Posted on 06/22/2002 11:49:00 AM PDT by Jean S
In Alaska, "the average temperature has risen about seven degrees over the last 30 years," according to the June 16th New York Times. Discussing the seemingly severe effects of climate change in Alaska, the newspaper of record observed that "rising temperatures... are not a topic of debate or distraction. Mean temperatures have risen by 5° F in summer and 10° F in winter since the 1970's, federal officials say." Unfortunately, this big climb in temperature reported by The Times does not synch with any available data.
The paper quoted oral testimony to the effects of climate change in Alaska. While it also mentioned the recent Climate Action Report from the Environmental Protection Agency in passing, The Times did not appear to have consulted the actual text of the EPA report to check its alarming temperature readings. The report states that "warming in interior Alaska was as much as 1.6° C (about 3° F)" over the last 100 years.
The Times' assertions baffled professor Gerd Wendler and his staff at the Alaska Climate Research Center. In response, Wendler posted to the Internet data analysis of mean annual temperatures at four widely dispersed weather stations in Alaska from 1971 to 2000. The mean temperature increase for Anchorage was 2.26° F and for Nome was 2.28° F. The two other locations were Barrow and Fairbanks. The Times had noted the appearance of mosquitoes in Barrow "where they once were nonexistent" and the rescue of "hunters trapped on breakaway ice at a time of year when such things were once unheard of." Yet while Wendler's data show that Barrow had the highest mean temperature change, it was still well below The Times' estimate, at 4.16° F. The Times had illustrated Fairbanks' warming trends by noting the need for hydraulic jacks to keep houses from falling because the permafrost beneath their foundations "is no longer permanent." Wendler's analysis, however, shows a minimal mean increase of 1.07° F in Fairbanks.
When it comes to climate change, The New York Times is no stranger to getting ahead of the facts. Consider a particularly scorching incident on the front page on August 19, 2000. The paper declared -- complete with color photograph -- that "The North Pole is melting." Tourists on a Russian ice-breaker had seen open water in the middle of the polar ice, clicked the shutter, and rushed right to The Times with "evidence that global warming may be real and already affecting climate." It was a sight "presumably never before seen by humans... the last time scientists can be certain the pole was awash in water was more than 50 million years ago."
The paper quoted Malcom C. McKenna, who said he didn't "know if anybody in history ever got to 90 degrees north to be greeted by water, not ice." Fellow passenger James J. McCarthy observed that "it was totally unexpected." But water in the Arctic circle was not much of a surprise to experts in Arctic climate, which the tourists were definitely not: McKenna was a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History and McCarthy an oceanographer at Harvard University. The Times started taking some serious heat. On August 29, ten days later, it issued a correction and a lengthy piece in its "Science Times" section clarifying the issue.
It turns out that what the tourists saw was quite typical. The Arctic ice cover is normally riddled with cracks and holes. Ninety percent of the high Arctic region is covered in ice during the summer, but at least ten percent is open water. Experts told the newspaper that "this has probably been true for centuries," caused by wind and ocean currents moving the ice sheet. Climatologist Mark Serreze explained to The Times that "there's nothing to be necessarily alarmed about" and that there was no reason to suspect this was "related to global climate change."
The plural of anecdote is not data. It is all too easy to remember the unusual and forget the typical. That is why interesting stories require justification with scientific data. Twice now in the last two years, The New York Times has failed to adequately verify catastrophic stories of warming in the Northern reaches. This is beginning to look like more than mere carelessness. To ring the false alarm once is unfortunate; to do so twice looks stupid.
I never owned RCA stock because I knew they had a total a-hole running the operation. Too bad because the stock quadrupled.
Now we're finding that the oil fields in TX, etc. are filling back up, and who knows what the climate is doing unless you follow the output of the sun. Can you believe that what warms us is the sun? Who ever figured that out?
From time to time I have attempted to follow the intricacies of the technical debate between scientists and have been unable to do so - except at the popular, Scientific American level, and then only with difficulty.
I am not a cynic. My contact with scientists, especially good ones, has been very positive. Your argument is obvious to anyone with any degree of common sense, let alone to experts. If it had merit do you think they would have overlooked it?
If the above is not enough to convince you then I suggest you seek out an expert and present it to him.
You could be right but I find the odds to be somewhere between zero and none that the world's greatest atmospheric scientists - under intense peer review and political pressure - have not considered these arguments and found very good reasons to reject them.
Maybe not, if a warm green house grows more food, makes more land habitable, creates more fresh water, and saves lives. My first thought when I was told about global warming by the socialist schools 25 years ago is what's bad about a green house?
I thought the dogma is liberals are progressive, change is good, and conservatives want to return to the past. Why are liberals non-progressive about a better functioning world? I suspect they are attracted to the global warming scare because it means more government, a world-wide super government in fact. The subconscience motive here is more and bigger government.
There's an excellent SF novel by Niven & Pournelle that posits that fossil-fuel burning was indeed producing a greenhouse effect -- and that this greenhouse effect was the only thing holding off the Ice Age...
But the predictions are not that rosy. For example, the Sierra snowpack is predicted to drastically decrease. That would present enormous problems for the City of L.A.
As for you comments about liberals, why address me with that? My screen name? Forget it. Just pay attention to my arguments. There's a great line from an old Robert Mitchum movie;
"Man have t' have a name fer ya?"
