[cantfindagoodscreenname]

I should have said, "presentation," not "paper." Sorry! The class is mainly a robotics class, but since they're designing robots that will work in the Arctic, they were given this issue to debate.

[farmfriend]

Global Warming Hoax index

[boris]

Try The Greening Earth Society. Pay special attention to the World Climate Watch online.

Also Access to Energy.

--Boris

[SteveMG]

Try these two:

http://www.globalwarming.org/

http://www.marshall.org/

SMG

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Click on the keywords and you will have more articles from more sources.

[jscd3]

You can also take a look at Dr Steve Milloy's site www.junkscience.com, and Dr Fred Singers site (www.sepp.com, I think - it's linked from junkscience.com)

[WorkingClassFilth]

Try this link from the 'Oregon Petition':

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

This paper is endorsed by about 19,700 scientists. Adds a little more weight than quotations from the Sierra Club.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0007A664-3534-1F03-BA6A80A84189EEDF

July 14, 2003

Hot Words

A claim of nonhuman-induced global warming sparks debate

By David Appell

In a contretemps indicative of the political struggle over global climate change, a recent study suggested that humans may not be warming the earth. Greenhouse skeptics, pro-industry groups and political conservatives have seized on the results, proclaiming that the science of climate change is inconclusive and that agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on the output of industrial heat-trapping gases, are unnecessary. But mainstream climatologists, as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are perturbed that the report has received so much attention; they say the study's conclusions are scientifically dubious and colored by politics.
Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reviewed more than 200 studies that examined climate "proxy" records--data from such phenomena as the growth of tree rings or coral, which are sensitive to climatic conditions. They concluded in the January Climate Research that "across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climate period of the last millennium." They said that two extreme climate periods--the Medieval Warming Period between 800 and 1300 and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900--occurred worldwide, at a time before industrial emissions of greenhouse gases became abundant. (A longer version subsequently appeared in the May Energy and Environment.)

[E. Pluribus Unum]

This is the best global warming article I have ever read.

[Rodney King]

www.junkscience.com

[wizardoz]

Be aware of the book The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg.

[Iowa Granny]

Tech Central Station has some good stuff.

www.techcentralstation.com

You need to scroll down the left side of the page to the seach function and type in Global Warming. There must be a fifty authors represented there. These guys aren't wackos, so you should be safe there.

Also the Heartland Institute out of Chicago does a nice responsible job.

[bjcintennessee]

I'm sorry I don't know how to do a link, so I cut and pasted the following report that I found brief and to the point compared to most other studies I've read:

Researchers question key global-warming study USA Today ^ | 10/28/2003 | Nick Schulz

Posted on 10/28/2003 10:10 PM EST by polemikos

An important new paper in the journal Energy &Environment upsets a key scientific claim about climate change. If it withstands scrutiny, the collective scientific understanding of recent global warming might need an overhaul.

A little background is needed to understand the importance of the new research behind this paper by Stephen McIntyre, a statistics expert who works in the mining industry, and Ross McKitrick, a professor of economics at the University of Guelph, Ontario. As scientists and governments have tried to understand mankind's influence on the environment, global warming has become a primary concern. Do mankind's activities ? especially burning fossil fuels to create energy ? affect climate? If so, how? What should be done?

These questions were so important that in 1988 the United Nations, along with the World Meteorological Organization, formed the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to study "human-induced climate change."

Ten years after IPCC's founding, a paper from Michael Mann, now an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, and his colleagues in the journal Nature shook scientific and political circles. It reconstructed temperatures dating back to the year 1400 by looking at tree rings, ice cores and other so-called proxy records to derive a temperature signature. This was before the sophisticated climate-measuring equipment we use today.

What Mann claimed to find was startling: The late-20th century was unusually warm ? warmer than at any time in the previous six centuries. (Later research by Mann extended the climate history back 1,000 years.) The reason? "It really looks like (the recent warming) can only be explained by greenhouse gases," Mann said then. His clear implication: The Earth's climate was changing dramatically, and mankind was responsible.

Earth heats up?

The U.N. used Mann's research to declare the 1990s "the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year of the millennium." Countless news stories picked up on this idea that the past few years have been unusually warm.

Efforts to limit the emission of the greenhouse gases blamed for this warming were bolstered by Mann's research. In fact, this week the Senate plans to consider legislation co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. McCain's Web site says, "Global warming is a growing problem. ... The 10 warmest years (on record) have all occurred since 1987." The statement is based on Mann's research.

But what if it's not true?

When McIntyre and McKitrick audited Mann's data to see whether its conclusions could be replicated, they discovered significant problems. Once they corrected the errors, the two researchers made a remarkable conclusion: The late 20th century was not unusually warm by historical standards.

Not alone in his conclusion

When asked about the paper, which had undergone review by other scientists before being published, Mann said he had heard about it but had not seen it. He called it a "political stunt" and said "dozens of independent studies published by leading journals" had come to conclusions similar to his.

