Expert says.........global warming is "hooey"

[Hotrod]

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/197613

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.

The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.
The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

"It's like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It's just a total misplacement of emphasis," he said. "It really isn't science because there's no really good scientific evidence."

Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. "Consensus doesn't prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe."

Bryson, 87, was the founding chairman of the department of meteorology at UW-Madison and of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He retired in 1985, but has gone into the office almost every day since. He does it without pay.

"I have now worked for zero dollars since I retired, long enough that I have paid back the people of Wisconsin every cent they paid me to give me a wonderful, wonderful career. So we are even now. And I feel good about that," said Bryson.

So, if global warming isn't such a burning issue, why are thousands of scientists so concerned about it?

"Why are so many thousands not concerned about it?" Bryson shot back.

"There is a lot of money to be made in this," he added. "If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'"

Speaking out against global warming is like being a heretic, Bryson noted.

And it's not something that he does regularly.

[TheDave]

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/topstories/197613



Bryson, 87, was the founding chairman of the department of meteorology at UW-Madison and of the Institute for Environmental Studies, now known as the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. He retired in 1985, but has gone into the office almost every day since. He does it without pay.



Just a thought, but maybe the 87 year old guy that has been retired for 22+ years may not be as up to date as he thinks.

[Garcia Bronco]

Just a thought, but maybe the 87 year old guy that has been retired for 22+ years may not be as up to date as he thinks.

Did you read the whole quote you posted? It sounds like this guy has oodles of experience.

[Hotrod]

Just a thought, but maybe the 87 year old guy that has been retired for 22+ years may not be as up to date as he thinks.

Hes been working everyday since he retired. I think hes prolly in the loop

[mosca]

Just a thought, but maybe the 87 year old guy that has been retired for 22+ years may not be as up to date as he thinks.
Nice ad hominem.

[Spider]

87 ? we got a place for people that old ...........Nursing home ...he is clearly senile ..time to put him away let the kids and grandkids come by once a week take him to the park

[Garcia Bronco]

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology

[Garcia Bronco]

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology.

[TheDave]

Did you read the whole quote you posted? It sounds like this guy has oodles of experience.

Yes... he gave his opinion on the subject. He gave no facts other than temperatures have been increasing for longer than people have been producing carbon dioxide. Since the bulk of global warming studies have been conducted well after his retirement it stands to reason he may not be as well versed on the subject as you wish him to be.

[Garcia Bronco]

Yes... he gave his opinion on the subject. He gave no facts other than temperatures have been increasing for longer than people have been producing carbon dioxide. Since the bulk of global warming studies have been conducted well after his retirement it stands to reason he may not be as well versed on the subject as you wish him to be.

Did you read the part where it says he still works there since 85? did you read the part where he is considered the father of the study.

[TheDave]

Did you read the part where it says he still works there since 85? did you read the part where he is considered the father of the study.

Yes, i read the part where the retired guy keeps his desk warm... Again JMO but i'll spend more time listening to the guys that are currently working on the problem. Kinda like if i need heart sugery... I'm pushing for a Dr. that has cut someone open a little more recently than 1985... but that's just me.

[Garcia Bronco]

Yes, i read the part where the retired guy keeps his desk warm... Again JMO but i'll spend more time listening to the guys that are currently working on the problem. Kinda like if i need heart sugery... I'm pushing for a Dr. that has cut someone open a little more recently than 1985... but that's just me.

He is currently working the issue...obviously climate study is his life's work. That means his resume trumps many others. This isn't heart surgery...it's vastly different in terms of skill and observation. Point is...we really don't know enough to say whether man-made CO2 is the cause for the warming of the globe....further more...since we haven't collected data long enough...it's hard to draw a conclusion either way. I preach conservation, but I also realize that we don't know enough to say one was or the other.

[TheDave]

He is currently working the issue...obviously climate study is his life's work. That means his resume trumps many others.

Then it should be easy for you to show me his most recent peer reviewed works...

This isn't heart surgery...it's vastly different in terms of skill and observation.

You right science moves MUCH faster than surgical techniques. Again i'm looking for the most recent peer reviewed research. Not the opinion of an 87 year old man who's resume hasn't been updated in 22 years.

[Hotrod]

Then it should be easy for you to show me his most recent peer reviewed works...



You right science moves MUCH faster than surgical techniques. Again i'm looking for the most recent peer reviewed research. Not the opinion of an 87 year old man who's resume hasn't been updated in 22 years.

I'd say the word hooey lends a little something to his cred.

[TheDave]

I'd say the word hooey lends a little something to his cred.

actually my favorite was this...

"You can go outside and spit and have the same effect (on climate) as doubling carbon dioxide."

[Garcia Bronco]

Then it should be easy for you to show me his most recent peer reviewed works...



You right science moves MUCH faster than surgical techniques. Again i'm looking for the most recent peer reviewed research. Not the opinion of an 87 year old man who's resume hasn't been updated in 22 years.

I don't know he has written more than 230 articles and five books, including Climates of Hunger, which won the Banta Medal for Literary Achievement. He's been doing this a long long time...to discount him is short sighted...especially in the area of longitudinal experience with climate research. But it's amusing that you would discount him based on his vast experience...ultimately...probably because his view is different from yours.

[TheDave]

I don't know he has written more than 230 articles and five books, including Climates of Hunger, which won the Banta Medal for Literary Achievement. He's been doing this a long long time...to discount him is short sighted...especially in the area of longitudinal experience with climate research. But it's amusing that you would discount him based on his vast experience...ultimately...probably because his view is different from yours.

No Garcia, your missing the point. Science evolves at a pace that lay-people simply do not understand. Currently there are 100's of "peer reviewed" papers showing that man IS having an affect on global climate. That is what i base my opinions on... Not the opinions of an old highly decorated scientist who has not subjected his work to peer review in over 20 years.

Taking his opinion over the CURRENT work being done by the CURRENT science community is about as intelligent as Shanahan attempting to channel Lombardi's ghost for helps on this seasons game plans.

[Garcia Bronco]

No Garcia, your missing the point. Science evolves at a pace that lay-people simply do not understand. Currently there are 100's of "peer reviewed" papers showing that man IS having an affect on global climate. That is what i base my opinions on... Not the opinions of an old highly decorated scientist who has not subjected his work to peer review in over 20 years.

Taking his opinion over the CURRENT work being done by the CURRENT science community is about as intelligent as Shanahan attempting to channel Lombardi's ghost for helps on this seasons game plans.

Peer review is only as good as the peers reviewing...and possible that they could all be wrong. People used to think the world was flat. People used to think the Universe used to revolve around the earth. That smoking was goos for you and that leeches were a good form of medical treatment. Maybe not the formal review process as peer review, but accepted as facts. The truth is there isn't actual concrete proof that this man made. Signs point to it, but no direct cause and effect relationship. One of the axioms of research...and you should know...that just because there is a cause, doesn't mean it's THE cause. It could very well be something else. It could be the sun...it could be a natural trend...it could be a simple reduction in CO2 converting agents such as trees.

Further more...you don't know what work this guy is reviewing. He has 60 years experience...and you just want to toss it aside. Interesting.

[spdirty]

what a heretic...guy should be burned at the stake for denying global warming.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Even if global warming were 100% crap, it would still be imperative to cut carbon emissions, if for no other reason than the fact that our air is causing a lot of health and respiratory problems. Then you have the energy issue and our dependance on oil that will eventually drive the economy to collapse if we don't find alternatives to our current reliance on oil.

I'm skeptical of the whole "it's for the grants" thing. Not all scientists who support the concept of man made global warming exist on grants, nor do I believe grants are only available to supporters of the theory.

I'm also leery of anybody's judgement and cognition at age 87...if he were driving I'd give him a wide berth...similar concept here.

[El Minion]

Peer review is only as good as the peers reviewing...and possible that they could all be wrong. People used to think the world was flat. People used to think the Universe used to revolve around the earth. That smoking was goos for you and that leeches were a good form of medical treatment. Maybe not the formal review process as peer review, but accepted as facts. The truth is there isn't actual concrete proof that this man made. Signs point to it, but no direct cause and effect relationship. One of the axioms of research...and you should know...that just because there is a cause, doesn't mean it's THE cause. It could very well be something else. It could be the sun...it could be a natural trend...it could be a simple reduction in CO2 converting agents such as trees.

Further more...you don't know what work this guy is reviewing. He has 60 years experience...and you just want to toss it aside. Interesting.

Maggots and Leeches: Old Medicine is New (http://www.livescience.com/health/050419_maggots.html)


...Maggot therapy is just one example of a medical approach called biotherapy -- the use of living animals to aid in medical diagnosis or treatment. Leeches are another example.

In ancient times, leeches were used to treat everything from headaches to ear infections to hemorrhoids. Historians think Egyptians used leech therapy 3,500 years ago. The treatments were back in vogue during the Middle Ages, and again in the 1800s.

Nowadays, leeches are routinely used to drain blood from swollen faces, limbs and digits after reconstructive surgery.

They are especially useful when reattaching small parts that contain many blood vessels, like ears, where blood clots can easily form in veins that normally drain blood from tissues. If the clots are severe, the tissues can die -- drowned in the body's own fluid -- because they are deprived of oxygen and other vital nutrients.

Scientists are also looking at using leeches to treat other ailments. Studies led by Andreas Michalsen, a researcher at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, suggests leech therapy may lessen the pain and inflammation associated with osteoarthritis, a debilitating disease where bones can grind against one another because the cartilage has been worn down.
.....

[Garcia Bronco]

"In ancient times, leeches were used to treat everything from headaches to ear infections to hemorrhoids"

[Bronco Bob]

There were prominent geologists who denied plate tectonics to their dying day.
Didn't make them right either.
Even W has jumped on the Global Warming bandwagon, so I'm not sure who
you are trying to convince anymore.

[Atlas]

That's funny . DUDE the Capital Times is a conservative site. They definatley have an agenda. For every 10 sites you can find like that I can find 1,000 legitimate sites that say exactly the opposite.

Just like people who don't believe in evolution. You can throw all the facts out there and ask them to use a little common sense but it's like talking to a wall.

Experts: Global Warming Is Real
A parcel of studies looking at the oceans and melting Arctic ice leave no room for doubt that it is getting warmer, people are to blame, and the weather is going to suffer, climate experts said on Thursday.

New computer models that look at ocean temperatures instead of the atmosphere show the clearest signal yet that global warming is well underway, said Tim Barnett of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Speaking at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Barnett said climate models based on air temperatures are weak because most of the evidence for global warming is not even there.

