Imagine my surprise upon reading a shocking entry on Sen. Inhofe's EPW blog: the scientific consensus on climate change is cracking!
That blog provides a long list of names of people who disagree with the consensus, and I have no doubt that many on this list are indeed skeptics. The question is: does their opinion matter? Should you revise your views about climate change accordingly?
Considering the source, I think we all know the answer to that. To understand why Inhofe's claims are fundamentally bogus, consider the following scenario: imagine a child is diagnosed with cancer. Who are his parents going to take him to in order to determine the best course of treatment?
Most people would take the child to a specialist. Not just someone with a PhD in a technical subject, but an actual medical doctor. And not just any medical doctor, but someone who was a specialist in cancer. And not just any specialist in cancer, but someone who was a specialist in pediatric cancer. And, if possible, not just any pediatric oncologist, but someone who specialized in that particular type of cancer.
Expertise matters. Not everyone's opinion is equally valid.
The list of skeptics on the EPW blog contains few bona fide climate specialists. In fact, the only criteria to get on the list, as far as I can tell, is having a PhD and some credential that makes you an academic. So Freeman Dyson makes lists. While I'm certain he's a smart guy, I would not take a sick child to him, and I won't take a sick planet to him either. In both cases, he simply does not have the relevant specialist knowledge.
That also applies the large number of social scientists, computer programmers, engineers, etc., without any specialist knowledge on this problem.
The bottom line is that the opinions of most of the skeptics on the list are simply not credible.
So given the critical nature of the climate change problem, who should we listen to? My opinion, and the opinion of all the governments of the world, is that we should listen to people who specialize in climate science. That's the IPCC.
And as detailed by the IPCC, the conclusions that the climate is warming, humans are very likely now the dominant driver of climate, and that future warming holds the risk of catastrophic impacts are as strongly supported as ever.
Finally, you often hear skeptics make the argument that, "science doesn't work through consensus," and "consensus doesn't prove anything," etc. That argument rings hollow, however, when you consider the amount of effort Inhofe and Co. are going through to try to disprove the existence of the strong consensus. Clearly, the scientific consensus is crucially important.
What to make of the new climate poll
Comments
View as Flat
GreenEngineer Posted 4:56 am
21 Dec 2007
Yeah, I hear that, but I've never understood it. Peer review is the gold standard for scientific legitimacy. When all the peers hold similar position, what results could well be described as a consensus.
What do these people think "science" is, anyway?
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A Siegel Posted 5:08 am
21 Dec 2007
I took a look at just the first three in "Inhofian Reporting: Peerless Work?" (http://energysmart.wordpress.com/2007/12/21/inhofian-repo ...)
Blogging regularly at Energy Smart to Energize America .
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:25 am
21 Dec 2007
"They" of course being the NRSP
http://thomhartmann.org/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2151097651/m/6 ...
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gmobus Posted 5:49 am
21 Dec 2007
I have been arguing that education has failed us miserably in that people are no longer capable of general critical thinking - that is outside of their narrow specialties. And people do not know enough about science and technology to have a basis for making critical judgments. Inhofe can make his list and get by with it because too many people in the general public don't know how to tell the difference.
It's funny too how people like Inhofe can scoff off scientists or anyone with a PhD when it suits them - arguing they are too theoretical or some such - yet rally round the titles when it is to their supposed advantage. Talk about having your cake and eating it at the same time.
George
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
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Andrew Dessler Posted 6:15 am
21 Dec 2007
I agree with you completely. I've been arguing for a while that university faculty have, in general, done a terrible job of teaching non-scientists how science actually works. You don't have to be a Ph.D. to decode the policy debate, you just have to have an understanding of how the scientific community produced knowledge. More universities need classes on the scientific method and critical thinking.
Thanks!
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StillSkeptical Posted 7:18 am
21 Dec 2007
Why do you feel it is necessary to tell me people not to listen to others? Do you think people are incapable of judging for themselves?
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trock Posted 8:16 am
21 Dec 2007
People sometimes go Doctor shopping, they want drugs so they'll go to as many doctors as it takes to get as many as they need.
In Politics we go shopping as well, but to the people who will tell us what we want to hear. We want to be told that things are the way they are not because of real limits, but because of those bad people who keep lying to you. We like to be told everything will be better if you just vote for me, I'll make fun of those mean people who keep telling you we have problems and I'll make them go away.
That's why we elect politicians, so they fix the problems and make them go away. And Sen. Inhofe is doing his job by making global warming something that will just go away.
What I don't understand is the number of people who may think this is a problem, but aren't motivated to do something about it. I've reduced my carbon footprint by quite a lot and I bring it up to my friends who are not in the least interested.
But what about the colleges and universities filled with entire rows of people who should be able to push this issue farther than it has been. Or are we all just concerned with our own next dollar that we can't be bothered by future generations?
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James Mayeau Posted 7:36 pm
21 Dec 2007
But when the evidence was less then persuasive you took the short cut.
You genuflected to lies such as Mann's hockey stick. You pretended confidence in world thermometers.
You squelched descenting opinion and experiments, promote only people who agree with you until there are none left to say no, then perversely claimed this a "consensus" of scientists, as if the crime itself was evidence.
Excuse me, but if your hypothetical cancer specialist was awarded his doctorate by mafioso, we would be fools to trust our children to his care, especially when they aren't sick to begin with, and his recommended treatment is euthanasia.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:44 pm
21 Dec 2007
Not only that, but they are trying to disprove GHG climate disaster, by creating a consensus of their own.
But their consensus is one produced without data or research. In fact it runs counter to all the scientific climatalogical data and research.
Our consensus is one of actual climate scientists engaged in research and analysis.
That's the difference. Expert opinion based on actual verifiable data is very different from opinion based on political leaning. Inhoffe's "experts" are not climate experts at all, they aren't even political experts.
Nor do they seem to have any notion of how reason is used to illuminate through dialectic argument. Instead they work backwards, from political opinion to alleged scientific opinion. "Stove piping" selected bits and pieces of imaginary theory and data to match their political prediliction.
This sounds familiar. Wasn't this how the case for the invasion of Iraq made? Yep. Corporatists like endless war and the energy policy status quo. It has emptied the US treasury straight to the bottomline of bushco friendly contractors and energy companies.
So much so that now the money to keep the whole mess going is coming from China. Mortgaging the future for short term corporate profit.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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James Mayeau Posted 10:54 pm
21 Dec 2007
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:13 am
22 Dec 2007
Looks like Global Warming is having another effect -- it's melting Al Gore's brainlock on Common Sense.
The Big Thaw is coming -- but it's among serious intellectuals who are routing the Soothsayer Prophets of CO2.
My Log
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Rich Posted 7:47 am
22 Dec 2007
Have you ever been to or known someone who has been to a medical specialist and gotten the wrong diagnosis or worse, died because of the wrong diagnosis and treatment?
Doctor's that I know are always reading work done by non-doctors. They use this information to make better and more informed decisions. Some conduct research to further, in a practical way, what they are doing. They never say never to a different idea, practice or procedure.
What I am concerned about is Dr. Dressler has made up his mind, end of discussion. Consensus does not prove anything. Dr. Dressler does not take on any of the scientific studies listed by Senator Inhofe.
He attacks the messenger and those that are not exactly like him as being invalid and not worthy of discussion. I think this happened in the 1630s to Galileo. Something about the sun and the moon. The consensus then was wrong. Could it be the consensus on the cause of global warming could be wrong?
Perhaps the biggest non-specialist on global warming is Al Gore. He has been anointed by the Nobel Committee. My problem with former Vice President Gore is that he confuses correlation with causation in his film.
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qft Posted 8:38 am
22 Dec 2007
In almost any field you can always find many people with credentials to suppose almost any idea and/or theory you want. This doesn't make the idea and/or theory true or untrue. Rather, the theory's ability to make falsifiable predictions, agreement with experimental data, internal consistency, and to some extent consensus make some theories closer to true than others.
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mapletree Posted 3:36 am
23 Dec 2007
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SammyOwl Posted 2:53 am
24 Dec 2007
As for scientific skeptics of AGW, they are numerous and active, and always will be. They may not have resumes that the AGW advocates and activists want to recognize, but none the less they do have scientific credentials and expertise. But more importantly, they also have the ears of many legislators and will continue to object to AGW theory with scientific evidence that the activists (with vested interests, financial and otherwise, in the outcome of the hypothesis) will continue to have a hard time debunking given their lack of credibility.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 12:37 pm
24 Dec 2007
The complexity of climate change does not suddenly make a sociologist, economist, computer programmer, etc. a credible skeptic. In fact, the weakness of Inhofe's list is readily apparent by the very fact that he had to include such people on his list.
The crown jewels of skeptics are Lindzen, Christy, Singer, etc., but as I've said before, there are only a small number of them. In order to bulk up the list, Inhofe lowered his criteria to basically include anyone who doesn't believe in climate change --- regardless of their technical background in the subject.
As far as my analogy being unsuitable, I stand by it. If your child is sick, you take him/her to the experts. Ditto if your planet is sick. You don't take either your child or a planet to a sociologist or economist.
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Earth Shaman Posted 7:26 pm
24 Dec 2007
Earth Shaman
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SammyOwl Posted 2:13 am
25 Dec 2007
Glaciology, Biochemistry, Fluid Dynamics, Computer Science, Math, Space Physics, and lastly Industrial Engineering and Economics. Can you guess who has these scientific research specialities and academic backgrounds who claim to be "climate experts" that we (other scientists and the public at large) should trust and believe without question?
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Andrew Dessler Posted 6:07 am
26 Dec 2007
This should be compared to the IPCC, which includes exclusively people with recent, relevant expertise on the problem.
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manacker Posted 5:08 pm
26 Dec 2007
Further to my earlier post, I am amazed by the pompous elitist view of the world that you have demonstrated.
All scientists who disagree with your viewpoint on AGW are not qualified as well as you are, because they do not toe the IPCC line.
For shame, Andrew.
One does not have to be a publishing climate expert lined up at the multibillion dollar AGW research trough to understand what is hype and hysteria. A little common sense will do just fine, thank you.
The 100 scientists that wrote the December 13 letter to the UN SG probably also do not fit your distorted view of what is a qualified scientist.
Lindzen, Bryson, Michaels, Christy, Hoyt, Shaviv, Balling, deLange, Baliunas, Gray, Singer, Spencer, Tenneke, and the hundreds of other scientists skeptical of the IPCC predictions are all idiots compared to you. Wow! What an ego!
Your attitude is typical of the arrogance displayed throughout the IPCC SPM 2007 report.
This arrogance seems to inflate more and more as the so-called consensus comes unraveled.
Max
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Andrew Dessler Posted 5:21 pm
26 Dec 2007
You name:
Lindzen, Bryson, Michaels, Christy, Hoyt, Shaviv, Balling, deLange, Baliunas, Gray, Singer, Spencer, Tenneke
You list here 13 scientists. I've said all along that there are a few dozen credible skeptics ... who are endlessly recycled by the denial machine. And if we assume, for the sake of argument, that your list contains credible skeptics, then you and I don't appear to be in disagreement.
The problem is not the several dozen credible skeptics on Inhofe's list, some of whom you've named, it's the 350 others. Overall, There are nowhere near 400 credible skeptics on his list, or on the planet.
I'll be following this up with some entries in the near future to buttress this point, which will allow you to foam with indignation at my pompous elitism, while I'm shaking my head at your naivety.
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manacker Posted 5:46 pm
26 Dec 2007
For the sake of brevity, I only named a few of the many hundred scientists and climate experts that do not support the IPCC doom and gloom predictions. There are hundreds of others, as you well know.
You say "there are nowhere near 400 credible skeptics on his (the Senate report) list, or on the planet". What you might consider, in your arrogance, to be a credible skeptic, does not really interest me too much, Andrew. There are hundreds of very credible skeptics out there, despite the fact that it takes a lot of courage to buck the multibillion-dollar AGW industry head on.
Sorry, Andrew, there is no real consensus that the science on AGW is settled. You, as a scientist, should know that science does not work this way in a democratic society.
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 8:29 pm
26 Dec 2007
The scientific community agrees with AGW because the physical facts overwhelmingly support it. Even the right's leading PR strategist Luntz agrees that the facts are on the enviros side, and has urged his clients to avoid debates about the facts.
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SammyOwl Posted 11:01 pm
26 Dec 2007
So, yes the IPCC lead authors have about as much credibility as Inhofe's list, except that many have worked the AGW gravy train payouts for decades and most of their publications are IPCC related, not original research. So would you claim being a member of the IPCC club for many years is relevant experience as a climate expert even with the unrelated degrees and research backgrounds? You see that is the problem I and many other scientists have with the gurus of IPCC pontificating and telling us what to think and who to trust. They have no credibility over Inhofe's list, as we are capable of calling BS on these political types.
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amazingdrx Posted 1:05 am
27 Dec 2007
Poll the public. Most are not skeptical about the IPCC and Gore's take on the urgency of curing GHG climate disaster.
But it isn't about numbers, it's about science. Climate science, done by climate scientists. They present their research findings, which are then challenged by other climate scientists, then re-researched, gone over again..and so forth. In fact that process goes on as we blog.
That is science.
We non-experts are free to scrutinize the reasoning and methods the scientists use and critique them. Then scientists respond to our critiques.
Then the public, informed by mass delusional media (but mainly the fire, drought, 300 mph tornados, melting glaciers and ice caps, and so forth), makes it's decision. It's an imperfect process, but the only one we have.
Polling the public tells us nothing about the actual science. The faux experts on the mighty 400 list are part of the public, not climate scientists.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:11 am
27 Dec 2007
It's the mighty 300, protecting western civilization from the persian hordes.
The mighty 400 on the Inhoffe list protect western civilization from the (commie) liberal conspiracy that is modern GHG climate change theory.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Andrew Dessler Posted 4:52 am
27 Dec 2007
I admire your efforts to discredit the IPCC. It's obviously been very effective ... I don't how many more awards and endorsements the IPCC can take before they give up.
But back to the relevant argument: I said the "vast vast" majority of people in those fields have no expertise in climate. For example, the vast vast majority of computer experts are not experts about the climate.
However, an extremely small subset of computer scientists engage in peer-reviewed science on climate and attend meetings and therefore are experts. Those are the ones that are involved in the IPCC process. Ditto for the other fields.
Your efforts to dismiss the value of expertise is ridiculous. Next time you get sick, I suspect you'll see someone with substantial and recent experience in your sickness --- you won't go see a computer programmer ...
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manacker Posted 5:12 am
27 Dec 2007
Thank you, Dr. Dessler, for taking your invaluable time to share with us uneducated mortals your infinite wisdom on why we should ignore the recent report to the US Senate by several uninformed and misguided individuals, who deny the obvious scientific truth about alarming anthropogenic global warming as outlined by IPCC, the only true scientific body monitoring and predicting global climate change.
It is reassuring to learn from you that none of these deniers as listed below are as imminently qualified as you are, Dr. Dessler, to have a relevant opinion on any and all aspects of AGW.
Partial list of deniers (134 are PhDs): Aitkin, Akasofu, Alexander, Allegre, Austin, Backhaus, Baliunas, Ball, Balling, Bashkirtsve, Battagli, Beck, Borel, Borlaug, Botkin, Brassell, Bredenkamp, Brosnahan, Bryson, Carruthers, Carter, Chilingar, Christy, Clark, Cotton, Courtney, Beboutritter, deFreitas, deLaat, Deming, Dilley, Douglass, BuBois, Dyson, Easterbrook, Egorov, England, Evans, C., Evans, D., Evans, W., Everett, Frank, Frauenfeld, Friis-Christensen, Frolov, Gauldie, Gerlich, Giegengack, Glatzle, Goldberg, Goldstein, Golubchikov, Gray, T., Gray, V., Gray, W., Greyber, Hackbart, Hald, Hayden, Heiss, Herman, Hissink, Hoyt, Hughes, Illarionov, Ingolfsson, Jaworowski, Jenkins, Kaerner, Karlen, Kear, Khandekar, Khilyuk, Kininmouth, Koerner, Kop, Kouffeld, Kramm, Kroonenberg, Kukla, Landsea, Leahy, Legates, Lemay, Leonov, Leroux, Lin, Linqvist, Lindzen, Lupo, Malberg, Mangini, Mashnich, Massen, Maunder, McFarquhar, McIntyre, McKitrick, McLean, Michaels, Michel, Milne, Moene, Mogil, Moore, Morner, Motl, Murty, Nicol, Noble, Nowell, Ollier, Osokin, Paldor, Paltridge, Patterson, Pearson, Pekarek, Pielke, Plimer, Pratt, Priem, Radhakrishna, Raina, Rancour, Reiter, Roper, Rorsch, Scagel, Shoneveld, Segalstad, Sharp, Shaviv, Shaw, Dheahan, Singer, Smith, Soon, Sorochtin, Spencer, Sun, Sutherland, Svensmark, Tennekes, Tol, Uriarte, van der Lingen, van Loon, Veizer, von Storch, Walcek, Walker Ward, Watts, Wegman, Wilksch, Wilson, Winterhalter, Wojick, Wust, Ziatsev, Zichichi, Zweerink.
Regards,
Max
PS Please enlighten me as to how many of the above deniers are on the payroll of Exxon-Mobil or some other nefarious group, which stand to make huge profits from denying the obvious anthropogenic global warming, thereby endangering all future life on this planet. Thank you.
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trock Posted 5:42 am
27 Dec 2007
But isn't it also, who among these 400 is able to show and explain their version of events and causes of global warming and non global warming as to why;
Greenhouse gases cause temperatures on the earth to be about 59 degrees F (33 C)greater than if we didn't have them. The earth would be about 0 degrees F (-18 C) without the greenhouse gases and its about 59 degrees F (15 C) with them.
Then they would have to explain why increasing daily to the amount of greenhouse gases that the earth has in the atmosphere would not increase that 59 degrees F to a larger number thus increasing earths temperature.
It's not just that they have studied as climatologists and global warming, but that they then have to explain why the climatologists around the world are wrong.
None of the 400 have done this, they have only made their statements for use in political statements, not as science.
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manacker Posted 7:03 am
27 Dec 2007
Don't believe anyone denies the greenhouse theory as defined by the Arrhenius law and the Stefan-Boltzmann equation. This tells us that a doubling of CO2 from 1900 levels of around 280 ppmv to the expected 2100 levels of around 560 ppm will cause an increase of temperature of around 0.68 deg.C.
We are about 45% of the way there by now, which corresponds with a radiative forcing factor for CO2 of 1.66 W/sq.m. as reported by IPCC from 1750 to 2005, , so this leaves around 0.4 deg C increase from today to 2100, plus a smaller effect from other greenhouse gases.
IPCC 2007 SPM projects temperature increase in the 21st century of 0.6 to 4.0 deg C due to AGW, with the upper end of the "likely range" at 6.4 deg C (p.13) (this compares with 20th century rise of 0.4 to 0.7 deg C, depending on which record is used).
This means that the (not very alarming) low end forecast of the IPCC is reasonable, if we believe (as IPCC does) in greenhouse gas forcing and a perfectly stable natural climate with no significant natural forcing factors (in itself a dubious premise). The (more alarming) high end IPCC projection is not reasonable. It is not supported by greenhouse gas theory, but is based on computer modeled "positive feedbacks" from increased water vapor and clouds, specifically designed to increase the impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gases on temperatures by several times the values supported by the greenhouse theory.
Unfortunately, it is the unreasonable high end projection that gets picked up by the media and the politicians (such as Al Gore and the UN Secretary General), when they warn us of an imminent tipping point.
And it is this alarmist prediction that many scientists as well as others do not accept as reasonable.
Max
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SammyOwl Posted 7:17 am
27 Dec 2007
I also suspect that meteorologists, climatologists, paleoclimatologists, geologists, paleontologists, geophysicists, oceanographers, atmospheric physicists and chemists, and glaciologists who are involved with the unquestionable and unassailable IPCC process and AGREE with your vast wisdom and opinion of AGW are also qualified AGW hypothesis experts. But those in these same scientific fields who DISAGREE with your vast wisdom and opinion of AGW are likewise unqualified as AGW hypothesis experts. Have I got that right?
Yes, it seems you have a singular definition of who is qualified as an expert on AGW, and it has nothing to do with scientific education and academic credentials, experience, or research background. Rather it is of point of view, belief, and perhaps a visceral dislike and disdain for those who have the temerity to question and disagree with you. Is it true your illustrious institution requires professors to take a pledge on the doctrine of AGW (do you put your right hand on Al Gore's book?) to be in your department? Or is that signature on the doctrine of AGW taken of free will? Has anyone refused to take the pledge? What would happen if they did?
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Andrew Dessler Posted 8:01 am
27 Dec 2007
Anyone who publishes in the peer-reviewed literature on climate change and engages in the normal scientific process on that problem would be considered an expert. It has nothing to do with whether they agree with me or not. You should check out the first of my expose blog entries on that subject here.
It just so happens that virtually everyone who falls into the above category agrees with the primary conclusions of the IPCC. Now I fully admit that there are a small number of skeptics out there, who are endlessly recycled by the denial machine.
My suggestion to you, Sammy: call up Inhofe and ask to be added to the list. I'm sure he'd be happy to add you --- you sound every bit as qualified as the other "prominent scientists" on the list.
And regarding my department's statement, let me say that I admire your ability to smoothly change the subject away from an argument you're losing to another that, unfortunately, you're also going to lose.
As far as the statement goes, there is no requirement to sign. It just so happens that virtually everyone familiar with the science is happy to sign. If someone didn't want to sign, then they wouldn't have to.
In fact, some faculty members expressed unhappiness with the initial draft, and some of the phrasing was changed to a version everyone could live with. Thus, it really does represent a consensus statement.
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Earth Shaman Posted 1:24 pm
27 Dec 2007
Earth Shaman
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Andrew Dessler Posted 1:57 pm
27 Dec 2007
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manacker Posted 2:51 pm
27 Dec 2007
In February 2007, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report entitled "IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis".
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
This was an up-date of an earlier report issued in 2001.
This document reports on past and recent climate changes, stating that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level."
These changes are essentially attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases: "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." No scientific evidence is given for this claim.
Natural causes for climate changes are essentially ignored with the statement "additional forcing factors not included here are considered to have a very low level of scientific understanding".
The underlying assumption is that climate would remain constant without the effect of anthropogenic factors, in other words the currently observed changes must be caused by human influence. This assumption, in itself, is obviously flawed, since the Earth has gone through some dramatic climate changes before humans even existed. The most recent examples are the Medieval Warm Period and the ensuing Little Ice Age, which actually ended just as modern temperature records started to be taken in the mid to late 19th century.
The report goes on to project future climate change due to anthropogenic greenhouse warming (AGW). These are based on computerized climate models, using various assumed "storylines" and "scenarios".
The wording of the report is extremely clever. Expressions such as "high confidence", "very likely", "extremely unlikely", "more likely than not", are sprinkled throughout. The report cites "advances in climate change modelling", "a larger number of climate models of increasing complexity and realism" and states "there is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation, and some aspects of extremes and of ice".
The report states confidently that "the ability of coupled climate models to simulate the observed temperature evolution on each of six continents provides stronger evidence of human influence on climate than was available in the TAR [the earlier IPCC report]".
This all exudes confidence and sounds very scientific, despite the fact that computerized "climate models" have been ineffective in tracking past and future climate change.
One major weakness in the IPCC report is that it provides no scientific evidence that global warming has been caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, but relies entirely on computer models to make this link. This key weakness has been cited by several critics from the scientific community and will not be covered here.
