Spirit Plants - Discussion of sacred plants and other entheogens

While CO2 emissions are commonly thought to be the cause of the current trend of global warming, not all are convinced by what is perceived as a lack of science behind the conclusions. Some noted scientists believe activity on the sun is THE major player in our current weather patterns, relegating CO2 output back to a nasty pollutant that still needs tighter controls and standards.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/glo ... 020507.htm (http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm)

Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide

Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

By Timothy Ball

Monday, February 5, 2007

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was the first Canadian Ph.D. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition.“Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.” . For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.


What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.

Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (www.nrsp.com (http://www.nrsp.com)), is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

lw

LW--

Did you know that Timothy Ball is on the payroll of Canadian oil companies? He says in the post above: "In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie." But look here:

http://desmogblog.com/oil-companies-fun ... of-science (http://desmogblog.com/oil-companies-funding-friends-of-science)

Something to consider in light of his claims running so counter to so many scientists around the world.

It doesn't really matter to me who the guy works for, cen. I'm interested in learning more about the science behind the positions. According to the above article, the science behind the CO2 theory of global warming has been taken for granted rather than scientifically proven as fact.

I'm not doubting the reality of global warming, although I do have questions pertaining to the cause. And I still think CO2 emissions should be curtailed due to their noxious nature regardless.

lw

I agree with you, in terms of the importance of the issue, and its reality, but I think it does matter who pays his check as that may have an influence on his findings. Also, that he denied that oil companies do finance his work, only to be proven a liar.

I think his oil ties put his findings under suspicion. It's like newspapers that won't run negative stories about the companies that advertise in their pages. Not biting the hand that feeds you, etc. It's a red flag, in my eyes. If you read that story I linked to, you'll see this guy is part of a group of suspicious characters.

Thing is, I'm convinced that humans are ruining the planet, in particular Americans. I'm convinced because we've had years and years of oil (yes there's that dirty word again) tycoons running the government. I don't trust them. I don't trust how they've influenced against funding for alternative energy sources, and the electric car. I tend to think the war in Iraq is an oil war more than anything else. I think they are protecting their interests, and the scientist above is being paid a lot of money to try and discredit what thousands of scientists agree on. His citing of Michael Crichton immediately made me suspicious. Crichton is another hack.

So my thinking tends to look at this oil-paid scientist and see a whore. I think it's great you brought this topic to the fore, but I believe, emotionally and intellectually both, someone like Al Gore, in "An Inconvenient Truth" where he warns in great detail about the frightening trends that can be shown by photograph, not just statistics.

I am not a scientist. In the end, I am a lay person subject to persuasion by people who can talk brainy about these matters. That said, I would rather err on the side of cleaning up this befouled planet than letting it go because there is a chance things are not quite as bad as they seem.

They are pretty bad, and I can't see anything but massive demand for change that will keep them from getting worse.

Quote from: "cenacle"but I believe, emotionally and intellectually both, someone like Al Gore, in "An Inconvenient Truth" where he warns in great detail about the frightening trends that can be shown by photograph, not just statistics.

First, Al Gore is a politician, not a scientist. His is an emotional sell, imo, having nothing to do with the science behind the alleged facts.

As far as seeing frightening trends by photograph, no one is doubting the trend, only the cause. While the photos are sure to stir emotions, they do nothing to further either side of this debate, imo.

lw

Gore has not been in politics for six years, and he has been consulting with experts on environmental issues since the 1970s. His movie is full of facts about the whys and hows of global warming, and consults the views of a wide panoply of experts. I recommend people see it and decide for themselves. Kassi and I were extremely impressed and convinced, and for what it's worth on an individual scale, we've become more conscious than ever about how we interact with the environment around us.

We as a race can do many things to change our relationship with our world. We already have. We used to use leaded gasoline. There used to be no pollution standards at all. We can do better but we need to use the power of the ballot box, at least here in the US, to let our leaders know what we want. They will listen if we start looking for other leaders. We can have electric cars, we can develop alternative energies like wind and surf and solar power. We can recycle, and learn how to recycle even more.

Our planet is in trouble, and it's not the goats or the gorillas that are causing it. It's humans. But humans can do great things, too. We could be making the planet a magically good place for all life. We CAN do these things, and some of us are. But we need to do more. It's our home, but it does not belong to us, we belong to it, as Daniel Quinn wrote in Ishmael.

best way to recycle is still: dont buy crap!!!

for recycling issues, if you havent seen it yet, you HAVE to take the time to watch it, and meditate on the information brought in:
//http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7734998370503499886&q=penn+and+teller

then for the "climate change" issues, watch this Penn and Teller! Bullshit on Environmental Hysteria:
//http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4480559399263937213&q=penn+and+teller
the show has an interesting interview with Bjorn Lomborg, the very controversial Dane, who calls the "environmentalists" facts a bunch of "ghosts facts", and who thinks that it is irresponsable for people such as Gore to preach such devestation. To ths day, Gore has refused any interviews with Bjorn.
of course, for those who still believe that we live in a peachy pink world, it might be about time to wake the fuck up. there is lots of work to do, but the emotional response of the hippies tying themselves up on a  tree is well...merely an over emotional response to a very real problem. its very cool art though, very cute.
//http://www.lomborg.com/

also, as part of the documentary, you can hear one of the founders of green peace and the not the kind words he has against the way greenpeace turned out, why he left the organization years ago, and about the "white upper middle class environmental kids".
Last but not least you will see a little test the Penn & Teller crew puts concerned hippies through, and the result aint pretty.
for you sensitive hippies out there, i dont recommend this show, as it might make you want to climb up a tree and make a nest in it, in which case we'd never get to smell that sweet patchouli stuff again!

Earth has warming up and cooling down since the beginning of time. However, humans have been tracking weather patterns for only a microscopic portion of that time frame. This pattern of warming and cooling existed long before humans roamed the planet and will probably continue long after we are gone. This planet owns us. Its not the other way around, no matter how much one cares to buy into that illusion. I'm confident the entity we call home is fully capable of protecting his/herself from most any infection It might catch.

However, I believe its possible/probable that even after ending human caused CO2 emissions the earth could continue warming due to factors that we don't fully understand/appreciate at this point in time. CO2 is bad for the environment, no doubt. And the sky just might be falling as the water tables rise to heaven. But the sun still doesn't revolve around man and we might only be in the short-term plan; sort of like the dinosaurs.

May you live in interesting times... - Ancient Chinese blessing/curse

lw

(//http://www.cezium.com/backgrounds/supernova.jpg)

challenging article indeed laughing. i think its nescessary to open real dialogue, even if that means having to kill some old myths. i think we dont know, no one really knows about this issue, so its good to analize info from many sides, and see what we think and how it should affect our life choices. it has been a few years since a part of the scientifc community says that there is no such thing as the green house effect, but for some reason newspapers like to propagate the disaster scenario better. go wander why scandals sell better than more plain info??? bad news sell better than good news, as usual.
if tomorrow i get the proof for sure that recycling glass is a bad idea, i a m ready to think i've been wrong for the last 20 years or so.

one of the things that i find missing from the "global warming" stuff is the fact that we live on a little planet that turns on itself, as most planets do.
not taking this is account when it comes to weather pattern changes seems quite faulty, and a wrong way of feeling the planet we live on. it is creating a false and flat relationship with it.
remember when the desert of africa used to be a lush jungle, ice ages? planets have seasons too.

only blaming humans for the weather seems extremely egocentric. then again, man has always been a pretentious creature, and has a hard time accepting that it might have as much importance as a pile of dust under a bed.

but no worries, about the fate of humans, in about 4 to 5 billion years this planet will go like a pancake as the sun goes into supernova.
by then, the earth will have become unlivable for quite a while already.
only safe rule: dont forget the mapple syrup!!
the rest belongs to science fiction and your imagination:D  :D
but for now: stop buying crap, and SMILE!

//http://www.michielb.nl/sun/leven.htm

QuoteEarth has warming up and cooling down since the beginning of time. However, humans have been tracking weather patterns for only a microscopic portion of that time frame.

Humans have only been around a small part of that time, but we have little trouble telling what the temperature has been throughout time using a number of methods, from short-term methods like tree ring thicknesses, to long-term methods like comparative levels of various oxygen isotopes captured in foraminifera and other aquatic organisms.

QuoteThis pattern of warming and cooling existed long before humans roamed the planet and will probably continue long after we are gone.

Sure, but in no time in observable earth history (read hundreds of millions of years) has the temperature swung so far so quickly. It is not a coincidence that in no observable earth history has the atmospheric carbon been so high. There is a direct and observable correlation between atmospheric carbon and temperature throughout time. If we accept this correlation and we know that both temperature and atmospheric carbon are rising faster than in any other period in earth's history, the only question is "where is the carbon coming from?" There is no argument that Man has become, by far, the greatest contributor to atmospheric carbon during our history, and that Man's increasing contribution to atmospheric carbon levels through time correlate closely with our current unprecedented warming trend.

QuoteThis planet owns us. Its not the other way around, no matter how much one cares to buy into that illusion. I'm confident the entity we call home is fully capable of protecting his/herself from most any infection It might catch.

The earth doesn't care about how hot it is, nor how many species disappear, nor how much garbage is in the ocean, nor how much radiation fills the atmosphere. Man can and has changed those things and many others, but, yes, home still spins on.

-TM

http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/ (http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/)

We *are* contributing to climate change, and this climate change is harming the prospects for many species, including our own, to survive in the long run. Additionally, ours is the only species that is not only affecting the planet, but can by its will make things worse or better. Both possibilites hang before us right now.

What I find worse is the widespread disinterest in this topic on the part of the American media and American businessess, not to mention much of the population. This disinterest is changing, but very slowly. I am hopeful things can improve but the first step in solving any crisis, personal or global, is to acknowledge its reality. Right now, I think we are leaving the denial stage but damned slowly.

Yep.

It took a while before you could say the sun is the center of the solar system without being crucified. Hopefully we're wiser now.

-TM

Quote from: "TroutMask"There is no argument that Man has become, by far, the greatest contributor to atmospheric carbon during our history, and that Man's increasing contribution to atmospheric carbon levels through time correlate closely with our current unprecedented warming trend.

I'm afraid there has been too little debate on this issue and too much taken for granted.

I believe there have been periods in history when the world was warmer than now. And those periods occured without the assistance of man. I'm not even sure that we have enough current information on todays weather patterns to predict future trends with any certainty. There appear to be enough variables affecting weather patterns to make it difficult to consistently make accurate predictions.

Heck, we don't even know with certainty what killed off the dinosaurs, but they disappeared over a relatively short period of time.

Just because A comes before B doesn't necessarily mean A causes B...

lw

No answers, just more questions.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15391426/site/newsweek/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15391426/site/newsweek/)

Remember Global Cooling?
Why scientists find climate change so hard to predict.

By Jerry Adler
Updated: 4:41 p.m. CT Oct 23, 2006
Oct. 23, 2006 - In April, 1975, in an issue mostly taken up with stories about the collapse of the American-backed government of South Vietnam, NEWSWEEK published a small back-page article about a very different kind of disaster. Citing "ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically," the magazine warned of an impending "drastic decline in food production." Political disruptions stemming from food shortages could affect "just about every nation on earth." Scientists urged governments to consider emergency action to head off the terrible threat of . . . well, if you had been following the climate-change debates at the time, you'd have known that the threat was: global cooling.

More than 30 years later, that little story is still being quoted regularlyâ€"as recently as last month on the floor of the Senate by Republican Sen. James Inhofe, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the self-proclaimed scourge of climate alarmists. The article's appeal to Inhofe, of course, is not its prescience, but the fact that it was so spectacularly wrong about the near-term future. Even by the time it appeared, a decades-long trend toward slightly cooler temperatures in the Northern hemisphere had already begun to reverse itselfâ€"although that wouldn't be apparent in the data for a few years yetâ€"leading to today's widespread consensus among scientists that the real threat is actually human-caused global warming. In fact, as Inhofe pointed out, for more than 100 years journalists have quoted scientists predicting the destruction of civilization by, in alternation, either runaway heat or a new Ice Age. The implication he draws is that if you're not worried about being trampled by a stampede of woolly mammoths through downtown Chicago, you don't have to believe what the media is saying about global warming, either.

But is that the right lesson to draw?  How did NEWSWEEKâ€"or for that matter, Time magazine, which also ran a story on the subject in the mid-1970sâ€"get things so wrong? In fact, the story wasn't "wrong" in the journalistic sense of "inaccurate." Some scientists indeed thought the Earth might be cooling in the 1970s, and some laymenâ€"even one as sophisticated and well-educated as Isaac Asimovâ€"saw potentially dire implications for climate and food production. After all, Ice Ages were common in Earth's history; if anything, the warm "interglacial" period in which human civilization evolved, and still exists, is the exception. The cause of these periodic climatic shifts is still being studied and debated, but many scientists believe they are influenced by small changes in the Earth's orbit around the Sun (including its "eccentricity," or the extent to which it deviates from a perfect circle) and the tilt of its rotation. As calculated by the mathematician Milutin Milankovitch in the 1920s, these factors vary on interlocking cycles of around 20,000, 40,000 and 100,000 years, and if nothing else changed they would be certain to bring on a new Ice Age at some time. In the 1970s, there were scientists who thought this shift might be imminent; more recent data, according to William Connolley, a climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey who has made a hobby of studying Ice Age predictions, suggest that it might be much farther off.

But in any case, climatologists now are mostly agreed that human impacts will swamp the effects of the Milankovitch cycles. The question has been, which specific impacts? In the mid-1970s, scientists were focusing on an increase of dust and "aerosols" (suspended droplets of liquid, mostly sulfuric acid) in the atmosphere. These, the result of increased agriculture and burning of coal in power plants, lower the Earth's temperature by reflecting sunlight back into space. Ironically, clean-air laws in North America and Europe had the effect of reducing aerosols (which cause acid rain), so the predominant influence on climate now is the buildup of carbon dioxideâ€"which traps the Earth's heat in the lower atmosphere and contributes to global warming.

As late as 1992, in a story that for some reason has gotten far less attention, NEWSWEEK revisited the Ice Age threat, this time posing it as a perverse consequence of the greenhouse effect. Citing the theories of an "amateur scientist and professional prophet of doom named John Hamaker," the article raised the specter that a small increase in air temperature could cause more snow to fall in places like northern Greenland, where the ground is often bare. (Extremely cold air doesn't hold enough moisture for a good snowfall.) Increased snow cover, by reflecting more sunlight back into space, could trigger a return of the glaciers to North America. Although the intricate web of positive and negative feedbacks that control climate are still not fully understood, that particular scenario hasn't gotten much attention in the last decade.

The point to remember, says Connolley, is that predictions of global cooling never approached the kind of widespread scientific consensus that supports the greenhouse effect today. And for good reason: the tools scientists have at their disposal nowâ€"vastly more data, incomparably faster computers and infinitely more sophisticated mathematical modelsâ€"render any forecasts from 1975 as inoperative as the predictions being made around the same time about the inevitable triumph of communism. Astronomers have been warning for decades that life on Earth could be wiped out by a collision with a giant meteorite; it hasn't happened yet, but that doesn't mean that journalists have been dupes or alarmists for reporting this news. Citizens can judge for themselves what constitutes a prudent response-which, indeed, is what occurred 30 years ago. All in all, it's probably just as well that society elected not to follow one of the possible solutions mentioned in the NEWSWEEK article: to pour soot over the Arctic ice cap, to help it melt.

The funny thing to me is all the debate about the cause, yet little discussion about how to react.

All the discussion about how to react is based on whether we have much influence on the outcomes or not.

