American Geophysical Union statement confirms global; prominent skeptic signs on

SF Chronicle/American Geophysical Union ^ | December 18, 2003 | David Perlman

[cogitator]

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.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Hope John Christy didn't do this switch just to greatly expand his potential research funding sources!

I think in this, as in many other things, it's shallow and mistaken to "follow the money." How many things have you done in your life that you did not do for the money? All of us have.

There are many other motivators stronger than money. Belief is one (think of religious martyrs, or Muslim suicide-bombers...), as is a desire for the respect of those we respect. Why, Lenin and Stalin weren't all that big on money, but they thought they were building a better world. Look what those two creeps did with that distinctly non-pecuniary motivation.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[ancient_geezer]

but not for atrocities such as the Kyoto Accord.

What has that to do with a politician's agenda? If a computer said it, it obviously must be an absolute fact. Computers can't lie you know. </sarcasm>

If a model has shortcomings, scientists and their grad students are working diligently right now to unearth and expose the fallacies.

Hmmm, yep just like Soon & Baliunas. No probs, afterall politicians would never use bad information would they? Nor would they ever attack those who would disagree with the agenda.

http://www.eco.freedom.org/el/20031102/gunter.shtml

Proof exists (that greenhouse does not), but believers would rather denounce than debate

By Lorne Gunter

Too many scientists have based their research, their reputations, and their incomes on the greenhouse theory to let it go now.

So, rather than debate the growing evidence that the greenhouse theory is fundamentally flawed, many greenhouse-believing scientists have begun viciously attacking those who question its conclusions and denouncing any agnostic as a heretic - especially ones presenting uncomfortably challenging proof.

Witness Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Both are noted solar physicists. Earlier this year, they published an exhaustive study of the climate of the past 1,000 years or so in the journal Climate Research. They examined more studies on historic climate trends - 240 in all - than any previous researchers, and concluded the 20th century was not unusually warm. In the past millennium there had been at least one other period when, worldwide, temperatures were as much as 2 - 3 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1990s.

This was not a particularly startling conclusion. There have been literally thousands of papers written by geologists identifying a Medieval Warm Period running from about 800 to 1300 AD, and a Little Ice Age spanning 1300 to about 1850. Soon and Baliunas merely confirmed that these thousands of earlier studies were right.

But Soon and Baliunas were both vehemently attacked. Myths were spread that they had cooked their findings (as good scientists do, they acknowledged in their article the very limitations in their results that have been used to try to discredit them). Three junior editors at the journal that published their study resigned, claiming embarrassment that their employer published shoddy research. Then, the controversy sucked down the editor-in-chief.

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.)

The reason for the hissy fit over Soon/Baliunas is simple though. The pair do not shy from drawing obvious conclusions from their research: if the warming of the 20th century is not unusual, then it is likely natural, meaning the Kyoto accord is an exercise in futility. And, even if the warming is not natural, it is not extreme, and thus nothing to worry about.

This is a threat to the greenhouse religion. Therefore, the pair must be burned at the stake.

Example:

StopEsso

Cox Newspapers, in an article published in May, disclosed that the study by Soon,
Baliunas and three other authors was underwritten by the American Petroleum

Look up some Soon-Baliunas papers in The Astrophysical Journal, and it turns out that the Mount Wilson Observatory of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is supported by Texaco, Exxon Foundation, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the American Petroleum Institute. Soon & Baliunas are associated with and do projects for both. Obviously bad guys working for big energy.

[RightWhale]

All good thoughts. We are right to question all these things. After all, in physics Einstein is still king. Admittedly most physics students either don't 'get' relativity or don't make it past the academic gauntlet with their own mind intact. I have been there swimming with the fingerlings. They usually don't question physics, but worry how to solve the pre-packaged math problems and that is as far as they go until they are hired to program a computer with even more packaged tools. A true scientific mind is rare, most students are very uncertain about things. It might be an Einstein will show up with the proper rebelliousness and make the transition to the next thing any day now. Or it might be another century.

[RightWhale]

only an engineer by education

All the more in touch with reality. If we can't trust the self-correcting facility of science, we are in big trouble, probably headed for third-world status. Maybe we should worry, although science is still cranking along as usual. Also, I long ago separated project managers from those doing the work. The workers, grad students usually, do get into their subject matter and question things deeply. No rubber stamps there. Also no power to change things. We should be hearing complaints if there is a problem.

[RightWhale]

It was a vicious and deadly fight. I hope we don't get into that situation, and this climate business should be aired out so that there is no danger. I worry that another President might be willing to direct science; this President seems more willing to let science work as it should. Technology can be directed, as we may soon see with the announcement of new goals for NASA; science must follow its own direction.