A second major weakness of this report, which will be covered here, is that it ignores published scientific data that do not support its claim of alarming AGW. In some cases these data show trends that are exactly opposite to those stated in the report.
The IPCC, as the supposedly un-biased "gold standard" organization for global climate science, should be above reproach in its claims. Since policy measures costing hundreds of billions of dollars are being considered based on the IPCC recommendations, it is extremely important that these are correct and not skewed to give a picture that is more alarming than realistic. If IPCC ignores data that do not support its claims, it is no longer acting in an un-biased fashion and can no longer claim the mantle of the "gold standard" climate organization.
A relatively cursory check of available scientific reports shows that there are many published reports showing results widely different from those claimed by IPCC. These are all ignored, rejected or not accepted as correct.
As a first example: IPCC claims a net mass loss of Antarctic ice over the period 1993-2003 due to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) with a corresponding rise in sea level over the same period (pp.5,7). The actual record based on 11 years of continuous actual measurements covering the same time period shows no shrinking, but an increase with a corresponding lowering of sea level over the period.
http://bowfell.geol.ucl.ac.uk/~lidunka/EPSS-papers/djw3.p ...
In other words, IPCC ignored (or rejected or refused to accept as correct) scientific data that directly contradicted its claim of Antarctic ice mass loss.
This is just one example.
There are many, many more. These all make the IPCC report less than credible.
Max
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manacker Posted 2:59 pm
27 Dec 2007
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
This was an up-date of an earlier report issued in 2001.
This document reports on past and recent climate changes, stating that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level."
These changes are essentially attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gases: "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." No scientific evidence is given for this claim.
Natural causes for climate changes are essentially ignored with the statement "additional forcing factors not included here are considered to have a very low level of scientific understanding".
The underlying assumption is that climate would remain constant without the effect of anthropogenic factors, in other words the currently observed changes must be caused by human influence. This assumption, in itself, is obviously flawed, since the Earth has gone through some dramatic climate changes before humans even existed. The most recent examples are the Medieval Warm Period and the ensuing Little Ice Age, which actually ended just as modern temperature records started to be taken in the mid to late 19th century.
The report goes on to project future climate change due to anthropogenic greenhouse warming (AGW). These are based on computerized climate models, using various assumed "storylines" and "scenarios".
The wording of the report is extremely clever. Expressions such as "high confidence", "very likely", "extremely unlikely", "more likely than not", are sprinkled throughout. The report cites "advances in climate change modelling", "a larger number of climate models of increasing complexity and realism" and states "there is now higher confidence in projected patterns of warming and other regional-scale features, including changes in wind patterns, precipitation, and some aspects of extremes and of ice".
The report states confidently that "the ability of coupled climate models to simulate the observed temperature evolution on each of six continents provides stronger evidence of human influence on climate than was available in the TAR [the earlier IPCC report]".
This all exudes confidence and sounds very scientific, despite the fact that computerized "climate models" have been ineffective in tracking past and future climate change.
One major weakness in the IPCC report is that it provides no scientific evidence that global warming has been caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, but relies entirely on computer models to make this link. This key weakness has been cited by several critics from the scientific community and will not be covered here.
A second major weakness of this report, which will be covered here, is that it ignores published scientific data that do not support its claim of alarming AGW. In some cases these data show trends that are exactly opposite to those stated in the report.
The IPCC, as the supposedly un-biased "gold standard" organization for global climate science, should be above reproach in its claims. Since policy measures costing hundreds of billions of dollars are being considered based on the IPCC recommendations, it is extremely important that these are correct and not skewed to give a picture that is more alarming than realistic. If IPCC ignores data that do not support its claims, it is no longer acting in an un-biased fashion and can no longer claim the mantle of the "gold standard" climate organization.
A relatively cursory check of available scientific reports shows that there are many published reports showing results widely different from those claimed by IPCC. These are all ignored, rejected or not accepted as correct.
As a first example: IPCC claims a net mass loss of Antarctic ice over the period 1993-2003 due to anthropogenic global warming (AGW) with a corresponding rise in sea level over the same period (pp.5,7). The actual record based on 11 years of continuous actual measurements covering the same time period shows no shrinking, but an increase with a corresponding lowering of sea level over the period.
http://bowfell.geol.ucl.ac.uk/~lidunka/EPSS-papers/djw3.p ...
In other words, IPCC ignored (or rejected or refused to accept as correct) scientific data that directly contradicted its claim of Antarctic ice mass loss.
This is just one example.
There are many, many more.
Max
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:14 pm
27 Dec 2007
Who is on the IPCC
Who wrote the reports
Who, individually, as scientists signed the reports
What scientific papers (and in what publications) were the bedrock research used to create the reports.
But, ok, let's leave those trivialities aside. They say that a fish stinks from the head down, so how about
http://www.ipcc.ch/about/ipcc-bureau-tfb.htm
Rajendra K. Pachauri
Chairman of the IPCC
Commencing his career with the Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi, where he held several managerial positions, Dr Pachauri joined the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, where he obtained an MS in Industrial Engineering in 1972, a PhD in Industrial Engineering and a PhD in Economics, and also served as Assistant Professor (August 1974 -- May 1975) and Visiting Faculty Member (Summer 1976 and 1977) in the Department of Economics and Business.
Wait. You're criticizing the "400" for having a Chemist in its midst, when you guys, the IPCC has a Choo-Choo train designer as the head guy?
DUDE?!
My Log
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josullivan58 Posted 3:27 pm
27 Dec 2007
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manacker Posted 4:03 pm
27 Dec 2007
The other guys that do not are different.
Their qualifications are obviously inadequate, because they do not support Dessler's point of view.
As Dessler says: "Expertise matters. Not everyone's opinion is equally valid."
Can't you see the difference?
Max
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amazingdrx Posted 4:28 pm
27 Dec 2007
"Indian engineer and economist Rajendra K. Pachauri is elected with US backing as chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [New York Times, 4/20/2002] US energy industry lobbyists had pressured Washington to block the reelection of Robert T. Watson, whose views about global warming had irked American energy companies (see February 6, 2001 and April 2, 2002)."
The bushwackwers evidently figured appointing an economist as chairman would produce more corporate polluter favorable results from the IPCC. I guess they were wrong, the climate scientists who toiled under him were not amenable to economic considerations outweighing the science.
Or was it like appointting Brownie (the horse show judge) or Gonzo (duuhbya's drunk driving coverup attorney) or Harriet Myers (fundamentalist texan) or Wolfi 9the guy who claimed the Iraq war would only cost uS taxpayers 1.8 billion) head of the world bank...and so forth.
They appoint incompetents and conmen to government positions in order to destroy government. A self fullfilling prophecy of the raygun revolution. Government does nothing right, so hire crooked contractors like halliburton and harvest the kickbacks.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Jay Alt Posted 7:19 pm
27 Dec 2007
But checking his ~ 70 papers, 95% deal with dynamics - waves, winds and flows. They do include 3 or 4 examining the effects of deep current upwelling on local Sea Surface Temps. But those are all in small zones near Israel - none of his work considers global or even regional SSTs.
Paldor has complained that journals don't publish his opinions on global warming. I'm sure they'd be happy to publish scientific papers supporting his views. But he has a familiar problem - none of his peer-reviewed research or writings deal with climate change.
http://earth.huji.ac.il/staff-details.asp?topic=3&id= ...
Interestingly, they do include refs 59 and 65 show that Jesus couldn't have walked on water of the Sea of Galilea . . .
Surely Morano/Inhofe could have picked a lead-off hitter who could actually walk the walk?
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SammyOwl Posted 11:56 pm
27 Dec 2007
Without the GCMs their entire case collapses, as they have nothing else of substance and of solid scientific foundation. The skeptics have many facts and observations from billions of years of earth's climate history to back up their arguments, as well as holes in the recent climate variations AGW theories big enough to drive an SUV through.
And yes Earth, the tactics of the AGW promoters and activists is to decalre victory in any debate by claiming they are the only credible sources of knowledge and if you don't agree you lose, simple minded logic for simple minds. Works at RC too.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 3:28 am
28 Dec 2007
Instead, it's back to hammering on the old IPCC. Your dissent, however, doesn't change the fact that every government in the world accepts the IPCC's conclusions, as do virtually all (real) climate experts and relevant professional organizations.
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benp Posted 3:59 am
28 Dec 2007
Looking at the 51 contributors to WGII AR4 from the UK, there were 5 economists, 3 epidemiologists, 5 who were either zoologists, entomologists, or biologists. 5 worked in civil engineering or risk management / insurance. 7 had specialisms in geography. And just 10 have specialisms in geophysics, climate science or modelling, or hydrology. But there were 15 who could only be described as social scientists. If we take the view that economics is a social science, that makes 20 social scientists.
And expertise? One contributing professor (Abigail Bristow) wasn't what you'd call a climate scientist, but a professor of Transport Studies at Newcastle University. Hardly climate science. Another Professor - Diana Liverman at Oxford University - specialises in "human dimensions of global environmental change" - Geography is a social science too. Another - John Morton of the University of Greenwich, specialises in "development Anthropology". Johanna Wolf, is an IPCC contributor from the University of East Anglia, who works in the department for "development studies". Does that make her a climate scientist? Anna Taylor, of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Oxford has no PhD at all, her research focuses on "stakeholder engagement in adapting to multiple stresses, including climate variability and change, water scarcity, food insecurity and health concerns" - not climate science. Similarly, Susanne Rupp-Armstrong, listed as a member of Southampton University only appears to have ever contributed to one academic paper. Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, Maureen Agnew does not focus her research on climate science, but on such things as "Public perceptions of unusually warm weather in the UK: impacts, responses and adaptations", and "Potential impacts of climate change on international tourism." Katherine Vincent specialising in "Social Capital and Climate change" at the UEA, only began her PhD thesis in October 2003. How can she be cited as a specialist in climate science?
Of the 70 US contributors, there were 7 economists, 13 social scientists, 3 epidemiologists, 10 biologists/ecologists, 5 engineers, 2 modellers/statisticians, 1 full-time activist (and 1 part time), 5 were in public health and policy, and 4 were unknowns. 17 worked in earth/atmospheric sciences. Again, we gave the benefit of the doubt to geographers where it wasn't clear whether their specialism was physical, or human geography.
And are they more expert? Well, included as contributors are Patricia Craig, Judith Cranage, Susan Mann, and Christopher Pfeiffer, all from Pennsylvania State University. Their jobs are (in order) website-designer, administrative assistant (x2), and network administrator.
Also on the list is Peter Neofotis who appears to be a 2003 graduate of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology from Columbia. Are there many experts in anything who graduated in 2003? Would you take your sick child to a doctor, who, according to our understanding of medical training, would have not yet qualified? Also at Columbia is MartaVicarelli , who is a PhD candidate in "sustainable development". Can she be the amongst the world's leading experts on sustainability? It seems hard to take the claim seriously. Or what about Gianna Palmer at Wesleyan University, who, as far as we can tell, will not graduate from university until 2010?
The IPCC contributors are simply neither the experts Andrew claims, nor are they mostly climate scientists - but in fact are made up of specialisms that he would exclude as not being qualified. Andrew is an activist, who urges us to beleive that the IPCC ismade up of climate experts, yet investigation reveals that this is not the case. But Andrew is also a climate scientist, who either has not investigated the IPCC, in which he invests so much faith (and if we can't trust climate scientists to check the IPCC, who can we trust?) or he is deliberately misleading the public. Andrew is living proof of the confusion of politics and science, and yet asks us to believe him that the earth is "sick".
Physician, heal thyself!
Read more at http://www.climate-resistance.org/2007/12/physician-heal- ...
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manacker Posted 4:20 am
28 Dec 2007
You wrote: "The contrarians don't have the facts on their side. If they were to use the same arguements in a court of law they would be charged with perjury."
Kinda doubt it in a free society.
But even if they did get charged, they would be acquitted in a fair trial in a democratic society, where diverging opinions and viewpoints are tolerated and even encouraged.
They would be convicted, however, in a kangaroo court with the McCarthy-ist approach to justice: "are you now, or have you ever been a member of a group that denies the absolute wisdom of the IPCC?"
Max
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Andrew Dessler Posted 5:13 am
28 Dec 2007
In case you didn't know, working group II is on "adaptation and impacts," and therefore requires the expertise of social scientists. The examples you give above are all the appropriate use of expertise to produce a consensus document.
As I'll detail in a future post, it is entirely appropriate for an economist to act as an expert on questions of economics, or a social scientist to act as an expert on questions of social science. The IPCC uses their experts in that way.
The "Inhofe 400" use economists to comment on climate physics. Everyone with a grain of common sense should object to that. You'll be seeing an example of that in a few days.
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benp Posted 5:50 am
28 Dec 2007
"That is not to say that social scientists and computer programmers have nothing to offer the world, or the IPCC process. They are crucial in fact. What it is to say, however, is that, when social scientists, computer programmers and administrative assistants comprise a significant proportion of IPCC contributors, the global warmer mantra that the IPCC represents the world's top 2500 climate scientists is just plain old-fashioned not true." http://www.climate-resistance.org/2007/12/physician-heal- ...
What is emerging is that (if the US/UK contributors are representative samples) climate scientists in WGII and WGIII are only a minority.
Furthermore, as well you know, there are some contributors to WGII who lack the expertise you demand of sceptics, even in the social sciences.
Lastly, you worry that "The "Inhofe 400" use economists to comment on climate physics." Well, do you complain when physical scientists make shrill, alarmist noises about the future that society faces? If it takes social scientists to make that kind of prediction, climate scientists are speaking outside their area of expertise.
And so who are you - as a climate scientist - to be passing comment on how policymakers use science? On your own terms, Andrew, you should be keeping your mouth shut.
Of course, it's better that you don't, because there is a debate to be had. It's just that you seem keener to shut the debate down by making statements about the 400 than actually have it by answering their criticisms. Shame on you.
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SammyOwl Posted 6:16 am
28 Dec 2007
Therefore I find the "governments and societies" you refer to to be as thin and weak as your IPCC "experts" resumes for scientific credibility. Only you could confuse partisan agenda driven political power for scienific process. You say the IPCC doesn't use economists for climate science. Perhaps you should tell the Indian fellow who stepped on the stage in Oslo with Gore and lectured the world about AGW. I'm sure he would object to your pigeon holing him as not qualified to speak on the science.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 6:34 am
28 Dec 2007
I find your opinions concerning scientific specialization depressingly unbalanced or self-centric. If for instance, I were to specialize in "Cloud Dynamics in the Atmosphere", and I were asked to look at a paper on say "Melting of the Greenland Ice-sheet", would you assume that I would not be able to understand it? If that is your opinion, then how pray can it be possible for the many cross-disciplinary complexities of climate change ever be comprehended? I believe that the work of all scientists should ideally be cross-fertilized with scientists not of the same discipline or specialty!
Furthermore, research scientists do sometimes make mistakes in the realm of "not seeing the wood from the trees", and such mistakes are more easily picked-up by those in different disciplines. Here is an example, where a "Coalface scientist's" typical test for reasonableness might have saved some embarrassment for an expert researcher:
Marco Tedesco of GSFC declared in the text of the following NASA release, that the surface melting of ice on Greenland, had in 2007 exceeded the surface area of the USA, 2.3 times. There is also a graph, showing the melt extent not in familiar units like "Millions of square kilometres", but "Maps of the USA"; about 3 of them back in 2002 and 1998. I guess he was confused by the normal cartographic projections of Greenland making it look large, but it is really only about a quarter the size of the USA. (Mainland) http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/greenland_re ... (November 07)
There are many other "errors" in the IPCC's AR4 reports 2007, and I would like you to advise, as an expert, on the first most obvious. Please refer figure 1 in WG1. (Earth's annual and global mean energy balance). Notice that it shows 390 w/m2 leaving the surface, which is MORE than the insolation from the sun of 342 w/m2, only part of which reaches the surface. It is shown to be driven by 324 w/m2 of back radiation from the clouds and atmosphere at some unspecified height, which is absorbed by the surface. It is fact that typically, air and cloud temperatures reduce with increasing altitude. Thus, Kevin Trenberth convening lead author at the IPCC, uses his own graph Trenberth and Keihl 1997, to show that a cold source can heat a warmer target, in complete defiance of the second law of thermodynamics. What do you think Andrew?
BTW, you declare that you will expose the inadequate qualifications of Inhofe's 400. How about you do it in parallel with the IPCC, excluding all those that had their expert comments rejected by the authors?
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Andrew Dessler Posted 6:45 am
28 Dec 2007
I looked up the surface area of the US and it's about 9 million square km, which looks consistent with the plot on that press release. Do you have a different value for the surface area of the US?
Fig. 1 in the IPCC WGI report appears correct. The energy balance at the surface is:
Energy in = Energy out, where
Energy in = solar + IR from the atmosphere = about 500 W/m^2
Energy out = IR + latent + sensible = about 500 W/m^2
so it balances, as it must. There is no mystery about why IR from the surface exceeds solar ... it's a consequence of the greenhouse effect. Only if there were no atmosphere (or an atmosphere w/o GHGs would solar in = IR from the surface)
Hope this clears things up.
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goliard Posted 7:44 am
28 Dec 2007
The report is available on line, and point-by-point rebuttal is possible, comrades. Let ten-thousand flowers bloom!
For example:
"Canada: IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist, a scientist with the Natural Resources Stewardship Project who has over 45 years experience in climatology, meteorology and oceanography, and who has published nearly 100 papers, reports, book reviews and a book on Ocean Wave Analysis and Modeling: "To my dismay, IPCC authors ignored all my comments and suggestions for major changes in the FOD (First Order Draft) and sent me the SOD (Second Order Draft) with essentially the same text as the FOD. None of the authors of the chapter bothered to directly communicate with me (or with other expert reviewers with whom I communicate on a regular basis) on many issues that were raised in my review. This is not an acceptable scientific review process."
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manacker Posted 8:05 am
28 Dec 2007
Benp's very thoughtful post exposes one of the biggest hoaxes of the "disastrous anthropogenic global warming" activists: that of "consensus among the world's experts".
This elitist viewpoint is exemplified by Andrew Dessler's "sick child" analogy.
Dessler's argument is not only extremely arrogant, it is flawed in many ways.
First, recent publications have shown that there are, indeed, many scientists who do not support Dessler's viewpoint that the IPCC is the only "gold standard" scientific body on the planet concerned with climate change, and is therefore infallible. As the predictions of the activists, such as James Hansen with his "tipping point", become increasingly shrill, there are growing numbers of scientists that distance themselves from the hysteria.
Second, the "child" has been pronounced by this elitist group, based on questionable computer simulations, as more likely than not to become ill during the 21st century unless draconian and very costly political measures are taken immediately to stop this. No scientific evidence or diagnosis is provided for the imminent illness, just computer model studies.
Third, Dessler's argument falls back into the employment of "ad hominem" attacks on individuals, by questioning either the competency or the political "hidden agenda" of the dissenting scientist.
Fourth, as benp points out, the purported overwhelming scientific credentials of the IPCC writers is hollow; sure, there are some climate experts, like Dr. Dessler, in the crowd, but there are also many "fellow travelers". We are not talking about "thousands of world experts on climate".
Fifth, the "numbers game" is irrelevant in any case; benp shows that the scientific process, unlike political processes, is not based on consensus, but on constant challenge and verification by experimentation, so Dessler's "consensus theory" has no place in true science.
Finally, Dessler's argument implies that only highly specialized scientists are qualified to have a relevant opinion on something as basic as what needs to be done today to (maybe) avert a possible, computer-generated virtual problem in the distant future; this is obviously not how things work in a democratic society.
Bravo for this excellent rebuttal to Andrew Dessler's elitist argumentation.
Max
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Ian Forrester Posted 9:10 am
28 Dec 2007
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Andrew Dessler Posted 9:50 am
28 Dec 2007
I repeat the ESSENCE of my original post, (subject tile omitted) since you only chose to comment on the two examples I gave of failure; attributable to ELITISM.
I find your opinions concerning scientific specialization depressingly unbalanced or self-centric. If for instance, I were to specialize in "Cloud Dynamics in the Atmosphere", and I were asked to look at a paper on say "Melting of the Greenland Ice-sheet", would you assume that I would not be able to understand it? If that is your opinion, then how pray can it be possible for the many cross-disciplinary complexities of climate change ever be comprehended? I believe that the work of all scientists should ideally be cross-fertilized with scientists not of the same discipline or specialty!
BTW, you declare that you will expose the inadequate qualifications of Inhofe's 400. How about you do it in parallel with the IPCC, excluding all those that had their expert comments rejected by the authors?
Concerning the two examples of failure by experts:
Reur item 1;
According to the CIA World Factbook, Greenland has a surface area ~2.2 million square Km. and is ~3 times the size of Texas. In other words, Greenland is smaller than USA. Therefore, even if the whole of the surface area of its ice-sheet were to melt each summer, which it does not, then the extent of that melt cannot exceed the area of the USA by a factor of 3 as claimed by Marco Tedesco of GSFC/NASA.
Reur item 2;
I agree that the numbers as illustrated in IPCC Fig. 1 do balance, but that is not the issue. It would seem that there is a misunderstanding concerning the difference between HEAT and EMR, or as you call it here IR. (Infra Red Light) Although they are usually measured in the same units they are two different forms of energy. For instance although sunlight is subjectively warm on the skin, the sensation of warmth is the consequence of the sunlight (Visible EMR) being converted into HEAT by molecular absorption. Our concern on this planet is not so much how much EMR is whizzing around, but how much HEAT is retained where it affects the biosphere. As you must know, EMR is funny stuff. For instance, the 324 w/m2 shown to be heading towards the surface must also be going in all other directions, including straight out of the paper and into your face. Are you at all concerned about that EMR? Finally, is it your belief that cold air and clouds can transfer HEAT to the warmer surface below?
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josullivan58 Posted 10:03 am
28 Dec 2007
"You wrote: 'The contrarians don't have the facts on their side. If they were to use the same arguments in a court of law they would be charged with perjury.'
Kinda doubt it in a free society."
No, to function the court system can't allow people to lie at all they want. That is why perjury is a crime. As a news flash for you we live in a free society and lying in legal proceedings is perjury and a crime. The well known skeptic Pat Michaels was called as an expert witness in court, but withdrew because he could not lie and get away with it.
Facts don't change because you don't like them. Facts are not voted on. Facts aren't elitist. They are how things are, good or bad. One plus one equals two, but do you think that changes because you don't like it? You are using the same strategy that Luntz advocated to stop talking about the facts. Its also the strategy that the cigarette companies used when they didn't like the facts that cigarettes are addictive and deadly.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 10:20 am
28 Dec 2007
As far as the IPCC goes, I've read the reports and am satisfied that it reflects the peer-reviewed literature. As a result, it is the gold-standard summary of what the scientific community thinks on climate change. People have been attempting to discredit it for years, but it's credibility just keeps increasing. Even Bush accepts it. What more do you need to know?
Re Item 1: I admit that plot is odd. What they're plotting is a "melting index" with units of km^2/day, and (implicitly in the plot) comparing that to an area, with units of km^2. This is not wrong in the way you thought (that they somehow misprojected Greenland), but I agree that it's an inappropriate comparison.
In any event, that's done only for the press release and doesn't change the conclusion of the work. Because this is a press release, you have to be very careful not to be misled. There are lots of bad press releases out there. While I have not read the peer-reviewed paper, I'd guess this comparison is not in it. In fact, it may have been the press people that added that. In any event, it would be very unlikely for something that silly to make it through peer review.
