The following is a well written summary of the current status of the understanding of what I call the "myth" of man-caused global warming. It is particularly gratifying because it is written by a politician, a group of people we often assume to be the last to understand anything. GP
Time for Some Climate Realism
By Rep. Carl Gatto, Alaska
We try to stay informed, read the newspapers, watch the news on TV, and still we missed a major event that affects our future and our pocketbooks. 700 scientists, economists, and public policy experts from 20 countries met in New York City in early March of this year. They concluded that global warming, if it is ocurring at all, is probably natural rather than man-made.
The message from 700 of our best and brightest scientists who studied this issue, based on science and observation, was very different from Al Gore’s message and President Obama’s message. Gore claims that there is a crisis in our atmosphere, that a calamity is occurring, and in ten years the atmosphere may suffer irreversible harm. Gore and Obama offer their solution: cap the production of energy from fossil fuels, tax carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, create a “cap and tax” bureaucracy, make most forms of energy very expensive, and transfer our personal wealth to government wealth all to perform an absolutely worthless and unnecessary task.
The Gore-Obama plan is to collect CO2 from the atmosphere and store it underground forever, spending trillions of dollars doing it. In return, we get nothing, unless you count the $645 billion in additional taxes, something that all Americans will pay every time they buy a product or fill up the tank of their car or truck.
Global warming alarmists want us to believe that the temperature of Earth would stay the same year after year, century after century, if not for “the human presence.” This is scientifically false. Huge climate changes have occurred before humans could possibly have played a role. More recently, global temperatures rose from 1900 to 1940 (1934 was the century’s warmest year), fell from 1940 to 1975, rose again from 1975 to 1998, and declined from 1998 to 2008. How does “the human presence” account for this variation? It can’t.
Most people have noticed the recent cooling that is taking place: extended cold snaps, snow accumulations, snow falling in southern states where “it does not belong” and staying around way too long. Satellite data confirms that the Earth has been cooling since at least 2001, and probably earlier.
Al Gore says “soaring global temperatures will bring human civilization to a screeching halt.” “Global warmers” also predict no more agriculture in California, and in ten years the oceans will be toxic and all life could die. And yet, we’re halfway to the much-feared “doubling of CO2” in the atmosphere, and none of these disasters has even begun to appear.
Global warming’s true believers say trains carrying coal and other fuel to cities are really death trains carrying poisonous fuel to “coal-fired factories of death.” Whew, Hollywood horror films could not top this stuff. But there is more: hurricanes, melting polar ice caps, polar bear extinctions, dust bowls, and anything else about the weather than you can imagine.
Let’s look at the facts. Nearly 85% of US energy consumption is carbon-based, and reducing that figure by using wind, solar, and other renewable sources will take a long time, be very expensive, and may not even be technically possible.
Scientists (and farmers) know carbon dioxide is not a “pollutant.” The vast majority of it is produced from natural sources, not human activities, and plants and forests use CO2 to grow and produce oxygen for all living things. Ordinary air contains roughly 78.08% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, and a paltry 0.038% carbon dioxide. Scientists - including several who presented at the New York conference - are quite unsure that a tiny increase in that tiny amount of CO2 is having any effect on climate. Many scientists believe negative feedbacks more than offset whatever warming the CO2 might be capable of causing.
Our whole solar system is showing signs of climate change, including Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and even lonely Pluto. There aren’t any SUVs on those planets. What all the planets have in common, though, is that they receive heat from the sun and they are affected by cosmic rays and other galaxy-wide processes. Nothing we do can compare to changes in sun spot activity and brightness when it comes to changing our climate.
Our climate appears to be once again reversing course and cooling, repeating a cycle that has repeated itself thousands of times in the past. Glaciers advance when the Earth cools, then make up for all that work by retreating when the Earth re-warms. Human activities may have a little impact, but is it good or bad? Worth preventing? No one knows.
