Global Warming and Katrina...

[Makalakumu]

I found this by RFK jr. It is very interesting...

08.29.2005

“For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind” (153 comments )

As Hurricane Katrina dismantles Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, it’s worth recalling the central role that Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour played in derailing the Kyoto Protocol and kiboshing President Bush’s iron-clad campaign promise to regulate CO2.

In March of 2001, just two days after EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman’s strong statement affirming Bush’s CO2 promise former RNC Chief Barbour responded with an urgent memo to the White House.

Barbour, who had served as RNC Chair and Bush campaign strategist, was now representing the president’s major donors from the fossil fuel industry who had enlisted him to map a Bush energy policy that would be friendly to their interests. His credentials ensured the new administration’s attention.

The document, titled “Bush-Cheney Energy Policy & CO2,” was addressed to Vice President Cheney, whose energy task force was then gearing up, and to several high-ranking officials with strong connections to energy and automotive concerns keenly interested in the carbon dioxide issue, including Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, Interior Secretary Gale Norton, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, White House chief of staff Andy Card and legislative liaison Nick Calio. Barbour pointedly omitted the names of Whitman and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, both of whom were on record supporting CO2 caps. Barbour’s memo chided these administration insiders for trying to address global warming which Barbour dismissed as a radical fringe issue.

“A moment of truth is arriving,” Barbour wrote, “in the form of a decision whether this Administration’s policy will be to regulate and/or tax CO2 as a pollutant. The question is whether environmental policy still prevails over energy policy with Bush-Cheney, as it did with Clinton-Gore.” He derided the idea of regulating CO2 as “eco-extremism,” and chided them for allowing environmental concerns to “trump good energy policy, which the country has lacked for eight years.”

The memo had impact. “It was terse and highly effective, written for people without much time by a person who controls the purse strings for the Republican Party,” said John Walke, a high-ranking air quality official in the Clinton administration.

On March 13, Bush reversed his previous position, announcing he would not back a CO2 restriction using the language and rationale provided by Barbour. Echoing Barbour’s memo, Bush said he opposed mandatory CO2 caps, due to “the incomplete state of scientific knowledge” about global climate change.

Well, the science is clear. This month, a study published in the journal Nature by a renowned MIT climatologist linked the increasing prevalence of destructive hurricanes to human-induced global warming.

Now we are all learning what it’s like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and--now--Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children.

In 1998, Republican icon Pat Robertson warned that hurricanes were likely to hit communities that offended God. Perhaps it was Barbour’s memo that caused Katrina, at the last moment, to spare New Orleans and save its worst flailings for the Mississippi coast. [UPDATE: Alas, the reprieve for New Orleans was only temporary. But Haley Barbour still has much to answer for.]



www.StopGlobalWarming.org



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/afor-they-that-sow-the-_b_6396.html

What do you think?

 

[michaeledward]

RFK Jr. has made some statements about Mr. Barbour that went too far. But his point must be considered. Governor Barbour has played a strong part in Grover Norquist's conservative agenda of "drowning government in a bathtub". Although, he seems to be first in line to take a federal handout after this disaster (so much for Conservative States Rights arguments, eh?).

Another reference to look at is this odd little book from the early 90's; something called 'Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit' by some obscure Senator from Tennessee. Seems this author kinda forsaw that the surface of the oceans warming up might present a problem for those low-lying coastal cities, like New Orleans.

One last thought ... directed at that last paragraph. Although abortion is a legal procedure in the United States, it is difficult to come by in Louisiana. I heard there were only 10 clinics that would undertake this medical procedure in the entire state. Well, it seems some Christ-ian groups are not hesitating to point out that 5 of those 10 clinics are/were in New Orleans. Geez ... maybe Pastor Robertson was right after all, eh? ----- Nah! ---- he's just an *******!

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

To be totally honest, I think global warming is a bunch of crock. No offense to anyone who believes it, but I believe there is a lot of bad science behind it that has not been openly confronted by the media.
I've still yet to find someone who can explain to me the actual scientific reasoning behind Kyoto, especially the infamous "hockey-stick graph" quoted so much. You know, the one where temperature is more or less "low" with no variation higher than half a degree Centigrade and then all of a sudden it shoots up so much higher very rapidly in current years.