But what if we have very little influence possible on the outcome?
Then our reactions and efforts need to be focused on adaptation.
What cities will be lost?
Where will crops be lost?
Where will crops be gained?
Etc.

<<The funny thing to me is all the debate about the cause, yet little discussion about how to react.>>

1) Develop alternatives to fossil fuel based transportation, such as the electric car
2) Global action to cut greenhouse emissions
3) US sign the Kyoto Protocols
4) World-wide recycling efforts
5) End the war in Iraq and all petro-based global conflicts

These are only a few. There is plenty we can do, some of which is being done. The evidence of global change is visible, widespread, and a blunt warning to worse to come.

cen: You seem to miss winder's underlying point concerning possible courses of action. I'm pretty sure he is wondering about possible actions humans may need to take if/when even our best efforts at limiting our adverse affects on the environmental equation fail to reverse the current climatological trends.

lw

stop buying shit
stop buying shit
stop buying shit
and most importantly STOP BUYING SHIT

all other issues are results from that one single fact: we buy/produce too much shit.

if the world is really concerned about pollution, to when the adds on tv that say : STOP BUYING SHIT?
all we hear about is : productivity, job rates, economy. and then we hear we have to do something for the planet. yet we have to consume, built more, consume. its a sign of a schyzophrenic and hypocritical society.
did Gore mention to stop buying shit on his little propaganda movie to wake up grand ma and gran pa?

humans can be such trashy/wastefull/selfish creatures that their homeland  not being enough, they now are trashing space:
"For decades, space experts have worried that a speeding bit of orbital debris might one day smash a large spacecraft into hundreds of pieces and start a chain reaction, a slow cascade of collisions that would expand for centuries, spreading chaos through the heavens.
...
Now, experts say, China's test of an antisatellite rocket that shattered an old satellite into hundreds of large fragments means the chain reaction will most likely start sooner."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/scien ... wanted=all (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/science/space/06orbi.html?ei=5090&en=16f9c6b2615d4e62&ex=1328418000&pagewanted=all)
 
START BREATHING
STOP BUYING SHIT!

Oops... Another heretic bites the dust..

http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/k ... 5d04a.html (http://www.kgw.com/news-local/stories/kgw_020607_news_taylor_title.59f5d04a.html)

06:09 PM PST on Tuesday, February 6, 2007
By VINCE PATTON, kgw.com

In the face of evidence agreed upon by hundreds of climate scientists, George Taylor holds firm. He does not believe human activities are the main cause of global climate change. Taylor also holds a unique title: State Climatologist.

Hundreds of scientists last Friday issued the strongest warning yet on global warming saying humans are "very likely" the cause.


“Most of the climate changes we have seen up until now have been a result of natural variations,” Taylor asserts.

Taylor has held the title of "state climatologist" since 1991 when the legislature created a state climate office at OSU The university created the job title, not the state. His opinions conflict not only with many other scientists, but with the state of Oregon's policies. So the governor wants to take that title from Taylor and make it a position that he would appoint.

In an exclusive interview with KGW-TV, Governor Ted Kulongoski confirmed he wants to take that title from Taylor. The governor said Taylor's contradictions interfere with the state's stated goals to reduce greenhouse gases, the accepted cause of global warming in the eyes of a vast majority of scientists.

“He is Oregon State University's climatologist. He is not the state of Oregon's climatologist,” Kulongoski said. Taylor declined to comment on the proposal other than to say he was a "bit shocked" by the news. He recently engaged in a debate at O.M.S.I. and repeated his doubts about accepted science.

In an interview he told KGW, "There are a lot of people saying the bulk of the warming of the last 50 years is due to human activities and I don't believe that's true." He believes natural cycles explain most of the changes the earth has seen.

A bill will be introduced in Salem soon on the matter. Sen. Brad Avakian, (D) Washington County, is sponsoring the bill. He said global warming is so important to state policy it's important to have a climatologist as a consultant to the governor. He denied this is targeted personally at Taylor. "Absolutely not," Avakian said, "I've never met Mr. Taylor and if he's got opinions I hope he comes to the hearing and testifies."

Kulongoski said the state needs a consistent message on reducing greenhouse gases to combat climate change. The Governor says, "I just think there has to be somebody that says, 'this is the state position on this.'"

lw

Yes, there will always be the Flat Earth Society. We will always find the people who will assert, in the face of piles of evidence to the contrary, that the earth is only 10,000 years old, that the earth is flat, that global warming is a myth; always looking through and around the evidence for the "but" while ignoring the evidence itself.

As a scientist (M.S. Geology), I find the questions of 1. Whether the earth is warming beyond natural background and 2. Whether Man is at least partially responsible, to be insulting to my intelligence. I find it hard to believe we're even discussing it. Maybe I should have stayed in computer science where I began so I wouldn't know about any of this.

We can find all kinds of people saying the Earth is flat; do we need to go back over the evidence every day to prove otherwise? I think the stars are little candles in the sky. Why not? Let's dig out all the evidence so I can ignore it. The stars are still candles, dammit, get that data out of here!

What would it take to change your mind? Jebus bopping down from Hebben and telling you to your face, I suppose. Lack of knowledge does not knowledge make.

-TM

P.S. I am still undecided on UFOs. The non-UFO folks seem to be stuck on the "How could they get from way over there to here?" question. With our developing knowledge of nuclear physics, that question seems to be less important: We are everywhere at all times; all we have to do is figure out where to stop. Now, THAT is a field with some questions left...

troutie: I see nobody here denying global warming is occuring. And for a person who professes to such great intelligence, I would expect you to realize that.

Also, please point me to your source which confirms your view that current conditions have, historically, never been replicated.

I have no doubt that humans play some part in affecting weather patterns. Please show me the proof that the current warming trends are primarly caused by CO2 emissions and not part of a natural cycle.

I'm pretty sure that there have been discoveries made in the artic recently, due to the lack of ice/snow, uncovering remanants of an age when the poles apparently were not covered with ice.

Jesus? Hell, I'd settle for scientific facts, mensa-lemming-mon.

lw

A few of the comments at the end of this story make points with which I agree. Seems like I'm not the only one asking stoopid questions and getting no plausable answer in return.

http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dl ... 06001/1002 (http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070206/NEWS01/70206001/1002)

Del. scientist's view on climate change criticized
Ties to big oil, industry-funded lobbies draw fire
By Jeff Montgomery
The News Journal


WILMINGTON, Del. â€" David Legates is skeptical of global warming data.

A Delaware scientist's contrarian stand on global warming and climate change has earned him national attention in a series of critical reports -- including some that lump his views in with industry-backed disinformation campaigns.

The controversy surrounding Delaware State Climatologist David R. Legates and other climate change skeptics peaked last week with the publication of an updated summary report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris.

Shortly before the Paris climate change report emerged, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a study listing Legates among several scientists it described as "familiar spokespeople from ExxonMobil-funded organizations" that have regularly taken stands or sponsored reports questioning the science behind climate change warnings.

"I certainly think that Legates is a good example of someone who has chosen, for whatever reason, to have much of his work sponsored indirectly by ExxonMobil," said Seth Shulman, primary author of the Union of Concerned Scientists report.

"In these cases, these people are often putting out information as the 'state climatologist,' whereas it's really at best an incomplete accounting of their affiliation," Shulman said.

ExxonMobil, which posted a record $39.5 billion profit last year, was accused by UCS of funneling $16 million to advocacy groups over a seven-year period in an effort to "confuse the public on global warming science," including some groups that have worked closely with Legates or other climate change critics.

ExxonMobil has since branded the claims as "deeply offensive and wrong," and described its position on climate change as "misunderstood."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its fourth report described human-contributions to higher global temperatures as "unequivocal," and warned that rising seas and shifting climates were likely.

Legates, a University of Delaware professor, has criticized the panel's previous summary reports as offering "a lot of misinformation," despite the work by thousands of scientists from dozens of nations worldwide who teamed to produce the document.

Legates, who has referred to himself as a contrarian in public, could not be reached Monday. He has confirmed serving in various unpaid roles with groups that question global warming science, including as an adjunct scholar for the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank.

Although Legates holds the title of Delaware State Climatologist, Gov. Ruth Ann Minner's office said that it had no direct role in the selection. The University of Delaware also supported the appointment, but has no direct oversight. Minner and the university both signed a four-way acknowledgement of the position.

Others around the country, meanwhile, have asked for a closer look at Legates' role in the debate over global warming.

California's attorney general last year asked a federal judge to force automakers to disclose their dealings with climate change skeptics, including Legates, in a dispute over greenhouse gas limits for new cars. General Motors, DaimlerChrysler and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers are defendants in that suit.

"The climate skeptics have played a major role in spreading disinformation about global warming," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer wrote.

The request included a quote from the book "The Heat is On," by former reporter and author Ross Gelbspan: "The tiny group of dissenting scientists have been given prominent public visibility and congressional influence out of all proportion to their standing in the scientific community on the issue of global warming."

Union of Concerned Scientists, Greenpeace and other organizations have cited Legates' ties to several groups that have supported or emphasized skeptical stands on climate change, while they also received regular contributions from ExxonMobil. Those organizations include the National Center for Policy Analysis, which has received about $421,000 from ExxonMobil, and the George C. Marshall Institute, which received $630,000.

Both groups have published work by Legates, and Legates has reported working as an adjunct scholar for the National Center for Policy Analysis. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, which also once listed Legates as an adjunct scholar, received more than $2 million from ExxonMobil at a time when the company was publicly fighting climate change policies.

During a speech last July at an event sponsored by the conservative Heritage Foundation, Legates described some claims about warming and climate shifts as "overblown," although he said that he was not disputing scientists whose work led to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

"I think in general there's very much of a disagreement," Legates said at the time.

Washington State Climatologist Philip Mote, who generally agrees with the panel's findings, said that few scientists disagree that the planet is warming, and said that an "inclusive and exhaustive" study found that humans "very likely" contributed to the change.

"It's pretty much the same eight or 10 people any time you see a skeptical point of view," Mote said. "It's pretty certain that it's going to be one of those folks."

But Mote also said that scientists who work on behalf of environmental groups also should have to disclose their backing.

"I don't know what number of scientists have accepted money from environmental groups to grind their ax, but I believe it's more than the eight or 10 listed in the UCS report."

Last year, Legates wrote a "policy report" for the National Center for Policy Analysis. It was released at about the same time as Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." The center's paper questioned several cornerstones of the argument supporting links between human activities and global warming.

"The complexity of the climate and the limitations of data and computer models mean projections of future climate change are unreliable at best," Legates wrote. "In sum, the science does not support claims of drastic increases in global temperatures over the 21st century, nor does it support claims of human influence on weather events and other secondary effects of climate change."

Attention to Legates' views increased in Delaware when he disputed arguments used to support Delaware efforts to control greenhouse gases as one of several authors in a "friend-of-the-court" brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court. The Competitive Enterprise Institute filed the brief.

Virginia state climatologist Patrick Michaels, who received a $100,000 contribution from a Colorado electric cooperative that supported Michaels' labeling of climate change supporters as "alarmists," was another co-author on the brief.


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After re-reading the article, I still could not find a single argument offered to challenge the dissenting scientist. The purpose of the article was strictly an effort to demonize dissent by association with funding by "undesirables."

How about an argument! If the global warmers are so righteous then let the debate begin.

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:20 am
Otherwise I would be sitting atop a 2 mile thick glasier.

So what melted those? Flintstone mobiles?

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:16 am
The word "consensus" is not a scientific term. "Proof" is a scientific term. It now appears that a "consensus" is sufficient to justify de-certification of meterologists, firing climatologists who do not adhere to the "state" or "party" position, and to not have to provide scientific or logical arguements when challenged by anyone who dares to disagree with, much less completely demolish, the positions of the "consensus". The scientific notion of proof is no longer required of believers in human induced global warming, neither is logic or rational thought.

The Global Warming Gestapo, with great zeal for their new religion, are just a hair away from offering us the same deal that the Islamic Fascists have offered: Convert, swear your belief in the teachings of the prophet ALGORE, submit to a new world order, or die as an infidel.

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:01 am
The real problem with trying to talk to the wack jobs who feign belief in the fakery called global warming or climate change (they need to keep changing the name to stay ahead of the unwilling public's opinion- what is next poison atmosphere?) is that like any bully, they will scream and cry like the hysterical bitches they are when confronted by overwhelming data (force) and get truly nasty when they are the overwhelming force.
At no time will they ever become reasonable, compromising, or rational. They are fully infected with evil the way a dog whose cranial content is 99% rabies by weight, and there is no dealing with them. Allowed to continue unmolested, they will simply continue scheming and conspiring new industries to disrupt, and new nd more efficient ways of manipulating facts to gain and hold and expand thier power.
Like poison ivy with the growth rate of Kudzu, it must be dealt with harshly, this marxist/fascist/we-want to rule the worldist thought pattern.
Besides: Even if the world warmed an average of twenty degrees NOW, and all te ice melted tomorrow, the result would be some earthquakes as the continents rise due to the seafloors being squished down by the weight. But that is NOT going to happen so fast. (PS: folks who listed the lies that they have promulgated in attempts to scare us into giving them power forgot to mention ASTEROIDS!!
Oh god an asteroid is going to hit earth. Vote for me.
Where is the RAID?...)

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:53 am
gxmadiso posted:
" . . .You will argue against any scientific concensus your string pullers tell you to. . . ."
My primary involvement with string has been to produce enough rope that radicals can manufacture nooses with which to hang themselves. I'll be glad to pull it if you want me to. If a topic interests me I will do some research, gather data from multiple sources, analyze that data and reach my own conclusions. Regarding temperature cycles in earth's history I have researched available data from geology, paleontology, anthropology, meteorology, human history, and astronomy. All these sciences support the conclusion that the current warming trend is not unprecedented. It is a current manifestation of a phase that is part of a repeating pattern.

I wonder how most of you feel about evolution. Actually, I have a pretty good idea. . . ."
During the past several decades I have been very thankful for the facts of evolution. Without it you and I would not exist in our present form. Many of the sciences I referenced above also support the validity of evolution. The only things that have been poofed into existence are wild conspiracy theories and special activists' causes.

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 10:37 am

So what do we do? Keep polluting the planet, killing off rare species, mowing down forests and jungles, building higher and higher piles of landfill, more and more places, continue with the petro-based economies that drive Western economies, buying shit and producing shit and piling up shit indefinitely?

Even if I wasn't convinced that global warming is good science, which I am, I would not be arguing for the status quo. There are too many people, too many factories and oil-based transit, too much shit piling up everywhere. The cities are filthy, people have no clue how to grow food, how to plant a tree, one bird from another. Most people are helpless worm-like consumers at the corporate manufactured trough, keeping us full of fat and booze and cigarettes and TV dope and human-centric materialist views of the world to kill any wild open sense of wonder we might have.

More of us are eating pills for every reason under the sun, more of us are fat, sick, unhappy and vulnerable to every two-bit con-man coming down the road with some get-rich-get-pretty-get-thin-get-laid potion in hand. Fucking Matrix drones, and I think everyone posting to this thread can see it.

We're here, in this community, because we are aware of something else, something more, each in his or her own way, like there's a world out there beyond the TV and the Happy Meal. We may approach it differently, and often have no clue what to do on a macro-scale, but we ask the questions and we wonder. The earth is being harmed by a species that is sick, war-ridden, abusive to its own kind and every other kind. Our capacity for kindness and intelligence and innovation is huge, but too often this bows before the grub for the mighty dollar, the shoulder exhausted from a workweek at the wheel.

Yet we rouse ourselves, and damnit we need to KEEP rousing ourselves. Our kind does not live well with each member receiving his or her due. We need to do something, and do it for a long time. Call it global warming or a global spiritual crisis, it's there, it's in our faces. We can be happy in our hours, live like this moment's joy is forever, and in some ways it is, but there are other things out there too. Muck and stardust both, and more.

