Here’s another example of where historians show their value in science debates.
Naomi Oreskes delivered this lecture a few years ago on denialism in climate science. Among other targets of her criticism-by-history is my old friend Robert Jastrow. I think her history is correct, and her views on the Marshall Institute and denial of climate change informative in the minimum, and correct on the judgment of the facts.
You’ll recognize some of the names: Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, S. Fred Singer, and William Nierenberg.
Oreskes details the intentional political skewing of science by critics of the serious study of climate warming. It’s just under an hour long, but well worth watching. Dr. Oreskes is Professor of History in the Science Studies Program at the University of California at San Diego. The speech is titled “The American Denial of Global Warming.”
If Oreskes is right — and I invite you to check her references thoroughly, to discover for yourself that her history and science are both solid — Lord Monckton is a hoaxster. Notice especially the references after the 54 minute mark to the tactic of claiming that scientists are trying to get Americans to give up our sovereignty.
Nothing new under the sun.
“Global warming is here, and there are almost no communists left,” Oreskes said.
Nudge your neighbor:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
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One of the more fascinating areas of study in paleontology, I think, is the study of ancient climates and ancient weather. Particularly, in the periods well before human existence, the planet experienced some extremes….
In the past few millions of years, however, the cycles have been relatively stable within limits. One of the historic issues is that we’re rather “overdue” for a period of cooling. While no one wishes for a quick return to glaciers covering the Great Lakes, what is troubling about our current trend is what appears to be a slow runaway warming.
Are you saying we should not be concerned about runaway climate change?
Robert s reply:Your opening sentence showed hope of some imtelligent disection of what climate change is all about.
However you spoiled it all with that statement about runaway climate change.
What is runaway climate change?!!
I’ve heard about runaway global warming like what is supposed to have happened on Venus.
Now let’s use some common sense and examine some of the issues involved here.
The earth has been around for over 4.5 billion years.
Oxygen as we know it did not exist on the surface of this planet for the first 500 million years at least.
The major component was (you guessed it) CO2.
There was so much CO2 that the atmospheric pressure was equivalent to being under 1 kilometer of water.
Let me repeat that:There was so much CO2 that the atmospheric pressure was equivalent to being under 1 kilometer of water.
Then along came a type of cyano bacteria and started converting that CO2 to Oxygen.
This process was to, some 500 million years plus down the track , create a pollutant called OXYGEN which was to create the very first Major Global Extinction.
Not that there was as much life ( probably ) as we know it today.
So all that Oxygen we breath today came from all that CO2 that was in the atmosphere at that time. Got that?
You state that the earth’s climate has been relatively stable for the past couple of million years.
Well I could say that is both true and false.
You see it all depends on which side of the fence you want to look at it from.
On this planet what does the word stable mean when it comes to talking about the climate.
As you noted correctly an event such as a large volcanic eruption can disrupt the weather system for a year or two ( Mt Pinatubo ), and other factors which I presume you won’t agree with are SUNSPOTS,the earth’s precession,stored heat in the oceans, and a whole host of other factor’s which I won’t list now.
However back to my main point, The earth is estimated to be round 4.5 billion years. I’m sure you can appreciate the magnitude of the word BILLION.
You state that the climate has been relatively stable for the last couple of million years. surely you’re not seriously comparing a few million years to several billion years are you.
My point is this: If there has been no runaway global warming in over 4.5 billion years, when CO2 levels where in recent times ( geologically speaking ) up 20 times higher or more than at present, Then no amount of CO2 that we can burn will ever match those conditions that existed before mankind came into existence.
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The following is an extract from, The Friends Of Science Society.
Between 1857 and 1958, the Pettenkofer process was the standard analytical method for determining atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and usually achieved accuracy better than 3%. These determinations were made by several scientists of Nobel Prize level distinction. Following Callendar (1938), modern climatologists have generally ignored the historic determinations of CO2, despite the techniques being standard textbook procedures in several different disciplines. Chemical methods were discredited as unreliable choosing only few which fit the assumption of a climate CO2 connection.
Ernst-Georg Beck calls the falsification of the CO2 record “The greatest scandal in the modern history of science”.
See here for a summary of the Beck paper, or here for the paper
One of the goals of the Friends of Science Society is to educate the public through dissemination of relevant, balanced and objective technical information on the scientific merit of the Kyoto Protocol and the global warming issue. The science of climate change is complex. Unfortunately, politics and the media has affected the science. Climate research institutions know that they must present scary climate forecasts to receive continued funding – no crisis means no funding. The media presents stories of climate disaster to sell their products. Scientific research that suggests climate change is mostly natural does not receive much if any media coverage. These factors have caused the general public to be seriously misled on climate issues resulting in wasteful expenditures of billions of dollars in an ineffective attempt to control climate. This document gives an overview of climate change issues as determined by a comprehensive review of the state of climate science.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html
To view the graph and the res of the article paste the above into your browser.
The graph above shows the temperature changes of the lower troposphere from the surface up to about 8 km as determined from the average of two analyses of satellite data. The best fit line from January 2002 to October 2009 indicates a decline of 0.21 Celsius/decade. Surface temperature data is contaminated by the effects of urban development. The Sun’s activity, which was increasing through most of the 20th century, has recently become quiet, causing a change of trend. The green line shows the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. The ripple effect in the CO2 curve is due to the seasonal changes in biomass.
The Science in Summary
The history of the Earth tells us that the climate is always changing; from warm periods when the dinosaurs flourished, to the many ice ages when glaciers covered much of the land. Climate has always changed due to natural cycles without any help from people.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a political organization promoting a theory that recent minor temperature increases may be caused largely by man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. CO2 is an infrared gas, and increasing concentrations can potentially increase the average global temperature as the gas absorbs radiation from the Earth and emits the absorbed energy at longer wavelengths. However, the warming ability of CO2 is limited because much of the absorption spectrum is near or fully saturated. When CO2 concentrations were ten times greater than today the Earth was in the grips of one of the coldest ice ages.
The history of climate and CO2 concentration shows that temperature changes precede CO2 changes and can not be a significant driver of climate. Temperature changes over different time scales have been well correlated to solar cycles, cosmic ray flux and cloud cover. Recent research shows that cosmic rays act as a catalyst to create low clouds, which cool the planet. When the Sun is more active, the solar wind repels the cosmic rays, reducing low cloud cover allowing the Sun to warm the planet.
Computer model results presented in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report shows that if CO2 is the main climate driver, the temperature profile in the atmosphere will show a unique and distinctive pattern – a CO2 fingerprint of global warming. Actual temperature data shows no such CO2 fingerprint. Therefore, the comparison of observed data to computer models proves that CO2 is not the main climate driver. In atmosphere layers near 5 km, the modelled trend from 1980 is 100 to 300% higher than observed. Real world data shows that high clouds cause a strong negative feedback on climate, but climate models assume that clouds cause a positive feedback. The computer models are programmed to forecast a constant water vapor relative humidity with increasing CO2 resulting in a large water vapor feedback. Actual data shows the relative humidity has fallen 21% since 1948 in the upper troposphere where the models predict the greatest feedback. A new greenhouse effect theory by Miskolczi shows that the Earth maintains a saturated greenhouse effect. Adding CO2 to the atmosphere just replaces an equivalent amount of water vapour to maintain an almost constant greenhouse effect.
Several planets and moons have warmed recently along with the Earth, confirming a natural warming trend. Over longer time periods, as the solar system moves in and out of the galactic arms the cosmic ray flux changes, causing ice ages and warm ages. A comparison of temperature and solar activity proxy data suggests that solar effects can explain at least 75% of the surface warming during the last 100 years.
CO2 is plant food and the increase in the CO2 concentration may have increased the global food production by 15% since 1950 resulting in huge benefits for people. For Canada, any CO2 warming effect would also benefit us by reducing our space heating costs and making a more pleasant climate.
The IPCC predicts that global average temperatures will increase by 0.17 to 0.38 oC per decade to the end of the century depending on the rate of CO2 growth in the atmosphere and other assumptions. The projections assume that no action is taken to limit CO2 emissions. However, these predictions are unrealistic because they falsely assume that the recent temperature changes are driven solely by CO2 and that the Sun has little effect on climate. A recent study of past climate change used by the IPCC has been shown to be wrong due to the use of a faulty algorithm, and the inappropriate selection of data.
