Too often we have it slammed down our theoats that no serious scientist questions global warming. Well, here is one article online which begs to differ:
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
Guest Column
Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe
"The Inconvenient Truth" is indeed inconvenient to alarmists
By Tom Harris
Monday, June 12, 2006
"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."
But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?
No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.
Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."
This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.
So we have a smaller fraction.
But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."
We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.
Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:
Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.
Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."
Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."
But Karlén clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karlén concludes.
The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the foreseeable future.
Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."
Karlén explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karlén
Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."
Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."
Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."
Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."
In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.
Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company. He can be reached at [email protected]
Now I know some folks may well just blow this off because of the source (I don't know, but I assume that the website might be from the "loony right" since it dares to carry such a politically incorrect column), that says more about those folks than refuting the evidence.
Forscher
Global warming and scientists.
by Forscher 82 Replies latest members politics
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Forscher
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breeze
The center of the Earth is extremely hot, correct? My thinking is if anything is going on it is a cooling of the Earth rather than a warming?
The entire theory that the world was warming came from the chemical people in the late eighties, blaming the warming on the ozone layer being depleted. These same people had an agenda to outlaw current refrigerants and revise thus create for profit the entire retrofiting of the worlds refrigeration and air conditioning systems. The prime group was the Dupont company, which now has many different so-called environment friendly refrigerants on the market to line their greedy pockets.
BREEZE
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Satanus
Well, since the info is coming out of canada, you gotta take it w a little maple syrup, and some beans.
Seriously though, i think global warming is just another apocalyptic hysteria (it came out of the usa). A brief look at the carbon cycle quickly calms ones nerves.
S
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Forscher
Funny you brought un the refrigerant thing.
I remember talking with an airconditioning technician who had to go to the seminars for all those certified folks who now had to check-off on working with the new "environmentally safe " refrigerants. He said the instructor for the one he attended got up and asked the techicians how many of them agreed with the "scientific" reason that Flurocarbons were now banned. Nobody raised a hand!
The instructor told them "you are correct, the ban on Freon has nothing to do with the environment." He went on to explain that since the freon molecule was alot heavier than air, enough of it to have any effect on the ozone layer cannot reach the elevations in the atmosphere to do so. The real reason, he informed them, for the ban was that Dupont was about to lose its exclusive right to market freon because the time on the patent was running out and couldn't be renewed. So their solution to the problem was to pay some scientists to come up with a theory to ban freon with so that it couldn't be marketed in the U.S. and Europe (the overwhelmingly biggest markets for the product)anymore and thus be replaced by a new Dupont product. That way competitors would not be able to exploit Dupont's loss of the patent and take away the market.
He told them that the earliest "studies" blaming the thining of the ozone layer on flurocarbons were published by scientists connected with Dupont. I've never tried to verify that, but if they were it would certainly give credence to his story. Wouldn't it really be something if the whole global warming thing had its start with a big company trying to keep a virtual monopoly on a market.
Forscher -
breeze
It was Dupont that started the hysteria. And for profitable reasons. No one in the industry bought the idea, but nothing could be done to reverse the Dupont spin on the warming issue. When it began everyone made fun of the idea now the left wing idiots have taken it on as a major cause.
The new refrigerants bring on a host of problems with regard to service and reliability. Without the new scroll compressor, that can withstand the new greater operating pressures none of the refrigerants would have been as successful as the are. The old refrigerants have a 2020 death date I believe? Some like R-22 are already out of production.
BREEZE
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Lady Liberty
I just recently was watching a documentary on Cable and it discussed this very issue. I was shocked to learn that Scientists are not in agreement with the whole "global warming" caused by man. Rather MANY scientist are saying that this is a cycle that the earth has had before. And that we just happen to be living in THAT cycle! They also said that something like only 1% of global warming was due to polution from man. They said that 1% would not be nearly enough to cause this kind of warming. So it would appear that this has happened before, and it will coninue to happen over and over! It made me feel better!! A side point: it kind of blows global warming as one of the "signs", doesn't it??
Sincerely,
Lady Liberty
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Forscher
Yes Lady liberty.
That's the same figure I get, that man's contribution to Greenhouse gases is only 1%. One does have to wonder if that is really significant enough to matter. There is also another side to the box that one has to consider. The argument is also made that it is the accumulation of greenhouse gases during the entire industrial revolution that is responsible for global warming. Now think on that for just a moment. If that is true, then just how is a radical cutback going to reverse over a hundred years of pollution with the kind of speed we are told it will? Doesn't it stand to reason that it will take decades to reverse the effects? Yet we are told that without that reduction we will see disaster in just a few short years.
I am already on record in this forum as saying that we should take steps in the directions suggested by scientists. there are several benefits in doing so. first, we should end the dependence on foreign oil which holds us hostage to assholes like Chavez and those radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia and elswhere. Second, we can't help but benefit from a reduction in pollution. Why should we be fouling our own nest anyway?
But that reduction has to be done in a way which does not ruin our economy. The radical lefties who are demanding extreme change right now are all from the elite ranks of our society and would suffer little inconvienience from such radical changes. They dont' really give a damn about the rest of us who would be plunged into a Great Depression style nightmare if the radical changes they demand were imposed. In fact, they kind of relish the prospect because it could lead to the kind of social chaos which could bring in a Communist style government, something most of them think they want because they think they will in up holding the reigns of power.
We missed the opportunity to start those changes in the 1970s, when Brazil led the way. If we'd begun those changes back then, we would be reaping the benefits now that the Brazilians are. and the price would not have been all that bad. The opportunity is still there. And we should demand that alternative fuels be made widely available along with the vehicules capable of utilizing them. the technology is there. American car companies already manufacture cars and trucks capable of utilizing both hydrocarbon and ethanol fuels. And they make them at a cost which folks in Brazil, a country with a much lower average wage than ours, can afford. they don't even need to throw large amounts of money into developing those vehicules since they are alreay making them! all they need to do is make the fuels available.