Re Item 2: The idea that the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics because it requires heat to flow from a cold atmosphere to a warm surface is incorrect. If you don't believe me, I recommend you check out from your library one of the very many books on atmospheric thermodynamics. While you cannot have net heat flow from a cold object to a warm object in an isolated system, such heat flow can occur as part of a larger system of heat flows, as long as the entropy production of the entire system is not negative. Like I said, read a textbook on this and all will become clear.
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goliard Posted 11:47 pm
28 Dec 2007
Science is what scientists do.
Science is what brings in big grant money.
Science is the search for truth about physical events, i.e. about the world.
3a. Die Welt ist alles was der Fall ist.
3b. Veritas est adaequatio rei intellectus.
I hope that clears everything up.
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goliard Posted 12:01 am
29 Dec 2007
Is there any connection here to the Ron Paul Presidential campaign?
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Andrew Dessler Posted 2:12 am
29 Dec 2007
Elitism in science, Re Andrew's Dec. 28:
Reur Para. 1) You [Andrew] admit to "a barrier to the kind of cross-disciplinary research needed in today's Earth science", so why don't you work for improvement instead of emphasizing elitism? I have to disagree with you that scientist `a' would have any real difficulty in understanding scientist `b' in the scenario discussed. If necessary, `a' would know where to go or what to ask, if deeper understanding were needed.....well that's my experience anyway. Perhaps the most important thing though is that `a' may have some other perspective or an idea that could HELP `b'
Reur Para. 2) This is a new topic really, and I may show you elsewhere that just because a paper is peer reviewed, it may in fact be totally wrong. Frequently papers used/cited by IPCC authors are those which are of vested interest, and other papers that challenge their findings are excluded. A quickie for now is the past infamous "peer reviewed" Mann et al 1999. (IPCC 2001)
Reur Para. [3] & [4] It's enough to agree when you finally came around to; "In any event, it would be very unlikely for something that silly to make it through peer review" (And that is all you need say). However, Marco Tedesco is an EXPERT in GSFC/NASA whom should have had his work checked, or did he think he was incapable of mistake? BTW, talking about silly stuff "not getting through" peer review, try Thomas et al 2005, featured by Thomas himself as a lead author of Ch.4 in WG1, if you have time and PATIENCE with such a confusing "Snow Job".
Reur Para. 5) Well, I did not say that, but as an initial response, I invite you to read what I wrote again and contemplate all aspects of it.
Then I recommend that you compare AR4 WG1 Fig.1 with a NASA version @ http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/images/Erb/components2 ...
The latter is rather different than the former. Both are compiled by experts, but are they both adequately qualified to publish without assistance or cross-fertilization from other disciplines, or to present their findings to the world out there?
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Andrew Dessler Posted 4:07 am
29 Dec 2007
re: Para 2: I agree that passing peer review is simply the first step in the scientific process, and it does not mean an idea is correct. That's why the scientific community re-tests important conclusions.
re: Para 3&4: it's important to realize here that we're talking about a press release, not a publication. Press releases don't count in science, and they often mischaracterize the peer-reviewed publication.
re: Para 5: I have to be honest that I didn't (and still don't) understand your question, so I answered what I imagined was the closest question that made sense. Sorry if it was not the correct one.
As far as the two figures goes, the energy budget of the atmosphere is really well understood. The IPCC figure is the peer-reviewed and documented one. The other figure contains no documentation or references so I don't know what's being plotted here. It looks like the arrows are net flows, where flows in different directions have been subtracted and only the remainder is being plotted. But without any documentation, I can't figure it out. But I assure you that any atmospheric scientist, even the few credible skeptics that exist, like Lindzen, would agree with the IPCC's figure.
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manacker Posted 9:45 am
29 Dec 2007
You wrote: "Facts don't change because you don't like them. Facts are not voted on. Facts aren't elitist. They are how things are, good or bad."
Your statement is correct. However, it is clear that the IPCC projections for the future are not "facts". They are guesses. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, they may even be "educated guesses", maybe even "educated guesses supported by computer model studies", but they are definitely not "facts".
When any dissenting climate scientists does not agree with IPCC projections, he is not denying facts, he is just making another "educated guess" on what is going to happen.
However, when IPCC makes the claim in its SPM 2007 report that the Antarctica Ice Sheet lost ice mass equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003 it ignored a study that actually measured the AIS over this period based on 24/7 ESA satellite measurements, which showed the "fact" that the AIS actually grew over this same time period.
In this particular case, IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") the scientifically established fact that AIS grew; instead it reported the "non-fact" (or untruth) that it lost mass over this same period.
So in this case IPCC did "vote" and did make the decision to "change facts because it didn't like them".
Regards,
Max
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:17 am
29 Dec 2007
With the establishment of the scientific consensus on climate change, is it reasonable and sensible to ask of political leaders who remain obstructive and in denial of such overwhelming scientific data if they are perfidiously engaged in a violation of public trust and, therefore, malfeasant in office?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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manacker Posted 11:20 am
29 Dec 2007
This is a complement to his words of wisdom.
What is politics?
1. Politics is what politicians do (Inhofe, Gore, the IPCC SPM 2007 writers, UN Secretary Ban Ki Soon), and often also what some politically motivated scientists do (James Hansen, Bert Metz, Rajendra Pachauri, Stephen Schneider, etc.)
2. Politics feeds on large sums of money and (in the case of UN's IPCC) it uses (the virtual) science (of computer simulations) for spreading fear in order to gain support for political programs and policies involving even larger sums of money
3. Politics has little to do with the scientific "search for truth"
3a. Jeder Politiker macht seine eigene Wahrheit.
3b. Non illegitimi carborundum.
Together with goliard's words of wisdom, this should clear everything up.
Max
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LegumeSam Posted 12:30 pm
29 Dec 2007
The idea of abrupt climate change driving increases in the intensity of natural disasters would have to look to big business like a "lose-lose proposition." No? Which big business interests stand to benefit from news about the IPCC?
The deniers aren't anywhere close to being believable because they can't establish a motive for the IPCC's recommendations other than, well, that the IPCC is suggesting some rather likely possilities.
They also have no counter-theory: as Coby Beck points out here:
Second, they need to come up with an explanation for why a 35% increase in the second most important greenhouse gas does not affect the global temperature. Theory predicts temperature will rise given an enhanced greenhouse effect, so how or why is it not happening?
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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manacker Posted 12:54 pm
29 Dec 2007
In your post: "Global warming deniers lack an adequate motive " --You wrote: "for why anyone would want to invent the scary scenarios of the IPCC. What business interest could possibly be behind the theory of `runaway greenhouse effect' that could seriously amplify the effect of CO2-driven abrupt climate change?"
The adequate motive for creating scary scenarios: Cherchez l'argent. (To paraphrase in English: follow the money.)
Multi billion dollar research grants are given to those that predict an impending disaster, following the well-known "no crisis = no funding" principle in government-sponsored "research".
The media jump on crisis stories to increase circulation and profits.
Politicians use the crisis reports to justify draconian policy and political measures involving hundreds of billions of dollars to be shuffled around by those same politicians.
What better "business interest" could there be?
Voila! Cherchez l'argent.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 2:26 pm
29 Dec 2007
"Scientific consensus on climate change"?
Believe this myth has been effectively destroyed.
"Political leaders who remain obstructive" is apparently a referencer to Inhofe.
What about "political leaders that are trying to sell a political bill of goods that imminent disaster awaits us if we do not subscribe to a draconian UN-sponsored program of carbon taxes and carbon offset schemes involving hundreds of billions of dollars to be shuffled around by the same politicians" (Gore, UN Secretary General, etc.)?
Are these guys also "malfeasant in office"? If not, why not?
Get serious, stevenearlsalmony.
Max
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manacker Posted 2:36 pm
29 Dec 2007
Still waiting for your detailed rationalization as to why the hundreds of individuals quoted in the US Senate report are not as qualified as you are to have a valid opinion on the causes and potential long term effects of the current warming trends.
Why have you not come forth with something substantial?
Still waiting.
Regards,
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 3:12 pm
29 Dec 2007
Acceptable behavior is making claims that have a basis in physical reality. Unacceptable behavior is making claims that don't have a basis in physical facts.
Inhofe is trying to attack the scientific community to avoid the the political question of what to do about global warming. The people the senator cites don't have arguments that are based in facts.
I personally don't see anything wrong with the argument that we should not regulate economic activity to address global warming. Just be honest about it, instead of raising spurious objections to the science.
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manacker Posted 3:37 pm
29 Dec 2007
Facts?
Hey, josullivan58, show me how Inhofe's scientists "don't have arguments that are based in facts" whereas what you refer to as "the scientific community" (referring to IPCC?) does.
Bring specific examples, please, with evidence that "facts" are on one side rather than the other.
Believe we are talking about alternate scientific opinions, not "arguments based on facts" on one side and "arguments not based on facts" on the other.
Max
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manacker Posted 3:50 pm
29 Dec 2007
Do you not want to respond to my statement that IPCC ignored published scientific data that contradicted its false claim of ice loss in the Antarctic Ice Sheet equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003?
I know, it may be unpleasant to admit that IPCC did not tell the truth in its 2007 SPM report, but that is exactly what happened.
Check out the facts.
Regards,
Max
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:56 pm
29 Dec 2007
Much of the world as you and I know it could be irretrievably gone and irreversibly damaged by what my elder generation is self-righteously counseling and, perhaps, selfishly doing.
According to some of our leaders, the world is on track to have its first trillionaire before long and, yes, a tiny minority of the projected and fully anticipated 9+ billion people on the planet by 2050 will be "richer," much richer. Yesterday's millionaires have been replaced by today's billionaires and today's billonaires will be overtaken by tomorrow's trillionaires, I suppose.
According to some of our leaders, there is no end to the globalization of economic activity, to per capita consumption of resources, or to the number of people who can live on a planet with the relatively small size, frangible ecosystem services and limited resources of Earth.
Please know that what you report is clear, coherent and reality-oriented.
Let us consider how daunting global challenges could be posed to humanity by the unregulated consumption, production and propagation activities of my rapacious, not-so-great generation of elders.
Although an unwelcome one, perhaps the time is right to deliver a message that is effectively transmitted to the human community's richest, most powerful and famous leaders--the ones directing the talking heads in the mass media, organizing public opinion, formulating government policy and implementing action plans--so the word goes out and is widely shared that the time for ubiquitous, self-limiting behavior change is at hand. Consider that now is the time for human beings to acknowledge and accept human limits and Earth's limitations, and to act accordingly.
Unrestricted consumption, unbridled production and unrestrained propagation activities of the human species, now occurring on a gigantic, soon-to-become patently unsustainable scale worldwide (the very human activities that appear in the main to be giving rise to ominous, potentially pernicious changes in Earth's ecology) can be reasonably and sensibly managed, modified or otherwise changed, as necessary..... the ill-advised and relentless expansion of economic globalization activities notwithstanding.
The human community can choose different behavioral repertoires: for example, capping per human consumption, reducing large-scale industrialization activities, and approving humane and voluntary reproduction limits.
Hopefully, too much time has not been wasted, too much of the environment degraded, too many species extirpated, many too many resources rampantly dissipated and too much of the world we inhabit utterly compromised by leaders who are denying the causes and the consequences of our ravenous consumption, reckless production and feckless propagation activities in these early years of Century XXI.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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LegumeSam Posted 1:42 am
30 Dec 2007
The easiest "way out" of the abrupt climate change crisis is decidedly bad for business: conserve energy by localizing multinational production, thus saving bigtime on transportation costs, thus burning less carbon. That's the easiest recommendation: do away, in short, with globalization, the global business proposition based on cheap energy. Here's how it could be accomplished politically, too: start a trade war, resulting in a neoisolationist world order; that should accomplish the political end of it.
Why would anyone fund research that's bad for business? Business would like to burn 85 million bbls./day of oil from here to eternity. So where's the documentation for this "well-known principle"? Prove that it's "well-known."
Politicians use the crisis reports to justify draconian policy and political measures involving hundreds of billions of dollars to be shuffled around by those same politicians.
In whose book is it natural for politicians to "justify draconian policy"? Politicians benefit from economic liberalization, as their sources of funding are secured in places where governments can't or won't touch their goods. This is, for instance, why big business bankrolled the capital strike waged against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in October of 2002 -- because Chavez dared to muscle in on PdVSA. Chavez, see, dared do something most politicians wouldn't do; defy the regime of privatization, corporate penetration, and the Washington Consensus.
Draconian policy, then, is bad for the politicians, because real politics in the Era of Finance Capital is absorbed with the task of making business profitable for the investor elites who bankroll the political parties.
The media jump on crisis stories to increase circulation and profits.
The mass media in the US have been giving damned little press coverage to abrupt climate change, because their owning corporations (GE, Disney, News Corp, CBS, Viacom, Tribune, and so on) know it goes against the bottom line.
What better "business interest" could there be?
Economic stability. The futures markets are all hurt by vast increases in weather instability. There's lots of old money planning to retire to Florida, for instance, and the IPCC models have Florida under water at a certain point. What business interest could there be in that?
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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Ian Forrester Posted 2:49 am
30 Dec 2007
This is a complete fabrication. The latest data from the GRACE satellites show that the AIS is in fact shrinking at the rate of approximately 150 cubic kilometers per year for the past few years.
http://www.engr.utexas.edu/news/articles/200603031012/ind ...
If you really have information to the contrary then provide it so we can discuss it in an intelligent way. Arguing with anyone who does not provide documentation is a waste of time.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:10 am
30 Dec 2007
If they waste enough time during these next few years of democratic rule, no signifigant GHG related legislation will be passed. Even if democrats have an overwhelming majority, key democrats can be bribed to block any reform.
Corporate interests know they will be on the outs with dC power for awhile, but not for long. The GOP will win back congress in 2010, if history is a guide.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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LegumeSam Posted 3:23 am
30 Dec 2007
The corporate leadership actually believes something is going to happen, as evidenced by the lists posted here on Gristmill -- they just don't want to do anything about it. They've gotten to the point of "it's going to happen," they just can't bring themselves to the point of "we need to do something about it," since their fiduciary duties are to increase profits for the stockholders, not to save the planet or anything of that sort.
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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manacker Posted 3:38 am
30 Dec 2007
Sorry, Ian, what I said is true and not a "complete fabrication", and here is the evidence.
Check: "IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis" (pp.5,7)
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
You will see that IPCC claims that the Antarctic Ice Sheet lost mass equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003. (This sea level rise equates to a mass loss of 71 Gt/year of the AIS.)
Now check the facts. You will see that scientists using hundreds of millions of ESA satellite readings of the AIS 24/7 over the 11-year period 1992-2003 concluded that the entire AIS actually grew over this period by 27 Gt/year.
http://bowfell.geol.ucl.ac.uk/~lidunka/EPSS-papers/djw3.p ...
From the above facts it is clear that IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") published data (the above-mentioned study) that directly contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Antarctic Ice Sheet equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003.
That is what I said, and this is the evidence to show it is true.
Regards,
Max
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 3:45 am
30 Dec 2007
Please understand that I am concerned my generation of elders could be "selling a bill of goods" to our young people today; but we have no intention of fulfilling our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, these unfortunate circumstances result from my generation's unbridled over-consumption of Earth's finite capacity to sustain life as well as from our reckless and unrestrained dissipation of limited natural resources bound up in the huge scale and growth rate of economic globalization.
My not-so-great generation appears to be mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unchecked increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous consolidation of political power used to conquer Earth. Despite all our high-minded rhetoric to the contrary, we need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for ourselves, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary object of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall coming generations, the leadership in my generation advises us to live long, and live large, in a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, conspicuous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth. Please, now, recognize the single-minded pursuit of dollars, political power and privileges to profligately consume, and to magnificently ignore the practical requirements of biophysical reality as our raison d'etre, come what may for the children.
When my not-so-great generation completes its unsavory 'mission' on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the things we have done and failed to do.....all things we proclaim loudly now as evidence of our many virtues.
Yes, of course, there is an ecological debt but, please, let us get real for moment and understand what my generation does not want its children to know: we are determined to let the ecological debt for which we are clearly responsible fall into your lap, come what may.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
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Ian Forrester Posted 5:36 am
30 Dec 2007
Since new snow/ice on the surface is much less dense than the hard packed ice at the bottom, which is in fact melting much faster than previously thought, the volume may be increasing but the actual amount (mass) of water trapped in the ice is decreasing.
The GRACE satellites are giving the best measurements so far to show that ice caps are melting and are adding to sea level rise.
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manacker Posted 5:59 am
30 Dec 2007
You wrote: "Max, you are confusing volume of ice with its mass. The various altimetry methods use the height of the ice/snow surface to measure volume of the ice. The GRACE satellites measure the mass of ice."
Sorry, Ian, you are dead wrong on two counts:
If you really read the report I cited (Wingham et al) you will see that this study does convert volume to mass (snow pack gain at a density of 0.35 and ice loss at a density of 0.92).
As I pointed out to you, this report's conclusion of 27 Gt/year overall mass gain based on actual measurements is clearly not compatible with the IPCC claim of 71 Gt/year overall mass loss over the same 1993-2003 time period. If you accept one you must automatically reject the other, because they cannot both be happening over the same time period.
Therefore IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") published studies (the Wingham report) that directly contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Antarctic Ice Sheet equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003.
This was my point, and this is the point for which I presented irrefutable evidence.
Now you bring up some interesting side issues.
You wrote: "The GRACE satellites are giving the best measurements so far to show that ice caps are melting and are adding to sea level rise."
The GRACE studies obviously have nothing to do with the 1993-2003 time frame of the IPCC claim, since they only started in 2002.
The GRACE methodology is in its infancy and still has significant unresolved questions due to a higher sensitivity to errors in the estimates of postglacial rebound than the other methods. Whether these are the "best measurements so far" is a matter that can be debated. In addition, there are not enough years of data to show any meaningful trends with this method, particularly when taking into consideration the large inter-annual variability of the numbers. The report to which you referred has a little more than two years of data, not eleven (and these years are outside the 1993-2003 period of the IPCC claim in any case).
Any predictions made on the basis of GRACE data today should be taken with a grain of salt. Since the highest apparent rates of mass loss are those derived from the GRACE studies, these should be examined critically before we jump to any conclusions.
How this will actually play out over the next decades is difficult to predict today. Once we have 10+ years of new data (let's say around 2013) and when we can be sure that the GRACE methodology has been sufficiently de-bugged to give consistent and reliable results, we may know more.
But for now we can say for sure that:
"IPCC ignored (or `rejected' or `refused to accept as correct') published studies (the Wingham report) that directly contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Antarctic Ice Sheet equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003."
And that was my point.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 6:35 am
30 Dec 2007
In an earlier exchange, I pointed out to you one key driver of the AGW hysteria, i.e. very large sums of money (research grants, draconian carbon taxes, cap and trade schemes, etc.); hundreds of billions of dollars will be shuffled around by bureaucrats and (if past experience is a guide) some will end up in the wrong private pockets. All of this will be paid by the public. Those in richer nations will see a slowdown or even a reversal of economic growth and those in developing nations will see even longer delays in their ability to ever have a decent standard of living with electrical power and clean drinking water.
You write: "The corporate leadership actually believes something is going to happen, as evidenced by the lists posted here on Gristmill -- they just don't want to do anything about it. They've gotten to the point of "it's going to happen," they just can't bring themselves to the point of "we need to do something about it," since their fiduciary duties are to increase profits for the stockholders, not to save the planet or anything of that sort."
No, it is not the job of corporate leaders to "save the planet" from a projected computer-generated virtual disaster that may or may not occur and that we may or may not be able to avert, particularly if the side effect from this preventative medicine is that it would seriously damage the world's economy.
There was a recent study made at the request of the Swiss Department of the Environment and published in the Swiss press regarding the potential financial damage to Switzerland from AGW.
I realize that Switzerland is not blessed with any low-lying harbor cities (with people living in below-sea-level shanty towns behind flimsy sea walls), but the study did include loss of tourist income from shorter winter sport seasons (and higher costs of producing artificial snow), loss of hydroelectric power due to reduced snowfall, etc.
The result was clear: the potential damage to Switzerland from AGW is insignificant (0.6% of GDP by 2100) compared to the cost of trying to stop it (even if these attempts were successful, which is extremely doubtful in itself).
The report concluded that it makes both ethical and political sense to defer measures that will have a negative influence on economic growth, as these will be more damaging to future generations than the consequences of AGW. It stated that the US approach of looking for technical solutions rather than imposing regulations and taxes is the correct one.
The report called for more basic research into technologies and products that require less energy, switching from coal to oil to natural gas to nuclear energy to reduce CO2 emissions, etc.
It stated that the Kyoto proposals and carbon caps and taxes are worthless, especially since these exclude the largest and most rapidly growing CO2 emitters (China, USA, India).
You can imagine the howls of outrage from green politicians to this report!
Just another viewpoint.
Regards,
Max
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Ian Forrester Posted 9:00 am
30 Dec 2007
From the limited time (thank goodness) I have spent reading what you have to say I can only conclude that it is the latter. There are two reasons for my conclusions.
Firstly, if you were seriously interested in understanding world climate you would be enthusiastic on the reports using new technologies which offer refinement to the measurements, Antarctic ice for example. As I mentioned previously, it is mass of ice that is important, not volume. The paper you quote seems to give a rather arbitrary density figures for the packed snow/ice. I suspect that there are much larger errors in these data than in GRACE.
However, what really lets me know that your primary goal is to discredit IPCC is that you accuse them of lying ("I know, it may be unpleasant to admit that IPCC did not tell the truth in its 2007 SPM report, but that is exactly what happened"). However, that statement is completely false, as I have mentioned already. If you had bothered to check up on the IPCC protocols you would see that there was a December 2005 cut off date for papers to be reviewed. Since the Wingham paper you quote was published in the middle of 2006 the IPCC would not have considered it. Thus they cannot be accused of lying about something that was not within their particular remit.
You have nothing of consequence to offer this debate. I will not be responding to anymore of your lies and innuendo.
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manacker Posted 10:41 am
30 Dec 2007
Hi Ian,
In rationalizing why the IPCC ignored the results of an 11-year study that directly refuted its claim of loss of mass in the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1993 to 2003 you wrote:
"If you had bothered to check up on the IPCC protocols you would see that there was a December 2005 cut off date for papers to be reviewed. Since the Wingham paper you quote was published in the middle of 2006 the IPCC would not have considered it. Thus they cannot be accused of lying about something that was not within their particular remit."
The Wingham report was published May 2006.
A December 2005 cut-off for scientific information that backs up a report that comes out in February 2007 and is called "The Physical Science Basis"? Wow! If that were really true, this would mean that IPCC has such a ridiculously slow, bureaucratic process that the "physical science" included in the report is out-of-date before it even comes out.
But IPCC also ignored an earlier report (Davis), which used the same ESA satellite data and also concluded a net gain of mass due to the large amount of snowfall in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/308/5730/1898
This one was published in May 2005.
The data were out there, Ian, but IPCC chose to ignore them, because they did not support its claim of net mass loss.
That's how simple it is.
And if this were the only isolated case where IPCC ignored scientific data that directly contradicted its claims, that would be OK.
But there are many examples, Ian.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 1:21 pm
30 Dec 2007
Here is another example of duplicity of IPCC (and its parent, UN) to sell its message of disastrous AGW.
The IPCC is currently looking for funding for new research on the Greenland Ice Sheet, in order to determine whether there is a danger that large portions of the ice sheet could suddenly break off and plunge into the sea, thereby abruptly raising sea levels, according to a recent statement to the media by Bert Metz, one of the lead IPCC scientists gone public (and political).
http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/26733
The Reuters press release says: "Dutch scientist Bert Metz, said that the risk of an accelerated melt of Greenland's ice sheet was among the unsolved issues in the U.N. reports this year that blame mankind for causing global warming and urge quick action to avert the worst impacts."
