The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change

[Evo]

Well, that's what I get for reading only the first few sentences.

I happen to like Baez's crackpot index.

Damn, I need to get this other guy to come here, but he bounces laser beams off tropical forests to get CO2 levels from satelites (at least that is my warped understanding) he is in forest ecology. Well, it's a bit more involved than that, but I'll let him explain if he will come here.

 

[Rach3]

He didn't just make the Baez index - he hit one of the 40-pointers on the nose!

 

[twisting_edge]

Then there are the usual straw-man arguments critcizing the "models", that since the "models" fail at so-and-so, all other science must be thrown out as well (an argument which has been around for quite a while, by the way)

No, that is not his point. I am not aware of anyone seriously claiming the increase in hurricanes is the result of global warming. The NOAA has a very specific Q&A on the matter (it's not true), and I have quite an amount of personal experience with it dating back to 1988.

That claim is one of three he lists in the very first paragraph of his article as being made by the press. I don't believe ANY of the models support any of those three claims.

He's not attacking a straw man, there, he is being very specific. In order to accept those three claims (and lots of others regularly made in the popular press that he did not list), you have to reject the currently accepted models and adopt something even more extreme.

 

[Gokul43201]

Damn, I need to get this other guy to come here, but he bounces laser beams off tropical forests...

Guess that explains all the fires!

 

[Rach3]

No, that is not his point. I am not aware of anyone seriously claiming the increase in hurricanes is the result of global warming.

Nor am I. Yet Lindzen's very first sentence took on that straw-man:

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change.

The DEFINITION of straw-man is to attack something that is not seriously claimed, or is claimed by non-serious sources. Unless he does know of a serious claim, in which case he should reference it without delay. (edited)

 

[Evo]

Guess that explains all the fires!

Heh, he's cool. Help me persuade him to come here. But he's busy with pesky grad students.

 

[Skyhunter]

Only the first category is an "explicit" endorsement; the "implicit" endorsements of categories 2, 3 are equally easily argued to be inferences based on topics by the AAAP study authors --- the "political winds" blow research money over the fence into my study area, who am I to argue? There is NOTHING "remarkable" in the fact that no papers asserted that there is "no global warming;" that's part of the scientific method --- the possibility of constructing perpetual motion machines of the first or second kind is still formally acknowledged, or alternatively, it is a formal concession in scientific arguments that the first and second laws of thermodynamics may be violated (don't bet any money on it). So, we have some fraction, about 1/3, of AAAP's "75%" who explicitly endorse the climate change argument. We have AAAP overstating the results of the study. We have a member of a history department lecturing the scientific community and general public on what steps to take.

Violating "formal scientific principles," there is NO CONSENSUS!

Good points.

However you are understating the results.

Since you assumed that the first 3 categories are equally divided into 1/3 of 3/4, or 25%, for the sake of argument let's continue that assumption.

You seem to be suggesting that only 25% of the abstracts endorse the scientific consensus 50% were were written for money, and the other 25% are neutral.

Perhaps I have a better opinion of the scientific community, but I would think the number of disingenuous scientists is probably very low. However, for the sake of argument let us assume it is 10% of category 2 and 3 or 20%.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that the neutral abstracts are divided evenly.

With these assumptions, 32.5% of the abstract papers do not endorse the consensus position.

67% endorse the consensus opinion.

0% dispute the consensus opinion.

[edit]
This is what I get for doing math in my head.

10% of 50% is 5%

Which makes the ratios:

17.5% do not endorse
82.5% Endorse
0% dispute
[/edit

Which leads us to twisting_edge's link the the WSJ OP/ED.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

Is there a conspiracy in the scientific community to terrorize and frighten the people of the world with lies about climate change. .

If so, then to what purpose?