"The real place to look is in the ocean," Barnett told a news conference.

His team used millions of temperature readings made by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate steady ocean warming.

"The debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people," he said.

The report was published one day after the United Nations Kyoto Protocol took effect, a 141-nation environmental pact the United States government has spurned for several reasons, including stated doubts about whether global warming is occurring and is caused by people.

Barnett urged U.S. officials to reconsider.

"Could a climate system simply do this on its own? The answer is clearly no," Barnett said.

His team used U.S. government models of solar warming and volcanic warming, just to see if they could account for the measurements they made. "Not a chance," he said. And the effects will be felt far and wide. "Anywhere that the major water source is fed by snow ... or glacial melt," he said. "The debate is what are we going to do about it."

Other researchers found clear effects on climate and animals.

Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that melting ice was changing the water cycle, which in turn affects ocean currents and, ultimately, climate.

"As the Earth warms, its water cycle is changing, being pushed out of kilter," she said. "Ice is in decline everywhere on the planet."

A circulation system called the Ocean Conveyer Belt is in danger of shutting down, she said. The last time that happened, northern Europe suffered extremely cold winters.

She said the changes were already causing droughts in the western United States.

Greenland's ice cap, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels globally by 23 feet, is starting to melt and could collapse suddenly, Curry said. Already freshwater is percolating down, lubricating the base and making it more unstable.

Sharon Smith of the University of Miami found melting Arctic ice was taking with it algae that formed an important base of the food supply for a range of animals.

And the disappearing ice shelves meant big animals such as walruses, polar bears and seals were losing their homes.

"In 1997 there was a mass die-off of a bird called the short-tailed shearwater in the Bering Sea," Smith told the news conference. The birds, which migrate from Australia, starved to death when warmer waters caused a plankton called a coccolithophore to bloom in huge numbers, turning the water an opaque turquoise color.

"The short-tailed shearwater couldn't see its prey," Smith said.

[broncos_mtnman]

Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?
By Timothy Ball

Monday, February 5, 2007

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.


What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He 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. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.

[broncos_mtnman]

Don't Believe the Hype
Al Gore is wrong. There's no "consensus" on global warming.

BY RICHARD S. LINDZEN
Sunday, July 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms--unless we change the way we live now.

Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific community is over."

That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this "debate" actually is in the first place.

The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim--in his defense--that scientists "don't know. . . . They just don't know."

So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the "consensus." Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore's preferred global-warming template--namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore's movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming.

They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why.

The other elements of the global-warming scare scenario are predicated on similar oversights. Malaria, claimed as a byproduct of warming, was once common in Michigan and Siberia and remains common in Siberia--mosquitoes don't require tropical warmth. Hurricanes, too, vary on multidecadal time scales; sea-surface temperature is likely to be an important factor. This temperature, itself, varies on multidecadal time scales. However, questions concerning the origin of the relevant sea-surface temperatures and the nature of trends in hurricane intensity are being hotly argued within the profession.

Even among those arguing, there is general agreement that we can't attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure, there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be global warming because he can't think of anything else. While arguments like these, based on lassitude, are becoming rather common in climate assessments, such claims, given the primitive state of weather and climate science, are hardly compelling.

A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are clearly not issues over which debate is ended--at least not in terms of the actual science.

A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by the environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific community now agrees that significant warming is occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, increased again until the '90s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998.

There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 parts per million by volume in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas--albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.

Given that we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task is currently impossible. Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising impact. Thus, although the conflicted state of the affair was accurately presented in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the infamous "summary for policy makers" reported ambiguously that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." This sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.

The next IPCC report again described the problems surrounding what has become known as the attribution issue: that is, to explain what mechanisms are responsible for observed changes in climate. Some deployed the lassitude argument--e.g., we can't think of an alternative--to support human attribution. But the "summary for policy makers" claimed in a manner largely unrelated to the actual text of the report that "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

In a similar vein, the National Academy of Sciences issued a brief (15-page) report responding to questions from the White House. It again enumerated the difficulties with attribution, but again the report was preceded by a front end that ambiguously claimed that "The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability." This was sufficient for CNN's Michelle Mitchell to presciently declare that the report represented a "unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man. There is no wiggle room." Well, no.

More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

Even more recently, the Climate Change Science Program, the Bush administration's coordinating agency for global-warming research, declared it had found "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system." This, for Mr. Easterbrook, meant: "Case closed." What exactly was this evidence? The models imply that greenhouse warming should impact atmospheric temperatures more than surface temperatures, and yet satellite data showed no warming in the atmosphere since 1979. The report showed that selective corrections to the atmospheric data could lead to some warming, thus reducing the conflict between observations and models descriptions of what greenhouse warming should look like. That, to me, means the case is still very much open.

So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.
First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists--especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce--if we're lucky.

Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

[Spider]

Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide
Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?
By Timothy Ball

Monday, February 5, 2007


he didnt site any facts , just that he is picked on ......... boo hoo ......

[Spider]

Don't Believe the Hype
Al Gore is wrong. There's no "consensus" on global warming.

BY RICHARD S. LINDZEN
Sunday, July 2, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT


Even among those arguing, there is general agreement that we can't attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure, there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be global warming because he can't think of anything else. While arguments like these, based on lassitude, are becoming rather common in climate assessments, such claims, given the primitive state of weather and climate science, are hardly compelling.
There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 parts per million by volume in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas--albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.



Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

does this guy even read what he writes ?

[broncos_mtnman]

Allegre's second thoughts

LAWRENCE SOLOMON, Financial Post
Published: Friday, March 02, 2007

Claude Allegre, one of France's leading socialists and among her most celebrated scientists, was among the first to sound the alarm about the dangers of global warming.

"By burning fossil fuels, man increased the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which, for example, has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century," Dr. Allegre, a renowned geochemist, wrote 20 years ago in Cles pour la geologie.." Fifteen years ago, Dr. Allegre was among the 1500 prominent scientists who signed "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," a highly publicized letter stressing that global warming's "potential risks are very great" and demanding a new caring ethic that recognizes the globe's fragility in order to stave off "spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic and environmental collapse."

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when concern about global warming was in its infancy, little was known about the mechanics of how it could occur, or the consequences that could befall us. Since then, governments throughout the western world and bodies such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have commissioned billions of dollars worth of research by thousands of scientists. With a wealth of data now in, Dr. Allegre has recanted his views. To his surprise, the many climate models and studies failed dismally in establishing a man-made cause of catastrophic global warming. Meanwhile, increasing evidence indicates that most of the warming comes of natural phenomena. Dr. Allegre now sees global warming as over-hyped and an environmental concern of second rank.

His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled."

Dr. Allegre's skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France's political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France's educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change.

But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics, which showed that the atmosphere was primarily formed early in the history of the Earth, and the geochemical modeller of the early solar system. Because of his path-breaking cosmochemical research, NASA asked Dr. Allegre to participate in the Apollo lunar program, where he helped determine the age of the Moon. Matching his scientific accomplishments in the cosmos are his accomplishments at home: Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on the structural and geochemical evolution of the Earth's crust and the creation of its mountains, explaining both the title of his article in l' Express and his revulsion at the nihilistic nature of the climate research debate.


Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers," Dr. Allegre especially despairs at "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." The world would be better off, Dr. Allegre believes, if these "denouncers" became less political and more practical, by proposing practical solutions to head off the dangers they see, such as developing technologies to sequester C02. His dream, he says, is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."

Claude Allegre received a Ph D in physics in 1962 from the University of Paris. He became the director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre in 1967 and in 1971, he was appointed director of the University of Paris's Department of Earth Sciences. In 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science.

[mhgaffney]

The real question is NOT whether earth is warming up -- but what is causing it.

If it's true that other planets in our solar system are also heating up -- then the primary cause is outside earth, though human activities are probably making the problem worse.

[Spider]

Allegre's second thoughts


Claude Allegre received a Ph D in physics in 1962 from the University of Paris. He became the director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre in 1967 and in 1971, he was appointed director of the University of Paris's Department of Earth Sciences. In 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science.

I thought you Jesus freaks right wing Clowns hated the french ?

[Bronco Bob]

The real question is NOT whether earth is warming up -- but what is causing it.

If it's true that other planets in our solar system are also heating up -- then the primary cause is outside earth, though human activities are probably making the problem worse.

Except that it isn't true.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/10/global-warming-on-mars/

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars (e.g. here). These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars (e.g. here and here). But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.


A couple of basic issues first : the Martian year is about 2 Earth years (687 days). Currently it is late winter in Mars's northern hemisphere, so late summer in the southern hemisphere. Martian eccentricity is about 0.1 - over 5 times larger than Earth's, so the insolation (INcoming SOLar radiATION) variation over the orbit is substantial, and contributes significantly more to seasonality than on the Earth, although Mars's obliquity (the angle of its spin axis to the orbital plane) still dominates the seasons. The alignment of obliquity and eccentricity due to precession is a much stronger effect than for the Earth, leading to "great" summers and winters on time scales of tens of thousands of years (the precessional period is 170,000 years). Since Mars has no oceans and a thin atmosphere, the thermal inertia is low, and Martian climate is easily perturbed by external influences, including solar variations. However, solar irradiance is now well measured by satellite and has been declining slightly over the last few years as it moves towards a solar minimum.

So what is causing Martian climate change now? Mars has a relatively well studied climate, going back to measurements made by Viking, and continued with the current series of orbiters, such as the Mars Global Surveyor. Complementing the measurements, NASA has a Mars General Circulation Model (GCM) based at NASA Ames. (NB. There is a good "general reader" review of modeling the Martian atmosphere by Stephen R Lewis in Astronomy and Geophysics, volume 44 issue 4. pages 6-14.)

Globally, the mean temperature of the Martian atmosphere is particularly sensitive to the strength and duration of hemispheric dust storms, (see for example here and here). Large scale dust storms change the atmospheric opacity and convection; as always when comparing mean temperatures, the altitude at which the measurement is made matters, but to the extent it is sensible to speak of a mean temperature for Mars, the evidence is for significant cooling from the 1970's, when Viking made measurements, compared to current temperatures. However, this is essentially due to large scale dust storms that were common back then, compared to a lower level of storminess now. The mean temperature on Mars, averaged over the Martian year can change by many degrees from year to year, depending on how active large scale dust storms are.