The land temperature record is contaminated by the urban heat island effect. Fully correcting the land temperature record would reduce the warming trend from 1980 to 2002 by half. The IPCC historical CO2 record may be incorrect due to inappropriate adjustments to the ice core data, and ignoring direct historical CO2 measurements. The IPCC selects and adjusts data to conform to its CO2 warming hypothesis and ignores alternative climate theories. This is the wrong way to do science. Many scientists strongly disagree with the IPCC conclusions.
The sea level data shows no increase in the recent rate of sea level rise, and no such increase is expected over the next hundred years. There has been no detected increase in severe storms and there is no reason to expect an increase in the number or intensity of hurricanes resulting from any warming assumed to be from human caused CO2 emissions.
Any increase in temperatures due to human caused CO2 emissions will likely be beneficial to human health. The CO2 fertilization effect will increase the rate of forest growth and CO2 induced crop yield increases will reduce the pressures to cut down forests for farmland expansion. This will greatly benefit animals by slowing habitat destruction.
The benefits of CO2 emissions greatly exceed any likely harmful effects. Several authorities who have studied solar cycles have warned that the Earth may soon enter a cooling phase as the Sun is expected to become less active. The atmosphere may warm because of human activity, but if it does, the expected change is unlikely to be more than 1 ºC, and probably less, in the next 100 years.
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No one has ever argued that there has been no warming the past. Why do you introduce that now?
One of the more fascinating areas of study in paleontology, I think, is the study of ancient climates and ancient weather. Particularly, in the periods well before human existence, the planet experienced some extremes.
In the past few millions of years, however, the cycles have been relatively stable within limits. One of the historic issues is that we’re rather “overdue” for a period of cooling. While no one wishes for a quick return to glaciers covering the Great Lakes, what is troubling about our current trend is what appears to be a slow runaway warming.
Are you arguing that the massive volcanic eruptions that produced significant cooling had no effect? I’m not sure what your point is.
Are you saying we should not be concerned about runaway climate change?
Without pointing out to you (though others may be informed) that such extremes are a symptom of trouble in a warming global atmosphere, aren’t you confusing a weather fluctuation with climate?
Yeah, we’ve had record snows (often lake effect snows, a symptom of global warming) and record colds in the U.S. But globally, the planet last year was incredibly warm for the past 50,000 years, and last decade is one of the warmest ever.
One early snow in one locality doesn’t change that, nor does it suggest a trend.
Only if one doesn’t pay close attention to the players and the issues. No scientist and no policy maker in the action (where Rep. Joe Barton decidedly was not) made the foolish claim that winter in Copenhagen indicated an end to global warming. Have you ever been to Copenhagen? Do you know what the normal winter weather there is like?
No, and they weren’t misled by the heat in Bali at the previous meeting. Most of the people at the meeting were rational, and most had done most of their homework.
Are you under the misimpression that global warming means there would be no winter anywhere?
What downturn? Show us the papers showing a downturn in temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere in the past decade, or even five years.
You probably hold all Nobel winners in such great disregard. All we know is that your chief argument against warming is insulting a guy with a lot more smarts than you or I have. You’re not impressing me with your case.
Gore is much more a scientist than most policy makers. I’ve seen him in action, close up, and he’s one of the most scientifically-astute policy makers in history. His leading on such issues as organ transplants, orphan drugs, pollution clean up and pollution prevention, and his single-handed defense of the internet when all the current climate “skeptics” joined in asking that it be killed suggest to me that he knows more than the average genius bear.
If you have a case, make it without hoping that insults will do it for you.
Yeah, we can tell you don’t know much about him. Or science.
Wonderful! Show us the studies that verify that claim. Surely you would not make such a claim on the basis of internet tomfoolery, or on the basis of propaganda, or just to be contrary — would you?
If the current trend upward is natural, beyond the time and beyond the temperatures previously noted in most natural swings, can you offer us a similar set of circumstances from history? You yourself just noted early snows in Austria (which you will claim as not a symptom of global warming, if for no other reason that such things are a prediction of the global warming theory and you don’t really want to confirm what you believe against evidence to be the case).
Is that your defense about Kilimanjaro?
Here’s the problem with your defense: The scientists who noted that the glaciers on Kilimanjaro may have been created originally by an unusual period of precipitation tens of thousands of years ago, also agree that they should not be melting so fast as they are. In fact, they say flat out that global warming is killing the glaciers prematurely. What their paper indicates is that we won’t recover the glaciers merely by ending the warming. That’s rather a tragedy. People in the future will think Hemingway hallucinated.
Plus, that’s just one of about 600 glaciers on Earth. For the first time in recorded history, almost all of those glaciers are melting dramatically. In almost every case, global warming accelerates the melting way beyond any completely natural phenomenon observed in the last several millions of years, since the oceans retreated from Kansas and Central Texas, and since the Rocky Mountains and Himalayas arose.
Yet, you claim that one not-contrary to global warming chunk of data makes Al Gore “wrong,” while you blithely ignore the melting all around you.
You might be right about one thing. This might not be a problem of politics. It may be a problem of mental health and mass hysteria against the evidence.
If temperatures
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Your comment:
robert s reply:
You know my answer to that Ed.
Yes warming may be causing the glaciers to melt.
However if warming never occured before, what happened to the glaciers from the last ice age. Did they just simply sublimate?
Or do you deny that there never was an ice age 18,000 years ago.Or that there never was a little ice age from 1400 to 1850 and as the world came out of that ice age that temperatures would naturally have to up and whether you can accept the truth or not have actually been declining in the last 10 years.
Austria just had it's earliest snow fall in recorded history.
The dismal failure of Copenhagen can be attributed to the freezing conditions that greeted the combatants ( yes they came to fight for our money because we owe them a so called climate debt ).
It must have been so ridiculous to quite a few of the delegates there that this was a summit on global warming and they were freezing their as…s off in record breaking temps, so much so that even the London to France rail link was impassable!
If the IPCC were right about man made CO2 causing global warming then why have their models failed miserably in predicting the downturn in global temps and the winter records that are being set in the northern hemisphere at the moment.
As for Big Al he is not a scientist, his documentary is not a scientific documentary, he is nothing but a cheap 3rd rate entertainer. Mind you I find him very charismatic but that's all.
Yes global warming does exist but is caused by natural variations. There, nice and simple answer and straight to the point.
cheers
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robert s reply to Nick : I feel sorry for you because I don’t think you know what you’re on about.
Firstly as Ed knows I don’t deny climate change.
Climate change has been going on for the last 4.5 billion years.
Now here is where it gets interesting, do you really think a tax on CO2 is going to stop the climate from changing. Tell me how much climate change stop will my dollar buy, or even easier for you to answer since you seem to know all the answers how many degrees of global warming will my dollar prevent.
You my friend are a pessimist. You need help. You must live in a blackhole where there is no escape from life’s negativities so you need to hound others and climate change for you is the vehicle by which to do it.
Get help my friend while you still can.
You use too many ‘if’ scenarios. If is not the same as facts.
I look at things positively and say man will through his ingenuity and intelligence ( yes something you seem to lack ) will over come any obstacle just as he has done in the last 10000 years to bring civilisation to where it is today with modern life saving drugs,engineering feats that allow us to build things like the golden gate bridge, dams, and the most amazing feat of all placing men on the moon.
How about modern medicines that save lives, modern operating techniques,heart transplants,you fill in the rest, I can go on forever and ever.
No this climate change folly is about control of the world. Create a problem that is global and then have the people like you cry for a global goverment to fix a fictitious problem.
The biggest joke of all is on us the little guys on the street.
While big business, yes even oil companies line up to start trading in CO2 ( the biggest ponzie scheme ever to come in existence )and are laughing at the true environmentalists who believe the the world is falling to pieces, we have another group that is set to profit by taking over the reins of a world government, namely the communists in the United Nations.
And you and I and our children are going to be patsies that pay for all these.
I can sympathize with your asthma as my son amd grandchildren suffer from it too.
and no body should have to put up with pollution.
But a world goverment and cap and trade now that is worse that pollution, that is corruption on a grand scale.
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robert s says:Let me put it the other way around,
what if you alarmists are 100% wrong.
Gee..then we’ve dealt with a huge environmental problem in the form of all the pollution we spew into the enviornment which will, among other things, drive down health care costs because..wait for it..those like me who have asthma won’t be getting sick simply going outside our doors, just for example. If you want to argue that the pollution we spew into the enviornment isn’t harmful then I suggest you take a trip to Russia and see what they’re rather lax environmental policies did for them.
Plus we’ll have spurred economic growth due to the innovation that the technology required to deal with said pollution will create.
