Climate Change

[NoTies]

I haven't used any media to establish my position. I have worked extensively in Antarctica supporting science and a particularly good friend of mine completed a thesis on ozone etc several years ago (she has since been hijacked by the Canadians to study in the Arctic). I was in a technical support role for her in the winter of 03 at Scott Base and am always picking her brain about the issue. Straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.
It is important to realise that climate change and ozone are seperate issues, I simply used the example that WE can make a difference if WE try. Do not wait to be handed the solution. Even if the global warming protagonists are wrong there is no reason why we shouldn't be taking steps to clean up the mess we have created since the industrial revolution.

[delmarrey]

This should resolve the Ozone argument.........
Antarctic Stratospheric Ozone & Temperature Data

[beau]

It was good to hear some sensible replies in regard to the "Global Warming" or is it now "Cimate Change".

I don't believe a word of it.
I worked for Australia's leading Scientific organisation, CSIRO some years ago. The things that i saw "scientists" do, or say, to get funding would make your head spin.

Its ALL about the money.
and the Media are all about sensationalising the situation, again for the money.

I agree with some earlier points in regard to the human race being so arrogant for one second to believe we can change the weather to begin with and then when we do change it, we can make it all right again.

Change is good, and natural change, if thats what it is is going on will happen anyway.

How do we in "the west" going to "force" the Chinese and Indians to stop development.?

[5user5]

I might be wrong but i thought we Americans were the largest producers of the gasses. Taking into consideration are population and all. So what are we going to do about us? Forget the Chinese (for the moment).

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Wahoo Sails

I was absolutely CERTAIN that we were causing all of the havoc, then read "State of Fear" by Micahael Chricton (SP) ... read this well documented work ... then let me know what ya think.
Bob

It's classified “Science-Fiction” for a (number of) reason(s):

Michael Crichton's science fiction thriller "State of Fear" is about an NGO hyping the science of the global warming to further the ends of evil eco-terrorists. The theme of the book is that global warming is a non-problem. The result is a 15-page political pamphlet, of questionable scholarly provenance, bloated into a near-600-page novel of minimal literary merit. Not nearly Crichton’s best work.

Like Crichton’s previous block-busters, “The Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park”, this book blends science and fiction, in ways intended to teach, as well as entertain readers. Which raises the question: How much of the science in State of Fear is accurate, and how much is fiction?

The novel addresses real scientific issues and controversies, but is selective, and often mistaken, about the science. Unlike most novels, “State of Fear” includes footnotes and a bibliography, giving the impression that Crichton unearthed facts buried as part of a dastardly plan by scientists or non-profit groups to suppress disagreement on global warming. Yet all the data he cites have been widely and publicly scrutinized as part of the peer-reviewed scientific assessment process involving independent academic and government experts from across the U.S. and around the world.

In a conversation about trying to educate an ignorant environmentalist about the realities of Global Warming, Dr. John Kenner (the main hero of the story) sums up the essence of Crichton's presentation of science in “State of Fear”:

"Her intentions are good, and her information is bad," Kenner said. "A prescription for disaster."

What I find truly disastrous, is the willingness of many readers to accept a sweeping dismissal, from a novelist, of eminent scientists' conclusions , derived from decades of scientific research.

We should no more take our scientific information from a popular novelist like Michael Crichton, than we should from a politician like Al Gore. Their respective fame & popularity doesn’t preclude them from being “right” (about any subject) - but neither does is suggest they are (right). Their hyped opinions are merely popular presentations, not science.

[cooper]

Sigh ...here we go again. Propersition ....That humans have changed the make up of the atmosphere to the extent that it is having an effect on the "global system"........you either believe it or not.......and to be blunt if you dont believe it, you probably dont beleive in acid rain or pea souper fogs, or any of the other "things" ........'"that must have been caused by a long term natural trend...that has happened before and will happen again....and everything will be back to normal soon" ...."after all there is no way that us peeny weeny humans could ever effect the climate and it is all scare mongering by those hugely powerfull eco terrorists greenies trying to make our lives misserable for their own evil ends"...........GIVE ME A BREAK......Over summer we had a most spectacular sight. Pyro cummulus , the clouds formed by a huge amount of heat (from in this case massive bush fires.) These clouds can then go on and cause rain. Now if thoses fires where lit by humans then you have ,on a micro level, humans causing a change in weather. The city l grew up in dosnt have frosts in the inner area anymore due to thermal mass. Why then is it so hard to believe that it is possible for the same thing to happen on a macro level ? It is arrogant to believe that humans dont effect their (and other living things) plannet.