In 2001, Malin et al published a short article in Science (subscription required) discussing MGS data showing a rapid shrinkage of the South Polar Cap. Recently, the MGS team had a press release discussing more recent data showing the trend had continued. MGS 2001 press release MGS 2005 press release. The shrinkage of the Martian South Polar Cap is almost certainly a regional climate change, and is not any indication of global warming trends in the Martian atmosphere. Colaprete et al in Nature 2005 (subscription required) showed, using the Mars GCM, that the south polar climate is unstable due to the peculiar topography near the pole, and the current configuration is on the instability border; we therefore expect to see rapid changes in ice cover as the regional climate transits between the unstable states.

Thus inferring global warming from a 3 Martian year regional trend is unwarranted. The observed regional changes in south polar ice cover are almost certainly due to a regional climate transition, not a global phenomenon, and are demonstrably unrelated to external forcing. There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth...

[Bronco Bob]

Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

Lindzen in Newsweek
Filed under:

* Climate Science
* Reporting on climate

— group @ 4:24 pm

Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann

As part of a much larger discussion on Learning to live with Global Warming in Newsweek recently, the editors gave some space for Richard Lindzen to give his standard 'it's no big deal' opinion. While we disagree, we have no beef with serious discussions of the costs and benefits of various courses of action and on the need for adaption to the climate change that is already locked in.

However, Lindzen's piece is not a serious discussion.

Instead, it is a series of strawman arguments, red-herrings and out and out errors.

Lindzen claims that because we don't know what the ideal temperature of the planet should be, we shouldn't be concerned about global warming. But concern about human-driven climate change is not because this is the most perfect of possible worlds - it is because, whatever it's imperfections, it is the world that society is imperfectly adapted to. Lindzen is well aware that predictions of weather are different from climate predictions (the statistics of weather), yet cheerfully uses popular conflation of the two issues to confuse his readers.

Lindzen claims that the known amount of 'forcing' on the system proves that CO2 will only have a small effect, yet makes plain in the subsequent paragraph that the total forcing (and hence what the planet should be reacting to) is quite uncertain (particularly before the satellite era). If the total forcing is uncertain, how can he say that he knows that the sensitivity is small? This issue has been dealt with much more seriously than Lindzen alludes to (as he well knows) and it's clear that this calculation is simply too uncertain to constrain sensitivity on it's own.

Among the more egregious of Lindzen's assertions is this one:

Ten years ago climate modelers also couldn't account for the warming that occurred from about 1050 to 1300. They tried to expunge the medieval warm period from the observational record—an effort that is now generally discredited.

It's remarkable that Lindzen is able to pack so many errors into two short sentences. First of all, doubts about the global scale of warmth associated with the "Medieval Climate Anomaly" date back well over a decade and certainly precede any known attempts to use climate models to simulate Medieval temperatures [e.g. Hughes and Diaz (1994), Was there a ‘medieval warm period’, and if so, where and when?; there are even earlier conference proceedings that were published coming to similar conclusions]. To the best of our knowledge, the first published attempt to use a climate model and estimated forcing histories to simulate the climate of the past millennium was described less than 7 years ago in this Science article by Tom Crowley, not 10 years ago-- (a 43% error ;) ). Crowley's original study and the other similar studies published since, established that the model simulations are in fact in close agreement with the reconstructions, all of which indicate that at the scale of the Northern Hemisphere, peak Medieval warmth was perhaps comparable to early/mid 20th century warmth, but that it fell well short of the warmth of the most recent decades. Not only has the most recent IPCC report confirmed this assessment, it has in fact extended it further back, concluding that the large-scale warmth of recent decades is likely anomalous in at least the past 1300 years. So we're puzzled as to precisely what Lindzen would like to have us believe was "expunged" or "discredited", and by whom?

Finally, we find it curious that Lindzen chose to include this very lawyerly disclaimer at the end of the piece:

[Lindzen's] research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies.

Richard, one thinks thou dost protest too much! A casual reader would be led to infer that Lindzen has received no industry money for his services. But that would be wrong. He has in fact received a pretty penny from industry. But this isn't for research. Rather it is for his faithful advocacy of a fossil fuel industry-friendly point of view. So Lindzen's claim is true, on a technicality. But while the reader is led to believe that there is no conflict of interest at work behind Lindzen's writings, just the opposite is the case.

It should hardly be surprising to learn that Lindzen was just chosen to share the title of "false counselor" in the list of leading "environmental sinners" compiled in the May issue of Vanity Fair on the newstands now (article "Dante's Inferno: Green Edition"; unfortunately, this sits behind the subscription wall, so you'll have to purchase the magazine for further details). Incidentally, several other frequent appearers on RC such as Fred Singer, Willie Soon, Sally Baliunas, James Inhofe, and Michael Crichton share in the award festivities. For a time, Lindzen set himself apart from this latter sort of contrarian; his scientific challenges were often thoughtful and his hypotheses interesting, if one-sided - he never met a negative feedback he didn't like. Sadly, it has become clear that those days are gone.

[Bronco Bob]

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.



Every now and again, the myth that "we shouldn't believe global warming predictions now, because in the 1970's they were predicting an ice age and/or cooling" surfaces. Recently, George Will mentioned it in his column (see Will-full ignorance) and the egregious Crichton manages to say "in the 1970's all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming" (see Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion ). You can find it in various other places too [here, mildly here, etc]. But its not an argument used by respectable and knowledgeable skeptics, because it crumbles under analysis. That doesn't stop it repeatedly cropping up in newsgroups though.

I should clarify that I'm talking about predictions in the scientific press. There were some regrettable things published in the popular press (e.g. Newsweek; though National Geographic did better). But we're only responsible for the scientific press. If you want to look at an analysis of various papers that mention the subject, then try http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/.

Where does the myth come from? Naturally enough, there is a kernel of truth behind it all. Firstly, there was a trend of cooling from the 40's to the 70's (although that needs to be qualified, as hemispheric or global temperature datasets were only just beginning to be assembled then). But people were well aware that extrapolating such a short trend was a mistake (Mason, 1976) . Secondly, it was becoming clear that ice ages followed a regular pattern and that interglacials (such as we are now in) were much shorter that the full glacial periods in between. Somehow this seems to have morphed (perhaps more in the popular mind than elsewhere) into the idea that the next ice age was predicatable and imminent. Thirdly, there were concerns about the relative magnitudes of aerosol forcing (cooling) and CO2 forcing (warming), although this latter strand seems to have been short lived.

The state of the science at the time (say, the mid 1970's), based on reading the papers is, in summary: "...we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate..." (which is taken directly from NAS, 1975). In a bit more detail, people were aware of various forcing mechanisms - the ice age cycle; CO2 warming; aerosol cooling - but didn't know which would be dominant in the near future. By the end of the 1970's, though, it had become clear that CO2 warming would probably be dominant; that conclusion has subsequently strengthened.

George Will asserts that Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned about "extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.". The quote is from Hays et al. But the quote is taken grossly out of context. Here, in full, is the small section dealing with prediction:

Future climate. Having presented evidence that major changes in past climate were associated with variations in the geometry of the earth's orbit, we should be able to predict the trend of future climate. Such forecasts must be qualified in two ways. First, they apply only to the natural component of future climatic trends - and not to anthropogenic effects such as those due to the burning of fossil fuels. Second, they describe only the long-term trends, because they are linked to orbital variations with periods of 20,000 years and longer. Climatic oscillations at higher frequencies are not predicted.

One approach to forecasting the natural long-term climate trend is to estimate the time constants of response necessary to explain the observed phase relationships between orbital variation and climatic change, and then to use those time constants in the exponential-response model. When such a model is applied to Vernekar's (39) astronomical projections, the results indicate that the long-term trend over the next 20,000 years is towards extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation and cooler climate (80).

The point about timescales is worth noticing: predicting an ice age (even in the absence of human forcing) is almost impossible within a timescale that you could call "imminent" (perhaps a century: comparable to the scales typically used in global warming projections) because ice ages are slow, when caused by orbital forcing type mechanisms.

Will also quotes "a full-blown 10,000-year ice age" (Science, March 1, 1975). The quote is accurate, but the source isn't. The piece isn't from "Science"; it's from "Science News". There is a major difference: Science is (jointly with Nature) the most prestigous journal for natural science; Science News is not a peer-reviewed journal at all, though it is still respectable. In this case, its process went a bit wrong: the desire for a good story overwhelmed its reading of the NAS report which was presumably too boring to present directly.

The Hays paper above is the most notable example of the "ice age" strand. Indeed, its a very important paper in the history of climate, linking observed cycles in ocean sediment cores to orbital forcing periodicities. Of the other strand, aerosol cooling, Rasool and Schneider, Science, July 1971, p 138, "Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate" is the best exemplar. This contains the quote that quadrupling aerosols could decrease the mean surface temperature (of Earth) by as much as 3.5 degrees K. If sustained over a period of several years, such a temperature decrease could be sufficient to trigger an ice age!. But even this paper qualifies its predictions (whether or not aerosols would so increase was unknown) and speculates that nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production (thereby, presumably, removing the aerosol problem). There are, incidentally, other scientific problems with the paper: notably that the model used was only suitable for small perturbations but the results are for rather large perturbations; and that the estimate of CO2 sensitivity was too low by a factor of about 3.

Probably the best summary of the time was the 1975 NAS/NRC report. This is a serious sober assessment of what was known at the time, and their conclusion was that they didn't know enough to make predictions. From the "Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations", we find that they said we should:

1. Establish National climatic research program
2. Establish Climatic data analysis program, and new facilities, and studies of impact of climate on man
3. Develope Climatic index monitoring program
4. Establish Climatic modelling and applications program, and exploration of possible future climates using coupled GCMs
5. Adoption and development of International climatic research program
6. Development of International Palaeoclimatic data network

Which is to say, they recommended more research, not action. Which was entirely appropriate to the state of the science at the time. In the last 30 years, of course, enormous progress has been made in the field of climate science.

Most of this post has been about the science of 30 years ago. From the point of view of todays science, and with extra data available:

1. The cooling trend from the 40's to the 70's now looks more like a slight interruption of an upward trend (e.g. here). It turns out that the northern hemisphere cooling was larger than the southern (consistent with the nowadays accepted interpreation that the cooling was largely caused by sulphate aerosols); at first, only NH records were available.
2. Sulphate aerosols have not increased as much as once feared (partly through efforts to combat acid rain); CO2 forcing is greater. Indeed IPCC projections of future temperature inceases went up from the 1995 SAR to the 2001 TAR because estimates of future sulphate aerosol levels were lowered (SPM).
3. Interpretations of future changes in the Earth's orbit have changed somewhat. It now seems likely (Loutre and Berger, Climatic Change, 46: (1-2) 61-90 2000) that the current interglacial, based purely on natural forcing, would last for an exceptionally long time: perhaps 50,000 years.