So for the time being, let’s accept that the Earth’s climate has been wide-ranging for five billion years. That’s our planet’s history, and we are here in spite of (or maybe because of) all those changes. Thank God for that. Read more here.
-->
Showing posts with label climate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Friday, April 13, 2007
The French Climate Skeptic
Because global warming is.....well a global issue, it is interesting to read what scientists from countries other than America have to say. I've pulled some interesting statements by Marcel Leroux, a prominent French Professor of Climatology. He has been following and criticizing the IPCC for over twenty years. To see the entire article or click on this link: http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=091106F
It literally stuns me to realize how far out of hand this whole global warming/climate change issue has gotten. The people of the world are being so greatly misled I can barely comprehend it. There could not be greater disparity between what the world's top climate scientists, (not the climate modelers) and what the public is hearing from the media and politicians. Professor Leroux has more than a few ideas, based on data, facts and experience. I think he should be taken very seriously.
Peter
One of the most prominent French climate skeptics, Marcel Leroux, has recently published a magnum opus (more than 500 pages) on the subject: Global Warming: Myth or Reality? The Erring Ways of Climatology. The author is no stranger in climate Jerusalem. He is professor of climatology at the University J. Moulin and director of the Laboratoire de Climatologie, Risques, Environnement, both in Lyon. He has already been criticizing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for some 20 years.
"Hardly a week goes by without some new 'scoop' ... filling our screens and the pages of our newspapers," he writes. "'Global warming' caused by the 'greenhouse effect' is our fault, just like everything else, and the message/slogan/ misinformation becomes even more simplistic, ever cruder! It could not be simpler: if the rain falls or draught strikes; if the wind blows a gale or there is none at all; whether it's heat or hard frost; it's all because of the 'greenhouse effect', and we are to blame. An easy argument, but stupid!"
"The Fourth Report of the IPCC might just as well decree the suppression of all climatology textbooks, and replace them in our schools with press communiqués. ... Day after day, the same mantra -- that 'the Earth is warming up' -- is churned out in all its forms. As 'the ice melts' and 'sea level rises' the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized' lulled into mindless acceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!"
In his book he also meticulously analyzes the development of climate science, focusing on the successive reports of the IPCC, which appeared in 1990, 1995, and 2001. According to Leroux, the first report already contains the core ideas of what is known as "global warming", but its tone is moderate and it makes no mention of human responsibility for it. The second report contributes nothing new from a scientific point of view, but suddenly and surprisingly, the human race is held responsible for global warming.
How was this turnaround achieved? New scientific insights? No, it was the result of a veritable scientific coup by sleight of hand.
The third report brought a second scientific coup. It increased the value of the predicted rise in temperature, and clinched the argument with the hockey stick diagram -- more recently exposed as a hoax -- stating that temperatures in recent times are higher than they have been for a thousand years. Moreover, the spectrum of the consequences of the greenhouse effect was considerably broadened, to the extent that it included every meteorological phenomenon.
Leroux also draws attention to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which article 6 on education and training, obliges participants to sensitize the public, at a national level, to climate change and its effects. States signatories to the Convention are thus bound to adopt the concept of "global warming" at the highest institutional level, to impose it as an incontrovertible dogma (i.e., a sort of state religion impervious to debate).
All in all, Leroux believes that climatology has gradually become distanced from the treatment of real facts, the dynamics of weather and climate, especially under the growing influence of modeling.
It literally stuns me to realize how far out of hand this whole global warming/climate change issue has gotten. The people of the world are being so greatly misled I can barely comprehend it. There could not be greater disparity between what the world's top climate scientists, (not the climate modelers) and what the public is hearing from the media and politicians. Professor Leroux has more than a few ideas, based on data, facts and experience. I think he should be taken very seriously.