 

[twisting_edge]

The DEFINITION of straw-man is to attack something that is not seriously claimed,

The mainstream media seems to have made those claims very strongly indeed. You might not feel that is a serious claim, but the usual folks watching the TV news do. That is the primary target he is attacking, and he's very clear about that. The bulk of his article, and if you read it again you'll see this is true, addresses the policy issues arising from global warming. The bit on the end about "article not in the general interest" is another argument for another day.

If you'd like to start a thread on that, you go right ahead, but here's a warning: there will be no peer reviewed articles on the matter, neither pro nor con. You're going to have to live with an awful lot of mere opinion and reasoning once you open that can of worms.

 

[Evo]

Is there a conspiracy in the scientific community to terrorize and frighten the people of the world with lies about climate change. .

If so, then to what purpose?

No, I believe that was referring to scientists that are NOT alarmists, but non-alarmists don't get the publicity alarmists do.

"Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear"

 

[Rach3]

Is there a conspiracy in the scientific community to terrorize and frighten the people of the world with lies about climate change. .

If so, then to what purpose?

This is UTTERLY RIDICULOUS and irresponsible! In light of the repeated, brazen, REAL CENSORSHIP of climatologists by this anti-science administration -

NYT: Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him (1/29)

and the CENSORING of official climate reports by ideological hacks -

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/07/24/politics/main564873.shtml
"W. House Guts Global Warming Study"

and the ideological litmus-tests on scientific positions, leading to political hacks like Marburger

Some scientists, including President Bush's chief science adviser, John H. Marburger III, emphasize there is still much uncertainty about when abrupt global warming might occur.

"There's no agreement on what it is that constitutes a dangerous climate change," said Marburger, adding that the U.S. government spends $2 billion a year on researching this and other climate change questions. "We know things like this are possible, but we don't have enough information to quantify the level of risk."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/28/AR2006012801021_pf.html

in light of this very obvious and serious situation of injecting ideology into science, it is OUTRAGEOUS to be claiming the exact opposite - that the repeatedly-censored scientists are in fact the censors.

 

[Skyhunter]

Not at all! An essay reviewing a scientific consensus is not a "scientific study" and should not be advertised as such.

I did not represent it as such. I was referring to the 928 abstracts when I said peer reviewed as opposed to OP/ED.

 

[Skyhunter]

in light of this very obvious and serious situation of injecting ideology into science, it is OUTRAGEOUS to be claiming the exact opposite - that the repeatedly-censored scientists are in fact the censors.

That is good, we have enough problems with terror, don't need the scientific community adding to it.

 

[twisting_edge]

That is good, we have enough problems with terror, don't need the scientific community adding to it.

Then in the interests of maintianing the public calm, you are suggesting we ought to discourage the nightly news from publicizing the terrors of global warming? I thought that was what the Bush admninistration (whom I can't stand, BTW) was already trying to do.

I still think its a completely immoral tactic, even though you would seem to be endorsing it.

P.S.: Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as sarcasm. It can be subtle at times, I know, but you need to keep track of it nonetheless.

 

[Gokul43201]

I have yet to see many articles claiming it is even harder to find grant money to prove anthropogenic global warming exists, but I suppose there must be some fringe authors who would assert that.

The reason you have not found articles saying that's it's harder to prove AGW exists is probably because that's not how scientists write grant proposals, and that's not how science is done. You do not do an experiment/measurement to prove some predetermined endpoint. If you did, it wouldn't be called scientific research. You can't write a proposal to a funding agency and say "I intend to prove [xyz]...give me money". In fact, ironically, anyone that did just that would find it exceptionally hard to get that grant.

 

[Skyhunter]

Then in the interests of maintianing the public calm, you are suggesting we ought to discourage the nightly news from publicizing the terrors of global warming? I thought that was what the Bush admninistration (whom I can't stand, BTW) was already trying to do.

I still think its a completely immoral tactic, even though you would seem to be endorsing it.

P.S.: Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as sarcasm. It can be subtle at times, I know, but you need to keep track of it nonetheless.