Finally, its clear that there were concerns, perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer review and editing process involved in scientific publication was sufficient to provide a sober view. This episode shows the scientific press in a very good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any such process in the popular press, then and now.

[Garcia Bronco]

The real question is NOT whether earth is warming up -- but what is causing it.

If it's true that other planets in our solar system are also heating up -- then the primary cause is outside earth, though human activities are probably making the problem worse.

that is the case on Mars.

[Bronco Bob]

that is the case on Mars.

What is the case on Mars?

[Garcia Bronco]

What is the case on Mars?

The caps are melting there.

[TheDave]

Peer review is only as good as the peers reviewing...and possible that they could all be wrong.

Exactly and if no one is reviewing it then it's called a guess. Again i'll go with peer reviewed science over guesses.

People used to think the world was flat. People used to think the Universe used to revolve around the earth. That smoking was goos for you and that leeches were a good form of medical treatment. Maybe not the formal review process as peer review, but accepted as facts.

and that's what we are talking about... The modern day review process. Not the assumptions of primitive cultures nor the "science" bought by the tobacco companies.

The truth is there isn't actual concrete proof that this man made. Signs point to it, but no direct cause and effect relationship. One of the axioms of research...and you should know...that just because there is a cause, doesn't mean it's THE cause. It could very well be something else. It could be the sun...it could be a natural trend...it could be a simple reduction in CO2 converting agents such as trees.

and unfortunately for you, the current science is saying that it is man made. Could it be wrong? Yes it could. Hell Dr. Bryson was the scientist quoted in the times article from the 70's that said a "new ice age" was coming. He was wrong then and according to current studies he is wrong now. Again Garcia, this is the opinion of a well decorated 87 year old retired scientist whos last foray into the peer review process was decades ago. Show me currentley published and accepted literature that shows other reasons for Global Warming and i will give it all the credit in the world. Continue to show me outdated opinion and i will treat it as such.

Further more...you don't know what work this guy is reviewing. He has 60 years experience...and you just want to toss it aside. Interesting.

and neither do you... yet oddly you value his opinion with the same weight as current research. Interesting.

[Bronco Bob]

The caps are melting there.

What does that have to do with the Earth?

[ChargerChuck]

This is a good synopsis for ole Mr. Bryson to chew on although reading his history he would never accept anthropogenic global warming...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
While Bryson doesn't think that global warming is man-made, he said there is some evidence of an effect from mankind, but not an effect of carbon dioxide.

For example, in Wisconsin in the last 100 years the biggest heating has been around Madison, Milwaukee and in the Southeast, where the cities are. There was a slight change in the Green Bay area, he said. The rest of the state shows no warming at all.

"The growth of cities makes it hotter, but that was true back in the 1930s, too," Bryson said. "Big cities were hotter than the surrounding countryside because you concentrate the traffic and you concentrate the home heating. And you modify the surface, you pave a lot of it."

Bryson didn't see Al Gore's movie about global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth."

"Don't make me throw up," he said. "It is not science. It is not true."

Not so fast, say scientists: Galen McKinley, an assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at UW-Madison disagrees with Bryson, whom she notes is a respected researcher and professor with a long history at the university.

"There are innumerable studies that show that the shoe fits for global warming, I guess you could say, and the human causation for it," McKinley said.

"We understand very well the basic process of the greenhouse effect, which is that we know that the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases the heat trapped by the atmosphere. You put one dollar more in the bank and you have one dollar more there tomorrow. It's a very clear feedback," she said.

Carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing over the industrial period, about 200 years, and can be observed very clearly through about 100 monitoring stations worldwide, McKinley said.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing consistently with the amount that humans are putting into the atmosphere, she said.

"We know humans are putting it there, we understand the basic mechanism and we know that the temperatures are warming. Many, many, many studies illustrate that both at the global scale and at the regional scale."

She cited the work of John Magnuson, a UW-Madison professor emeritus of limnology who is internationally known for his lake studies. Magnuson records the number of days of ice on the lakes in southern Wisconsin, including Mendota and Monona.

His research shows that over the course of the last 150 years, the average has gone from about four months of ice cover to more like 2.5 months, McKinley said.

Bryson would say that it is due to coming out of an Ice Age, McKinley notes, "but the rate of change that we are seeing on the planet is inconsistent with changes in the past that have been due to an Ice Age."

The huge changes in temperature that scientists are seeing are happening much faster than have ever been observed in the past due to the change from an Ice Age phase to a non-Ice Age phase, she said.

"We know that humans are putting CO2 into the atmosphere at an incredibly fast rate, much, much faster than any natural process has done it in the last at least 400,000 years and probably more like millions of years."

The rate of change is consistent with human activity, she said. That is why so many major scientific societies are concerned about global warming, she added.

The release in February of the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) put the likelihood that human beings are the cause of global warming at 90 percent. It noted that temperatures will continue to climb for decades, that heat waves and floods will become more frequent and that the last time the Arctic and the Antarctic were warmer than they are today for an extended period -- before the start of the last Ice Age -- global sea levels were at least thirteen feet higher.

IPCC, founded in 1988, is the joint venture of the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization. Every four or five years, it conducts an exhaustive survey of the available data and issues a multivolume assessment of the state of the climate. IPCC's reports are vetted by thousands of scientists and the organization's 190-plus participating governments.

"My views are very similar to those expressed by IPCC," said Steve Vavrus, an associate scientist at the UW-Madison Center for Climatic Research.

"Reid Bryson maintains his long-standing opinions on anthropogenic climate change, and he's certainly entitled to them," Vavrus said.

"The scientific process is never 100 percent sure and it could be proven wrong," McKinley added.

"But I would say that the chances of that based on all of the best information at this current time are incredibly slim. And even though that possibility is out there, it would be irresponsible of us as a society not to act based on the best scientific information we have at the moment, which is that humans are causing the warming of the planet," she said.

"If you saw smoke in your house, it would be irresponsible not to get your family out, right?"

[Bronco Bob]

Basically the debate over man caused Global Warming is over and all we
have left now is a few ostriches with their heads buried in the sand.

[Garcia Bronco]

Basically the debate over man caused Global Warming is over and all we
have left now is a few ostriches with their heads buried in the sand.

The debate isn't over...it's not a fact. Never has been a fact and propbably never will be a fact. There isn't enough data over a long enough period of time to make a conclusion one way or the other.

[Garcia Bronco]

What does that have to do with the Earth?

If it's happening here and there....could mean that there is another force at play.

[TheDave]

The debate isn't over...it's not a fact. Never has been a fact and propbably never will be a fact. There isn't enough data over a long enough period of time to make a conclusion one way or the other.

Best minds in the world working on this subject say it's 90% that we are the cause... But hold on, Garcia has said otherwise ::)

[Spider]

well since it a natural thing and man isnt contributing to it ..... I might as well burn some old 18 wheeler tires today in the pit .............

[Garcia Bronco]

Best minds in the world working on this subject say it's 90% that we are the cause... But hold on, Garcia has said otherwise ::)

The best minds in the world...whom ever they be..can be wrong.

Btw...76.5 percent of all statistics are made up on the spot.

[Garcia Bronco]

well since it a natural thing and man isnt contributing to it ..... I might as well burn some old 18 wheeler tires today in the pit .............

It very well can be a natural trend. We just don't have enough observed data.

[Spider]

It very well can be a natural trend. We just don't have enough observed data.
so it would be ok to burn tires ?

if not how about condoms ? can I burn those ? hell who am I kidding, I have 6 kids , never owned a condom in my life ;D

[Garcia Bronco]

so it would be ok to burn tires ?

if not how about condoms ? can I burn those ? hell who am I kidding, I have 6 kids , never owned a condom in my life ;D

I mean if you have to....and please...for all of our sakes.....start wearing rain coat.

[Spider]

I mean if you have to....and please...for all of our sakes.....start wearing rain coat.

why ?

[24champ]

The debate isn't over...it's not a fact. Never has been a fact and propbably never will be a fact. There isn't enough data over a long enough period of time to make a conclusion one way or the other.

That's why I don't buy the global warming BS, because it isn't conclusive.

[Garcia Bronco]

why ?

So there are no more liddle Spida's. :D

[Bronco_Beerslug]

It very well can be a natural trend. We just don't have enough observed data.Ah, Garcia is a scientist today or did he find one someone that doesn't agree with the overwhelming majority of some of the brightest minds in the world?

[Garcia Bronco]

Ah, Garcia is a scientist today or did he find one someone that doesn't agree with the overwhelming majority of the brightest minds in the world?

An overwhlming majority does not agree...to make that claim you would have to know the group of the "brightest minds"...then you would have to take that group and poll them on what they believe...since this hasn't happened...you and others spouting those phrases are nothing more than the blind leading the blind. There are way to many confounding variables to claim that the globe warming is caused by man. First and foremost..we have not been accurately recording temperatures, atmosphere, and weather for a long enough period of time to accurately depict what is happening out there.

Research Axiom: Just because there is a cause, that does not mean it's THE cause. Correlation does not imply causation.

and right now..all you can really say is that there is a correlation, and all these "brightest minds" know that. But they need grant money....so go figure it out because at the end of the day we are talking about their means to get paid.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

An overwhlming majority does not agree....That right there shows your ignorance rendering the rest of your post moot. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists throughout the world do indeed agree now that global warming has a 90% chance of being caused by man.

[Garcia Bronco]

That right there shows your ignorance rendering the rest of your post moot. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists throughout the world do indeed agree now that global warming has a 90% chance of being caused by man.

No they don't. And 72.7 of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Now put down the People Magazine and you just might learn something here today.

[TheDave]

and right now..all you can really say is that there is a correlation, and all these "brightest minds" know that. But they need grant money....so go figure it out because at the end of the day we are talking about their means to get paid.

Either you ave taken over for mock as the resedent alchoholic or you are trolling your own board...

Are you seriously tryoing to say that there is no money on the other side of the argument?

Exxon?
BP?
General Motors?
American Electric?

You don't suppose any of them might want the Global Warming studies to go the other direction... :rofl:

[Garcia Bronco]

Either you ave taken over for mock as the resedent alchoholic or you are trolling your own board...