[whd23]

Lets review: In 1772 Joseph Priestly discovered that if he put a mouse in a jar with a tightly sealed lid the mouse would soon die. However, if Priestly put a plant in the jar with the mouse and sealed it tightly the mouse lived. He reasoned that it was because the plant was breathing in CO2 and releasing O2. The mouse survived on the oxygen provided by the plant.

Let's review: this only works when there is LIGHT. Hence the photo in photosynthesis. What gases do trees/plants release at night? (Hint: it isn't O2)

[JoeSchem]

Although the vast majority of climate researchers are persuaded that the evidence, combined with computer models, show that global warming is real and dangerous

I froze my hinderlands off last year. It snowed on the first day of Spring. After hearing for twenty years about how every winter is warmer than the last, I'd like to know how come it still is so cold outside. I figure global warming statistics are like the Soviet Union economists announcing their GDP grew by leaps and bounds every year -- but strangely, their living standards kept falling behind the US.

[glannon]

so kyoto proponents say those things. not the AGU.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Of course, if it's being suppressed, how does one find it?

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.

[Criminal Number 18F]

Fifteen years ago a friend observed that, "it is alarming that you can tell what someone thinks about global warming from his position on abortion or gun control." His point was, the latter two are political issues and are somewhat intractable to the scientific method; the first should be amenable to scientific enquiry. (And we need to be prepared to change our positions depending on what the science says. My personal understanding is that very few conclusions here have been demonstrated with scientific probability). It disturbs me that we have a lot of Saganic bombast and not a lot of scientific humility in the whole climate field...

My friend who said that is now a PhD in the social sciences and is known as a quant head, who is applying scientific rigour where it has previously been lacking. This is not always popular with his colleagues.... some of whom prefer what they call "advocacy science," which means the first word cloaked with the jargon of the second...

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[SierraWasp]

"You can read the full title? For some reason, I see it truncated."

The whole vacuous idea, including this article ought to be truncated, along with all these turds touting it!!!

[Dan Evans]

It's the last 25 years that is really starting to look unusual -- and that's not model-based.

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.

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?

[sergeantdave]

 
 


The former GOP presidential contender Sen. John McCain made good on a campaign promise and held a hearing before his Senate Commerce Committee on global warming.

John Christy, a climatologist at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, admitted he was ''the most skeptical among the panelists'' when it came to climate change.

Christy has questioned surface temperature readings that show the earth has been warming. These readings are contradicted by readings over the past 20 years of atmospheric temperature readings that show no increase.

''Sixty percent of the atmosphere is going in a direction opposite from the (computer climate) models,'' said Christy. He also said that broad global temperature data may be misleading since it does not address local or regional climate changes or impact.

[Dan Evans]

In a phone interview, Christy said that while he supports the AGU declaration, and is convinced that human activities are the major cause of the global warming that has been measured,

I notice that Christy's comment is not in quotes. I wonder what he really said and in what context.

[Dan Evans]

People at NOAA with research to the contrary of global warming are GAGGED.

Overheard in a NOAA/ERL elevator:

"...so I asked him if he knows what this lab is doing. And he said, 'I don't know what this lab is doing but what I think this lab is doing is going out to get money to keep people employed'"

[Boot Hill]

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."

Current CO2 levels are about 350 ppm (parts per million) and these BRAIN DEAD IDIOTS apparently want us to believe that prior to 1900 the CO2 level was a miniscule 70 ppm.

Yet the plain truth is that earth was covered with millions of square miles (literally) of forests, jungles and plains teeming with plant life. And for that plant life to flourish as it did, atmospheric CO2 was an absolutely indispensable ingredient. And they want us to believe that this abundance of plant life came about with a tiny 70 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere?

Do they really think we're that stupid???

--Boot Hill

[Dan Evans]

The U.S. East Coast has exhibited a slight cooling trend over the past couple of decades while the rest of the world has been warming up. The suggested cause is increased cloud cover due to higher sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, which provide more moisture for more clouds over the U.S. East Coast.

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?

[Romulus]

That is a lot of lying going on.

And a lot of denying.

[Boot Hill]

TAKE 2:

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."

There is a simple way to make a logical estimate of the impact of man's contribution to global temperatures via CO2 emmissions.

There are two basic routes by which C02 can be released to the atmosphere. The first is plant/animal processes, which are ultimately sun driven, and the second is by the combustion of carbon based materials (mostly fossil fuels).

Working from that premise, all that is necessary to perform this analysis is to compare the sun's energy input to the earth, versus man's energy input from the production of power.

HUMAN IMPACT ON GLOBAL WARMING

Man's input	1.1 × 1014   kWh
Sun's input	1.5 × 1018   kWh
Human impact	0.007%

You read that right, folks, human activity impacts the forces that create CO2 at a level less than 0.007% of what the sun's impact is! That's only 75 parts per million or one part in 13,400. And from this miniscule input, those BRAIN DEAD IDIOTS extrapolate that man is causing global warming.

--Boot Hill