The Tempest: A handful of skeptics maintain that Global Warming is a hoax

Washington Post ^ | May 28, 2006 | Joel Aschenbach

[billorites]

IT SHOULD BE GLORIOUS TO BE BILL GRAY, professor emeritus. He is often called the World's Most Famous Hurricane Expert. He's the guy who, every year, predicts the number of hurricanes that will form during the coming tropical storm season. He works on a country road leading into the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, in the atmospheric science department of Colorado State University. He's mentored dozens of scientists. By rights, Bill Gray should be in deep clover pausing only to collect the occasional lifetime achievement award.

He's a towering figure in his profession and in person. He's 6 feet 5 inches tall, handsome, with blue eyes and white hair combed straight back. He's still lanky, like the baseball player he used to be back at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington in the 1940s. When he wears a suit, a dark shirt and tinted sunglasses, you can imagine him as a casino owner or a Hollywood mogul. In a room jammed with scientists, you'd probably notice him first.

He's loud. His personality threatens to spill into the hallway and onto the chaparral. He can be very charming.

But he's also angry. He's outraged.

He recently had a public shouting match with one of his former students. It went on for 45 minutes.

He was supposed to debate another scientist at a weather conference, but the organizer found him to be too obstreperous, and disinvited him.

Much of his government funding has dried up. He has had to put his own money, more than $100,000, into keeping his research going. He feels intellectually abandoned. If none of his colleagues comes to his funeral, he says, that'll be evidence that he had the courage to say what they were afraid to admit.

Which is this: Global warming is a hoax.

[ctdonath2]

I'm wondering more often now: what's the problem?

More CO2 means more plant food.
More heat means more plant water.
More plant food & water means more plants.
More plants means ... well ... more plants, more life, more biodiversity.
We grow plants in greenhouses to make more & healthier plants, right?
More plants means more food for animals (us included).

That's all good stuff, right?

Yes, there will be negative effects on specific species and locations, but can't there be positive effects on others?

Change happens. Ya want it colder or hotter in here? Which does life thrive better in? icecaps or tropics? Change will happen.

Yes, humans do contribute to global warming. So do volcanos, solar output, forest fires, and bovine burps - by a lot more for a lot longer. Eliminate human activity entirely and we'll still get global warming - it's been cyclic for eons.

So let's say the FUDsters are right: global warming continues. So? Icecaps & glaciers melt - certainly not good for polar bears and penguins, but also certainly beneficial to other species. Forests expand. Farmland is more productive.

Things change. Cope.

[jwalsh07]

The globes been warming for 18,000 years in the latest cycle. It isn't the local max's that humans have to worry about, it's the local min's. Populations have been expanding during this cycle. When the next cycle approaches a local min, resources may become very scarce. Then my progeny will have something to worry about.

[jwalsh07]

"There're people like [Lindzen] in every field of science. There are always people in the fringes. They're attracted to the fringe . . . It may be as simple as, how do you prove you're smarter than everyone else? You don't do that by being part of the consensus," Held says.

Oyvey, if you confine yourself to the box, it is tough to figure out what is happening outside the box.

[griswold3]

"Now this is truly astonishing that people would even give ALGORE a thread of attention or credibility."
Hey, he's cereal!!

[calljack]

We are living on a thin, constantly shifting crust on top of a molten ball of lava, circling in a hard vacuum, around a constantly operating fusion reactor. What could possibly go wrong???

[billorites]

If you want to fix global warming just kill all the termites.
There, problem solved.

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the termites." - (Act IV, Scene II).

[billorites]

"We are living on a thin, constantly shifting crust on top of a molten ball of lava, circling in a hard vacuum, around a constantly operating fusion reactor. What could possibly go wrong?"

Nothing.

So long as I have hope of getting laid.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from May 28, 2006. Thanks billorites.

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[steelyourfaith]

 

Legions of Global Warming Deniers

• Global Warming Petition Project, also known as the Oregon Project, has been signed to date by 31,486 American scientists, including 9,029 with PhDs, and nearly 4,000 with specific training in atmospheric, earth, and environmental sciences. All signers have the necessary training in physics, chemistry, and mathematics to understand and evaluate the scientific data relevant to the human-caused global warming hypothesis and to the effects of human activities upon environmental quality.
• The CATO Institute Climate Change Ad signed by 115 scientists, mostly PhDs. Ad in pdf form. March 30, 2009
• 141 Scientists Sign Letter Sent to UN Secretary-General Questioning Global Warming stating that the science behind anthropogenic global warming is anything but "settled". December 8, 2009
• U. S. Senate Minority Report: More Than 700 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claim Over 700 dissenting scientists to date  from around the globe challenged man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. Initially released December 2007.
• Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change over nearly 1000 endorsers of the International Climate Science Coalition, March 2-4, 2008.

[FreedomPoster]

You know how you can tell there was some real Science involved in putting together that graph?

The fact there is an uncertainty bounds right on the graph.

You rarely, if ever, see any notes on measurement uncertainty with the Warmers’ work. To anyone with any knowledge at all about measurement uncertainty (anyone with a decent engineering or science background), this just SCREAMS “BOGUS!”, especially when we are talking about tenths of a degree for a planetary average temperature from years ago deduced from tree ring data and such.

[Right Wing Assault]

Yes, there is another version of this graph without the uncertainty shown. Someone got himself together, did the research on the bounds, and put them on the graph. It was very cool to see this new version.

Good eye. You are the first one to mention it. Of course, you must have some sci/eng background.

[Right Wing Assault]

Forgot to mention it also shows the names of whose data was used to produce the graph, unlike the generic graphs we sometimes see with no clue where they came from.

[FreedomPoster]

Correct. BME and MSME.

I’ve forgotten more about heat transfer, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and thermophysical properties of materials than most of these schmucks blathering about climate change will ever know. I still haven’t seen anything resembling a strong technical argument for a mechanism for how a trace atmospheric component gas measured in PPM is supposed to be having such a dramatic effect on planetary heat transfer.