His statement also indicated they would study whether or not this could cause a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream, thereby causing temperatures in Europe to drop significantly.
The Greenland story actually has an interesting history, which may explain why IPCC wants to initiate new studies.
Using 11 years of 24/7 data from ESA satellites, researchers find that the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS) is actually GROWING overall, rather than losing mass, due to massive snowfall in the vast interior of the island. The period studied was 1992-2003.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/esa-eas110 ...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1115356v1
Ignoring these reports based on actual measurements, which showed an overall gain of mass, IPCC states in its 2007 `Summary for Policymakers' report (pp. 5,7) that GIS lost mass at a rate that was equivalent to a rise in sea level of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
This is still not very scary.
At 0.21 mm/year sea level rise, Al Gore is going to have to wait 28,571 years for his 6-meter waves to swallow New York City, as he depicted in his sci-fi horror film, "An Inconvenient Truth". The UN Secretary General will also have to wait much longer than his predicted 10 to 100 years for an "almost overnight" 6-meter rise (International Herald Tribune, November 17-18, 2007).
Essentially all of the very minor sea level rise that did actually occur over the past century can be attributed to thermal expansion of warming oceans (as IPCC also confirms), not from melting ice.
This is also not very scary, since there is no 6-meter potential rise there, and most folks don't really understand the concept of thermal expansion anyway.
So the UN has a dilemma: it has to find a way to hide the not so scary facts on what is truly happening and replace these with predictions of horrible things that are (maybe) going to happen fairly soon, if they cannot get their money-shuffling hundred+ billion dollar carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes implemented.
Voila! The perfect solution. Let's have a new study, paid by taxpayer dollars, to show that the GIS could "drop off into the ocean" and raise sea levels by several meters almost overnight.
Then, for folks who live away from the coasts in Europe (and really wouldn't mind at all if it got a bit warmer where they live), let's throw in the "slowing down of the Gulf Stream" and a colder Europe, in order to really put a scare into them.
Unfortunately, this is not "science". It is scare mongering at its worst in order to gain support for a political agenda.
Max
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Ian Forrester Posted 2:37 pm
30 Dec 2007
Good bye
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manacker Posted 3:44 pm
30 Dec 2007
Hi Ian,
Rather than responding to my post on IPCC errors on Antarctica and Greenland ice sheet mass losses, you chastised me: "Why do you not get someone to explain to you how carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas? I seem to have read someplace that you dispute that fact."
I have no notion where you "seem to have read someplace that I dispute" the greenhouse theory, but you are wrong on that one (as you have been on other proclamations). As a matter of fact, I do not need you or anyone else to explain the greenhouse theory to me, as it is defined by the Arrhenius law and the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.
This theory tells us that a doubling of CO2 from the 1900 level of around 280 ppmv to the expected 2100 level of 560 ppmv would raise temperatures by 0.68 deg C.
We are about 45% of the way there today, which corresponds with a radiative forcing factor for CO2 of 1.66 W/sq.m. as reported by IPCC from 1750 to 2005, so this leaves around 0.4 deg C increase from today to 2100, plus a smaller effect from other greenhouse gases.
This means that the (not very alarming) low end forecast of the IPCC by the year 2100 (SPM 2007) (0.6 deg C) is reasonable, if we believe (as IPCC does) in greenhouse gas forcing and no significant natural forcing factors (in itself a dubious premise). The (more alarming) high end IPCC projection of 4 to 6 deg C is not reasonable and totally off the wall.
It is not supported by greenhouse gas theory, but is based on computer modeled "positive feedbacks" from increased water vapor and clouds specifically designed to increase the impact of anthropogenic greenhouse gases on temperatures by several times the values supported by theoretical physics or by the actual 20th century temperature record (which checks with the theory and provides no evidence of such "positive feedbacks").
So, yes, I understand "how carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas".
Do you? Maybe not, if you believe the high end of IPCC projections.
Regards,
Max
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Pangolin Posted 4:14 pm
30 Dec 2007
In 1980 despite some serious economic shocks one person working at a supermarket could buy a house and feed a family in most of america. There were no homeless people to speak of and college and health care were largely subsidized by the government for those in need. After the "Reagun/Bush" presidencies both parents have to work and they're still getting foreclosed on. College involves debt or service in an endless, losing, war, homeless people are everywhere and health care is a disaster. Let's not mention the debt problem either.
This is what conservatives call "progress."
Pointing out simple facts like "the Arctic Ice cap was largely gone last summer" just doesn't faze them. They can eat a cow pie and swear it's chocolate cake if Rush tells them it is. The bozos still think they were winning the Vietnam war much less Iraq. Climate change denial is no big shakes to those who live in a magical world. Jayzus tol 'em it was not so and it says so in the bible (in ENGLISH) if you don' believe it.
So don't feed the trolls. Please. Point to the evidence once and move on.
We need your energy elsewhere.
Put the Carbon Back
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manacker Posted 5:07 pm
30 Dec 2007
Iraq, Vietnam, national debt, "Reaganomics", homeless people, standard of living, etc., etc.
What does all this have to do with the current global warming hysteria?
Not much.
The only very vague similarity would be the use of fear by politicians to gain support for a political agenda:
In one case it was the fear of (non-existent) "weapons of mass destruction" and predictions of a "mushroom cloud smoking gun" based on faulty (or intentionally skewed) intelligence reports that hoodwinked the US population into supporting a political course of action (the invasion of Iraq costing hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives).
Today it is the fear of an imminent climate "tipping point" with predictions of sudden 6-meter sea level increases and horrible tornados, storms, droughts and heat waves based on the virtual reality of intentionally skewed computer models in order to bamboozle the world's population into supporting another political course of action (draconian carbon taxes and cap and trade plus carbon offset schemes involving hundreds of billions of dollars being shuffled around by bureaucrats).
Watch it folks. The politicians are at work to sell you a bill of goods. And that is not good.
So in that case Pangolin may be right even though he sounds a bit confused.
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 5:26 pm
30 Dec 2007
The IPCC did exactly this. The scientists followed the standard scientific procedure that placed the highest value on accuracy and explaining the certainties and the uncertainties.
Manacker and company are putting their political ideologies first then cherry-picking papers to sow uncertainty. They are the ones who don't like free speech. Manacker on this thread attacked scientist Dr Metz just for talking to the media. Its the same tactics that the tobacco companies used. Dishonestly attack the science and the scientists to win a political fight.
The goal is to falsely create reasonable doubt like criminal defense attorneys do. To paraphrase Johnny Cochrane when he represented OJ Simpson for murdering his ex-wife, if global warming is not a fact then you must not act.
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manacker Posted 6:01 pm
30 Dec 2007
What a bunch of BS!
Respond to specifics. Don't just spout off a bunch of emotional garbage.
It is IPCC that did the "cherry-picking" when they ignored the Greenland and Antarctica reports that did not support their claim.
And what the hell do Johnny Cochrane or the tobacco companies have to do with what we are debating?
Nada.
Regards,
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 10:33 pm
30 Dec 2007
Manker cites three papers to show how the the IPCC is wrong and dishonest
Snowfall-Driven Growth in East Antarctic Ice Sheet Mitigates Recent Sea-Level Rise
Curt H. Davis et al Science 24 June 2005
Dr Davis on the claims by people who say it disproves climate science and the IPCC, calling it "a deliberate effort to confuse and mislead the public about the global warming debate. They are selectively using only parts of my previous research to support their claims. They are not telling the entire story to the public."
http://www.factcheck.org/article395.html
Recent Ice Sheet Growth in the Interior of Greenland
O.M. Johannessen et al Science 310: 1013-1016
The editors of Science printed this in response to people saying that this paper disproved climate science and the IPCC, the "ad misrepresents the conclusions of the two cited Science papers and our current state of knowledge by selective referencing."
http://www.aaas.org/programs/centers/pe/CEI-ad.pdf
The author's research institute comes to conclusions that are similar to the IPCC's
http://www.bjerknes.uib.no/pages.asp?kat=2&id=170& ...
Mass Balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
D.J. Wingham et al Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.
From The summary of this paper:
"What is clear, from the data, is that fluctuations in some coastal regions reflect long-term losses of ice mass, whereas fluctuations elsewhere appear to be short-term changes in snowfall. While the latter are bound to fluctuate about the long-term MAR, the former are not, and so the contribution of retreating glaciers will govern the twenty-first century mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet."
http://bowfell.geol.ucl.ac.uk/~lidunka/EPSS-papers/djw3.p ...
This again agrees with what the conclusions of the IPCC.
Manacker is misrepresenting the content of the IPCC SPM as well. If you use the find function on the pdf for "antarctic" you will see its found eleven times and when you look at what the IPCC says all eleven times, it concludes that the ice sheets on Greenland and the Antarctic probably contributed to recent sea level rise, but its unclear how much.
The IPCC SPM itself states its predictions of sea level rise don't include the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets because of the uncertainties in ice sheet dynamics.
Check RealClimate for a discussion
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/the ...
Intentionally or not, manacker is making comments that are deceptive. Judging by the tone of manacker's comments and the clear political content I would say its the former.
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josullivan58 Posted 11:06 pm
30 Dec 2007
Constructing "Sound Science" and "Good Epidemiology": Tobacco, Lawyers, and Public Relations Firms
Am J Public Health. 2001 November; 91(11): 1749-1757. Copyright © American Journal of Public Health 2001
"Public health professionals need to be aware that the 'sound science' movement is not an indigenous effort from within the profession to improve the quality of scientific discourse, but reflects sophisticated public relations campaigns controlled by industry executives and lawyers whose aim is to manipulate the standards of scientific proof to serve the corporate interests of their clients."
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid ...
Some of the people who are lying about climate science, like The Competitive Enterprise Institute, use the same tactics when they represent the tobacco companies and act like criminal defense attorneys.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Competitive_En ...
Much of the language of manacker's comments mirrors the recommendations in the infamous Luntz memo, like emphasis on the "need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate".
http://www.luntzspeak.com/memo.html
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Ian Forrester Posted 2:06 am
31 Dec 2007
"Is there a scientifically proven link between increased CO2 and higher temperatures?
No. Just model scenarios that have been programmed in by the IPCC to demonstrate this link. Certainly the warming actually experienced from 1800 to 1900 and from 1900 to 1940 had little to do with man-made CO2 emissions".
The adsorption of specific IR radiation by CO2 is a well documented observation and scientific fact.
Also your knowledge about CO2 sensitivity is away off, by a factor of approximately 5 to 6.
People reading this blog should be made aware of the lies you are promulgating, I will challenge every lie you tell.
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Andrew Dessler Posted 2:42 am
31 Dec 2007
Elitism in Science Cont.
Hi Andrew, reur 11:07 AM on 29 Dec 2007 taking your last point first:
Re; the two different "Earth's Energy Budget" diagrams; a) Trenberth's and b) NASA's: You assume that a) is correct because it has been peer reviewed, appears in the "gold standard" IPCC report, and that therefore EVERYONE else agrees with it including that pariah Lindzen. You also immediately contradict this by asserting that b) which does not agree, despite it being from a respectable source (NASA), is not correct presumably because you ASSUME that it has not been peer reviewed. Additionally you agree nevertheless that peer reviewed publications can indeed be wrong. I'll come back to this later but meanwhile, let's seek advice from a respected atmospheric scientist; Andrew Lacis from GISS....(no need for introductions for you I would think). He was an expert reviewer in the 2007 IPCC report (WG1), and here below are a couple of his expert review comments, which PASSED PEER REVIEW by the arbitrating IPCC authors:
Andrew Lacis commented in part:
`...obvious that any gas that absorbs thermal radiation is a greenhouse gas, and that its ability to contribute to the greenhouse effect depends on the strength of its absorption bands, its atmospheric concentration, and its local temperature difference with the ground surface. [Andrew Lacis]"
"... In terms of its practical impact, the atmospheric greenhouse effect works the same way that thermal insulation around a hot steam pipe reduces the rate of heat energy escape from the+G20 steam pipe. The only significant difference is that thermal insulation restricts energy transport carried by conduction, while absorbing gases in the atmosphere restrict energy transport by radiation (air is a good insulator, so conductive energy transport in the atmosphere is negligible). However, because of the fluid nature of the atmosphere, heat energy can also be transported ...[Andrew Lacis]"
I comment only in part, to keep it brief: Thus at the quantum theory level Andrew Lacis was comparing heat flow through a solid insulator (predominantly) via phonon quanta versus photon quanta through an absorptive gas. In both cases, the heat flow is towards a colder sink. The latter process up through the air column with its many varying parameters is of course extremely complicated, and, without getting too boringly detailed here, let's go back to energy diagram a):
I put to you that Andrew Lacis is correct but that contrarily diagram a) contains a convenient construct used to visualize the greenhouse effect, which fits neatly in with the simplistic individual "forcing" constructs employed by definition by the IPCC. However, the actual thermodynamics and interactions are different and very complicated. What is more, the EMR depicted in a) with the endless loop has several sillies in it. 1) EMR is not HEAT. 2) The infinite number of directions that EMR radiates other than normal down is impossible to illustrate on flat paper and is not contemplated. 3) The downward 324 w/m2 should sensibly carry a negative sign, but it does not, and if it were shown thus it would expose that it is not HEAT, since there is no such thing as negative HEAT. Erh, will that do so-far to make my point? (Keeping it brief)
In fact diagram b) from NASA has the same values for the Earth's Energy Budget, but OMITS the simplistic construct of Greenhouse EMR feedback from cold to hot as favoured by Trenberth et club. Could it be that some parts of NASA have their feet firmly on the ground?
Since this is fairly heavy stuff, and this is already a substantial post, let's stop here and keep it relatively simple for now, and leave the other three lesser points you obfuscated, for some other time.
Cheers, Black Wallaby
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LegumeSam Posted 3:29 am
31 Dec 2007
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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manacker Posted 3:48 am
31 Dec 2007
I stand by my statement that there is no scientific proof that the warming that occurred in the 20th century was caused by human CO2 emissions. If you can provide such proof, please do so.
But let's go to Physics 101 to establish the theoretical temperature increase from doubling CO2 levels from 280ppmv, which they were in 1900, to 560 ppmv, which they are projected to be in 2100, assuming there are no natural or other anthropogenic forcing factors (which is obviously not the case).
Arrhenius Law tells us
dE=[alpha]ln([CO2][CO2]orig),
where alpha is 5.35 (Myhre et al.)
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm
dE is change in forcing
using Stefan-Boltzmann:
dT/dE = 1(4[sigma]T^3)
then:
dT = [alpha]ln([CO2][CO2]orig)/4[sigma]T^3)
A doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 ppmv,
And substituting T=15 degrees C = 288.16K
dT=5.35ln(560/280)(4*5.6705E-08*(288.16^3))
or
dT=0.6833 centigrade for a doubling of CO2
for simplification, let's call that 0.7 degrees C
That's the physics behind anthropogenic global warming due to CO2. All the rest is models and hype.
You can do the same calculation based on the CO2 level of 381 ppmv, as measured in 2006
Then you arrive at a dT of around 0.3 degrees C, by increasing CO2 from 280 to 381 ppmv.
This means there is about 0.4 degrees C warming to be expected from today to the year 2100, if CO2 increases to the anticipated 560 ppmv.
And, Ian, the really good news is that, since the relationship is logarithmic, CO2 will have to double again, to 1120 ppmv for another 0.7 degrees C to result. This might happen by around the year 2400, if current rates of increase continue. No "tipping point" here, my friend. Aren't you happy?
All of the above assumes that there are no significant natural forcing factors.
You can do the same calculation for methane, which IPCC tells us doubled from 1900 to 2006 and is expected to double again by 2100, with an alpha of .036, resulting in 0.05 degrees C increase for each doubling.
Hope this helps clear up your confusion.
And some friendly advice: control your emotions and don't go calling people liars; I'm sure your Mommy told you that isn't nice.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 4:07 am
31 Dec 2007
Enjoyed your one-way trip to Venus remark, but, hey, I have a question:
When I check my Webster for "legume", I get two definitions.
One says "fruit of a leguminous plant (peas, beans) used for food".
The second says: " a leguminous plant grown for forage or green-manure crop (as clover or alfalfa)".
Does this imply either that you are either full of beans or spreading "green manure"? Or both?
Just kidding, Sam, don't take it personal.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 5:30 am
31 Dec 2007
Somehow the formulas in my message got garbled when loading onto the site. So have rewritten them with spacers between, to see if this helps:
Arrhenius Law tells us
dE = [alpha] ln ( [CO2] / [CO2]orig ),
where alpha is 5.35 (Myhre et al.)
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/222.htm
dE is change in forcing
using Stefan-Boltzmann:
dT/dE = 1 / (4 [sigma] T^3)
then:
dT = [alpha] ln ( [CO2] / [CO2] orig) / 4 [sigma] T^3)
A doubling of CO2 from 280 to 560 ppmv,
And substituting T = 15 degrees C = 288.16K
dT = 5.35 ln (560 / 280) / (4 *5.6705E-08 * (288.16^3))
or
dT = 0.6833 centigrade for a doubling of CO2
for simplification, let's call that 0.7 degrees C
That's the physics behind anthropogenic global warming due to CO2. All the rest is models and hype.
Looks like it worked this time.
Max
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manacker Posted 7:06 am
31 Dec 2007
You wrote: "Manacker is misrepresenting the content of the IPCC SPM as well. If you use the find function on the pdf for "antarctic" you will see its found eleven times and when you look at what the IPCC says all eleven times, it concludes that the ice sheets on Greenland and the Antarctic probably contributed to recent sea level rise, but its unclear how much."
Wrong, josullivan. IPCC does, indeed, claim a LOSS of ice in both the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets, each equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003. You have to actually read pp 5 and 7 of the IPCC 2007 SPM report and you will see that this is the case.
In both cases IPCC ignored published data that directly contradicted its claims. The two studies I already cited showed that both Greenland and Antarctica GAINED mass over a 11-year study period 1992-2003, based on hundreds of millions of ESA satellite readings taken 24/7 over the study period.
You mention Wingham's projection that: "the contribution of retreating glaciers will govern the twenty-first century mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet."
This may very well be correct for the 21st century. Wingham's educated guess on what may happen is certainly as good as anyone's and probably better.
But it does not change the fact that Wingham concluded in his report that the Antarctic Ice Sheet overall gained mass equivalent to 27 Gt/year over his 1992-2003 study period, which just happened to coincide with the period of IPCC's claim of mass loss equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year, which calculates out to a mass loss of 71 Gt/year over the period.
And that is all I am saying:
IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") scientific data that contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, each equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003.
Turn it any way you want to, josullivan. Those are the facts.
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 9:18 am
31 Dec 2007
On the third study, Wingham et al 2006:
Mancker: "it does not change the fact that Wingham concluded in his report that the Antarctic Ice Sheet overall gained mass equivalent to 27 Gt/year over his 1992-2003 study period, which just happened to coincide with the period of IPCC's claim of mass loss equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year, which calculates out to a mass loss of 71 Gt/year over the period."
The authors do no such thing. The authors recognized the discrepancies and clearly stated "other data are needed to settle this value. In any case, our data excludes 28% of the grounded ice." They emphasized that good measurements are lacking in Antarctica and that even their study is preliminary because data is lacking.
I will point out again that Wingham 2006 was not included in the IPCC because it was published after the deadline for studies. Deadlines are a constant present in our daily lives, they are not a sign of some conspiracy.
On the IPCC:
manacker: "IPCC does, indeed, claim a LOSS of ice in both the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets, each equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003. You have to actually read pp 5 and 7 of the IPCC 2007 SPM report and you will see that this is the case."
The 0.21mm year figure manacker gives is misleading. Manacker fails to note the error bars in the IPCC on page 7. For Antarctica the error range is +/- 0.35mm so this means that according to the IPCC SPM Antarctica could be absorbing 0.14mm a year from the oceans. The IPCC is explicitly stating the possibility that Antarctica is a net sink of water. The error bar for Greenland is 0.07mm, and so not the same as Antarctica.
On page 17 of the IPCC SPM puts this in prose: "Current global model studies project that the Antarctic Ice Sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall. However, net loss of ice mass could occur if dynamical ice discharge dominates the ice sheet mass balance."
I don't know if manacker is being dishonest or has intellectual blinders on, but its clear manacker is looking to sow uncertainty about the science where there is none.
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manacker Posted 9:52 am
31 Dec 2007
If you had really read Winghams report you would have seen that it does, indeed, say that AIS gained 27 GT/year over the period 1992-2003.
To the 28% that were not measured, Wingham included estimates of the 6% marginal area plus the 22% area too near the poles. His conclusion was that the mass losses in the 6% marginal areas were offset by the gains in the 22% polar area. Did you catch that part, josullivan? I can only recommend that you read the report before you shoot off a post.
To IPCC's "error bars": get serious, josullivan.
Your statement "I don't know if manacker is being dishonest or has intellectual blinders on, but its clear manacker is looking to sow uncertainty about the science where there is none" is pure drivel.
It would be just as stupid if I were to say (which I do not intend to do) that: "I don't know if josullivan58 is being dishonest or has intellectual blinders on, but its clear josullivan is looking to show certainty about the science where there is none."
Stick with the factual discussion, josullivan, and leave out the sideline "adhominem" attacks on the individual. When you resort to this ploy it only shows you cannot win the factual debate.
Your statement about p 17 is totally irrelevant to IPCC's claim concerning the period 1993-2003.
The fact remains that IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") scientific data that contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, each equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003.
You have brought me no evidence that this statement is untrue.
Sorry,
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 11:30 am
31 Dec 2007
Manacker claims that the IPCC states that both the Greenland Ice Sheet and the Antarctica Ice Sheet have each separately contributed 0.21mm a year from 1992 to 2003.
Well not exactly, the IPCC gives a range of potential contributions, and for the Antarctica Ice Sheet the range of contributions includes a possible negative effect on sea level. It first states this in on page five and directs the reader to the table on page seven for the details.
Manacker then builds an argument based on this incorrect premise. Manacker cites two papers that supposedly claim the IPCC is wrong and dishonest. Manacker claims these papers show that the ice sheets are growing so can't be adding to sea level change. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has said the same things publicly, but the authors and the publishers of these papers said the CEI was incorrect and misleading the public.
Manacker cites another paper and claims it was ignored by the IPCC because it proved the IPCC wrong about the Antarctica Ice Sheet. The paper first of all was not included, like many others, because it was published past the deadlines for submission. Second the paper concludes that the preliminary data show that Antarctica is likely to be a net sink, but there are uncertainties. The IPCC and this paper are not necessarily in conflict. The IPCC concludes that it is possible that Antarctica is a net sink for the same period. Based on a newer and better data set conclusions change. That is how science works.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 1:46 am
01 Jan 2008
Dear Andrew Dessler, GreenEngineer, JoSullivan58, Trock, AmazingDrX, Legume Sam and Friends All,
If we are serious about our assuming our responsibilities as guardians or steward of the Earth, and I believe all of us are sincere, then perhaps we could benefit from examining the scientific evidence from Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D. and David Pimentel, Ph.D. on the dynamics of absolute global human population numbers. Please bear with me. Who knows, it might be possible for us and our brothers and sisters in the human community to respond more ably to the human-induced global challenges that are already dimly visible, as if seen "through a glass darkly," on the far horizon.