Are you seriously tryoing to say that there is no money on the other side of the argument?

Exxon?
BP?
General Motors?
American Electric?

You don't suppose any of them might want the Global Warming studies to go the other direction... :rofl:

Why would they? they don't care...they've already been able to get corn into our gas making it less efficent and cost more...I think they're doing just fine.

[TheDave]

Why would they? they don't care...they've already been able to get corn into our gas making it less efficent and cost more...I think they're doing just fine.

Fair enough... you're trolling

[Garcia Bronco]

Fair enough... you're trolling

What ever the hell that means. It's a serious dicussion. We are talking about correlations and correlation does not imply causation.

[TheDave]

What ever the hell that means. It's a serious dicussion. We are talking about correlations and correlation does not imply causation.


What ever you say boss... have fun.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

No they don't. And 72.7 of all statistics are made up on the spot. Including your little diddy?

Now put down the People Magazine and you just might learn something here today.I'm pretty sure there aren't very many things you could teach me including how to treat women, how to assess facts and information and how to read statistics.

[24champ]

An overwhlming majority does not agree...to make that claim you would have to know the group of the "brightest minds"...then you would have to take that group and poll them on what they believe...since this hasn't happened...you and others spouting those phrases are nothing more than the blind leading the blind. There are way to many confounding variables to claim that the globe warming is caused by man. First and foremost..we have not been accurately recording temperatures, atmosphere, and weather for a long enough period of time to accurately depict what is happening out there.

Research Axiom: Just because there is a cause, that does not mean it's THE cause. Correlation does not imply causation.

and right now..all you can really say is that there is a correlation, and all these "brightest minds" know that. But they need grant money....so go figure it out because at the end of the day we are talking about their means to get paid.

Yeah like the sun would have NOTHING do with climate change.:giggle:

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Yeah like the sun would have NOTHING do with climate change.:giggle:It does but if you would have read the world scientists report on global warming you would know more precisely the impact it has.

[Garcia Bronco]

Including your little diddy?
I'm pretty sure there aren't very many things .....how to assess facts and information and how to read statistics.

Apparently you are wrong...but you 60's kids have never really been the sharpest knives in the drawer.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Apparently you are wrong...but you 60's kids have never really been the sharpest knives in the drawer.How so? Because you say so?

[Garcia Bronco]

Apparently you are wrong...but you 60's kids have never really been the sharpest knives in the drawer.

You also have to remember too....part of earning my degree was a complete study in research methods...also including statistics and research to obtain...tada...Grants.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

You also have to remember too....part of earning my degree was a complete study in research methods...also including statistics and research to obtain...tada...Grants.I would have guessed your major as trolling.

[Bronco Bob]

The debate isn't over...

Yes, it is. All there is left on the other side is the ostriches.

[Bronco Bob]

If it's happening here and there....could mean that there is another force at play.

Do you even understand anything about Mars? Are you aware the ice caps
on Mars aren't even water, they are frozen CO2. And they they melt away
every summer on Mars and freeze over again the next winter. Are you aware
that the icecaps on Earth are frozen H2O and that they have remained
permanent for thousands of years and have only recently started to melt
significantly? Now tell me again how the ice caps are Mars relate to the
ice caps on Earth and how what is happening on Mars relates to what is
happening on Earth.

[Bronco Bob]

That's why I don't buy the global warming BS, because it isn't conclusive.

Neither is the theory of gravity. Do you plan on jumping off a roof to test it?

[Bronco Bob]

Yeah like the sun would have NOTHING do with climate change.:giggle:

The sun has nothing to do with our current climate change because the sun
hasn't changed that much in the last 150 years.

[spdirty]

tell ya what, the global warming torched my ass today. Sure wish W would turn it down a little bit.

[24champ]

The sun has nothing to do with our current climate change because the sun
hasn't changed that much in the last 150 years.

Even Beerslug knows that the Sun has an effect on the earth's climate.:spit:


The Sun isn't just a piece of light during the day BOB, the Sun actually has seasons, or cycles of activity and relative inactivity. This does affect our weather. I would like for you to show me where the Sun does not affect our weather and that the sun has remained the same for 150 years.The sun is the driving force behind weather whether you like it or not.

[Bronco Bob]

Even Beerslug knows that the Sun has an effect on the earth's climate.:spit:


The Sun isn't just a piece of light during the day BOB, the Sun actually has seasons, or cycles of activity and relative inactivity. This does affect our weather. I would like for you to show me where the Sun does not affect our weather and that the sun has remained the same for 150 years.The sun is the driving force behind weather whether you like it or not.

In a recent paper in Geophysical Research Letters, Scafetta & West (S&W) estimate that as much as 25-35% of the global warming in the 1980-2000 period can be attributed changes in the solar output. They used some crude estimates of 'climate sensitivity' and estimates of Total Solar Irradiance (TSI) to calculate temperature signal (in form of anomalies). They also argue that their estimate, which is based on statistical models only, has a major advantage over physically based considerations (theoretical models), because the latter would require a perfect knowledge about the underlying physical and chemical mechanisms.

In their paper, they combine Lean et al (1995) proxy data for the TSI with recent satellite TSI composites from either Willson & Mordvinov (2003) [which contains a trend] and of Fröhlich & Lean (1998) [data from the same source, but the analysis doesn't contain a trend, henceforth referred to as 'FL98']. From 1980 and afterwards, they see a warming associated with solar forcing, even when basing their calculations on the FL98 data. The fact that the FL98 data doesn't contain any trend makes this finding seem a bit odd. Several independent indices on solar activity – which are direct modern measurement rather than estimations - indicate that there has been no trend in the level of solar activity since 1950s.

But, S&W have assumed a lagged response (which they state is tS4~4.3 years), so that the increase prior to 1980 seems to have a delayed effect on the temperature. The delayed action is a property of the climate system, which also affects greenhouse gases, and is caused by the oceans which act as a flywheel due to their great heat capacity and thermal inertia. The oceans thus cause a planetary imbalance. When the forcing levels off, the additional response is expected to taper off as a decaying function of time. In contrast, the global mean temperature, however, has increased at a fairly steady rate (Fig. 1). The big problem is to explain a lag of more than 30 years when direct measurements of quantities (galactic cosmic rays, 10.7 cm solar radio, magnetic index, level of sunspot numbers, solar cycle lengths) do not indicate any trend in the solar activity since the 1950s.


In order to shed light on these inconsistencies, we need to look more closely at the methods and results in the GRL paper. The S&W temperature signal, when closely scrutinised starts at the 0K anomaly-level in 1900, well above the level of the observed 1900 temperature anomalies, which lie in the range -3K < T < -1K. In 1940, their temperature [anomaly] reconstruction intercepts the temperature axis near 0.12K, which is slightly higher than the GISS-curve suggests. The S&W temperature peaks at 0.3K in 1960, and diverge significantly from the observations. By not plotting the curves on the same graph, the reader may easily get the wrong impression that the construction follows the observations fairly closely. The differences between the curves have not been discussed in the paper, nor the time difference for when the curves indicate maxima (global mean temperature peaks in 1945, while the estimated solar temperature signal peaks in 1960). Hence, the decrease in global temperature in the period 1945 - 1960 is inconsistent with the continued rise in the calculated solar temperature signal.

Another more serious weakness is a flawed approach to obtain their 'climate sensitivity', and especially so for 'Zeq' in their Equation 4. They assume a linear relationship between the response and the forcing Zeq=288K/1365Wm-2. For one thing, the energy balance between radiative forcing and temperature response gives a non-linear relation between the forcing, F, and temperature to the fourth power, T4 (the Stefan-Boltzmann law). This is standard textbook climate physics as well as well-known physics. However, there is an additional shortcoming due to the fact that the equilibrium temperature is also affected by the ratio of the Earth's geometrical cross-section to its surface area as well as how much is reflected, the planetary albedo (A). The textbook formulae for a simple radiative balance model is:

F (1-A)/4 = s T4, where 's' here is the Boltzmann constant (~5.67 x 10-8 J/s m2K4).

('=' moved after Scafetta pointed out this error. )

S&W's sun-climate sensitivity (Zeq =0.21K/Wm-2), on which the given solar influence estimates predominantly depend, is thus based solely on a very crude calculation that contradicts the knowledge of climate physics. The "equilibrium" sensitivity of the global surface temperature to solar irradiance variations, which is calculated simply by dividing the absolute temperature on the earth's surface (288K) by the solar constant (1365Wm-2), is based on the assumption that the climate response is linear in the whole temperature band starting at the zero point. This assumption is far from being true. S&W argue further that this sensitivity does not only represent the direct solar forcing, but includes all the feedback mechanisms. It is well known, that these feedbacks are highly non-linear. Let's just mention the ice-albedo feedback, which is very different at (hypothetically) e.g. 100K surface temperature with probably 'snowball earth' and at 300K with no ice at all. In their formula for the calculation of the sun-related temperature change, the long-term changes are determined by Zeq, while their 'climate transfer sensitivity to slow secular solar variations' (ZS4) is only used to correct for a time-lag. The reason for this remains unclear.

In order to calculate the terrestrial response to more ephemeral solar variations, S&W introduce another type of 'climate sensitivity' which they calculate separately for each of two components representing frequency ranges 7.3-14.7 and 14.7-29.3 year ranges respectively. They take the ratios of the amplitude of band-passed filtered global temperatures to similarly band-passed filtered solar signal as the estimate for the 'climate sensitivity'. This is a very unusual way of doing it, but S&W argue that similar approach has been used in another study. However, it's not as simple as that calculating the climate senstivity (see here, here, here, and here). Hence, there are serious weaknesses regarding how the 'climate sensitivities' for the 11-year and the 22-year signals were estimated. For linear systems, different frequency bands may be associated with different forcings having different time scales, but chaotic systems and systems with convoluted response are usually characterised with broad power spectra. Furthermore, it's easy to show that band-pass filtering of two unrelated series of random values can produce a range of different values for the ratio of their amplitudes just by chance (Fig. 2). As an aside, it is also easy to get an apparent coherence between two band-pass filtered stochastic series of finite extent which are unrelated by definition - a common weakness in many studies on solar-terrestrial climate connection. There is little doubt that the analysis involved noisy data.