Even though temperatures are warmer than in the 1970s (the cool temperature at that time was cited as evidence that mankind was doing something bad to the environment), they are cooler than they were in 1930s. You won't see that in the oft-quoted hockey-stick graph.

The hockey-stick graph and supporters of human-induced global warming theories make no mention whatsoever of the two largest temperature fluctuations of the past millenium (correlated with numerous GLOBAL proxies, not just local, isolated ones). Those are the Medieval Warm Period between 700 and 1300 and the "Little Ice Age" from around 1560 - 1830. What industrial output were we doing back then to make the temperature so many degrees warmer than it is today?

Nor can they explain how tree-ring proxy data (shown to be not a very reliable temperature proxy...taken only during the growing season and only during the daytime let alone a host of other factors) of a study (Mann's hockey-stick graph) specifically of North America somehow is now interpreted as indicating global temperature.
Nor do they explain how the large margins of error present in the original Mann graph never appear anywhere else.

Or the fact that the United States has had some of the cleanest air in the past few years, with 2004 being a record low for ozone pollution. That's using both the old and the new ways of calculation, by the way.

There are so many inconsistencies, it is simply tiring to list them all.


Oh, and another thing...
The fact that we have modern technology to minimize death in these instances desensitizes us to how destructive hurricanes and natural disasters like them have always been and still are. We forget that in poorer countries like Bangladesh, floods and hurricanes kill literally hundreds of thousands of people in some cases. The mild ones kill "only" tens of thousands initially, not including all the deaths from starvation and displacement. But our comfortable lifestyles, our clean water and warm showers...they all make us forget how powerful nature by itself really is. Nature doesn't need humankind to "go mad" as the poster on the forum wrote...it is often crazy enough by itself. Life is resilient on Earth and Nature can be very good...but Nature is also very destructive. At least 5 major cataclysmic extinctions have occurred on this planet...in the most drastic, 95 percent of all species on Earth were destroyed.

But thanks to technology and progress, we forget these things. We see these disasters (don't get me wrong, they truly are tragedies) and wonder how they could happen. In arrogance, many people point to humanity as the cause, forgetting these things have always happened. Fortunately, thanks to technology and progress we can mitigate the damage and make it easier to cope. If only we could somehow mitigate ridiculous claims coming from environmentalists so eager to claim any disaster as the fault of industry and progress.


Edit: As far as those claiming Katrina was sent down by God to punish a place that allowed abortion clinics, those people are just morons.

 

[arnisador]

I just finished watching "The Day After Tomorrow" which would convince anyone that global warming is a crock.

It's all cyclic. We know that!

 

[Rich Parsons]

I watched two shows the other day on Discovery about Katrina and Hurricanes. One mentioned as if it was fact that it is global warming that caused Katrina. (* This being the news approach *) The other (* scientific approach *) made a comment about the Gulf of Mexico being a degree or two higher than normal, and than tracked it back to when it was a degree higher back in the 70's and late 50's & 60's. The relationship is that when the water gets warmer, then there are more and stronger hurricanes.

Another aspect reported was that there is a cycle for Hurricanes, that has us right now coming out of the low end to a higher end, much closer to about 1500 years ago.

 

[deadhand31]

Where to begin here, hooboy.

First off, the Kyoto Protocol. What exactly did it do? Basically, those industrialized countries who would have signed on with it would have had to cut C02 emmisions considerably. It did not, however, touch developing countries like China, who are belching out CO2 at a higher rate than we are.

Second, the kyoto protocol was a step taken out of order. The first thing that it should have done is research. Does CO2 cause global warming? Good question. If you take a look at CO2 levels, they have been on a constant rise in this country for about 100 years, mostly due to land use. However, in a 30 year period from about 1940 to 1970, there was a time when national temperatures went down while CO2 levels went up. If CO2 causes warmer temperatures, why did temperatures go down in that 30 year period?

Third, hurricanes. Is it true that this country has never seen a devestating hurricane, ever?? No, it's not true. In 1900, there was a freak hurricane in Galveston, TX, that killed 6000 people. It has been often referred to as "The 1900 Storm". CO2 levels were lower then, so why was there such a horrible hurricane? Could it be that these things happen?