Almost all the people I know will reflexively reassure one another by saying to each other and to all that food is continuously and maximally produced in order to feed a growing population. They say no basis whatever exists to question this statement. It is accepted everywhere as if it is an irrefutable fact, one firmly supported in good science, we have been repetitiously told for much too long a time. I would like for us to take just a moment to consider that potentially catastrophic circumstances could result from maintaining this colossal misperception.
The apparently unforeseen scientific research from Hopfenberg and Pimentel indicates that the long held, widely shared and consensually validated perspective of almost all experts for the too many years is based on culturally-biased, mistaken impressions and not the product of good science.
To even suggest that the relationship be reversed by saying that more available food drives growth in the human population in a positive feedback loop, just as this "cycle" occurs with other living things, is everywhere eschewed.
Why would the mere statement that food supply drives human population like other species, rather than the other way around, be anathema to so many people? What would lead our brightest and best minds, inside and outside of science, during my entire lifetime to continuously ignore or else adamantly deny, up to this very day, what we can recognize now as specious thinking and theorizing?
Why are Wolfgang Lutz, David Coleman, Caroline Ash, Carl Haub, Peter Gleick, Peter Raven, M.H.King, Thoraya Obaid, Joel Cohen, Jesse Ausubel, Nafis Sadik, Richard Cincotta, Cynthia Lloyd, Ken Arrow, Jeff Sachs, Bob Engleman, Jonathan Lash, Marc Hixson, Jane Lubchenco, Paul Demeny, John Bongaarts, Bill Ryan, Barney Cohen and Gary Gardner among many too many experts, unwilling to examine and report as responsible professionals on the evidence presented by Drs. Hopfenberg and Pimentel?
From my humble perspective, the research from Hopfenberg and Pimentel contains an inconvenient truth about the human species. Their evidence indicates that the population dynamics of the human species is common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. So what, you might ask. Well, please now, consider what it could mean if food supply drives human species numbers. Although unexpected, this research indicates with remarkable simplicity and clarity, at least to me, that as long as we increase food production/distribution capabilities worldwide, absolute global population numbers of the human species will grow. Increases in obtainable food will result in increases in newborns. More food equals more people; less food equals less people; and in any and every case, without exception, no food equals no people. Just like the numbers of other organisms in the natural world, human numbers will grow without limits, as long as enough food is made available to make existence possible. Human organisms propagate like other living things, come what may.
The 'expert scientific thinking' regarding the "end of population growth soon" and the widely validated demographic transition theory could be an example of specious thought and theory. The evidence for some kind of demographic transition and an end to human population growth in the middle of this century appears to be a product of wishful thinking and faulty reasoning, I suppose, and can be seen now as fundamentally flawed, unrealistic, and unsupported by good science.
For the moment, I will stop here but not before extending every good wish to each of you for a happy and healthy 2008.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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LegumeSam Posted 2:01 am
01 Jan 2008
My sister didn't choose to have three babies because the food supply drove her decision to populate the planet some more. Conversely, I chose to have no babies, not because I couldn't afford to feed them, but because I didn't want kids.
Look at human reproductive decisions on the ground level. Do some ethnographic research on the subject. Then report back to us.
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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amazingdrx Posted 2:27 am
01 Jan 2008
If the corelation between food supply and population growth is simply noted as a fact, then one problem arises. It's a big one.
Humans grow our own food. Wilderness populations rely on the food they can gather that is provided by the naturtal system. Populations go up, they go down. interdependent cycles.
Since we grow our own food, and even have the means to limit birthrates, we can decide that cruel starvation is no way to address over population.
We can both end starvation and unlimited human growth voluntarily and democratically. From the family unit, with the mother deciding how many offspring, all the way up to a sustainable culture that lets no one starve.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 2:35 am
01 Jan 2008
Sadly, I think this one is used by black marketeeering militia/gangs in straved areas to scare people off the relief supplies, they then round it up and use it to brew booze and feed animals, and sell on the black market.
It costs 20 times as much to drop bombs as it does to drop food, pound for pound. Strategic food "bombing' might get food right to those who need it (instead of shrapnel) and short circuit a lot of vicious starvation, horrible disease, and atrocious slaughter.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 2:58 am
01 Jan 2008
Abundant research indicates that countries like Australia, Italy, Russia and Tunisia, among many others, have recently shown a decline in human population growth. These geographically localized data need not blind us to overwhelming facts that the absolute global population of the human species is still growing and may reach 12 billion by the end of this century. Recent data from the UN Population Divison indicate that global human numbers will be above 9 billion by 2050. As suggested above, the world population is like a wave; individual or localized reproduction numbers are like the molecules. Put another way, human propagation data and evidence of reproduction numbers among individuals, even in many places, may be pointing in different directions.
Choosing the scope of observation is like deciding to look at either the forest or the individual trees, at either the wave or its molecules. Thus, the global challenge before us is a species propagation problem, in a way not directly related to individual decision-making and local counts.
For too long a time, human population growth has been viewed as being somehow outside the course of nature. The possible reasons, causes and consequences of human population growth rates and numbers have seemed complex, obscure, numerous, or even unknowable, so that a strategy to address what could be a clear and present danger has been thought to be all but impossible to develop, let alone implement. To have suggested, as most scientists have done, that understanding the dynamics of human population does not matter, that the human population problem is not about numbers, or that human population dynamics have so dizzying an array of variables as not to be suitable for scientific investigation, in a way seems not quite right. Drs. Hopfenberg and Pimentel appear to have made it possible for us to grasp human population dynamics as a natural phenomenon and to liberate vital understandings of skyrocketing human population growth worldwide from the realm of the preternatural.
Hopfenberg and Pimentel give us empirical evidence of a non-recursive biological problem that is independent of ethical, social, legal, religious, and cultural considerations. This means human population dynamics are essentially like the population dynamics of other species. It also means that world human population growth is a rapidly cycling positive feedback loop, a relationship between food and population in which food availability drives population growth, and population growth fuels the (mistaken) impression that food production needs to be increased. Their evidence indicates that as we increase food production every year, the number of people goes up, too. This evidence also makes it abundantly clear that humanity does not have a food production problem; our abundant harvests will meet the needs of the human community. Of course, Gandhi was correct in noting that there is plenty of food to meet the needs of people everywhere; however, that cannot occur if, and only if, many brothers and sisters in the human community choose to be insatiable, rapacious and greedy. Can there be reasonable doubt that humanity has a food distribution problem?
With every passing year, as food production is increased, leading to a population increase, millions go hungry. Why are those hungry millions not getting fed year after year after year... and future generations of poor people may not ever be fed? Every year the human population grows. All segments of it grow. Every year there are more people growing up well fed and more people growing up hungry. The hungry segment of the global population goes up just like all the other segments of the population. We are not bringing hunger to an end by increasing food production; we are giving rise to millions more hungry people as we begin 2008, just as we have done in the recent past. While millions of people become obese, billions of people are going hungry. Humanity is confronted with a food distribution problem not a food production problem.
Perhaps a new biological understanding is emerging with the Hopfenberg/Pimentel research. It is simply this: human population numbers, as is the case with other species, are primarily a function of food availability. Although the human population explosion appears to be a huge problem, we can take the measure of it and find a remedy that is consonant with universally shared values.
Yours truly,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 3:04 am
01 Jan 2008
Thanks for your comments,
Steve
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:19 am
01 Jan 2008
i.e. It's an exponential graph.
If you use a linear graph, there's still quite a lot of growth going on.
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manacker Posted 5:01 am
01 Jan 2008
IPCC SPM 2007 claimed net loss of both GIS and AIS, in each case equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003. All of josullivan's rationalizing cannot change the fact that this is what IPCC claims on pp. 5 and 7 of their report. Just facts, that's all.
Published reports based on hundreds of millions of 24/7 ESA satellite readings over an 11-year period showed net growth of both ice sheets over same time period:
Greenland:
Johannessen (2005)
Antarctica
Davis (2005)
Wingham (2006)
Just facts. That's all.
Josullivan claims that one of these 3 papers came out too late to be considered by IPCC (9 months before they published their report!). The other two obviously did not.
Now, josullivan can rationalize why IPCC chose to ignore these reports, but it is not possible to credibly claim that they did not ignore (or "reject" or "refuse to accept as correct") these reports, since these reports directly contradicted their claim of net mass loss.
Since josullivan has not been able to bring evidence to show that my statement was incorrect, it stands:
IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") scientific studies that contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, each equivalent to a sea level rise of 0.21 m,m/year over the period 1993-2003. Just facts, that's all.
So let's cap this discussion off.
Max
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manacker Posted 5:36 am
01 Jan 2008
Here are some facts regarding Greenland.
The Johannessen study showed that the Greenland ice sheet grew during an 11-year study period 1992-2003, based on tens of millions of ESA satellite readings taken 24/7 over the 11-year period.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-11/esa-eas110 ...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1115356v1
The major new finding in this study was "an increase of 6.4 cm/year in the vast interior areas above 1500 meters, in contrast to previous reports of high-elevation balance". The study concluded that there was a spatially averaged increase of 5.4 cm/year over the entire study area, which excluded marginal areas that could not be measured accurately with satellite altimetry.
A subsequent study by Zwally et al converted elevation change to mass balance and extended the study area to cover the entire GIS. This study used ATM laser-altimeter surveys that were conducted during the same time period to increase coverage of the margins. It also used optimum-interpolation procedures to cover the entire GIS. It truncated a six-month period of heavy snowfall (the winter months from October 2002 to April 2003) from Johannessen's record, so that its conclusion of an overall ice mass GAIN of 11 Gt/year is probably understated.
http://icesat.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/IGS/mass_changes ...
Nevertheless, it is the Johannessen study, as well as the later Zwally study, that IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") when it made its contradictory claim of net ice loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the time period 1993-2003.
Regards,
Max
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 6:51 am
01 Jan 2008
Dear Max,
The way the global economy has been organized has produced spectacular successes. No doubt about it. Likely you and certainly I are beneficiaries of that astounding expansion of production and distribution capabilities worldwide. Surely, we can share an understanding of a desire, however misguided, to present ideological factoids of any and every kind to deny good scientfic evidence showing us that we cannot keep doing what we doing now by overpopulating Earth; by conspicuously overconsuming limited resources; and by endlessly "growing" big-business activities and polluting the relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet God blesses us to inhabit........and not to overrun, I suppose.
If we keep doing what we are doing now, how on Earth can a good enough future for our children be assured? We will have consumed the lion's share of Earth's resources and, in the process, will dissipate those resources much faster than the resources can be restored by the Earth for the benefit of our children. The way things are going now, I think we can confidently say that we will leave our children with a stupendous economic mortgage to repay as well as an incalculable ecologic debt, most of which cannot be reclaimed.
Robert, let us look at our predicament another way. If per human overconsumption of scarce resources; unbridled economic globalization; and the skyrocketing increase of absolute global human population numbers could be occurring synergistically in our time, and could have something to do with the distinctly human predicament which looms ominously before humanity, does it not make good and common sense to consider, at least for a moment, what might to done to set limits on increases only in these dangerously overgrown human consumption, production and propagation activities now rampantly overspreading the surface of our planetary home?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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manacker Posted 7:43 am
01 Jan 2008
A philosophical question.
Do you believe that the IPCC is looking for "scientific truth" about what is happening to the climate?
Or do you believe the IPCC is looking for "scientific proof" to support its theory of what is happening to climate?
Which of the above do you honestly believe?
Regards,
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 8:20 am
01 Jan 2008
Manacker:
"Published reports based on hundreds of millions of 24/7 ESA satellite readings over an 11-year period showed net growth of both ice sheets over same time period:
Greenland:
Johannessen (2005)
Antarctica
Davis (2005)
Wingham (2006)
Just facts. That's all."
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a lobbying group with a history of dishonest behavior, produced ads that said the same things as manacker about Johannessen (2005) and Davis (2005) and might be manacker's source. Namely the ads claimed these papers showed net growth of the entire ice sheets and went on to say that this invalidates the science.
Dr Davis saw the ads. In response Davis put out a press release with the university he is a professor at. "Davis said that three points in his study unequivocally demonstrate the misleading aspect of the CEI ads.
His study only reported growth for the East Antarctic ice sheet, not the entire Antarctic ice sheet.
Growth of the ice sheet was only noted on the interior of the ice sheet and did not include coastal areas. Coastal areas are known to be losing mass, and these losses could offset or even outweigh the gains in the interior areas.
The fact that the interior ice sheet is growing is a predicted consequence of global climate warming."
https:/cf.iats.missouri.edu/news/NewsBureauSingleNews.cfm?newsid=9842
Johannessen (2005) and Davis (2005) were published in the journal Science. The editors of Science saw the ads and also put out a press release.
"The text of the CEI ad misrepresents the conclusions of the two cited Science papers and our current state of knowledge by selective referencing. The following lay- language press summaries were approved by Science Editorial at the time when the papers were published. These press summaries therefore represent our official interpretation of the research.
More recent research is indeed beginning to provide such an integrated view of the entire ice sheets. A study looking at the mass balance of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet using the GRACE gravity satellite has found an overall negative mass balance for the past several years. Other studies also show a negative overall mass balance for the Greenland Ice Sheet and other evidence of accelerated melting. See, for example, several papers and a news story in Science, 24 March 2006."
http://www.aaas.org/programs/centers/pe/CEI-ad.pdf
Manacker:
"IPCC SPM 2007 claimed net loss of both GIS and AIS, in each case equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003."
The IPCC:
"New data since the TAR now show that losses from the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica have very likely contributed to sea level rise over 1993 to 2003 (see Table SPM.1)." page 5
From Table SPM 1
Source of sea level rise Greenland Ice Sheet, rate of sea level rise 1992-2003 0.21 +- 0.07
Source of sea level rise Antarctic Ice Sheet, rate of sea level rise 1992-2003 0.21 +/- 0.35
page 7
The plus and minus indicates a range of values that is found by adding and subtracting the second figure from the first. So the rate of sea level rise from Antarctica could be as great as 0.56 or as little as -0.14 meaning that it could be taking water from the oceans, not adding to the oceans. The range for Greenland is different, 0.28 to 0.14.
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josullivan58 Posted 8:27 am
01 Jan 2008
The IPCC is not a group of political operatives who tell lies in order to achieve world domination, notwithstanding manacker's conspiracy theories about the IPCC.
Manacker started on this post by pushing the misleading Luntz/Limbaugh anti-science and anti-enviromentalist talking points, like how science is elitist, scientists are arrogant and against freedom and the IPCC is apparently run by the villains from James Bond movies.
Manacker moved on to the science and is pushing the same talking points, but now with extra hand waving. I have had some fun feeding this troll, but dealing with dishonest and/or delusional people like manacker gets old quickly.
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manacker Posted 9:03 am
01 Jan 2008
If we track the increase in world GDP, we see that it has grown in parallel with the global emission of CO2 from the consumption of fossil fuels. So there is a clear correlation here between industrialization and economic growth. The good news is that the GDP has grown at twice the rate of CO2 emissions, as more efficient use of energy, alternate energy sources and conservation programs have been implemented over the years.
But despite the spectacular successes to which you make reference, not everyone has been a winner. There are still hundreds of millions of people in the poorest countries of the world that do not have access to electrical power or clean drinking water. Many are living without adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical care. Many are mentally stunted due to malnutrition in infancy, unable even to read and write due to lack of schooling. These people are living below the international poverty line of somewhere around $1 per day.
So there is a lot of real work to be done. A part of the solution will be to install systems for power generation and distribution as well as water treatment and distribution for these hundreds of millions of people that are deprived today of electrical power and clean drinking water. This will undoubtedly result in a global increase in the consumption of fossil fuels and the emission of CO2 as these regions increase their per capita GDP above the poverty line.
The unfortunate part of all this is that we do have a number of critical problems that we should be addressing more strongly, but are not. Instead we are getting all "wrapped around the axle" chasing a politically inspired, computer generated, imaginary "rich man's" problem called potentially disastrous anthropogenic global warming.
Politicians such as Al Gore and the UN Secretary General are warning us that this could have disastrous consequences for mankind in the very near future, unless political action is taken now involving draconian measures with hundreds of billions of dollars being shuffled around.
H.L. Mencken once observed, "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
Instead of running around beating our chests about a problem that is practically non-existent and which, if it were existent, we could do little about, we would be far better off taking some of the billions of dollars this imaginary problem is consuming to try to alleviate some of the real suffering that does exist in today's world.
That is my opinion, and that is why I am rationally skeptical of the current AGW hysteria.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 9:06 am
01 Jan 2008
Where do you dig up all this drivel?
Stick to the debate.
Max
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manacker Posted 9:40 am
01 Jan 2008
But back to the facts:
The Davis study concluded: "For the ROC (region of coverage), the 5:1 ratio in East versus West Antarctic area coverage causes slight thickening overall at the rate of 1.4 ± 0.3 cm/year." Wingate converted elevation increase/decrease to mass gain/loss and added estimates for the 6% marginal and the 22% polar areas that could not be measured, with the conclusion that Antarctica had an overall gain of 27 Gt/year over the 11-year period 1992-2003.
The "ads" to which you refer are of no relevance to our discussion, so why do you bother to cloud the issue by bringing them up?
The Johannessen and Zwally studies showed a net gain in the Greenland Ice Sheet. Zwally figured this to be 11 Gt/year over the 10.5 year period April 1993 to October 2002, after truncating a 6-month winter period of heavy snowfall (October 2002-April 2003) from Johannessen's 11-year study.
So the data were out there on both Greenland and Antarctica.
And, yes, it could well be that whatever climate changes are taking place in these locations, they do include an increase in interior snowfall which tends to offset increased melting at the edges. Whether this is being caused by temperatures in Greenland, for example, recently rising back up to the relatively warm temperatures there of the 1930's or possibly some other factor, I would not argue your point on that one.
But you have not yet shown me why my statement is incorrect that:
IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") studies that contradicted its claim of ice loss in both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets equal to a sea level rise from each of 0.21 mm/year.
Believe we are beginning to become repetitive here, josullivan58, so maybe we should cap off our discussion unless you have some new evidence to present to shoot down my statement.
But please leave out the personal attacks; they just discredit you.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 10:03 am
01 Jan 2008
Forgot to mention one point. You bring in the recent GRACE studies.
These are totally irrelevant to our discussion on what happened in both Greenland and Antarctica over the 11-year period 1992-2003, since they only started in 2002 and are thus outside the period we are discussing plus they only have a few years' data collected so far.
Regards,
Max
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guade00 Posted 3:08 pm
01 Jan 2008
"There are, however, caveats to consider. First, we cannot make an integrated assessment of elevation changes--let alone ice volume and its equivalent sea-level change--for the whole Greenland Ice Sheet, including its outlet glaciers, from these observations alone, because the marginal areas are not measured completely using ERS-1/ERS-2 altimetry (see Fig. 1). It is conceivable that pronounced ablation (e.g., 10, 11) in low-elevation marginal areas could offset the elevation increases that we observed in the interior areas. Second, there is large interannual to decadal variability in the high-latitude climate system including the NAO [North Atlantic Oscillation], such that the 11-year-long data set developed here remains too brief to establish long-term trends." Johannessen 2005.
"Our results show that the East Antarctic ice-sheet interior increased in overall thickness within the ROC from 1992 to 2003 and that this increase is probably the result of increased snowfall. Both of these observations are consistent with the latest IPCC prediction for Antarctica's likely response to a warming global climate." Davis 2005.
These studies have been put in their proper perspective at RealClimate.org.
If skeptics are going to cite studies to support their conclusions, they ought to read the studies' conclusions.
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guade00 Posted 3:40 pm
01 Jan 2008
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch04.pdf ...
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manacker Posted 3:57 pm
01 Jan 2008
Thanks for caveats to consider.
I have read the conclusions of the reports you cite very carefully.
Johannessen's caveat got taken care of by Zwally's study that covered the marginal areas in Greenland that were not measured completely using ERS-1/ERS-2 altimetry, with a net conclusion of ice mass gain over the period, despite the fact that Zwally truncated a 6-month winter period from October 2002 to April 2003 with extensive snowfall from Johannessen's record.
The Davis/Wingham conclusion of increased Antarctic ice sheet thickness in the interior being the "result of increased snowfall" is also very pertinent. The conclusion that this is a "likely response to a warming climate" is also interesting.
These conclusions show that the whole story is much more complicated than the simplistic message that IPCC would have us believe, i.e. increased CO2 emissions cause warmer global temperatures that, in turn, cause net reduction of ice mass in Greenland and Antarctica due to melting and resulting rise in sea level.
And that is exactly my point.
Thanks for bringing it up.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 4:13 pm
01 Jan 2008
My Webster tells me that "cite" means "refer to" or "recall". I am sure that IPCC did exactly that, as you say.
However, by definition they also "ignored" or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct" these reports, when they made claims that directly contradicted them.
Pretty straightforward to me.
Regards,
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 4:17 pm
01 Jan 2008
"Thanks for your latest 'ad hominem'"
No need to thank me, I'm more than happy to do it.
manacker
"Where do you dig up all this drivel?"
From your comments on Gristmill, the scientific literature, and the anti-environmentalist's memos.
manacker
"Is this ad hominem attack supposed to be witty? Or is it just plain stupid and childish?"
None of the above, its just meant to turn your own tactics on you and to see if you like it. I get the distinct impression that you don't.
manacker
"But you have not yet shown me why my statement is incorrect."
You need to prove its correct first. Since this thread is about the science, act like a scientist. In science you need objective proof for a idea to be accepted. You haven't offered any facts yet.
manacker
"These are totally irrelevant to our discussion on what happened in both Greenland and Antarctica over the 11-year period 1992-2003, since they only started in 2002 and are thus outside the period we are discussing."
Why can I only write about the things you want me to? You're suppressing my free speech. You must hate freedom.
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manacker Posted 4:27 pm
01 Jan 2008
I provided you facts, which you were unable to disprove, i.e. reports say one thing; IPCC claims exactly the opposite thing.
Now you say that I "hate freedom" because I'm "suppressing your free speech"?
Get serious and grow up, pal.
Max
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manacker Posted 6:19 pm
01 Jan 2008
But IPCC does not tell us the real story.
Chylek et al (2004) analyzed the temperature histories of three coastal stations in southern and central Greenland that have almost uninterrupted temperature records between 1950 and 2000. In doing so, they discovered that "summer temperatures, which are most relevant to Greenland ice sheet melting rates, do not show any persistent increase during the last fifty years."
In fact, working with the two stations with the longest records (both over a century in length), they determined that coastal Greenland's peak temperatures occurred between 1930 and 1940, and that the subsequent decrease in temperature was so substantial and sustained that current coastal temperatures "are about 1°C below their 1940 values."
Furthermore, they note that "at the summit of the Greenland ice sheet the summer average temperature has decreased at the rate of 2.2°C per decade since the beginning of the measurements in 1987." Hence, it would appear that Southern Greenland has not experienced any net warming over the most dramatic period of atmospheric CO2 increase on record. In fact, it has cooled during this period, and cooled significantly, in a place where CO2-induced warming is supposed to be greatest and most evident, and during a period of time when it is claimed that the earth experienced unprecedented warming.
Petr Chylek is a researcher for Space and Remote Sensing Sciences at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to becoming a government researcher in 2001, Chylek was Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science in the graduate program at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada where he continues as an Adjunct Professor.
Chylek has published over 100 scientific papers in remote sensing, atmospheric radiation, climate change, cloud and aerosol physics, applied laser physics and ice core analysis. His work has been cited more than 3000 times. Chylek is best known for his work in remote sensing, water vapor, aerosols and their relation to climate change.
