Posted on 01/01/2007 5:11:40 PM PST by neverdem
Amid the shouting lately about whether global warming is a human-caused catastrophe or a hoax, some usually staid climate scientists in the usually invisible middle are speaking up.
The discourse over the issue has been feverish since Hurricane Katrina. Seizing the moment, many environmental campaigners, former Vice President Al Gore and some scientists have portrayed the growing human influence on the climate as an unfolding disaster that is already measurably strengthening hurricanes, spreading diseases and amplifying recent droughts and deluges.
Conservative politicians and a few scientists, many with ties to energy companies, have variously countered that human-driven warming is inconsequential, unproved or a manufactured crisis.
A third stance is now emerging, espoused by many experts who challenge both poles of the debate.
They agree that accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases probably pose a momentous environmental challenge, but say the appropriate response is more akin to buying fire insurance and installing sprinklers and new wiring in an old, irreplaceable house (the home planet) than to fighting a fire already raging.
“Climate change presents a very real risk,” said Carl Wunsch, a climate and oceans expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It seems worth a very large premium to insure ourselves against the most catastrophic scenarios. Denying the risk seems utterly stupid. Claiming we can calculate the probabilities with any degree of skill seems equally stupid.”
Many in this camp seek a policy of reducing vulnerability to all climate extremes while building public support for a sustained shift to nonpolluting energy sources.
They have made their voices heard in Web logs, news media interviews and at least one statement from a large scientific group, the World Meteorological Organization. In early December, that group posted a statement written by a committee consisting of most of the climatologists...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The global warmers seem to believe that the natural state of earth surface temperatures is stability, so that IF it can be shown that 2007 is warmer (or colder) than 1807 that we have a crisis on our hands, a) caused by us and b) subject to our control if c) we place political power in their hands.
In fact, any perusal of the temperature record, at any point in the last 450kY, would predict exactly what is observed, i.e., that 2007 is different than 1807 and 1907.
What's the problem?
Naturally the Slimes has it wrong here.
Actually, Big-International-Government-Socialists (the BIGS) and the scientists they have corrupted with grant money have created the Anthropogenic Global Warming scare in order to fleece America (via the nutty Kyoto Protocols) and acquire more power and control over people.
"Middle stance" is the language of politics, not science. The BIGS also commonly use the political term scientific "consensus" to promote the Kyoto Protocols.
"Anthropogenic Global Warming" is a weak hypothesis based on garbage-in/garbage-out computer modeling which functions to magnify the importance of one very small but politically convenient variable of the climate equation to the exclusion of all others. It is Lysenkoism déjà vu, the subversion of science to political ends. Anthropogenic Global warming would be laughable science but for the seriousness of the politics driving it.
AGW ™ certainly does not rise anywhere near the level of validated scientific theory. Many reputable climatologists have raised red flags about the methodology of the supporting AGW ™ data, the extortion of the work product of some within the scientific community by grant money, irregularities in the peer-review process, etc., etc., etc.
Well THOSE levels of CO2 aren't currently even plausible here on earth. We're arguing about a couple of hundred parts per million here, with an ecosystem that uses CO2 for food, compared to multiple tens of thousands of parts per million on Venus.
It's possible, but we have no way of knowing. Frankly, we really don't know what it's doing NOW within a couple of orders of magnitude.
There's nothing remotely unusual about current undersea volcanic activity, as best we can tell.
Ten years ago we were just learning about black smokers. Three years ago we began to learn about white smokers. Both have cumulative enormous heat outputs that vary considerably. To state that there are sudden recent changes is alarmism. To state that there haven't been changes is unsupportable due to lack of evidence.
It's like measuring hurricane strength over the last few hundred years when we have only vague proxy records, insufficient to properly describe even a single hurricane much less a season, prior to the early 1990s.
The proportion of CO2 in Venus atmosphere is 96.5%. On Mars, CO2 makes up 95% of the atmosphere. Mars is significantly colder than anywhere on earth.
CO2 on earth accounts for less than 0.01% of the atmosphere.
However, it's true that the amount of CO2 in earth's atmosphere is increasing.
Was 2006 35% warmer than our warmest year in recorded ice core history? Your chart would indicate that it should be.
Was 2006 35% warmer than our warmest year in recorded ice core history? Your chart would indicate that it should be.
Just for the heck of it I went to The "A" page of signers & picked a name out at random.
Check this page:
http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Ade_C._53220978.aspx
Again from my post:
"Nearly all of the initial 17,100 scientist signers have technical training suitable for the evaluation of the relevant research data, and many are trained in related fields."
If you find some phoneys I'd like to know.
A good question is that if this list is genuine how come we don't hear much about it? Could it be that there is campaign to suppress anything which does not agree with the global warming scare?
Yes, but Mars' atmosphere is so thin it cannot retain heat despite being 95% CO2.
The whole global warming debate is ridiculous. Technology is going to minimize emissions in the coming decades without government intervention.
It is. I was involved in a FReeper fracas about two weeks ago over this petition and the accompanying "article".
The Real Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming: Skeptics Have Valid Arguments
Post #38 lit the fuse on this one.
Erik the Red named the icy, cold land he discovered "Greenland" to con other Scandinavians into following him there. It was barely habitable then, and when it cooled off into the LIA, it got appreciably worse.
CO2 has to go up much, much higher for any saturation effect to happen, and good climate scientists know all about the effects of water vapor (even if modeling them, particularly clouds, is tough).
Reread the Sagas and the recent reports of teh scientific excavations. The Vikings did pasture cattle on Greenland. There were no vines growing there, and that was both Hugh and series to them.
All reports are congruent on the Viking love of mead, wine, etc.
Vinland, probably Newfoundland or perhaps part of New England, well may have had vines during that warm period.
Correct, and also due to increased bacterial respiration in bogs ocurring in permafrost as continental glaciers recede.
Glacial/interglacial periods appear to be primarily triggered by the points where Milankovitch cycles either positively or negatively superimpose (all 3 of them, usually). These points mark places where solar insolation will be rapidly increasing or decreasing over a relatively short (geologically) time interval. Once the cooling or warming has been initiated, CO2 feedback ensues, pushing the system warmer or colder.
See this thread and discussion for a thorough perspective:
The Real Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming: Skeptics Have Valid Arguments
Start at post 38. From me.
The Holocene has been an interglacial with an abnormally stable warm climate.
The existence of smokers/hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor was predicted from a landmark paper by Wolery and Sleep based on crustal heat flow measurements. This paper defined the amount of heat released from the mid-oceanic ridges. Because that amount of heat is known, it is also known that this amount of heat does not affect climate and doesn't even appreciably affect the temperature of the oceans. Local effects will be measurable, of course.
Astounding that a thinking scientist could even utter such meaningless drivel with a straight face.
"Climate Change"--the hysteria previously known as "Global Warming"--is not a risk, it's a historical and current fact. It has been occurring throughout the history of the earth. It was happening before the first engine fired up. It happened before the first cow farted. It was happening even before Al Gore gave it a name.
It's also a result of forces far to powerful and complex for the capability of man to meaningfully affect or to fully comprehend. The sheer hubris of those who preach otherwise is akin to the foolish declaration of Q. Todd Dickinson that the Patent Office should be closed because everything had been invented.
Some minds have a terribly difficult time limiting themselves to what they actually know.
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