don't be surprised when they're so easily picked apart.

I'm not calling you stupid or retarded. But I am calling you lazy and politically motivated. Claiming that mountains of evidence you clearly haven't bothered to look for don't exist is lazy. I understand you can't stand liberals and automatically have instant distrust for anything they say. I read your posts - this is as clear as a bell, and I accept that. But that's not a good reason to dismiss what should NOT be a political issue. Like I said: believe in global warming or don't, I don't care. But denying the role we're playing in wrecking the only planet we've got, thereby endangering the quality of life of all who inhabit it - both animals and ourselves - just because you disagree politically with those who connect the dots about the macro effects of billions of people pumping carbon into our air and toxins into our water at an alarming clip, is, frankly, heart-breakingly stupid. It is in your SELF INTEREST to consume and pollute less. It is in Little Snook's best interest as well, and his kids and their kids. The possibility of the earth exploding tomorrow is immaterial. Digging around on the internet to find some crackpot who claims to "debunk the myth" and then crowing about it so you can feel morally superior in your choice to drive a suburban and not recycle is not only lame, but self destructive behavior.

And again - if you ask a legitimate question and everyone here yells at you to shut up without engaging you or answering your question, then you'd have a claim to being shouted down. That isn't the case here. Please point out to me an instance where that has happened here and I'll apologize. But until that happens, "You're shouting me down!" = whining.

 

DR: Most reasonable global warming skeptics fully realize problems with polluting the environment. None that I know advocate "polluting the earth as much as you want...". That type of emotional stereotyping is just ridiculous. The majority of scientists who are skeptics of global warming are simply against the alarmism and generalization present in a large number of climate change findings.

The issue of climate change is much more complex than many seem to put forth. It is in our nature to want things simple -- simple explanations are easy to visualize. Unfortunately when you combine multiple complex (even chaotic) factors together, the result is not simple. In science A + B = C does not always exist. To me, it is a sign of laziness on the part of the researcher to try to fit climate data into a linear equation with only two variables. Most intelligent people realize there are numerous variables in climatology (hell, I don't even trust a 10 day forecast). I just get the impression the climate scientist are doing a least squares fit on data requiring multivariable exponential analysis -- and an analysis where they don't even know half the variables.

Many of the skeptic I've read are only showing the simple model does not work -- something is missing. And for that they are branded as wanting to pollute the earth and make it unusable for future generations. Much like you are doing here....

 

It's strange how only a bunch of American scientists are on the right track, and the rest of the civilized world and all the scientists in it have been brainwashed by "the fear-mongers" who somehow seem to have bigger resources at their disposal for doing it than major oil companies.