Peter
One of the most prominent French climate skeptics, Marcel Leroux, has recently published a magnum opus (more than 500 pages) on the subject: Global Warming: Myth or Reality? The Erring Ways of Climatology. The author is no stranger in climate Jerusalem. He is professor of climatology at the University J. Moulin and director of the Laboratoire de Climatologie, Risques, Environnement, both in Lyon. He has already been criticizing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for some 20 years.
"Hardly a week goes by without some new 'scoop' ... filling our screens and the pages of our newspapers," he writes. "'Global warming' caused by the 'greenhouse effect' is our fault, just like everything else, and the message/slogan/ misinformation becomes even more simplistic, ever cruder! It could not be simpler: if the rain falls or draught strikes; if the wind blows a gale or there is none at all; whether it's heat or hard frost; it's all because of the 'greenhouse effect', and we are to blame. An easy argument, but stupid!"
"The Fourth Report of the IPCC might just as well decree the suppression of all climatology textbooks, and replace them in our schools with press communiqués. ... Day after day, the same mantra -- that 'the Earth is warming up' -- is churned out in all its forms. As 'the ice melts' and 'sea level rises' the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized' lulled into mindless acceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!"
In his book he also meticulously analyzes the development of climate science, focusing on the successive reports of the IPCC, which appeared in 1990, 1995, and 2001. According to Leroux, the first report already contains the core ideas of what is known as "global warming", but its tone is moderate and it makes no mention of human responsibility for it. The second report contributes nothing new from a scientific point of view, but suddenly and surprisingly, the human race is held responsible for global warming.
How was this turnaround achieved? New scientific insights? No, it was the result of a veritable scientific coup by sleight of hand.
The third report brought a second scientific coup. It increased the value of the predicted rise in temperature, and clinched the argument with the hockey stick diagram -- more recently exposed as a hoax -- stating that temperatures in recent times are higher than they have been for a thousand years. Moreover, the spectrum of the consequences of the greenhouse effect was considerably broadened, to the extent that it included every meteorological phenomenon.
Leroux also draws attention to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, of which article 6 on education and training, obliges participants to sensitize the public, at a national level, to climate change and its effects. States signatories to the Convention are thus bound to adopt the concept of "global warming" at the highest institutional level, to impose it as an incontrovertible dogma (i.e., a sort of state religion impervious to debate).
All in all, Leroux believes that climatology has gradually become distanced from the treatment of real facts, the dynamics of weather and climate, especially under the growing influence of modeling.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Important New Website on Climate
Yesterday I discovered a great new website. They have an impressive list of contributing and supporting scientists. They address the issues of global warming from all angles, and as they say, "this is not about politics, but about science." From what I have seen so far, it's very good. Here is what they say on their homepage. http://icecap.us/index.php/go/about-us
Peter
About Us
ICECAP, International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, is the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public. It provides access to a new and growing global society of respected scientists and journalists that are not deniers that our climate is dynamic (the only constant in nature is change) and that man plays a role in climate change through urbanization, land use changes and the introduction of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but who also believe that natural cycles such as those in the sun and oceans are also important contributors to the global changes in our climate and weather. We worry the sole focus on greenhouse gases and the unwise reliance on imperfect climate models while ignoring real data may leave civilization unprepared for a sudden climate shift that history tells us will occur again, very possibly soon.
Through ICECAP you will have rapid access to our experts here in the United States and to experts and partner organizations worldwide, many of whom maintain popular web sites or insightful blogs or newsletters, write and present papers, have authored books and offer interviews to the media on climate issues. We spotlight new findings in papers and reports and rapidly respond to fallacies or exaggerations in papers, stories or programs and any misinformation efforts by the media, politicians and advocacy groups.
Included is a section called All About Climate where users are able to interactively access all the latest thinking on climate topics along with lists of references, stories, links and experts (with contact information).
ICECAP is not funded by large corporations that might benefit from the status quo but by private investors who believe in the need for free exchange of ideas on this and other important issues of the day. Our working group is comprised of members from all ends of the political spectrum. This is not about politics but about science.
We are an open society that welcomes your membership and appreciates your endorsement and support.