In 2006, Chylek served as Chairman, Scientific Program Committee for The Second International Conference on Global Warming and the Next Ice Age held at Los Alamos National Laboratory. in Santa Fe, NM.
Chylek received his diploma in theoretical physics from Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He received his Ph.D. in physics from UC Riverside in 1970.
This appears to actually be good news, in that current warming is not unprecedented, even in the past 80 years, and increased CO2 has not caused any significant warming as compared to recent earlier periods.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 7:07 pm
01 Jan 2008
Your "one-way trip to Venus" invitation got me to thinking.
Our two planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars, both have atmospheres that are composed of 95+% carbon dioxide. Venus is unbearably hot (400+ deg C) and Mars is extremely cold (-20 to -140 deg C).
At around 0.03%, our atmosphere contains almost no carbon dioxide as compared to either of our "next door" neighbors.
So what does this prove?
Nothing.
Venus is closer to the sun than Earth; Mars is further from the sun.
But I'll pass on your invitation to a one-way trip to Venus. Thanks anyway.
Regards,
Max
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LegumeSam Posted 12:57 am
02 Jan 2008
Venus has 90 atmospheres of CO2, and a constant surface temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit despite a day that is 243 times longer than Earth's. The surface temperature on Venus is slightly hotter than the daytime surface temperature on Mercury despite the fact that Mercury is significantly closer to the Sun. You'd think that Venus would have some semblance of night, but it doesn't: the greenhouse effect of 90 atmospheres of CO2 cancels out almost all of what would otherwise be the cooling effect of a night-time 243 times longer (on average) than ours. We've known CO2 as a greenhouse gas for more than a century now.
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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Ian Forrester Posted 2:17 am
02 Jan 2008
"Using double correlations between the Greenland temperature records, North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index and global temperature change we find a region of Greenland that is not affected by the NAO. Using this region as an indicator of Greenland's temperature change that is related to global warming, we find that the ratio of the Greenland to global temperature change due to global warming is 2.2 in broad agreement with GCM predictions".
Eating too many cherries is bad for your digestion.
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manacker Posted 3:08 am
02 Jan 2008
Thanks for your own cherry-pick and "bon appetit"!
BTW Chylek has also published a recent study on the limits on climate sensitivity, but that is another story.
Chylek was one of 60 climate scientists and experts that signed a letter to the Canadian PM on April 6, 2006. Here are some pertinent excepts from this letter:
"Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future."
"`Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural `noise'".
"The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to `stopping climate change' would be irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to whatever nature throws at us next."
So if he would sign his name to statements like these, Chylek is probably on your "bad guy" denier list, anyway. Probably also automatically disqualifies him (at least in Andrew Dessler's eyes) from being a relevant expert. Right?
Regards,
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 3:12 am
02 Jan 2008
Scientists are the best people to do and to interpret science because they understand how science is done. Science has rigorous requirements. If you want to make statements about an area of research and you want to be taken seriously by the scientific community you need to be very familiar with the work. You can't selectively cite papers or draw conclusion by only reading summaries or abstracts and be taken seriously (this means you manacker).
The way science is a process that grounds itself in physical facts, has a high burden of proof and tries to eliminate biases makes it a powerful tool. Scientists who ignore this aren't doing science and risk professional scorn.
Science's ability to prove things makes it unpopular with some and is the motive for much of the attacks on climate science.
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manacker Posted 3:19 am
02 Jan 2008
Of course it is the total amount of atmosphere that counts, and I knew you would bring that up. This is where Venus has 90 times the surface pressure of Earth (90,000 mb) while Mars has only 0.007 times the surface pressure on Earth (7 mb).
But it does point out that the situation on Venus is so totally different from that on Earth that there is no comparison, no matter how many gigatons of CO2 are emitted into our atmosphere by our puny human activity.
And that was actually my point, since you were the one who initially brought Venus up as a "greenhouse gone bad" example.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 3:38 am
02 Jan 2008
You wrote: "Science's ability to prove things makes it unpopular with some and is the motive for much of the attacks on climate science."
Don't hijack the "science" mantel for only those scientists that support the IPCC's "party line" stand on AGW.
The ones who do not agree are also a part of "science", whether these are the 100 that signed a recent letter to the UN Secretary General or the 60 that signed a letter last year to the Canadian PM, or the ones cited in the US Senate report.
Andrew Desslers elitist view was pretty much summarized by his sentence, "Not everyone's opinion is equally valid" (i.e. only those that agree with Andrew have a valid opinion).
Looks like your "exhibit A" is falling into the same trap.
And, josullivan58, where you are way off base is in thinking that only scientists should have an opinion on the draconian policy changes being proposed by the pro-IPCC political lobby, which most experts tell us will do major harm to the world's economy and will have no impact on the world's climate. In a democratic society, we ALL have a voice on this topic.
And as rational skeptics, we have to probe for and expose any weak spots in the science that supports these proposed policy changes.
Got it?
Regards,
Max
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Ian Forrester Posted 3:54 am
02 Jan 2008
Two comments on this statement. Firstly, you and the other deniers are not being rational. Secondly, probing by legitimate means is acceptable; lying, distorting and misrepresentation is not. The deniers have never yet used the former but their only means of trying to move ahead their twisted agenda is by lying, distortion and misrepresentation. You are a fully fledged member of this band of junk scientists and liars.
Picking a paper (by the same author, no less) is not "cherry picking" but is a normal part of the refutation of data and findings. Something any scientist would be aware of. There is a big difference between being a real scientist and some one like you who is playing at being a scientist and is failing miserably.
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manacker Posted 4:33 am
02 Jan 2008
You wrote: "Picking a paper (by the same author, no less) is not "cherry picking" but is a normal part of the refutation of data and findings. Something any scientist would be aware of. There is a big difference between being a real scientist and some one like you who is playing at being a scientist and is failing miserably."
Thanks for your definition of "cherry-picking". As I understand it, if YOU or IPCC do it, it is not cherry-picking, if someone opposing your viewpoint does it, it is cherry-picking. Pretty much follows Andrew Dessler's elitist view of whose opinion counts and whose does not. If I refute an IPCC claim based on published data that directly contradict this claim, then this is "cherry-picking". If you bring out a report that contradicts the report I cited, then this is not cherry-picking. I think I understand the difference, although I certainly do not accept it as valid.
To your other statement: "Firstly, you and the other deniers are not being rational. Secondly, probing by legitimate means is acceptable; lying, distorting and misrepresentation is not."
Mmm. Having trouble figuring out exactly what you are trying to prove here. You have not shown me any evidence that my viewpoint is less rational than yours, and you have not shown me any evidence that I am lying, distorting or misrepresenting facts. Just claiming something is so does not make it true, Ian.
Sorry, Ian, your argumentation is flawed.
But you should really try to stick to the subject matter and avoid personal attacks. They really do weaken your whole stand.
Regards,
Max
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Ian Forrester Posted 4:58 am
02 Jan 2008
You are only on this blog to spread confusion and lies and to support the big business right wing political alliance. I'm sure every educated person knows where your are coming from and will give you the respect (or lack of same) that you deserve.
You still have not admitted to your original lie concerning CO2 sensitivity which is not the figure you gave but is very much higher. Feedbacks must be included since we live in a real world (not your dream world) where everything is connected.
The fact that you disregard the feedbacks is blatantly dishonest and you should know it. Shame on you.
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manacker Posted 5:22 am
02 Jan 2008
You wrote: "The way science is a process that grounds itself in physical facts, has a high burden of proof and tries to eliminate biases makes it a powerful tool. Scientists who ignore this aren't doing science and risk professional scorn."
I think I understand the message here.
For example, Mann's hockey stick (that attempted to disprove the existence of the Medieval Warm Period) was scientifically challenged and discredited, since Mann was apparently not following a process that "grounds itself in physical facts, has a high burden of proof and tries to eliminate biases".
For this he was chastised publicly before a US congressional committee by Dr. Edward Wegman, a prominent statistics professor at George Mason University and chair of the National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, who independently assessed Mann's data on a pro bono basis.
Wegman concluded that "Dr. Mann's assessment that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade of the millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year of the millennium cannot be supported by his analysis."
But, wait a minute, the IPCC did not heap "professional scorn" on Mann for his transgression. They promoted him to lead author.
And they kept these statements in their 2007 SPM report (p.9): Paleoclimate information supports the interpretation that the warmth of the last half century is unusual in at least the previous 1,300 years," and "Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the 20th century are likely the highest in at least the past 1300 years" (p.9)
Is this part of the scientific process you are espousing in your "exhibit A", josullivan58?
I think it is a good idea, but everyone has to play by the same rules, right?
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 5:58 am
02 Jan 2008
Thanks for your unsolicited assessment of my debating skills. I will endeavor to do a better job.
But let's stick with the factual part and move off of the personal attacks, OK? As I told you before, you just weaken your argument by resorting to name calling.
Greenhouse theory is what it is, as I tried to explain to you.
You wrote: "The fact that you disregard the feedbacks is blatantly dishonest and you should know it. Shame on you.
Tsk, tsk. More name-calling and finger-wagging.
Programmed in feedbacks are programmed in feedbacks, based on a whole bunch of assumptions. Are they right? Are they wrong? Who knows?
Have low level cumulus and cumulostratus clouds been considered? If so, have they been considered properly? Who knows?
How about high level cirrus clouds? Will they increase or decrease? Who knows?
Has the anticipated global increase in water vapor been confirmed by satellite measurements? There are measurements that show no real increase. Are these correct? Are they wrong? Who knows?
Will there be more precipitation? What impact will this have on global temperatures? Who knows?
Have Svensmark's studies linking solar activity to cloud formation been considered or are these ignored? Will his CERN study validate the simple lab experiments that showed a link? Who knows?
What other negative feedbacks are out there which should be considered? Who knows?
Please do not give me any links to RealClimate or other sites that explain "for dummies" why IPCC assumptions of positive feedbacks are the correct answer; I have read these and they are not convincing. There is still too much unknown to say whether or not feedbacks will be positive or negative on balance.
I know this argumentation does not suit IPCC supporters, because it eliminates the scare factor from AGW.
Regards,
Max
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Ian Forrester Posted 7:11 am
02 Jan 2008
If you do not like being called to task then start acting in a responsible manner. You are just out to confuse people just like the oil companies planned 10 years ago. I hope that the cheques you get from them are not wasted but spent on some thing useful like shoring up your beach front property or putting gas in your gas guzzling Humnmer.
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manacker Posted 7:36 am
02 Jan 2008
If you do not like being called to task then start acting in a responsible manner. You are just out to confuse people just like the oil companies planned 10 years ago. I hope that the cheques you get from them are not wasted but spent on some thing useful like shoring up your beach front property or putting gas in your gas guzzling Humnmer."
A question: Are you over 15 years of age? Your debating style reveals some signs of immaturity.
Your avoidance of factual discussion and use of personal insults and attacks reveals an inability to concentrate on the subject matter due to apparent emotional problems.
No, I do not get any checks from any oil company, I do not own "beach front property" or, as you spell it, a "Humnmer". Sorry, you are wrong again.
Just a private citizen that is rationally skeptical of all the doomsday predictions and calls for a political money shuffling agenda involving hundreds of billions of dollars paid by the public that will hurt the overall economy and not result in any change to climate.
That's all.
And, Ian, you see that there are a lot of others out there that share my view on the whole AGW hysteria.
Regards,
Max
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 8:30 am
02 Jan 2008
I have a concern, touched on by Ian Forrester in his last missive, that gives rise to a need for me to ask you to examine whether business enterprises are growing so large that they have become more powerful than the governments of the nation-states they call home. If people were not the consumers of their products, people would receive little regard, if any, from corporate entities, I believe.
Evidently, humanity has a global warming challenge, in large part induced by the industrial activities of big businesses worldwide, particularly evident since the 1850s.
During the last 30-40 years big business has admitted "poisoning the well" of public discourse regarding fulminating environmental degradation by giving millions of dollars to ideological think tanks (for example, Exxon Mobil) to spread disinformation, to willfully arrange for the misrepresentation of the science of climate change, and to literally manufacture the uncertainty and controversy surrounding otherwise good science.
Leaders of multinational corporations have too much power to influence the decision-making of national politicians, many of whom are already bought-for-paid-for by great wealth provided by the very big business entities that fill these politicians' coffers.
How can national governments and their many tainted politicians be expected to sensibly regulate the activities of multinational conglomerations?
Are we now to think of multinational corporations as "global" citizens? If so, what global entity is supposed to regulate them? If not, how on Earth can these gigantic corporations be made to serve the interests of humanity more reasonably and sensibly and not just their owners' bottom line requirements for profits?
The multinational businesses now operating rampantly and overspreading the surface of our planetary home represent a giant, soon to become patently unsustainable dinosaur-like presence on Earth. The current scale and continuous growth rate of the expanding global economy cannot be maintained much longer, much less forever, can it?
Yours truly,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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manacker Posted 8:42 am
02 Jan 2008
Earlier you informed me that IPCC ignored the Wingham report that showed overall growth of the AIS from 1992 to 2003, based on 11 years of 24/7 ESA satellite data, because of a cut-off deadline.
To quote: "The paper first of all was not included, like many others, because it was published past the deadlines for submission."
You then pontificated further on this subject: "I will point out again that Wingham 2006 was not included in the IPCC because it was published after the deadline for studies. Deadlines are a constant present in our daily lives, they are not a sign of some conspiracy."
So I did some checking on your claim.
Apparently an end-2005 deadline was correct, as you say, for the first order draft. But this was extended to 2006 for the second order draft, where new expert comments are given, and additional literature cited. The following papers from 2006 are cited:
· Velicogna and Wahr (ANT)
· Ramillen et al (ANT)
· Zwally et al (ANT)
· Thomas et al (GRL)
· Ramillen et al (GRL)
· Rignot and Kanagaratnam (GRL)
· Box et al (GRL)
So your deadline argument is not valid. But it was a good try.
Regards,
Max
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josullivan58 Posted 9:48 am
02 Jan 2008
"Don't hijack the "science" mantel for only those scientists that support the IPCC's "party line" stand on AGW."
I'm not. Science is science when the high burden of proof is met. To meet that burden certain behaviors are required in a scientific debate. None of manacker's claims meet the threshold of convincing arguments. Its not because they disagree with the IPCC, its because manacker is creating strawmen using false statements about what's in the IPCC and what's in the science literature. This is besides manacker's cherry-picking.
manacker
"And, josullivan58, where you are way off base is in thinking that only scientists should have an opinion on the draconian policy changes being proposed by the pro-IPCC political lobby"
Another strawman, I never wrote that.
manacker
"which most experts tell us will do major harm to the world's economy and will have no impact on the world's climate."
Isn't the use of experts "elitist", "pompous" and "arrogant" according to manacker?
manacker
"And as rational skeptics, we have to probe for and expose any weak spots in the science that supports these proposed policy changes."
Let us know when you start being rational.
manacker
"I think I understand the message here."
No , when it comes to the science everyone has to meet the same standards. As long as the procedures are rigorous, you can be wrong but not dishonest. The conclusions don't have to be the same, but standard scientific method has to apply to all the science. To claim my position is different is another strawman.
manacker
"So your deadline argument is not valid. But it was a good try."
Wow a combined cherry-picking/strawman involving both my statements and the IPCC with an accusation of IPCC censorship on the side and an ad hom on top, that's a lot of non-science in a science debate! First the claim that the IPCC rejected Wingham (2006) because it concluded Antarctic ice sheet is growing is false because the IPCC included other studies with similar findings and the IPCC stated that the ice sheet might be growing not melting. Second, read this page for the deadline issue. Its not as black and white as manacker claims http://www-pcmdi.llnl.gov/ipcc/revised_deadlines.php
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josullivan58 Posted 9:57 am
02 Jan 2008
"Get serious and grow up, pal."
I'm glad to see that you consider me your friend, but you think just because I'm young I can't participate. More censorship, manacker hates young people and freedom.
Ian Forrester
"you [manacker] have a rock for a mind"
That comparison is unkind to rocks.
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manacker Posted 10:02 am
02 Jan 2008
Lots of 2006 reports included, but (strangely) Wingham is ignored.
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch04.pdf ... ...
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 10:21 am
02 Jan 2008
You started with "maybe I should let this go".
Probably not bad advice. When you are in the hole, the best thing to do is to stop digging.
Your latest ramble did not shed any new light on our discussion, despite using lots of words and making unfounded accusations.
Your earlier claim of deadline reasons for ignoring Winghams report, which showed overall net mass gain in Antarctica from 1992 to 2003, was shot down. Pretty "black and white" to me. Lots of 2006 reports are listed but Wingham is not.
You tried to sell me an argument that turned out to be untrue, and I called you on it.
IPCC made a claim of net mass loss of the Antarctic ice sheet equal to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003.
In so doing, IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") a published study (Wingham) that reported an overall increase in mass of the Antarctic ice sheet over the same time period and thereby directly contradicted its claim.
That's all I said. And you have not shown me any evidence that this is untrue.
Sorry, josullivan58, you lost this one, as you did the similar discussion on Greenland.
So maybe we should move onto a new topic.
Regards,
Max
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 2:09 am
03 Jan 2008
Thanks,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://journals.aol.com/sesalmony/HumanandEnvironmentalHe ...
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Ian Forrester Posted 12:36 pm
03 Jan 2008
Large corporations have way too much influence over politicians and the regulatory processes. One of the other areas which concerns me is the fraud and deceit which is going on in the promotion of genetically modified organisms for food.
My background is in biochemistry so I have a much more intimate knowledge of the GMO scene than climate change. However, the same techniques are being used and the same fraudulent "think tanks" are active in both areas as well as many others where large corporations feel that science will have a negative influence on their bottom lines.
It is a sad reflection of our population that people such as Manacker and the many others who post on these blogs are willing to do the dirty work for these corporations. It is saving them a lot of money.
Such people should be ashamed to take part in the misinformation campaign put forward by big business and their political allies.
Regards.
Ian
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josullivan58 Posted 3:08 pm
03 Jan 2008
Participation in this thread has been interesting, like participating in a social experiment. Having an argument with a contrarian like manacker is getting direct participation with and being personally targeted by the right-wing slur machine.
Manacker's comments are a shining example of the war on environmentalists and science. Read the luntz memo and then read manacker's comments. They use the same language and tactics that luntz recommends. When the thread moved on to the science, manacker cited the same papers and used the same arguments that contrarian/industry sponsored web sites like CO2science started.
I saw a news story on the National Academy of Science report that recommended keeping intelligent design out of the public school science classes. A spokesperson for an evangelical group disagreed saying there needs to be more 'scientific' debate about the validity of evolution. The ID movement is trying to redefine the definition of science to take advantage of science's reputation for reliability while not having to meet the high burden of proof that defines science.
The movement to attack climate science is doing the same thing. Manacker's comments are a prime example. My exchange with manacker was not a scientific debate because the rules that make science what it is were ignored by manacker.
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manacker Posted 3:50 pm
03 Jan 2008
Here is a message to you, with a request for your rebuttal.
Three arguments used frequently by proponents of the potentially disastrous anthropogenic greenhouse warming hypothesis, like Andrew Dessler, are:
· The "science" behind the alarming projections must be sound, because it has been "peer reviewed"
· The "science" supporting the projections represents a broad consensus of the mainstream scientific community and therefore must be valid
· The IPCC represents the "science" behind global warming
All three arguments deserve closer analysis to see just how valid they really are.
Peer review, if properly administered, can be an effective control. It can, however, be misused. If an editor is in agreement with the findings of a research study, he can pick reviewers that he knows are also in agreement. In this case, the peer review process is nothing more than a meaningless "rubber stamping" by like-minded scientists. On the other hand an editor can pick his reviewers to "shoot down" the findings of a research study with which he is personally not in agreement.
How effective has the IPCC review process been?
A good example of a peer review that did not provide effective control was the case of Michael Mann's now discredited "hockey stick". This study passed peer review by a group of like-minded scientists, although it was later shown to be fraudulent.
So peer review is no "quality guarantee", particularly when the research paper draws conclusions that are favorable to the editor or represent a "politically correct" mainstream view.
The claim of "scientific consensus" has also been used frequently to support a particular scientific hypothesis. In the case of global warming this consensus is supposed to be among "the world's 2500 top climatologists". The problem with this argumentation is two-fold.
First, at any given time, consensus may well exist about all sorts of questions in a particular science, however, that consensus is often later seen to have been mistaken. As recently as the mid-1970s, for example, a scientific consensus existed among climatologists and scientists in related fields that the earth was about to enter a new ice age.
The case of Alfred Wegener and his continental drift / plate tectonics theory is often cited as the fallibility of "consensus". Here the "mainstream scientific community" at the time went out of its way to discredit Wegener in defense of the prevailing paradigm of the time of static continents. Symposia were held to show how ridiculous Wegener's theory was. It was only twenty years after Wegener's death (and the passing of many of the objectors to his new theory), that a paradigm shift occurred and the plate tectonics theory became the new paradigm.
The second fallacy with the "consensus" theory as a proof for scientific validity is that it ignores human nature. Scientists are humans, like everyone else, Andrew Dessler included. Once a scientist has invested heavily in the prevailing paradigm, it is extremely difficult for him/her to acknowledge that there may be errors in this paradigm, for this would, in effect, be an admission that he/she has been wasting his/her time.
Another aspect of human nature is that it is easier to agree with the prevailing paradigm and get along within the peer group than it is to question it and risk hostility or isolation.
Data points that fall outside the established paradigm are therefore rejected or ignored.
And finally, as Thomas Kuhn observed, it may be physically impossible for the scientist to even see or recognize the data points that do not fit his/her paradigm.
When reports are published that show results that refute or directly conflict with the prevailing paradigm, the "mainstream scientific community" reacts quickly by "circling the wagons" and initiating a new study that will again confirm the paradigm and thereby revalidate it. There are numerous examples of this in the AGW debate.
The "mainstream" is a tight community with numerous close interconnections. If a scientist is not a member of this club, it will be extremely difficult for him/her to publish in a renowned scientific journal or to receive an invitation to participate in a scientific-conference panel discussion. The non-conformists are shut out.
Finally there is the funding issue. All researchers rely on some sort of funding, be it from industry or government.
An industrial enterprise usually funds research that is expected to bring it a new or improved product or process, with the end result that it will bring an economic gain to the company and its shareholders.
Governments are supposed to fund research that is "in the public interest".
If a proposed research study implies that there is the need for government action to solve an immediate problem or avert an impending disaster, it will get funding by the bureaucrats and legislators much more readily than if the proposed study shows there is no real problem. This is the well known "no crisis = no funding" principle. In addition, if the research study shows that although a problem exists there is no feasible government action that can solve this problem, it also has a hard time receiving funding.
So, in order to receive public funding, researchers have to show that there is an imminent crisis ahead and that this imminent crisis could be averted by political action.
In the global warming debate the argument is often made that the IPCC is a "gold standard" group of climate scientists, who are searching for scientific truth about the climate changes that are occurring.
The IPCC is no such thing. As a committee formed by the international political body, the United Nations, it is, by definition, also a political body.
It was set up to determine what impact human activities (specifically the emission of anthropogenic greenhouse gases) were having on climate and to project what this impact might be in the future.
Hans von Storch, director of the Institute for Coastal Research of the GKSS Research Center in Germany and professor at the Meteorological Institute of the University of Hamburg, has said that public expression of reservations by scientists about "climate catastrophe" are "viewed as unfortunate within the scientific community, since they harm the `worthy cause'". This, he argues, threatens to undermine science in an important way.
