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June 15, 2006

Still More On The "Global Warming" Myth

Recently, I put up two posts on the Global Warming Myth, here and here.

Right Wing News has posted an article from the Canada Free Press that further, and profoundly so, debunks the myth that high CO2 levels caused by man are inducing dramatic changes in the earth's climates. The article in question includes input from several scientists who, unlike most of those with whom the likes of Algore consulted to make his film, "An Inconvenient Truth", are actually experts who specialize in Climate, as opposed to climate related fields.

"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.

And from another expert,

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.


Read the entire article here.

Posted by Seth at June 15, 2006 06:23 AM

Comments

The author is not even a climatologist while of course he derides scientists whom Gore listens to as they are not climatologists.

That itself makes the artilce ridiculous but
the bigger problem is none of the "scientist" quoted in that right-wing article publish their views in peer-reviewed journals.

If they are so sure why don't they do that?

Because they are wrong and they know it.
Losers.

Personal attacks on Gore is not the scientific way to refute anthropogenic climate change. If you are a real scientist you do that in peer-reviewed papers.

But where are they? Show me one.

Here's what real climate scientists say about the movie:

How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research. Discussion of recent changes in Antarctica and Greenland are expertly laid out. He also does a very good job in talking about the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane intensity. As one might expect, he uses the Katrina disaster to underscore the point that climate change may have serious impacts on society, but he doesn't highlight the connection any more than is appropriate.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/

BTW Gore proves in the movie that among the scientist who do publish in peer-reviewed journals the bebate is indeed over about whether anthropogenic climate change is taking place. Go ahead and refute that if you can.

Posted by: gringo at June 15, 2006 08:05 AM

Drill --

Thank you for your comment.

It's funny that you should link to realclimate.org. Sometime last year at another blog, I was involved in a debate on this very subject and one of the "opposing" force, an extreme left winger who frequently comments at conservative blogs (his main contribution, as is usually the case with the Angry Left, is hostility -- other than that, his input is the usual bumper sticker stuff) referred us to realclimate.org.

It is apparently the man's climate bible, the last word on the subject and his only reference thereupon. He claimed the site was totally apolitical and that whatever one read there was "gospel".

When I and others went to have a look, we all realized very quickly that the site was pretty much hyping the liberal POV, and that in itself rendered them less credible >>> apolitical, indeed! realclimate.org is the last "scientific" website I would go to for a purely scientific, non-political discourse on anything.

This planet's been around a long time, and throughout its history there have been warming and cooling cycles, many more extreme than today's, but the planet is still alive and kicking. Warming and cooling cycles are related to solar activity, not to anything we humans are capable of doing. This earth is nowhere near as fragile as many would have us believe.

In the Conclusion of Ann Coulter's book, "Slander", she writes:

"It is not an accident that, today, the left's single biggest cause is 'global warming.' This time, conservatives won't be able to prove them wrong for a thousand years."

Posted by: Seth at June 15, 2006 09:11 AM

Unfortunately, the scientists quoted in that article -- an article published by web site that is not a credible news source -- have no credibility.

Posted by: thickslab at June 15, 2006 12:40 PM

That's just your word SLAB. Your source is just another blog. It shows no lack of credibility.

SOrry that just doesn't fly.

Neither do any global Vorming "facts". It's all theory and theory can be and is often wrong.

Posted by: Raven at June 15, 2006 02:04 PM

Raven --

And, we haven't seen any proof that CO2 created by human venues is the cause of anything, though CO2 is what all those plants and trees on this green earth "breathe" to survive and it makes a fair fire extinguishing agent.

All we have is innuendo and chicken-littleism from the left, who need to take every opportunity, whenever it presents itself, to blame mankind for "destroying" the earth. These are, remember, folks who value trees, "endangered" insects and spotted owls over human life.

Slab -- the site you link exudes political partisanism so thick you could, at the risk of being cliche, cut it with a knife.

It is rather difficult to take your comment all that seriously when you use as a reference a liberal run website, just as much as any liberal would take me seriously if I linked to Rush Limbaugh's or the Fox News website to prove a political debating point.