-->
Peter
About Us
ICECAP, International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, is the portal to all things climate for elected officials and staffers, journalists, scientists, educators and the public. It provides access to a new and growing global society of respected scientists and journalists that are not deniers that our climate is dynamic (the only constant in nature is change) and that man plays a role in climate change through urbanization, land use changes and the introduction of greenhouse gases and aerosols, but who also believe that natural cycles such as those in the sun and oceans are also important contributors to the global changes in our climate and weather. We worry the sole focus on greenhouse gases and the unwise reliance on imperfect climate models while ignoring real data may leave civilization unprepared for a sudden climate shift that history tells us will occur again, very possibly soon.
Through ICECAP you will have rapid access to our experts here in the United States and to experts and partner organizations worldwide, many of whom maintain popular web sites or insightful blogs or newsletters, write and present papers, have authored books and offer interviews to the media on climate issues. We spotlight new findings in papers and reports and rapidly respond to fallacies or exaggerations in papers, stories or programs and any misinformation efforts by the media, politicians and advocacy groups.
Included is a section called All About Climate where users are able to interactively access all the latest thinking on climate topics along with lists of references, stories, links and experts (with contact information).
ICECAP is not funded by large corporations that might benefit from the status quo but by private investors who believe in the need for free exchange of ideas on this and other important issues of the day. Our working group is comprised of members from all ends of the political spectrum. This is not about politics but about science.
We are an open society that welcomes your membership and appreciates your endorsement and support.
-->
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
More from Dr. Reid A. Bryson on Global Warming
Here is another wonderful link to use as ammunition against the Al Gore the Prophet fan club....
Peter
http://whyfiles.org/247sci_politics/index.php?g=4.txt
Why Files talks with Reid Bryson. Reid Bryson helped found the field of climatology with pioneering studies documenting how climate changed over the centuries. He was long associated with the idea that, based on climatic history, another ice age was coming, and he has long questioned the conventional wisdom about global warming: that the globe is warming due to human activity.
Bryson founded what is now the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1977, he co-authored a pioneering book on the two-way interaction between humans and weather (see "Climates of Hunger ..." in the bibliography). He was long-time founding director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at UW-Madison, and remains active in climate research.
University of Wisconsin-Madison atmospheric and oceanic sciences professor Jonathan Martin helps students in a meteorology computer lab. Photo: Jeff Miller, Courtesy UW-Madison
On Oct. 17, the Why Files spoke with Bryson about global warming, politics and science.
The Why Files: In your opinion, is global warming occurring?
Reid Bryson: I'm not skeptical about global warming. It's occurring. The question is, what is the human hand in this? Back in 1968, I gave a talk at the AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science] suggesting that people could change the climate a little bit, and I was laughed off the platform. Now some of those same people say the human influence is the only thing that can change the climate. That's simply nonsense. We know that the climate has been warming at least since the early 1800s. Why was this happening before all that carbon dioxide was released during the industrial revolution? Until they answer that, they can't say why the current warming is going on. They say in the last 50 years, temperature and carbon dioxide are correlated. Okay, but how much causality does correlation show? Nothing.
WF: Back in 1968, why did you say people could affect climate?
RB: I said, "Let's look at contrails [left by jet planes]. They are making clouds, and everybody says clouds are important in weather and climate. Do they put enough clouds to make a difference?" I'm sitting in my office right now, looking south, and I can almost always see a bank of contrails from planes going west from Chicago.
Jet contrails are one of many ways that people affect climate. Photo: NOAA
WF: We have seen frightening graphs with CO2 and average temperature rising hand in hand. What do you make of that?
RB: It's all hype, those graphs that show CO2 not changing [until recently], then going up. Most of that rise is projected, not measured. How good are the models they are using? They stink. If you can't model today, you sure as hell can't model 50 years from now, and they can't model today. [Climate modelers started as meteorologists] and they tried to model climate as if it was weather. Climate is not average weather, it's a boundary condition problem. For climate, you have to know the incoming radiation, the reflected radiation from Earth's surface, how much ice is there, what is the topography, things like that. Weather evolves from one day to the next, it's an initial state problem.