The fact that there is poor correspondence between the individual amplitudes of the band-passed filtered signals is another sign indicating that the fluctuations associated with a frequency band in temperature is not necessarily related to solar variability. In fact, the 7.3-14.7 and 14.7-29.3 frequency bands may contain contributions from El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), although the time scale of ENSO is from 3-8 years. The fact that the amplitude of the events vary from time to time implies slower variations, just like modulations of the sunspot number has led to the proposition of the Gleissberg cycles (80-90 years). There is also volcanic activity, and the last major eruption in 1982 and 1991 are almost 10 years apart, and may contribute to the variance in the 7.3-14.7 year frequency range. S&W argue that their method eliminates influences of ENSO and volcanoes because their calculated sensitivity in the higher frequency band is similar to the one derived by Douglass and Clader (2002) by regression analysis (0.11 K/Wm-2). This conclusion is not valid. Having signals of different frequencies in the 7-15 years band, the amplitude of the signal in the higher band may correspond roughly to the 11-year signal by accident, but that doesn't mean that there are no other influences.

S&W combined two different types of data, and it is well-known that such combinations in themselves may introduces spurious trends. The paper does not address this question.

From regression analysis cited by the authors (Douglass and Clader 2002, White et al. 1997), it seems possible that the sensitivity of global surface temperature to variations of total solar irradiance might be about 0.1K/Wm-2. S&W do not present any convincing result that would point to noticeably higher sensitivities to long-term variations. Their higher values are based on unrealistic assumptions. If they would use a more realistic climate transfer sensitivity of 0.11K/Wm-2, or even somewhat higher (0.12 or 0.13) for the long-term, and use trends instead of smooth curve points, they would end up with solar contributions of 10% or less for 1950-2000 and near 0% and about 10% in 1980-2000 using the PMOD and ACRIM data, respectively.

[24champ]

where is the link?

[Bronco Bob]

where is the link?

Why do you need a link? Is there something you dispute in what I posted?
Or are you just planning on turning this into a shoot the messenger game?

[24champ]

Why do you need a link? Is there something you dispute in what I posted?
Or are you just planning on turning this into a shoot the messenger game?

I'd like to know the source of the article, everyone on here posts links to their articles even LABF...unless they have something to hide.

[Bronco Bob]

I'd like to know the source of the article, everyone on here posts links to their articles even LABF...unless they have something to hide.

Go for it. Just don't give me any crap about how you don't like the website.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/03/solar-variability-statistics-vs-physics-2nd-round/

[24champ]

Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries.

"One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age," NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency's Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated." With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets.

NASA's findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming.

"Mars has global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth -- can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."

The sun's increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we're seeing, says the celebrated scientist, and this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of C02 emissions.

"It is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth's oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations."

Dr. Abdussamatov goes further, debunking the very notion of a greenhouse effect. "Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated," he maintains. "Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."

The real news from Saint Petersburg -- demonstrated by cooling that is occurring on the upper layers of the world's oceans -- is that Earth has hit its temperature ceiling. Solar irradiance has begun to fall, ushering in a protracted cooling period beginning in 2012 to 2015. The depth of the decline in solar irradiance reaching Earth will occur around 2040, and "will inevitably lead to a deep freeze around 2055-60" lasting some 50 years, after which temperatures will go up again.

Because of the scientific significance of this period of global cooling that we're about to enter, the Russian and Ukrainian space agencies, under Dr. Abdussamatov's leadership, have launched a joint project to determine the time and extent of the global cooling at mid-century. The project, dubbed Astrometry and given priority space-experiment status on the Russian portion of the International Space Station, will marshal the resources of spacecraft manufacturer Energia, several Russian research and production centers, and the main observatory of Ukraine's Academy of Sciences. By late next year, scientific equipment will have been installed in a space-station module and by early 2009, Dr. Abdussamatov's space team will be conducting a regular survey of the sun.

With the data, the project will help mankind cope with a century of falling temperatures, during which we will enter a mini ice age.

"There is no need for the Kyoto Protocol now. It does not have to come into force until at least 100 years from no w," Dr. Abdussamatov concluded. "A global freeze will come about regardless of whether or not industrialized countries put a cap on their greenhouse- gas emissions."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=edae9952-3c3e-47ba-913f-7359a5c7f723&k=0

Meanwhile I will just sip on some margaritas and enjoy the warm weather before the cooling period in 2015. 8')

[Bronco Bob]

Digital Kayak

As support for action on climate change continues to grow, some influential people are carefully cultivating what they call "climate change skepticism" in order to make meaningful progress on the environment politically impossible.

These climate change "deniers", as an impatient public in the mood for change has started calling them, fall into three categories: those that maintain climate change is not happening, those that say it is not our fault, and those that say there's nothing we can do about it.

Actually, these are not really categories. They're more like stages that fit neatly into the "denial, anger, acceptance" model.

The National Post's Lorne Gunter was in the first stage a mere five years ago. In 2002 he wrote Five things every Canadian should know about Kyoto, starting with "The Earth isn't warming".

Then he hedged his bets by following up with number two ("If the Earth is warming, it is not necessarily a bad thing") and three ("Even if warming is real, there's a good chance humans are not the cause").

Mr. Gunter clearly knows his own mind, because his article of 2002 neatly predicted where he would stand now, in 2007: global warming is real. But it's not our fault.


Bright Sun. Warm Earth. Bad Article.

Lorne Gunter's 'Bright sun, warm Earth. Coincidence?' article from March 12, published in the National Post, is a prime example of shoddily researched agenda-pushing in the guise of journalism.

He starts by saying that Mars, Jupiter, Neptune's moon Triton and Pluto are all warming, even though he hasn't left his "SUV idling on any of those planets or moons."

Is there something all these heavenly bodies have in common? Some one thing they all share that could be causing them to warm in unison?

Hmmm, is there some giant, self-luminous ball of burning gas with a mass more than 300,000 times that of Earth and a core temperature of more than 20-million degrees Celsius, that for the past century or more has been unusually active and powerful? Is there something like that around which they all revolve that could be causing this multi-globe warming? Naw!

In a shaky appeal to common sense - that part of the brain that says the earth is flat - Mr. Gunter asks a series of rhetorical questions about which times of day and months of the year are warmest.

The sunny ones, of course, and this is enough evidence for Mr. Gunter to decide that climate change is a fraud perpetrated by overheated climatologists and an even more overheated sun.

I could respond with another series of rhetorical questions involving, say, the temperatures inside and outside of greenhouses, or the amount one sweats when wearing jeans on the beach versus wearing a thong, but the atmosphere is not beach wear and you are not a moron. So let's quickly examine the facts instead.

It would take too long to examine all of the planetary bodies that Mr. Gunter refers to, so I'll pick two at random: one that you may know a fair bit about, Mars, and one which no one knows much about at all, Triton, the largest moon of Neptune.

His claim about Triton's warming seem to be based on a study published in Nature in 1998. The study found that Triton had warmed from around -236 degrees Celsius to a balmy -234 degrees Celsius in the nine years since the Voyager space probe had visited it in 1989.

Why? The likely explanation according to the report's lead researcher is because Triton "is approaching an extreme southern summer, a season that occurs every few hundred years."

If a summer that occurs every few hundred years seems remarkable, consider that Neptune takes 165 years to orbit the sun. Triton was discovered in 1846, which means we have not yet observed the behaviour of the moon over a full orbit of the planet it circles.

Is it wise to reject climate change on Earth because of the climactic variations of a mysterious moon of another planet? Is it ethical to tell the public that Triton has "heated up" without informing us of the likely reason for the warming according to a leading researcher on the subject?


Mars 1, Propaganda 0.

Lawrence Solomon, who also writes for the National Post, agrees with Mr. Gunter that an increase in solar activity is to blame for global warming. "Global warming extends to Mars," he wrote in early February 2007, "where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries."

The climate of Mars was first measured by the Viking space probes launched by NASA in 1975, which means that Mr. Solomon, like the rest of us, has no hard evidence as to what the Martian climate was like in past centuries.

He must instead rely on what current observations tell us about the Martian past, and what observed trends and well-understood mechanisms like planetary orbits tell us about the likely Martian future.

That is, he must rely on scientists. What do scientists say about melting Martian ice caps?

Global warming on Mars?, an article by Steinn Sigurosson of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Pennsylvania State University, explains the Martian "'great' summers and winters" which occur "on time scales of tens of thousands of years" as a result of Mars' eccentric orbit. (The following is slightly edited to remove hyperlinks):

Recently, there have been some suggestions that "global warming" has been observed on Mars. These are based on observations of regional change around the South Polar Cap, but seem to have been extended into a "global" change, and used by some to infer an external common mechanism for global warming on Earth and Mars. But this is incorrect reasoning and based on faulty understanding of the data.

[...]

There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth.

Misplaced Arguments from Authority

Mr. Gunter then turns to a favourite card in the climate change denier hand, the argument from authority:

Habibullah Abdussamatov of the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St. Petersburg, Sami Solanki of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Solar and Stellar Physics Division of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a host of the rest of the world's leading solar scientists are all convinced that the warming of recent years is not unusual and that nearly all the warming in the past 150 years can be attributed to the sun.

The inclusion of Pulkovo Observatory's Abdussamatov, who plays a central role in Mr. Solomon's article (climate change deniers with credentials are a rare breed) seems honest enough, but the use of Sami Khan Solanki is particularly instructive when it comes to the tactics of climate change denial.

Dr. Solanki is probably in Mr. Gunter's article for saying in 2004 that "the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself."

How Strongly Does the Sun Influence the Global Climate?, a report released by the Max Planck Society and which is based in part on Dr. Solanki's work, also says, "Since the middle of the last century, the Sun is in a phase of unusually high activity, as indicated by frequent occurrences of sunspots, gas eruptions, and radiation storms."

This sounds a lot like Mr. Gunter. But the report's conclusion features a quote from a prominent scientist: "according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth's temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide."

The prominent scientist quoted is Dr. Solanki.

As if misrepresenting Dr. Solanki weren't enough, Mr. Gunter then resorts to weasel words by saying that in addition to the scientists he says share his views, "a host of the rest of the world's leading solar scientists" say that "nearly all the warming in the past 150 years can be attributed to the sun."

A host is defined as "a multitude or great number", "an army". Sounds like plenty. But on Wikipedia's list of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming that have "a record of scholarship in the broad area of natural sciences," only sixteen scientists are listed that blame natural causes more than human activity for rising temperatures. Many of these sixteen blame volcanoes, water vapour, and ocean currents instead of or in addition to solar activity for the temperature increase.

Claim Dismissed

So what about the basic claim of Mr. Gunter's article and the others like it, which is that a brighter sun is responsible for a warmer Earth?