Got anything a little less politically motivated, or is that it?

In all the material I've read re the "global warming" kerfuffle at "pro" sites, other than unconvincing "theories", I have yet to see anything even resembling incontrovertible evidence that man is responsible for global climate change.

I refer you to the closing paragraph in my reply to Drill's comment.

Oh, and Drill --

I hate to break it to you, but I have a few friends who are scientists, very dedicated to their fields, who have been so for decades and never written anything in peer publications.

Posted by: Seth at June 15, 2006 05:49 PM

Sure. How many of the quoted "climate experts" dare to publish their contratian views in peer-reviewed journals?
0. Show me one paper that any of these so-called skeptics wrote and had become accepted science?
But what happens when you take a look at the peer-reviewed papers?

This:

The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

And what happens if you ask climate scientists who are not getting money from the fossil-fuel industry?

This:

Al Gore’s movie
by Eric Steig

"How well does the film handle the science? Admirably, I thought. It is remarkably up to date, with reference to some of the very latest research. Discussion of recent changes in Antarctica and Greenland are expertly laid out. He also does a very good job in talking about the relationship between sea surface temperature and hurricane intensity. As one might expect, he uses the Katrina disaster to underscore the point that climate change may have serious impacts on society, but he doesn't highlight the connection any more than is appropriate."

Eric Steig is an isotope geochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. His primary research interest is use of ice core records to document climate variability in the past. He also works on the geological history of ice sheets, on ice sheet dynamics, on statistical climate analysis, and on atmospheric chemistry.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/

In other words those few guys who are quoted in this dishonest article are losers and they just can't take it.

Everything that Gore says about anthroponegic climate change in the movie can be backed up by peer-reviewed research.

Like his claim that IF the Greenland ice sheet melted or broke and slipped into the sea sea levels would rise by 20 feet.

Polar melting may raise sea level sooner than expected

The red and pink areas in this image of the coasts of the states of Massachusetts and Rhode Island indicate the areas that would be submerged if the sea level rose about 20 feet (six meters). Courtesy of Jeremy Weiss and Jonathan Overpeck, The University of Arizona.

If the current warming trends continue, by 2100 the Earth will likely be at least 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than present, with the Arctic at least as warm as it was nearly 130,000 years ago. At that time, significant portions of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets melted, resulting in a sea level about 20 feet (six meters) higher than present day.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoa-pmm031506.php

Here's the paper:

Paleoclimatic Evidence for Future Ice-Sheet Instability and Rapid Sea-Level Rise
Jonathan T. Overpeck,1* Bette L. Otto-Bliesner,2 Gifford H. Miller,3 Daniel R. Muhs,4 Richard B. Alley,5 Jeffrey T. Kiehl2

Sea-level rise from melting of polar ice sheets is one of the largest potential threats of future climate change. Polar warming by the year 2100 may reach levels similar to those of 130,000 to 127,000 years ago that were associated with sea levels several meters above modern levels; both the Greenland Ice Sheet and portions of the Antarctic Ice Sheet may be vulnerable. The record of past ice-sheet melting indicates that the rate of future melting and related sea-level rise could be faster than widely thought.

Science 24 March 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5768, pp. 1747 - 1750
DOI: 10.1126/science.1115159

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/311/5768/1747?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=sea+level&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=10&resourcetype=HWCIT

But these industry funded shills are too coward to "refute" anthroponegic climate change in peer-reviewed journals.
Yes despite the lie in the article Bob Carter is one of those shills:
The Lavoisier Group distributes the work of geologist Bob Carter, Ian Castles, William Kininmonth, Ian Plimer and a few other Australian sceptics. http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=287

Hugh Morgan convenes the Lavoisier Group – described by critics as ‘Australia’s funniest corporate front group’. Set up to challenge what it calls ‘environmental extremists’, the group declares: ‘With the Kyoto Protocol we face the most serious challenge to our sovereignty since the Japanese Fleet entered the Coral Sea on 3 May, 1942.’ It gets better. Morgan views discussion papers from the Australian Government’s Greenhouse Office as Nazi propaganda, labelling them ‘ Mein Kampf declarations’. Like several others in the Lavoisier Group, Morgan is connected with the mining transnational WMC – he only resigned as its Chief Executive in January. In recent years WMC’s greenhouse-gas emissions are reported to have risen sharply, from 1.62 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 1994-95 to 2.99 million tonnes in 2001.
http://www.newint.org/issue357/toxic.htm