Whereas if we don’t deal with climate change and it proves true then we’re in a massive sh–hole because you and the other denialists were stupid idiots. Tell me, little one, what do you think is going to happen to the economy if the polar ice caps all do melt and raise the ocean levels by feet? Or if the Midwest becomes like Arizona in it’s climate? How many wars do you think are going to be fought because of the changes to the climate if climate change is true? How many people do you think are going to die if you’re wrong? Tell me, what do you think is going to happen to Minnesota’s 15,000 lakes if there isn’t enough snowfall and rainfall to keep them filled? Oh if you’re wondering what’s so important about Minnesota there…it’s my home state.
You are literally arguing “There is no point to putting an fire escape in an building…it will never ever catch on fire.”
And curious you didn’t bother trying to answer my question, Robert, before you flipped it around. Should I assume that’s because you can’t answer it? You want to argue that climate change isn’t happening..then you should have an answer to what if you’re wrong? Unless you think you’re God and therefor are never wrong?
As for what I said about 99% of the world’s scientists..on that I’m willing to bet that I’m far closer to the truth on that number then you are.
You keep on claiming that you can prove that climate change isn’t real. So then you can explain what scientific tests have been done to prove your claim? You can show what scientific papers have been published and peer reviewed right?
I find it absolutely preposterous that you somehow think that with all the pollution we put into the environment that it somehow doesn’t have an affect. I find it even more preposterous that you somehow think we shouldn’t do anything in regards to the climate changes are going on whether you think they’re caused by man or not.
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Robert writes:
BY the way your comment there are no more communists, of there are no more, because the modern term for communism is “SOCIALISM”.
just as the modern term for “Fascism” and “Nazi” is “Republican.”
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Robert S said:
Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying before I eviscerate your claim, Robert. You’re saying that, with 600+ glaciers known on Earth, with more than 585 of them in decline due to global warming, you claim Al Gore is wrong because one scientist argues that not all the decline of the glacier on Kilimanjaro is due to warming, but also due to a failure of rains over the last 1,000 years?
So, you’re calling Gore “wrong” on 0.17% of them (that’s “seventeen one-hundredths of one percent”), and saying that his being right on the other 99.83% doesn’t count? And even at that, the scientist you cite says that the melting at Kilimanjaro is being speeded by global warming? Right?
Is that what you’re saying?
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robert s says:Let me put it the other way around,
what if you alarmists are 100% wrong.
Where do you get this myth that 99+% of scientists are in agreement. Come out of your shell man.
Even if man made climate change were real you still would never get 99% of scientists agreeing. You’re very naive to believe that.
My response to Ed Darell: The glaciers melting today did not start melting yesterday, they started 10s if not hundreds of years ago.Surely you should know that.
But the most wonderful thing about this is the media is starting to wake up take notice that there is an opposing view, which means more people will become sceptical as they see the facts for themselves.
I noticed Obama’s rating has dropped to 47%. May be he should stop trying to push cap and trade.
And here is another nail in the coffin of AGW:
Dutch: Gore Wrong on Snows of Kilimanjaro:
Here is the site,http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOP_7YDC49 hope you can read Dutch, otherwise read on.
But this is typical of the alarmists always jumping to the worst possible conclusions without any evidence…
The Netherlands is afire today over a Dutch study concluding Mount Kilimanjaro’s snow melt — used as a symbol of AGW by Al Gore — is entirely natural.
Newspapers and news sites in the Netherlands today extensively broke the news of the findings of a research team led by Professor Jaap Sinninghe Damste — a leading molecular paleontologist at Utrecht University and winner of the prestigious Spinoza Prize — about the melting icecap of the Kilimanjaro, the African mountain that became a symbol of anthropogenic global warming.
Professor Sinninghe Damste’s research, as discussed on the site of the Dutch Organization of Scientific Research (DOSR) — a governmental body — shows that the icecap of Kilimanjaro was not the result of cold air but of large amounts of precipitation which fell at the beginning of the Holocene period, about 11,000 years ago.
The melting and freezing of moisture on top of Kilimanjaro appears to be part of “a natural process of dry and wet periods.” The present melting is not the result of “environmental damage caused by man.”
Professor Damste studied organic biomarker molecules in the sediment record of Lake Challa, near Mount Kilimanjaro, and reconstructed the changes and intensity of precipitation in this part of Africa over the last 25,000 years. They observed an 11,500 year cycle of intense monsoon precipitation.
In the dry period between 12,800 and 11,500 years ago, Kilimanjaro was ice-free.
At the end of this period, a dramatic climate change from very dry to very wet took place — driven by changes in solar radiation — resulting in the creation of an icecap. At the moment, this part of Africa seems to be at the end of a similar dry period, resulting in the disappearance of the famous icecap.
DOSR calls Al Gore’s iconic use of the melting cap of Kilimanjaro “unfortunate” — since it now seems to be mainly the result of “natural climate variations.”
The journal Nature published the highly technical article by Professor Sinninghe Damste’s team.
The website of Elsevier magazine — the Netherlands’ most circulated political weekly — broke the news as follows: “Dutchman discredits Al Gore’s climate evidence.”
Leon de Winter is columnist for Elsevier Magazine in Holland. He is also a bestselling novelist and adjunct-fellow at the Hudson Institute. He is presently living in Los Angeles.
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BY the way your comment there are no more communists, of there are no more, because the modern term for communism is “SOCIALISM”.
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I have a simple question for you, Robert.
What if you and all the other denialists are wrong?
And as for you process, 99.999999999999999% of the world’s scientists are all in agreement on climate change.
so to be blunt…bite me.
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Fascinating response, Robert. Can you tell us which of Dr. Oreskes’ points was nullified by anything in the stolen e-mails?
No, I didn’t think you could.
Facts are stubborn things. The glaciers still melt; the spring comes 8 hours earlier; USDA plant zones still march northward, along with insect pests formerly considered tropical; birds still move up the mountain slopes and northward, except where the warming-caused lake effect snows block their spring nesting and dining. Measured temperatures around the world, from tens of thousands of sites, show the past decade to have been the warmest ever.
Maybe it’s because Nature doesn’t get e-mail? What’s your explanation?
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Who’s in denial now?
By Kenneth P. Green, For The Calgary HeraldDecember 28, 2009
Responses to “Climategate”–the leaked e-mails from Britain’s University of East Anglia and its Climatic Research Unit — remind me of the line “Are your feet wet? Can you see the pyramids? That’s because you’re in denial.”
Climate catastrophists like Al Gore and the UN’s Rajendra Pachauri are downplaying Climategate: it’s only a few intemperate scientists; there’s no real evidence of wrongdoing; now let’s persecute the whistleblower. In Calgary, the latest fellow trying to use the Monty Python “nothing to see here, move along” routine is Prof. David Mayne Reid, who penned a column last week denying the importance of Climategate.
Unfortunately for Reid, old saws won’t work in the Internet age: Climategate has blazed across the Internet, blogosphere, and social networking sites. Even environmentalist and writer George Monbiot has recognized that the public’s perception of climate science will be damaged extensively, calling for one of the Climategate ringleaders to resign.
What’s catastrophic about Climategate is that it reveals a science as broken as Michael Mann’s hockey stick, which despite Reid’s protestations, has been shown to be a misleading chart that erases a 400-year stretch of warm temperatures (called the Medieval Warm Period), and a more recent little ice-age that ended in the mid-1800s. No amount of hand-waving will restore the credibility of climate science while holding onto rubbish like that.
Climategate reveals skulduggery the general public can understand: that a tightly-linked clique of scientists were behaving as crusaders. Their letters reveal they were working in what they repeatedly labelled a “cause” to promote a political agenda.
That’s not science, that’s a crusade. When you cherry-pick, discard, nip, tuck, and tape disparate bits of data into the most alarming portrayal you can in the name of a “cause,” you’re not engaged in science, but in the production of propaganda. And this clique tried to subvert the peer-review process as well. They attempted to prevent others from getting into peer reviewed journals — thus letting them claim skeptic research wasn’t peer-reviewed — a convenient circular (and dishonest) way to discredit skeptics.
Finally, people know that a fish rots from its head. The Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia was considered the top climate research community. It was the source of a vast swath of the information then that was funnelled into the supposedly “authoritative” reports of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
If scientific objectivity is corrupt at the top, there’s every reason to think that the rot spreads through the entire body. And evidence suggests it has. A Russian think-tank recently revealed the climate temperature record compiled by the Climatic Research Unit cherry-picked data from only 25 per cent of Russia’s climate monitoring sites, the sites closest to urban areas, biased by the urban heat island effect. The stations excluded data from 40 per cent of Russia’s total land mass, which is 12.5 per cent of all the Earth’s land mass.
