Here are a some short videos about global warming.
Peter
1. The Myth About Global Warming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMDi_u0dcig
2. Global Warming Hoax
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io-Tb7vTamY
3. Global Warming: An Unsettled Science
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMQH5aa5Q0s
4. Beck Cheers NYT Admission of Global Warming Swindle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL4s5qdvaug
5. Global Warming: Opportunities
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BURDqZVdKAc
6.Michael Crichton On Global Warming, Part 1 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noec6Xkx73k
7. Freeman Dyson On Global Warming 2 of 2 Stratospheric Cooling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k69HUuyI5Mk
8. The Myth Of Man-Made Global Warming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIuNxy6i1o0
9. Sen. James Inhofe On The Global Warming Scam
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFjMeFaBS7w
10. Michael Crichton, On Global Warming, Part 2 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJJsDtSHjdE
11. Michael Crichton, On Global Warming, Part 3 of 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MagSO9L2Ns0&mode=related&search=
12. Global Warming: Sun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcncuRfIrTs
13. Dennis Avery Discusses Global Warming, Author of "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTGBcVi7n0o
14. The Global Warming Report, Jerry Taylor, Cato Institute
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHi4f0iTdsY
15. Inconvenient Truth: Science Fraud
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-b5D5941AM&mode=related&search=
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Ultimate SUV
Friday, September 28, 2007
CO2 and Global Climate Change: Separating Fact, From (Hansen's) Personal Opinion
The following is a very well-written and documented critique of testimony given by James Hansen of NASA, considered the foremost advocate of human caused global warming and climate change. The critique is detailed, and I believe, objective and accurate.
A major conclusion of the critique is that Hansen often confuses, and intertwines his personal opinion unsupported by sound and accurate science. This is well -documented in the critique. I am only reproducing a portion of it here. The remainder can be viewed in html format, or downloaded and saved in pdf format.
The critique addresses the major scientific issues related to the complex subject of global warming. Since the subject is one of such importance, it is well worth studying.
Peter
from: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/current_issue.html
In the materials that follow, we present such a comparison, focusing on a number of key subjects addressed by Hansen. These topics include:
(1) ice sheet disintegration,
(2) sea level trends,
(3) atmospheric methane concentrations,
(4) climates of the past,
(5) predicted warming-induced extinctions of terrestrial plants and animals,
(6) the CO2-induced preservation of terrestrial species, and
(7) predicted CO2-induced extinctions of calcifying marine organisms.
In addition, we discuss a number of other topics that Hansen addresses in less detail, including: (1) positive vs. negative climate feedbacks,
(2) effects of drought on agriculture in a CO2-enriched world,
(3) sea level rise over the next hundred years,
(4) the adaptability of living organisms to rising sea levels,
(5) the "dangerous" level of atmospheric CO2,
(6) the magnitude of climate forcing due to a doubling of the air's CO2 content,
(7) empirical evaluations of earth's climate sensitivity,
(8-10) the ability of man to control global climate,
(11-14) the need to act now to reduce CO2 emissions, and
(15) the role of morality in the debate over what to do, or not do, about anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
And when Hansen's testimony is compared with what has been revealed by the scientific investigations of a diverse assemblage of highly competent researchers in a wide variety of academic disciplines, we find that he paints a very different picture of the role of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in shaping the future fortunes of man and nature alike than what is suggested by that larger body of work.
The Basis for Hansen's Testimony
Hansen's testimony is divided into five parts: (1) Summary, (2) Basis for Testimony, (3) Crystallizing Science, (4) Metrics for Dangerous Climate Change, and (5) Four-Point Strategy to Stabilize Climate. We will begin our critique of the document with a brief analysis of what Hansen says is its foundation, i.e., his Section 2: Basis for Testimony.
Six papers in various stages of preparation for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals form the basis for Hansen's testimony. The first, written by Hansen and 46 co-authors, is entitled "Dangerous human-made interference with climate: A GISS modelE study" and is listed as being "in press" in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
The second paper, written by Hansen and five co-authors, is entitled "Climate change and trace gases" and is listed as being "in press" in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. The third paper, also written by Hansen and 46 co-authors, is entitled "Climate simulations for 1880-2003 with GISS modelE" and is listed as being "in press" in Climate Dynamics.
The fourth paper, written by Hansen alone, is entitled "Scientific reticence and sea level rise" and is listed as being "accepted for publication" by Environmental Research Letters. The fifth paper, again by Hansen alone, is entitled "State of the wild: Perspective of a climatologist" and is listed as being "accepted" by an unnamed journal.
The sixth paper, where Hansen appears as the second of two authors, is entitled "Implications of 'peak oil' for atmospheric CO2 and climate" and is listed as being a "first draft" prepared for Geophysical Research Letters.
In perusing these manuscripts, it is readily apparent they either deal with, or are based upon, scenario-driven climate-model projections, which obviously can be no better than the physics, chemistry and biology upon which they are based, as well as the scenarios that drive them.
To be of any prognostic value, therefore, the models must include, and correctly characterize, all of the physical, chemical and biological phenomena that significantly impact the planet's climate, which is something most climate modelers would probably admit they have not yet achieved to the degree they would like. But are they close enough?
Our only way of answering this question is to see if what the models portend about the future compares favorably with what they suggest about the past. Of course, the models could accidentally give the "right answers," but there is no other course of action we can take at the present time; and, hence, this is what we will do in evaluating Hansen's testimony, for if the models give the wrong answers about the recent past, we can be confident they are not up to the task of correctly inferring the future.
Analyzing Hansen's "Crystallizing Science"
The core concept of Hansen's testimony is that the earth "is close to dangerous climate change, to tipping points of the system with the potential for irreversible deleterious effects." However, this contention, like the many other claims Hansen makes, is neither a self-evident verity nor a proven fact. It is merely an opinion. And to raise it to a loftier status requires that there be real-world evidence for the changes the climate models suggest should occur in response to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and rising air temperatures.
This requirement is all the more justified in light of the fact that air temperatures of the last quarter-century are typically claimed by climate alarmists to have been unprecedented for at least the past two thousand years (Mann and Jones, 2003; Mann et al., 2003) - and possibly for close to a million years, if one believes Hansen et al. (2006) - while the atmosphere's current CO2 concentration is greater than it may have been for tens of millions of years (Pagani et al., 1999).
So what are the major climate changes and associated catastrophic consequences that are suggested by the climate models? And are there any signs they may already be in process of developing? The "sharpest criterion" for defining dangerous climate change, in the words of Hansen, "is probably maintenance of long-term sea level close to the present level," and in this regard he says that "sea level is already rising at a rate of 3.5 cm per decade and the rate is accelerating [our italics]," due, he would have us believe, to "ice sheet disintegration."
But are there any real-world data to support this claim?
Ice Sheet Disintegration
A good perspective on this issue is provided in the 16 March 2007 issue of Science by Shepherd and Wingham (2007), who review what is known about sea-level contributions arising from wastage of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets, focusing on the results of 14 different satellite-based estimates of the imbalances of the polar ice sheets that have been derived since 1998. These studies have been of three major types - standard mass budget analyses, altimetry measurements of ice-sheet volume changes, and measurements of the ice sheets' changing gravitational attraction - and they have yielded a diversity of values, ranging from an implied sea-level rise of 1.0 mm/year to a sea-level fall of 0.15 mm/year. Based on their evaluation of these diverse findings, the two researchers come to the conclusion that the current "best estimate" of the contribution of polar ice wastage to global sea level change is a rise of 0.35 millimeters per year, which over a century amounts to only 35 millimeters, or less than an inch and a half.
Yet even this small sea level rise may be unrealistically large, for although two of Greenland's biggest outlet glaciers doubled their mass-loss rates in 2004, causing many to claim that the Greenland Ice Sheet was responding more rapidly to global warming than expected, Howat et al. (2007) report that the glaciers' mass-loss rates "decreased in 2006 to near the previous rates." And these observations, in their words, "suggest that special care must be taken in how mass-balance estimates are evaluated, particularly when extrapolating into the future, because short-term spikes could yield erroneous long-term trends."
Other findings also contradict Hansen's claim that "increasingly rapid changes on West Antarctica and Greenland ... are truly alarming." Writing in the 30 March 2007 issue of Science, for example, Anandakrishnan et al. (2007) describe a sedimentary wedge or "till delta" deposited by and under West Antarctica's Whillans Ice Stream that they detected via radar surveys made from the floating Ross Ice Shelf. This grounding-line buildup of sedimentary material, as they describe it, "serves to thicken the ice and stabilize the position of the grounding line," so that "the ice just up-glacier of the grounding line is substantially thicker than that needed to allow floatation." Consequently, they say that "the grounding-line will tend to remain in the same location ... until sea level rises enough to overcome the excess thickness that is due to the wedge."
So how high would the sea need to rise to "unground" the Whillans Ice Stream and wrest it from the continent? In a study that analyzes this question in detail, Alley et al. (2007) find that "sea-level changes of a few meters are unlikely to substantially affect ice-sheet behavior," and they conclude that a rise on the order of 100 meters might be needed to "overwhelm the stabilizing feedback from sedimentation." In fact, Anderson (2007) states that "at the current rate of sea-level rise, it would take several thousand years [our italics] to float the ice sheet off [its] bed." What is more, Alley et al. say that the ice sheet's extra thickness up-glacier from the grounding-line wedge will tend to stabilize it against "any other environmental perturbation."
With respect to the range of applicability of the findings of Anandakrishnan et al. and Alley et al., Anderson notes that "grounding-zone wedges are common features on the continental shelf, including the Ross Sea Shelf," and that "all ice streams of the Siple Coast have an anomalous elevation and stop at the grounding line," which leads him to conclude that "this mechanism for stabilization of the grounding-line is likely to be widespread." Consequently, Anderson concludes that "sea-level rise may not destabilize ice sheets as much as previously feared," which in turn suggests that sea level itself may not rise as fast or as high as previously feared. So what do actual sea level data suggest?
(continued here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/current_issue.html
A major conclusion of the critique is that Hansen often confuses, and intertwines his personal opinion unsupported by sound and accurate science. This is well -documented in the critique. I am only reproducing a portion of it here. The remainder can be viewed in html format, or downloaded and saved in pdf format.
The critique addresses the major scientific issues related to the complex subject of global warming. Since the subject is one of such importance, it is well worth studying.
Peter
from: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/current_issue.html
Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: Separating Scientific Fact from Personal Opinion
A critique of the 26 April 2007 testimony of James E. Hansen made to the Select Committee of Energy Independence and Global Warming of the United States House of Representatives entitled "Dangerous Human-Made Interference with Climate"
Prepared by Sherwood B. Idso and Craig D. Idso Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change 6 June 2007
In the materials that follow, we present such a comparison, focusing on a number of key subjects addressed by Hansen. These topics include:
(1) ice sheet disintegration,
(2) sea level trends,
(3) atmospheric methane concentrations,
(4) climates of the past,
(5) predicted warming-induced extinctions of terrestrial plants and animals,
(6) the CO2-induced preservation of terrestrial species, and
(7) predicted CO2-induced extinctions of calcifying marine organisms.
In addition, we discuss a number of other topics that Hansen addresses in less detail, including: (1) positive vs. negative climate feedbacks,
(2) effects of drought on agriculture in a CO2-enriched world,
(3) sea level rise over the next hundred years,
(4) the adaptability of living organisms to rising sea levels,
(5) the "dangerous" level of atmospheric CO2,
(6) the magnitude of climate forcing due to a doubling of the air's CO2 content,
(7) empirical evaluations of earth's climate sensitivity,
(8-10) the ability of man to control global climate,
(11-14) the need to act now to reduce CO2 emissions, and
(15) the role of morality in the debate over what to do, or not do, about anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
And when Hansen's testimony is compared with what has been revealed by the scientific investigations of a diverse assemblage of highly competent researchers in a wide variety of academic disciplines, we find that he paints a very different picture of the role of anthropogenic CO2 emissions in shaping the future fortunes of man and nature alike than what is suggested by that larger body of work.
The Basis for Hansen's Testimony
Hansen's testimony is divided into five parts: (1) Summary, (2) Basis for Testimony, (3) Crystallizing Science, (4) Metrics for Dangerous Climate Change, and (5) Four-Point Strategy to Stabilize Climate. We will begin our critique of the document with a brief analysis of what Hansen says is its foundation, i.e., his Section 2: Basis for Testimony.
Six papers in various stages of preparation for publication in peer-reviewed scientific journals form the basis for Hansen's testimony. The first, written by Hansen and 46 co-authors, is entitled "Dangerous human-made interference with climate: A GISS modelE study" and is listed as being "in press" in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
The second paper, written by Hansen and five co-authors, is entitled "Climate change and trace gases" and is listed as being "in press" in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. The third paper, also written by Hansen and 46 co-authors, is entitled "Climate simulations for 1880-2003 with GISS modelE" and is listed as being "in press" in Climate Dynamics.
The fourth paper, written by Hansen alone, is entitled "Scientific reticence and sea level rise" and is listed as being "accepted for publication" by Environmental Research Letters. The fifth paper, again by Hansen alone, is entitled "State of the wild: Perspective of a climatologist" and is listed as being "accepted" by an unnamed journal.