WF: Many people say global warming is the worst current example of politicizing science.
RB: In my opinion, the one thing the Administration is doing right is not doing anything about global warming. Unless we know in detail the mechanics of global warming, should we risk the economy of the whole country? Suppose we want to go to nuclear power, what is the cost of that? You don't have to convince me there is a human hand in climate, I am the guy who said it first. You have to convince me you understand it well enough to know what else is going on. If you say the warming that happened before the industrial revolution is "natural variation," we are natural scientists, and that's a copout. What exactly do you mean?
Adding it up: Is science more political than ever?
Peter
http://whyfiles.org/247sci_politics/index.php?g=4.txt
Why Files talks with Reid Bryson. Reid Bryson helped found the field of climatology with pioneering studies documenting how climate changed over the centuries. He was long associated with the idea that, based on climatic history, another ice age was coming, and he has long questioned the conventional wisdom about global warming: that the globe is warming due to human activity.
Bryson founded what is now the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1977, he co-authored a pioneering book on the two-way interaction between humans and weather (see "Climates of Hunger ..." in the bibliography). He was long-time founding director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at UW-Madison, and remains active in climate research.
University of Wisconsin-Madison atmospheric and oceanic sciences professor Jonathan Martin helps students in a meteorology computer lab. Photo: Jeff Miller, Courtesy UW-Madison
On Oct. 17, the Why Files spoke with Bryson about global warming, politics and science.
The Why Files: In your opinion, is global warming occurring?
Reid Bryson: I'm not skeptical about global warming. It's occurring. The question is, what is the human hand in this? Back in 1968, I gave a talk at the AAAS [American Association for the Advancement of Science] suggesting that people could change the climate a little bit, and I was laughed off the platform. Now some of those same people say the human influence is the only thing that can change the climate. That's simply nonsense. We know that the climate has been warming at least since the early 1800s. Why was this happening before all that carbon dioxide was released during the industrial revolution? Until they answer that, they can't say why the current warming is going on. They say in the last 50 years, temperature and carbon dioxide are correlated. Okay, but how much causality does correlation show? Nothing.
WF: Back in 1968, why did you say people could affect climate?
RB: I said, "Let's look at contrails [left by jet planes]. They are making clouds, and everybody says clouds are important in weather and climate. Do they put enough clouds to make a difference?" I'm sitting in my office right now, looking south, and I can almost always see a bank of contrails from planes going west from Chicago.
Jet contrails are one of many ways that people affect climate. Photo: NOAA
WF: We have seen frightening graphs with CO2 and average temperature rising hand in hand. What do you make of that?
RB: It's all hype, those graphs that show CO2 not changing [until recently], then going up. Most of that rise is projected, not measured. How good are the models they are using? They stink. If you can't model today, you sure as hell can't model 50 years from now, and they can't model today. [Climate modelers started as meteorologists] and they tried to model climate as if it was weather. Climate is not average weather, it's a boundary condition problem. For climate, you have to know the incoming radiation, the reflected radiation from Earth's surface, how much ice is there, what is the topography, things like that. Weather evolves from one day to the next, it's an initial state problem.
WF: Many people say global warming is the worst current example of politicizing science.
RB: In my opinion, the one thing the Administration is doing right is not doing anything about global warming. Unless we know in detail the mechanics of global warming, should we risk the economy of the whole country? Suppose we want to go to nuclear power, what is the cost of that? You don't have to convince me there is a human hand in climate, I am the guy who said it first. You have to convince me you understand it well enough to know what else is going on. If you say the warming that happened before the industrial revolution is "natural variation," we are natural scientists, and that's a copout. What exactly do you mean?
Adding it up: Is science more political than ever?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)