Only when they are just sensationalizing which I agree does happen. And like the boy who cried wolf, that creates a credibility problem when the wolf is really there.

 

[twisting_edge]

The reason you have not found articles saying that's it's harder to prove AGW exists is probably because that's not how scientists write grant proposals, and that's not how science is done.

This is utterly disingenious. If you do not know in advance approximately what the impact of your investigation will be, how do you write the proposal? A part of every proposal is the significance of the anticipated results. There is usually a reason to evaluate any given aspect of a given phenomenon. No experiment happens in a vacuum (except literally).

My professors would have had me over a barrel as a "knob twiddler" hoping to be the "next monkey to type Shakespeare" if I had ever gone into a lab without a sound theoretical basis for what I was hoping to prove (or wound up disproving, as the case may be).

It's almost always one-way ratchet at the best of times: either your hypothesis is correct and you get the expected results, or it is wrong, and you get nothing. It's very rare for an experiment to prove the opposite (not just the absence) of what it set out to demonstrate.

 

[twisting_edge]

I've made no claims about censorship in the grant process

Then you are attacking a straw man yourself, since that is precisely Mr. Lindzen's point. Try reading his article again. He is very, very clear on the matter.

I agree that any sort of analysis of the acceptance grant proposals would be self-defeating. If the data for such studies were collected, people would file garbage proposals specifically so they could claim censorship.

A similar argument applies to Mr. Lindzen's other point about the journals declining articles as "not in the general interest". Acceptance rates would be equally meaningless.

If you wish to address Mr. Lindzen's points, you're going to need an opinion or two. There is no way around that. Opinions can be supported, however. They are not meaningless in and of themselves. They are, ultimately, the basis for all decisions ever made.

 

[dimensionless]

Where is the disinformation coming from and why?

Congress

text to fill the minimum character requirement

 

[Bystander]

Good points.

However you are understating the results.

Since you assumed that the first 3 categories are equally divided into 1/3 of 3/4, or 25%, for the sake of argument let's continue that assumption.

You seem to be suggesting that only 25% of the abstracts endorse the scientific consensus 50% were were written for money, and the other 25% are neutral.

I don't "seem to be suggesting" any such thing; given that the AAAS report a zero population for gp. 6 (contrary endorsements), and do not identify any other groups as having a zero population, I am stating flatly that the percentage endorsing GW is less than the 75% the AAAS claims. The fact that explicit endorsements are lumped with inferred endorsements further suggests that there may have been an embarrassingly low population in gp.1.

Perhaps I have a better opinion of the scientific community, but I would think the number of disingenuous scientists is probably very low. However, for the sake of argument let us assume it is 10% of category 2 and 3 or 20%.

"I'll fight a scrubwoman if they pay me enough," attributed to Muhammed Ali/Cassius Clay. House and car payments, groceries, utility bills, alimony, college tuition for kids all contribute to a very pragmatic approach to research choices; if IGT and GPA run RFPs for atmospheric CO₂ remediation, people run to their file drawers of stock proposals that haven't been funded and are, however remotely, related to CO₂, rewrite the opening and closing paragraphs, update salary and equipment costs, double the overhead, run off a new cover letter and send 'em in. They get funded, the abstract, key words, intro, and conclusion get a few words about GHG, climate change, and whatever buzz-words are popular, and that's that. It "DON'T MEAN NUTHIN' " about the opinions, beliefs, or "endorsements" of the investigator. It does mean the bills get paid for one to three years, and that maybe, once in a while, someone gets to work on something that interests them --- just as long as they can "paint it up" with the right buzz-words to sell it to someone else.

Let us assume for the sake of argument that the neutral abstracts are divided evenly.

With these assumptions, 32.5% of the abstract papers do not endorse the consensus position.

67% endorse the consensus opinion.

0% dispute the consensus opinion.

Counting the assumption we've both made implicitly that AAAS did use a proper statistical design in picking their 900 and some papers, this is too many "if-levels" down the logic tree to mean anything.