It can be done in a sane manner. And it should. Shoot, we don't even need to go drill in ANWAR! The $64,000 is will we do it?
Forscher -
jws
He told them that the earliest "studies" blaming the thining of the ozone layer on flurocarbons were published by scientists connected with Dupont. I've never tried to verify that, but if they were it would certainly give credence to his story. Wouldn't it really be something if the whole global warming thing had its start with a big company trying to keep a virtual monopoly on a market.
Or maybe a big company like, oh say, Exxon Mobile is contributing to several of the scientists in the anti-global warming debate (or their related organizations).
http://www.environmentaldefense.org/article.cfm?contentid=3804&CFID=14547406&CFTOKEN=95443573
Why is a global climate even a political issue? Why does a conservative have to deny it to be a good conservative? Shouldn't a cleaner environment be in everyone's best interest. To deny it is to say that the levels we pollute at are just fine. And why is that? Do conservatives enjoy pollution? If their neighbor throws his trash in their yard, I'll bet they're upset. But if the trucks driving by pollute the air they breath in their house, that's OK?
Global warming could be caused by our pollution. It could be an effect of where our planet is as our solar system circles our galaxy and comes closer to other stars. It could be a natural cycle. Whatever global warming is or isn't, doesn't it help us all to cut down on pollution?
What it boils down to is the right-wing noise machine. We have oilmen in the oval office. Anything that might hurt their industry's profits is going to be targeted. If you're a conservative, and your politicians are big oil, all of the conservative media is going to be supportive of big oil and as a result against claims of global warming.
Big oil is afraid of things that might eat into their enormous (largest profits in the history of the world) profits. The claims of global warming might force big oil executives to lose some of those huge profits. Laws may force them to outlay bucks to find alternative fuel. Or maybe the auto industry will be encouraged to develop more fuel efficient cars, reducing the amount of product that big oil sells. Their execs might make a few million less of those hundreds of millions they bring home each year. Is any of this a bad thing?
Companies have histories of covering up the problems they create. Problems that cause the rest of us working-class people harm. Take global warming out of the issue. Enact legislation to encourage these companies to clean up their act. Encourage them to improve our fuel economy and find cleaner, less expensive fuels.
I doubt it would make much of a dent in the economy and hurt these companies too badly. Paying $3 / gallon for gas with vehicles that get 20 MPG or less is affecting everybody's bottom line.
If we're paying all that money at the pump so the oil companies can make record profits, shouldn't we be getting something back? Cleaner air? More fuel economy?
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AuldSoul
To clarify a common misconception, contributing to a professional trade journal does not typically financially benefit the contributor of the articles, in any way, shape, form or fashion.
Of Dr. Tim Patterson, jws link only says:
Contributing Writer and Speaker techcentralstation.com. The Tech Central Station Science Foundation received $95,000 from ExxonMobil for "Climate Change Support" in 2003.
This in no way demonstrates financial benefits paid to Dr. Patterson in exchange for the reporting of warped data. It only grossly infers that such exist without offering any credible support. I also note that they do not state what topics he spoke on for techcentralstation.com, or their source for this "fact", or whether he speaks for them as opposed to speaking at events they sponsor. There is a wide gulf of distinction between the two. I worked in a trade industry heavily involved in geological sciences (the ground water industry) and the speakers at our events were not speaking for the company that arranged the event. They were speaking in behalf of their own individual research and their own theories and ideas.
However, lest this man's character and credential be tarnished by ignorant agenda-driven bias, please meet Dr. Patterson:
Professor, Department of Earth Sciences (Paleoclimatology), Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
Web Site: http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/index_flash.html
Phone: 613-520-2600 ext. 4425
e-mail: [email protected]
Dr. Tim Patterson is Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He uses microfossils and geochemistry to study evidence of climate change in lake and oceanic sediments.
Dr. Patterson is Canadian leader of the International Geological Correlation Program Project 437 "Coastal Environmental Changes during Sea-Level Highstands in the late Quaternary" and is Principal Investigator of a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Strategic Project studying the effect of past climate change (on scales varying from seasonal to millennia) on fish populations that are important to the west coast fishing industry.
He received both a B.Sc. in Biology (1980) and a B.A. in Geology (1983) from Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S. and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1986 with Dr. Helen Tappan Loeblich and late Dr. Alfred R. Loeblich. After brief stints at the University of Southern California and University of California at Berkeley he joined Carleton University in 1988.
Other areas of research interest include the use of foraminifera to identify neotectonic and paleoceanographic phenomena on the west coast of Canada, the further development of arcellacea as a new class of paleolimnological indicators, and to determine whether the methods of non-linear dynamics are applicable in the study of evolutionary phenomena.It appears he is more than qualified to state his opinion on the matter. It also appears that his CV as related by the site jws offered is a little light...in fact, among Dr. Patterson's many accomplishments and efforts you will not find listed his extensive and no doubt labor intensive involvement efforts on behalf of techcentral.com. Being that he is employed as a Professor of Geology I wonder where he would find the time to conspire with techcentralstation.com.
Please dig below the surface anytime someone purports to present facts from a clearly agenda-driven source. That goes the same for oil company releases, or the tobacco industry, or the opponents of the tobacco industry, etc. If they have a view of reality that actually has merit, they won't have to sell it to you.
Respectfully,
AuldSoul -
AuldSoul
I thought I'd throw this in, in case anyone wondered what it was: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council