The sixth paper, where Hansen appears as the second of two authors, is entitled "Implications of 'peak oil' for atmospheric CO2 and climate" and is listed as being a "first draft" prepared for Geophysical Research Letters.
In perusing these manuscripts, it is readily apparent they either deal with, or are based upon, scenario-driven climate-model projections, which obviously can be no better than the physics, chemistry and biology upon which they are based, as well as the scenarios that drive them.
To be of any prognostic value, therefore, the models must include, and correctly characterize, all of the physical, chemical and biological phenomena that significantly impact the planet's climate, which is something most climate modelers would probably admit they have not yet achieved to the degree they would like. But are they close enough?
Our only way of answering this question is to see if what the models portend about the future compares favorably with what they suggest about the past. Of course, the models could accidentally give the "right answers," but there is no other course of action we can take at the present time; and, hence, this is what we will do in evaluating Hansen's testimony, for if the models give the wrong answers about the recent past, we can be confident they are not up to the task of correctly inferring the future.
Analyzing Hansen's "Crystallizing Science"
The core concept of Hansen's testimony is that the earth "is close to dangerous climate change, to tipping points of the system with the potential for irreversible deleterious effects." However, this contention, like the many other claims Hansen makes, is neither a self-evident verity nor a proven fact. It is merely an opinion. And to raise it to a loftier status requires that there be real-world evidence for the changes the climate models suggest should occur in response to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and rising air temperatures.
This requirement is all the more justified in light of the fact that air temperatures of the last quarter-century are typically claimed by climate alarmists to have been unprecedented for at least the past two thousand years (Mann and Jones, 2003; Mann et al., 2003) - and possibly for close to a million years, if one believes Hansen et al. (2006) - while the atmosphere's current CO2 concentration is greater than it may have been for tens of millions of years (Pagani et al., 1999).
So what are the major climate changes and associated catastrophic consequences that are suggested by the climate models? And are there any signs they may already be in process of developing? The "sharpest criterion" for defining dangerous climate change, in the words of Hansen, "is probably maintenance of long-term sea level close to the present level," and in this regard he says that "sea level is already rising at a rate of 3.5 cm per decade and the rate is accelerating [our italics]," due, he would have us believe, to "ice sheet disintegration."
But are there any real-world data to support this claim?
Ice Sheet Disintegration
A good perspective on this issue is provided in the 16 March 2007 issue of Science by Shepherd and Wingham (2007), who review what is known about sea-level contributions arising from wastage of the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets, focusing on the results of 14 different satellite-based estimates of the imbalances of the polar ice sheets that have been derived since 1998. These studies have been of three major types - standard mass budget analyses, altimetry measurements of ice-sheet volume changes, and measurements of the ice sheets' changing gravitational attraction - and they have yielded a diversity of values, ranging from an implied sea-level rise of 1.0 mm/year to a sea-level fall of 0.15 mm/year. Based on their evaluation of these diverse findings, the two researchers come to the conclusion that the current "best estimate" of the contribution of polar ice wastage to global sea level change is a rise of 0.35 millimeters per year, which over a century amounts to only 35 millimeters, or less than an inch and a half.
Yet even this small sea level rise may be unrealistically large, for although two of Greenland's biggest outlet glaciers doubled their mass-loss rates in 2004, causing many to claim that the Greenland Ice Sheet was responding more rapidly to global warming than expected, Howat et al. (2007) report that the glaciers' mass-loss rates "decreased in 2006 to near the previous rates." And these observations, in their words, "suggest that special care must be taken in how mass-balance estimates are evaluated, particularly when extrapolating into the future, because short-term spikes could yield erroneous long-term trends."
Other findings also contradict Hansen's claim that "increasingly rapid changes on West Antarctica and Greenland ... are truly alarming." Writing in the 30 March 2007 issue of Science, for example, Anandakrishnan et al. (2007) describe a sedimentary wedge or "till delta" deposited by and under West Antarctica's Whillans Ice Stream that they detected via radar surveys made from the floating Ross Ice Shelf. This grounding-line buildup of sedimentary material, as they describe it, "serves to thicken the ice and stabilize the position of the grounding line," so that "the ice just up-glacier of the grounding line is substantially thicker than that needed to allow floatation." Consequently, they say that "the grounding-line will tend to remain in the same location ... until sea level rises enough to overcome the excess thickness that is due to the wedge."
So how high would the sea need to rise to "unground" the Whillans Ice Stream and wrest it from the continent? In a study that analyzes this question in detail, Alley et al. (2007) find that "sea-level changes of a few meters are unlikely to substantially affect ice-sheet behavior," and they conclude that a rise on the order of 100 meters might be needed to "overwhelm the stabilizing feedback from sedimentation." In fact, Anderson (2007) states that "at the current rate of sea-level rise, it would take several thousand years [our italics] to float the ice sheet off [its] bed." What is more, Alley et al. say that the ice sheet's extra thickness up-glacier from the grounding-line wedge will tend to stabilize it against "any other environmental perturbation."
With respect to the range of applicability of the findings of Anandakrishnan et al. and Alley et al., Anderson notes that "grounding-zone wedges are common features on the continental shelf, including the Ross Sea Shelf," and that "all ice streams of the Siple Coast have an anomalous elevation and stop at the grounding line," which leads him to conclude that "this mechanism for stabilization of the grounding-line is likely to be widespread." Consequently, Anderson concludes that "sea-level rise may not destabilize ice sheets as much as previously feared," which in turn suggests that sea level itself may not rise as fast or as high as previously feared. So what do actual sea level data suggest?
(continued here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/current_issue.html
Man-Caused Global Warming and Climate Change? Not In Yellowstone National Park
Here is an easy-to-understand review of an article concluding that the recent climate and precipitation changes seen in Yellowstone National Park are not out of the ordinary for at least the last one thousand years. This strongly suggests that the recent period of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are not creating any unusual weather conditions. Granted, this is just one small area, but it agrees with many other studies from around the world.
Peter
From: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/current_issue.html
Yellowstone National Park (USA): Precipitation Since AD 1173
ReferenceGray, S.T., Graumlich, L.J. and Betancourt, J.L. 2007. Annual precipitation in the Yellowstone National Park region since AD 1173. Quaternary Research 68: 18-27.
What was done
Noting, among other things, that current "concerns over anthropogenic climate change" emphasize the importance of understanding natural climatic variability in the U.S. Rocky Mountain West, and that "the hydroclimate of Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is of "particular interest" in light of its role as the "headwaters for both the Columbia and Missouri Rivers," the authors developed "a new tree-ring-based reconstruction of annual YNP precipitation spanning AD 1173-1998," working with "133 limber pine (Pinus flexilis James) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirbel) Franco) at four sites … in the Yellowstone National Park region."
What was learned
Gray et al. found that "extreme wet and dry years within the instrumental period fall within the range of past variability," and that "the magnitude of the worst-case droughts of the 20th century (AD 1930s and 1950s) was likely equaled or exceeded on numerous occasions [our italics] before AD 1900," or as they say in another place in their paper, "they were likely equaled or exceeded at least thirty times in the preceding six centuries [our italics]."
In addition, they report that their precipitation reconstruction shows "significant decadal to multidecadal variability that can produce strong regime-like behavior in regional precipitation, with the potential for rapid, high-amplitude switching between persistent wet and dry conditions," adding that comparisons with the results of other studies "suggest that YNP droughts and wet periods over multiple time scales are often part of spatially complex, extra-regional to sub-continental precipitation events."
What it means
The world's climate alarmists continue to proclaim that (1) global warming leads to more extremes of both dry and wet (drought and flood) conditions, and that (2) 20th-century global warming has produced a climatic state that is warmer than anything earth has experienced over the prior one (Mann et al., 1998, 1999) to two (Mann and Jones, 2003) millennia - or much longer (Hansen et al., 2006).
However, proxy precipitation data from the USA's Yellowstone National Park (which are well correlated with larger data sets of extra-regional to sub-continental scale), augmented by data from all around the world (see Precipitation in our Subject Index), suggest that one or both of these claims simply cannot be correct.
References
Hansen, J., Sato, M., Ruedy, R., Lo, K., Lea, D.W. and Medina-Elizade, M. 2006. Global temperature change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 103: 14,288-14,293.
Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K. 1998. Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries. Nature 392: 779-787.
Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K. 1999. Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations. Geophysical Research Letters 26: 759-762.
Mann, M.E. and Jones, P.D. 2003. Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia. Geophysical Research Letters 30: 10.1029/2003GL017814.Reviewed 26 September 2007
Peter
From: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/current_issue.html
Yellowstone National Park (USA): Precipitation Since AD 1173
ReferenceGray, S.T., Graumlich, L.J. and Betancourt, J.L. 2007. Annual precipitation in the Yellowstone National Park region since AD 1173. Quaternary Research 68: 18-27.
What was done
Noting, among other things, that current "concerns over anthropogenic climate change" emphasize the importance of understanding natural climatic variability in the U.S. Rocky Mountain West, and that "the hydroclimate of Yellowstone National Park (YNP) is of "particular interest" in light of its role as the "headwaters for both the Columbia and Missouri Rivers," the authors developed "a new tree-ring-based reconstruction of annual YNP precipitation spanning AD 1173-1998," working with "133 limber pine (Pinus flexilis James) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirbel) Franco) at four sites … in the Yellowstone National Park region."
What was learned
Gray et al. found that "extreme wet and dry years within the instrumental period fall within the range of past variability," and that "the magnitude of the worst-case droughts of the 20th century (AD 1930s and 1950s) was likely equaled or exceeded on numerous occasions [our italics] before AD 1900," or as they say in another place in their paper, "they were likely equaled or exceeded at least thirty times in the preceding six centuries [our italics]."
In addition, they report that their precipitation reconstruction shows "significant decadal to multidecadal variability that can produce strong regime-like behavior in regional precipitation, with the potential for rapid, high-amplitude switching between persistent wet and dry conditions," adding that comparisons with the results of other studies "suggest that YNP droughts and wet periods over multiple time scales are often part of spatially complex, extra-regional to sub-continental precipitation events."
What it means
The world's climate alarmists continue to proclaim that (1) global warming leads to more extremes of both dry and wet (drought and flood) conditions, and that (2) 20th-century global warming has produced a climatic state that is warmer than anything earth has experienced over the prior one (Mann et al., 1998, 1999) to two (Mann and Jones, 2003) millennia - or much longer (Hansen et al., 2006).
However, proxy precipitation data from the USA's Yellowstone National Park (which are well correlated with larger data sets of extra-regional to sub-continental scale), augmented by data from all around the world (see Precipitation in our Subject Index), suggest that one or both of these claims simply cannot be correct.
References
Hansen, J., Sato, M., Ruedy, R., Lo, K., Lea, D.W. and Medina-Elizade, M. 2006. Global temperature change. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 103: 14,288-14,293.
Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K. 1998. Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries. Nature 392: 779-787.
Mann, M.E., Bradley, R.S. and Hughes, M.K. 1999. Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the past millennium: Inferences, uncertainties, and limitations. Geophysical Research Letters 26: 759-762.
Mann, M.E. and Jones, P.D. 2003. Global surface temperatures over the past two millennia. Geophysical Research Letters 30: 10.1029/2003GL017814.Reviewed 26 September 2007
Stop Global Warming Hysteria
There are many reasons why the stop global warming movement is a farce. It is not only scientists who disagree with the notion that humans are causing global warming with carbon dioxide emissions, it is not just scientists who contend global warming is a naturally occurring phenomena, it is more and more economists recognizing that it is a very bad idea to raise taxes, while crippling the economy in a vain attempt to stop global warming.
Peter
Global Warming Hysteria
By Walter E. Williams CNSNews.com Commentary September 27, 2007
Despite increasing evidence that man-made CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change, politicians and others who wish to control our lives must maintain that it is.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Rep. John Dingell wants a 50-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline. We've heard such calls before, but there's a new twist. Dingell also wants to eliminate the mortgage tax deduction on what he calls "McMansions," homes that are 3,000 square feet and larger. That's because larger homes use more energy. One might wonder about Dingell's magnanimity in increasing taxes for only homes 3,000 feet or larger. The average U.S. home is around 2,300 square feet, compared with Europe's average of 1,000 square feet. So why doesn't Dingell call for disallowing mortgage deductions on houses more than 1,000 square feet? The reason is there would be too much political resistance, since more Americans own homes under 3,000 square feet than over 3,000. The full agenda is to start out with 3,000 square feet and later lower it in increments.
Our buying into global warming hysteria will allow politicians to do just about anything, upon which they can muster a majority vote, in the name of fighting climate change as a means to raise taxes.
In addition to excuses to raise taxes, congressmen are using climate change hysteria to funnel money into their districts. Rep. David L. Hobson, R-Ohio, secured $500,000 for a geothermal demonstration project. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., got $500,000 for a fuel-cell project by Superprotonic, a Pasadena company started by Caltech scientists. Money for similar boondoggles is being called for by members of both parties.
