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American Geophysical Union statement confirms global; prominent skeptic signs on
SF Chronicle/American Geophysical Union ^ | December 18, 2003 | David Perlman

Posted on 12/23/2003 12:33:31 PM PST by cogitator

Edited on 04/13/2004 2:45:19 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

Leaders of one of the nation's top scientific organizations issued a new warning this week that human activities -- most notably the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other industries -- are warming Earth's climate at a faster rate than ever.


(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Foreign Affairs; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agu; change; climate; climatechange; globalwarming; humans; temperature; warming
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To: cogitator
TAKE 3:

The American Geophysical Union declares:   "...that since 1900 more than 80 percent of the atmosphere's heat-trapping carbon dioxide...has been caused by fossil fuel burning and changes in land use."

Before you ever get to the question of whether humans affect global warming, you must first deal with the assumption that there actually is any global warming in the first place.

To believe the global warming scenario that's being passed off as science these days, this is what you've got to be willing to swallow...

  1. That scientists have the ability to accurately measure and integrate all temperatures from every nook and cranny of our atmosphere and oceans, night and day, all year long.
  2. That they have equally accurate data from earth's history, to compare those numbers with and identify any changes.
  3. That the data they have is of enough precision that the signal of climate change can be discerned from the noise of measurement error.
Until the day arrives that they can do all that, global warming will remain as nothing more than the junk science it is, in other words, no science at all.

--Boot Hill

101 posted on 12/24/2003 12:23:05 AM PST by Boot Hill (Entropy Kills!!!)
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To: cogitator
Balderdash. Total nonsense.
102 posted on 12/24/2003 12:25:59 AM PST by Fledermaus (Fascists, Totalitarians, Baathists, Communists, Socialists, Democrats - what's the difference?)
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To: farmfriend
BTTT!!!!!!
103 posted on 12/24/2003 3:12:50 AM PST by E.G.C.
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To: Fledermaus
Balderdash. Total nonsense.

Some things require more than three seconds of thought to understand.

104 posted on 12/24/2003 7:39:41 AM PST by cogitator
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To: RightWhale
now weather satellites dump incomprehensible amounts of data into your model.

The data still has to be high quality, though, or the model results could be totally screwed... er, skewed.

105 posted on 12/24/2003 7:41:57 AM PST by cogitator
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To: sauropod
I'll believe global warming is real when Sallie Baliunas and Fred Singer sign up as believing it is real.

Fred will be dead before Hell freezes over, and Sallie will blame the cooling trend in Hell on a reduction in solar irradiance.

106 posted on 12/24/2003 7:43:32 AM PST by cogitator
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To: ancient_geezer
"The Economist, which provides the best environmental reporting of any major news source, carried a small story last week about a simple methodological error in the latest U.N. global warming report that has huge implications. The article, "Hot Potato: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Had Better Check Its Calculations" (February 15 print edition), reviews the work of two Australian statisticians who note an anomaly in the way the IPCC estimated world carbon dioxide emissions for the 21st century."

This is acknowledged in the AGU statement as follows:

"Scientists' understanding of the fundamental processes responsible for global climate change has greatly improved during the last decade, including better representation of carbon, water, and other biogeochemical cycles in climate models. Yet, model projections of future global warming vary, because of differing estimates of population growth, economic activity, greenhouse gas emission rates, changes in atmospheric particulate concentrations and their effects, and also because of uncertainties in climate models. Actions that decrease emissions of some air pollutants will reduce their climate effects in the short term. Even so, the impacts of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations would remain."

107 posted on 12/24/2003 7:48:29 AM PST by cogitator
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To: ancient_geezer; RightWhale
With regard to the Soon, Baliunas 2001 Climate Research paper, these should also be read (both are PDFs):

Commentary by James Risbey on Soon, Baliunas et al. Climate Research 2001

Reply to Risbey 2002

108 posted on 12/24/2003 7:57:10 AM PST by cogitator
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To: Always Right
LOL, I think you underestimate the level the global warming agenda has infested this 'science'. The only information that is critically attacked and looked at are those that contradict the 'theory'.

John Christy's name on this statement is a very important indicator. Christy and Spencer's research results have been "attacked" by those who you might call advocates of the global warming agenda for several years. But these "attacks" have been on the integrity of the data, not the integrity of the scientists. Because scientists question, question, question, they wondered why Spencer and Christy's data weren't toeing the line. But, as they questioned, questioned, questioned, errors were discovered, and Christy and Spencer modified/improved their analysis methods. Lo and behold, their data now shows a significant warming trend -- and independent analyses of the same data show a larger warming trend.

Christy, as shown by his statements, doesn't want to be seen as advocating the catastrophic projections of global warming that the media adore. Neither do I. There are other more pressing environmental and social concerns; access to clean drinking water is a major one, coral reef decline is another. But global warming could make both of these get worse. If we don't understand it and if it turns out that ignorance is not bliss, the legacy we pass to future generations (including three very Christmas-excited toddlers that I know very well) might not be one to be proud of.