 

[Makalakumu]

50 million years ago, in the Eocene, the average global temperature was 26 degrees C! The world was covered with a blanket of rainforest and even the poles were green. The oceans were high and epicratonic seas swept over the continental shelves and reached far into the interior.

Then, something changed. The oceans currents began to slow and stop and ice began to form at the poles for the first time in hundreds of millions of years. In matter of a million years, the global temperature fell 15 degrees and 30% of animal species on earth went extinct.

Think about this. 15 degree temperature change over a million years...and we get a mass extinction. What happens if we change the temperature 5 degrees in a hundred? That is exactly what many of the models predict. Life depends on a stable environment in order to prosper. Human, in order to support our current population, NEED a stable climate. We are changing the climate and we can measure the changes and even though we can't figure out how these changes might affect us yet, the climate is still changing.

I liken this process to the famous flowerpot islands around many south pacific islands. These islands are made of limestone and coral and there is an algea that feeds on the CaCO^3 in the rock. Feeding on the algea are small mollusks called Chitons. These creatures have iron teeth that they use to scrape the algea away. Unfortuneately, it also scrapes a little bit of the rock away, too. Over the years this has led to a mushroom shaped island with the stems getting smaller and smaller every year.

If the chitons were capable of thought, they might look at the way they were living and ask the question, if we keep scraping the rock away on the stem of these islands, the whole thing is going to come crashing down to kill us all. But they are not, and they continue to scrape and the island falls on the entire community. Do you see my point?

Extinction is in our future whether we like it or not. It may be tomorrow, or it may be a million years from now. The forces of nature could extinct us easily and there would be nothing we could do about it. Just as quickly though, we could extinct ourselves with vast amounts of thermonuclear weaponry. Much more insideous, though, is this "chewing up the island" process. It does not happen quickly, so it doesn't send us into a panic that would unite people against it. Yet, the changes are going to lead to a different global climate in a short time.

Global warming has the potential to affect our lives and our children's lives negatively. Something needs to be done about it. We can sit there and stare at the island above us and hope that it doesn't fall, meanwhile ignoring the fact that the small things we all do will tip it over, as long as we want. Or at least, until it falls. Then what? Extinction? Maybe, maybe not. Yet, the concept alone is unthinkable. It is different then death because at least something of us would pass on. The immortality of our genetic lines end. It's too much to risk just to drive an SUV.

 

[Makalakumu]

If you look at this site… http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/mlo144e.pdf

This graph clearly shows an increase in CO^2 levels since 1958. The short up and down movements on the graph show a phenomenon known in the northern hemisphere known as winter. People are burning fuel to keep warm. Individually, if you look at the spikes, they rise a little higher each year. This reflects the fact that our population has been rising since 1958. From this information, you can clearly see that carbon dioxide increases are directly related to the activities of humans.

Carbon Dioxide is a proven greenhouse gas. Its molecular properties clearly show its ability to absorb and emit photons in the IR spectrum. From this information and from information taken at other observatories worldwide it is clearly a safe assumption that global warming is occurring.

And then if you Look at this site and view all of the observation station's data…

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm

It clearly shows that humans are adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and this correlates to graphs showing an increase in temperature. If you look at the Ice Core graphs, you will see that natural CO^2 fluctuations are much more gradual. It takes thousands of years to accomplish what humans have accomplished in 50 years.

Our current global warming trends cannot be totally attributed to natural causes. The data shows that WE are at least part of this phenomenon.

 

[Tgace]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA206.html
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=473

When taking a peek at the more distant past, Richard Alley from Penn State University discovered through ice-core measurements that global temperatures and precipitation in the last few thousand years have been as steady as any time during the last 100 millennia. He also found that large swings in temperature (15 degrees Fahrenheit) and wet weather occurred on a regular basis prior to the recent quieter time. Perhaps more interesting is that these swings, which happened long before humans had a chance to influence the environment, typically occurred within a 10-year period, indicating that drastic climate change can occur through natural means, and quickly.

