Thursday, June 15, 2006

Scientists respond to Gore-bal warming

From Slashdot. There are a few other links to threads regarding this topic in there.

Slash-Dot Post

The Article

11 comments:

Unknown said...

"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."

That is a good quote

Anonymous said...

And you read an article published by a right-wing website and you believe it's the Gospel.
How lame is that? Can't you think for yourself or what?

The article was not written by Canada but by two so-called skeptics who have been discredited over and over again.

Read about these so-called climate experts here:

An embarrassment to Australian science
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/06/an_embarrassment_to_australian.php

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 about climate change 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.

BTW
The High Park Group public relations consultant (Tom Harris) who has recently launched a Canadian campaign questioning the science behind climate change was implicated earlier as one of the architects of a similar strategy for the tobacco industry in the US.

http://www.desmogblog.com/news-alert-tobacco-strategist-now-meddling-in-climate-change-debate

Of course we all know that he was right back then, too. Tobacco does not cause cancer. Yep.

Anonymous said...

Inasmuch the word 'good' means hogwash in your dictionary then yes it's a good quote.

Where is Patterson's paper in which he describes that because there is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame anthroponegic climate change over the last 120 years has not taken place?

In which peer-reviewed journal did he publish it?


Here's what Mark Pagani, a paleoclimatologist at Yale,
http://earth.geology.yale.edu/~mp364/
wrote about the significance of different time-frames in response to my e-mail:

The miocene appears to have been warmer relative to today. The height of the climatic optimum centers at ~17 million years ago. CO2 appears to have been lower than today...closer to pre-industrial values. No one has any estimates of other green house gases, like water vapor or methane.

These estimates and time periods cover many millions of years. Over those time scales other factors are critical to climate, like changes in geography, mountain building (Himalayas, Andes, and others), and ocean circulation, that are irrelevant to discussion regarding modern climate change.

There is clear and undeniable evidence for CO2-induced warming...CO2 and other "greenhouse gases" trap long wave radiation (heat) radiating from the earth and sustain the earth's ambient temperature...without an atmosphere the earth would be 30ûC cooler (go spend a night on the moon and see how comfortable that is)..the more trapping ability of the earth's atmosphere ..the more heat is sustained. If geologic time is invoked as an argument against CO2 warming, I advice you to look at the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal maximum 55 million years ago. This event occurred on time scales equivalent to today's scenario (in a few thousand years) and was sustained for only ~100,000 years. Prior to 55 million years ago CO2 appears to have been quite high..(~2000 ppmv)..likely an ice-free world (consistent with high CO2) with broad leaf forests surround the Arctic. During the event CO2 rapidly rose (estimates and reasons vary..but there had to be about 2 doublings of CO2) as evidenced by the change in the carbon isotopic composition of carbon and the massive dissolution of carbonates in the ocean (CO2 is actually an acid and will lower pH ..as is evident today). the earth experienced a 5ûC rise in temperature...So even under extremely warm conditions and very high CO2 levels, the earth warmed even more as would be predicted.
your friend is either misinformed or is politically motivated to ignore the evidence.
yours, mark

Pagani DOES publish his views in peer-reviewed journals. Why doesn't
Patterson do the same if he is so damn sure that Pagani is wrong?

While just because a paper has been peer-reviewed does not necessarly mean that its conclusions are correct un-peer-reviewed claims cannot be taken seriously at all.

Unknown said...

Listen Chicken Little, take a breath about the sky falling. You want to make a point, then make it. You don't have to go crazy with a hundred different links that nobody is going to read just to seem like you are some sort of authority.

Nonetheless, thanks for participating.

Maximum Colossus said...

Typical Republican, trying to bully people off of your blog for having a dissenting opinion. There's some pretty good stuff there if you care to read. Can you honestly tell me you don't think man has been a detriment to the climate of this planet? And God gives smokers lung cancer cause they all covet their neighbos' houses.

Unknown said...

Listen you turncoat, I enjoy other opinions very much and I am not afraid to face them. So lets start. Do I think that humans have a hand in climate change? I don't know. No one knows, but some sure are convinced of it. As a result, they are running around demonizing other people for living their lives. If you want to protect yourself from climate change, build a house boat. How about an Ark? Pile em on two by two.

Maximum Colossus said...

Go club a baby harp seal, you Nazi!

BVM said...

No, you mean "You Canadian".

BVM said...

I've also got to add that its nice having some action here. Definitely makes it more interesting.

The Gore movie is all about politics. Period. He may believe what he is spouting, but I don't honestly think that saving-mankind is the true goal of this crusade. I mean the movie starts by mentioning how Bush "stole" the election. What does that have to do with Gore-ble warming?

Your skepticism over anything funded by private industry also dulls your point.

Suffice it to say that there's going to be disagreement on man's influence. There are other factors way beyond man that influence climate change in much bigger ways, like volcanic activity and sun intensity.

It would be a grave mistake to take billions of dollars and put it towards lowering man's menial influence.

The money would be better spent building bigger levees and better infrastructure.

Unknown said...

Amen to that Baron

Maximum Colossus said...

Canandiens are a very bright, sensitive and enlightened people. Except the fishermen that club harp seals. They are obviously Nazis.

I hope I don't really need to go with the burnt umber here.