[Boracay]

What we have is the best forecast for the weather over the next 50-100 years.

Our TV has just shown a program about how the Gulf stream that warms Europe might stop flowing.

They were worried that Europe might get a little cool.

If I were American I would be worried about what might happen if all that heat in the Gulf of Mexico was not taken away.

[never monday]

The planet is on a different calender then we humans. We must make the planet conform to our way of doing things...it's just not right.

[GordMay]

"Prediction is difficult, especially the future," said quantum physicist Niels Bohr, and no one has since captured the underlying concept quite so cleverly.

Notwithstanding - According to a 2006 survey of the world's leading technology professionals, conducted by the Institute for the Future and IEEE Spectrum magazine, here are some of the major advances we can expect to occur in the next 20 to 50 years:

* Everyday objects that can "think" for themselves;
* Miniscule-but-mighty robots tackling everything from internal medicine to outer space maintenance to house cleaning;
* Increasingly early and accurate warning of major weather events like hurricanes;
and
* Computer graphics so lifelike they are impossible to distinguish from the real thing.

Set your watch to the weather. Nearly two-thirds (60 percent) of respondents believe that the massive expansion of computer processing power will provide for more accurate models of the impact of solar weather on the Earth's climate. In fact, 40 percent of respondents say they expect terrestrial weather to be accurately forecasted to the hour. Advancements will also allow meteorologists to predict weather further in advance, providing a critical time advantage when faced with potentially devastating weather events like Hurricane Katrina.

Goto: Institute for the Future | Tech Experts Forecast the Next Wave of Innovation

[Wahoo Sails]

I believe GordMay has missed the point I was trying to make about "State of Fear" .... entirely. The book is indeed fiction, and has never been represented as anything else. However, it does provide a well documented "alternative view" on climate change. All of the information I had seen/read/heard prior to reading the book was that ALL scientists were in agreement on the issue, and that anyone that thought otherwise was a crackpot. Turns out that, that isn't true ... there is still plenty of room for disagreement, even among the most scholarly of debaters. On a different note .... what about HAARP? The U.S. government (Department of Defense) is altering the weather as we speak ... and even THEIR scientists admit that they don't know the long range effects of what they are doing .... does this scare anyone else?
Bob

[GordMay]

With apologies:

Originally Posted by Wahoo Sails

I believe GordMay has missed the point I was trying to make about "State of Fear" .... entirely. The book is indeed fiction, and has never been represented as anything else. However, it does provide a well documented "alternative view" on climate change. All of the information I had seen/read/heard prior to reading the book was that ALL scientists were in agreement on the issue, and that anyone that thought otherwise was a crackpot. Turns out that, that isn't true ... there is still plenty of room for disagreement, even among the most scholarly of debaters.? ...Bob

I think I got Bob’s point, exactly.

My point was, that Bob’s point, and Crichton’s opinions, were (in my view) fundamentally wrong.

Crichton’s alternative view is, for the most part, MIS-documented, and despite the fraudulent “look” of the book, not science. Footnotes do not a scientific treatise make.

The fact that all of Bob’s previous reading had not revealed dissenting opinion, speaks to Bob’s selection choices, more than to the ready availability of dissenting literature.

There seems to be some misconception that, in the interest of balance, all opinions should receive an equal airing, and be given equal credence. In fact, most of the scholarly investigators have agreed on some very important basic science.

Scientists know with virtual certainty:

Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.

The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.

A warming trend of about 0.7 to 1.5̊F occurred during the 20th century. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans.

The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.

Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet.

Important scientific questions remain about how much warming will occur, how fast it will occur, and how the warming will affect the rest of the climate system including precipitation patterns and storms. In other words, most of the remaining scholarly disagreement & debate revolves around the rate & degree of climate change and the severity of it’s practical effects - not the basic premise.

Of course, we don't know all the things that we don't know ...

[Benny]

Gord - thanks for reiterating and clarifying the initial premise of this thread that I started with.

It is incredible to me given all the real documented science out there that there are still those that choose to believe that man is not affecting the global climate. Gore is simply a messenger that is presenting in his way the science behind global warming - it does not minimize the real science he refers to and maybe it is better that someone use a little showmanship to get people into action to help deal with the issue. What are Americans famous for if not the entertaimant business to get a message out there. So you may not like Gore but don't use that to refute the existance of the problem or mans responsibility for it.

[rtbates]

Global warming won't be an issue as soon as the bees all disappear. Humans will be gone 4 years after the bees from starvation.