Which leads us to twisting_edge's link the the WSJ OP/ED.


Is there a conspiracy in the scientific community to terrorize and frighten the people of the world with lies about climate change. .

If so, then to what purpose?

Nope. Little more "junk science" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" type peer review than is ideal, but you ain't going to get two members of the scientific community to agree on much of anything of a political or social/cultural nature, let alone a few million on scamming the public.

 

[Astronuc]

. . . he bounces laser beams off tropical forests to get CO2 levels from satelites . . . he is in forest ecology. Well, it's a bit more involved than that, but I'll let him explain if he will come here.

This is an example of remote sensing. (e.g. A Remote Sensing Approach for Estimating Regional Grassland Carbon Dioxide Flux) Satellite instruments monitor various frequencies in IR, as well as visual and radio/radar. Some frequencies are sensitive to CO₂ and H₂O. Active systems can simply shine light from a CO₂ laser on a forest and record the absorption (reduction in reflected intensity) which is a function of the CO₂ concentration.

Similar approach - http://www.cabq.gov/aircare/rst.html

 

[Skyhunter]

The reviews from climate scientists of Gores film "An Inconvenient Truth" are in.

Climate scientists who have seen Gore's film say on the whole it presents a scientifically valid view of global warming and does a good job of presenting what's likely to occur if human-induced greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler for NASA, was pleased the film didn't say: "You're all going to die, woo-hoo." Schmidt, who stressed that his views are his own, not NASA's, says the movie plays it relatively safe by saying, "These are the things that have happened so far. These are the things that are likely to happen should we continue on the trajectory we're on, and these are the moral consequences of it."

Scientists express surprise that Gore could present the science in an accurate way without putting everyone in the audience to sleep. "Such an amount of relatively hard science could have been extremely dull, and I've been to a lot of presentations on similar stuff that were very dull," says Schmidt. "Where there was solid science, he presented it solidly without going into nuts and bolts, and where there were issues that are still a matter of some debate, he was careful not to go down definitively on one side or the other."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/10/truths/index.html

There are detractors of course.

To the tune of the Allman Brothers Band's "Ramblin Man," Al Gore's face rides a cartoon airplane across a map of the United States. As he zips from coast to coast in a Web video clip titled "Al Gore: An Inconvenient Story," a ticker at the bottom of the screen displays his rapidly rising CO2 emissions next to the comparatively modest emissions of everyday folk. The climate-change Paul Revere's steed is an airplane, powered by fossil fuels. The implication: Gore's sure spewing a lot of carbon dioxide as he travels the land spreading the word about global warming.

Produced by the industry flacks at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which is funded in part by Exxon-Mobil, the clip dismisses Gore as a hypocrite, leading a carbon-intensive lifestyle while scolding us plebes that we should strive to reduce our own carbon footprints. Of course, nowhere does this oil-industry-funded propaganda mention that Gore used carbon offsets to mitigate the global warming impact of his travel for "An Inconvenient Truth," that Gore pledged to make the documentary carbon-neutral.

Another review.

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 (see our post on this, here).

There are a few scientific errors that are important in the film. At one point Gore claims that you can see the aerosol concentrations in Antarctic ice cores change "in just two years", due to the U.S. Clean Air Act. You can't see dust and aerosols at all in Antarctic cores -- not with the naked eye -- and I'm skeptical you can definitively point to the influence of the Clean Air Act. I was left wondering whether Gore got this notion, and I hope he'll correct it in future versions of his slideshow. Another complaint is the juxtaposition of an image relating to CO2 emissions and an image illustrating invasive plant species. This is misleading; the problem of invasive species is predominantly due to land use change and importation, not to "global warming". Still, these are rather minor errors. It is true that the effect of reduced leaded gasoline use in the U.S. does clearly show up in Greenland ice cores; and it is also certainly true that climate change could exacerbate the problem of invasive species.