While the IPCC emphasizes that its work is "policy relevant" but not "policy prescriptive" its "Summary for Policymakers (SPM)" reports are clearly written to move the policy makers to a specific course of action.
The process is supposed to work as follows: once the scientists have drafted their reports, they are circulated to the politicians from the various countries; the politicians and scientists then come together to agree on the wording of the SPM reports.
Unfortunately, IPCC ignores (or rejects) scientific reports that do not support its hypothesis of potentially disastrous anthropogenic greenhouse warming. There are many examples of this.
Once the non-favorable reports have been censored out and the other reports are included, IPCC expects there will be no further debate, in other words everyone must sign up to an agreed-upon version of the "latest science".
This is clearly a political process.
A clear indication of the political driving force of this process is found in the statement by Rajendra K Pachauri, the current chair of the IPCC, as he described the significance of the process at the press launch of the Working Group III Report in May 2007:
"It is of great satisfaction that this report for the first time has dealt with lifestyle and consumption patterns as an important means by which we can bring about mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. So of course you can look at technologies, you can look at policies, but what is an extremely powerful message in this report is the need for human society as a whole to start looking at changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns."
This political message emphasizing behavior change over technological innovation, is delivered by the IPCC, a political body posing as a group of impartial scientists.
From the moment the IPCC was born, its mission has been to frighten the public into believing that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (primarily CO2 from fossil fuel combustion) will lead to disastrous consequences for our planet unless political measures are be taken immediately to avert this disaster.
The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, has joined this scare mongering approach in his recent article in the International Herald Tribune (November 17-18), in which he predicted a sudden 6-meter sea level increase in 10 or 100 years from man-made global warming unless action is taken today.
Strangely, the pronouncements if the IPCC have become the "new truth" about climate change in the eyes of the media, the politicians and society as a whole, to the point where questioning these pronouncements has become not only "politically incorrect" but almost unimaginable.
This has nothing to do with "science" - it is pure politics.
What do you think about all this, Andrew? Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks and regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 4:36 pm
03 Jan 2008
You place me in "the right-wing slur machine", because I disagree with you.
Wrong, josullivan.
I am all for true science as well as environmental protection, true pollution abatement and energy conservation measures.
Your ramblings about the "intelligent design" supporters and their efforts to keep Darwinism from being taught in public schools have absolutely nothing to do with our debate.
I am just against scientifically unfounded "disaster projections" to justify draconian 100+ billion dollar "money shuffling" programs administered by the United Nations, who have shown a fairly consistent knack for corruption and graft when large sums of public money are involved.
In your debate with me you claimed something that was later shown to be not true (the deadline on reports as an excuse for scientific reports being ignored by IPCC that do not support the AGW hypothesis of melting ice caps caused by AGW).
In other words, josullivan58, you flat out lied, and then I caught you in this lie, when I showed you that there was no deadline, and that IPCC included many reports that came out after this deadline, but ignored the report that did not support its "party line".
Then you state: "My exchange with manacker was not a scientific debate because the rules that make science what it is were ignored by manacker." What kind of BS double-talk is this?
Face it, josullivan58, you lost this debate, despite your unsuccessful attempt to lie your way out of it with the fictitious "deadline" excuse.
IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") published scientific studies (Wingham, Johannessen/Zwally) that contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, each equivalent to a rise in sea level of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003. The reports that were ignored showed a measured overall gain in ice mass of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets over the same time period.
Those are the facts, josullivan58, and you, with all your waffling and blah-blah, have been unable to come up with any evidence to refute these facts.
Max
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manacker Posted 2:01 am
04 Jan 2008
On another site, climate resistance, Black Wallaby has asked me to post this message for you on this site, since he apparently has problems getting in.
Regards,
Max
Black Wallaby said...
The lead article here features Dr. Andrew Dessler's attack on the Inhofe 400. Over at Gristmill, I have been in debate with him over his elitism in science, and how his rejection of cross fertilization of ideas is harmful to science. Below, is my third post to him, on which he seems to be stuck for an answer. It points out that Fig.1 in the IPCC report, which he says is well understood, is seriously contradicted by an equivalent diagram from NASA, and by a very highly credentialed scientist. He responded immediately to the first two posts, but not this one, yet has had time to raise several new blogs at Gristmill continuing his personal attack on individuals listed by Inhofe, which he describes as fun. It is interesting to contemplate why he is delaying a response this time!
Hi Andrew, reur 11:07 AM on 29 Dec 2007, taking your last point: (Abbreviated for new context here)
Re; the two different "Earth's Energy Budget" diagrams; a) Trenberth's Fig 1 in IPCC Report, and b) NASA's equivalent: You assume that a) is correct because it has been peer reviewed, appears in the "gold standard" IPCC report, and that therefore EVERYONE else agrees with it. You then immediately contradict this by asserting that b) which does not agree, despite it being from a respectable source (NASA), is not correct. Nevertheless you agree that peer reviewed publications can indeed be wrong. I'll come back to this later but meanwhile, let's seek advice from a respected atmospheric scientist; Andrew Lacis from GISS. He was an expert reviewer in the 2007 IPCC report (WG1), and here below are a couple of his expert comments, which PASSED PEER REVIEW by the arbitrating IPCC authors:
He commented in part:
`...obvious that any gas that absorbs thermal radiation is a greenhouse gas, and that its ability to contribute to the greenhouse effect depends on the strength of its absorption bands, its atmospheric concentration, and its local temperature difference with the ground surface. [Andrew Lacis]"
"... In terms of its practical impact, the atmospheric greenhouse effect works the same way that thermal insulation around a hot steam pipe reduces the rate of heat energy escape from the+G20 steam pipe. The only significant difference is that thermal insulation restricts energy transport carried by conduction, while absorbing gases in the atmosphere restrict energy transport by radiation... [Andrew Lacis]"
I put to you that Andrew Lacis is correct and that contrarily diagram a) contains but a convenient construct used to visualize the greenhouse effect. However, the actual thermodynamics and interactions are different and very complicated. What is more, the EMR (Infra Red Light in this case) depicted in a) with the endless loop has several sillies in it. 1) EMR is not HEAT. 2) The infinite number of directions that EMR radiates other than normal down is impossible to illustrate on flat paper and is not contemplated. 3) The downward 324 w/m2 should sensibly carry a negative sign, but it does not, and if it were shown thus it would expose that it is not HEAT, since there is no such thing as negative HEAT.
In fact diagram b) from NASA has the same values for the Earth's Energy Budget, but OMITS Trenberth's simplistic construct of Greenhouse EMR feedback from cold to hot. Could it be that some parts of NASA have their feet firmly on the ground?
Cheers, Black Wallaby @ 9:42 AM on 31 Dec 2007
Black Wallaby said...
"if Max is tuned in, could you please assist with this proposal:
RE: My post above, starting: "Getting back to the lead article, Dr. Dessler has his own very elitist opinion on who may or may not be qualified to comment on the IPCC's 2007 report.
However, let's consider the simplest basics in that report:"
Of 02 JANUARY 2008 07:11 Is equally suitable at Gristmill, but I'm unable to post there.
Could you please forward it the attention of Andrew Dessler across at his blog, with your Intro why: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/21/112933/48
04 January 2008 03:39
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josullivan58 Posted 2:17 am
04 Jan 2008
"If you would be so kind and helpful, please... ...do not let go of this discussion just yet."
I appreciate the encouragement, but the thread with manacker has outlived its usefulness. Considering the dishonesty of the contrarian positions, it gives more attention to contrarians than they deserve. Manacker has the chance to stop making things up and repeating things someone else made up on gristmill.
Seeing this comment, manacker will feel compelled to take a break from his habit of kicking puppies to make up more stuff on gristmill. I will not reply. Life is too short to spend time replying to vacuous arguments.
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manacker Posted 2:41 am
04 Jan 2008
You wrote: "I will not reply. Life is too short to spend time replying to vacuous arguments."
Good move.
When you have lost a debate, the best thing to do is slink off.
Max
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manacker Posted 6:53 am
04 Jan 2008
You wrote: "It seems to me that the human community has reached a crossroads in Bali, Indonesia, December 2007: EITHER we will choose to "stay the current course" of endless economic growth, ever increasing conspicuous per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers OR we will find other ways to go forward."
I well remember the 1968 book "The Population Bomb", by Paul Ehrlich, currently a Stanford researcher and environmental ethics philosopher. This book predicted mass starvations by the end of the 20th century as a result of human overpopulation and the inability of the planet's limited resources to keep up with this exponential growth.
Ehrlich made the analogy in his book: "A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies-- often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion, if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival."
These dire predictions obviously did not come true and the "patient" is still "alive and well, thank you".
This is not to say that there are no places in the world where starvation on a large scale exists tody, but this is not caused by a global shortage of food due to overpopulation, but rather from local droughts and famines plus the political use of starvation as a weapon (as Stalin did in the agricultutally rich Ukraine, in the 1930s to squash the people there seeking independence from his rule).
Then there are the poorest nations of the world, where survival of the weakest remains a touch and go proposition. Of the 20 poorest countries in the world, with a per capita GDP of $1 or less per day, 17 are in Africa and 3 in Asia.
With a few exceptions, almost all of these nations are governed by corrupt and despotic governments, which have no interest in improving the welfare of their people. Many are involved in on-going ethnic or tribal wars or bloody political power struggles.
It is true that Africa, as a continent, has had the highest growth rate in population since WWII. From a population in 1948 of around 170 billion, this has grown to 855 billion in 2003, at a compounded annual rate of 3%. This growth is projected to continue at 2.5% per year, despite the large numbers of people afflicted with and dying from AIDS, malaria and other diseases.
I do not know whether or not there is a direct cause and effect correlation between Africa's poverty and its high population growth rate.
I have never heard anyone make the claim that there is a direct cause and effect correlation between Africa's poverty and the global increase of atmospheric CO2.
So I really do not think the recent Bali conference is going to do much to solve the poverty problem in much of Africa.
If anything, I am afraid that all the money being put into AGW research and political posturing today and carbon taxes and cap and trade schemes in the future could actually be better spent trying to find solutions to the poverty problem.
But that is just my opinion.
Having gone through the Hopfenberg slide show for which you gave me a link, I found it interesting. The basic tenet seems to be that increasing food supply will increase population at the expense of the environment and other species, therefore we should stop increasing food supply.
Since the more wealthy parts of the world are already at low population growth rates, which are continuing to decline, the problem of future overpopulation does not appear to lie there. So we should look at the poorer areas of the world that have the highest population growth rates.
I do not know if this goes as far as Ehrlich carried it with his cancer analogy, i.e. let's not allow Africa to increase its food supply so that this most rapidly growing population will have to choose between facing mass starvation or reducing its growth. Sounds pretty inhumane to me, if that is what is implied.
But this whole discussion belongs on another site, since it has nothing to do with the debate surrounding anthropogenic global warming, as far as I can see.
Regards,
Max
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 7:27 am
04 Jan 2008
From something you reported here, it appears that I am considerably older than you. There are some things I want to share with you. Please bear with me.
It appears that people like me, who are situated near the top of the global economic pyramid have a great deal to offer our younger people in helping them come to an adequate understanding of the distinctly human predicament with which humanity could soon be confronted.
It is my hope that by openly discussing the global challenges before humanity, ones already visible on the far horizon, it will possible for the human community to respond ably to whatever challenges present themselves. As long as people with foresight and the great advantages of experience remain electively mute about what is being discussing here, the status quo will remain unchanged.
And if humankind keeps reflexively overpopulating Earth, conspicuously over consuming limited resources, and endlessly expanding big-business activities, thereby polluting the relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet, as we keep doing now, then a good enough future for our children cannot be assured, I suppose. Not only that, there is something more forbidding that could occur.
I am concerned that my generation of leading elders is selling a bill of goods to our young people today; but we have no intention of making good our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, this unfortunate situation results from my generation's unbridled over-consumption of Earth's limited resources as well as from our reckless dissipation of resources bound up in the huge scale and growth rate of economic globalization. My generation appears to be both mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unrestrained increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous consolidation of political power.
Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, you and I need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for my generation, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary objects of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall the children and coming generations, the leadership in my generation adamantly directs all of us to live long, and live LARGE, in hot pursuit of a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, conspicuous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of McMansions and private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth. Recognize as our raisons d'etre my generation's single-minded drive for endless wealth, political power and privileges to profligately consume as well as to willfully ignore both the requirements of practical reality and the hopes of those who follow us. At least to me, it appears our current leadership is taking all of us down a "primrose path."
When my not-so-great generation completes its `mission' on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the unthinkable things we are doing to the Earth, failing to do to protect it, and self-righteously describing to the children as exercises of our virtue.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
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manacker Posted 11:17 am
04 Jan 2008
Black Wallaby has asked me to include this part of his message to you, which I apparently left out by mistake.
Sorry for confusion.
Hope you can get him fixed up, so he can post directly.
Regards,
Max
Black Wallaby said...
Getting back to the lead article, Dr. Dessler has his own very elitist opinion on who may or may not be qualified to comment on the IPCC's 2007 report.
However, let's consider the simplest basics in that report:
A small subgroup of the IPCC authors summarised to policymakers, that THEY THINK there is a 90% probability that there is significant human influence within the current global warming. (This amounts to an admission that they could be wrong in their estimation....in the other arbitrary 10%.)
Detailed reading of the IPCC report with its many contributions from the many sciences such as glaciology, mixed paeleo-sciences, oceanography, etc, indicate a wide scope of regional warmings, past and present, but there is no direct indicator as to the cause in each case. (There is BTW, a dearth of historians and archaeologists)
Computer models are employed to try and pin-it on CO2, based on an array of assumptions, some of which the IPCC admits to carrying a low level of understanding. Against this it is useful to remember that meteorologists use much simpler and less assumptive computer models which are not famous for being reliable beyond days. Thus a useful and worrying comparison can be made to the IPCC ambitions.
So here are just three points, but dozens more could be made.
Surely! It only takes a modicum of analytical ability from say a chemist, chess player or engineer, whomever, to see that there is rather doubtful reliability in the IPCC claims? Anyone technically capable: such as geologist and economist; Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick who looked at the finer detail, soon proved discrepancies, and even apparent fraud in the IPCC.
No Dr. Dessler, you are wrong to emphasise elitism. You should be encouraging cross fertilization of ideas. That way you might be able to understand all of the IPCC report rather than just your chosen very narrow speciality!
Black Wallaby 02 January 2008 07:11
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manacker Posted 10:16 am
05 Jan 2008
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/04/phew_what_a_scorc ...
Met office scientist Katie Hopkins said: "This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world."
The article went on to say, "The long-term prognosis is alarming. As Reuters puts it: `Most scientists agree that temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees Celsius this century due mainly to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.'"
It's great to be able to predict a whole year's average temperature, and even to predict that it will be a "record hot year".
Let's see how well the UK's Meteorological Office really did.
Under the eye-catching headline, "2007 'second warmest year' in UK", BBC tells us what really happened on a global scale.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7169690.stm
Turns out the top 10 were (from hottest to coolest): 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997 and 1995.
OOPS! So, despite the eye-catching headline, 2007 was number seven out of ten and not the "record hot year" at all. If you only take the years in the 21st century, 2007 ranked only number five out of seven, so it was kind of a "blooper".
So much for predicting temperature for a whole YEAR in advance.
But cheer up, folks, as the article said IPCC's scientists can predict (or project, as they prefer to call it) that "temperatures will rise by between two and six degrees Celsius" a whole CENTURY in advance.
Too bad none of us will be around in 2100 to see how well (or poorly) they actually did.
Max
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Schoneveld Posted 9:17 pm
05 Jan 2008
You are obliged to respond to manacker's very reasonable posts.
If you keep silent you implicitly surrender to his views. This wouldn't be a surprise to me because I can't find anything wrong with his line of reasoning. But for an official Gristmill contributor like yourself it must be hard to swallow. Maybe we could use some ad homs to shut him up. Couldn't we find out whether manacker is paid by Exxon.Mobile or another right wing think tank? Wouldn't that immediately make his views suspect? How can one be a climate change skeptic and be a genuine person at the same time. Isn't that indeed a contradiction in terms?
JoSullivan58 at least dares to argue (unconvincingly in my view) but Dessler should not stay on the sideline.
Chris
If you cannot place me in any box read my Bio.
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manacker Posted 9:35 am
06 Jan 2008
Hi Andrew,
You have expressed an "elitist" view on "who is qualified" to have a relevant opinion in the current political and scientific debate surrounding the hypothesis of potentially alarming anthropogenic greenhouse warming.
You have pointed out that many of the individuals mentioned in the report to the US Senate are not qualified "climate scientists", and should therefore have nothing pertinent to say in this debate.
You have not mentioned that one of these individuals is Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, who also cosigned the December 13 letter to the UN Secretary General with 100 other climate experts and scientists.
Tennekes, the former director of research at the Royal Dutch Meteorological Institute, and currently a professor at Pennsylvania State University, pioneered methods of multi-modal forecasting. He is a strong proponent of scientific modeling and he has challenged the use of incomplete or unproven scientific models by those trying to explain complex phenomena such as global warming (Wikipedia).
Andrew, I do not believe you can make a credible claim that Dr. Tennekes is not qualified to have a relevant opinion on the science supporting the current AGW hysteria.
Now to Dr. Tennekes. As early as in 1990s Tennekes wrote (some excerpts):
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/files/sideways.pdf
I worry about the arrogance of scientists who blithely claim they can solve the climate problem, provided their research receives massive increases in funding."
(Note: "arrogance" and "funding")
I worry about the eagerness with which we tend to prostitute ourselves in order to please politicians who might be seduced into financing our craving for expansion."
(Note: "please politicians" for "financing")
"It took meteorology nearly forty years to produce consistently reliable numerical weather forecasts for a mere three days ahead. With that kind of record, we should know better that to promise rapid advances in climate modelling."
(Note: poor reliability of climate models to predict future)
Recently has since been even more vociferous in his critique of the IPCC and the whole AGW hysteria, which he says is fueled by politicians:
http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/01/31/a-personal-call ...
"I want to lobby for decency, modesty, honesty, integrity and balance in climate research.
(Note: ,,modesty",,,honesty" and ,,balance", among others)
I hope and pray we lose our obsession with climate forecasting. Climate simulations are best seen as sensitivity experiments, not as tools for policy makers. I said it in 1990 and I am saying it now: the constraints imposed by the planetary ecosystem require continuous adjustment and permanent adaptation. Predictive skills are of secondary importance.
(Note: ,,climate simulations" should not be used as ,,tools for policy makers")
We should stop our support for the preoccupation with greenhouse gases our politicians indulge in. Global energy policy is their business, not ours.
(Note: Scientists should stop supporting ,,politicians' preoccupation with greenhouse gas" to further their own political agendas)
We should not allow politicians to use fake doomsday projections as a cover-up for their real intentions.
(Note: IPCC should clearly distance itself from fearmongering political ,,tipping point" predictions [Hansen, Ban Ki Moon, Gore, etc.])
If IPCC does not come to its senses, I'll be happy to let it stew in its own juices. There is plenty of other work to do."
(Note: Tennekes seems to be giving up on IPCC as an un-biased ,,gold standard" organization of climate scientists.)
Now, Andrew, I know that you do not agree with Tennekes' views.
But I do believe you (and the IPCC) would do well to listen to his call for less ,,arrogance" and more ,,decency, modesty, honesty, integrity and balance in climate research", and to distance yourself from the scientifically unfounded ,,disaster predictions" promoted by the politicians.
I would appreciate your comments on the above.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 2:27 pm
06 Jan 2008
On this site, I demonstrated examples where IPCC ignored (or "rejected" or "refused to accept as correct") published scientific reports that directly contradicted claims it made in its 2007 "Summary for Policymakers" report.
These included claims of ice mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica from 1993 to 2003.
While josullivan58 attempted to claim that the published reports contradicting the IPCC claims were published "after the deadline" and were therefore ignored, this claim was proven to be incorrect, since many reports that were published after this deadline were included, but the reports that refuted the IPCC claim were ignored.
So josullivan58 was not telling the truth and IPCC did indeed ignore publish reports that contradicted its claim of ice loss in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets that each contributed to a sea level rise of 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993-2003.
I also demonstrated that the IPCC "high end" claims of future temperature increase due to anthropogenic greenhouse warming" are not supported by the greenhouse theory, but rely entirely on "programmed in computer positive feedbacks" that greatly exaggerate the warming supported by the greenhouse theory.
Now, in addition to these questionable IPCC claims, there are also claims by IPCC of a reduction in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the latter part of the 20th century due to AGW (pp.5,6). The actual record shows no such reduction since 1988, i.e. 20 years ago. http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_se ...
So we have claims of ice mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica as well as Northern Hemisphere snow cover that are refuted by actual measurements, and unsupported claims of "positive feedbacks" to temperature increases that greatly increase the theoretical temperature increase from greenhouse gas warming.
There are many more problems with IPCC 2007 SPM, but I will cover these one at a time.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 4:12 pm
07 Jan 2008
You are keeping very silent.
Cat got your tongue?
Or are you admitting that IPCC are not the "specialists that are going to save the child from cancer"?
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 1:36 pm
08 Jan 2008
Got another one for you, where the facts show us that IPCC is not telling us the truth.
IPCC states that the effect of the urban heat island (UHI) effect of exaggerating the temperature anomalies in the surface record are "real but local, and have a negligible influence (less than 0.006 deg C per decade and zero over the oceans) on these values" (p.5).
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_SPM.pdf
Many studies have been made world wide, from Canada to China, that show that there is a significant distortion of the surface temperature record due to the effects of urbanization and shutting down rural stations.
As a part of "keeping them honest", meteorologist Anthony Watts has examined over one-third of the 1,221 weather stations making up the U.S. Historical Climatology Network and published the results. Of those examined, more than half fall short of federal guidelines for optimum placement. Some examples include weather stations placed near sewage treatment plants, parking lots, and near cars, buildings and air-conditioners - all artificial heat sources which cause spurious higher temperature readings, providing physical confirmation of a root cause for a significant UHI effect on the record.
http://www.surfacestations.org/downloads/USHCN_stationlis ...
Watts gives an example with photographs of two fairly closely located weather stations, both located north of Sacramento. CA: one (Orland, CA) is properly positioned in a grassy area with trees around, while the other (nearby Marysville, CA) is located near an asphalt parking lot with buildings and airconditioning units nearby.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/how-not-t ...
Both stations have been in operation since the 1880's. Both are pictured in the Watts report.
Sometimes pictures "are worth a thousand words". But pictures supported by figures are worth even more.
The station in Orland, CA is well-positioned and well-maintained., with a grass surface and no buildings or paved areas nearby.
The site in Marysville, CA, however, "has been encroached upon by growth in a most serious way by micro-site effects". These include: asphalt paved parking lot, buildings, and air conditioning units directly next to the measuring station.
The impact of the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect can be seen by comparing the two official temperature records from GISS NASA station data:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station ...
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/gistemp_station ...
I downloaded the NASA GISS data and made the comparison. If we compare the two official records, we see that Marysville (the poorly positioned and maintained station) shows a trend of temperature increase of around 0.24 degrees Celsius per decade (5-year Annual Average over the 60-year period of major urbanization since WWII, 1946-2005). This compares with a trend of only 0.10 degrees C per decade at the well-positioned and maintained station at Orland over the same time period.
This spurious difference of 0.14 degrees C per decade between the temperature trends of two fairly closely located stations is higher than the IPCC's trend itself for the past 50 years (0.13 degrees C per decade).
The temperature as measured at Marysville is around 0.9 degrees C higher today than that at Orland (average of past 10 years).