It's true that the sun is in a period of increased activity. Some researchers believe the level is the highest it's been in 8000 years, but others have demonstrated (PDF) that "the radiocarbon record reveals several periods during past centuries in which the strength of the magnetic field in the solar wind was similar to, or even higher than, that of today."

Regardless, this increased activity is responsible for a portion of global warming. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report accounts for this portion, calculating that human activity is a warming force of about 1.6 watts per square meter, while increased solar activity is responsible for a warming force of about 0.12 watts per square meter.

In non-technical terms, this means that human activity has more than ten times the impact on Earth's climate than the increased activity of the sun.

But these are facts - cold, hard, unreassuring facts that sink to the bottom of the National Post under the weight of advertiser pressure and ideological certainty, finally dropping off the margins altogether.

Eventually, though, even the most committed ideologues are forced to face the facts. That's when the third stage of climate change denial commences, the part where it is too late to do anything about it so we might as well stop trying.

Let's not let things get that far.

http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=536

[24champ]

http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/images/global_temp2.jpg

Seems like one big cycle to me...

[SoCalBronco]

http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/images/global_temp2.jpg

Seems like one big cycle to me...

It looks to me that the Earth just cant handle JMFJ.

[epicSocialism4tw]

An overwhlming majority does not agree...to make that claim you would have to know the group of the "brightest minds"...then you would have to take that group and poll them on what they believe...since this hasn't happened...you and others spouting those phrases are nothing more than the blind leading the blind. There are way to many confounding variables to claim that the globe warming is caused by man. First and foremost..we have not been accurately recording temperatures, atmosphere, and weather for a long enough period of time to accurately depict what is happening out there.

Research Axiom: Just because there is a cause, that does not mean it's THE cause. Correlation does not imply causation.

and right now..all you can really say is that there is a correlation, and all these "brightest minds" know that. But they need grant money....so go figure it out because at the end of the day we are talking about their means to get paid.

One of the biggest problems in our society today is that the holy trinity of "science", mass media, and money are ruling the ignorant masses.

By "science", I mean the idea that every piece of information that is generated through some form of the scientific method is taken as gospel. It is not questioned by Joe Schmoe. "Science" is this fanciful idea of an all-powerful source of unquestionable information. Even the opinions of scientists are accepted without scrutiny or measured cognition by the ignorant masses. "Science" is some nebulus mass of all-powerful ideas to these simpletons.

[Bronco Bob]

http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/images/global_temp2.jpg

Seems like one big cycle to me...

And this graph came from where? You seemed pretty insistant on links,
yet provided no info as to where this graph came from. For all I know you
made this up on your own.

[Garcia Bronco]

One of the biggest problems in our society today is that the holy trinity of "science", mass media, and money are ruling the ignorant masses.

By "science", I mean the idea that every piece of information that is generated through some form of the scientific method is taken as gospel. It is not questioned by Joe Schmoe. "Science" is this fanciful idea of an all-powerful source of unquestionable information. Even the opinions of scientists are accepted without scrutiny or measured cognition by the ignorant masses. "Science" is some nebulus mass of all-powerful ideas to these simpletons.


Absolutely. There are four base sciences and most people can't name them...nor put them in order of discipline.

[Garcia Bronco]

And this graph came from where? You seemed pretty insistant on links,
yet provided no info as to where this graph came from. For all I know you
made this up on your own.

right click the picture and select properties and you see where the image cam from.

[Bronco Bob]

right click the picture and select properties and you see where the image cam from.

404
The page you are looking for
has been moved or never existed.
Return to SEED home …

[24champ]

And this graph came from where? You seemed pretty insistant on links,
yet provided no info as to where this graph came from. For all I know you
made this up on your own.

http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/change.htm


knock yourself out.:wave:

[Bronco Bob]

http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/climate_change/change.htm


knock yourself out.:wave:

Go to the next page. Notice the CO2 level at the far right of the graph.
And you still insist man isn't putting a lot more CO2 into the air than is
natural?

[24champ]

Go to the next page. Notice the CO2 level at the far right of the graph.
And you still insist man isn't putting a lot more CO2 into the air than is
natural?

Never said Man wasn't putting more CO2 in the air, in fact I don't know who on this thread disputes that. I said man isn't the sole and major reason for climate change.

[Garcia Bronco]

Go to the next page. Notice the CO2 level at the far right of the graph.
And you still insist man isn't putting a lot more CO2 into the air than is
natural?

Who knows...what converts CO2 into O2? Trees. Further more....those readings from more than 50 years ago are estimates. They might not even be right. No one was alive to record those readings.

[broncos_mtnman]

Best minds in the world working on this subject say it's 90% that we are the cause... But hold on, Garcia has said otherwise ::)

Well, I'm 90% sure you're an idiot.

I guess that makes it a "fact."

Hilarious!

[broncos_mtnman]

Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=c5e16731-3c64-481c-9a36-d702baea2a42)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics. The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg. A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report. Please stay tuned to this website, as this new government report is set to redefine the current climate debate.
_____________________________

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!"

Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed his view of man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic. Wiskel was once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to build a “Kyoto house” in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in 1997. Wiskel wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol’s goals were achievable by people making small changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind Kyoto, Wiskel reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong skeptic, that he recently wrote a book titled “The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the Myth of Global Warming.”

Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning scientists, recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change. ""Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for the Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. “I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause.

Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made climate change to a skeptic.

Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife, recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now calls global warming fears "poppycock."

Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland, N.Z., also converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. “At first I accepted that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to dangerous ‘global warming,’ But with time and with the results of research, I formed the view that, although it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are drivers of significant climate variation.”

Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department of Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare of the 1970’s ( See Time Magazine’s 1974 article “Another Ice Age” citing Bryson: & see Newsweek’s 1975 article “The Cooling World” citing Bryson) has now converted into a leading global warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky is falling" man-made global warming fears.

Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a man-made global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting climate research. Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, “I started as a anthropogenic global warming believer, then I read the [UN’s IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the research of prominent skeptics.” “After that, I changed my mind,” Labohn explained.

Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa converted from believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. “I taught my students that CO2 was the prime driver of climate change,” Patterson wrote on April 30, 2007. Patterson said his “conversion” happened following his research on “the nature of paleo-commercial fish populations in the NE Pacific.”

Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate change in the form of global cooling in the 1970’s all the way to converting to a skeptic of current predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. “At the beginning of the 1970s I believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on the effects of industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a history book on this pollution,” Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. “With the advent of man-made warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a lot of experience with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in accepting the reliability of ice core CO2 studies,” Jaworowski added.

Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of Earth Sciences at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change after further examining the evidence. “I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of climate disaster. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of natural causes such as changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed my views on the Kyoto protocol,” Clark explained.

Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of University of Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific studies of climate history. “I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,” Veizer wrote on April 30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was leading to a climate catastrophe. “The final conversion came when I realized that the solar/cosmic ray connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time scales, than did the CO2 scenario,” Veizer wrote.

[Spider]

Well, I'm 90% sure you're an idiot.

I guess that makes it a "fact."

Hilarious!

LOL you calling someone an Idiot ..... thats rich Hilarious!

[TheDave]

Well, I'm 90% sure you're an idiot.

I guess that makes it a "fact."

Hilarious!

Wow... awesome argument.

[broncos_mtnman]

Wow... awesome argument.

Obviously, neither you or the previous poster understand sarcasm.

I made a bad arguement like the "idiot" to show the 90% "reason" for believing the glo-BULL warming hype is just as weak.

By the way, science PROVES theories. You don't vote on them based on personal bias'.

[W*GS]

I don't doubt one could dredge up a scientist or two that believes there's no link between smoking and lung cancer, too.

[TheDave]

Obviously, neither you or the previous poster understand sarcasm.

I made a bad arguement like the "idiot" to show the 90% "reason" for believing the glo-BULL warming hype is just as weak.

By the way, science PROVES theories. You don't vote on them based on personal bias'.

What are you talking about? Science does not "prove" theory. It is tested repeatedly under different circumstances to create a consensus. That's what we have now. Sure, scientific theories do occasionally become law but considering how rarely that happens I wouldn't expect to see it in our life time... on any subject.

Again since reading comprehension seems to be alluding you... Could the current global warming theory be proven false . Yes it could. But right now the real "peer reviewed" science is pointing to it being man made. You can choose to be as ignorant as you want, just stop pretending the facts are supporting your opinion.

[TheDave]

I don't doubt one could pay a scientist or two to believe there's no link between smoking and lung cancer, too.

Fixed it for you...

[Spider]

Obviously, neither you or the previous poster understand sarcasm.

I made a bad arguement like the "idiot" to show the 90% "reason" for believing the glo-BULL warming hype is just as weak.

By the way, science PROVES theories. You don't vote on them based on personal bias'.

you make this shít up as you go dont you ?

[Bronco Bob]

Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist who has authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and received numerous scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical Society of the United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006. Allegre, who was one of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now says the cause of climate change is "unknown" and accused the “prophets of doom of global warming” of being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless protesting has become a very lucrative business for some people!"

Con Allègre, ma non troppo
Filed under:

* Climate Science
* Arctic and Antarctic

— group @ 8:18 am

Guest Commentary by Georg Hoffmann (LSCE)

Climate change denial is not necessarily a speciality of Washington DC think tanks - sometimes it can also be found in old Europe. Right now there is a little media storm passing by in France evoked by an article from Claude Allègre in L’Express. Who is Claude Allègre? He is one of the most decorated french geophysicists specializing in geochemistry and the use of paleomagnetism. Being a longtime friend of the former prime minister, Lionel Jospin, he even became Minister of Education and Research in the former Socialist government. He still plays an active role within the Socialist party and though he has never published anything directly related to anthropogenic climate change, one would assume that he has some understanding of the scientific matter. But this assumption would be wrong.

In the French weekly journal l’Express he exposed his “sceptical” views in an article entitled “The snows of Kilimanjaro”. In the short editorial, he somehow became lost when following Ernest Hemingway to East Africa. Allègre mentions two scientific examples to demonstrate that there is something fundamentally wrong in the IPCC statements on the reality of climate change. First, he commented on the disappearing glaciers of the Kilimanjaro, sometimes treated as the “Panda” of anthropogenic climate change. Citing a "Nature" study (which was in fact published in Science) by Pierre Sepulchre and colleagues from my laboratory, he claimed that this modelling study demonstrated that Kilimanjaro’s glaciers are controlled by tectonic activity. In fact, the article describes the impact of tectonics of the East African Highlands on Indian ocean moisture transport ---- on a time scale of millions of years! This confuses glacier variability over the last ~100 years with rainfall trends extending back to the time of the early hominids (such as Lucy).