Several of my colleagues complained that a more significant error is Gore's use of the long ice core records of CO2 and temperature (from oxygen isotope measurements) in Antarctic ice cores to illustrate the correlation between the two. The complaint is that the correlation is somewhat misleading, because a number of other climate forcings besides CO2 contribute to the change in Antarctic temperature between glacial and interglacial climate. Simply extrapolating this correlation forward in time puts the temperature in 2100 A.D. somewhere upwards of 10 C warmer than present -- rather at the extreme end of the vast majority of projections (as we have discussed here). However, I don't really agree with my colleagues' criticism on this point. Gore is careful not to state what the temperature/CO2 scaling is. He is making a qualitative point, which is entirely accurate. The fact is that it would be difficult or impossible to explain past changes in temperature during the ice age cycles without CO2 changes (as we have discussed here). In that sense, the ice core CO2-temperature correlation remains an appropriate demonstration of the influence of CO2 on climate.

For the most part, I think Gore gets the science right, just as he did in Earth in the Balance. The small errors don't detract from Gore's main point, which is that we in the United States have the technological and institutional ability to have a significant impact on the future trajectory of climate change. This is not entirely a scientific issue -- indeed, Gore repeatedly makes the point that it is a moral issue -- but Gore draws heavily on Pacala and Socolow's recent work to show that the technology is there (see Science 305, p. 968 Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies).

I'll admit that I have been a bit of a skeptic about our ability to take any substantive action, especially here in the U.S.
Gore's aim is to change that viewpoint, and the colleagues I saw the movie with all seem to agree that he is successful.

In short: this film is worth seeing. It opens in early June.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/05/al-gores-movie/#comment-14433

Then there is the rebuttal endorsed by the right, and the rebuttal to the rebuttal.

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/26/balling-rebuttal/

BALLING: “Gore discusses glacial and snowpack retreats atop Kenya’s Mt. Kilimanjaro, implying that human induced global warming is to blame. But Gore fails to mention that the snows of Kilimanjaro have been retreating for more than 100 years, largely due to declining atmospheric moisture, not global warming.”

THE FACTS: Dr. Balling is distorting the scientific data. The climate scientists at realclimate.org explain studies of Kilimanjaro “only support the role of precipitation in the initial stages of the retreat, up to the early 1900’s.” Moreover, “the Kilimanjaro glacier survived a 300 year African drought which occurred about 4000 years ago.” The most likely explanation for why it has almost completely disappeared this time is “anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change.”

BTW Mr. Lindzen's professorship is sponsored by the Alfred P Sloan foundation (Alfred P. Sloan was long time chairman of General Motors.)
Does General Motors have an economic interest in this issue?

 

[edward]

We can banter about endlessly about who dissagrees with whom as far as anthropological effects on global warming.

It is very difficult for scientists to get empiricle laboratory test tube type information out of a test tube the size of the earth. On the other hand most scientists will agree that there currently is global warming. The Scripps ocean temperature studies confirmed that much and a lot more.

The Scripps study also proved, as far as they are concerned and to my satisfaction, that global warming is directly connected to human activity.

Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and their colleagues have produced the first clear scientific evidence that human activity-and very little else- is warming the world's oceans.

The Scripps' report, coming from one of the world's leading ocean research institutions, may turn out to be the "smoking gun" that finally establishes the link between greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and other pollutants) and the increase in temperature worldwide, or global warming.

The authors contend that their results clearly indicate that the oceans' warming is produced "anthropogenically," i.e. by human activities. The study, conducted by Tim Barnett and David Pierce, along with colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI), used a combination of computer models and real-world "observed" data to capture signals of the penetration of greenhouse gas-influenced warming in the oceans,

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2005/02/21/51777.htm

My observations are much simpler. Since we do have global warming and it is associated with increases in CO2, would it not be reasonable to assume that the billions of tons of CO2 human activity is emitting each year is involved to some extent?