Vast stretches of Canada and Siberia would become habitable -- but the Malibu beachhouses of the power elite would be under water
Large scale integration of world society, economy, and ultimately government is unavoidable. Technology, population growth, and ever increasing trade dictate that.
I don't happen to agree with the "liberal" approach to global warming as exemplified by Kyoto. People do not behave all that well in good times and in bad they are much worse. The chances of reasonable conformity to the agreement are not good.
I would look for for government incentives to encourage better, more efficient methods of transportation - perhaps even crash programs of the sort that produced the Internet, the Space program, Boulder Dam. Why not? There's nothing sacred about using 4000 pounds of metal to transport 200 pounds of flesh. Quite the contrary. It's incredibly wasteful, destructive, and dangerous. Motorcycles have shown that light-weight vehicles can move like hell. Formula one cars have shown they can also be safe.
Tort reform would greatly help in that respect. We've had the technology for some time to create virtual trains on the highways, combining the freedom and low cost of cars with the energy and capacity efficiency of trains. What's the hold up? The lawyers that would sue for every mistake along the way.
Air bags did not happen in cars until it was legislated, exposing all the car makers to the lawyers equally. Virtual trains are a bit bigger though. We need to cut the lawyers off from the money trough.
I think the correct approach is a positive one - everyone would like cheaper, safer, better means of transportation regardless of whether global warming is real or not.
If the energy that is now wasted in denying it were channeled in this or some other useful direction we'd all be better off. Reasonable alternatives to Kyoto are a much easier sell than simply trying to trash it.
If you believe that human activity is responsible, then it is reasonable to assume that you are unfamiliar with the concept of empirical knowledge, factual evidence, scientific method, and simple common sense. Plus, you are not in possession of enough knowledge about the subject to debate it. Read this, and discover some interesting facts that will enlighten the discussion.
Your world's greatest atmospheric scientists - under intense peer review are not great or even atmosheric scientists for the most part.
Scientific American ran an article on the global warming controversy a few months ago, featuring an interview with Lindzen (you can probably find it by doing a Google). It illustrates well the complicated, technical nature of the dispute. I couldn't really follow it. Perhaps you can do better.
The people on both sides are real, world-class scientists. Pretending they aren't for political or economic reasons only diminishes you, not them.
I am not pretending anything, most of the global warming huckersters are not atmospheric scientists.
It is interesting to try to square Richard Lindzen's arguments with MonroeDNA's.
I don't see a problem as Richard Linden said this:
Clearly, "global warming'' is a tempting issue for many very important groups to exploit. Equally clearly, though far less frequently discussed, are the profound dangers in exploiting that issue. As we shall also see, there are good reasons why there has been so little discussion of the downside of responding to "global warming.''
A parochial issue is the danger to the science of climatology. As far as I can tell, there has actually been reduced funding for existing climate research. That may seem paradoxical, but, at least in the United States, the vastly increased number of scientists and others involving themselves in climate as well as the gigantic programs attaching themselves to climate have substantially outstripped the increases in funding. Perhaps more important are the pressures being brought to bear on scientists to get the "right'' results. Such pressures are inevitable, given how far out on a limb much of the scientific community has gone. The situation is compounded by the fact that some of the strongest proponents of "global warming'' in Congress are also among the major supporters of science (Sen. Gore is notable among those). Finally, given the momentum that has been building up among so many interest groups to fight "global warming,'' it becomes downright embarrassing to support basic climate research. After all, one would hate to admit that one had mobilized so many resources without the basic science's being in place. Nevertheless, given the large increase in the number of people associating themselves with climatology and the dependence of much of that community on the perceived threat of warming, it seems unlikely that the scientific community will offer much resistance. I should add that as ever greater numbers of individuals attach themselves to the warming problem, the pressures against solving the problem grow proportionally; an inordinate number of individuals and groups depend on the problem's remaining.
Thus, speaking of "thousands" of the world's leading climate scientists is not especially meaningful. Even within climate science, most of the top researchers (at least in the US) avoid the IPCC because it is extremely time consuming and non-productive. Somewhat ashamedly I must admit to being the only active participant in my department. None of this matters a great deal to the IPCC. As a UN activity, it is far more important to have participants from a hundred countries many of which have almost no active efforts in climate research. For most of these participants, involvement with the IPCC gains them prestige beyond what would normally be available, and these, not surprisingly, are likely to be particularly supportive of the IPCC. Finally, judging from the Citation Index, the leaders of the IPCC process like Sir John Houghton, Dr. Robert Watson, and Prof. Bert Bolin have never been major contributors to basic climate research. They are, however, enthusiasts for the negotiating process without which there would be no IPCC, which is to say that the IPCC represents an interest in its own right. Of course, this hardly distinguishes the IPCC from other organizations.
in testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on 2 May 2001.
2) most of the top researchers (at least in the US) avoid the IPCC ...
at least in the United States, the vastly increased number of scientists ... involving themselves in climate ...
From your quotes. Not quite a contradiction but it makes you wonder. In any case what you've presented are political arguments. Read the Scientific American article for the science.
3) You quote only from those scientists who agree with your politics and point of view - Lindzen specifically, Balliunas and Seitz by implication. I've seen that pattern of behavior before - among Political Correctniks.
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