[camaraderie]

Sorry Gord but your "All the experts agree" just is not so. I offer the following as proof. I fully expect the author to be attacked rather than the assertions to be debunked but since the data is there in SCIENCE magazine AND peer reviewed...it is easier to attack the messenger. Bold type is mine.

Does Carbon Dioxide Really Affect Temperatures?

October 9, 2003
by Dennis T. Avery


The global warming theory says that an increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere will trap more of the sun’s heat and “overcook” the planet. The global climate computer models are programmed to assess how much overcooking we’ll suffer.
But, in the past, have changes in CO2 levels raised—or lowered—real-world temperatures? Recently, both the earth’s temperatures and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been rising. But the temperature increase could be just the earth’s recovery from the Little Ice Age, which lasted until about 1850. (Most of the recent warming occurred between 1880 and 1940)
The fact that humanity’s industrial CO2 emissions are rising strongly during the recovery from the Little Ice Age could be just happenstance. Linking cause (a CO2 increase) with effect (higher temperatures) calls for more than a coincidence of timing.
The world has had lots of warmings and coolings through its history, including massive Ice Ages. What can science tell us about the relationship of CO2 and temperature?
A team of ice-core researchers, led by Hubertus Fischer of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, analyzed an Antarctic ice core that gives real-world records of atmospheric CO2 and air temperatures back to 240,000 years ago. The ice core record includes three massive Ice Ages, and the warming periods that followed them.
When the Ice Ages ended, the Scripps researchers found that air temperatures warmed long before there was any increase in atmospheric CO2. In fact, they said, the increases in CO2 lagged the warming by 400 to 1,000 years! That’s just the opposite of the greenhouse theory that CO2 increases lead to warming. (The Fischer team’s analysis was published in the March 12, 1999 issue of Science.)
Eric Steig of the Earth and Environmental Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania argues that CO2 rises during cold periods because they are drier. (Less moisture is evaporated into the air from the oceans, and thus there is less moisture to fall as rain or snow). The drier climate supports less plant life, and carbon is eventually released into the atmosphere from dying trees and then from the soil itself.
In addition, the Fischer team found a 15,000 year period following the second Ice Age when the air’s CO2 content stayed constant while the air temperatures dropped back to near-glacial levels. That doesn’t follow the greenhouse theory either.
Recently, another Scripps team, led by French expert Dr. Nicholas Caillon, also tested Antarctic ice cores, but used a more-accurate argon proxy to measure the CO2 lag more precisely. The Caillon team says their work confirms the Fischer findings (that CO2 increases lagged behind the Antarctic warming) but say argon gives them a more precise estimate of the lag—800 to 200 years.
“This confirms that CO2 is not the forcing that initially drives the climatic system during a deglaciation,” they wrote in Science, March 14, 2003
So real-world Antarctic history shows several cases of CO2 lagging behind, not leading, when the earth warms. It shows another case of CO2 holding constant when the earth is getting cooler. These events do not conform to the greenhouse theory.
The greenhouse theory and all that expensive computer modeling depend on a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature. If CO2 lags warming, or is independent of it, then the computer models are useless.
There is no question that the earth is getting warmer, but a recent study of iceberg debris on the floor of the North Atlantic shows this happens naturally every 1500 years or so, in a cycle that coincides with a known cycle in the magnetic activity of the sun. (That study was led by Dr. Gerard Bond, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, NY, and published in Science on Nov. 16, 2001.)
If the warming is natural, we won’t be able to stop it no matter how heavily we tax energy, nor how many lives we sacrifice to (1) heat stroke (no summer air conditioning), (2) cold stress due to the high cost of furnace fuel, and (3) food shortages (restricting natural gas for fertilizer production). Nor how many lives we sacrifice to continuing poverty in a Third World that won’t be able to afford any energy except wood from its shrinking forests. The economic shocks of the Kyoto Protocol would be felt most severely by the very young, the very old, the very poor—and the forest wildlife.
Do we owe them something more than a titillating theory that isn’t borne out by the real history of the real world?



Hudson Institute > Publication Details

[Benny]

The crux of the question is this - Are YOU willing to stop polluting our planet - yes or no. Natural long cycles have little to do with recent temperature increases due to the junk we put into the atmosphere that traps heat and rays and is causing a climatic warming phenomenom not heretofor seen in historical data. This is what we are trying to deal with - stopping pollution that is fueling that phenomenom and may cause drastic changes to our world - some are already occuring and they are NOT a natural consequence of a long term trend. Time to wake up and decide if you want to do something about the problem.