Personally I don't know which will be the most difficult, dealing with the effects of global warming, or dealing with the situation that will come about when the fossil fuels are gone.

 

[edward]

By the way, professor Lindzen seems to make a living trying to debunk global warming. I haven't found a direct link to the congressional records for 1995 but:

"Look in the Congressional record at Richard Lindzen's funding sources...which he tried to hide even under oath (this is extremely unethical for a scientist)...one of his funding sources is a FOREIGN fossil fuels organization -OPEC(-Harpers Magazine- DEC. 1995.) In other words, Lindzen is unethical in the scientific community."

http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001306.html

 

[Skyhunter]

By the way, professor Lindzen seems to make a living trying to debunk global warming. I haven't found a direct link to the congressional records for 1995 but:


http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001306.html

Could it be that is why he writes OP/ED's for a major business paper, the Wall Street Journal instead of science journals?

 

[SOS2008]

We can banter about endlessly about who dissagrees with whom as far as anthropological effects on global warming.

It is very difficult for scientists to get empiricle laboratory test tube type information out of a test tube the size of the earth. On the other hand most scientists will agree that there currently is global warming. The Scripps ocean temperature studies confirmed that much and a lot more.

The Scripps study also proved, as far as they are concerned and to my satisfaction, that global warming is directly connected to human activity.


http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2005/02/21/51777.htm

My observations are much simpler. Since we do have global warming and it is associated with increases in CO2, would it not be reasonable to assume that the billions of tons of CO2 human activity is emitting each year is involved to some extent?

Personally I don't know which will be the most difficult, dealing with the effects of global warming, or dealing with the situation that will come about when the fossil fuels are gone.

Agreed -- The Earth IS warming, the glaciers are disappearing, the ice shelves are melting, the caribou are being eaten by mosquitoes, the polar bears are drowning, the fish are changing migration, etc., etc.! But we must be careful, or like Al Gore, we too will be compared to Hitler.

As for members of congress, or research by oil companies (let's not forget the studies done by cigarette companies), or Bush/Cheney who are oilmen in cahoots with oil companies, none are credible sources of information because they are not qualified and/or are very biased. But most of all, they are denying it because they don't want to be held responsible by the public for doing nothing about it.

 

[Mech_Engineer]

My observations are much simpler. Since we do have global warming and it is associated with increases in CO2, would it not be reasonable to assume that the billions of tons of CO2 human activity is emitting each year is involved to some extent?

I'm doubt that anyone has finally and definitively proven any connection between CO2 and AGW... The problem with this is the fact that first of all, CO2 is not the main contributor to the greenhouse effect, H2O is. CO2 is a relatively small part of the atmosphere, and will continue to be, even if we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Another important thing to consider is the fact that plant growth tends to increase as CO2 does, providing some CO2 absorption effects. There is an interesting online paper that covers this subject, as well as several others:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

Most important, however, is the fact that CO2 levels in the atmosphere do not follow atmospheric temperature trends. I would like to cite arguments that I made in the [Earth] area before the discussion was locked:

https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=117182&page=3

...
1) Much of temperature increases in the last century were before 1940, when CO2 could not have been a dominant factor.

2) CO2 levels seem largely INdependent of global temperature, as shown by the fact that CO2 levels increased from 1940 to 1970, but there was a mean cooling trend recorded.

Very well then, where can this be verified? Quite simple if you look around. This data has been published by NASA, and a quick search for Mauna Loa CO2 levels and a temperature history will confirm my claims, both in the fact that about one-half of the warming occurred pre-1940, and that CO2 levels rose while temperature did not.
...

Sorry if it seems overly aggressive or argumentative, Skyhunter and I were right in the middle of heated debate I suppose I think that the fervor over CO2 is a misplaced one, given that there seem to be bigger contributors to the illeged problems that we face.