I think we are endowed with intelligence and wisdom, by whatever source, for whatever ultimate purpose, to do something now. I speak only for myself here but I get the feeling if I could say the right words to convey my meaning everyone else here would nod and agree.

I get sick at heart every day seeing the potential of the world wasted by greed and fear and envy. I counter this feeling with good food, and kindness to others, and music, and nature. But I do not deny there are people and animals and plants dying needlessly by the mindless hand by the millions. Joy and trauma, that's the world in most moments.

/me hands cen a box of Kleenex brand tissue......

Life is messy, bro. Always has been, always will be. Life daily consumes life in an epic battle for survival. Now, that doesn't mean CO2 emissions are good for the environment. I think we need to drastically cut those emissions in order to protect all the species that breath clean air.

Feel free to get back to the hand wringing and nashing of teeth, if that's really where its at for you, cen.....

lw

I buy into the whole 'Climate is changing' thing...  Granted, I have not really sought out and studied much data to support my belief, but c'mon; surely one does not have to be a certified climatologist to know that the weather patters are screwy...  I do alot of the hand wringing/nashing of teeth thing, as well....  It satisfies my need to feel I am 'above the fray, more concerned and aware than the average Joe Schmo....  Guess you could say I agree that the earth is goin' to hell in a handbasket; woven by it's greedy, consumerism...  senor sal will, of course, just muddle along.  Just don't forget he is always around to bitch n moan about things......  Damn now;  where's that Utopian Society my benevolent guvmit promised me!!!!!!!!!!!!!  :wink:   sal

Life being messy need not be so. Let me tell you a personal story. I've been having some health problems lately, not to get into them too much, I have problems with my feet. Doctors give me pills, and modern technological shoes to help. All good, I am grateful for such things. But it took asking a third doctor to be told, yes, I can learn to walk in a way that is less harmful to my feet. See, I think we can learn, I think, in fact we are here to learn, to grow. I think as individuals we can learn from our own past experience, and as a species we can learn from our collective history. That is what I believe.

So now maybe our science is better than ever before at telling us what's wrong, what we are doing that we did not know was causing harm, like me and my feet. But science cannot solve things. It is up to us, in our individual ways and in smaller and larger groups to decide to change. It's that simple, and that hard.

So, like Fuzz says, stop buying shit. Well put. Most things come from shit and go back to shit. But I think cultivating awareness is important too, a greater knowing of how A affects B and causes C. I want to learn as a single soul, but also to be part of a general learning. It will take many, many of us to move the world into a better space. Like that 100th monkey theory that was talked about back in the bad old nuclear nightmare '80s.

I'm not without hope or I would not rail against the things I oppose, and for the solutions that seem evident to me right now.

I am trying to learn to walk differently, and why I need to do this. I think, as a species, we need to do this as well. Learn what the problem is, why it came to be, and how to improve things.

I don't need tissues, LW, I need your good brain on the case :twisted:

quote cen: I don't need tissues, LW, I need your good brain on the case

Sneaky focker went and found the one way to shut me up....

But seriously, you have my brain on the case. I agree something needs to be done about CO2 emissions.

lw

well done, man :twisted: in some other world, we'd seal our deal with a puff of something sweet & exotic ;)

This is an interesting read on the subject, imo.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editor ... l_climate/ (http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/02/09/no_change_in_political_climate/)

ELLEN GOODMAN
No change in political climate
By Ellen Goodman  |  February 9, 2007

On the day that the latest report on global warming was released, I went out and bought a light bulb. OK, an environmentally friendly, compact fluorescent light bulb.

No, I do not think that if everyone lit just one little compact fluorescent light bulb, what a bright world this would be. Even the Prius in our driveway doesn't do a whole lot to reduce my carbon footprint, which is roughly the size of the Yeti lurking in the (melting) Himalayas.
But it was either buying a light bulb or pulling the covers over my head. And it was too early in the day to reach for that kind of comforter.
By every measure, the U N 's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises the level of alarm. The fact of global warming is "unequivocal." The certainty of the human role is now somewhere over 90 percent. Which is about as certain as scientists ever get.

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

But light bulbs aside -- I now have three and counting -- I don't expect that this report will set off some vast political uprising. The sorry fact is that the rising world thermometer hasn't translated into political climate change in America.

The folks at the Pew Research Center clocking public attitudes show that global warming remains 20th on the annual list of 23 policy priorities. Below terrorism, of course, but also below tax cuts, crime, morality, and illegal immigration.
One reason is that while poles are melting and polar bears are swimming between ice floes, American politics has remained polarized. There are astonishing gaps between Republican science and Democratic science. Try these numbers: Only 23 percent of college-educated Republicans believe the warming is due to humans, while 75 percent of college-educated Democrats believe it.

This great divide comes from the science-be-damned-and-debunked attitude of the Bush administration and its favorite media outlets. The day of the report, Big Oil Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma actually described it as "a shining example of the corruption of science for political gain." Speaking of corruption of science, the American Enterprise Institute, which has gotten $1.6 million over the years from Exxon Mobil, offered $10,000 last summer to scientists who would counter the IPCC report.

But there are psychological as well as political reasons why global warming remains in the cool basement of priorities. It may be, paradoxically, that framing this issue in catastrophic terms ends up paralyzing instead of motivating us. Remember the Time magazine cover story: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried." The essential environmental narrative is a hair-raising consciousness-raising: This is your Earth. This is your Earth on carbon emissions.
This works for some. But a lot of social science research tells us something else. As Ross Gelbspan, author of "The Heat is On," says, "when people are confronted with an overwhelming threat and don't see a solution, it makes them feel impotent. So they shrug it off or go into deliberate denial."

Michael Shellenberger, co author of "The Death of Environmentalism," adds, "The dominant narrative of global warming has been that we're responsible and have to make changes or we're all going to die. It's tailor-made to ensure inaction."

So how many scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
American University's Matthew Nisbet is among those who see the importance of expanding the story beyond scientists. He is charting the reframing of climate change into a moral and religious issue -- see the greening of the evangelicals -- and into a corruption-of-science issue -- see big oil -- and an economic issue -- see the newer, greener technologies .

In addition, maybe we can turn denial into planning. "If the weatherman says there's a 75 percent chance of rain, you take your umbrella," Shellenberger tells groups. Even people who clutched denial as their last, best hope can prepare, he says, for the next Katrina. Global warming preparation is both his antidote for helplessness and goad to collective action.

The report is grim stuff. Whatever we do today, we face long-range global problems with a short-term local attention span. We're no happier looking at this global thermostat than we are looking at the nuclear doomsday clock.

Can we change from debating global warming to preparing? Can we define the issue in ways that turn denial into action? In America what matters now isn't environmental science, but political science. We are still waiting for the time when an election hinges on a candidate's plans for a changing climate. That's when the light bulb goes on.

lw

I know some of you think I'm stoopid for asking these questions, but at least there are some educated folks who are apparently a lot dumber than me, as they should know better....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... warm11.xml (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/02/11/warm11.xml)

Cosmic rays blamed for global warming

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:08am GMT 11/02/2007

Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research.

Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought.

In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly alter the amount of cloud covering the planet.

    
High levels of cloud cover blankets the Earth and reflects radiated heat from the Sun back out into space, causing the planet to cool.

Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.

This, he says, is responsible for much of the global warming we are experiencing.

He claims carbon dioxide emissions due to human activity are having a smaller impact on climate change than scientists think. If he is correct, it could mean that mankind has more time to reduce our effect on the climate.

The controversial theory comes one week after 2,500 scientists who make up the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change published their fourth report stating that human carbon dioxide emissions would cause temperature rises of up to 4.5 C by the end of the century.

Mr Svensmark claims that the calculations used to make this prediction largely overlooked the effect of cosmic rays on cloud cover and the temperature rise due to human activity may be much smaller.

He said: "It was long thought that clouds were caused by climate change, but now we see that climate change is driven by clouds.

"This has not been taken into account in the models used to work out the effect carbon dioxide has had.

"We may see CO2 is responsible for much less warming than we thought and if this is the case the predictions of warming due to human activity will need to be adjusted."

Mr Svensmark last week published the first experimental evidence from five years' research on the influence that cosmic rays have on cloud production in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Journal A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. This week he will also publish a fuller account of his work in a book entitled The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change.

A team of more than 60 scientists from around the world are preparing to conduct a large-scale experiment using a particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, to replicate the effect of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.

They hope this will prove whether this deep space radiation is responsible for changing cloud cover. If so, it could force climate scientists to re-evaluate their ideas about how global warming occurs.

Mr Svensmark's results show that the rays produce electrically charged particles when they hit the atmosphere. He said: "These particles attract water molecules from the air and cause them to clump together until they condense into clouds."

Mr Svensmark claims that the number of cosmic rays hitting the Earth changes with the magnetic activity around the Sun. During high periods of activity, fewer cosmic rays hit the Earth and so there are less clouds formed, resulting in warming.

Low activity causes more clouds and cools the Earth.

He said: "Evidence from ice cores show this happening long into the past. We have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years.

"Humans are having an effect on climate change, but by not including the cosmic ray effect in models it means the results are inaccurate.The size of man's impact may be much smaller and so the man-made change is happening slower than predicted."

Some climate change experts have dismissed the claims as "tenuous".

Giles Harrison, a cloud specialist at Reading University said that he had carried out research on cosmic rays and their effect on clouds, but believed the impact on climate is much smaller than Mr Svensmark claims.

Mr Harrison said: "I have been looking at cloud data going back 50 years over the UK and found there was a small relationship with cosmic rays. It looks like it creates some additional variability in a natural climate system but this is small."

But there is a growing number of scientists who believe that the effect may be genuine.

Among them is Prof Bob Bingham, a clouds expert from the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils in Rutherford.

He said: "It is a relatively new idea, but there is some evidence there for this effect on clouds."

Its getting hot in here....

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national ... -4433r.htm (http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070211-112902-4433r.htm)

Global-warming skeptics cite being 'treated like a pariah'

By Eric Pfeiffer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 12, 2007

Scientists skeptical of climate-change theories say they are increasingly coming under attack -- treatment that may make other analysts less likely to present contrarian views about global warming.
   
"In general, if you do not agree with the consensus that we are headed toward disaster, you are treated like a pariah," said William O'Keefe, chief executive officer of the Marshall Institute, which assesses scientific issues that shape public policy.
   
"It's ironic that a field based on challenging unproven theories attacks skeptics in a very unhealthy way."
   
Two climatologists in Democrat-leaning states, David Legates in Delaware and George Taylor in Oregon, have come under fire for expressing skepticism about the origins of climate change. Oregon Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski is publicly seeking to strip Mr. Taylor, widely known as the state's climatologist, of his position because of his stance.

"There has been a broad, concerted effort to intimidate and silence them," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global-warming policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "It's the typical politics of the hard left at work. I think these are real threats."
   
CEI, which previously listed Mr. Legates as an "adjunct scholar," has published multiple reports questioning the science behind global-warming theories and has been criticized for accepting donations from companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp.
   
Mr. O'Keefe said his organization doesn't deny the existence of global warming but questions the methods used by individuals and groups advocating for new government restrictions to combat the phenomenon.
   
"We have never said that global warming isn't real," Mr. O'Keefe said. "No self-respecting think tank would accept money to support preconceived notions. We make sure what we are saying is both scientifically and analytically defensible."
   
In an interview with local NBC affiliate KGW-TV, Mr. Kulongoski, a Democrat, said he hopes to take away Mr. Taylor's job title because his views do not mesh with the political opinions of most lawmakers in Oregon, including the governor.
   
"He is Oregon State University's climatologist. He is not the state of Oregon's climatologist," Mr. Kulongoski said. "I just think there has to be somebody that says, 'This is the state position on this.' "
   
Mr. Taylor was appointed to the position in 1991, when Oregon's legislature created a state climate office at the college. Mr. Kulongoski wants to change the position to a governor-appointed one. State Sen. Brad Avakian, a Democrat, is sponsoring a bill supporting such a move.

I think this article brings up a few important points...

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 363818.ece (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1363818.ece)

You don't say......

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/1 ... 9529R.html (http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/13/upiUPI-20070213-100336-9529R.html)

Study: Glacier melting can be variable

Feb 13 10:13 AM US/Eastern

BOULDER, Colo., Feb. 13 (UPI) -- A U.S. study suggests two of Greenland's largest glaciers are melting at variable rates and not at an increasing trend.

The study, led by Ian Howat, a researcher with the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center and the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, shows the glaciers shrank dramatically and dumped twice as much ice into the sea during a period of less than a year between 2004 and 2005.

But then, fewer than two years later, they returned to near their previous rates of discharge.

Howat says such variability during such a short time underlines the problem in assuming glacial melting and sea level rise will necessarily occur at a steady upward trajectory.

"Our main point is that the behavior of these glaciers can change a lot from year to year, so we can't assume to know the future behavior from short records of recent changes," he said. "Future warming may lead to rapid pulses of retreat and increased discharge rather than a long, steady drawdown."

The research is online in the journal Science Express.

Damn doubting dolts.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1925164,0008.htm (http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1925164,0008.htm)

Experts question theory on global warming

Anil Anand

New Delhi, February 11, 2007

Believe it or not. There are only about a dozen scientists working on 9,575 glaciers in India under the aegis of the Geological Society of India.  Is the available data enough to believe that the glaciers are retreating due to global warming?

Some experts have questioned the alarmists theory on global warming leading to shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers. VK Raina, a leading glaciologist and former ADG of GSI is one among them.

He feels that the research on Indian glaciers is negligible. Nothing but the remote sensing data forms the basis of these alarmists observations and not on the spot research.

Raina told the Hindustan Times that out of 9,575 glaciers in India, till date, research has been conducted only on about 50. Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers.

It is simple. The issue of glacial retreat is being sensationalised by a few individuals, the septuagenarian Raina claimed. Throwing a gauntlet to the alarmist, he said the issue should be debated threadbare before drawing a conclusion.

However, Dr RK Pachouri, Chairman, Inter-Governmental Panel of Climatic Change said it’s recently released fourth assessment report has  recorded increased glacier retreat since the 1980s.

This he said was due to the fact that the carbon dioxide radioactive forcing has increased by 20 per cent particularly after 1995. And also that 11 of the last 12 years were among the warmest 12 years recorded so far.
 
Surprisingly, Raina, who has been associated with the research and data collection in over 25 glaciers in India and abroad, debunked the theory that Gangotri glacier is retreating alarmingly.

Maintaining that the glaciers are undergoing natural changes, witnessed periodically, he said recent studies in the Gangotri and Zanskar areas (Drung- Drung, Kagriz glaciers) have not shown any evidence of major retreat.

"Claims of global warming causing glacial melt in the Himalayas are based on wrong assumptions," Raina, a trained mountaineer and skiing expert said. He rued that not much is being done by the Government to create a bank of trained geologists for an in-depth study of glaciers.

The agencies such as the GSI are not getting fresh talent simply because of the measly salaries offered by the Government.

Consider this. During one of his visits to Antarctic, to his utter dismay, Raina discovered that the cook of a Japanese team was getting a bigger pay packet than him.

If he is to be believed, currently only about a dozen scientists are working on Indian glaciers. More alarming is the fact that some of them are above 50.  How can one talk about the state of glaciers when not much research is being done on the ground, he wondered.

In fact, it is difficult to ascertain the exact state of Himalayan glaciers as these are very dusty as compared to the ones in Alaska and the Alps. The present presumptions are based on the cosmatic study of the glacier surfaces.