Bob Carter
Professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University
former Director, Australian Secretariat for the Ocean Drilling Program Contributing Writer, Tech Central Station)

http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/personfactsheet.php?id=1134

Tech Central Station is primarily funded by sponsors that include AT&T, The Coca-Cola Company, ExxonMobil, General Motors Corporation, McDonalds, Merck, Microsoft, Nasdaq, and PhRMA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tech_Central_Station

This tells it all about the scientific intergrity -- or lack thereof -- of these nuts:

Someone like Bill Gray seems to be a fully credentialed authority figure. But when you press him on his theory of how thermohaline circulation has caused recent warming of the planet and will soon cause cooling, he concedes that he hasn't published the idea in any peer-reviewed journal. He's working on it, he says.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301305_pf.html

Huh? Gray has denied anthroponegic climate change for years but somehow he couldn't find a way top write a paper about it. (Not to mention that his 2005 hurricane season prediction was the mother of all understatements. Probably he forgot to calculate global warming into the picture.)


Here's what you should do. Call the National Academy of Science and ask them: is anthropogenic climate change happening because of man-made GHG emission? And ask them whether it's a good thing.
You will not like the answer.

Highlights of National Academies Reports:
Understanding and Responding to Climate Change

A GROWING BODY OF EVIDENCE
indicates that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming. Records show that surface temperatures have risen
about 1.4oF (0.7oC) since the early twentieth century, and that about 0.9oF (0.5oC) of this increase has occurred since 1978. Observed changes in oceans, ecosystems, and ice cover are consistent with this warming trend.
The fact is that Earth’s climate is always changing. A key question is how much of the observed warming is due to human activities and how much is due to natural variability in the climate.
In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth’s warming in recent decades has been caused
primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
(see Figure 1). Greenhouse gases have increased significantly since the Industrial Revolution,
mostly from the burning of fossil fuels for energy, industrial processes, and transportation.
Greenhouse gases are at their highest levels in at least 400,000 years and continue to rise.

Global warming could bring good news for some parts of the world, such as longer growing
seasons and milder winters. Unfortunately, it could bring bad news for a much higher percentage of the world’s people. Those in coastal communities, many in developing nations, will likely experience increased flooding due to sea-level rise and more severe storms and surges. In the Arctic regions, where temperatures have increased almost twice as much as the global average, the landscape and ecosystems are rapidly changing.

http://dels.nas.edu/basc/Climate-HIGH.pdf

If you are too lazy to read scientific papers watch this video where Peter Cox, a truly leading climate expert at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, explains why the speed and scale of warming over the last 120 years cannot be explained by natural variations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD1dnP_k8Yc&search=DAvid%20Attenborough

And you look really dumb when even Bush's own environmental advisor agrees with Gore:

Bush aide touts administration's policies, plugs Gore film

Connaughton also surprised some by praising Gore’s new film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” as well as the recent Advertising Council campaign sponsored by Environmental Defense and the Robertson Foundation. In both cases, Connaughton said the messages presented on both campaigns’ Web sites mirror the Bush administration’s themes of better consumer practices and development of new technologies.

“I encourage you to go to them,” Connaughton said. “They’re giving the same advice I’ve been giving for years.”

http://www.eenews.net/eenewspm/2006/05/22/archive/1/?terms=Connaughton

By the way who are those "hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts"? Where are the names and their papers? Could you show me the full list?

These idiots know they are in the minority and they have the arrogance to call themselves "leading climate scientists" and
ridicule the thousands of climate scientists who disagree with their views. The entire IPCC is wrong but Bob Carter -- who is not even a climatologist but a geologist -- is right? You bet.
And they call Gore an "embarrassment to US science" when they choose to argue in right-wing media outlets instead of peer-reviewed journals?