Compared with a global temperature increase of around 0.6 to 0.7 degrees C for the entire past century, these differences between a well positioned and a nearby poorly positioned weather station demonstrate a major UHI distortion.
This is just one of many examples cited by Watts, which confirm a significant UHI distortion of the US surface temperature record.
If the work by Watts were the only study showing a significant UHI distortion, we could conclude that it represents a non-representative anomaly, limited to the United States.
There are, however, many studies from all over the world that come to the same conclusion of a significant UHI distortion of the global surface temperature record.
These studies conclude that this effect is substantial (median value of 0.06 deg C per decade), not local and would reduce the global temperature anomaly by 0.3 to 0.5 deg C.
IPCC has reassured us that the UHI distortion is "less than 0.006 degrees C per decade over land", based on studies by David Parker using a comparison between "calm nights with windy nights" to make his point (studies which have since been questioned) but I somehow have a really hard time believing this conclusion, in view of all the hard evidence out there to the contrary.
Do you, as a climate expert, have anything to say about this?
Max
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Delay And Deny Posted 9:32 am
09 Jan 2008
Where is the evidence:
For Dr Dessler,
Reur response to Jabailo, who was seeking your expertise to recommend the three best papers linking CO2 to the current warming:
Because this is "your area", you should have such info right at your fingertips. Thus it is arrogant and/or at best unhelpful to retort; go read the 1,600 page IPCC report. (WG1). I would have thought you would be pleased to roll-off the evidence to him.
I have previously read most of WG1 and cannot find the answer to Jabailo's question either; "where is the evidence?" There are some correlations, intuitive statements, and assumptive models etc, but so what? Where is the actual evidence? Muana Loa CO2 data shows a crude correlation with T, but probably the consumption of hamburgers or some other consumable shows a correlation too. So what? Why be so arrogant and unhelpful about it? Black Wallaby
My Log
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manacker Posted 2:08 pm
09 Jan 2008
The comments by jabailo and Black Wallaby appear to be echoed even by a Vice Chair of the IPCC, which appear to be in direct contradiction with your views.
IPCC Vice Chair, Yuri A.Izrael, (Russia), a PhD in Climatology has stated, "climate change is obvious, but science has not yet been able to identify the causes of it," and, "there is no proven link between human activity and global warming."
"I think the panic over global warming is totally unjustified. There is no serious threat to the climate," and,
"There is no need to dramatize the anthropogenic impact, because the climate has always been subject to change under Nature's influence, even when humanity did not even exist."
http://en.wikipedia.org?wiki?Yuri_Izrael
So there is not even "broad scientific concensus" among the climate scientists within the IPCC team on anthropogenic global warming, despite the words of the political IPCC chair and "choo-choo" engineer, as jabailo describes him (i.e. non-climate scientist), Rajendra K. Pachauri.
Andrew, where are your much needed rebuttals to all this?
Do you no longer feel you can support the IPCC in its claim of potentially disastrous global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, since there are so many cracks in the argument?
Please let us all know your thoughts on this, as a climate expert.
I am sure jabailo and Black Wallaby are also waiting for your input.
Thanks and regards,
Max
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hunter Posted 5:32 am
18 Jan 2008
One - he is basing his argument on calls to authority, which seldom bodes well for the one making the assertion.
Two - he hopes no one notices that a great number of the IPCC authors are not qualified to their opinion by Dr. D's own standard. Distractive hopes are seldom successful, long term
Since it is clear the science is not yet settled on climate, making claims of authority by comparing climatologists to cancer doctors is very poor. Also, if someone stops a moment and thinks about the success rate of oncologists, one would not really want to be ofering that as the standard to meet. When one does think of oncology, by the way, it is clear that medicine, unlike AGW promoting climatologists, do not claim to have the laws of physics on their side. They are very open to new ideas and areas of research. AGW is quite the opposite.
Second, hoping to distract or silence skeptics by pointing out that some of the academics who are skeptical of AGW relies on people not discovering that a loarge number of IPCC authors are not climatologists at all.
That may have worked in the pre-google days of yore, but that does not work today.
What we seein Dr. D is a classic response from an availability entrepreneur - defensive and dissembling.
Hunter
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MarkUK Posted 6:04 am
18 Jan 2008
You guys should set up a website where you can all smoke cigars and rant about those nasty greens and Gore supporters who want to put evil taxes on you...
Anyway, keep it going. These posts are providing really good teaching materials. It's great to see how children very quickly pick up on good logical arguments and, well, really shitty ones.
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hunter Posted 2:04 am
19 Jan 2008
Yes, we 'deniers' also sacrifice baby seals, penguins and polar bear cubs, and we drive around in hummers.
Hunter
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MarkUK Posted 2:59 am
19 Jan 2008
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manacker Posted 8:21 am
22 Jan 2008
Actually I think Hunter's posts make some sense. Andrew Dessler's "cancer doctor" analogy was very weak and a bit arrogant.
On the other hand, you seem to prefer to attack individuals on an emotional basis rather than discuss issues on a rational basis.
Why get so testy?
Regards,
Max
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MarkUK Posted 2:43 am
26 Jan 2008
I'm not testy at all. I debate climate science all the time and find it fascinating. I have figured out by now when there is a point and when there isn't it. With you there obviously isn't any point. I know good old hunter from the SciGuy blog where he consistently copy/pastes the same crap he posts here. There is no discussion to be had with him as he is in complete denial. I have in fact used many of his posts in lectures as perfect examples of what denial looks like. He has a use. Usually those comments raise a good laugh. Though there used to be a guy at SciGuy called "Tex". He was amazing. Nuts, but the funniest denier I've ever come across. Mostly you guys are all the same....
It's like trying to discuss evolution with a creationist. Pointless. That said, you can have some fun sometimes, right?
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manacker Posted 7:08 am
26 Jan 2008
I agree with you that debating climate science is fascinating.
I am not much in favor of ad hominem attacks on cherry picked individuals, as Andrew has done in this and following blogs on "Inhofe's list". I would prefer if Andrew, a noted climate scientist, would stick to his field of expertise and answer questions posed to him on these sites regarding the scientific evidence behind some of the more bizarre and alarming IPCC projections, but so far he has chosen not to do so.
Maybe there are some nuts on both sides of this debate, but there are others who are quite sane and rational.
There are "fundies" on both sides. These are the people who believe in something so strongly that they are unwilling or even unable to see or accept any argument that goes against this belief. But I would disagree with you that these are "all the same", regardless of which camp they are in; each one has his or her own peculiar quirk.
It is my experience that there are at least as many of these "fundies" on the side that supports the notion of potentially disastrous anthropogenic global warming as there are on the side that is skeptical of this notion. Maybe your experience on this has been different.
And I agree with you that it is pointless to try to convince these individuals of anything that goes against their belief system. But yes, it can be fun to watch them waffle from one argument to another.
So I guess we agree on something, even if we do not agree on what I would describe as the current global warming hysteria.
Regards,
Max
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MarkUK Posted 7:28 am
26 Jan 2008
Sure there are "fundies" on both sides of the debate. No doubt about that. In both cases pretty horrific. Whether the numbers are the same I don't know.
I do know that the number of serious scientists skeptical of the theory of global warming are extremely rare. So, maybe we can call a draw on the fundies. Not on the science.
If only the skeptics would do a real job of providing skepticism worhty of the word. I see that so rarely it is close to never.
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:18 am
26 Jan 2008
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manacker Posted 5:07 am
27 Jan 2008
No. I do not have any evidence to say that Paul Revere was "hysterical". Do you?
Now MarkUK might have another take on Paul Revere than you do, as an American, but the story is recorded in US encyclopedias and history books as follows.
Prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, Revere was a member of the Sons of Liberty, a group that protested Crown policy on taxation.
When the British army began its move across the Charles River toward Lexington, Revere was sent by Dr. Warren of this group across the Charles River to the opposite shore, where he could begin a ride to Lexington, to warn the inhabitants.
Aside from his "midnight ride" and a somewhat unsuccessful period as an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, Revere was best known as an artisan and early industrialist, primarily in the metalworking field.
He was a pioneer in what would be called the "defense contracting business" today. He built one of the first gunpowder mills supplying the Continental Army. His iron and brass foundry supplied the naval shipyards.
But his company also supplied other customers; it was a big supplier of church bells, which at that time was a fast-growing market.
His company eventually became the Revere Copper Products, Inc., which still exists today.
But, aside from the small amount of "greenhouse gases" emitted from his factories, what's that all got to do with AGW?
Regards,
Max
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:16 am
27 Jan 2008
Well you seem to equate "alarm" with "hysteria".
But obviously there are times where alarm is necessary, and action needs to be taken.
Certainly we can gamble and pray that we're wrong. But is that really a responsible and rational thing to do?
_
But in general, thats two different perceptions of what an "Alarmist" is.
A chicken-little, or a Paul Revere.
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MarkUK Posted 5:45 am
27 Jan 2008
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manacker Posted 6:10 am
27 Jan 2008
You made a good point with your statement that skeptics must come with rational "skepticism worthy of the word". I would add that this includes avoiding "ad hominem" attacks or resorting to hyperbole.
The same is true, of course, for the defenders of the prevailing AGW paradigm.
So I would agree with your position on this. I would not necessarily agree that this happens "so rarely it is close to never"..
But first of all we must realize that we are not talking about a purely scientific debate here. We are talking about a political debate with some "science" being used to support a political message. The reason I have put "science" in quotation marks is that the evidence for significant AGW is only partly based on the true reality of experimental science but largely based on the virtual reality of computer models, which is not true science.
The recent IPCC meeting in Bali was a political meeting. Its whole purpose was to arrive at a political decision.
The statements made to the press shortly before this meeting by Rajendra K. Pachauri and Ban Ki Moon were political statements, dressed up a science, to help push in favor of a desired political decision, which the UN supports.
Al Gore's movie is a political statement, dressed up as "science". Its purpose is to frighten the public into supporting a political course of action, which Al Gore personally espouses.
Skeptics have pointed out that the disaster predictions in Al Gore's movie are not even supported by the IPCC projections.
When James E. Hansen made his "tipping point" testimony to the US House of Representatives with statements on imminent extinction of species and recommendations for a carbon tax, he was not only moving outside his area of expertise, but was also making a political statement, designed to frighten politicians into a course of action, which Hansen personally supports.
Skeptics have pointed out that the disaster predictions in Hansen's testimony are not even supported by the IPCC projections.
So the rational skeptic is not only skeptical of the results of computer models, which have been presented by IPCC as scientific evidence for alarming future projections, but also of the political messages that are being sent out to frighten the public in order to gain support for a political agenda.
As an arm of the "mother of all political organizations" (the UN), the IPCC is itself a political organization. Its 2007 report "Summary for Policymakers" was a political report, backed up with some scientific observations on what is currently happening to climate and some computer-generated projections on what might happen in the future, based on the hypothesis that current climate changes, as well as the projected future changes, are almost exclusively caused by AGW.
Skeptics have pointed out that scientific studies that do not support the IPCC "story line" of potentially alarming AGW are ignored by the IPCC. There are many examples of this.
This is what rational skepticism is all about.
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 6:20 am
27 Jan 2008
Well now, there is a bit of a difference here.
Eyewitness reports told Revere's group that the British troops are advancing toward Lexington, so this group sent him off to warn the people there of an imminent attack.
These were real soldiers, in nice red uniforms, armed with real muskets, not the "virtual reality of computer generated" soldiers.
Comparing the computer-generated "imminent disaster" of AGW with the real troops crossing the river and advancing toward Lexington is a major stretch.
In fact it is downright ridiculous.
But MarkUK is right about Mrs. Revere and the dishes.
Max
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:28 am
27 Jan 2008
And do we have to prove it to the same degree as gravity before we even lift a finger?
Is it really sane to err on the side of oblivion?
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:39 am
27 Jan 2008
We can't be certain that any individual nation will launch their nukes.
And there's certainly no way to achieve a high degree of certainty in time to stop it.
_
Which leaves you with the only sane approach.
Don't play Russian Roulette with the fate of the world at stake.
Especially when you are uncertain about the odds.
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manacker Posted 8:18 am
27 Jan 2008
Nuclear proliferation is a totally different story. Everyone knows exactly what a nuclear war would bring. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were real examples. And since 1945 the capacity of nuclear weapons to destroy has been increased by many orders of magnitude.
Are you trying to compare a possible global temperature increase of 1 to 2 degrees C with a possible nuclear holocaust?
Get serious, Greyfalcon.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:24 am
27 Jan 2008
Get serious, Greyfalcon.
You think I'm not serious?
http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-climate-c ...
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news ...
Many people would die.
Many places would become inhabitable.
Hunger Disease Warfare Refugees Infrastructure-Collapse
In either case, although human society would live on, but the carrying capacity of the planet would be greatly decreased, and geopolitics would be stressed to their limit.
Also, 2°C globally isn't something to sneeze at. Less than 2°C downwards, and we're back at the "Little Ice Age". And then again, we don't know if 2°C is the worst we'll have to deal with.
http://greyfalcon.net/moberg2005.png
Nuclear proliferation is a totally different story. Everyone knows exactly what a nuclear war would bring.
Like I said, we don't even know how bad it will be. It could be even worse than nuclear warfare. Isn't that a comforting thought.
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GreyFlcn Posted 10:41 am
27 Jan 2008
In short "Worse than thermonuclear warfare" is certainly a possibility.
On the other hand, it could be nothing, it could actually be a golden era of society.
But the thing that should scare you most is that we really don't know what the hell this is going to do.
And we only get to run this "experiment" once.
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manacker Posted 2:48 pm
27 Jan 2008
Real nuclear disasters (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, multiplied by several orders of magnitude) versus computer-generated virtual disasters.
There is no comparison.
The only thing you've got right is "we really don't know what the hell this is going to do".
Nor do IPCC and all those climate "scientists" and computer gurus, that claim they do know.
I'll go with history (the MWP and earlier Roman Optimum) and bet on "it could be nothing, it could actually be a golden era of society."
So relax, Greyfalcon, its only a computer-generated virtual disaster, not a real one.
Max
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:42 pm
27 Jan 2008
Oh come now, you're not honestly saying the Medieval Period was warmer globally than now are you?
And if you are, can you back it up with any peer reviewed physical science journal articles?
Because I don't think you can.
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manacker Posted 3:56 pm
27 Jan 2008
You wrote: "Oh come now, you're not honestly saying the Medieval Period was warmer globally than now are you?"
Sure I am. Don't rely on discredited "bristlecone pine" studies, but read your history books.
And when they find signs of Medieval civilization where alpine glaciers have recently retreated, that gives me even more evidence.
Max
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manacker Posted 4:07 pm
27 Jan 2008
Since you are so convinced we are headed for "global climate disaster", tell me about James E. Hansen's "tipping point" hypothesis when we reach 450 ppm CO2 or have 1 degree C higher temperature.
Do you really believe this hogwash?
Fill me in.
Regards,
Max
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GreyFlcn Posted 4:18 pm
27 Jan 2008
Can you provide a single peer reviewed physical science journal article that says the Medieval Period was warming GLOBALLY than it is today.
"None of the reconstructions indicates that temperatures were warmer during medieval times than during the past few decades"
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx? ...
As such, I'm pretty certain you can't find an individual study which says otherwise, GLOBALLY.
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MarkUK Posted 4:52 pm
27 Jan 2008
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bookerly Posted 5:54 pm
27 Jan 2008
Dear Andrew,
Though I sometimes disagree with you, I want to state clearly that I have never seen anyone as patient with trolls as you are!!! And so many!! Thanks for gathering them all here in one place.
To those who want to argue that the IPCC experts aren't experts, you guys miss the point totally. The IPCC bases its reports on peer reviewed research done by reputable scientists. It is not neccessary that they all be IPCC members.
Based on your logic, the FDA should never be able to approve drugs, because politicians and bureaucrats work on it. There should be no EPA for the same reason. The oil companies should shut down because they aren't run by oil geologists. IBM, Microsoft and Apple should close because their leaders are not software engineers.
The IPCC's job is clearly to gather the bet evidence (peer reviewed by reputable scientists) that it can find, subject that evidence to public scrutiny and then prepare reports that reflect the consensus of the scientific community.
Mr. Jim just collects a buncha names and says whatever he wants. Are his statements based on peer reviewed published reports? NO!! Does he hold open public hearings and try to listen to all the evidence? NO!!!
I have a book containing the names of over 5 million martian spies. It is published by the largest information agency in global history. Six hundred cult members (err, people who can spell science) support my theories. You can get your own copy by calling the New York Phone Company..
Clearly the hacks and trolls want to find sponsors from some sort of organization, but guys, honest work isn't so bad. And frankly, the big boys already do most of their lobbying behind the scenes. I would be surprised if any of you qualify for subsidies, but hey, keep trying!!!
And Andrew, I bow in admiration of your patience in dealing with all this. It really makes for some humorous reading!!!
(Hey, they're all just joking, right??).
patrick in Beijing
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manacker Posted 3:09 am
28 Jan 2008
For a study made in 2003 that showed a global MWP warmer than today check:
http://www.int-res.com/articles/cr2003/23/c023p089.pdf
A more recent study using non-tree-ring proxies from several locations across the globe confirms that the MWP and LIA were "real and global" and that the "MWP was warmer than the late 20th century". http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Max
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:32 am
28 Jan 2008
And the second one isn't even published in a physical science journal.
"Energy & Environment" is the equivalent of a scientific tabloid.
Is that all you got?
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lengould Posted 4:25 am
28 Jan 2008
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amazingdrx Posted 4:30 am
28 Jan 2008
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Andrew Dessler Posted 4:58 am
28 Jan 2008
Actually, it's not patience. Rather, it's a recognition (based on lots of experience) that debating these skeptics is not productive. In fact, I think it's anti-productive. They're not interested in real debate. And being ignored irritates them, which is a nice side effect.
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:03 am
28 Jan 2008
How could hunger be connected with global-warming?
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manacker Posted 6:14 am
28 Jan 2008
Hi MarkUK,
You asked me why I think that Hansen's "tipping point" testimony is wrong.
Let's talk Hansen, hyperbole and politics.
In his testimony to the US House of Representatives, Hansen started out by painting a picture of imminent catastrophe, based on "GISS modelE studies" (quotes from the testimony and the reports cited in the main report). Hansen's predictions strayed from his area of expertise (temperature measurement and greenhouse gas impacts) to other areas, where he is not an expert
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/testimony_26april2007.pdf
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/hansen/preprints/Wild.070410.pdf ...
"our home planet is now dangerously near a `tipping point'"
the "predominance of positive feedbacks" has caused large swings in past climate
"global temperature is at its warmest level in the Holocene"
"the safe global temperature is, at most, 1 degree C greater than year 2000 temperature. It may be less."
"the dangerous level of CO2 is at most 450ppm, and is probably less"
"likely demise of the West Antarctic ice sheet"
"sea level rise this century may be measured in meters"
"animals are on the run"
"population of [polar] bears in Canada have declined about 20%"
"states from West and Central Texas, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and both Dakotas would likely become more drought-prone"
"This warming has brought us to the precipice of a great `tipping point'. If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to `a different planet', an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet."
After making these model-based predictions of disaster, Hansen threw in a personal complaint:
the "response of the government has been to "kill the messenger"
He then went on to discuss "steps needed to defuse the global warming time bomb" and propose all sorts of policy changes to avert the otherwise certain and imminent disaster scenario he had painted earlier (carbon taxes, etc.). Here he entered the domain of politics, not really his specialized field of expertise (but every American has the right to a political viewpoint, as he pointed out).
Hansen's predictions go way beyond the "mainstream" view, as expressed in IPCC reports. While these reports also only emphasize negative effects from AGW and ignore reports that contradict these, they are much more level-headed and far less shrill than Hansen.
Most importantly, Hansen presents no real evidence for his claims of a "tipping point".
For a good debunking of Hansen's testimony see:
http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/education ...
As just one example of the "mainstream" view on sea level rise compared to Hansen's prediction of "meters" of rise in this century, a recent study entitled "Decadal Trends in Sea Level Patterns: 1993-2004" concluded that the increase over this period was 1.6 mm/year (or around one-half the rate reported by IPCC in its 2007 SPM report). It did conclude, however that "systematic errors are likely to dominate most estimates of global average change" and the "database is insufficient to compute sea level trends with the accuracy necessary to discuss the impact of global warming".
http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/Wunschetal_jcl ...
A 2006 report calculated a mass balance for the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet over the time period mid-April 1992 to mid-April 2003. This report, which was ignored by IPCC in its 2007 SPM report, showed a net mass gain of 27 Gt/year over the 11-year period.
http://bowfell.geol.ucl.ac.uk/~lidunka/EPSS-papers/djw3.p ...
Some months after the IPCC SPM report was published the authors of the earlier report published a study that concluded that Greenland and Antarctica combined are losing mass today, not primarily due to melting, but due to the flow of ice to the ocean from ice streams and glaciers, which has apparently accelerated in the past decade, concluding that over the course of the 21st century, these processes could counteract the snowfall gains, so that there could be a negative mass balance. The conclusion was that this combined effect could be enough to raise sea level by 0.35 millimeters per year (3.5 centimeters over the 21st century, not meters, as predicted by Hansen).
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/315/5818/1 ...
Hansen testified that the current warmth is unprecedented in human history. There are many historical references that show that there was a warmer Medieval Warm Period that was recorded throughout the civilized world at that time. There are also recent scientific reports that confirm this. A recent report using non-tree ring proxy data has confirmed that the MWP and LIA were "real and global" and that the "MWP was warmer than the late 20th century".
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
In testimony to the US House of Representatives, another well-respected climate scientist, John Christy, directly contradicted Hansen's disaster predictions in testifying that projections of drastic climate changes in the future from global warming have not been adequately proved, and it is important not to make radical changes in energy policy based on such projections. In his testimony he told the lawmakers that, "scientists cannot reliably project the trajectory of climate."
So I'll put my bets on the more level-headed scientists that are not predicting "imminent disaster", rather than on Hansen who is obviously show-boating.
Regards,
Max
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:23 am
28 Jan 2008
How could hunger be connected with global-warming?
Easy.
The basis of food production is plants.
Plants are largely reliant on rainfall, and fair weather.
Climate change will produce less predictable rainfall, and more extreme weather events, like Heatwaves, Droughts, Floods, WildFires, Frosts.
_
Then add in that ocean acidification from carbonic acid is hurting the ocean. It's estimated there may be no more fish in the ocean by as early as 2040.
SeaFood makes up a gigantic portion of the protein provided to the world's populace.
_
Lastly, the stupidity of persuing BioFuels.
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manacker Posted 6:32 am
28 Jan 2008
Well, now. Finally you are heard from in person. A voice of wisdom from the "man on the mountain".
Unfortunately it has only been with a sort of whiney philosophical remark about debating with those that are skeptical of your viewpoint, rather than bringing any scientific evidence in support of your belief, based on your expert knowledge as a climate scientist, as has been requested on this and other sites by several rational skeptics.
Andrew, I am interested in real debate, as were the others that asked you for scientific evidence.
But instead of entering a real debate, you shut all these people off. You are apparently not interested in real debate, since you find it "anti-productive".
If this is your viewpoint, why do you open up blogsite after blogsite with your "ad hominem" opinions (Inhofe's list) or silly analogies (fat earthers)?
Do you want to open a debate or just pontificate?
Regards,
Max
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manacker Posted 6:37 am
28 Jan 2008
You wrote: "It's estimated there may be no more fish in the ocean by as early as 2040".
From AGW? (Or from over-fishing?)
Who "estimated" this and what scientific evidence was presented?
Max
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