Nobody knows what is happening beneath the glaciers. What ever is being flaunted about the under surface activity of the glaciers, is merely presumptions, he claimed.

His views were echoed by Dr RK Ganjoo, Director, Regional Centre for Field Operations and Research on Himalayan Glaciology, who is supervising study of glaciers in Ladakh region including one in the Siachen area. He also maintained that nothing abnormal has been found in any of the Himalyan glaciers studied so far by him.

Still, he wondered on the Himalayan glaciers being compared with those in Alaska or Europe to lend credence to the melt theory. Indian glaciers are at 3,500-4,000 meter above the sea level whereas those in the Alps are at much lower levels. Certainly, the conditions under which the glaciers in Alaska are retreating, are not prevailing in the Indian sub-continent, he explained.

Another leading geologist MN Koul of Jammu University, who is actively engaged in studying glacier dynamics in J&K and Himachal holds similar views. Referring to his research on Kol glacier ( Paddar, J&K) and Naradu (HP), he said both the glaciers have not changed much in the past two decades.

Email Anil Anand: aanand@hindustantimes.com

one of the things that makes me laugh about some of the movies concerning global changes is how everythng gets destroyed in ..well..2 hrs since most movies last around 2 hrs. those 2 hrs usually represent a couple weeks, or a month at least.

the reality of any real changes happens over hundreds of years. which means that in one of our life times, we wouldnt see much change, just slight changes, just enough to think: "um i think there was more snow last year" or "um, i think it was a bit warmer last year".

a change is always happening, thats the nature of life.
the "there is no global warming happening" can also be used by industrials as an escuse to keep on producing like the pigs that industry is. as long as we will keep on buying their crap, they will keep on producing more crap!

so, no matter how much or how little humans influence the already existing natural changes, i think its always a good idea to:

BUY/consumme LESS SHIT!!
BREATHE MORE!

It seems that climate models and weather predictions may be a little more complicated than we are led to believe. Remember the hurricane predictions for last season?

lw

Public release date: 15-Feb-2007

Contact: David Bromwich
Bromwich.1@osu.edu (mailto:Bromwich.1@osu.edu)

Ve haf vays of dealing with swine like this en Cleveland!

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindeal ... thispage=1 (http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1171620847309210.xml&coll=2&thispage=1)

Cleveland's weather wizards downplay global warming
Friday, February 16, 2007

Sure, a panel of 2,500 scientists this month declared that it is "unequivocal" that global warming is occurring and at least 90 percent certain that humans are responsible.

And, yes, the international report predicted that world temperatures will rise from 3.2 to 7.8 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and that sea levels could rise from 7 to 23 inches, leading to worldwide catastrophe.

OK, fine -- but don't get too worked up over it.

That was the consensus among five Northeast Ohio meteorologists at a panel discussion Tuesday at Landerhaven in Mayfield Heights.

It's not that Mark Johnson, Dick Goddard, Mark Nolan, Jon Laufman or former Cleveland weatherman Don Webster disbelieve the data entirely.

But they're skeptical, and they don't believe that it's necessarily our fault or that we should panic over it.

"We have maybe 100 years of data on a rock that's 6 billion years old," said Johnson, a WEWS Channel 5 weatherman. "Mother Nature tends to even herself out, and the fact is, the Earth is cyclical."

Goddard, WJW Channel 8 meteorologist, said scientists have flip-flopped on the matter: "I have a file an inch thick from 30 years ago that says the planet was cooling," he told the crowd of several hundred.

They cautioned listeners not to put too much stock in what they said was an insufficient history of warming.

"The term global warming' strikes fear in the heart of people every time you say it, but it's simply a rise in temperature over time, and it's happened before," said Nolan, meteorologist at WKYC Channel 3. "I'm not sure which is more arrogant for humans: to say we caused it or to say we're going to fix it."

Laufman, who has free-lanced for WOIO Channel 19 and taught meteorology courses at several local colleges, including Case Western Reserve University, also referenced history.

"There was also a significant spike in world temperatures during the 1400s -- and that was well before the Industrial Revolution," he said "We haven't studied it long enough to know what causes global warming."

Even Webster, who now lives in Hilton Head, S.C., but flew in this week to moderate the discussion, was flippant.

"Where's Al Gore now?" he joked with the audience, referring to the former vice president and his documentary film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which argues the case for global warming. "You can bet he's not in New York, where they've got nearly 12 feet of snow right now."

In memoriam:

Richard A. Vollenweider, a Swiss scientist credited for trying to save the Great Lakes region in the 1970s by calling for the elimination of phosphorous in laundry detergent, died Jan. 20.

Work by Vollenweider, 84, led directly to the historic 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement between the United States and Canada.

Vollenweider's work showed that high concentrations of phosphorous and nitrogen lead to lakes being choked with vegetation and algae.

Dumb fucking asses...

Why did NY get 12 feet of snow???

Because Lake Ontario was warm and never cooled off this year.
Then the jet stream moved southernly and the cold artic air collided with the warm moist air hovering over Lake Ontario.  A sudden shift in air temperatures is what make every storm dammit.  Ignorant assholes.

(Do you get idea I am pissed?  Well, yes I am, because I just finished watching An Inconvienent Truth last night.)

Had Lake Ontario not been so warm and the air temperature gradually fallen and the lake cooled slowly, then there wouldn't have been house crushing levels of snow falling.  Yes, house crushing.  When there is 12 feet of snow on your roof, that's a loading 87 lbs/sq ft.  That's like having people packed as densely as the floor section of a concert on your roof.  If the roof is 1000 sq. ft. thats over 40 tons extra loading.  Great, 20 cars stacked on the roof.

That's why people were shoveling their roofs, not their driveways.

I was amused by the fact that people were entering their houses through the second story.  Gosh, help anyone stuck with a single story rancher!!!

Right on, Windey.

Speaking of "what if" scenarios, here's an article concerning the possible future of the Bay area in No Cal if sea levels rise as currently projected. It won't be a pretty sight, that's for sure...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... O72DJ1.DTL (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/18/MNG6SO72DJ1.DTL)

CONSEQUENCES OF A RISING BAY
GLOBAL WARMING: New set of maps reveals how melting polar ice could change shoreline and carry a high price for entire region
Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer
Sunday, February 18, 2007
 
New maps show that neighborhoods and roads in many cities near the San Francisco Bay shoreline would be under water if global warming causes tides to rise as much as 3 feet in the coming decades, and officials say regions face key decisions about where people will be able to live and build.

The maps, which the Bay Conservation and Development Commission prepared for The Chronicle, offer a detailed look at how a changing shoreline would affect life around the bay.

Parts of Corte Madera, San Rafael, Hayward and Newark and much of the Silicon Valley shoreline would be under water, including a portion of Moffett Field, the site of NASA Ames Research Center, where Google wants to build a 1 million-square-foot campus.

On the edge of the rising waters would be stadium sites proposed for the 49ers -- in Santa Clara and at the Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco. Fremont's proposed site for the Oakland A's ballpark also could be vulnerable to flooding in the 21st century, the maps show.

Wastewater treatment plants for more than a dozen cities in the South Bay, including San Jose, and the industrial ponds for the Valero oil refinery in Benicia and the Chevron refinery in Richmond, would be inundated by the projected rise in the bay.

While the Bay Area has done a good job designing for earthquakes, it hasn't done so for sea-level rise, said Will Travis, executive director of the bay conservation agency, which approves shoreline development. Aside from cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Travis said, "The amount of planning and preparing that we do is really what will affect how severe the impacts are here.''

Cities can protect vulnerable shorelines with sea walls and levees, but the fixes and maintenance would cost billions of dollars. Officials will have to decide what to save and what to let go. Some development plans in the works may have to be shelved or drastically re-engineered, Travis said.

The maps illustrate the regions of risk. Among the areas threatened are:

-- In the North Bay, low areas include Bel Marin Keys, parts of Highway 37 and much of the former Hamilton Air Force Base around Black Point. Parts of Highway 101, Mill Valley and Sausalito would be flooded. Sections of Corte Madera would be under water, as would southern San Rafael.

-- On the San Francisco shoreline, vulnerable spots include parts of Mission Bay housing and office developments, Caltrain tracks, Candlestick Point redevelopment, Heron's Head Park and the city's sewage-treatment system on Islais Creek. Parts of Treasure Island and the San Francisco and Oakland airports would be under water.

-- Foster City and parts of San Mateo, Redwood City, Mountain View and Palo Alto would be flooded. Waters would inundate sewage treatment plants located in Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Alviso, which serve dozens of cities and thousands of businesses. Parts of Shoreline Park at Mountain View would be at risk of flooding.

-- Parts of Alameda, San Leandro, Hayward, Union City, Fremont and Newark, including sections of Interstate 880, would be covered with water.

-- The Richmond Parkway and parts of Richmond and San Pablo are vulnerable to rising bay water, as is the enormous West County landfill.
Areas of greatest risk

The new maps showing a 1-meter rise shouldn't be used for specific planning purposes, the bay agency's representatives say, although the maps indicate which regions of the shoreline are at the greatest risk of incremental inundation.

Just how fast or how high the oceans might rise in the coming decades are points of uncertainty among climate scientists. Most models don't take into account the recent increasing rate of melt in Greenland and sloughing of ice in western Antarctica. Nor can they project with much confidence the amount of expansion of ocean waters as they warm. At this point, models show a range of rise from 0.5 meter to 5 meters by 2100.

The problems for a metropolitan estuary are enormous. Topping the list is saltwater flowing up into the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, where pumps send fresh water to two-thirds of Californians. Homes, businesses, highways, groundwater and wetland habitat would be flooded.

Sea water would inundate dozens of industrial and municipal wastewater systems ringing the bay, disrupting treatment. Another worry is old shoreline dumps and military installations that could leak biological and chemical contaminants into the bay if soaked.

"Since the bay isn't going to rise over night, the landfill owners can extend dikes, as well as design for flood control, as part of a maintenance program,'' said Curtis Scott, chief of the ground water and waste contamination division of the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

For example, bay waters would lap up around the big West County landfill off Richmond in the event of a 1-meter rise. The owner, Republic Industries, already has dug down into the bay and built walls around it. The wall could go higher, Scott said.

Lila Tang, the regional board's division chief of wastewater permitting, said municipal and industrial wastewater treatment plants are at risk because they're generally at the low spots on the edge of the bay.

Difficult solutions

Protecting them "isn't as simple as building a berm or seawall around a sewage treatment plant," she said. "If the bay water rises, the operators would have to install additional pumping capacity to force the treated water out to a higher bay.'' Other problems would be backflow into the system or a rising groundwater table that would allow seepage into the collection system.

There are no current cost figures of what's at stake. In 1990, the Pacific Institute, an Oakland independent think tank, determined that a 1-meter rise would threaten $48 billion in residential, commercial and industrial property. Constructing new levees and seawalls, raising buildings, freeways and railroads and replenishing beaches, according to the estimates then, would exceed $940 million with $100 million a year to maintain.

Officials from the bay conservation agency and the Pacific Institute are seeking funds to conduct a study to identify real estate, infrastructure and natural resources at risk, and calculate the costs.

Perhaps hardest hit would be the South Bay and Silicon Valley, where government agencies and property owners have started to look at ways to reduce flooding. Some parts of Santa Clara County have dropped 14 feet as the ground sank when groundwater was pumped from the 1940s to 1960s. Agricultural lands in the North Bay and delta islands have also dropped.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is poised to play a part in levee construction, and is conducting a study of South Bay shoreline flood-control with agencies including the Santa Clara Valley Water District. The work will be done in conjunction with the major transformation of some 15,000 acres of salt ponds into tidal marsh.

Few fears for sports teams

Some businesses are more concerned than others. Forty-niners spokeswoman Lisa Lang said the team owners "are aware of the predictions and the many variables associated with them'' at a Santa Clara site under consideration for a new stadium. But she said the owners believe that if the site is feasible, "it will provide decades of enjoyment for our fans.''

The Oakland A's plan to build a ballpark in Fremont at one of the sites at risk of rising tides. Team spokesman Jim Young has said that if the owners thought the water was a problem, they wouldn't be going ahead with planning for a Fremont park.

Officials at the NASA Ames Research Park on Moffett Field are actively working with the Corps of Engineers and others to plan levee protection from sea-level rise, said Sandy Olliges, deputy director of the environmental office. Already home to dozens of businesses, nonprofits and universities, NASA Ames is planning to build the world's largest concentration of high-tech companies, including the Google campus.
But few of California's coastal cities and counties have taken action to prepare for rising tides, said Susanne Moser, a research scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who surveyed 300 planners, public works engineers and other officials from city and county governments last year.

Only one city, Berkeley, and two counties, Sonoma and San Luis Obispo, had in place some plan that considers the effects of global warming. San Francisco, Alameda, Palo Alto, Solana Beach (San Diego County), Goleta (Santa Barbara County) and the counties of Contra Costa, Marin and Humboldt are preparing plans.

The officials who haven't acted blamed lack of money, staff and support from the state and federal governments, as well as the press of other obligations.

It's difficult for local officials to plan given the uncertainty of how much sea levels will rise, said Harvard University Professor John Holdren, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
who is in San Francisco for the group's annual meeting.

But he said a new report expected next month from the United Nations will proclaim that "prudence requires not building close to the shoreline in the future.''

Learn about climate change

Discussions of climate change and other events will be held at a free Family Science Day today in San Francisco that is part of the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The programs will be held in the Yosemite Room of the Hilton San Francisco, 333 O'Farrell St., between 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. For more information, go to aaasmeeting.org.

E-mail Jane Kay at jkay@sfchronicle.com.

Doesn't sound like even Jesus is sure about the underlying causes of this current bout of global warming.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... 996d72c888 (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=d5d6b9e4-802a-23ad-4bba-38996d72c888)

Sunday Telegraph (Australia)

Keeping a cool head amid warming hysteria

By CARDINAL GEORGE PELL

Opinion / Op Ed; Pg. 81

February 18, 2007  

Global-warming doomsayers were out and about in a big way recently, but the rain came in central Queensland, then here in Sydney.

January also was unusually cool.

We have been subjected to a lot of nonsense about climate disasters, as some zealots have been presenting extreme scenarios to frighten us.

They claim ocean levels are about to rise spectacularly, there could be the occasional tsunami as high as an eight-storey building, and the Amazon Basin could be destroyed as the ice cap in the Arctic and Greenland melts.  

An overseas magazine called for Nuremberg-style trials for global-warming sceptics, and a US television correspondent compared sceptics to ''Holocaust deniers''.

A local newspaper editorial's complaint about the doomsayers' religious enthusiasm is unfair to mainstream Christianity.

Christians don't go against reason, although we sometimes go beyond it in faith to embrace the probabilities.

What we were seeing from the doomsayers was an induced dose of mild hysteria -- semi-religious if you like, but dangerously close to superstition.

I'm deeply sceptical about man-made catastrophic global warming, but still open to further evidence.

I would be surprised if industrial pollution and carbon emissions had no ill-effects at all.

But enough is enough.

A few fixed points may provide light on the subject.

We know that enormous climate changes have occurred in world history -- for example, the ice ages and Noah's flood, when human causation could only have been negligible.

Nor should it be too surprising to learn that during the past 100 years, the media has alternated between promoting fear of anew ice age and fear of global warming.

Terrible droughts are not infrequent in Australian history, sometimes lasting seven or eight years.

We all know that a cool January doesn't mean much in the long run.

But neither does evidence based on only a few years.

Scaremongers have used temperature fluctuations over limited periods and in a few places to misrepresent longer patterns.

Warming evidence is mixed and often exaggerated but can be reassuring.