Reid’s indignation about Climategate is beyond ludicrous. “It is wrong,” intones Reid, “to castigate people for things said in private, and often taken out of context.” He equates the response to Climategate with a “lynch mob.” Funny, the professor seems to have highly selective indignation; he is apparently unaware of the unremitting attacks on people skeptical of climate science or policy by climate scientists and politicians.
People skeptical of any aspect of climate change have long been called “deniers,” an odious linkage with Holocaust denial, and various luminaries have called for them to be drowned, jailed, and tried for crimes against humanity. One prominent columnist called skepticism treason against the very Earth itself.
As for indignation about the release of private correspondence, where was Reid’s indignation when Greenpeace, looking for something to spin into an incriminating picture, stole skeptic Chris Horner’s trash? Where was his indignation a few years ago when scientist Steve Schroeder showed a routine letter of mine to another climate scientist (Andrew Dessler), who posted it to the Internet where it was spun into the scurrilous accusation that I was trying to bribe UN scientists? Reid’s indignation is the chutzpah of a man who kills his family then wants pity because he’s an orphan.
The Climategate scandal, like others in biology and medicine erodes the credibility of both the scientists involved, and the institution of scientific research. And it should: it has become evident that there is a lot of rot going on in the body of science, and too little effort made to fix it.
A start could be made. They should start by practicing the scientific method: release all data, and release all assumptions and methods used to process the data at the time of publication. Make it available to researchers (even lay researchers) who are outside the clique so the work can be checked. Had the researchers involved in Climategate done this from the beginning, instead of circling their wagons and refusing to allow outsiders to check their work, they would have taken less hectoring. As a bonus for them, Climategate would never have happened.
Former IPCC reviewer Kenneth P. Green, has his doctorate in environmental sci ence and engi neering and is an Advisor to the Frontier Center for Public Polic y, ( http://www.fcpp.org).Green is a Resident Scholar at the Americ an Enterprise Institute.
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
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Attributed to DR. Rogers:
You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the industrious out of it.
You dont multiply wealth by dividing it.
The goverment cannot give anything to anybody that it doesnt first take from somebody else.
Whenever somebody receives something without working for it, somebody has to work for it without receiving.
The worst thing that can happen to a nation is for half the people to get the idea they dont have to work because somebody else will work for them, and the other half to get the idea that it does no good to work because they don’t get to enjoy the fruit of their labour.
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So, rather than look at what socialism is or the facts, you cast in with a bunch of profiteers who wish to pick your pocket and dump garbage in your air in the name of laissez faire economics and the practice of Barnumism.
Amazing.
At least the hand in the pocket is warm, when you can feel it.
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Fawn Leibowitz Says:
robert s says: I don’t think you read the publication,please read it first.
I am not a fanatic, just a sceptic. Whether Global warming is caused by humans ( which is highly improbable) I refuse to be taken advantage of by a bunch of socialists who want to control the world all in the name of man made global warming.
You’ve eithe glossed over or didn’t bother to read it.
Here a few points that are really important ie:
This is how alarmists do business. Exagerate, exagerate, exagerate.
Quote:
1)Greenpeace was following a script. In 2005, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope told members of his organization they should “[r]ide the wave of public concern created over extreme weather.”
2)While it is impossible to link a single weather event to global warming, scientists warn that tropical storms like Cyclone Aila could become more severe. The global cost of climate-related disaster has increased relentlessly over the past half-century. THE CAUSE IS NOT GLOBAL WARMING however. Rather it is RISING CONCENTRATIONS of people and infrastructure along coastlines.
3) Roger A. Pielke Jr. noted in a 2005 paper for Environmental Science and Policy that if everything else stays the same but we halt global warming, there would still be a 500% increase in hurricane damage in 50 years time. If global warming continues but we halt the number of people moving into harms’ way, the increase in hurricane damage would be less than 10%. If the entire world had signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, and its binding restrictions were to last all the way until 2050, the predicted reduction in global warming could cut hurricane damage by half a percentage point.
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Your reply from November 24, 2009 at 8:39am is incredibly weak. Your fatuous comments to the solid points made aren’t helping your cause.
And on November 24, 2009 at 9:04am you quote Bjorn Lomberg to support your denial case. Do you realize he agrees that AGW is happening?
His solution is different, but you have quoted a well-regarded academic who says you are wrong on your main argument of AGW.
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By BJøRN LOMBORG
Global warming has captured the attention of politicians around the world. The following article is part of a series leading up to the December United Nations conference in Copenhagen on how ordinary people in different countries view the issue:
One week after Cyclone Aila flattened Lakshmi Bera’s mud, bamboo and thatched grass house in May, a Copenhagen Consensus researcher found her family of five under the open sky. Their only protection was a plastic tarp.
“We have been living on a bowl of rice for the past few days”, said 35-year-old Mrs. Bera. “The food that we had stocked up was lost. Whatever water we are getting we are sharing with our cattle, since the animals too are suffering. The only clothes we have left are the ones we are wearing.”
After the cyclone ravaged parts of India and Bangladesh, a Greenpeace spokesperson announced that the disaster should be used to teach politicians a lesson. “India must continue to pressure the industrialized world to make deep and urgent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.”
Greenpeace was following a script. In 2005, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope told members of his organization they should “[r]ide the wave of public concern created over extreme weather.”
In Gangapur village in the Sundarbans, India, Mrs. Bera had more immediate fears than carbon. “If we don’t have a house, food and water, how can we think about these things?” she asked.
Mrs. Bera needed 25,000 Indian rupees to rebuild and dreamed of being able to afford a concrete house that would not wash away. She wanted the Indian government to improve the mud embankments—last substantially worked on in the 1970s—that were supposed to protect her home.
She also was angry that the early-warning system failed. “Had we known the storm would come,” she said, “we could have at least moved some of our belongings elsewhere.”
While it is impossible to link a single weather event to global warming, scientists warn that tropical storms like Cyclone Aila could become more severe. The global cost of climate-related disaster has increased relentlessly over the past half-century. The cause is not global warming, however. Rather it is rising concentrations of people and infrastructure along coastlines.
Roger A. Pielke Jr. noted in a 2005 paper for Environmental Science and Policy that if everything else stays the same but we halt global warming, there would still be a 500% increase in hurricane damage in 50 years time. If global warming continues but we halt the number of people moving into harms’ way, the increase in hurricane damage would be less than 10%. If the entire world had signed up to the Kyoto Protocol, and its binding restrictions were to last all the way until 2050, the predicted reduction in global warming could cut hurricane damage by half a percentage point.
By following the advice of hurricane victims like Mrs. Bera, however, we could achieve a lot more. Better evacuation plans, community education, and the distribution of relief would reduce the amount of suffering caused by severe storms.
Regulating vulnerable land and not offering state-subsidized, low-cost insurance that encourages people to settle in high-risk areas would reduce the number of people hit by hurricanes. Better building codes, upgraded dikes and levees, and improved warning systems would also reduce storm damage. Protecting wetlands and beaches that act as natural seawalls would also help.
These measures are much cheaper than carbon cuts and could dramatically cut the losses due to storm damage that are sure to come. They would also save a huge amount of heartache and suffering—and at lower cost.
Rather than riding a wave of concern about big storms, we would do better to follow the advice of those, who like Mrs. Bera, have to live with the consequences of our actions.
Mr. Lomborg is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank, and author of “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming” (Knopf, 2007).
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Ed Darrell Says:
November 23, 2009 at 3:22 pm
There is no sound evidence that our use of fossil fuels is making any significant contribution to any global climate change that might be occurring.
There is much sound evidence of warming, and much sound evidence that humans contribute to warming significantly.
robert s says: Show me one scientist that says he has proof that humans are without a doubt causing warming and I’ll show you a liar.
1. Migratory birds around the world have altered their nesting destinations, due to changing food conditions and nesting conditions caused by warming.
robert s says: migratory birds have altered their destinations in the past, due to many reasons including warming which occured after the
world came out of the last little ice age.
2. Plant life across the planet has been substantially affected by climate zone changes. Compare USDA’s original charts for the U.S. with current charts of where to grow plants. That’s warming. It is incontrovertible.
robert s says: Can’t argue with that, add to that continental drift as well.