What's to guarantee McKitrick and McIntyre's research will withstand the kind of scrutiny they gave Mann's research?

In an interview, McKitrick said, "If a study is going to be the basis for a major policy decision, then the original data must be disseminated and the results have to be reproducible. That's why in our case we have posted everything online and invite outside scrutiny."

Mann never made his data available online ? nor did many of the earlier researchers whose data Mann relied upon for his research. That by itself raises questions about the U.N. climate-change panel's scientific process.

It remains to be seen whether the McKitrick and McIntyre study will withstand the "outside scrutiny" they have asked for and will no doubt receive. But given the implications of the errors and problems they apparently have unearthed within the Mann study, the two researchers have done a tremendous service to science and the public, which should rely on facts to make informed public policy decisions.

Nick Schulz is editor of TechCentralStation.com, a science, technology and public policy Web site.

[goodnesswins]

All these suggestions are great....but, I'd hope they find a way to subtly string the instructor up....by showing that there would be NO impact to a robot from global warming in Antartica...or something like that.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1012390/posts is full of interesting info.

There is no doubt that atmospheric CO2 levels are increasing, and little doubt that global temperatures are increasing, and that climate change is occurring. The trouble comes when you posit which comes first... the graph in post #5 of the page linked above suggests that the CO2 increase comes as a result of temperature increase, not the other way around. That kinda blows a hole in theories of human causes for global warming. That, and the bulk of today's global warming occurring before 1940.

As a physicist, I'm cautiously skeptical of the concept of global warming due to the poor science involved along with memories of the equally hysteric warnings from the same crowd regarding "global cooling" a couple decades ago. But there might well be something to it. If so, does it make sense to optimize automobiles and other energy consuming devices for fuel efficiency? Sure. Should we shut down the Western economy while allowing China and the rest of the third-world to waste and pollute without a care? No, and that's what Kyoto would have done.

Your student might also find some of the energy-per-dollar-of-GDP statistics cited towards the end of http://www.speakeasy.org/~dervish/recession.pdf to be of use as well. Guess what: he U.S. compares favorably, globally, on a BTU-of-energy-per-dollar-of-GDP basis. Tom Daschle is deeply saddened.

[BabsC]

Hit them with the current controversy concerning the sun's activity. The scientist have noticed a real increase in the sun's activity since records have been kept starting in the 1700's and the invention of the telescope.

[BJungNan]

Here is my take on it.

The Earth has been here many millions of years. We have been studying its atmosphere with any modern sophistication for the last 30 or so years.

To say we understand atmospheric dynamics and conclude there is such a thing as global warming in our short study of it would be like saying you know someone intimately at the first shake of their hand when meeting them for the first time.

The Earth and the stars go through many cycles with some cycles lasting hundreds even thousands of years. If everything else in the world operates on such a wide cycle, why are we so quick to conclude that the warming some scientists detect over the last 30 years is not part of routine cycle.

You can quote me on that.

[Ramius]

So there is a school that is teaching that global climate should somehow be expected to remain constant except for the inputs of man?

One thing is certain, regarding climate: it will change. The ONE thing it will not do, is remain the same. If mankind wished to do anything about it one way or the other... could we control it if we wanted to?

Interesting question.

[aquila48]

Here's a very recent study attributing it to increased sun activity:

http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1013226/posts

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000CB4E1-111E-1C5E-B882809EC588ED9F

An Orbital Anomaly Once Chilled Earth

Earth meanders a bit in her slow walk around the sun, and scientists report in today's issue of Science that a particularly unusual orbit our planet took about 23 million years ago may have caused a sudden dip in global temperatures. To reach this conclusion, they considered three recurring orbital variations known as Milankovitch cycles. The first 100,000-year cycle involves eccentricity, or variations in the shape of Earth's orbit from a near perfect circle to an ellipse and back. The second cycle describes obliquity, or changes in the tilt of Earth's axis, which varies between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees over 41,000 years. The third cycle tracks precession, or slight wobbles in Earth's axis that repeat every 21,000 years.
"What we found at 23 million years ago is a rare congruence of a low point in Earth's eccentricity and a period of minimal variation in obliquity," James Zachos, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and lead author of the paper, explains. In other words, the earth's orbit was almost circular and, at the same time, its axis tilted less, leading to fewer seasonal variations and less extreme weather conditions for a period of about 200,000 years.

The researchers suggest that such conditions would have made a difference of several degrees in summer temperatures at the poles—enough, they think, to have allowed the Antarctic ice sheet to expand. They looked to sediment cores from the ocean floor for a detailed climate record, and found a correlation between climatic changes and the Milankovitch cycles. "I'm not sure everyone will be convinced that the orbital anomaly alone is responsible," Zachos says, "but the congruence of those orbital cycles is a very rare event, and the fact that it exactly corresponds with this rare climatic event is compelling." --Harald Franzen