There are many ways to reduce CO2 emissions, and being 71 years of age I know many of them. Al Gore might even consider me carbon neutral and possibly having carbon credits because my carbon offsets were made in advance. For example, for the first 15 years of my life, I didn't use energy-consuming refrigerators; we had an icebox. For two decades I listened to radio instead of watching television and walked or used public transportation to most places. And for more than half my life I didn't use energy-consuming things such as computers, clothes dryers, air conditioning and microwave ovens. Of course, my standard of living was much lower.
The bottom line is, serious efforts to reduce CO2 will lead to lower living standards through higher costs of living. And it will be all for naught because there is little or no relationship between man-made CO2 emissions and climate change.
There's an excellent booklet available from the National Center for Policy Analysis (ncpa.org) titled "A Global Warming Primer." Some of its highlights are:
What about public school teachers frightening little children with tales of cute polar bears dying because of global warming? The primer says, "Polar bear numbers increased dramatically from around 5,000 in 1950 to as many as 25,000 today, higher than any time in the 20th century."
The primer gives detailed sources for all of its findings, and it supplies us with information we can use to stop politicians and their environmental extremists from doing a rope-a-dope on us.
(Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute. The views expressed are those of the writer.)
Peter
Global Warming Hysteria
By Walter E. Williams CNSNews.com Commentary September 27, 2007
Despite increasing evidence that man-made CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas and contributor to climate change, politicians and others who wish to control our lives must maintain that it is.
According to the Detroit Free Press, Rep. John Dingell wants a 50-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline. We've heard such calls before, but there's a new twist. Dingell also wants to eliminate the mortgage tax deduction on what he calls "McMansions," homes that are 3,000 square feet and larger. That's because larger homes use more energy. One might wonder about Dingell's magnanimity in increasing taxes for only homes 3,000 feet or larger. The average U.S. home is around 2,300 square feet, compared with Europe's average of 1,000 square feet. So why doesn't Dingell call for disallowing mortgage deductions on houses more than 1,000 square feet? The reason is there would be too much political resistance, since more Americans own homes under 3,000 square feet than over 3,000. The full agenda is to start out with 3,000 square feet and later lower it in increments.
Our buying into global warming hysteria will allow politicians to do just about anything, upon which they can muster a majority vote, in the name of fighting climate change as a means to raise taxes.
In addition to excuses to raise taxes, congressmen are using climate change hysteria to funnel money into their districts. Rep. David L. Hobson, R-Ohio, secured $500,000 for a geothermal demonstration project. Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., got $500,000 for a fuel-cell project by Superprotonic, a Pasadena company started by Caltech scientists. Money for similar boondoggles is being called for by members of both parties.
There are many ways to reduce CO2 emissions, and being 71 years of age I know many of them. Al Gore might even consider me carbon neutral and possibly having carbon credits because my carbon offsets were made in advance. For example, for the first 15 years of my life, I didn't use energy-consuming refrigerators; we had an icebox. For two decades I listened to radio instead of watching television and walked or used public transportation to most places. And for more than half my life I didn't use energy-consuming things such as computers, clothes dryers, air conditioning and microwave ovens. Of course, my standard of living was much lower.
The bottom line is, serious efforts to reduce CO2 will lead to lower living standards through higher costs of living. And it will be all for naught because there is little or no relationship between man-made CO2 emissions and climate change.
There's an excellent booklet available from the National Center for Policy Analysis (ncpa.org) titled "A Global Warming Primer." Some of its highlights are:
- --"Over long periods of time, there is no close relationship between CO2 levels and temperature."
- -- "Humans contribute approximately 3.4 percent of annual CO2 levels" compared to 96.6 percent by nature.
- -- "There was an explosion of life forms 550 million years ago (Cambrian Period) when CO2 levels were 18 times higher than today. During the Jurassic Period, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, CO2 levels were as much as nine times higher than today."
What about public school teachers frightening little children with tales of cute polar bears dying because of global warming? The primer says, "Polar bear numbers increased dramatically from around 5,000 in 1950 to as many as 25,000 today, higher than any time in the 20th century."
The primer gives detailed sources for all of its findings, and it supplies us with information we can use to stop politicians and their environmental extremists from doing a rope-a-dope on us.
(Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute. The views expressed are those of the writer.)
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Did Not End The Last Ice Age
Here is yet another study supporting the vast amount of evidence that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing global warming and climate change.
Peter
BREAKING NEWS!
from: http://www.junkscience.com/
Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age
Media Release, University of California
9-27-07 1400 ET
Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records.
"There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change," said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express.
"You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages."
Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown - but was not its main cause.
"I don't want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn't affect climate," Stott cautioned. "It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change."
While an increase in atmospheric CO2 and the end of the ice ages occurred at roughly the same time, scientists have debated whether CO2 caused the warming or was released later by an already warming sea.
The best estimate from other studies of when CO2 began to rise is no earlier than 18,000 years ago. Yet this study shows that the deep sea, which reflects oceanic temperature trends, started warming about 19,000 years ago.
"What this means is that a lot of energy went into the ocean long before the rise in atmospheric CO2," Stott said.
But where did this energy come from" Evidence pointed southward.
Water's salinity and temperature are properties that can be used to trace its origin - and the warming deep water appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, the scientists wrote.
This water then was transported northward over 1,000 years via well-known deep-sea currents, a conclusion supported by carbon-dating evidence.
In addition, the researchers noted that deep-sea temperature increases coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice, both occurring 19,000 years ago, before the northern hemisphere's ice retreat began.
Finally, Stott and colleagues found a correlation between melting Antarctic sea ice and increased springtime solar radiation over Antarctica, suggesting this might be the energy source.
As the sun pumped in heat, the warming accelerated because of sea-ice albedo feedbacks, in which retreating ice exposes ocean water that reflects less light and absorbs more heat, much like a dark T-shirt on a hot day.
In addition, the authors' model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, also accelerating the warming.
The link between the sun and ice age cycles is not new. The theory of Milankovitch cycles states that periodic changes in Earth's orbit cause increased summertime sun radiation in the northern hemisphere, which controls ice size.
However, this study suggests that the pace-keeper of ice sheet growth and retreat lies in the southern hemisphere's spring rather than the northern hemisphere's summer.
The conclusions also underscore the importance of regional climate dynamics, Stott said. "Here is an example of how a regional climate response translated into a global climate change," he explained.
Stott and colleagues arrived at their results by studying a unique sediment core from the western Pacific composed of fossilized surface-dwelling (planktonic) and bottom-dwelling (benthic) organisms.
These organisms - foraminifera - incorporate different isotopes of oxygen from ocean water into their calcite shells, depending on the temperature. By measuring the change in these isotopes in shells of different ages, it is possible to reconstruct how the deep and surface ocean temperatures changed through time.
If CO2 caused the warming, one would expect surface temperatures to increase before deep-sea temperatures, since the heat slowly would spread from top to bottom. Instead, carbon-dating showed that the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by surface-dwelling ones, suggesting that the warming spread bottom-up instead.
"The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms," Stott said. The complexities "have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future."
Peter
BREAKING NEWS!
from: http://www.junkscience.com/
Carbon dioxide did not end the last Ice Age
Media Release, University of California
9-27-07 1400 ET
Carbon dioxide did not cause the end of the last ice age, a new study in Science suggests, contrary to past inferences from ice core records.
"There has been this continual reference to the correspondence between CO2 and climate change as reflected in ice core records as justification for the role of CO2 in climate change," said USC geologist Lowell Stott, lead author of the study, slated for advance online publication Sept. 27 in Science Express.
"You can no longer argue that CO2 alone caused the end of the ice ages."
Deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2, the study found. The finding suggests the rise in greenhouse gas was likely a result of warming and may have accelerated the meltdown - but was not its main cause.
"I don't want anyone to leave thinking that this is evidence that CO2 doesn't affect climate," Stott cautioned. "It does, but the important point is that CO2 is not the beginning and end of climate change."
While an increase in atmospheric CO2 and the end of the ice ages occurred at roughly the same time, scientists have debated whether CO2 caused the warming or was released later by an already warming sea.
The best estimate from other studies of when CO2 began to rise is no earlier than 18,000 years ago. Yet this study shows that the deep sea, which reflects oceanic temperature trends, started warming about 19,000 years ago.
"What this means is that a lot of energy went into the ocean long before the rise in atmospheric CO2," Stott said.
But where did this energy come from" Evidence pointed southward.
Water's salinity and temperature are properties that can be used to trace its origin - and the warming deep water appeared to come from the Antarctic Ocean, the scientists wrote.
This water then was transported northward over 1,000 years via well-known deep-sea currents, a conclusion supported by carbon-dating evidence.
In addition, the researchers noted that deep-sea temperature increases coincided with the retreat of Antarctic sea ice, both occurring 19,000 years ago, before the northern hemisphere's ice retreat began.
Finally, Stott and colleagues found a correlation between melting Antarctic sea ice and increased springtime solar radiation over Antarctica, suggesting this might be the energy source.
As the sun pumped in heat, the warming accelerated because of sea-ice albedo feedbacks, in which retreating ice exposes ocean water that reflects less light and absorbs more heat, much like a dark T-shirt on a hot day.
In addition, the authors' model showed how changed ocean conditions may have been responsible for the release of CO2 from the ocean into the atmosphere, also accelerating the warming.
The link between the sun and ice age cycles is not new. The theory of Milankovitch cycles states that periodic changes in Earth's orbit cause increased summertime sun radiation in the northern hemisphere, which controls ice size.
However, this study suggests that the pace-keeper of ice sheet growth and retreat lies in the southern hemisphere's spring rather than the northern hemisphere's summer.
The conclusions also underscore the importance of regional climate dynamics, Stott said. "Here is an example of how a regional climate response translated into a global climate change," he explained.
Stott and colleagues arrived at their results by studying a unique sediment core from the western Pacific composed of fossilized surface-dwelling (planktonic) and bottom-dwelling (benthic) organisms.
These organisms - foraminifera - incorporate different isotopes of oxygen from ocean water into their calcite shells, depending on the temperature. By measuring the change in these isotopes in shells of different ages, it is possible to reconstruct how the deep and surface ocean temperatures changed through time.
If CO2 caused the warming, one would expect surface temperatures to increase before deep-sea temperatures, since the heat slowly would spread from top to bottom. Instead, carbon-dating showed that the water used by the bottom-dwelling organisms began warming about 1,300 years before the water used by surface-dwelling ones, suggesting that the warming spread bottom-up instead.
"The climate dynamic is much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms," Stott said. The complexities "have to be understood in order to appreciate how the climate system has changed in the past and how it will change in the future."
Scare Stories From The AP About Global Warming and Sea Level Rise
The following article is typical of the global warming scare stories coming from the mainstream media, this one from the AP (Associated Press) and published online by MSNBC. Many people (including myself) usually read the paper and consider or assume the AP is a credible and unbiased news source. Read this article, then the actual statements from scientists posted on this blog by nearly two dozen prominent scientists. It is clear the AP is only publishing one side of the story.
The public is being grossly manipulated and deceived by these scare stories about global warming and the accompanying catastrophic sea level rise. This is politically -driven nonsense, facilitated by the media's addiction to sensationalism. This is propagandist journalism at its worst. I think people are growing weary of all of the hype, they don't trust the journalists, and politicians who trumpet this kind of deceit. Read this, then read what the scientists say, and make up your own mind. Who do you believe? Sensationalistic journalists? Politicians trying to scare you into winning your vote, or real scientists outraged over the untruths being told to the gullible public?
To read what scientists say about the AP articles, see here: Scientists Worldwide Counter AP Article Promoting Climate Fears And Sea Level Rise
Peter
from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20840145/
Why worry about warming? Think rising seas
Scenarios for U.S. coastlines help focus on what to protect and at what cost
Michael Kappeler / AP
A ship passes by the coast of Greenland where the nearby Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, a U.N. heritage site, has thinned in recent years. Greenland experts are surprised by the rapid retreat of ice along the continent, which would raise sea levels by 20 feet if all the ice on it completely melted.
View related photos
Rising seas will ultimately swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting.
As they see it, it's just a matter of time.
Few of the more than two dozen climate experts interviewed disagree with the U.N. projection last February that levels will rise by three feet, or a meter. Some believe it could happen in 50 years, others say 100, and still others say 150.
“We’re going to get a meter and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said climatologist Andrew Weaver of Canada's University of Victoria, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It’s going to happen no matter what — the question is when.”
So, in about a century, many places that make America what it is might be slowly erased by seas rising due to melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and waters that literally expand because of warming.
In this scenario, rising seas will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp big city airports and major interstate highways.
Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians — the Bushes’ Kennebunkport and John Edwards’ place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.
The specific, and troubling, outlook is projected in coastal maps created by scientists at the University of Arizona and which are based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
What to protect?Sea level rise “has consequences about where people live and what they care about,” said Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland scientist who has studied the issue. “We’re going to be into this big national debate about what we protect and at what cost.”
This week, beginning with a meeting at the United Nations on Monday, world leaders are convening to talk about fighting global warming. At week’s end, leaders will gather in Washington with President Bush.