3. Temperature increases over the past year appear to correlate with increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphwere, especially CO2.
robert s says: Temperatures have actually come down in the last ten years and CO2 has been going up. Of course the most of the greenhouse gasses
is water vapor. CO2 is only .04%, while water vapor is 97%. Now who is the denier.
4. Air pollution theory from the 1940s postulated that particulates and aerosols cool the atmosphere, while greenhouse gases warm it. Under that theory, warming was being masked by particulate and aerosol pollution — one counteracted the other as both increased. Starting about 1972, control of particulates and aerosols dramatically reduced the amount of emissions and total concentrations of these pollutants. As those coolers decreased, warming quickened.
You’ll notice that none of these warming manifestations relies on a model of the atmosphere, but is instead a measured, verifiable chunk of data.
robert s says:
The decrease of particulates also increased the amount of UV rays hitting the surface and resulted in a great increase in skin cancers especially in Australia
and no one, even today is aware of that fact that cleaner skies mean greater cancer risks. Not saying that clean skies is a bad thing but everything has
it’s consequences. Something the environmentalists can’t do is take responsibility for their actions.
5. Insurance actuaries calculate that warming already increases the frequency and magnitude of weather, and so people in states like Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, California and other coastal states, already pay a global warming premium on home insurance. Here in Texas, homeowners pay between $1,000 and $1,200 a year in increased insurance rates to cover the increased damage from warming.
robert s says:
Insurance companies will say anything to make an extra buck. And does any one think that a cap and trade will bring those premiums down? Guess again.
You may have come very late to this discussion. There’s a lot of evidence of warming, substantial evidence of human causes of warming, and very little to rebut those science conclusions. You appear to have a thumb on the scales when you weigh the data. If it’s not your thumb, somebody is playing you as a gullible.
But I’m willing to hear a good case, if someone from the denialist side has one.
robert s says.
Firstly I am not a denialist, I am a sceptic.the opposite of sceptic is GULLIBLE. Yes there is warming no one is denying that, how ever I get very sceptical when you say that 385 parts per million of CO2 is causing warming, as I have not found one single respectful scientist that will say with 100% certainty that man is the sole cause
of this warming.Try turning off the sun for a couple of days and if it still stays warm I’ll believe you.
Oh by the way listen to Pete Ridley the guy is smarter than both of us put together.
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There is much sound evidence of warming, and much sound evidence that humans contribute to warming significantly.
1. Migratory birds around the world have altered their nesting destinations, due to changing food conditions and nesting conditions caused by warming.
2. Plant life across the planet has been substantially affected by climate zone changes. Compare USDA’s original charts for the U.S. with current charts of where to grow plants. That’s warming. It is incontrovertible.
3. Temperature increases over the past year appear to correlate with increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphwere, especially CO2.
4. Air pollution theory from the 1940s postulated that particulates and aerosols cool the atmosphere, while greenhouse gases warm it. Under that theory, warming was being masked by particulate and aerosol pollution — one counteracted the other as both increased. Starting about 1972, control of particulates and aerosols dramatically reduced the amount of emissions and total concentrations of these pollutants. As those coolers decreased, warming quickened.
You’ll notice that none of these warming manifestations relies on a model of the atmosphere, but is instead a measured, verifiable chunk of data.
5. Insurance actuaries calculate that warming already increases the frequency and magnitude of weather, and so people in states like Texas, Florida, the Carolinas, California and other coastal states, already pay a global warming premium on home insurance. Here in Texas, homeowners pay between $1,000 and $1,200 a year in increased insurance rates to cover the increased damage from warming.
You may have come very late to this discussion. There’s a lot of evidence of warming, substantial evidence of human causes of warming, and very little to rebut those science conclusions. You appear to have a thumb on the scales when you weigh the data. If it’s not your thumb, somebody is playing you as a gullible.
But I’m willing to hear a good case, if someone from the denialist side has one.
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There is no sound evidence that our use of fossil fuels is making any significant contribution to any global climate change that might be occurring. Assumptions, estimates, uncertainty and speculation are rife and the poor understanding of climate processes and drivers is being used by the UN and others for reasons having nothing to do with global climate change. The UN has two primary objectives:
– introduction of a mechanism for global taxation in order to redistribute wealth from developed to underdeveloped economies,
– establishment of a framework for global government.
Attempts to achieve binding agreement on this at Copenhagen are destined to fail. The release of those files leaked from University of East Anglia Climate research Unit, probably by a disgruntled insider, should ensure this, regardless of whether or not the contents turn out to be as significant as many of us hope.
What a reaction there has been to the alleged disclosure of E-mails and other data! This information has been flying around the Internet since 19th and if genuine it potentially blows the lid off the all of the propaganda that has been promulgated about The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis. Despite this there apparently has not been a word from any political party member or broadcaster about it. This has much more significance than what today’s celebrities had for breakfast. Why no news coverage or political reaction?
In an article on this subject in the UK’s Daily Telegraph (Note 1) mention is made of John Daly. It says QUOTE: One of the alleged emails has a gentle gloat over the death in 2004 of John L Daly (one of the first climate change sceptics, founder of the Still Waiting For Greenhouse site), commenting: “In an odd way this is cheering news.” UNQUOTE. This alleged E-mail is presented more fully elsewhere (Note 2).
It is important to remain sceptical about the validity of this “leak” of information and await the results of a thorough investigation. (Is anyone in the news media doing something along these lines?). Despite this, there is a saying “there’s no smoke without fire”. It is interesting to see that there appeared to be an exchange of E-mails between John Daly and Phil Jones back in 2001 (Note 3). This item starts with QUOTE: After several requests by visitors to this website for details of the two emails which were sent by Phil Jones of CRU, demanding withdrawal of the articles about recent errors in CRU hemispheric temperatures, the following exchange of emails was made via a very large CC (110 addressees), with both of Jones’ emails signed in his official capacity as professor at CRU. UNQUOTE. It is followed by an apparent exchange of E-mails between John Daly and Phil Jones.
I leave you to read them and draw your own conclusions. While you’re at it, have a read of the comments at Wattsupwiththat (Note 2). There are some interesting comments about that site favoured by supporters of The (significant human-made global climate change) Hypothesis, Realclimate (Note 4). It leads off with an article spinning the motivations behind what appears in the E-mails followed by some uncharacteristic defensive responses to readers’ comments by Gavin Schmidt.
Another interesting commentary on this is at ClimateAudit (Note 5).
NOTES:
1) see http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
2) see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/19/breaking-news-story-hadley-cru-has-apparently-been-hacked-hundreds-of-files-released/
3) see http://www.john-daly.com/cru/emails.htm
4) see http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/comment-page-10/
5) see http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7810
Pete Ridley, human-made global climate change agnos(cep)tic
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Global truth, here:
https://timpanogos.wordpress.com/2009/08/18/how-about-another-cup-of-coffee-global-warming-conspiracy/
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Global Lying
by Thomas Sowell (June 10, 2002)
The campaign to stampede the federal government into drastic action to counter “global warming” has never let honesty cramp its style. The most recent ploy has been the release of a study from the Environmental Protection Agency which concluded that human actions were responsible for rising temperatures and that government restrictions on those actions were necessary to prevent various disastrous scenarios from unfolding.
The problem is that all this hysteria was based on a computer model which had been shown to be incompatible with factual data. Patrick Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, had already exposed the inability of that computer model to account for existing temperature changes before its release to the public was allowed to suggest that it was able to predict future temperature changes.
This is by no means the first time that a supposedly “scientific” report turned out to be a political report wrapping itself in the mantle of science. Last year, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, garnished with the names of numerous eminent scientists, which was widely hailed in the media as proving the dangers of global warming. The problem with that particular report was that the scientists whose names were put on display had not written the report nor even seen it before it was released.
One of those eminent scientists, MIT professor Richard S. Lindzen, publicly repudiated the conclusions of the study on which his name had been displayed. As Professor Lindzen, a meteorologist, pointed out, “the climate is always changing. Innumerable factors go into temperature changes and many of these factors, such as the changing amounts of heat put out by the sun during different eras, are beyond the control of human beings.”
The same kind of ploy was used by a United Nations report on climate in 1996. After the scientists had reviewed the report, the following sentence was added, without their knowledge — “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.” But that is not what the scientists said.
What are all these ploys about? There are people in the environmental cult and in the media who are hell-bent to have the United States and other countries sign the Kyoto treaty that would drastically restrict how our economy works and what kind of lives the average American could lead.
Anything that allows them to impose their superior wisdom and virtue on the rest of us gets a sympathetic hearing. Moral melodrama also has great appeal to some. As Eric Hoffer said, “Intellectuals cannot operate at room temperature.”