Only a fool takes these jerks seriously. They will deny anthroponegic climate change until the hell freezes over no matter what the facts are.

Posted by: gringo at June 15, 2006 11:11 PM

"I hate to break it to you, but I have a few friends who are scientists, very dedicated to their fields, who have been so for decades and never written anything in peer publications."

Dedication is not enough in scientific debate.
That takes place in peer-reviewed journals like it or not. Get over it.

As for realclimate, prove that the scientist there are liberals or have anything to do with liberals.
Accusation alone is not enough.
I could tell tha you are a killer that would not make it so.

Posted by: gringo at June 15, 2006 11:15 PM

Just another blog?

And what is Canadian Free Press?

Just another right-wing website. No credibility whatsoever. Why don't you get your climate science from Rush Limbaugh?

Posted by: gringo at June 15, 2006 11:17 PM

Gringo --

Greenwire?

The Washington Post?

Eurekalert?

More realclimate?

Why not just one general link to Daily Kos?

Posted by: Seth at June 16, 2006 06:51 AM

Yes , but Dr Bob Carter really is a well known oil industry stooge: :::[Global warming denial funded by ExxonMobil]. So how can you believe him?

Posted by: JohnP at June 16, 2006 09:03 PM

Welcome, John P --

I am really enjoying this, as it serves mostly to confirm my theories on the liberal end of a debate.

In the comment immediately preceeding yours, I gave four excellent examples of why I am unable to embrace as serious Gringo's references -- they are all liberal venues, and I have yet to see any liberal "data" or opinion venue, no matter its sources of information, dedicate itself to any belief that the global warming myth is anything but an in-your-face guarantee of imminent global destruction because of things perpetrated by man. And your blog is The Green House.

Then you link, in a comment, to a website whose very name is Global Warming! That's great!

How about if you do some research? Hit the Google and get into some vulcanism {not Spock, but the geological field, though I certainly hope you and I both live long & prosper} and maybe while you're there, find out how much stuff and what kind of stuff comes out of an erupting volcano. Then get a ballpark figure on how many volcanoes have erupted over the millenia that we know of.

Ever been in a tropical swamp or the Louisiana bayous during midsummer? How much and how many gases are created by "Mother Nature" in those totally natural enclaves?

Should we get into gases emitted worldwide by a wide spectrum of maneurs? If I miss my guess, these fecal materials come from animals. Animals are a purely natural phenomenon dating back to long before Noah. Noah was the guy who built the world's oldest and most famous ocean liner, during a short time when ocean was pretty much all they had to work with.

Back on topic, look, guy -- even though we haven't yet encountered the threat of interplanetary war {except in Hollywood}, I'm not only a patriotic American, but a patriotic Earthling as well. I have complete confidence in my planet. It is a serious business "heavenly body" that's been around for millions of years and survived every challenge, from molten liquid to ice ages.

Other than by employing thousands of our most powerful nuclear weapons simultaneously, I sincerely doubt that we could inflict even a bruise on this planet, or its climate.

Earth is not the "fragile little thing" liberals want us to believe it is.

I may post about liberals' mares-eat-oats-&-does-eat-oats fantasies about such entities as human nature, the "environment" and calculated alarmism in the next day or two.

Later, JohnP.

Posted by: Seth at June 17, 2006 01:54 AM

Well where else would you go to get info on global warming than a site called Global Warming Watch? You don't go to an art gallery to get a book, do you?

By vulcanism I believe you mean volcanism, and yes there is plenty of co2 emitted by nature, I am glad you realise that, but the problem is the additional bit spewed out by mankind over the last 100 years that has thrown the carbon cycle out of kilter, heating up the atmosphere and causing trigger events, like the thawing of the permafrost to release all the carbon it has been storing for the last 10,000 years as c02, causing a positive feedback loop that reinforces further global warming. That's when the climate starts to change. There is a post about this on ">Global Warming Watch, and you may not agree that it is reporting true science, but I think you should at least find out what you are talking about before you mouth off.