Personally I don't know which will be the most difficult, dealing with the effects of global warming, or dealing with the situation that will come about when the fossil fuels are gone.

This is probably a more important question to ask, along with the issue of industrially developing nations and their impacts that we cannot control... China is well on its way to producing far more emissions than the US (if it isn't already, I'm not sure), as well as India. What happens when every person in China or India owns a car? As these nations industrialize, any trillion dollar policies implemented in the US will have little to no effect on overall CO2 emissions (even though CO2 emissions will not be the biggest problem in my opinion) unless they of course are aimed at these countries, which would lead to politically unstable situations... Is that a productive use of our money?

 

[edward]

I am convinced that global warming does include CO2 from human activity as a factor. Scripps and Livermore labs are very credible sources. Their data is from 2005, which is very recent compared to the data of most sceptics.

Science, especially new science has always been viewed with scepticism.
His fellow scientists laughed at Farraday when he suggested "invisible lines of magnetic force". Today those invisible lines of magnetic force turn our hard drives.

Other than that I am not about to get into a more scientific dialog, except to say that the science of many published sceptics seems to be funded by big energy companies, and that it is probably too late to stop anthropologic global warming anyway.

What is unusual with the modern day global warming situation is that it has become a poliital football. In times past new science, or most science for that matter, was a religious football.

Leaving science out of the picture completely, conservative tend to be the global warming skeptics and liberals the believers. The Al Gore movie has simply kicked off the ball again.

 

[Evo]

I'm doubt that anyone has finally and definitively proven any connection between CO2 and AGW... The problem with this is the fact that first of all, CO2 is not the main contributor to the greenhouse effect, H2O is. CO2 is a relatively small part of the atmosphere, and will continue to be, even if we keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Another important thing to consider is the fact that plant growth tends to increase as CO2 does, providing some CO2 absorption effects. There is an interesting online paper that covers this subject, as well as several others:

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

I wouldn't place too much trust in this paper.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicine

"The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) describes itself as "a small research institute" that studies "biochemistry, diagnostic medicine, nutrition, preventive medicine and the molecular biology of aging." It is headed by Arthur B. Robinson, an eccentric scientist who has a long history of controversial entanglements with figures on the fringe of accepted research. OISM also markets a home-schooling kit for "parents concerned about socialism in the public schools" and publishes books on how to survive nuclear war."

 

[Amp1]

Just to make an attempt to get BOT, I noted that Edward mentioned the CO₂ dumped by humans is a factor in the increasing concentration. Billions of tons per year does accumulate even with CO₂ sinks. Keep in mind also that many thousands of acres of forests have been destroyed in the Amazon and other locations around the world which decreases some of the sinks. Next consider that as was mentiond by another poster CO₂ isn't the only GW factor, there's H₂O, and Methane and probably some others that man has had a role in introducing in larger than natural amounts into the atmosphere. With these considerations it seems inconceivable that GW isn't human induced. The jury is in and the increased pace of temperature rise in the equatorial oceans is evidence that there is a problem. By increased pace I mean rises in temperature that are notably faster than geologic increases. I wonder if the glaciers on Kilimanjaro are shrinking because of a lack of precipatation then what about the US's own Glacier National Park? Or Greenland's shrinking glaicers or Anartica- where there are now areas that were once covered in meters deep snow/ice layers. The plight of polar bears in the Artic that are in trouble because of documented reduction in the ice cover/floes that used to occur during the six months of winter. I don't think it wise to play the ostrich.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn8850-atmospheric-cosub2sub-accumulating-faster-than-ever.html [/URL]

[PLAIN] http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg18825203.700-arctic-ice-shrinking-as-it-feels-the-heat.html [/URL]

[PLAIN] http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg18925425.200-coastal-carbon-sinks-are-shrinking.html [/URL]

[PLAIN] http://zebu.uoregon.edu/2004/es399/lec02.html [/URL]

[PLAIN] http://www.hydrogen.co.uk/h2_now/journal/articles/3_Methane.htm [/URL]

[PLAIN] http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg18925424.700-gravity-reveals-shrinking-antarctic-ice.html [/URL]

[PLAIN] [URL]http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/article312997.ece[/URL] [/URL]

[PLAIN] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4660938.stm [/URL]

[PLAIN] http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/16/60minutes/main1323169.shtml [/URL]

 

[Skyhunter]

This is the man I believe is leading the dissent. His name is Richard Lindzen.