Every record hot day is trumpeted in the media as showing global warming. But record cold days are mentioned only as isolated curiosities, if they are mentioned at all.
Environmental cults have already stampeded us into recycling programs that studies have shown to be counterproductive — except for appeasing shrill zealots and allowing them to feel like they are saving the planet.
In the 1970s, the big scare was global cooling — a “new ice age.” And of course drastic government action was needed to head it off. There has to be moral melodrama.
The real question is not whether human beings have any effect on temperature. The question is: How much? And how much can we change the temperature — and at what price? And what if we do nothing? What will happen? And how dire will it be?
Professor Michaels estimates that most of the global warming over the past century has been due to the sun’s getting hotter. If we do everything the Kyoto treaty calls for, it would not lower the average temperature in the world by half a degree over the next 50 years. But it could wreck some economies.
And what if we do nothing? Actually there are benefits to global warming, such as a longer growing season, but we are not likely to see a lot of those benefits because there is not likely to be a lot of warming. Moreover, it is mostly the very cold places that are getting warmer. As Professor Michaels points out, “Siberia has warmed from minus 40 to minus 28 in January.” Is anyone complaining — other than professional complainers and professional doomsayers?
Thomas Sowell has published a large volume of writing. His dozen books, as well as numerous articles and essays, cover a wide range of topics, from classic economic theory to judicial activism, from civil rights to choosing the right college.
Please contact your local newspaper editor if you want to read the THOMAS SOWELL column in your hometown paper.
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A few papers Oreskes missed…
450 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming
http://www.populartechnology.net/2009/10/peer-reviewed-papers-supporting.html
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Is Jim Hansen the Granddaddy of them all when it comes to Alarmism?
Catching Jim Hansen exaggerating about climate change again
NASA’s supreme global warming scaremeister, Jim Hansen, has given a speech to The Club Of Rome (don’t even go there, that’s a conspiracy theory all of its own), once again claiming it is do or die on climate change.
Or was it do or lie?
Here’s what he told them about a week ago, about this photo of surface water on a Greenland glacier disappearing down a plughole in the ice:
The meltwater runs to a low spot on the ice surface, where it burrows a hole in the ice sheet that carries the water all the way to base of the ice sheet. The meltwater lubricates the base of the ice sheet, accelerating the discharge of giant icebergs to the ocean. This is one of the processes causing ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica to increase.
Now Jim’s a hero to our friends at Hot Topic, and you only have to look down their twitter alerts to know that because they twittered this speech. But it turns out both Jim Hansen and Hot Topic should have paid more attention to the scientific studies quoted in Air Con, such as the one from University of Washington/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution last year that says:
“New findings indicate that while surface melt plays a substantial role in ice sheet dynamics, it may not produce large instabilities leading to sea level rise.”
The study, which measure ice sheet movement using RADARSAT and ground based GPS, describes meltwater as “inconsequential” in the grand scheme of things – directly contradicting Hansen’s Chicken Little take on things above.
Another study quoted in Air Con, published in the journal Science late last year, reaches similar findings. Utrecht University researchers found that the water disappearing down the plug hole did indeed lubricate the base of the ice sheet, but only briefly before it refroze and glued the ice sheet back to the bedrock.
“Ultimately, this is not a cause of accelerated sea level rise” reported the study.
Beam Jim up, Scotty, he needs re-programming.
Posted by iwishart on November 09, 2009 at 03:49 PM | Permalink
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Robert S response to Ed:
I don’t confuse weather with climate but can’t say the same about the alarmists.
If it is a hot day it’s climate change.
If it’s an unusually cool day it’s weather.
Guess what, weather makes climate, and climate drives weather.
The two are interlinked just like dancing the tango.
Hey nothing wrong mixing musical drama and science.
The alarmists do it all the time, but to a much greater degree. That’s why they are called ALARMISTS.
Ed Darrell Says:
November 9, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Can you or anyone imagine a planet where the climate never changes. Perhaps you’re familiar with the lyrics to ‘Camelot’, A law was made a distant moon ago here, July and August may not be too hot, by order summer lingers through September in Camelot, if you know the tune you can sing to it.
But is these what you alarmists envisage a Camelot scenario? Give me a break.
You confuse weather with climate. You confuse musical drama with science.
Below is an article from sceptics that are emerging more and more out of the wood works as they become aware of this farce called man made climate change.
And would it really kill you to once note a source?
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You confuse weather with climate. You confuse musical drama with science.
And would it really kill you to once note a source?
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Bogus claim.
$100 billion would have gone a long ways toward fixing the problem. I’ll wager you can’t verify more than $10 billion in studies, if that much.
That would be one order of magnitude off. You may be too high by two orders of magnitude.
If you’re grossly in error on such claims, how can we grant you credence on any claim?
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Response to Ed:
Ed this is precisely want Alarmism is all about. You are taking alrmists’ interpretations, and not questioning whether these people have an agenda, or is it just simply that if one includes the word climate change then they get funding. Very lucrative.
Todate 100billion dollars spent trying to prove man made climate change is happening. And the science is settled?
Below is an article from sceptics that are emerging more and more out of the wood works as they become aware of this farce called man made climate change.
Can you or anyone imagine a planet where the climate never changes. Perhaps you’re familiar with the lyrics to ‘Camelot’, A law was made a distant moon ago here, July and August may not be too hot, by order summer lingers through September in Camelot, if you know the tune you can sing to it.
But is these what you alarmists envisage a Camelot scenario? Give me a break.
From The Times
October 22, 2007
Today’s forecast: yet another blast of hot air
Why I would rather be called a heretic on global warming
David Bellamy
Recommend? (13)
Am I worried about man-made global warming? The answer is “no” and “yes”.
No, because the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction has come up against an “inconvenient truth”. Its research shows that since 1998 the average temperature of the planet has not risen, even though the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to increase.
Yes, because the self-proclaimed consensus among scientists has detached itself from the questioning rigours of hard science and become a political cause. Those of us who dare to question the dogma of the global-warming doomsters who claim that C not only stands for carbon but also for climate catastrophe are vilified as heretics or worse as deniers.
I am happy to be branded a heretic because throughout history heretics have stood up against dogma based on the bigotry of vested interests. But I don’t like being smeared as a denier because deniers don’t believe in facts. The truth is that there are no facts that link the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming. Instead of facts, the advocates of man-made climate change trade in future scenarios based on complex and often unreliable computer models.
Name-calling may be acceptable in politics but it should have no place in science; indeed, what is happening smacks of McCarthyism, witch-hunts and all. Scientific understanding, however, is advanced by robust, reasoned argument based on well-researched data. So I turn to simple sets of data that are already in the public domain.
The last peak global temperatures were in 1998 and 1934 and the troughs of low temperature were around 1910 and 1970. The second dip caused pop science and the media to cry wolf about an impending, devastating Ice Age. Our end was nigh!
Then, when temperatures took an upward swing in the 1980s, the scaremongers changed their tune. Global warming was the new imminent catastrophe.
But the computer model – called “hockey stick” – that predicted the catastrophe of a frying planet proved to be so bent that it “disappeared” from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s armoury of argument in 2007. It was bent because the historical data it used to predict the future dated from only the 1850s, when the world was emerging from the Little Ice Age. Little wonder that temperatures showed an upward trend.
In the Sixties I used to discuss climate change with my undergraduates at Durham University. I would point to the plethora of published scientific evidence that showed the cyclical nature of change – and how, for instance, the latest of a string of ice ages had affected the climate, sea levels and tree lines around the world. Thank goodness the latest crop of glaciers and ice sheets began to wane in earnest about 12,000 years ago; this gave Britain a window of opportunity to lead the industrial revolution.
The Romans grew grapes in York and during the worldwide medieval warm period – when civilizations blossomed across the world – Nordic settlers farmed lowland Greenland (hence its name) and then got wiped out by the Little Ice Age that lasted roughly from the 16th century until about 1850.
There is no escaping the fact that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising for 150 years – and very uniformly since the 1950s. Yet the temperature has not increased in step with CO2. Not only have there been long periods of little change in temperature, but also the year-to-year oscillations are totally unrelated to CO2 change. What is more, the trend lines of glacial shortening and rise in sea level have shown no marked change since the big increase in the use of fossil fuels since 1950.
How can this be explained unless there are other factors at work overriding the greenhouse effect of CO2? There are, of course, many to be found in the peer-reviewed literature: solar cycles, cosmic rays, cloud control and those little rascals, such as El Niño and La Niña, all of which are played down or even ignored by the global-warming brigade.