Rising seasView what future sea levels could mean for some of America's favorite places.Experts say that protecting America’s coastlines would run well into the billions and not all spots could be saved.
And it’s not just a rising ocean that is the problem. With it comes an even greater danger of storm surge, from hurricanes, winter storms and regular coastal storms, Boesch said. Sea level rise means higher and more frequent flooding from these extreme events, he said.
All told, three feet of sea level rise in just the lower 48 states would put about 25,000 square miles under water, according to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona. That’s an area the size of West Virginia.
The amount of lost land is even greater when Hawaii and Alaska are included, said Overpeck, who is one of the scientists mapping coastal scenarios.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s calculation projects a land loss of about 22,000 square miles. The EPA, which studied only the Eastern and Gulf coasts, found that Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and South Carolina would lose the most land. But even inland areas like Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia also have slivers of at-risk land, according to the EPA.
Recent past as cluesThis past summer’s flooding of subways in New York could become far more regular, even an everyday occurrence, with the projected sea rise, other scientists said. And New Orleans’ Katrina experience and the daily loss of Louisiana wetlands — which serve as a barrier that weakens hurricanes — are previews of what’s to come there.
Florida faces a serious public health risk from rising salt water tainting drinking water wells, said Joel Scheraga, the EPA’s director of global change research. And the farm-rich San Joaquin Delta in California faces serious salt water flooding problems, other experts said.
“Sea level rise is going to have more general impact to the population and the infrastructure than almost anything else that I can think of,” said S. Jeffress Williams, a U.S. Geological Survey coastal geologist in Woods Hole, Mass.
Even John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a scientist often quoted by global warming skeptics, said he figures the seas will rise at least 16 inches by the end of the century. But he tells people to prepare for a rise of about three feet just in case.
Williams says it’s “not unreasonable at all” to expect that much in 100 years given that seas have risen by about eight inches in the last century.
The change will be a gradual process, one that is so slow it will be easy to ignore for a while.
“It’s like sticking your finger in a pot of water on a burner and you turn the heat on, Williams said. “You kind of get used to it.”
Coastal strategies
Susanne Moser of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has studied the sea rise problem and says it may actually be cheaper to try to slow global warming by cutting fossil fuel emissions.
But, assuming that doesn't happen, there are three primary ways for coastal areas to survive the rising seas predicted with global warming. None is perfect. None is cheap.
The first option is to retreat. Abandon the low-lying area to the oncoming sea and build farther inland. Think parts of the disappearing Louisiana coastline.
But some properties along the coasts are so valuable — tens of trillions of dollars in value in Florida alone — and involve so much infrastructure that they can’t be abandoned. Think New York City or Miami.
So in those areas, artificial protection could be devised through earthen levees and dikes. Or there could be costly high-tech solutions. The Netherlands, which is mostly at or below sea level, has the world’s largest flood control system with an intricate system of barriers, levees, sluices, pumps and a gigantic swinging sea gate. The cost over 40 years was about $18 billion to protect a country the size of Maryland.
The cost would be prohibitive to protect all U.S. coastal regions, and such efforts would change some wetlands into freshwater lakes.
The third option is to raise the elevation of buildings and land on the coast. This, too, is expensive and requires constant battles against the elements. Think parts of the Outer Banks. There, some houses are on stilts, and beach replenishing occurs regularly.
One state, Maine, requires developers to anticipate the future. It has a regulation that demands that sea level rise be considered before permits are issued for new large buildings. That rule has blocked construction of some high-rises.
The public is being grossly manipulated and deceived by these scare stories about global warming and the accompanying catastrophic sea level rise. This is politically -driven nonsense, facilitated by the media's addiction to sensationalism. This is propagandist journalism at its worst. I think people are growing weary of all of the hype, they don't trust the journalists, and politicians who trumpet this kind of deceit. Read this, then read what the scientists say, and make up your own mind. Who do you believe? Sensationalistic journalists? Politicians trying to scare you into winning your vote, or real scientists outraged over the untruths being told to the gullible public?
To read what scientists say about the AP articles, see here: Scientists Worldwide Counter AP Article Promoting Climate Fears And Sea Level Rise
Peter
from: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20840145/
Why worry about warming? Think rising seas
Scenarios for U.S. coastlines help focus on what to protect and at what cost
Michael Kappeler / AP
A ship passes by the coast of Greenland where the nearby Sermeq Kujalleq glacier, a U.N. heritage site, has thinned in recent years. Greenland experts are surprised by the rapid retreat of ice along the continent, which would raise sea levels by 20 feet if all the ice on it completely melted.
View related photos
Rising seas will ultimately swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting.
As they see it, it's just a matter of time.
Few of the more than two dozen climate experts interviewed disagree with the U.N. projection last February that levels will rise by three feet, or a meter. Some believe it could happen in 50 years, others say 100, and still others say 150.
“We’re going to get a meter and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said climatologist Andrew Weaver of Canada's University of Victoria, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “It’s going to happen no matter what — the question is when.”
So, in about a century, many places that make America what it is might be slowly erased by seas rising due to melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and waters that literally expand because of warming.
In this scenario, rising seas will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp big city airports and major interstate highways.
Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians — the Bushes’ Kennebunkport and John Edwards’ place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.
The specific, and troubling, outlook is projected in coastal maps created by scientists at the University of Arizona and which are based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
What to protect?Sea level rise “has consequences about where people live and what they care about,” said Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland scientist who has studied the issue. “We’re going to be into this big national debate about what we protect and at what cost.”
This week, beginning with a meeting at the United Nations on Monday, world leaders are convening to talk about fighting global warming. At week’s end, leaders will gather in Washington with President Bush.
Rising seasView what future sea levels could mean for some of America's favorite places.Experts say that protecting America’s coastlines would run well into the billions and not all spots could be saved.
And it’s not just a rising ocean that is the problem. With it comes an even greater danger of storm surge, from hurricanes, winter storms and regular coastal storms, Boesch said. Sea level rise means higher and more frequent flooding from these extreme events, he said.
All told, three feet of sea level rise in just the lower 48 states would put about 25,000 square miles under water, according to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona. That’s an area the size of West Virginia.
The amount of lost land is even greater when Hawaii and Alaska are included, said Overpeck, who is one of the scientists mapping coastal scenarios.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s calculation projects a land loss of about 22,000 square miles. The EPA, which studied only the Eastern and Gulf coasts, found that Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and South Carolina would lose the most land. But even inland areas like Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia also have slivers of at-risk land, according to the EPA.
Recent past as cluesThis past summer’s flooding of subways in New York could become far more regular, even an everyday occurrence, with the projected sea rise, other scientists said. And New Orleans’ Katrina experience and the daily loss of Louisiana wetlands — which serve as a barrier that weakens hurricanes — are previews of what’s to come there.
Florida faces a serious public health risk from rising salt water tainting drinking water wells, said Joel Scheraga, the EPA’s director of global change research. And the farm-rich San Joaquin Delta in California faces serious salt water flooding problems, other experts said.
“Sea level rise is going to have more general impact to the population and the infrastructure than almost anything else that I can think of,” said S. Jeffress Williams, a U.S. Geological Survey coastal geologist in Woods Hole, Mass.
Even John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a scientist often quoted by global warming skeptics, said he figures the seas will rise at least 16 inches by the end of the century. But he tells people to prepare for a rise of about three feet just in case.
Williams says it’s “not unreasonable at all” to expect that much in 100 years given that seas have risen by about eight inches in the last century.
The change will be a gradual process, one that is so slow it will be easy to ignore for a while.
“It’s like sticking your finger in a pot of water on a burner and you turn the heat on, Williams said. “You kind of get used to it.”
Coastal strategies
Susanne Moser of the National Center for Atmospheric Research has studied the sea rise problem and says it may actually be cheaper to try to slow global warming by cutting fossil fuel emissions.
But, assuming that doesn't happen, there are three primary ways for coastal areas to survive the rising seas predicted with global warming. None is perfect. None is cheap.
The first option is to retreat. Abandon the low-lying area to the oncoming sea and build farther inland. Think parts of the disappearing Louisiana coastline.
But some properties along the coasts are so valuable — tens of trillions of dollars in value in Florida alone — and involve so much infrastructure that they can’t be abandoned. Think New York City or Miami.
So in those areas, artificial protection could be devised through earthen levees and dikes. Or there could be costly high-tech solutions. The Netherlands, which is mostly at or below sea level, has the world’s largest flood control system with an intricate system of barriers, levees, sluices, pumps and a gigantic swinging sea gate. The cost over 40 years was about $18 billion to protect a country the size of Maryland.
The cost would be prohibitive to protect all U.S. coastal regions, and such efforts would change some wetlands into freshwater lakes.
The third option is to raise the elevation of buildings and land on the coast. This, too, is expensive and requires constant battles against the elements. Think parts of the Outer Banks. There, some houses are on stilts, and beach replenishing occurs regularly.
One state, Maine, requires developers to anticipate the future. It has a regulation that demands that sea level rise be considered before permits are issued for new large buildings. That rule has blocked construction of some high-rises.
Scientists Worldwide Counter AP Article Promoting Climate Fears And Sea Level Rise
Nearly two dozen highly reputable scientists from around the world criticize a recent AP (Associated Press) article that is promoting popular computer climate models. Bear in mind that sea levels are considered by many to be the most accurate measure of global warming.
All of the scientists disparage the AP article as distorting reality, misinterpreting scientific data and observations, and playing upon people's fears. After reading the following, I can not see how any reasonable person can conclude there is scientific "consensus about global warming. This does not even consider whether carbon dioxide emissions can cause global warming. Which I and many others believe it can not.
Peter
The AP article appears here: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RQKV7O0&show_article=1
Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears
Post below lifted from Marc Morano.
Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions. The AP article also has been accused of mischaracterizing the views of a leading skeptic of man-made global warming fears.
The scientists are dismissing the AP article, entitled “Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History”(LINK) as a “scare tactic,” “sheer speculation,” and “hype of the worst order.” (H/T: Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.org - LINK)
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer ridiculed the AP article. “Rarely have I read such a collection of unsubstantiated and scare-mongering twaddle. Not only do real studies show no increase to rate of sea level change, the[AP] article gives reasons for concern that are nonsense,” Courtney told Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23.
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand slammed the article as well: “This [AP article] is a typical scare story based on no evidence or facts, but only on the ‘opinions’ and ‘beliefs’ of ‘experts’, all of whom have a financial interest in the promotion of their computer models,” Gray wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.
Swedish Professor Wibjorn Karlen of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Stockholm University: “Another of these hysterical views of our climate,” Karlen wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog regarding the AP article. "Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate,” Karlen explained.
The September 22, 2007 Associated Press article promoting future computer generated climate fears, appears just days before a high profile UN climate summit in New York Citythis week. The AP’s Seth Borenstein has a history of promoting unverifiable climate fears of the future (See: “AP Incorrectly claims scientists praise Gore’s movie” from June 2006 – LINK )
This AP report comes at a time when the peer-reviewed science is continuing to debunk the foundation of man-made climate change fears. (See "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" (LINK)
Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, stated that the AP mischaracterized his views on sea level in the article promoting climate fears a hundred years from now. “[My] discussion [with the AP reporter Seth Borenstein] was primarily about the storm surges which come from hurricanes - that's the real vulnerability.
The sea level is rising around 1 inch per decade, but sea level is like any other climate parameter - its either rising or falling all the time. To me, 16 inches per century is not a significant problem to deal with. But since storm surges of 15 to 30 feet occur in 6 hours, any preventive strategy, like an extra 3 feet of elevation, would be helpful,” Christy wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press blog. “Thinking that legislation can change sea level is hubris.
I did a calculation on what 1000 new nuclear power plants operating by 2020 would do for the IPCC best guess in the year 2100. The answer is 1.4 cm – about half an inch (if you accept the IPCC projection A1B for the base case.) Also, there doesn't seem to be any acceleration of the slow trend,” Christy explained. Borenstein's AP article stated: “Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.”Borenstein, who only quotes six scientists in the article, of which only one can be labeled a climate skeptic, uses the generic phrase “several leading scientists say." [EPW Blog Note: This blog report alone quotes nearly twodozen climate experts countering the AP’s “report” on sea level]
Borenstein’s article also claims alarming sea levels “will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.” “Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians—the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break,” Borenstein’s AP article continued.
But prominent scientists are speaking out and denouncing the article a mere hours after its publication. Here is a sampling of scientists’ reaction to the AP story: State of Florida Climatologist Dr. Jim O'Brien of Florida State University countered the AP article. “The best measurements of sea level rise are from satellite instrument called altimeters. Currently they measure 14 inches in 100 years. Everyone agrees that there is no acceleration. Even the UN IPCC quotes this,” O’Brien wrote to EPW on September 23. O’Brien is also the director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies. “If you increase the rate of rise by four times, it will take 146 years to rise to five feet. Sea level rise is the ‘scare tactic’ for these guys,” O’Brien added.
Climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990: "The IPCC never makes predictions, only projections" -- what might happen, or be 'likely' if you believe the assumptions in the model. No computer model has ever been shown to be capable of successful prediction", Gray wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. “Actual data on sea levels are unreliable. Long term figures are based on tide-gauge measurements near port cities prone to subsidence and damage of equipment from severe weather. Many recent and more reliable measurements show little recent change. Satellite measurements have shown a recent rise which may be temporary,” Gray added.
Dr. Boris Winterhalter, a retired Senior Research Scientist and Coordinator for national international marine geological research at the Geological Survey of Finland: “Even the worst case scenario is half of that quoted by Associated Press. This is a hype of the worst order. This whole scare builds on GCM's which we know mimic Earth processes very simplistically and are thus most unreliable,”
Winterhalter told Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. “I, as a marine geologist, am abhorred. I just looked at the USGS (US Geological Survey) site and am astonished that none of the references or fact sheets seem to refer to IPCC Fourth Assessment Report released this spring,” Winterhalter added.
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer: “Global sea level has been rising for the 10,000 years since the last ice age, and no significant change to the rate of sea level rise has been observed recently,” Courtney wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. "A continuing rise of ~2 mm/year for the next 100 years would raise sea level by ~0.2 m as it did during the twentieth century. And it is hard to see any justification forAndrew Weaver's claim (as quoted by AP) that ‘We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it, unless Weaver is talking about the next 500 years,” Courtney wrote. “Simply, there is no reason to suppose that sea level rise will be more of a problem in this century than it was in the last century or each of the previous ten centuries,” he concluded.
Geophysicist Dr. David Deming of University of Oklahoma. “Projections of sea-level rise are based on projections of future warming, fifty or a hundred years hence. And these projections are based on speculative computer models that have numerous uncertainties,” Deming wrote in a September 23, e-mail to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “These models cannot even be tested; their validity is completely unknown. In short, predictions of future sea-level rise are nothing but sheer speculation,” Deming added.
Swedish Professor Wibjorn Karlen of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Stockholm University: "I have used the NASA temperature data for a study of several major areas. As far as I can see the IPCC Global Temperature is wrong. Temperature is fluctuating but it is still most places cooler than in the 1930s and 1940s," Karlen wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog regarding the AP article. “The latest estimates of sea level rise are 1.31 mm/year. With this water level increase it will take about 800 years before the water level has increased by 1 m if not conditions change before that (very likely). Society will looks very different at that time,” he added.
Emmy Nominated Meteorologist Art Horn says AP loves ‘a scary story’ “Fearless forecasts from people who likely have never made real time, real world predictions. We who have worked in the real world of everyday weather forecasting for decades understand what it's like to be burned, even when you felt the forecast was a lock. I'm of the belief that most if not all of these predictions come from people who don't know much about the nature of prediction,” Horn wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog the day after the AP article was published. “Working with computer models that don't even start with a climate remotely similar to the real world can't give you results that are in any way close to useful. But the AP and all news organizations love a scary story. I know, I worked as a TV meteorologist for 25 years. If it will generate a buzz they will run with it,” Horn explained. “Making predictions about how much sea level will rise helps to insure the money train will continue. There will be people in seats of power that will continue to feed money to universities, research facilities and people like [NASA’s] James Hansen.
Greenpeace co-founder ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore noted the AP article was way off base from even the UN IPCC predictions. “The IPCC predicts 18 - 59 cm, i.e. their high end is about half predicted in the AP story, and the AP story warns of a possible three meters,” Moore told Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “The sea was 400 feet (130 meters)lower than today at the peak of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago. This is an average of 72 cm/100 years. Most of this occurred between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago so there were periods when the sea rose more that 1 meter per 100 years,” Moore concluded.
Former Harvard physicist Dr. Lubos Motl: “There's no good reason to expect more than 3 millimeters per year in average. It's been really 1.5 mm in the last 50 years, and 2 mm per year in 1900-1950. The rate has actuallyslowed down according to some papers,” Motl wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “Any model that predicts significant acceleration [of sea level] with growing CO2 is falsified or nearly falsified by the observed data. It's crazy to think that this slow gradual rise is anything that would justify any actions besides the houses that have to be either moved or protected on the centennial scale,” he added. “Any calculation that wants to indicate that the effects of sea level rise are a significant portion of the life or the economy is simply a miscalculation,” he concluded.
Chemist and agronomist Paavo Siitam: “Despite some doom and gloom predictions, excluding waves washing onto shores by relatively rarely occurring tsunamis and storm-surges, low-lying areas on the face of our planet have NOT yet been submerged by rising oceans... so probably low-lying areas along shorelines of Canada and the USA will be SAFE into foreseeable and even distant futures,” Siitam wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “By the way, I'd be happy to buy prized oceanfront properties at bargain prices, anywhere in the world, when unwarranted, panic selling begins. The dire predictions will not come true this century,” he added.
IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Dr. Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist: “I cannot help but conclude that this is one more example of scare-mongering by some very reputed scientists inthe atmosphere/ocean science. I am disappointed to find that none of these scientists seem to want to refer to the excellent work of Prof Morner of Stockholm University who was the President of the INQUA commission for Maldive Islands SLR and who has discounted & dismissed theMaldive Islands 'disappearing' in ONE hundred years or even earlier accordingto some scare-mongerers!” Khandekar wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “Besides Prof Morner's excellent studies, the scientists named in the news story seem to have ignored another well-documented study by Simon Holgate , an oceanographer in UK, whose paper in GRL( Geophysical Research Letters, 2007) has analyzed nine long sea-level records from 1903-2003 and the study finds that the SLR from 1953-2003 was about 1.5 mm/yr while the SLR from 1903-1953 was about 2 mm/yr, so there is NO ESCALATING sea level rise at present,” Khandekar explained. “If the earth's climate enters into a mini ice age by 2035-2040 as several solar scientists are suggesting now, we may NOT even see half the sea level rise as quoted above,” he added.
Atmospheric physicist Dr. Fred Singer: “The key to Borenstein’s story is the first very word: 'Ultimately.' Yes -- with sea level continuing to rise at the rate of about seven inches per century (as it has in past centuries), Florida will be flooded in a few 1000 years,” Singer, co-author of “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years,” wrote. Singer added sea levels will rise “unless a new ice age begins sooner -- lowering sea level -- as ocean water turns into continental ice sheets.”
Dr. Art Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine: “Long term temperature data suggest that the current - entirely natural and not man made - temperature rise of about 0.5 degrees C per century could continue for another 200 years. Therefore, the best data available leads to an extrapolated value of about 1 foot of rise during the next two centuries,” Robinson explained to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. ”There is no scientific basis upon which to guess that the rise will be less or will be more than this value. Such a long extrapolation over two centuries is likely to be significantly in error - but it is the only extrapolation that can be made with current data. There may be no sea level rise at all. No one knows,” he added.
Accuweather chief meteorologist Joe Bastardi, who specializes in long-range forecasts, slammed the AP article for being offering up "a series of anything can happen and probably will statements." “As someone who competes in the private sector and gets fired if my forecasts are not supply enough merit to be right enough for clients to benefit, I would welcome the kind of padding one has in making such outrageous long range forecasts that no one still alive will be able to verify,” Bastardi explained.
Ivy League forecasting expert Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and his colleague Kesten Green Monash University in Australia: “Dire consequences have been predicted to arise from warming of the Earth in coming decades of the 22nd Century. Enormous sea level rises is one of the more dramatic forecasts. According to the AP’s Borenstein, such sea-level forecasts were experts' judgments on what will happen,” Armstrong and Green wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “As shown in our analysis experts' forecasts have no validity in situations characterized by high complexity, high uncertainty, and poor feedback. To date we are unaware of any forecasts of sea levels that adhere to proper (scientific) forecasting methodology and our quick search on Google Scholar came up short,” Armstrong and Green explained. “Media outlets should be clear when they are reporting on scientific work and when they are reporting on the opinions held by some scientists. Without scientific support for their forecasting methods, the concerns of scientists should not be used as a basis for public policy,” they concluded.
The Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in the UK, an advisor to the Science and Pulblic Policy Institute, who has authored numerous climate science analyses (LINK): “Given the absence of credible evidence for extreme sea-level rise over the coming century in the peer-reviewed literature, theIPCC has been compelled to reduce its sea-level estimates. The mean centennial sea-level rise over then 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age has been 4 feet per century; in the 20th century sea level rose less than 8 inches; and the IPCC's current central estimate is that in the coming century sea level will rise by just 43 cm (1 ft 5 in),” Monckton wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog.
Canadian economist Dr. Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph in Ontario (who was key in debunking the infamous “Hockey Stick”) pointed out that real estate values would be plummeting on the coastlines if the AP article was accurate. “If what they're saying is true, we will see the effect on land values long before we see the effect on sea levels. They are saying that it is certain that all sea-level waterfront property around the US will be worthless in 50-100 years. Since the market is very efficient at discounting future certainties into present values, US beachfront property ought to be losing at least 20 percent of its remaining value every decade from now on,” McKitrick wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. ”It might be worth asking some real estate agents, especially in places like Hollywood and the Hamptons, where there seems to be such a consciousness of global warming, if beachfront owners are beginning to dump their properties at a discount. Because, of course, if some people have inside information that this land is really going to be worthless soon, they'll be the first ones to cash out and move to higher ground,” he concluded.
As EPW previously reported in a comprehensive report debunking fears of Greenland melting and a scary sea level rise, many prominent scientists dismiss computer model fears. (LINK) Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania, explains that sea level is only rising up 1.8 millimeters per year (0.07 inches) -- less than the thickness of one nickel "Sea level is rising," Giegengack said, butit's been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago, he explained according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine. “So if for some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level doesn’t know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming,"he said.(LINK) Giegengack also noted that the history of the last one billion years on the planet reveals"only about 5% of that time has been characterized by conditions on Earth that were so cold that the poles could support masses of permanent ice." (LINK)
Prominent scientist Professor Nils-Axel Morner, declared "the rapid rise in sea levelspredicted by computer models simply cannot happen." Morner, a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headedthe Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University,notedon August 6, 2007: "When we were coming out of the last ice age, huge ice sheets were melting rapidly and the sea level rose at an average of one meter per century. If the Greenland ice sheet stated to melt at the same rate - which is unlikely - sea level would rise by less than 100 mm - 4 inches per century." Morner, whowas president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution from1999 to 2003, has published a new booklet entitled"The Greatest Lie Ever Told," to refute claims of catastrophic sea level rise. (LINK)
All of the scientists disparage the AP article as distorting reality, misinterpreting scientific data and observations, and playing upon people's fears. After reading the following, I can not see how any reasonable person can conclude there is scientific "consensus about global warming. This does not even consider whether carbon dioxide emissions can cause global warming. Which I and many others believe it can not.
Peter
The AP article appears here: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8RQKV7O0&show_article=1
Scientists Counter AP Article Promoting Computer Model Climate Fears
Post below lifted from Marc Morano.
Nearly two dozen prominent scientists from around the world have denounced a recent Associated Press article promoting sea level fears in the year 2100 and beyond based on unproven computer models predictions. The AP article also has been accused of mischaracterizing the views of a leading skeptic of man-made global warming fears.
The scientists are dismissing the AP article, entitled “Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History”(LINK) as a “scare tactic,” “sheer speculation,” and “hype of the worst order.” (H/T: Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters.org - LINK)
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer ridiculed the AP article. “Rarely have I read such a collection of unsubstantiated and scare-mongering twaddle. Not only do real studies show no increase to rate of sea level change, the[AP] article gives reasons for concern that are nonsense,” Courtney told Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23.
UN IPCC reviewer and climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand slammed the article as well: “This [AP article] is a typical scare story based on no evidence or facts, but only on the ‘opinions’ and ‘beliefs’ of ‘experts’, all of whom have a financial interest in the promotion of their computer models,” Gray wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press Blog.
Swedish Professor Wibjorn Karlen of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Stockholm University: “Another of these hysterical views of our climate,” Karlen wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog regarding the AP article. "Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate,” Karlen explained.
The September 22, 2007 Associated Press article promoting future computer generated climate fears, appears just days before a high profile UN climate summit in New York Citythis week. The AP’s Seth Borenstein has a history of promoting unverifiable climate fears of the future (See: “AP Incorrectly claims scientists praise Gore’s movie” from June 2006 – LINK )
This AP report comes at a time when the peer-reviewed science is continuing to debunk the foundation of man-made climate change fears. (See "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears" (LINK)
Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, stated that the AP mischaracterized his views on sea level in the article promoting climate fears a hundred years from now. “[My] discussion [with the AP reporter Seth Borenstein] was primarily about the storm surges which come from hurricanes - that's the real vulnerability.
The sea level is rising around 1 inch per decade, but sea level is like any other climate parameter - its either rising or falling all the time. To me, 16 inches per century is not a significant problem to deal with. But since storm surges of 15 to 30 feet occur in 6 hours, any preventive strategy, like an extra 3 feet of elevation, would be helpful,” Christy wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press blog. “Thinking that legislation can change sea level is hubris.