Speaking of those toddlers, I already have to consider their college costs. How dumb would I look if I suddenly discovered a family financial "crisis" a year before they attend college, that we don't have a way to pay for it? I could certainly be accused of not paying attention to a potential problem.

Same goes for global warming. We need to pay attention to what the scientists are saying (like those in the AGU). Ignore the political radicals with anti-business, anti-human agendas. We need to seek the rational path.

109 posted on 12/24/2003 8:11:24 AM PST by cogitator
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To: ancient_geezer
However, when an independent review was conducted of the Soon/Baliunas article, no misrepresentation was found, nor any shortcomings with Climate Research's peer-review process. (These latter facts are often left out of news stories on the controversy, though.)

This article leaves out one important aspect of the story. Climate Research lets the authors choose the editor to handle their reviews. Soon, Baliunas et al. chose the one global warming skeptic on the editorial board (Colin de Freitas). The editorial review referred to above indicated that the paper should have been sent back to the authors for extensive revisions.

110 posted on 12/24/2003 8:19:25 AM PST by cogitator
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To: RightWhale
... this President seems more willing to let science work as it should.

Unfortunately, my observations of how this Administration works with regard to science tend toward support for the Waxman report. I thought initially that the Bush Administration might provide some balance to the Clinton/Gore viewpoints, but I've lost that hope. The Bush Administration is adept at manipulating the scientific discussion in their favor.

111 posted on 12/24/2003 8:23:08 AM PST by cogitator
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To: JoeSchem
I froze my hinderlands off last year. It snowed on the first day of Spring.

Where do you live? Regional variability means that some areas will probably be colder than normal, every winter. The eastern U.S. was colder than normal last winter; the western U.S. was warmer than normal (and notably, the difference from average conditions was larger for the warmer area than the colder area).

112 posted on 12/24/2003 8:25:14 AM PST by cogitator
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To: Doctor Stochastic
There were lots of NOAA papers claiming that volcanos emit copious quantities of CO2. Rates were given. It doesn't appear that NOAA is suppressing that volcanos emit CO2 and there were even papers showing historical results from ice cores.

Volcanoes aren't significant emitters of CO2.

SO2 and sulfate aerosols, they can be a significant source.

113 posted on 12/24/2003 8:29:33 AM PST by cogitator
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To: Dan Evans
Based on which temperature record? The surface record, the satellite record or the balloon record. I've heard the increase according to the balloon soundings and the satellite record wasn't really a big deal.

The ~0.8 C increase since the 70's is a surface record value. Depending on whose satellite data analysis is consulted, the lower troposphere warming is somewhere between 50% to about the same as that value. Radiosondes on balloons also give different values depending on the distribution of sites where they are deployed; James Angell's NOAA radiosonde dataset has shown warming consistent with the surface record.

And was it Mr. Christy who said the said the upward adjustments to the satellite record were very peculiar since the adjustments were made primarily because they agreed with the models?

I can't confirm that Christy said that, and if he did, I have no idea regarding the context of the statement. Certainly in the robust nature of scientific debate, Christy and Spencer have defended their methods and results as compared to the more recently released analyses from other groups.

114 posted on 12/24/2003 8:39:41 AM PST by cogitator
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To: sergeantdave
These readings are contradicted by readings over the past 20 years of atmospheric temperature readings that show no increase.

Update: Christy's data shows a significant increase in lower tropospheric temperatures (the area where he is doing the analysis of MSU channel 2 data).

115 posted on 12/24/2003 8:41:04 AM PST by cogitator
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To: Dan Evans
I notice that Christy's comment is not in quotes. I wonder what he really said and in what context.

The statement immediately following the paraphrase appears to be a direct quote from Christy.

"It is scientifically inconceivable that after changing forests into cities, turning millions of acres into farmland, putting massive quantities of soot and dust into the atmosphere and sending quantities of greenhouse gases into the air, that the natural course of climate change hasn't been increased in the past century."

I think that's a reasonable statement.

116 posted on 12/24/2003 8:43:10 AM PST by cogitator
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To: Boot Hill
Your math is off. The approximately pre-industrial CO2 concentration of the atmosphere is 285 ppm, not 70 ppm. The increase since the mid-1800s has been about 70 ppm.
117 posted on 12/24/2003 8:44:21 AM PST by cogitator
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To: Dan Evans
What's this? CO2 causes warming which raises sea temperature which increases evaporation causing clouds that cool. Sounds like a negative feedback effect. Any estimate of the magnitude of this negative feedback? Has it been factored into the models?

To an extent. Cloud processes are still one of the largest uncertainties in the models. Observations such as this one help improve the models.

118 posted on 12/24/2003 8:45:26 AM PST by cogitator
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To: E=MC<sup>2</sup>
"Why are there fossils of palm trees (from centuries before the Industrial Revolution) found in cold regions???"
Ever hear of continental drift? Look up (google) Pangea for some basics. Remember - fossils are old, not from last year.
119 posted on 12/24/2003 8:49:16 AM PST by familyofman
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To: cogitator
Correct. SO2 seems to be the big problem with volcanoes. I was just pointing out that I didn't see any suppression of results by NOAA.
120 posted on 12/24/2003 8:49:56 AM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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