Let’s turn to Al Gore’s doom-laden Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. First, what is the point of scaring the families of the world with tales that polar bears are heading for extinction? Last year Mitchell Taylor, of the US National Biological Service, stated that “of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.”
Why create alarm about a potential increase in the spread of malaria thanks to rising temperatures when this mosquito-borne disease was a major killer of people in Britain and northern Russia throughout the Little Ice Age?
Despite the $50 billion spent on greenwashing propaganda, the sceptics and their inconvenient questions are beginning to make their presence felt.
A recent survey of Klaus-Martin Schulte, of Kings College Hospital, of all papers on the subject of climate change that were published between 2004 and February of 2007 found that only 7 per cent explicitly endorsed a “so-called consensus” position that man-made carbon dioxide is causing catastrophic global warming. What is more, James Lovelock, the author and green guru, has changed his mind: he recently stated that neither Earth nor the human race is doomed.
Yes, melting sea ice around Greenland has recently opened up the fabled North West passage. And, yes, the years 2006 and 2007 have seen massive flooding in Europe. However, a quick dip into the records of the Royal Society – which ranked alongside Dr Lovelock as arch doomsters, before his change of mind – shows that dramatic fluctuations happened long before the infernal combustion engine began spewing out carbon dioxide.
The year 1816 went down in history as the “year without a summer”, thanks to the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia that veiled much of the world with dust, screening out the Sun. Yet in 1817, while still in the grip of the Little Ice Age, the Royal Society was so worried that 2,000 square leagues of sea ice around Greenland had disappeared within two years, and massive flooding was taking place in Germany, that its president wrote to the Admiralty advising of the necessity of an expedition to find out what was the source of this new heat.
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Robert S. said:
One more way we can tell you didn’t read any of those sites, or if you read them, you didn’t bother to understand them.
The first site, at NASA, is factual:
Exactly what denialists are denying.
Check the second site, Worldometers, and under “environment” it shows speeding and spreading desertification and deforestation, which is both a cause and a result of warming in a vicious feedback spiral.
And then we realize your math is out the window because it doesn’t include a calculation for the century it takes excessive CO2 to settle from the atmosphere to the oceans (see the NASA site again), nor do you account for warming oceans — which, since the oceans are more massive, means warming is much farther along that you allow, and farther along than even those you call “alarmists” said a decade ago.
Look at the facts, RS, your facts — if we do nothing, we’re screwed.
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Here is another sceptic I would not like to argue with unless of course there is a part of your brain missing.
Colin Dixon Posted: 15 August 2009 01:20 AM
Senior Member
Total Posts: 298
Joined: 2009-06-10 The 1km of atmosphere is a poor 1d example the atmosphere on earth os on a sphere 3D so all your maths is way out.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanClimate/ocean-atmos_chem.php
http://www.worldometers.info/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean
its volume is approximately 1.3 billion cubic kilometers
1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000kg 1.3 x 10^21 ( assuming 1kg per litre)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth’s_atmosphere
mass of about five quadrillion metric tons
5,000,000,000,000,000kg 5 x 10^15
Ocean / Atmosphere = 2,600,000 2.6 x 10 ^5
according to my maths and research the water in the oceans is 2,6 million times more significant than the
atmosphere.. do you think this number may be significant in the climate change debate?
I don’t think we are in for any dangerous warming in any hurry.
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Epic science there, Bob.
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Hi Ed:
I havent had the time lately to post but please be assured I still read your posts and really find them very amusing. Simply because your postings are more fitting for a cartoon series.
Much of what you say has very little fact as you knit and pick your way through the volume of intelligent information that is out there to make it suit your point of biased view.
Keep up the good work I’m sure a lot of readers enjoy a good chuckle.
robert s
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So we see the latest meme of the crazies. I note that at the risk of offending Robert S., but there is no other way to accurately describe it. He said:
Of all the crazy claims out there, the idea that Al Gore carried his presentations around the world for two years, the film makers made the film, and the IPCC got going in the 1980s, in order that climate scientists could take over the world, ranks up there with concerns that “Pinky and the Brain” cartoons are secret messages to other mice to rise up and, um, take over the world.
For at least the last 5,000 years of human history, the part we have records on, the way to “take over” any part of the world has been to raise an army and invade somebody else. Our experience in the 20th and 21st centuries reveal no changes in those methods have ever worked. The Summer of Love didn’t get the U.S. out of Vietnam, the Prague Spring of 1968 didn’t push the Soviet tanks out of Czechslovakia. Artists’ paintings, poets’ poetry, protest singers’ songs have had no great influence on reducing war. Pete Seeger turned 90 this year, and all of his anti-war songs are just as valid as they were when he started singing them 70 years ago.
The idea that scientists who study ice cores, weather, atmospheric chemistry at high altitudes, pollen in lake sediments, and ice thickness, would be engaged in a plot to take over the world demonstrates an astounding, malignant ignorance of world history, warfare, science and politics.
I’ll wager Monckton cannot make that argument and survive a sanity hearing.
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Robert S. had claimed that the Earth has 40% more vegetation than in 1970, all due to increased carbon dioxide. Knowing that CO2 is not the limiting factor on growth on about 99% of plants in the world (water is the first; nitrogen the second; sunlight and heat the third; CO2 may be fourth in some places, but all that means is that more CO2 can’t increase the growth of most plants, especially beneficial ones; I’m working solely from very old memory here), I challenged the claim.
Robert S. responded with an admission he might have been a bit in error, and this:
So, instead of 40% increase, we get a perhaps 6% increase with one anecdotal account of increased production of beneficial plants where El Nino didn’t work as it usually does, and warnings from the authors that global warming is a problem.
Robert S., my experience is that each and every one of the claims by the warming “skeptics” breaks down in exactly the same way — the data do not say what the so-called skeptics claim, and the data sources note that the benefits are fleeting, or are symptoms of global warming, and generally are signs of more damage.
Alas.
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More sloppy citations.
Note that it was a 1997 press release from the National Academy of Science, Robert, and please note that the study confirmed that warming causes harm. Quoting that part of the release in its entirety:
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Ed Darrell Says:
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Ed, why dont you get serious as this man made global warming thing is not about the climate but world governance.
whether you Like Monckton or not he is not receiving any goverment grants for his role in letting everyone know the skullduggery going on behind the scenes.
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Not being suckered, however I may have been a little
lose with my numbers.
This is from another blog. My thanks to Pete Ridley on this one.
regarding global plant growth, NASA “climate-vegetation interactions” expert Dr. Ramakrishna Nemani (Note 1) says (Note 2) QUOTE: Between 1982 and 1999, 25 percent of the Earth’s vegetated area experienced increasing plant productivity—a total increase of about 6 percent, UNQUOTE but does not put this down to increased atmospheric CO2 content (he wouldn’t, would he). The paper, which is worth a read, includes QUOTE: Nemani says it would be nice if the next decade were as favorable for plants as the past two seem to have been. “Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing yet whether climate changes will continue to have a positive effect on vegetation productivity,” he cautions. “India, for example, got a blessing from nature during the 1990s. For 100 years, there has been a strong relationship between El Niñoo and the monsoon season that brings rain to India and Southeast Asia; El Niñoo events interrupt the monsoon and create drought. In the 1990s, that relationship broke down, and the monsoon rains came despite a severe and persistent El Niño.” As a result, while much of the globe saw a decrease in productivity during El Niño events, India was one of the places where productivity increased. Whether the region can count on such a lucky break this decade can’t be predicted. UNQUOTE. I love those last three words.
You may be interested in comparing what Dr. Nemani says about what “can’t be predicted “ and what Professor David Schimel said in the National Science Foundation’s paper in 1997 “Plant Growth Surges After Global Temperature Spikes, Scientists Report” (Note 3). Dr. David Schimel (at that time with The National Center for Atmospheric Research) said QUOTE: the results highlight the power of new data sets on global change, as well as the usefulness of computer models that connect the atmosphere and biosphere. .. We were looking specifically for delayed ecosystem responses in this study because they had been predicted by the models, UNQUOTE.
It seems that even the scientists who support The (significant human-made climate change ) Hypothesis cannot agree on the ability of those computer models to predict anything worthwhile.
Thanks for the comment and the information about those natural oil spills. If the environmentalists find out we’ll have them condemning Mother Nature as well as us humans. Greenpeace will be out in force demonstrating against these seepages.