I did a calculation on what 1000 new nuclear power plants operating by 2020 would do for the IPCC best guess in the year 2100. The answer is 1.4 cm – about half an inch (if you accept the IPCC projection A1B for the base case.) Also, there doesn't seem to be any acceleration of the slow trend,” Christy explained. Borenstein's AP article stated: “Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting. In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.”Borenstein, who only quotes six scientists in the article, of which only one can be labeled a climate skeptic, uses the generic phrase “several leading scientists say." [EPW Blog Note: This blog report alone quotes nearly twodozen climate experts countering the AP’s “report” on sea level]
Borenstein’s article also claims alarming sea levels “will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.” “Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians—the Bushes' Kennebunkport and John Edwards' place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break,” Borenstein’s AP article continued.
But prominent scientists are speaking out and denouncing the article a mere hours after its publication. Here is a sampling of scientists’ reaction to the AP story: State of Florida Climatologist Dr. Jim O'Brien of Florida State University countered the AP article. “The best measurements of sea level rise are from satellite instrument called altimeters. Currently they measure 14 inches in 100 years. Everyone agrees that there is no acceleration. Even the UN IPCC quotes this,” O’Brien wrote to EPW on September 23. O’Brien is also the director of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies. “If you increase the rate of rise by four times, it will take 146 years to rise to five feet. Sea level rise is the ‘scare tactic’ for these guys,” O’Brien added.
Climate researcher Dr Vincent Gray, of New Zealand, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990: "The IPCC never makes predictions, only projections" -- what might happen, or be 'likely' if you believe the assumptions in the model. No computer model has ever been shown to be capable of successful prediction", Gray wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. “Actual data on sea levels are unreliable. Long term figures are based on tide-gauge measurements near port cities prone to subsidence and damage of equipment from severe weather. Many recent and more reliable measurements show little recent change. Satellite measurements have shown a recent rise which may be temporary,” Gray added.
Dr. Boris Winterhalter, a retired Senior Research Scientist and Coordinator for national international marine geological research at the Geological Survey of Finland: “Even the worst case scenario is half of that quoted by Associated Press. This is a hype of the worst order. This whole scare builds on GCM's which we know mimic Earth processes very simplistically and are thus most unreliable,”
Winterhalter told Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. “I, as a marine geologist, am abhorred. I just looked at the USGS (US Geological Survey) site and am astonished that none of the references or fact sheets seem to refer to IPCC Fourth Assessment Report released this spring,” Winterhalter added.
Dr. Richard S. Courtney, a climate and atmospheric science consultant and a UN IPCC expert reviewer: “Global sea level has been rising for the 10,000 years since the last ice age, and no significant change to the rate of sea level rise has been observed recently,” Courtney wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog on September 23. "A continuing rise of ~2 mm/year for the next 100 years would raise sea level by ~0.2 m as it did during the twentieth century. And it is hard to see any justification forAndrew Weaver's claim (as quoted by AP) that ‘We're going to get a meter and there's nothing we can do about it, unless Weaver is talking about the next 500 years,” Courtney wrote. “Simply, there is no reason to suppose that sea level rise will be more of a problem in this century than it was in the last century or each of the previous ten centuries,” he concluded.
Geophysicist Dr. David Deming of University of Oklahoma. “Projections of sea-level rise are based on projections of future warming, fifty or a hundred years hence. And these projections are based on speculative computer models that have numerous uncertainties,” Deming wrote in a September 23, e-mail to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “These models cannot even be tested; their validity is completely unknown. In short, predictions of future sea-level rise are nothing but sheer speculation,” Deming added.
Swedish Professor Wibjorn Karlen of the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Stockholm University: "I have used the NASA temperature data for a study of several major areas. As far as I can see the IPCC Global Temperature is wrong. Temperature is fluctuating but it is still most places cooler than in the 1930s and 1940s," Karlen wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog regarding the AP article. “The latest estimates of sea level rise are 1.31 mm/year. With this water level increase it will take about 800 years before the water level has increased by 1 m if not conditions change before that (very likely). Society will looks very different at that time,” he added.
Emmy Nominated Meteorologist Art Horn says AP loves ‘a scary story’ “Fearless forecasts from people who likely have never made real time, real world predictions. We who have worked in the real world of everyday weather forecasting for decades understand what it's like to be burned, even when you felt the forecast was a lock. I'm of the belief that most if not all of these predictions come from people who don't know much about the nature of prediction,” Horn wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog the day after the AP article was published. “Working with computer models that don't even start with a climate remotely similar to the real world can't give you results that are in any way close to useful. But the AP and all news organizations love a scary story. I know, I worked as a TV meteorologist for 25 years. If it will generate a buzz they will run with it,” Horn explained. “Making predictions about how much sea level will rise helps to insure the money train will continue. There will be people in seats of power that will continue to feed money to universities, research facilities and people like [NASA’s] James Hansen.
Greenpeace co-founder ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore noted the AP article was way off base from even the UN IPCC predictions. “The IPCC predicts 18 - 59 cm, i.e. their high end is about half predicted in the AP story, and the AP story warns of a possible three meters,” Moore told Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “The sea was 400 feet (130 meters)lower than today at the peak of the last Ice Age 18,000 years ago. This is an average of 72 cm/100 years. Most of this occurred between 18,000 and 6,000 years ago so there were periods when the sea rose more that 1 meter per 100 years,” Moore concluded.
Former Harvard physicist Dr. Lubos Motl: “There's no good reason to expect more than 3 millimeters per year in average. It's been really 1.5 mm in the last 50 years, and 2 mm per year in 1900-1950. The rate has actuallyslowed down according to some papers,” Motl wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “Any model that predicts significant acceleration [of sea level] with growing CO2 is falsified or nearly falsified by the observed data. It's crazy to think that this slow gradual rise is anything that would justify any actions besides the houses that have to be either moved or protected on the centennial scale,” he added. “Any calculation that wants to indicate that the effects of sea level rise are a significant portion of the life or the economy is simply a miscalculation,” he concluded.
Chemist and agronomist Paavo Siitam: “Despite some doom and gloom predictions, excluding waves washing onto shores by relatively rarely occurring tsunamis and storm-surges, low-lying areas on the face of our planet have NOT yet been submerged by rising oceans... so probably low-lying areas along shorelines of Canada and the USA will be SAFE into foreseeable and even distant futures,” Siitam wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “By the way, I'd be happy to buy prized oceanfront properties at bargain prices, anywhere in the world, when unwarranted, panic selling begins. The dire predictions will not come true this century,” he added.
IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Dr. Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist: “I cannot help but conclude that this is one more example of scare-mongering by some very reputed scientists inthe atmosphere/ocean science. I am disappointed to find that none of these scientists seem to want to refer to the excellent work of Prof Morner of Stockholm University who was the President of the INQUA commission for Maldive Islands SLR and who has discounted & dismissed theMaldive Islands 'disappearing' in ONE hundred years or even earlier accordingto some scare-mongerers!” Khandekar wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “Besides Prof Morner's excellent studies, the scientists named in the news story seem to have ignored another well-documented study by Simon Holgate , an oceanographer in UK, whose paper in GRL( Geophysical Research Letters, 2007) has analyzed nine long sea-level records from 1903-2003 and the study finds that the SLR from 1953-2003 was about 1.5 mm/yr while the SLR from 1903-1953 was about 2 mm/yr, so there is NO ESCALATING sea level rise at present,” Khandekar explained. “If the earth's climate enters into a mini ice age by 2035-2040 as several solar scientists are suggesting now, we may NOT even see half the sea level rise as quoted above,” he added.
Atmospheric physicist Dr. Fred Singer: “The key to Borenstein’s story is the first very word: 'Ultimately.' Yes -- with sea level continuing to rise at the rate of about seven inches per century (as it has in past centuries), Florida will be flooded in a few 1000 years,” Singer, co-author of “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years,” wrote. Singer added sea levels will rise “unless a new ice age begins sooner -- lowering sea level -- as ocean water turns into continental ice sheets.”
Dr. Art Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine: “Long term temperature data suggest that the current - entirely natural and not man made - temperature rise of about 0.5 degrees C per century could continue for another 200 years. Therefore, the best data available leads to an extrapolated value of about 1 foot of rise during the next two centuries,” Robinson explained to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. ”There is no scientific basis upon which to guess that the rise will be less or will be more than this value. Such a long extrapolation over two centuries is likely to be significantly in error - but it is the only extrapolation that can be made with current data. There may be no sea level rise at all. No one knows,” he added.
Accuweather chief meteorologist Joe Bastardi, who specializes in long-range forecasts, slammed the AP article for being offering up "a series of anything can happen and probably will statements." “As someone who competes in the private sector and gets fired if my forecasts are not supply enough merit to be right enough for clients to benefit, I would welcome the kind of padding one has in making such outrageous long range forecasts that no one still alive will be able to verify,” Bastardi explained.
Ivy League forecasting expert Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania and his colleague Kesten Green Monash University in Australia: “Dire consequences have been predicted to arise from warming of the Earth in coming decades of the 22nd Century. Enormous sea level rises is one of the more dramatic forecasts. According to the AP’s Borenstein, such sea-level forecasts were experts' judgments on what will happen,” Armstrong and Green wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. “As shown in our analysis experts' forecasts have no validity in situations characterized by high complexity, high uncertainty, and poor feedback. To date we are unaware of any forecasts of sea levels that adhere to proper (scientific) forecasting methodology and our quick search on Google Scholar came up short,” Armstrong and Green explained. “Media outlets should be clear when they are reporting on scientific work and when they are reporting on the opinions held by some scientists. Without scientific support for their forecasting methods, the concerns of scientists should not be used as a basis for public policy,” they concluded.
The Viscount Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in the UK, an advisor to the Science and Pulblic Policy Institute, who has authored numerous climate science analyses (LINK): “Given the absence of credible evidence for extreme sea-level rise over the coming century in the peer-reviewed literature, theIPCC has been compelled to reduce its sea-level estimates. The mean centennial sea-level rise over then 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age has been 4 feet per century; in the 20th century sea level rose less than 8 inches; and the IPCC's current central estimate is that in the coming century sea level will rise by just 43 cm (1 ft 5 in),” Monckton wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog.
Canadian economist Dr. Ross McKitrick of the University of Guelph in Ontario (who was key in debunking the infamous “Hockey Stick”) pointed out that real estate values would be plummeting on the coastlines if the AP article was accurate. “If what they're saying is true, we will see the effect on land values long before we see the effect on sea levels. They are saying that it is certain that all sea-level waterfront property around the US will be worthless in 50-100 years. Since the market is very efficient at discounting future certainties into present values, US beachfront property ought to be losing at least 20 percent of its remaining value every decade from now on,” McKitrick wrote to Inhofe EPW Press Blog. ”It might be worth asking some real estate agents, especially in places like Hollywood and the Hamptons, where there seems to be such a consciousness of global warming, if beachfront owners are beginning to dump their properties at a discount. Because, of course, if some people have inside information that this land is really going to be worthless soon, they'll be the first ones to cash out and move to higher ground,” he concluded.
As EPW previously reported in a comprehensive report debunking fears of Greenland melting and a scary sea level rise, many prominent scientists dismiss computer model fears. (LINK) Ivy League geologist Dr. Robert Giegengack of the University of Pennsylvania, explains that sea level is only rising up 1.8 millimeters per year (0.07 inches) -- less than the thickness of one nickel "Sea level is rising," Giegengack said, butit's been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago, he explained according to a February 2007 article in Philadelphia Magazine. “So if for some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level doesn’t know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming,"he said.(LINK) Giegengack also noted that the history of the last one billion years on the planet reveals"only about 5% of that time has been characterized by conditions on Earth that were so cold that the poles could support masses of permanent ice." (LINK)
Prominent scientist Professor Nils-Axel Morner, declared "the rapid rise in sea levelspredicted by computer models simply cannot happen." Morner, a leading world authority on sea levels and coastal erosion who headedthe Department of Paleogeophysics & Geodynamics at Stockholm University,notedon August 6, 2007: "When we were coming out of the last ice age, huge ice sheets were melting rapidly and the sea level rose at an average of one meter per century. If the Greenland ice sheet stated to melt at the same rate - which is unlikely - sea level would rise by less than 100 mm - 4 inches per century." Morner, whowas president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution from1999 to 2003, has published a new booklet entitled"The Greatest Lie Ever Told," to refute claims of catastrophic sea level rise. (LINK)
Czech President Challenges UN About Climate Change
I'll bet you won't find this speech on the nightly news or in the mainstream media. Here is the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, speaking on global warming at the United Nations. He is not just a politician, but an economist and an author of a book on the economics of climate change. He is convinced that there is no reason for panic over climate change, and he makes far more sense than most American politicians.
Peter
from: http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/177/czech_national_news/12570/
CZECH PRESIDENT CHALLENGES IPCC 'MONOPOLY' AT THE UN
"The increase in global temperatures has been in the last years, decades and centuries very small in historical comparisons and practically negligible in its actual impact upon human beings and their activities," Czech President Vaclav Klaus said at the world politicians' meeting on global warming today. The conference in New York has been organised by U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon.