This evidence raises an interesting and provocative idea. Perhaps wilder weather is actually more typical than benign weather.

Whether humans are contributing to climate change or not, maybe the pendulum is beginning to swing back - toward the wild side.

http://www.junkscience.com/news/robinson.htm

Why are temperatures rising? The first chart nearby shows temperatures during the past 250 years, relative to the mean temperature for 1951-70. The same chart shows the length of the solar magnetic cycle during the same period. Close correlation between these two parameters--the shorter the solar cycle (and hence the more active the sun), the higher the temperature--demonstrates, as do other studies, that the gradual warming since the Little Ice Age and the large fluctuations during that warming have been caused by changes in solar activity.

The highest temperatures during this period occurred in about 1940. During the past 20 years, atmospheric temperatures have actually tended to go down, as shown in the second chart, based on very reliable satellite data, which have been confirmed by measurements from weather balloons.

Consider what this means for the global-warming hypothesis. This hypothesis predicts that global temperatures will rise significantly, indeed catastrophically, if atmospheric carbon dioxide rises. Most of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide has occurred during the past 50 years, and the increase has continued during the past 20 years. Yet there has been no significant increase in atmospheric temperature during those 50 years, and during the 20 years with the highest carbon dioxide levels, temperatures have decreased.

In science, the ultimate test is the process of experiment. If a hypothesis fails the experimental test, it must be discarded. Therefore, the scientific method requires that the global warming hypothesis be rejected.

Why, then, is there continuing scientific interest in "global warming"? There is a field of inquiry in which scientists are using computers to try to predict the weather--even global weather over very long periods. But global weather is so complicated that current data and computer methods are insufficient to make such predictions. Although it is reasonable to hope that these methods will eventually become useful, for now computer climate models are very unreliable. The second chart shows predicted temperatures for the past 20 years, based on the computer models. It's not surprising that they should have turned out wrong--after all the weatherman still has difficulty predicting local weather even for a few days. Long-term global predictions are beyond current capabilities.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/6-30-97.html
http://scs.student.virginia.edu/~liberty/articles/GlobWarm.html
http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-08-99.html

Without sulfate aerosols, computer models indicate our hemisphere should have already warmed about 2.3 degrees Celsius as a result of the greenhouse effect. The observed warming this century is a scant 0.65 degrees. If the sulfate hypothesis fails, the argument devolves into what the "skeptics" have said for decades: the earth simply isn't going to warm all that much.

Having held a doctorate in climatology for two decades, I feel confident in saying that every one of my colleagues who has expressed an opinion to me dislikes Wigley, mainly because he seems arrogantly dismissive of some facts when they get in the way of his theories. He actively discourages the airing of points of view that conflict with his.

In October 1994, at a global warming meeting called by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), Wigley was confronted with the reality that satellites had found no warming. He merely waved his hands and said, "Oh come now, that's just the satellite data." Oh come now, Tom, it's just the only global measure of temperature that exists!

http://www.detnews.com/EDITPAGE/0001/16/1edit/1edit.htm

Thus it is far from clear that the much ballyhooed greenhouse effect is the cause of the observed warming. Surface warming, the study notes, is “not necessarily representative of how the atmosphere is responding to long-term, human-induced changes.” One of the study’s authors, John R. Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama, goes even further and explicitly notes that using the observed warming to “predict future climate trends remains fraught with peril.”

What is it with school teachers and environmental "nuts"? My sisters a HS science teacher and she's was indoctrinated with this **** in college too.

 

[Makalakumu]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA206.html
http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php?uid=473
http://www.junkscience.com/news/robinson.htm
http://www.cato.org/dailys/6-30-97.html
http://scs.student.virginia.edu/~liberty/articles/GlobWarm.html
http://www.cato.org/dailys/07-08-99.html
http://www.detnews.com/EDITPAGE/0001/16/1edit/1edit.htm

What is it with school teachers and environmental "nuts"? My sisters a HS science teacher and she's was indoctrinated with this **** in college too.

Quite a few of your sources are organizations that directly contribute to "the sagebrush revolution" an anti-environmental movement dedicated to turning back the progress that President Richard Nixon (of all people) made.