In fact, there are good reasons to believe that the situation on the Kilimanjaro is a bit more complicated than a simple “atmosphere gets warmer/ glaciers are melting” equation (for instance, see this previous post on tropical glacier retreat). Furthermore, the real link to climate change does not come from the retreat of one single tropical glacier, but from the fact that, to my knowledge, all studied tropical glaciers have retreated over the 20th century, and the retreat rates have generally increased in recent decades.

Allègre's misunderstanding was immediately followed by another one. Citing a recent study on relatively stable Antarctic snowfall over the last 30 years (Monaghan et al, 2006, discussed here) , he highlighted what he thought was a clear contradiction to future climate simulations of global circulation models (melting of the Antarctic ice sheet). However, that's not what they predict. All models predict a comparably stable Antarctic ice sheet for the 21th century in which comparably moderate temperature changes in Antarctica are compensated by slight increase in snowfall. The Monaghan et al study does not contradict these model scenarios.

The French climate research community was of course not very pleased about this short sequence of misrepresentations and personal attacks (“les Cassandres”) and corrected Allègre in an open letter published here on the website of the Institute Pierre Simon Laplace (which includes links to the ongoing back and forth, for those that speak French).

Curiously enough, twenty years ago Allègre wrote in “Clés pour la géologie", (éd. Belin/France Culture):

"En brûlant des combustibles fossiles, l'homme a augmenté le taux de gaz carbonique dans l'atmosphère, ce qui fait, par exemple, que depuis un siècle la température moyenne du globe a augmenté d'un demi-degré."

(Translation)
“By burning fossil fuels man enhanced the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a degree in the last century”.

But at that time he used this argument against the anti-nuclear energy movement. It might be that there is simply a bit too much politics in Allègre’s life...

[Bronco Bob]

Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics (http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=c5e16731-3c64-481c-9a36-d702baea2a42)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research



Some scientists who haven't reversed their views on Global Warming:


Gavin A. Schmidt


Gavin Schmidt is a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and is interested in modeling past, present and future climate. He works on developing and improving coupled climate models and, in particular, is interested in how their results can be compared to paleoclimatic proxy data. He also works on assessing the climate response to multiple forcings, such as solar irradiance, atmospheric chemistry, aerosols, and greenhouse gases.

He received a BA (Hons) in Mathematics from Oxford University, a PhD in Applied Mathematics from University College London and was a NOAA Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Global Change Research. He serves on the CLIVAR/PAGES Intersection and the Earth System Modeling Framework Advisory Panels and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Climate. He was recently cited by Scientific American as one of the 50 Research Leaders of 2004, and has worked on Education and Outreach with the American Museum of Natural History, the College de France and the New York Academy of Sciences. He has over 50 peer-reviewed publications.


Michael E. Mann

Dr. Michael E. Mann is a member of the Penn State University faculty, holding joint positions in the Departments of Meteorology and Geosciences, and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute (ESSI). He is also director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (ESSC).

Dr. Mann received his undergraduate degrees in Physics and Applied Math from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.S. degree in Physics from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University. His research focuses on the application of statistical techniques to understanding climate variability and climate change from both empirical and climate model-based perspectives. Current areas of research include paleoclimate data synthesis and statistical climate reconstruction using climate ``proxy'' data networks, and model/data comparisons aimed at understanding the long-term behavior of the climate system and its relationship with possible external (including anthropogenic) ``forcings'' of climate. Other areas of active research include development of statistical methods for climate signal detection, and investigations of the response of geophysical and ecological systems to climate variability and climate change scenarios.

Dr. Mann was a Lead Author on the "Observed Climate Variability and Change" chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report. He has been organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences 'Frontiers of Science' and has served as a committee member or advisor for other National Academy of Sciences panels. He served as editor for the 'Journal of Climate' and has been a member of numerous international and U.S. scientific advisory panels and steering groups. Dr. Mann has been the recipient of several fellowships and prizes, including selection as one of the 50 leading visionaries in Science and Technology by Scientific American, the outstanding scientific publication award of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and recognition by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) for notable citation of his refereed scientific research. He is author of more than 100 peer-reviewed and edited publications.


Caspar Ammann


Caspar Ammann is a climate scientist working at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Dr. Ammann is interested in the reconstruction of natural climate forcings, natural climate variability, coupled modeling of natural and anthropogenic climate change, and data/model intercomparison. Dr. Ammann got his B.S. from Gymnasium Koeniz (Switzerland), his M.S. from the University of Bern (Switzerland), and a Ph.D. from the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts.




Rasmus E. Benestad


I am a physicist by training and work with climate analysis on a Norwegian project called RegClim, and have affiliations with the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (met.no) and the Oslo Climate Group (OCG) [My views here are personal and may not necessarily represent those of RegClim, OCG, met.no, or the mentioned societies]. I have a D.Phil in physics from Atmospheric, Oceanic & Planetary Physics at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. Recent work involve a good deal of statistics (empirical-statistical downscaling, trend analysis, model validation, extremes and record values), but I have also had some experience with electronics, cloud micro-physics, ocean dynamics/air-sea processes and seasonal forecasting. In addition, I wrote the book 'Solar Activity and Earth's Climate' (2002), published by Praxis-Springer, and I sit on the council of the European Meteorological Society, representing the Nordic countries and the Norwegian Meteorology Society.

In my work, I often get questions from media and lay persons about climate change. I believe it is necessary to approach these questions with identifying what we really don't know and what we are more sure about. I believe that some of Karl Popper ideas about falsification can be useful.



Raymond S. Bradley

Ray Bradley is Director of the Climate System Research Center (www.paleoclimate.org) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and a University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Geosciences. His interests are in climate variability and why climate changes, over a wide range of timescales. He did his graduate work at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado, Boulder. He has written or edited ten books on climatic change, and authored more than 100 refereed articles on the subject. In 2004, he received a Doctor of Science (D.Sc) degree from Southampton University (U.K.) for his contributions to the field of paleoclimatology.

Ray Bradley has been an advisor to various government and international agencies, including the U.S., Swiss, Swedish, and U.K. National Science Foundations, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. National Research Council, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the US-Russia Working Group on Environmental Protection, and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (IGBP), Stockholm.


William M. Connolley

I am a climate modeller with the British Antarctic Survey. I work half time and spend the difference looking after my two children. As an extension of my work, I'm interested in communicating the science of climate change, which is why I'm here.

But I'm also elsewhere: in the newsgroup sci.environment, a rather rough and noisy forum for discussing climate change and other issues; more constructively, the wikipedia project is developing into a useful resource, and my profile is User:William_M._Connolley. My personal vanity site is at www.wmconnolley.org.uk. And my work page is www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/wmc



ps: all my contributions online are released under the GFDL, unless I explicitly note otherwise.



Stefan Rahmstorf


A physicist and oceanographer by training, Stefan Rahmstorf has moved from early work in general relativity theory to working on climate issues.

He has done research at the New Zealand Oceanographic Institute, at the Institute of Marine Science in Kiel and since 1996 at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany (in Potsdam near Berlin).

His work focuses on the role of ocean currents in climate change, past and present.

In 1999 Rahmstorf was awarded the $ 1 million Centennial Fellowship Award of the US-based James S. McDonnell foundation.

Since 2000 he teaches physics of the oceans as a professor at Potsdam University.

Rahmstorf is a member of the Panel on Abrupt Climate Change and of the Advisory Council on Global Change of the German government.



Eric Steig


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.

He received a BA from Hampshire College at Amherst, MA, and M.S. and PhDs in Geological Sciences at the University of Washington, and was a DOE Global Change Graduate fellow. He was on the research faculty at the University of Colorado and taught at the University of Pennsylvania prior to returning to the University of Washington 2001. He has served on the national steering committees for the Ice Core Working Group, the Paleoenvironmental Arctic Sciences initiative, and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Initiative, all sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. He is an editor of the journal Quaternary Research. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in international journals.




Thibault de Garidel


Dr. Thibault de Garidel-Thoron is currently a post-doctoral associate at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University. His main scientific interest is to reconstruct past tropical climate changes using micropaleontological and geochemical proxies from oceanic sediment records.

Dr. de Garidel received his Bachelor’s degree in Earth Sciences from the Université Lyon I, France, completed a Master in the Université Bordeaux I, France and a Ph.D. in Geosciences at CEREGE, Université Paul Cézanne (a.k.a. Aix-Marseille III).


David Archer


David Archer is a computational ocean chemist at the University of Chicago. He has published research on the carbon cycle of the ocean and the sea floor, at present, in the past, and in the future. The ocean contains fifty times more carbon than does the atmosphere, and the ocean controls the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere on time scales of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. The atmospheric pCO2 that the ocean chooses depends on all kinds of things, such as the effect of phytoplankton on the chemistry of surface waters, and the effect of CaCO3 dissolution and production on the pH of the ocean. Dr. Archer has worked on the ongoing mystery of the low atmospheric CO2 concentration during glacial time 20,000 years ago, and on the fate of fossil fuel CO2 on geologic time scales in the future, and its impact on future ice age cycles, ocean methane hydrate decomposition, and coral reefs. Archer is writing a textbook for non-science major undergraduates called "Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast" to be published by Blackwell. More information can be found here.




Raymond T. Pierrehumbert


Raymond Pierrehumbert is the Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, having earlier served on the atmospheric science faculties of MIT and Princeton. He is principally interested in the formulation of idealized models which can be brought to bear on fundamental phenomena governing present and past climates of the Earth and other planets. His recent research interests have included water vapor feedback, baroclinic instability, the Neoproterozoic Snowball Earth, the climate of Early Mars, and methane hydrological cycles on Titan. He is director of the Climate Systems Center, a US National Science Foundation Information Technology Research project aimed at bringing modern software design techniques to the problem of climate simulation. He has also collaborated with David Archer on the University of Chicago's global warming curriculum.

He received an A.B. degree in Physics from Harvard, was then a Knox Fellow in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University, and completed his PhD on hydrodynamic stability theory at MIT, in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He was a lead author of the IPCC Third Assessment Report, and a co-author of the National Research Council study on abrupt climate change. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union.

Pierrehumbert is currently writing a book on comparative planetary climate, "Climate from First Principles," to be published by Cambridge University Press.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10