Klaus said "the hypothetical threat connected with future global warming depends exclusively upon very speculative forecasts, not upon undeniable past experience and upon its trends and tendencies. These forecasts are based on relatively short-time series of relevant variables and on forecasting models that have not been proved very reliable when attempting to explain past developments." No scientific consensus exists, "contrary to many self-assured and self-serving proclamations" about the causes of the ongoing climate changes, Klaus said.
The arguments of both parties in dispute - i.e. those believing in "man's dominant role in recent climate changes" and those who support the hypothesis about "its mostly natural origin" - are so strong that they must be listened to carefully, Klaus continued. "To prematurely proclaim the victory of one group over another would be a tragic mistake and I am afraid we are making it," Klaus continued. "Different levels of development, income and wealth in different places of the world make worldwide, overall and universal solutions costly, unfair and to a great extent discriminatory.
The already-developed countries do not have the right to impose any additional burden on the less developed countries. Dictating ambitious and for them entirely inappropriate environmental standards is wrong and should be excluded from the menu of recommended policy measures."
He proposed that the U.N. organise two parallel inter-government discussion panels and issue two competing reports on climate changes. "To get rid of a one-sided monopoly is a condition sine qua non for an efficient and rational debate. Providing the same or comparable financial backing to both groups of scientists is a necessary starting point," Klaus said. Commenting on the issue for public Czech Radio (CRo) later today, Klaus said "Let's not create a false illusion that we share a single expected opinion. This is simply just the huge cheat and trick ... the gentlemen such as [Al] Gore and [Martin] Bursik have created."
He alluded to former U.S. vice-president and to the Czech Green Party (SZ) chairman, respectively.... In his New York speech Klaus said that "as a result of the scientific dispute there are those who call for an imminent action and those who warn against it. Rational behaviour should depend on the size of the probability of the risk and on the magnitude of the costs of its avoidance." "As as a responsible politician, as an economist, as an author of a book on the economic of climate changes, with all available data and arguments in mind, I have to conclude that the risk is too small, the costs of eliminating it too big and the application of a fundamentally-interpreted precautionary principle a wrong strategy," Klaus stated. More here
Peter
from: http://www.praguemonitor.com/en/177/czech_national_news/12570/
CZECH PRESIDENT CHALLENGES IPCC 'MONOPOLY' AT THE UN
"The increase in global temperatures has been in the last years, decades and centuries very small in historical comparisons and practically negligible in its actual impact upon human beings and their activities," Czech President Vaclav Klaus said at the world politicians' meeting on global warming today. The conference in New York has been organised by U.N. General Secretary Ban Ki-Moon.
Klaus said "the hypothetical threat connected with future global warming depends exclusively upon very speculative forecasts, not upon undeniable past experience and upon its trends and tendencies. These forecasts are based on relatively short-time series of relevant variables and on forecasting models that have not been proved very reliable when attempting to explain past developments." No scientific consensus exists, "contrary to many self-assured and self-serving proclamations" about the causes of the ongoing climate changes, Klaus said.
The arguments of both parties in dispute - i.e. those believing in "man's dominant role in recent climate changes" and those who support the hypothesis about "its mostly natural origin" - are so strong that they must be listened to carefully, Klaus continued. "To prematurely proclaim the victory of one group over another would be a tragic mistake and I am afraid we are making it," Klaus continued. "Different levels of development, income and wealth in different places of the world make worldwide, overall and universal solutions costly, unfair and to a great extent discriminatory.
The already-developed countries do not have the right to impose any additional burden on the less developed countries. Dictating ambitious and for them entirely inappropriate environmental standards is wrong and should be excluded from the menu of recommended policy measures."
He proposed that the U.N. organise two parallel inter-government discussion panels and issue two competing reports on climate changes. "To get rid of a one-sided monopoly is a condition sine qua non for an efficient and rational debate. Providing the same or comparable financial backing to both groups of scientists is a necessary starting point," Klaus said. Commenting on the issue for public Czech Radio (CRo) later today, Klaus said "Let's not create a false illusion that we share a single expected opinion. This is simply just the huge cheat and trick ... the gentlemen such as [Al] Gore and [Martin] Bursik have created."
He alluded to former U.S. vice-president and to the Czech Green Party (SZ) chairman, respectively.... In his New York speech Klaus said that "as a result of the scientific dispute there are those who call for an imminent action and those who warn against it. Rational behaviour should depend on the size of the probability of the risk and on the magnitude of the costs of its avoidance." "As as a responsible politician, as an economist, as an author of a book on the economic of climate changes, with all available data and arguments in mind, I have to conclude that the risk is too small, the costs of eliminating it too big and the application of a fundamentally-interpreted precautionary principle a wrong strategy," Klaus stated. More here
The Cost Of Caution
There is a debate going around about who is going to be hurt the most by the costs associated with trying to control global warming by restricting carbon dioxide emissions. Well it is pretty obvious that poor people around the world, or even those in developed countries trying to live on fixed incomes are going to be badly hurt by the rising costs of everything. The following article expresses this fundamental fact better than I can.
I'm wondering if by limiting the energy available to the developing world , in the form of fossil fuels, the real motive isn't the control of population growth. What are the moral implications of that?
Peter
from: http://sitewave.net/news/s49p1835.htm#Message5955
Counting the cost of the precautionary principle
People will appeal to the Precautionary Principle - that it's better to be safe than sorry. Why not sign global treaties to limit carbon emissions? The April 16th Newsweek had a telling map entitled "Leaders and Laggers". Based on the Environmental Performance Index from Yale, it rated countries based on how environmentally friendly their policies were - the "leaders" dark green and the "laggers" in coal black. One immediately notes a rough correlation between wealth and environmental policy on this map. Why not encourage developing nations to get with the program and use more "clean energy"?
Well, why don't you have a solar paneled house? Probably because it's too expensive. No matter what we say about saving costs down the road, as a practical matter these solar technologies involve too much of an initial capital investment to be feasible for most Americans. Installation costs for one entirely solar house in Boston was $35,456. Presumably the technology will get cheaper and more efficient in the future, but this is where it stands today.
A recent article came out about a group of Virginia Tech engineering students who designed a solar energy system to power a clinic in Getongoroma village in Southwestern Kenya. The high tech system will provide the clinic with an ample 24 kilowatt hours per day (25% more than was requested, but still 20% less than the average US household uses). The projected cost: $120,000. Surrounded by the relative riches of America, the project is still in the fund raising stage. How can we possibly be serious in prescribing this to countries where the average person earns a couple of dollars a day? James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist and author, has said, "The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy. But for us, we are still at the stage of survival."
Of course, there are places where solar energy is the best option for electricity in developing countries. These are generally places that have no hope of getting connected with a power grid, such as remote clinics in agricultural communities in Kenya or guerilla-controlled areas of Burma.
The technology generally used in clinics along the Thai-Burmese border, for example, utilizes solar panels which each cost $525. Sounds a little more reasonable, right? Each of these panels supplies 130 watts of power. If you have two incandescent light bulbs on in your house right now, you are probably exceeding this wattage. If you made coffee this morning, you used almost seven times this amount of power. The medics along the Thai-Burma border don't really focus much on immunizations because a refrigerator requires at least 200-700 watts of power. Of course, this also precludes the possibility of blood banks, in a part of the world where medics are frequently faced with treating postpartum hemorrhage, malarial hemolysis and trauma. At a household level, lack of refrigeration has profound repercussions in the form of prevalent and deadly diarrheal diseases that account for 50% of childhood mortality in this population. What else might you want in a clinic? An ultrasound? Cautery? A microscope that can be used at night? A pulse-oximeter? A UV lamp?
These affordable solar panels are a valuable stopgap, but they are by no means a permanent panacea for the word's energy needs. Economist James Shikwati says, "I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel is going to power a railway train network. It might work to power a small transistor radio….
One clear thing that emerges from [this] debate is the point that there's somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream is to develop." By telling developing countries to use "clean energy sources" what we are saying is, "You will not have electricity at all." We are saying, "You will live a life of backbreaking work. You will see at least one of your children die in early childhood, probably more than that. You will experience incomparably more painful and dangerous pregnancy and labor than women in developed countries, and you will face it more frequently because you will fear losing your children to disease, starvation or violence. You will be too busy struggling for survival to protest the rampant official corruption or the government troops who rape you, destroy your villages and disregard your votes. Ultimately, you will die 20-30 years younger than I will.
"But it will be worth it, because I've been told there is a scientific consensus that all this is necessary to avert global warming."
I'm wondering if by limiting the energy available to the developing world , in the form of fossil fuels, the real motive isn't the control of population growth. What are the moral implications of that?
Peter
from: http://sitewave.net/news/s49p1835.htm#Message5955
Counting the cost of the precautionary principle
People will appeal to the Precautionary Principle - that it's better to be safe than sorry. Why not sign global treaties to limit carbon emissions? The April 16th Newsweek had a telling map entitled "Leaders and Laggers". Based on the Environmental Performance Index from Yale, it rated countries based on how environmentally friendly their policies were - the "leaders" dark green and the "laggers" in coal black. One immediately notes a rough correlation between wealth and environmental policy on this map. Why not encourage developing nations to get with the program and use more "clean energy"?
Well, why don't you have a solar paneled house? Probably because it's too expensive. No matter what we say about saving costs down the road, as a practical matter these solar technologies involve too much of an initial capital investment to be feasible for most Americans. Installation costs for one entirely solar house in Boston was $35,456. Presumably the technology will get cheaper and more efficient in the future, but this is where it stands today.
A recent article came out about a group of Virginia Tech engineering students who designed a solar energy system to power a clinic in Getongoroma village in Southwestern Kenya. The high tech system will provide the clinic with an ample 24 kilowatt hours per day (25% more than was requested, but still 20% less than the average US household uses). The projected cost: $120,000. Surrounded by the relative riches of America, the project is still in the fund raising stage. How can we possibly be serious in prescribing this to countries where the average person earns a couple of dollars a day? James Shikwati, a Kenyan economist and author, has said, "The rich countries can afford to engage in some luxurious experimentation with other forms of energy. But for us, we are still at the stage of survival."
Of course, there are places where solar energy is the best option for electricity in developing countries. These are generally places that have no hope of getting connected with a power grid, such as remote clinics in agricultural communities in Kenya or guerilla-controlled areas of Burma.
The technology generally used in clinics along the Thai-Burmese border, for example, utilizes solar panels which each cost $525. Sounds a little more reasonable, right? Each of these panels supplies 130 watts of power. If you have two incandescent light bulbs on in your house right now, you are probably exceeding this wattage. If you made coffee this morning, you used almost seven times this amount of power. The medics along the Thai-Burma border don't really focus much on immunizations because a refrigerator requires at least 200-700 watts of power. Of course, this also precludes the possibility of blood banks, in a part of the world where medics are frequently faced with treating postpartum hemorrhage, malarial hemolysis and trauma. At a household level, lack of refrigeration has profound repercussions in the form of prevalent and deadly diarrheal diseases that account for 50% of childhood mortality in this population. What else might you want in a clinic? An ultrasound? Cautery? A microscope that can be used at night? A pulse-oximeter? A UV lamp?
These affordable solar panels are a valuable stopgap, but they are by no means a permanent panacea for the word's energy needs. Economist James Shikwati says, "I don't see how a solar panel is going to power a steel industry, how a solar panel is going to power a railway train network. It might work to power a small transistor radio….
One clear thing that emerges from [this] debate is the point that there's somebody keen to kill the African dream. And the African dream is to develop." By telling developing countries to use "clean energy sources" what we are saying is, "You will not have electricity at all." We are saying, "You will live a life of backbreaking work. You will see at least one of your children die in early childhood, probably more than that. You will experience incomparably more painful and dangerous pregnancy and labor than women in developed countries, and you will face it more frequently because you will fear losing your children to disease, starvation or violence. You will be too busy struggling for survival to protest the rampant official corruption or the government troops who rape you, destroy your villages and disregard your votes. Ultimately, you will die 20-30 years younger than I will.
"But it will be worth it, because I've been told there is a scientific consensus that all this is necessary to avert global warming."
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Jim Hansen, NASA Temperature Data, and Lies
I have to post this dialogue and save it for posterity because I have a feeling it will be important. I'm somewhat involved in a personal way, so it warrants my saving it. The debate over global warming is not "over", as many people want us to believe. Perhaps it is just beginning.
Peter
from: http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/thread.aspx?threadid=388913&boardsparam=page%3D44
GCB Stokes
Message #52209/26/07 12:36 AM
Sky Hunter,
Hansen is the political hack, the whiny little candy a$$ would call Al Gore to report on what the others at NASA were doing and saying. He would set with people and ask them questions pertaining to their research, and he would gain their trust. Then when he had the information, he would run into his office and call Al Gore on his cell phone and rat people out, "Al guess what! This person did this, and he saying that and put this and that into his research, you got to stop him Al, you got to do something!" He even pasted Al Gore notes the night before he gave his testimony at the Senate Hearings in 1998, on what to ask and how to ask it, when it was his turn to question him in the hearing. Give me a break Sky Hunter, you don't know the first thing about what your talking about here, you only know what you hear in the warming cycle. And your being a hypocrite.