Posted by: JohnP at June 17, 2006 02:55 AM

Sorry about that bad linking

Posted by: JohnP at June 17, 2006 02:57 AM

Before I "mouth off" (kind of hard to do on a keyboard), I generally do look into something, John P.

Going to a site called Global Warming to learn about global warming. In the now defunct Soviet Union, when people wanted "the truth" they went to a magazine called Truth. In Russian: Pravda. Most of us who were around back in the day know what a propaganda machine Pravda was then. We have a similar publication here in the U.S. called the New York Times, which is a liberal propaganda venue.

Per one of the links one of yours leads to:

CO2 credits? LOL! That sounds so liberal! Have some liberals store CO2 in a tree in your name?

As a matter of interest, I have 8 big trees on my property and 6 Japanese maples, not to mention lots and lots of stuff like rose bushes, shrubs and myriad flowering plants. Why would I need a liberal to store CO2 for me in a tree someplace? {LMFAO!!!!} That is ridiculous {snicker, snicker}, and would be so even for an apartment dweller in midtown Manhattan. LOL!

That's what happens when one follows liberal links: One runs into "looney links".

To reiterate:

Well where else would you go to get info on global warming than a site called Global Warming Watch? You don't go to an art gallery to get a book, do you?

Anyone could start a website and call it whatever they want, that doesn't mean its content is going to be any more accurate on the subject than their own beliefs or theories are. This tactic of saying, "Yes, you are correct, nature does spew more CO2 in the air than we ever could, but it's that tiny extra amount we put in that really tips the balance" is typical feeble, semi-capitulatory liberal logic. Agree with the unbeliever just enough to convince him that you've taken his POV into account, then factor in the liberal agenda. {chuckle, let a liberal store some CO2 in a tree in my name, heh heh...}

Liberals are desperate for some reason to make the human race out to be as common as all animals, nothing better, an upstart animal that's an enemy of nature, conspiring to destroy her at every turn. These same liberals avail themselves daily of the very biproducts of civilization that they claim are "killing the planet", despite all their whining. If they really feel so strongly about it, let them set a good example, leave the rest of us alone, give away everything they own and move to the nearest forest equipped only with a knife and a loin cloth. When enough liberals do that, maybe I'll take 'em seriously re their concern for the environment.

BTW: Back in the distant past when I still thought I wanted to become a geologist, the various text books and other materials I read spelled the word, vulcanism.


Posted by: Seth at June 17, 2006 09:47 AM

Gringo's assertion that the only credible scientists are the ones who write artcles for peer journals and periodicals really slays me. Does he really believe that an opposing or dissenting theory or research would stand a chance of being published, much less accepted for publication? I'd liken it to my writing a strongly conservative article for publication on dailykos.

Has Any of those scientists that work in climate related fields ever taken notice that we have more vegetation (specifically trees) on the earth than ever before? If I'm not mistaken that means that more CO2 is consumed than in the past. In other words, the trees are helping to keep the balance. That's just a layman's view of material read.

I look at "science" with a very skeptical eye. It seems to me that each "scientist" tries to out do previous theories with complexity - the more complexity that can be incorporated the more credence they think they command.

Posted by: Old Soldier at June 18, 2006 04:49 PM

LOL!

Old Soldier, that's probably an on-point analysis of the scientific community. I had a friend, many years ago in L.A., who was a marine biologist, a very astute one who managed to get by outside Gringo's world by never "contributing" the research results of his personal projects. One reason for that was that he had no interest at all in becoming embroiled in what he called "Science Politics". He used to employ plain language when talking about things of interest he encountered in his field, and he enjoyed making fun of pontificative colleagues.

As you infer, politics and science go hand-in-hand and to the left -- academics are probably in the eighties percentile of being liberals, and academics publish science journals. Hmmm. It's not hard to connect the above with larger numbers of science journals coming down on the left side of the equation, and being "scientists", the beauracrats in question can give all sorts of convoluted reasons why dissenters' articles were rejected and encounter no debate from "the layman", such as judges, jurors and so forth, who they have no difficulty baffling with Bravo Sierra.

The world of science must be a real quagmire.

Posted by: Seth at June 18, 2006 10:52 PM