Global warming has been increasing constantly since 1975 at the rate of less than one-fifth of a degree

Celsius per decade.

The concentration of carbon dioxide increased surface temperatures more in winter than in summer, especially in mid and high latitudes over land, while there was a global cooling of the stratosphere.

Britain's University of East Anglia climate research unit found global temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2005, and a NASA satellite recently found the southern hemisphere had not warmed in the past 25 years.

Is mild global warming a northern phenomenon?

We may have been alarmed by the sighting of an iceberg as large as an aircraft carrier off Dunedin, but we should be consoled by the news that the Antarctic is getting colder and the ice is growing there.

The science is certainly more complicated than the propaganda.

This one has me scratching my head. If livestock is such a major factor in global warming, I'm curious as to why the millions upon millions of bison which roamed the great plains up until a couple hundred years ago didn't cause worse damage to the environment. Sure, I realize they are factoring in the slaughtering proceedure these days, but I seriously doubt there are as many four legged creatures roaming the earth, shitting and consuming grass than a few hundred years ago. And to say livestock produces more harmful gasses than all the autos in the world really floors me. Livestock worse than autos for the environment, eh? That tells me cars might not be so bad....  

Oh well, I'm off to trim my carbon footprint....  

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0220/p03s01-ussc.html (http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0220/p03s01-ussc.html)

 Grazing: As meat consumption grows worldwide, cows, like these in a field near Riverside, Pa., are becoming a 'major player' in greenhouse-gas emissions, according to a recent report.

Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet

American meat eaters are responsible for 1.5 more tons of carbon dioxide per person than vegetarians every year.

By Brad Knickerbocker | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming, the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants, not on lowly bovines.

Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. And as meat becomes a growing mainstay of human diet around the world, changing what we eat may prove as hard as changing what we drive.

"Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems," Henning Steinfeld, senior author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in November.

Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation.

The latter two gases are particularly troubling â€" even though they represent far smaller concentrations in atmosphere than CO2, which remains the main global warming culprit. But methane has 23 times the global warming potential (GWP) of CO2 and nitrous oxide has 296 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide.

Methane could become a greater problem if the permafrost in northern latitudes thaws with increasing temperatures, releasing the gas now trapped below decaying vegetation. What's more certain is that emissions of these gases can spike as humans consume more livestock products.

As prosperity increased around the world in recent decades, the number of people eating meat (and the amount one eats every year) has risen steadily. Between 1970 and 2002, annual per capita meat consumption in developing countries rose from 11 kilograms (24 lbs.) to 29 kilograms (64 lbs.), according to the FAO. (In developed countries, the comparable figures were 65 kilos and 80 kilos.) As population increased, total meat consumption in the developing world grew nearly five-fold over that period.

Beyond that, annual global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tons at the beginning of the decade to 465 million tons in 2050. This makes livestock the fastest growing sector of global agriculture.

Animal-rights activists and those advocating vegetarianism have been quick to pick up on the implications of the FAO report.

"Arguably the best way to reduce global warming in our lifetimes is to reduce or eliminate our consumption of animal products," writes Noam Mohr in a report for EarthSave International.

Changing one's diet can lower greenhouse gas emissions quicker than shifts away from fossil fuel burning technologies, Mr. Mohr writes, because the turnover rate for farm animals is shorter than that for cars and power plants.

"Even if cheap, zero-emission fuel sources were available today, they would take many years to build and slowly replace the massive infrastructure our economy depends upon today," he writes. "Similarly, unlike carbon dioxide which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to cooling of the earth."

Researchers at the University of Chicago compared the global warming impact of meat eaters with that of vegetarians and found that the average American diet â€" including all food processing steps â€" results in the annual production of an extra 1.5 tons of CO2-equivalent (in the form of all greenhouse gases) compared to a no-meat diet. Researchers Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin concluded that dietary changes could make more difference than trading in a standard sedan for a more efficient hybrid car, which reduces annual CO2 emissions by roughly one ton a year.

"It doesn't have to be all the way to the extreme end of vegan," says Dr. Eshel, whose family raised beef cattle in Israel. "If you simply cut down from two burgers a week to one, you've already made a substantial difference."

• Staff writer Peter Spotts contributed to this report

LW and everyone--found this essay, published originally in the NY Review of Books--worth reading for some background on the global warming issue--R

******

Warning on Warming  
by Bill McKibben

Published on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 by TomDispatch.com  
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0220-20.htm (http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0220-20.htm)

[This article appears in the March 15, 2007 issue of The New York Review of Books ]
 
When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its latest report in early February, it was greeted with shock: "World Wakes to Climate Catastrophe," reported an Australian paper. But global warming is by now a scientific field with a fairly extensive history, and that history helps set the new findings in context -- a context that makes the new report no less terrifying but much more telling for its unstated political implications.

Although atmospheric scientists had studied the problem for decades, global warming first emerged as a public issue in 1988 when James Hansen, a NASA scientist, told Congress that his research, and the work of a handful of other scientists, indicated that human beings were dangerously heating the planet, particularly through the use of fossil fuels. This bold announcement set off a scientific and political furor: many physicists and chemists played down the possibility of serious harm, and many governments, though feeling pressure to react, did little to restrain the use of fossil fuel. "More research" was the mantra everyone adopted, and funding for it flowed freely from governments and foundations. Under the auspices of the United Nations, scientists and governments set up a curious hybrid, the IPCC, to track and report on the progress of that research.

From roughly 1988 to 1995, the hypothesis that burning coal and gas and oil in large quantities was releasing carbon dioxide and other gases that would trap the sun's radiation on Earth and disastrously heat the planet remained just that: a hypothesis. Scientists used every means at their disposal to reconstruct the history of the earth's climate and to track current changes. For example, they studied the concentration of greenhouse gases in ancient air trapped in glacial cores, sampled the atmosphere with weather balloons, examined the relative thickness of tree rings, and observed the frequency of volcanic eruptions. Most of all, they refined the supercomputer models of the earth's atmosphere in an effort to predict the future of the world's weather.

By 1995, the central Herculean tasks of both research and synthesis were largely complete. The report the IPCC issued that year was able to assert that "the balance of evidence suggests" that human activity was increasing the planet's temperature and that it would be a serious problem. This was perhaps the most significant warning our species, as a whole, has yet been given. The report declared (in the pinched language of international science) that humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they were now damaging the most basic of the earth's systems -- the balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy. Although huge amounts of impressive scientific research have continued over the twelve years since then, their findings have essentially been complementary to the 1995 report -- a constant strengthening of the simple basic truth that humans were burning too much fossil fuel.

The 1995 consensus was convincing enough for Europe and Japan: the report's scientific findings were the basis for the Kyoto negotiations and the treaty they produced; those same findings also led most of the developed world to produce ambitious plans for reductions in carbon emissions. But the consensus didn't extend to Washington, and hence everyone else's efforts were deeply compromised by the American unwillingness to increase the price of energy. Our emissions continued to soar, and the plans of many of the Kyoto countries in Western Europe to reduce emissions sputtered. (At the same time, most tragically of all, China and India had just begun their rapid industrial takeoffs using precisely the technologies we then knew were wreaking havoc; they did not seek or find much aid from the Western countries that could have encouraged them to take a more benign path.) In 2001, the IPCC issued its Third Assessment Report (TAR), but it coincided with the start of the Bush administration, which refused even to consider a serious policy for climate. The IPCC's new Fourth Assessment of this February (known as AR4) arrives at a more congenial moment, as the new Democratic Congress takes up a wide variety of legislation designed, finally, to curb emissions.

The finding of the new report that attracted the most attention in the press was that scientists were now more confident than ever that the warming we've seen so far (about one degree Fahrenheit in the average global temperature) was caused by human beings. Instead of being merely "likely," the conclusion was now "very likely," which in the IPCC's lexicon means better than a 90% chance. But it's been years since any reputable scientist specializing in climate research doubted that conclusion. More important findings were ignored in accounts of the report and in some cases were obscured by the document's very poor prose, which is much more opaque than its predecessors. Those findings include:

* The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now increasing at a faster rate even than before.

* Temperature increases would be considerably higher than they have been so far were it not for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet.

* Alternative explanations for some of the warming (for example, sunspot activity and the "urban heat island effect," the raising of temperatures in cities caused by high building densities and the use of heat-retaining materials such as concrete and asphalt) are now known to be relatively negligible.

* Almost everything frozen on earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and therefore holds more water than cold air, and "cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent."

These facts serve as the prelude to the most important part of the new document, its predictions for what is to come. Here, too, the news essentially confirms the previous report, and indeed most of the predictions about climate change dating back to the start of research: if we don't take the most aggressive possible measures to curb fossil fuel emissions immediately, then we will see temperature increases of -- at the best estimate -- roughly five degrees Fahrenheit during this century. Technically speaking, that's enormous, enough to produce what James Hansen has called a "totally different planet," one much warmer than that known by any of our human ancestors.

The process by which the IPCC conducts its deliberations -- scientists and national government representatives quibbling at enormous length over wording and interpretation -- is Byzantine at best, and makes the group's achievements all the more impressive. But it sacrifices up-to-the-minute assessment of data in favor of lowest-common-denominator conclusions that are essentially beyond argument. That's a reasonable method, but one result is that the "shocking" conclusions of the new report in fact lag behind the most recent findings of climate science by several years.

That's most obvious here in the discussion of the rise in sea level. Researchers know that sea levels will rise fairly quickly this century, in part because of the melting of mountain glaciers and in part because warm water takes up more space than cold. The new assessment refines the calculations of the rise in sea level and puts the best estimate at a foot or two, which is actually slightly less than the last assessment in 2001. Though it doesn't sound like much, a couple of feet is actually a large amount -- enough to inundate many low-lying areas and drown much of the Earth's coastal marshes and wetlands. Still, it might be more or less manageable.

During the last eighteen months, however, new research has indicated that a far more rapid rise in sea level may be possible, because the great ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic appear to have begun moving more quickly toward the sea. Some of this research appeared in Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth, and James Hansen has written in The New York Review about this new information; it is responsible for much of the recent increase in the level of alarm. But it is not included in the IPCC report, except as a caveat: "larger values cannot be excluded, but understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or provide a best estimate or an upper bound for sea level rise."

In short, the new report is a remarkably conservative document. That it is still frightening in its predictions simply indicates the huge magnitude of the changes we're now causing, changes far larger than most people fully understand. Even using its conservative projections, the panel states unequivocally that typhoons and hurricanes will likely become more intense; that sea ice will shrink and perhaps disappear in the summertime Arctic; that snow cover will contract. Later this year, a second working group will outline the effects of these changes on humans, translating inches of sea-level rise into numbers of refugees, showing the effects of increases in temperature and humidity on malaria-carrying mosquitoes as well as the impact of heat waves on crop losses. The language will still be bloodless, but the findings obviously won't.

The IPCC has always avoided taking political positions -- it doesn't recommend specific policies -- and it continues this tradition with its new report. In its discussions of the momentum of climate change, however, it does introduce one particularly disturbing statistic. Because of the time lag between carbon emissions and their effect on air temperature, even if we halted the increase in coal, oil, and gas burning right now, temperatures would continue to rise about two tenths of a degree Celsius per decade. But, the report writes, "if all radiative forcing agents [i.e., greenhouse gases] are held constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming trend would occur in the next two decades at a rate of about 0.1ºC per decade."

Translated into English, this means, to put it simply, that if world leaders had heeded the early warnings of the first IPCC report, and by 2000 had done the very hard work to keep greenhouse gas emissions from growing any higher, the expected temperature increase would be half as much as is expected now. In the words of the experts at realclimate.org, where the most useful analyses of the new assessment can be found, climate change is a problem with a very high "procrastination penalty": a penalty that just grows and grows with each passing year of inaction.

This is why the most important news about climate at the moment may come not from the IPCC but from Washington. After twenty years of inactivity -- a remarkably successful bipartisan effort to accomplish nothing -- the first few weeks of the new Congress have witnessed a flurry of activity. A series of bills have been introduced by people ranging from California Representative Henry Waxman and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders to Arizona's John McCain that would call for more or less aggressive carbon reduction targets. Some of the bills would set in place a "cap-and-trade" system that would set overall limits on emissions of carbon dioxide but would allow companies to freely buy and sell credits permitting them to emit certain amounts of it; this would produce a market for carbon-cutting measures.

The IPCC report doesn't call for particular reduction figures. It does, however, make clear that reduction in emissions must be quick and deep. There is no more optimistic alternative. Even if we do everything right, we're still going to see serious increases in temperature, and all of the physical changes (to one extent or another) predicted in the report. However, there's reason to hope that if the US acts extremely aggressively and quickly we might be able to avoid an increase of two degrees Celsius, the rough threshold at which runaway polar melting might be stopped. This means that any useful legislation will have to feature both a very rapid start to reductions and a long and uncompromising mandate to continue them. Sanders's bill, also endorsed by California's Barbara Boxer, who heads the relevant committee, comes closest to that standard. It calls for an eventual 80% cut in emissions by 2050. McCain's bill, cosponsored by one of his challengers for the presidency, Barack Obama, is somewhat weaker in its eventual targets. But the bargaining has barely begun, and in any event quick initial implementation of any cuts will be almost as important as the final numbers.

No one expects President Bush to sign such a bill. In fact, it was widely considered a minor miracle that he uttered the words "climate change" in this year's State of the Union address. (His limp proposal, centering on alternative fuels for some vehicles, was equally widely considered a dud.) What's happening now has much to do with positioning for the next presidential election, and the legislation that will eventually be passed and signed in 2009. What the IPCC report makes clear by implication is that that legislation will be our last meaningful chance: anything less than an all-out assault on carbon in our economy will be rendered meaningless by the increasing momentum of global warming. And of course by now our economy is only part of the problem. Though we use more energy per capita than any other country, the Chinese may pass us in total carbon emissions by decade's end. Even if we start to get our own house in order, we'll need to figure out how, with desperate speed, to lead an equally sweeping international response.

The only really encouraging development is the groundswell of public concern that has built over the last year, beginning with the reaction to Hurricane Katrina and Al Gore's movie. In January, a few of us launched an initiative called stepitup07.org. It calls for Americans to organize rallies in their own communities on April 14 asking for congressional action. In the first few weeks the website was open, more than six hundred groups in forty-six states registered to hold demonstrations -- this will clearly be the largest organized response to global warming yet in this country. The groups range from environmental outfits to evangelical churches to college sororities, united only by the visceral sense (fueled in part by this winter's bizarre weather) that the planet has been knocked out of whack. The IPCC assessment offers a modest account of just how far out of whack it is -- and just how hard we're going to have to work to have even a chance at limiting the damage.

[Note: This piece reviews Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, 18 pp. It can be found by clicking here.]

Bill McKibben is a frequent contributor to The New York Review and is scholar in residence at Middlebury College and the author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.

Hi all--I found this essay online. Paul Krugman is a NY Times columnist, and an economics professor at Princeton University. I've heard him speak on the radio as well as reading his columns. He's smart, and he's on the money about many issues--Raymond

******

Colorless Green Ideas
by Paul Krugman

Published Thursday, February 22, 2007 at Welcome to Pottersville
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot ... ideas.html (http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/02/paul-krugman-colorless-green-ideas.html)

The factual debate about whether global warming is real is, or at least should be, over. The question now is what to do about it.

Aside from a few dead-enders on the political right, climate change skeptics seem to be making a seamless transition from denial to fatalism. In the past, they rejected the science. Now, with the scientific evidence pretty much irrefutable, they insist that it doesn’t matter because any serious attempt to curb greenhouse gas emissions is politically and economically impossible.