NOTES:
1) see http://experts.nasa.gov/get_expert.php?id=1543
2) see http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalGarden/
3) see http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=102841
Best regards, Pete Ridley, human-made global climate change agnostic
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Got a source on that? I’ve not seen any calculation which does not arrive at reduced biomass due to deforestation and desertification.
Either you’re making up statistics on the spot, or you’re being suckered by someone who is.
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robert s response:
Ed Darrell Says:
November 2, 2009 at 1:33 pm
And plants today still need CO2 to create food for all life on earth, yes even alarmists like you. and it is down to 385 ppm.Very precarious indeed if it goes any lower guess what will happen to life on earth. Here’s another fact to ponder: for every CO2 released there are 2 molecules of oxygen waiting to be freed. Most life on earth need oxygen, I’m sure even you alarmists can see that.
This is why I have a difficult time taking these claims seriously.
If CO2 goes a lot lower, life on Earth won’t be significantly affected. It’s not “down to” 385 ppm; that’s the highest levels recorded in human history. Above 350 ppm, some have predicted runaway greenhouse effect — like Venus has.
385 means that a lot of the plants that used to act as sinks for carbon, are simply gone.
But this cavalier dismissal of a serious air pollution problem: How do you expect anyone to take you seriously?
You must be the most ignorant writer around making claims like above.
FACT: the earth today has 40% more vegetaton since 1970 which is dur to increased CO2.
All is not lost yet with you obviously you dont believe that incredibly naive goldilocks story put forth by some unscientific personn when you said that some believe….like venus.
Venus is 95% CO2. The weight of the atmosphere is so heavy that even a thick skull like yours would be crushed under it’s weight. Bet you don’t know that.
Is it any wonder then that the surface temperature is over 400 deg c.
the reason you are having problems taking these facts seriously is because what you know is what you have been told. you obviously have not made any personal efforts to do any research and so you just mouth the mantra.
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This is why I have a difficult time taking these claims seriously.
If CO2 goes a lot lower, life on Earth won’t be significantly affected. It’s not “down to” 385 ppm; that’s the highest levels recorded in human history. Above 350 ppm, some have predicted runaway greenhouse effect — like Venus has.
385 means that a lot of the plants that used to act as sinks for carbon, are simply gone.
But this cavalier dismissal of a serious air pollution problem: How do you expect anyone to take you seriously?
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So, with more than 3,000 peer-reviewed studies dating back more than 60 years, all attesting to the fact and causes of global warming, you don’t have a single one in rebuttal?
And you can’t figure out why scientists don’t pay attention?
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reply to Ed Darell by robert s :
Thanks for your prompt response. You have just proved my point in your statement:
where’s the denialist who has any data to prove warming wrong?
This is the line the AGW scamsters use.
We dont have to prove you wrong. You have to prove you’re right.
Remember the story of Chicken Little, she never had any proof the sky was falling and ran off in a panic because an acorn fell on her head.
You alarmists are worse than chicken little because everything must be falling on your heads and it ain’t the sky.
How about the globe warming up after the little ice age which ended around 1870. Was the earth supposed to get cooler after coming out of an ice age. No 1 knock on you heads.
No 2 knock on your chicken little heads, the vostok ice core data, it showed that CO2 followed warming,
Al gore knew this before he made his unscientific fiction movie, but he still made it just to keep you chicken little people happy and in turn you chicken little people will make him plenty of carbon credit money.
No 3 knock on your chicken little heads, the mann hockey stick. Was this or was this not a deliberate attempt to deceive you chicken little fans. Even numbers out of a phone book would give the hockey stick affect. And it goes on and on and on.
The honest people who believe that man is responsible for global warming do just that, believe.
They are the average 9 – 5 workers, dont have the luxury or the inclination after a hard day’s work to do any research on this so called global warming being caused by humans.
But you cant fool all of the people most of the time.
To say that 385 ppm of CO2 is going to force warming, I mean you goota have the imaginationof a godzilla movie fan to think that even tripling this amount is even going to have any significant effect.
That this CO2 is a pollutant and is going to take us past a tipping point of no return. What a load of Bull droppings. The earth started off with no oxygen and had CO2 instead. Oxygen is the pollutant that remained after certain creatures evolved in the early part of earth’s history and started to convert the massive amount of CO2 that was in the air that made up part of the earth’s early atmosphere.
If the environmentalists had been around then they would have tried to stop the stromatolites
(see http://pilbara.mq.edu.au/wiki/Stromatolites )
from doing their job of converting CO2 to oxygen, perhaps might have been the earliest form of cap and trade eh.
Inspite of all that CO2 there never was a dangerous tipping point reached ever. And plants today still need CO2 to create food for all life on earth, yes even alarmists like you. and it is down to 385 ppm.Very precarious indeed if it goes any lower guess what will happen to life on earth. Here’s another fact to ponder: for every CO2 released there are 2 molecules of oxygen waiting to be freed. Most life on earth need oxygen, I’m sure even you alarmists can see that.
And now today the world is cooling and CO2 is still going up, not exactly following the ipcc models is it. So the models are now putting out what the humans behind it put in..GARBAGE..and for that we in the developed countries have to pay a tax for, and hand over our country’s sovereignty for?! Go f..k yourselves.
Now you see what I mean when I say that global warming is a hoax.
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1. There’s no indication of any hoax in global warming science. Frankly, I can’t see how a hoax could be maintained with 15,000 participants, most of whom are sworn to reveal hoaxes. I cannot imagine how anyone could have any understanding of science and make such a claim.
2. No entity nor group of entities has spent $100 billion on research into anything, with the possible exception of nuclear weapons. If you disagree, please show us the numbers.
3. Experiments and measurements being made now are not repeats of old experiments, but rather the collection of hard data to help figure out how to mitigate the damages, and how bad the damage is and will be.
4. Show me a denier who has had funding cut off from oil companies. Please.
5. You said:
I can’t find that proposal, not in Waxman-Markey, not in the Kyoto Treaty, nor any other proposal. What proposal are you talking about? Can you be specific as to section, please so we can see the language?
6. So, you won’t listen to Oreskes. That’s a key part of the problem. People who don’t want to get up off their donkeys won’t listen to the facts, historical, scientific, nor anything else.
7. You said:
So, where’s the denialist who has any data to prove warming wrong?
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global warming is the greatest hoax of the century.
I repeat:global warming is the greatest hoax of the century.
Todate 100 billion dollars spent on proving that it exists and the goverments are still giving out grants to prove that it exists.
For heavens sake if the science is settled why do the tax payers keep forking out this money to keep proving it over and over again.
Now the alarmists cant even say that the deniers are being paid by the oil companies because they are in on the act too. This cap and trade scheme is going to be the biggest ponzie scheme yet that the world has ever seen. Without going into details just think of the enormosity of this scheme. As the entities with the most money purchase as much of the carbon credits only to resell it down the line. Goverments are going to try to keep ahead of this economic monster by trying to bring in legislation after legislation but by the same token they’ll be screwing everyone as they reduce the amount of credits available thereby driving up the prices to higher and higher levels until the whole thing collapses and the average joe on the street finds himself back about a hundred or so years ago with his living standards. This is the future you alarmists want for your children?
I wouldn’t waste my time listening to oreskes. she may fool some of the people but she wont fool me. only idots would fall for the line that there is no uncertainty in the science.
Einstein once said “it doesn’t take a hundred experiments to prove me right. It only takes one to prove me wrong.”
So the alarmists in the ipcc can go on playing with their xboxes and other toy computers, but it will never replace real science. Climate does not come out of a computer. Remember GIGO and that’s what you got today with so called computer modelings.
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It’s part and parcel of the same denialist appeal to authority that leads to
cretinistscreationists’ compiling of lists of scientists who deny evolution – if you look closely, you find names of people who don’t exist, who don’t deny the science, who don’t work in the field, and so on.It does make me wonder – how much overlap is there between the various kinds of denialists? We know that a certain segment of creationists disbelieve in global warming because they don’t think their god would allow it. Is denialism simply a general thing that gets applied to any old thing, or is it more specific?
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Dozens of scientists dispute warming, not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands. That’s the point of Oreskes’s lecture, that people are hoodwinked into thinking there is science uncertainty where it doesn’t exist. Listen to the lecture.
If you listen to the lecture, you’ll see the context in which that last line is humorous.
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“Global warming is here, and there are almost no communists left”
The first premise is hotly (pun?) contested by tens of thousands of scientists, so it is a breathtakingly arrogant (or stupid) assertion.
The second, that there are no more communists, is delusional … or conspiratorial.
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