GCB Stokes
Message #52309/26/07 12:37 AM
GCB Stokes
Message #52409/26/07 12:38 AM
Like it or not, the science is far from settled, and there are many researchers from around the world who agree, people you could not put a patch on the A$$ of. Including those who run the models.
And one more thing.
I don't know what came over you, maybe you had some bad beans or something. Or perhaps you feel like the kid who was just told there really is no Santa, but here are the facts as science know them:
Global Warming is a radical theory proposed by a few scientists several decades ago. This theory was captured by environmentalist, antihuman ideologists and politicians and elevated into the status of a fear based religious belief. In science, theories are grounded by the evidence that supports the theory. Even though the Global Warming Theory has been under the microscope for the past few decades and even though billions of dollars have been thrown into research on this subject, the work has not been able to accumulate a strong foundation of data supporting this theory. On the contrary, the analysis by hundreds of top scientist indicates the evidence has been building up over the past few years to reject this theory. And all the temper tantrums in the world won't change the facts.
Massagatto
Message #52509/26/07 12:46 AM
Thank You, GCB, for cramming sense into Sky Hunter's empty head. I really could not abide his attack so I reprinted your posts. Instead of adhominem attacks by SKy Hunter, I would like to see him take each of your posts one by one and rebut them. I am sure he could never do that. Therefore, he descended into an adhominem attack. But you hit him right on the nose...Bravo!!!!
Message #526
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GCB Stokes
Message #52609/26/07 01:39 AM
Massagatto,
I really don't like having to do things like this, and having to deal with some of the want-a-be's out on this message board is one thing, but I really didn't expect Shy Hunter to go all hysterical and going into an Al Gore automated attack mode as some may true believes do. They don't like what their hearing and things don't go there way, and faced with facts contrary to their beliefs and all they have been conditioned to accept and it hurts. So, they attack and insult even people who called them a friend.
Some of the **** he was saying was absurd. I work with climate researchers, some of whom are IPCC contributors, one was a lead authors, and three are considered some of the very best in there field. And the guy I'm working with tonight, is a pro-warming researcher and he read over the reports that I posted, some he disagrees with, some he and other's don't have an answer for. He concedes that he believes in his models, but accepts their flaws, and there are opposing views that nobody can explain away. And what Sky Hunter said about McIntyre, was ludicrous. And when he read Sky Hunter's post, he laughed and said, "McIntrye sure knows enough to make an A$$ out of Hansen before the whole world. Let's hear him refute that fact!" And the part were he can refute everyone one of the studies, he just shook his and rolled his eye and said, "I can't wait for his reply and for him to refute each of those studies. Then I'll take them into work and give some pointers to all of the armatures." I guess Sky Hunter was a little full of himself tonight, or he was just acting hysterical, but that was a ridiculous statement as if he mastered these professional researchers and their peer-reviewed research. I could see if these guy wrote papers without supporting data or some other silly B.S. researchers put out there, but that's not the case here, at all.
And the fact is, this thread is a report of a researchers findings, the very findings that made Hansen concede flawed data, and forced him to even change his method along with some dirty tricks. I'm reporting findings that were proven correct, along with peer-review research. It's too bad he doesn't get so worked up over the ridiculous B.S. some of these guys post in support of his warming beliefs. Such as when CuriousPete, after getting a Peterson Field Guide and did some googling, and today tried playing ornithologist with me over some unsupported global warming hysteria regarding birds. I did my best not to insult him, even after he got all cocky. And after dealing with this ****, then SkyHunter had his spell, and I was just not in the mood for it, and I got the impression he thought he was talking to one of his fans who doesn't know any better or something. But he's not dealing with an idiot here, or some fool who doesn't know the difference between the hole in their backside and a gopher hole and try to play scientist on the message board.
I'm just upset/pi$$ed off, and I'm sure GeoPeter will tell me, "Your a trained researcher, don't conduct yourself in this manner!" And he'll be right of course. I guess people just got on my last nerve and I said things I should not have, and I'll feel bad about it later.
Well, I'm home now and need to take a hot shower, and then get into bed. Take care
Peter
from: http://boards.msn.com/MSNBCboards/thread.aspx?threadid=388913&boardsparam=page%3D44
GCB Stokes
Message #52209/26/07 12:36 AM
Sky Hunter,
"So are you getting paid to post Marc Morano's disingenuous garbage he calls theClassic pro-warming, you've been train very well. I'm sure Al Gore and Big Dad Jim and very proud.
Senate EPW blog all over this forum?"
"Is Steve McIntyre slipping you a little extra to cut and paste his lies ontoFor some as smart as you, that's a really stupid statement and it put you in the same class as Rabid Roy. Tell us, just what is he lying about? Fact is Sky Hunter, his "lies" exposed Hansen's flawed data and method. Hansen has been forced to change them because Steve McIntrye was not lying, he was right. Have you seen Hansen changing things on the NASA Web Site? It's hard keeping up, but if you check in daily, you can see it yourself, and you won't have to read it from Steve McIntyre.
these threads?"
"All this effort to discredit Hansen and then you guys scream fouls whenever
someone questions the credibility of bloggers that are not even scientists, Like
Moarano, who is a political hack, and McIntyre, who is an advocate for the
mining industry."
Hansen is the political hack, the whiny little candy a$$ would call Al Gore to report on what the others at NASA were doing and saying. He would set with people and ask them questions pertaining to their research, and he would gain their trust. Then when he had the information, he would run into his office and call Al Gore on his cell phone and rat people out, "Al guess what! This person did this, and he saying that and put this and that into his research, you got to stop him Al, you got to do something!" He even pasted Al Gore notes the night before he gave his testimony at the Senate Hearings in 1998, on what to ask and how to ask it, when it was his turn to question him in the hearing. Give me a break Sky Hunter, you don't know the first thing about what your talking about here, you only know what you hear in the warming cycle. And your being a hypocrite.
"I am terribly disappointed in both you and GeoPeter
for a total lack of original thinking on this issue of late. Posting the climate
deniers talking points is what I would expect from lesser intellects."This is not attempt at original thinking, it an informative threat, and I'm
posting the updates and posting/reporting what the liberal news media and
Al Gore lovers won't in order to protect Al Gore and his trained pet rat
James Hansen.
GCB Stokes
Message #52309/26/07 12:37 AM
Hansen has discredited himself way back, form his flip-flop from raving about the new ice age coming within 50 years and we must act now before it too late, and then not 10 years later started raving about global warming and we must act now before it too late. And his numbers, data and methods speak for themselves. I don't have to discredit him, he's doing a fine job of that on his own. Advocate of the mining industry? Oh, you mean his an advocate of Al Gore's mining industry with that zinc mine of his?"All this effort to discredit Hansen and then you guys scream fouls whenever
someone questions the credibility of bloggers that are not even scientists, Like
Moarano, who is a political hack, and McIntyre, who is an advocate for the
mining industry."
"I can refute every single example you have posted, most are just MoranoI'm sure in you mind you can. That's interesting Sky Hunter, because many of the climate researchers from NASA, NOAA and Met Office can't. Perhaps I'll put in the good word and get you a job, and you can get in there and tell them how things are to be done.
misrepresenting the studies. But for instance the Joseph D'Alio is an example of
distorting the facts beyond recognition."
"What he is doing is dishonest and he knows it. So here you have another provenSky Hunter, don't take me for a fool, and don't think I don't run things past my people on these matters. And the fact is, McIntyre has expose errors and flaws, Hansen had to concede to this fact, and had to make the corrections and now has change his method. Some, of the studies reported my Morano have some question, just as the warming studies and Hansen's claims, other many don't. And they are based on peer-review research and just because Morano report them, does not change the fact, like him or not. If things are really as bad as you say, then the global warming thread has even less to stand on, being that some much garbage gets through the peer-review process.
liar and yet you are willing to trust him because he is on your side of the
argument."
"The simple truthis that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations areI hate to break the news to you, but there many people, researchers including some of the world's best climate researchers who are vastly more knowable then you who disagree. And that list is growing.
increasing as a result of human activity, and this increase in greenhouse gases,
particularly CO2 is causing an increase in radiative forcing, and as a result
the planet is warming. All the tricky arguments and lies told by the right wing
media and industry funded deniers does not change the physics. The Earth is
warming, and human activity is the cause."
GCB Stokes
Message #52409/26/07 12:38 AM
"Well I think that is your problem, you see this as a political issue, not aYeah, that coming from a Hansen fan, that sure gives you a whole lot of creditability! Don't you think he should know better.
science issue, so you are willing to believe people who support your
confirmation bias, even though as a trained scientist, you should know
better."
"I guess perhaps I gave you guys more credit for objective thinking than wasThe feeling is mutual, Sky Hunter.
deserved."
Like it or not, the science is far from settled, and there are many researchers from around the world who agree, people you could not put a patch on the A$$ of. Including those who run the models.
And one more thing.
"I know he is only a meteorologist, but even a meteorologist knows that this isNow that was stupid, and I'll give you some breaking news Sky Hunter. The overwhelming majority of climate researchers, include more then 75 percent of the climate modellers are just that, "only meteorologist." I really did take you for someone who knew what they were talking about, this prove that wrong. Fact be known, Hansen is not even a meteorologist, or an atmospheric researcher at all for that matter. Hansen was trained in "physics" and "astronomy." And it shows in his work.
not a logical argument, since isotopic fractionation of the carbon atom proves
that the additional CO2 in the atmosphere is from fossil sources."
I don't know what came over you, maybe you had some bad beans or something. Or perhaps you feel like the kid who was just told there really is no Santa, but here are the facts as science know them:
Global Warming is a radical theory proposed by a few scientists several decades ago. This theory was captured by environmentalist, antihuman ideologists and politicians and elevated into the status of a fear based religious belief. In science, theories are grounded by the evidence that supports the theory. Even though the Global Warming Theory has been under the microscope for the past few decades and even though billions of dollars have been thrown into research on this subject, the work has not been able to accumulate a strong foundation of data supporting this theory. On the contrary, the analysis by hundreds of top scientist indicates the evidence has been building up over the past few years to reject this theory. And all the temper tantrums in the world won't change the facts.
Massagatto
Message #52509/26/07 12:46 AM
Thank You, GCB, for cramming sense into Sky Hunter's empty head. I really could not abide his attack so I reprinted your posts. Instead of adhominem attacks by SKy Hunter, I would like to see him take each of your posts one by one and rebut them. I am sure he could never do that. Therefore, he descended into an adhominem attack. But you hit him right on the nose...Bravo!!!!
Message #526
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Show message Edit settings
GCB Stokes
Message #52609/26/07 01:39 AM
Massagatto,
I really don't like having to do things like this, and having to deal with some of the want-a-be's out on this message board is one thing, but I really didn't expect Shy Hunter to go all hysterical and going into an Al Gore automated attack mode as some may true believes do. They don't like what their hearing and things don't go there way, and faced with facts contrary to their beliefs and all they have been conditioned to accept and it hurts. So, they attack and insult even people who called them a friend.
Some of the **** he was saying was absurd. I work with climate researchers, some of whom are IPCC contributors, one was a lead authors, and three are considered some of the very best in there field. And the guy I'm working with tonight, is a pro-warming researcher and he read over the reports that I posted, some he disagrees with, some he and other's don't have an answer for. He concedes that he believes in his models, but accepts their flaws, and there are opposing views that nobody can explain away. And what Sky Hunter said about McIntyre, was ludicrous. And when he read Sky Hunter's post, he laughed and said, "McIntrye sure knows enough to make an A$$ out of Hansen before the whole world. Let's hear him refute that fact!" And the part were he can refute everyone one of the studies, he just shook his and rolled his eye and said, "I can't wait for his reply and for him to refute each of those studies. Then I'll take them into work and give some pointers to all of the armatures." I guess Sky Hunter was a little full of himself tonight, or he was just acting hysterical, but that was a ridiculous statement as if he mastered these professional researchers and their peer-reviewed research. I could see if these guy wrote papers without supporting data or some other silly B.S. researchers put out there, but that's not the case here, at all.
And the fact is, this thread is a report of a researchers findings, the very findings that made Hansen concede flawed data, and forced him to even change his method along with some dirty tricks. I'm reporting findings that were proven correct, along with peer-review research. It's too bad he doesn't get so worked up over the ridiculous B.S. some of these guys post in support of his warming beliefs. Such as when CuriousPete, after getting a Peterson Field Guide and did some googling, and today tried playing ornithologist with me over some unsupported global warming hysteria regarding birds. I did my best not to insult him, even after he got all cocky. And after dealing with this ****, then SkyHunter had his spell, and I was just not in the mood for it, and I got the impression he thought he was talking to one of his fans who doesn't know any better or something. But he's not dealing with an idiot here, or some fool who doesn't know the difference between the hole in their backside and a gopher hole and try to play scientist on the message board.
I'm just upset/pi$$ed off, and I'm sure GeoPeter will tell me, "Your a trained researcher, don't conduct yourself in this manner!" And he'll be right of course. I guess people just got on my last nerve and I said things I should not have, and I'll feel bad about it later.
Well, I'm home now and need to take a hot shower, and then get into bed. Take care
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