Behind this claim lies the assumption, explicit or implicit, that any substantial cut in energy use would require a drastic change in the way we live. To be fair, some people in the conservation movement seem to share that assumption.

But the assumption is false. Let me tell you about a real-world counterexample: an advanced economy that has managed to combine rising living standards with a substantial decline in per capita energy consumption, and managed to keep total carbon dioxide emissions more or less flat for two decades, even as both its economy and its population grew rapidly. And it achieved all this without fundamentally changing a lifestyle centered on automobiles and single-family houses.

The name of the economy? California.

There’s nothing heroic about California’s energy policy â€" but that’s precisely the point. Over the years the state has adopted a series of conservation measures that are anything but splashy. They’re the kind of drab, colorless stuff that excites only real policy wonks. Yet the cumulative effect has been impressive, if still well short of what we really need to do.

The energy divergence between California and the rest of the United States dates from the 1970s. Both the nation and the state initially engaged in significant energy conservation after that decade’s energy crisis. But conservation in most of America soon stalled: after a decade of rapid progress, improvements in auto mileage came to an end, while electricity consumption continued to rise rapidly, driven by the growing size of houses, the increasing use of air-conditioning and the proliferation of appliances.

In California, by contrast, the state continued to push policies designed to encourage conservation, especially of electricity. And these policies worked.

People in California have always used a bit less energy than other Americans because of the mild climate. But the difference has grown much larger since the 1970s. Today, the average Californian uses about a third less total energy than the average American, uses less than 60 percent as much electricity, and is responsible for emitting only about 55 percent as much carbon dioxide.

How did the state do it? In some cases conservation was mandated directly, through energy efficiency standards for appliances and rules governing new construction. Also, regulated power companies were given new incentives to promote conservation, via rule changes that “decoupled” their profits from the amount of electricity they sold.

And yes, a variety of state actions had the effect of raising energy prices. In the early 1970s, the price of electricity in California was close to the national average. Today, it’s about 50 percent higher.

Incidentally, since someone is bound to mention it: the California energy crisis of 2000-2001 has nothing to do with this story. That crisis was caused by market manipulation â€" we’ve got it on tape â€" made possible by ill-conceived deregulation, not conservation.

Back to California’s success. As the higher price of power indicates, conservation didn’t come free. Still, it’s striking how invisible California’s energy policy remains. It’s easy to see why New York has much lower per capita energy consumption than, say, Georgia: it’s a matter of high-rises versus sprawl, mass transit versus driving alone. It’s less obvious that Los Angeles is a much greener city than Atlanta. But it is.

So is California a role model for climate policy? No and yes. Even if America as a whole had matched California’s conservation efforts, we’d still be emitting about as much carbon dioxide now as we were in 1990. That’s too much.

But California’s experience shows that serious conservation is a lot less disruptive, imposes much less of a burden, than the skeptics would have it. And the fact that a state government, with far more limited powers than those at Washington’s disposal, has been able to achieve so much is a good omen for our ability to do a lot to limit climate change, if and when we find the political will.

Thanks for adding material to this thread, cen.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Yj ... EwZTFhM2E= (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YjI4NTc0YWMzNTA3ZjRmYmJiMDRjNmI5MGEwZTFhM2E=)

Inconvenient Truths
Novel science fiction on global warming.

By Patrick J. Michaels

This Sunday, Al Gore will probably win an Academy Award for his global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, a riveting work of science fiction.

The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland’s 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.

Where’s the scientific support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent Policymaker’s Summary from the United Nations’ much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.

Even 17 inches is likely to be high, because it assumes that the concentration of methane, an important greenhouse gas, is growing rapidly. Atmospheric methane concentration hasn’t changed appreciably for seven years, and Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland recently pronounced the IPCC’s methane emissions scenarios as “quite unlikely.”

Nonetheless, the top end of the U.N.’s new projection is about 30-percent lower than it was in its last report in 2001. “The projections include a contribution due to increased ice flow from Greenland and Antarctica for the rates observed since 1993,” according to the IPCC, “but these flow rates could increase or decrease in the future.”

According to satellite data published in Science in November 2005, Greenland was losing about 25 cubic miles of ice per year. Dividing that by 630,000 yields the annual percentage of ice loss, which, when multiplied by 100, shows that Greenland was shedding ice at 0.4 percent per century.

“Was” is the operative word. In early February, Science published another paper showing that the recent acceleration of Greenland’s ice loss from its huge glaciers has suddenly reversed.

Nowhere in the traditionally refereed scientific literature do we find any support for Gore’s hypothesis. Instead, there’s an unrefereed editorial by NASA climate firebrand James E. Hansen, in the journal Climate Change â€" edited by Steven Schneider, of Stanford University, who said in 1989 that scientists had to choose “the right balance between being effective and honest” about global warming â€" and a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was only reviewed by one person, chosen by the author, again Dr. Hansen.

These are the sources for the notion that we have only ten years to “do” something immediately to prevent an institutionalized tsunami. And given that Gore only conceived of his movie about two years ago, the real clock must be down to eight years!

It would be nice if my colleagues would actually level with politicians about various “solutions” for climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, if fulfilled by every signatory, would reduce global warming by 0.07 degrees Celsius per half-century. That’s too small to measure, because the earth’s temperature varies by more than that from year to year.

The Bingaman-Domenici bill in the Senate does less than Kyoto â€" i.e., less than nothing â€" for decades, before mandating larger cuts, which themselves will have only a minor effect out past somewhere around 2075. (Imagine, as a thought experiment, if the Senate of 1925 were to dictate our energy policy for today).

Mendacity on global warming is bipartisan. President Bush proposes that we replace 20 percent of our current gasoline consumption with ethanol over the next decade. But it’s well-known that even if we turned every kernel of American corn into ethanol, it would displace only 12 percent of our annual gasoline consumption. The effect on global warming, like Kyoto, would be too small to measure, though the U.S. would become the first nation in history to burn up its food supply to please a political mob.

And even if we figured out how to process cellulose into ethanol efficiently, only one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. Even the Pollyannish 20-percent displacement of gasoline would only reduce our total emissions by 7-percent below present levels â€" resulting in emissions about 20-percent higher than Kyoto allows.

And there’s other legislation out there, mandating, variously, emissions reductions of 50, 66, and 80 percent by 2050. How do we get there if we can’t even do Kyoto?

When it comes to global warming, apparently the truth is inconvenient. And it’s not just Gore’s movie that’s fiction. It’s the rhetoric of the Congress and the chief executive, too.

 â€" Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.

More questions than answers.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/ ... 25822.html (http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/greenhouse-sceptics-to-congregate/2007/02/27/1172338625822.html)

Greenhouse sceptics to congregate

Katharine Murphy and Brendan Nicholson, Canberra and Richard Baker
February 28, 2007

HARD-CORE global warming sceptics will descend on Canberra today for the release of a book claiming environmentalism is the new religion.

Former mining executive Arvi Parbo will launch Ray Evans' new publication, Nine Facts About Climate Change, at a function at Parliament House.

The book claims climate change is nothing new and declares Howard Government investments in solar power and in cleaning up coal a "complete waste of taxpayers' money".

"Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States," Mr Evans says in the publication.

"It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth," he says.

"The global warming scam has been, arguably, the most extraordinary example of scientific fraud in the postwar period."

The function is organised by the Lavoisier Group, founded in 2000 by Ray Evans and former mining executive Hugh Morgan to test claims that global warming is the result of human activity.

Mr Evans is a longstanding friend and colleague of Mr Morgan and a committed activist on issues such as workplace reform through the HR Nicholls Society, which he founded with federal Treasurer Peter Costello.

Former Labor minister Peter Walsh also will attend today's function, and the group will hold a dinner to be addressed by climate-change sceptic Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor in the School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science at Auckland University.

Liberal MP Dennis Jensen has organised the function on behalf of the Lavoisier Group and expects about 50 people to attend the dinner.

Dr Jensen, a nuclear physicist, has said he is not convinced that human activity is responsible for global warming.

In an interview with The Age last month, Mr Evans acknowledged that last September's visit by former US vice-president Al Gore to promote his Oscar-winning global-warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth had helped generate a lot of publicity on climate change.

But he described Mr Gore's film as "bullshit from beginning to end".

"The science from the anthropology point of view has collapsed. The carbon-dioxide link is increasingly recognised as irrelevant," Mr Evans said.

"But the Government's frightened.

"Cabinet, from what I understand, is by and large still sceptical of climate change, but it is scared of the drought and worried about how Labor will make use of it."

More CO2 deniers. To the gas chamber!!!

Quote from below....

"At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion and this is dangerous."


http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?stor ... ocumentary (http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowStory.asp?story=CZ434669U&news_headline=global_warming_is_lies_claims_documentary)

Global Warming Is Lies' Claims Documentary

Sunday, 4th March 2007, 11:04


Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary.

‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans.

The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world’s poor.

Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2.

Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn.

A source at Channel 4 said: "It is essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."

Controversial director Martin Durkin said: "You can see the problems with the science of global warming, but people just don’t believe you â€" it’s taken ten years to get this commissioned.

"I think it will go down in history as the first chapter in a new era of the relationship between scientists and society. Legitimate scientists â€" people with qualifications â€" are the bad guys.

"It is a big story that is going to cause controversy.

"It’s very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bollocks.

"Al Gore might have won an Oscar for ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, but the film is very misleading and he has got the relationship between CO2 and climate change the wrong way round."

One major piece of evidence of CO2 causing global warming are ice core samples from Antarctica, which show that for hundreds of years, global warming has been accompanied by higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

In ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ Al Gore is shown claiming this proves the theory, but palaeontologist Professor Ian Clark claims in the documentary that it actually shows the opposite.

He has evidence showing that warmer spells in the Earth’s history actually came an average of 800 years before the rise in CO2 levels.

Prof Clark believes increased levels of CO2 are because the Earth is heating up and not the cause. He says most CO2 in the atmosphere comes from the oceans, which dissolve the gas.

When the temperature increases, more gas is released into the atmosphere and when global temperatures cool, more CO2 is taken in. Because of the immense size of the oceans, he said they take time to catch up with climate trends, and this ‘memory effect’ is responsible for the lag.

Scientists in the programme also raise another discrepancy with the official line, showing that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, when global temperatures then fell for four decades.

It was only in the late 1970s that the current trend of rising temperatures began.

This, claim the sceptics, is a flaw in the CO2 theory, because the post-war economic boom produced more CO2 and should, according to the consensus, have meant a rise in global temperatures.

The programme claims there appears to be a consensus across science that CO2 is responsible for global warming, but Professor Paul Reiter is shown to disagree.

He said the influential United Nations report on Climate change, that claimed humans were responsible, was a sham.

It claimed to be the opinion of 2,500 leading scientists, but Prof Reiter said it included names of scientists who disagreed with the findings and resigned from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and said the report was finalised by government appointees.

The CO2 theory is further undermined by claims that billions of pounds is being provided by governments to fund greenhouse effect research, so thousands of scientists know their job depends on the theory continuing to be seen as fact.

The programme claims efforts to reduce CO2 are killing Africans, who have to burn fires inside their home, causing cancer and lung damage, because their governments are being encouraged to use wind and solar panels that are not capable of supplying the continent with electricity, instead of coal and oil-burning power stations that could.

Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore is shown saying: "Environmentalists have romanticised peasant life, but this is anti-human.

"They are saying the world’s poorest people should have the world’s most expensive form of form of energy â€" really saying they can’t have electricity."

Gary Calder, a former editor of New Scientist, is featured in the programme, and has just released a book claiming that clouds are the real reason behind climate change.

‘The Chilling Stars’ was written with Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark who published a scientific paper, claiming cosmic rays cause clouds to form, reducing the global temperature. The theory is shown in the programme.

Mr Calder said: "Henrik Svensmark saw that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars - when there are more cosmic rays, there are more clouds.

"However, solar winds bat away many of the cosmic rays and the sun is currently in its most active phase, which would be an explanation for global warming.

"I am a science journalist and in my career I have been told by eminent scientists that black holes do not exist and it is impossible that continents move, but in science the experts are usually wrong.

"For me this is a cracking science story â€" I don’t come from any political position and I’m certainly not funded by the multinationals, although my bank manager would like me to be.

"I talk to scientists and come up with one story, and Al Gore talks to another set of scientists and comes up with a different story.

"So knowing which scientists to talk to is part of the skill. Some, who appear to be disinterested, are themselves getting billions of dollars of research money from the government.

"The few millions of dollars of research money from multinationals can’t compare to government funding, so you find the American scientific establishment is all for man-made global warming.

"We have the same situation in Britain The government’s chief scientific advisor Sir David King is supposed to be the representative of all that is good in British science, so it is disturbing he and the government are ignoring a raft of evidence against the greenhouse effect being the main driver against climate change."

The programme shows how the global warming research drive began when Margaret Thatcher gave money to scientists to ‘prove’ burning coal and oil was harmful, as part of her drive for nuclear power.

Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London , who also features in the film warned the issue was too complex to be down to one single factor, whether CO2 or clouds.

He said: "The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start because you can’t say that just one factor can have this effect.

"The system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on CO2 production would be, or indeed of continuing to produce CO2.

"It’s ridiculous to see politicians arguing over whether they will allow the global temperature to rise by 2C or 3C."

Mr Stott said the film could mark the point where scientists advocating the greenhouse effect theory, began to lose the argument.

He continued: "It is a brave programme at the moment to give excluded voices their say, and maybe it is just the beginning.

"At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion and this is dangerous."

In the programme Nigel Calder says: "The greenhouse effect is seen as a religion and if you don’t agree, you are a heretic.

He added: "However, I think this programme will help further debate and scientists not directly involved in global warming studies may begin to study what is being said, become more open-minded and more questioning, but this will happen slowly."

Caution: Frog on board!


http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news ... 28f14da388 (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388)

Allegre's second thoughts
The Deniers -- The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science
LAWRENCE SOLOMON, Financial Post
Published: Friday, March 02, 2007
Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie.."

Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great" and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off "spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse."
The full Deniers series

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."
Dr. Allegre's skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France's political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France's educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change.

But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics, which showed that the atmosphere was primarily formed early in the history of the Earth, and the geochemical modeller of the early solar system. Because of his path-breaking cosmochemical research, NASA asked Dr. Allegre to participate in the Apollo lunar program, where he helped determine the age of the Moon. Matching his scientific accomplishments in the cosmos are his accomplishments at home: Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on the structural and geochemical evolution of the Earth's crust and the creation of its mountains, explaining both the title of his article in l' Express and his revulsion at the nihilistic nature of the climate research debate.

Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers," Dr. Allegre especially despairs at "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." The world would be better off, Dr. Allegre believes, if these "denouncers" became less political and more practical, by proposing practical solutions to head off the dangers they see, such as developing technologies to sequester C02. His dream, he says, is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."

Lawrence Solomon@nextcity.com
- - -
- Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.
CV OF A DENIER:
Claude Allegre received a Ph D in physics in 1962 from the University of Paris. He became the director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre in 1967 and in 1971, he was appointed director of the University of Paris's Department of Earth Sciences. In 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science.


© National Post 2007

UNITED STATES
Climate Summary
February 2007


The average temperature in February 2007 was 32.9 F. This was -1.8 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 34th coolest February in 113 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

1.56 inches of precipitation fell in February. This was -0.46 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 16th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.00 inches per decade.
Select from the options below to view graphs and tables of monthly temperature and precipitation data for the UNITED STATES , then click "submit". (Please wait 20-30 seconds)

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/res ... g3/na.html (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html)

{Keeping this thread active for LW and other interested folks}


Gore Warns Congress of ‘Planetary Emergency’
By Felicity Barringer and Andrew C. Revkin

Published March 21, 2007 by the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/washi ... ref=slogin (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/washington/21cnd-gore.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin)

Former Vice President Al Gore, rejecting complaints by Republican lawmakers that he was waging an alarmist war on coal and oil use, insisted before Congressional panels today that human-caused global warming constitutes a “planetary emergency” requiring an aggressive federal response.