Richard Siegmund Lindzen (born February 8, 1940) is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT.

He was a lead author of Chapter 7 [1] of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report of 2001.

He frequently speaks out against the IPCC position that significant global warming is caused by humans (see global warming) although he accepts that the warming has occurred, saying global mean temperature is about 0.6 degrees Celsius higher than it was a century ago [2].

His position with regard to the IPCC can be summed up in this quote: "Picking holes in the IPCC is crucial. The notion that if you’re ignorant of something and somebody comes up with a wrong answer, and you have to accept that because you don’t have another wrong answer to offer is like faith healing, it’s like quackery in medicine – if somebody says you should take jelly beans for cancer and you say that’s stupid, and he says, well can you suggest something else and you say, no, does that mean you have to go with jelly beans?" [3].

He is using the uncertainty and complexity of atmospheric science as an argument against the IPCC, its conclusions, and recommendations.

His professorship at MIT is sponsored by the http://www.sloan.org/main.shtml

Interesting man was Alfred P. Sloan.

During Alfred P. Sloan's leadership of GM, many public transport systems of trams in the US were replaced by buses. Many of the trams themselves were literally burnt in order to prevent any reversal in public transport policies. Some believe that GM orchestrated this bustitution; see General Motors streetcar conspiracy for details. Frequencies of bus services were decreased on less profitable routes, helping to encourage people to buy their own automobiles and travel independently.

I am learning about Transit Oriented Development, many cities are beginning to plan and development communitees that are pedestrian, bicycle, and transit oriented. Part of their reasoning is to curb GHG emissions another is cleaner more livable cities.

Looking at the old right of ways, and historic tram routes, I realize how well thought out the cities were.

http://www.culturechange.org/issue10/taken-for-a-ride.htm

Then GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil bought the railways.

A 1974 report by government attorney Bradford Snell ignited the conspiracy theory by claiming that General Motors was convicted of conspiracy in 1949 (and fined $5000) in its program to buy up and destroy electric urban trolley systems so that urban transit would be forced to rely on GMC buses, and that this is the principal reason that modern-day trolley systems are rare in the United States today. Between 1936 and 1950, National City Lines, a holding company sponsored and funded by GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil of California, bought out more than 100 electric surface-traction systems in 45 cities (including New York, San Francisco, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Baltimore, and Los Angeles) to be dismantled and replaced with GM buses. In 1949 GM and its partners were convicted in U.S. district court in Chicago of criminal conspiracy in this matter and fined $5,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy

I can get everything I need from public transit, bicycling, or walking. It is however not nearly as convenient and inexpensive as it could be. http://www.transitorienteddevelopment.org/pages/1/index.htm is a way to reduce the cars in the cities and make them more livable. This is antithetical to selling cars, tires, and gasoline.

I only need a truck when I am working, so I leave it at the shop and bike to the local lightrail, when I can. The greatest problem I face is the cars that go zooming by, making it difficult and hazardous to navigate, not to mention the nasty exhausts. Transit Oriented Development is a step into the past in order to restore intelligent transportation and quality of life in our cities.

But I digress.

Mr.Lindzens position on global warming is the preferred position of industry. I wonder if that position is not somehow influenced by his professorship. Alfred P. Sloan was one of the greatest industrialists of the 20th century.

Alfred P. Sloan was a ruthless industrialist. I think that Mr. Lindzen is living up to his professorship's namesake.