Mr. Gore, accompanied by his wife, Tipper, delivered the same blunt message to a joint meeting of two House subcommittees this morning and in written testimony prepared for a Senate hearing this afternoon: Humans are artificially warming the world, the risks of inaction are great, and meaningful cuts in emissions linked to warming will only happen if the United States takes the lead.

Evoking the hit movie “300,” about the ancient Spartans’ stand at Thermopylae, Mr. Gore called on Congress to put aside partisan differences, accept the scientific consensus on global warming as unambiguous and become “the 535,” a reference to the number of seats in the House and Senate.

Democrats and Republicans, he said, should emulate their British counterparts and compete to see how best to curb emissions of smokestack and tailpipe “greenhouse” gases that scientists have now firmly linked to a global warming trend.

Mr. Gore also proposed a 10-point legislative program, calling for everything from a tax on carbon emissions to a ban on incandescent light bulbs and a new national mortgage program to promote the use of energy-saving technologies in homes.

Sounding at times like a professor addressing a class and at others like a revivalist preacher, Mr. Gore arrived at the Rayburn House Office Building in his new black Mercury Mariner hybrid sports utility vehicle, gave a quick summary of the most recent science and statistics, then punctuated his mini-lecture with exhortations from his witness’s pulpit.

Waving his finger at some 40 House members, he said, “A day will come when our children and grandchildren will look back and they’ll ask one of two questions.”

Either, he said, “they will ask: what in God’s name were they doing?” or “they may look back and say: how did they find the uncommon moral courage to rise above politics and redeem the promise of American democracy?”

The hearing that followed was partially a reunion â€" Mr. Gore had served on the House Energy and Commerce committee as a young congressman in the 1980s â€" and in part an opportunity for the vice president’s Republican detractors to question the science of climate change and argue about the cost of Mr. Gore’s proposed solutions.

There were no references to the 2000 election, which Mr. Gore conceded to President Bush after a monthlong battle, except perhaps the small slip by Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who referred to Mr. Gore as “Mr. President.”

But there were plenty of references to Mr. Gore’s Academy Award-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Representative Bob Inglis, Republican of South Carolina, said he had paid to see it, while Republicans like Representative Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, challenged its conclusions.

Mr. Gore, facing a litany of criticisms of his portrayal of the science from Mr. Barton, threw out his hands and smiled in exasperation. Mr. Barton, however, appeared out of step with some of his Republican colleagues, several of whom, including Representative J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois, the former House speaker, accepted the scientific consensus that humans are warming the climate.

A few minutes later, Mr. Gore said, “The planet has a fever. “If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor.” He added, “If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say ‘I read a science fiction novel that says it’s not a problem.’ You take action.”

He credited hundreds of mayors and many states for moving ahead with pledges or laws limiting carbon emissions, but said regional actions were insufficient.

Mr. Gore also conceded that without meaningful shifts in energy use in countries with the world’s fastest-growing economies, warming would not be curtailed, but said that the United States, the main source of the gases so far, still had to act first.

“The best way â€" and the only way â€" to get China and India on board is for the U.S. to demonstrate real leadership,” he said in written testimony prepared for both hearings. “As the world’s largest economy and greatest superpower, we are uniquely situated to tackle a problem of this magnitude.”

Representative Ralph Hall, Republican of Texas, said that calls for cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases amounted to an “all-out assault on all forms of fossil fuels” that could eliminate jobs and hurt the economy.

In written testimony for the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and author critical of people who present environmental problems as a crisis, asserted that Mr. Gore’s portrayal of global warming as a problem and his prescription for solving it were both deeply flawed.

Mr. Lomborg said that “global warming is real and man-made,” but that a focus on intensified energy research would be more effective and far cheaper than caps or taxes on greenhouse gas emissions or energy sources that produce them.

“Statements about the strong, ominous and immediate consequences of global warming are often wildly exaggerated,” he said. “We need a stronger focus on smart solutions rather than excessive if well-intentioned efforts.”


Felicity Barringer reported from Washington, and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.

I found this one particularly interesting....


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Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics
May 15, 2007

Posted by Marc Morano â€" Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.Gov  - 9:14 PM ET

Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics.  The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg.  A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new government report is set to redefine the current climate debate.

In the meantime, please review the list of scientists below and ask yourself why the media is missing one of the biggest stories in climate of 2007.  Feel free to distribute the partial list of scientists who recently converted to skeptics to your local schools and universities. The voices of rank and file scientists opposing climate doomsayers can serve as a counter to the alarmism that children are being exposed to on a daily basis. (See Washington Post April 16, 2007 article about kids fearing of a “climactic Armageddon” )

The media's climate fear factor seemingly grows louder even as the latest science grows less and less alarming by the day. (See Der Spiegel May 7, 2007 article: Not the End of the World as We Know It ) It is also worth noting that the proponents of climate fears are increasingly attempting to suppress dissent by skeptics. (See UPI May 10, 2007 article: U.N. official says it's 'completely immoral' to doubt global warming fears )

Once Believers, Now Skeptics ( Link to pdf version )  

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!" “Glaciers’ chronicles or historical archives point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is confirmed by mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious,” Allegre explained in a September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L'EXPRESS. The National Post in Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting “Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution.” Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers” mocks "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." Allegre, a member of both the French and U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade global warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of 1500 scientists who signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity” in which the scientists warned that global warming’s “potential risks are very great.”

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997.  Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.”  A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains Wiskel’s conversion while building his “Kyoto house”: “Instead, he said he realized global warming theory was full of holes and ‘red flags,’ and became convinced that humans are not responsible for rising temperatures.” Wiskel now says “the truth has to start somewhere.”  Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years, Wiskel told the Canadian newspaper, “If this happened once and we were the cause of it, that would be cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions of years."  Wiskel also said that global warming has gone "from a science to a religion” and noted that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism instead of funding areas he considers more worthy. "If you funnel money into things that can't be changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed,” he said.

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye,” Shaviv said in February 2, 2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02 temperature link is only “incriminating circumstantial evidence.” "Solar activity can explain a large part of the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that [the solar climate link] does not exist,” Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the atmosphere. According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global temperature." “Even if we halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50% increase relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in the rise of global temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant,” Shaviv explained. Shaviv also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that “CO2 should have a large effect on climate” so “he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic temperature. He wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none, he slowly had to change his views.”  Shaviv believes there will be more scientists converting to man-made global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. “I think this is common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is a secondary climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche. While working there, each one of us realized that things just don't add up to support the AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their views,” he wrote.

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause. I am now skeptical,” Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. “But after 2000 the evidence for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for the last century, more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays precipitate low clouds,” Evans wrote.  â€œAs Lord Keynes famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’” he added. Evans noted how he benefited from climate fears as a scientist. “And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet!  But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four pieces of evidence outlined above fell away or reversed,” Evans wrote. “The pre-2000 ice core data was the central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused temperature increases. The new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused by rises in atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any amplification. This piece of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role in past warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting role,” he added. “Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The science of global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions become more entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced messages. At the moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the cause of global warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics,” he concluded. (Evans bio link )  

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic.  â€œI stated with a firm belief about global warming, until I started working on it myself,” Murty explained on August 17, 2006.  â€œI switched to the other side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to prepare a position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously,” Murty explained. Murty was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.”  

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK Sunday Times, Bellamy said “global warming is largely a natural phenomenon.  The world is wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that can’t be fixed.” “The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have computer models which do not prove anything,” Bellamy added. Bellamy’s conversion on global warming did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have ended their association with him because of his views on climate change. The severing of relations came despite Bellamy’s long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times reported Bellamy “won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns to save Britain’s peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was arrested when he tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest.”
 
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.” de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. “I accept there may be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,” he added. “One could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for complacency. But I believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying for GW and for Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very real environmental problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean water and improved health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people,” de Freitas concluded. de Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “Significant [scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases.”

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world. “Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?” Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy Cooperative News. “All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air,” Bryson said. “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide,” he added. “We cannot say what part of that warming was due to mankind's addition of ‘greenhouse gases’ until we consider the other possible factors, such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured during the past century, but to my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that the question of anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question -- too important to ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political issue more than a scientific problem,” Bryson explained in 2005.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research.  Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.”  â€œAfter that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained. Labohn co-authored the 2004 book “Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma,” with chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part, “’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.’”

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson  wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.” “[My conversion from believer to climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results began to come in from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),” Patterson explained. “Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances,” he wrote. “As the proxy results began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and paleoproductivity records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot cycles.  About that time, [geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable hypotheses as to how solar signals could be amplified and control climate,” Patterson noted. Patterson says his conversion “probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a scientist I go where the science takes me and not were activists want me to go.” Patterson now asserts that more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics.  "When I go to a scientific meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion (about climate change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in Philadelphia in the fall and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the majority,” Patterson told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the sun is responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the environmentalists and the media for not reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian environmental activist David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its tail. They try to outdo each other and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn't -- come out to a scientific meeting sometime,” Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26, 2007 with a Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors skeptics. “I think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments) are saying, (is) we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere," he said. “The world should be heating up like crazy by now, and it's not. The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."  

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published many papers on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed the UN IPCC summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the atmosphere in a March 16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled “CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time.” “We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warmingâ€"with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economyâ€"is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels,” Jaworowski wrote. “For the past three decades, these well-known direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg Beck (Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by climatologistsâ€"and not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by several Nobel Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook procedures in chemistry, biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The only reason for rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of anthropogenic climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific scandal of our time,” Jaworowski wrote. “The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that emissions of industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a conceited anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of that time. The same fate awaits the present,” he added. Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays and solar activity are major drivers of the Earth’s climate. Jaworowski was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part: "It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases."

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature of the past century was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear and simple. Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate catastrophe,” Clark said in a 2005 documentary "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change.” “However, a few years ago, I decided to look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is no evidence of humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed my views on the Kyoto protocol,” Clark explained. “Actually, many other leading climate researchers also have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto] Protocol,” he added.

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” Veizer wrote. “It was the results of my work on past records, on geological time scales, that led me to realize the discrepancies with empirical observations. Trying to understand the background issues of modeling led to realization of the assumptions and uncertainties involved,” Veizer explained. “The past record strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate driver,” he added. Veizer acknowledgez the Earth has been warming and he believes in the scientific value of climate modeling. “The major point where I diverge from the IPCC scenario is my belief that it underestimates the role of natural variability by proclaiming CO2 to be the only reasonable source of additional energy in the planetary balance. Such additional energy is needed to drive the climate. The point is that most of the temperature, in both nature and models, arises from the greenhouse of water vapor (model language ‘positive water vapor feedback’,) Veizer wrote. “Thus to get more temperature, more water vapor is needed. This is achieved by speeding up the water cycle by inputting more energy into the system,” he continued. “Note that it is not CO2 that is in the models but its presumed energy equivalent (model language ‘prescribed CO2’). Yet, the models (and climate) would generate a more or less similar outcome regardless where this additional energy is coming from. This is why the solar/cosmic connection is so strongly opposed, because it can influence the global energy budget which, in turn, diminishes the need for an energy input from the CO2 greenhouse,” he wrote.

More to follow...

Related Links:

Senator Inhofe declares climate momentum shifting away from Gore (The Politico op ed)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate

Global Warming on Mars & Cosmic Ray Research Are Shattering Media Driven "Consensus’

Global Warming: The Momentum has Shifted to Climate Skeptics

Prominent French Scientist Reverses Belief in Global Warming - Now a Skeptic

Top Israeli Astrophysicist Recants His Belief in Manmade Global Warming - Now Says Sun Biggest Factor in Warming

Warming On Jupiter, Mars, Pluto, Neptune's Moon & Earth Linked to Increased Solar Activity, Scientists Say

Panel of Broadcast Meteorologists Reject Man-Made Global Warming Fears- Claim 95% of Weathermen Skeptical

MIT Climate Scientist Calls Fears of Global Warming 'Silly' - Equates Concerns to ‘Little Kids’ Attempting to "Scare Each Other"

Weather Channel TV Host Goes 'Political'- Stars in Global Warming Film Accusing U.S. Government of ‘Criminal Neglect’

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

ABC-TV Meteorologist: I Don't Know A Single Weatherman Who Believes 'Man-Made Global Warming Hype'

The Weather Channel Climate Expert Refuses to Retract Call for Decertification for Global Warming Skeptics

Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release Of "Skeptic’s Guide To Debunking Global Warming"

Btw, the trending continues down, at least for now...

UNITED STATES
Climate Summary
April 2007


The average temperature in April 2007 was 51.7 F. This was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average, the 47th coolest April in 113 years. The temperature trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.

2.09 inches of precipitation fell in April. This was -0.34 inches less than the 1901-2000 average, the 30th driest such month on record. The precipitation trend for the period of record (1895 to present) is 0.01 inches per decade.

This linked story caught my eye. The results of the debate are quite interesting, for anyone who cares about facts and figures...


http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm? ... &Issue_id= (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=5ac1c0d6-802a-23ad-4a8c-ee5a888dfe7e&Region_id=&Issue_id=)

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners Against Global Warming Believers in Heated NYC Debate
March 16, 2007

Posted By Marc Morano â€" 8:45 AM ET â€" Marc_Morano@EPW.Senate.gov
Just days before former Vice President Al Gore’s scheduled visit to testify about global warming before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, a high profile climate debate between prominent scientists Wednesday evening ended with global warming skeptics being voted the clear winner by a tough New York City before an audience of hundreds of people.

Before the start of the nearly two hour debate the audience polled 57.3% to 29.9% in favor of believing that Global Warming was a “crisis”, but following the debate the numbers completely flipped to 46.2% to 42.2% in favor of the skeptical point of view. The audience also found humor at the expense of former Vice President Gore’s reportedly excessive home energy use.

After the stunning victory, one of the scientists on the side promoting the belief in a climate "crisis" appeared to concede defeat by noting his debate team was ‘pretty dull" and at "a sharp disadvantage" against the skeptics. ScientificAmerican.com’s blog agreed, saying the believers in a man-made climate catastrophe “seemed underarmed for the debate and, not surprising, it swung against them."

The New York City audience laughed as Gore became the butt of humor during the debate.

"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. But it is a very serious point," quipped University of London emeritus professor Philip Stott to laughter from the audience.

The audience also applauded a call by novelist Michael Crichton to stop the hypocrisy of environmentalists and Hollywood liberals by enacting a ban on private jet travel.

"Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [power] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously?" Crichton said to applause audience. (For more debate quotes see bottom of article)

The debate was sponsored by the Oxford-style debating group Intelligence Squared and featured such prominent man-made global warming skeptics as MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, the University of London emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott and Physician turned Novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton on one side.

The scientists arguing for a climate ‘crisis’ were NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, meteorologist Richard C.J. Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The event, which was moderated by New York Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer, debated the proposition: "Global warming is not a crisis.”

Skeptics Dramatically Convinced Audience

The skeptics achieved the vote victory despite facing an audience that had voted 57% in favor of the belief that mankind has created a climate "crisis" moments before the debate began.

But by the end of the debate, the audience dramatically reversed themselves and became convinced by the arguments presented by the skeptical scientists. At the conclusion, the audience voted for the views of the skeptics by a margin of 46.2% to 42.2%. Skeptical audience members grew from a pre-debate low of 29.9% to a post debate high of 46.2% -- a jump of nearly 17 percentage points. [Link to official audience voting results]

[Link to full debate pdf transcript]

Scientist Concedes Debate To Skeptics

NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, one of the scientists debating for the notion of a man-made global warming "crisis" conceded after the debate that his side was ‘pretty dull’ and was at "a sharp disadvantage." Schmidt made the comments in a March 15 blog posting at RealClimate.org.

"…I'm afraid the actual audience (who by temperament I'd say were split roughly half/half on the question) were apparently more convinced by the entertaining narratives from [Novelist Michael] Crichton and [UK’s Philip] Stott (not so sure about Lindzen) than they were by our drier fare. Entertainment-wise it's hard to blame them. Crichton is extremely polished and Stott has a touch of the revivalist preacher about him. Comparatively, we were pretty dull," Schmidt wrote.

‘Advantage: Climate Contrarians’

The ScientificAmerican.com’s blog also declared the global warming skeptics the clear winner of the debate in a March 15 post titled: "Debate Skills? Advantage: Climate Contrarians."

"The proponents [of a climate crisis] seemed underarmed for the debate and, not surprisingly, it swung against them, particularly when Schmidt made the fatal debating error of dismissing the ability of the audience to judge the scientific nuances," ScientificAmerican.com’s David Biello wrote.

The advocates of climate alarmism "were faced with the folksy anecdotes of Crichton and the oratorical fire of Stott," Biello wrote at ScientificAmerican.com.

Biello concluded, "…the audience responded to Crichton's satirical call for a ban on private jets more than Ekwurzel's vague we need to throw ‘everything we can at the climate crisis.’ By the final vote, 46 percent of the audience had been convinced that global warming was indeed not a crisis, while just 42 percent persisted in their opinion that it was."

Biello also criticized climate "crisis" advocate Richard Somerville as "perplexed" and "hardly inspiring."

Skeptic’s ‘Very Popular’

Debate participant Schmidt lamented that the evening turned into one of futility for believers in a man-made global warming catastrophe.

"Crichton went with the crowd-pleasing condemnation of private jet-flying liberals - very popular, even among the private jet-flying Eastsiders present and the apparent hypocrisy of people who think that global warming is a problem using any energy at all."

Schmidt continued, "Stott is a bit of a force of nature and essentially accused anyone who thinks global warming is a problem of explicitly rooting for misery and poverty in the third world. He also brought up the whole cosmic ray issue as the next big thing in climate science."

Schmidt appeared so demoralized that he mused that debates equally split between believers of a climate ‘crisis’ and scientific skeptics are probably not “worthwhile” to ever agree to again.

Selected Quotes from the climate debate from transcript: [Link to full debate pdf transcript]

Skeptical quotes from Novelist Michael Crichton:

"I would like to suggest a few symbolic actions that rightâ€"might really mean something. One of them, which is very simple, 99% of the American population doesn’t care, is ban private jets. Nobody needs to fly in them, ban them now. And, and in addition, [APPLAUSE] "Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [electrical] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously? [APPLAUSE]"

"I suddenly think about my friends, you know, getting on their private jets. And I think, well, you know, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe all that we have to do is mouth a few platitudes, show a good, expression of concern on our faces, buy a Prius, drive it around for a while and give it to the maid, attend a few fundraisers and you’re done. Because, actually, all anybody really wants to do is talk about it."

"I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes. [LAUGHTER]"

"Everyday 30,000 people on this planet die of the diseases of poverty. There are, a third of the planet doesn’t have electricity. We have a billion people with no clean water. We have half a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Do we care about this? It seems that we don’t. It seems that we would rather look a hundred years into the future than pay attention to what’s going on now. I think that's unacceptable. I think that’s really a disgrace."

Skeptical quotes of University of London’s emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott:

"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. [LAUGHTER] But it is a very serious point."

"In the early 20th century, 95% of scientists believe in eugenics. [LAUGHTER] Science does not progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts."

"The first Earth Day in America claimed the following, that because of global cooling, the population of America would have collapsed to 22 million by the year 2000. And of the average calorie intake of the average American would be wait for this, 2,400 calories, would good it were. [LAUGHTER] It’s nonsense and very dangerous. And what we have fundamentally forgotten is simple primary school science. Climate always changes."

"Angela Merkel the German chancellor, my own good prime minister (Tony Blair) for whom I voted -- let me emphasize, arguing in public two weeks ago as to who in Annie get the gun style could produce the best temperature. ‘I could do two degrees C said Angela.’ ‘No, I could only do three said Tony.’ [LAUGHTER] Stand back a minute, those are politicians, telling you that they can control climate to a degree Celsius.”

“And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let’s use an engineer; I don’t think I’d want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge. [LAUGHTER]”

Skeptical quotes of MIT’s Professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen:

"Now, much of the current alarm, I would suggest, is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate."

"The impact on temperature per unit carbon dioxide actually goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is not directly related to the emissions rate or even CO2 levels, which is what the legislation is hitting on, but rather to the impact of these gases on the greenhouse effect."

"The real signature of greenhouse warming is not surface temperature but temperature in the middle of the troposphere, about five kilometers. And that is going up even slower than the temperature at the surface."

This one has to hurt...

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story? ... 696&page=1 (http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=3229696&page=1)

By CLAYTON SANDELL and BILL BLAKEMORE
May 31, 2007

NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency's preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.

In an interview broadcast this morning on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" program, Griffin was asked by NPR's Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.

"I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists," Griffin told Inskeep. "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."

"To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said. "I guess I would ask which human beings â€" where and when â€" are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

Griffin's comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

"It's an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement," Hansen told ABC News. "It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change."

Hansen believes Griffin's comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to.

"It's unbelievable," said Hansen. "I thought he had been misquoted. It's so unbelievable."

News media inquiries to NASA headquarters about Griffin's comments prompted the space agency to make the unusual move of issuing a news release late Wednesday night.

"NASA is the world's preeminent organization in the study of Earth and the conditions that contribute to climate change and global warming," Griffin said in a statement. "The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet's evolving systems. It is NASA's responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA's mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies. As I stated in the NPR interview, we are proud of our role and I believe we do it well."

Hansen, featured prominently in Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," has been warning of the potential dangers of climate change since the 1980s.

In late 2005, he accused NASA of trying to improperly censor him after he warned that Earth's climate might be approaching a dangerous "tipping point."

The agency later fired a public affairs employee, a political appointee of the Bush administration, over the incident.

Last year, many NASA scientists were upset when reports surfaced that the agency had quietly deleted the phrase "to understand and protect our home planet" from the NASA mission statement. The scientists believe research on issues like climate change will suffer as NASA shifts priorities toward exploration missions to the moon and Mars.

"Earth has always been central to NASA's science," Hansen said.

This last article just indicates to me how those scientists who wish to stay blind on the danger are shills for big business and the Bush Administration. Griffin sounds like a nut, and an embarrassment to NASA. But I bet when he gets fired, some nice little company like Haliburton will be giving him a ring with an offer.

I disagree on the point that Griffin sounds like a nut.

If you were to analyze the history of climate change on earth, you would find that there was a period of time just HUHDREDS of years past with a substantially warmer climate than we are currently experiencing. That period of time is noted  for the bounty provided by the earth and prosperous times in general. And it occured with minimal input from man.  So predictions of doom and gloom are maybe not as accurate as some are trying to lead us to believe.

In that context, Mr Griffin's comments make perfect sense to me.

Thinking man has the ability to control weather patterns on this planet is what I find nutty and arrogant.  Especially since we still don't understand all of the subtle factors in play.  

lw

What subtle factors are those? And who is studying them but the scientists who in overwhelming numbers are warning about global warming?

What we need, in part, is a multinational movement to understand the environment better, but also we need well funded scientific organizations to take the data already amassed and offer it in well-publicized ways to a governmental body that has been sanctioned to TAKE ACTION.

Right now, it's all talk and more talk. It's clear there are areas of the world suffering from the actions of human beings. And that there is too little funding or action on this.

I believe we do affect our world, and why aren't we trying to improve it, instead of just arguing over how bad it's getting???

The earth's weather is effected by many things, including rays from the sun.

There are many influences on weather.

How do you explain that the weather was warmer only hundreds of years ago and prosperity was reported widely.

I've yet to read any scientific facts linking man with an ability to raise earth temps. Lotso-hype but few facts.

lw

A spf'er turned me onto this video clip awhile back. He told me he was going to post it here but I've missed it if he has. Anyway, I think the views are interesting.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/Conspira ... e-pt-.aspx (http://www.livevideo.com/video/ConspiracyCentral/266507D4094B4538B8284CBBBCDFA40F/the-global-warming-swindle-pt-.aspx)

cen: I really hope you take the time toview that 5 part video clip I linked above. It presents s the science behind the theory laid out and the consequences of our actions.

lw

I talked to a friend about global warming yeaterday. He believes Co2 is the driver of temp increases mainly due to the consensus of world scientists. Like most of us, he's not read the science behind the claims.

Anyway, here's more on the "consensus" of global warming...

lw

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/fina ... 755457a8af (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=c47c1209-233b-412c-b6d1-5c755457a8af)

//http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr-2.png
//http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/60/Solar_Activity_Proxies.png

That hockey stick shaped graph was developed with computer models that incorporated invalid parameters. Top statiticians have examined the info used to produce that graph and deemed it bogus. Figures don't lie, but liars figure....

lw

Here's an article that debunks the myth of the graph posted above. In case you don't have enough time or energy to read the whole article, here is the important part.....

"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.
Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.


http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/stor ... bed2f6&k=0 (http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0)

Statistics needed

Tuesday, November 28, 2006
In the global warming debate, there are essentially two broad camps. One believes that the science is settled, that global warming is serious and man-made, and that urgent action must be taken to mitigate or prevent a future calamity. The other believes that the science is far from settled, that precious little is known about global warming or its likely effects, and that prudence dictates more research and caution before intervening massively in the economy.

The "science is settled" camp, much the larger of the two, includes many eminent scientists with impressive credentials. But just who are the global warming skeptics who question the studies from the great majority of climate scientists and what are their motives?

Many in the "science is settled" camp claim that the skeptics are untrustworthy -- that they are either cranks or otherwise at the periphery of their profession, or that they are in the pockets of Exxon or other corporate interests. The skeptics are increasingly being called Deniers, a term used by analogy to the Holocaust, to convey the catastrophe that could befall mankind if action is not taken. Increasingly, too, the press is taking up the Denier theme, convincing the public that the global-warming debate is over.

In this, the first of a series, I examine The Deniers, starting with Edward Wegman. Dr. Wegman is a professor at the Center for Computational Statistics at George Mason University, chair of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics, and board member of the American Statistical Association. Few statisticians in the world have CVs to rival his (excerpts appear nearby).

Wegman became involved in the global-warming debate after the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives asked him to assess one of the hottest debates in the global-warming controversy: the statistical validity of work by Michael Mann. You may not have heard of Mann or read Mann's study but you have often heard its famous conclusion: that the temperature increases that we have been experiencing are "likely to have been the largest of any century during the past 1,000 years" and that the "1990s was the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year" of the millennium. You may have also heard of Mann's hockey-stick shaped graph, which showed relatively stable temperatures over most of the last millennium (the hockey stick's long handle), followed by a sharp increase (the hockey stick's blade) this century.

Mann's findings were arguably the single most influential study in swaying the public debate, and in 2001 they became the official view of the International Panel for Climate Change, the UN body that is organizing the worldwide effort to combat global warming. But Mann's work also had its critics, particularly two Canadians, Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, who published peer-reviewed critiques of their own.

Wegman accepted the energy and commerce committee's assignment, and agreed to assess the Mann controversy pro bono. He conducted his third-party review by assembling an expert panel of statisticians, who also agreed to work pro bono. Wegman also consulted outside statisticians, including the Board of the American Statistical Association. At its conclusion, the Wegman review entirely vindicated the Canadian critics and repudiated Mann's work.

"Our committee believes that the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported," Wegman stated, adding that "The paucity of data in the more remote past makes the hottest-in-a-millennium claims essentially unverifiable." When Wegman corrected Mann's statistical mistakes, the hockey stick disappeared.
Wegman found that Mann made a basic error that "may be easily overlooked by someone not trained in statistical methodology. We note that there is no evidence that Dr. Mann or any of the other authors in paleoclimate studies have had significant interactions with mainstream statisticians." Instead, this small group of climate scientists were working on their own, largely in isolation, and without the academic scrutiny needed to ferret out false assumptions.

Worse, the problem also applied more generally, to the broader climate-change and meteorological community, which also relied on statistical techniques in their studies. "f statistical methods are being used, then statisticians ought to be funded partners engaged in the research to insure as best we possibly can that the best quality science is being done," Wegman recommended, noting that "there are a host of fundamental statistical questions that beg answers in understanding climate dynamics."

In other words, Wegman believes that much of the climate science that has been done should be taken with a grain of salt -- although the studies may have been peer reviewed, the reviewers were often unqualified in statistics. Past studies, he believes, should be reassessed by competent statisticians and in future, the climate science world should do better at incorporating statistical know-how.

One place to start is with the American Meteorological Society, which has a committee on probability and statistics. "I believe it is amazing for a committee whose focus is on statistics and probability that of the nine members only two are also members of the American Statistical Association, the premier statistical association in the United States, and one of those is a recent PhD with an assistant-professor appointment in a medical school." As an example of the statistical barrenness of the climate-change world, Wegman cited the American Meteorological Association's 2006 Conference on Probability and Statistics in the Atmospheric Sciences, where only eight presenters out of 62 were members of the American Statistical Association.

While Wegman's advice -- to use trained statisticians in studies reliant on statistics -- may seem too obvious to need stating, the "science is settled" camp resists it. Mann's hockey-stick graph may be wrong, many experts now acknowledge, but they assert that he nevertheless came to the right conclusion.

To which Wegman, and doubtless others who want more rigourous science, shake their heads in disbelief. As Wegman summed it up to the energy and commerce committee in later testimony: "I am baffled by the claim that the incorrect method doesn't matter because the answer is correct anyway. Method Wrong + Answer Correct = Bad Science." With bad science, only true believers can assert that they nevertheless obtained the right answer.

THE CV OF A DENIER
Edward Wegman received his Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics from the University of Iowa. In 1978, he went to the Office of Naval Research, where he headed the Mathematical Sciences Division with responsibility Navy-wide for basic research programs. He coined the phrase computational statistics, and developed a high-profile research area around this concept, which focused on techniques and methodologies that could not be achieved without the capabilities of modern computing resources and led to a revolution in contemporary statistical graphics. Dr. Wegman was the original program director of the basic research program in Ultra High Speed Computing at the Strategic Defense Initiative's Innovative Science and Technology Office. He has served as editor or associate editor of numerous prestigious journals and has published more than 160 papers and eight books.

As for the second graph Azarius was kind enough to share concerning sunspot activity and weather... Here is a link to a video which demonstrates the correlation between sun spots, cosmic rays, clouds and our weather patterns.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/Conspira ... e-pt-.aspx (http://www.livevideo.com/video/ConspiracyCentral/8C631F3E3E3D42438C697122E58317C8/the-global-warming-swindle-pt-.aspx)

Thnx lw... global warming seems to be happening now, whatever the cause may be... i xpect in 50 years scientists will still b of divided opinion as to its cause  :roll:

I doubt our planet will still be on the same warming trend we're currently experiencing in 50 years. However, I'm fairly certain the weather patterns and climate will still be changing as they have been for millions of years. Thirty years ago, many scientists were certain the earth was headed toward a disaster due to global cooling. Today its global warming.....

Imo, modern humans must learn to adapt to variation in climate just as our ancestors have been forced to do since our time began.

lw