Drill cores show that in the past when CO^2 was added to the atmosphere, temperatures rose considerably. The data shows that we are adding CO^2 with our activities. The evidence also shows that the temerature is rising.

 

[Makalakumu]

http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/glob_warm_hurr.html

The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the earth's climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Although we cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricane will occur in the future with global warming, the hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions. This expectation (Figure 1) is based on an anticipated enhancement of energy available to the storms due to higher tropical sea surface temperatures.

I suggest looking at Figure 1 listed above. The graph is very informative.

I would not want to live near the gulf or in Florida with these kind of predictions.

 

[Shorin Ryuu]

Everyone scoffs if anyone considered remotely conservative brings up scientific arguments. Meanwhile, you get ultra-liberal hardcore environmentalists with an obvious agenda and people take their unfounded claims seriously. Funny world we live in.

 

[michaeledward]

Everyone scoffs if anyone considered remotely conservative brings up scientific arguments. Meanwhile, you get ultra-liberal hardcore environmentalists with an obvious agenda and people take their unfounded claims seriously. Funny world we live in.

That could be because many (not all) conservatives seem to be of the church-goin' type. And you see, church and science, well, they don't go together. They have different methods of serving different purposes. Ain't no harm in that.

I certainly am 'ultra-liberal', but that is an awful broad brush to paint some of our colleagues on this board.

I don't know that I am a 'hardcore environmentalist' ... sure I want trout swimming in the rivers, and deer walking through the woods. ... If that qualifies as a 'hardcore environmentalist', I guess I am.

Now, 'obvious agenda' .... don't know what that may be ... except, to perhaps leave the planet at least as nice as how I found it; to conserve natural resources.

As for 'unfounded claims', why don't you, please, debunk them as opposed to throwing defamatory adjectives around.

• Explain to me how, carbon di-oxide does not trap solar energy within the atmosphere.
• Explain, how combustion of fossil fuels, (coal, oil, natural gas) does not add to the amount of carbon di-oxide in the atmosphere.
• Show me where the ravaging of the rain forests (where plants, through photosynthesis convert carbon di-oxide back into oxygen) has not reduced the planents ability to heal itself. (I once had a guitar made out of Honduras Mahogany ... nice instrument ... prolly bad politics).
• Demonstrate how the plant life in the oceans (another great source of absorbing carbon di-oxide) dying off from pollution does affect the planets ability to absorb all those carbons.

Ah, never mind ... it's all just cyclical anyhow.

 

[Sapper6]

:bs:

Katrina and Disgusting Exploitation

Tragedies happen, and my daughter and her family are happy just to be alive. Their losses and those of hundreds of thousands of other innocents deserve mourning, prayer and respect.

That is why the response of environmental extremists fills me with what only can be called disgust. They have decided to exploit the death and devastation to win support for the failed Kyoto Protocol, which requires massive cutbacks in energy use to reduce, by a few tenths of a degree, surface warming projected 100 years from now.

Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.

But that doesn't stop an enviro-predator like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from writing on the Huffingtonpost website: "Now we are all learning what it's like to reap the whirlwind of fossil fuel dependence which Barbour and his cronies have encouraged. Our destructive addiction has given us a catastrophic war in the Middle East and - now -- Katrina is giving our nation a glimpse of the climate chaos we are bequeathing our children."

The Kyoto advocates point to warmer ocean temperatures, but they ought to read their own favorite newspaper, The New York Times, which reported yesterday:



"Because hurricanes form over warm ocean water, it is easy to assume that the recent rise in their number and ferocity is because of global warming. But that is not the case, scientists say. Instead, the severity of hurricane seasons changes with cycles of temperatures of several decades in the Atlantic Ocean. The recent onslaught 'is very much natural,' said William M. Gray, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who issues forecasts for the hurricane season.'"

Indeed, there is no evidence that hurricanes are intensifying anyway. For the North Atlantic as a whole, according to the United Nations Environment Programme of the World Meteorological Organization: "Reliable data…since the 1940s indicate that the peak strength of the strongest hurricanes has not changed, and the mean maximum intensity of all hurricanes has decreased."

But environmental extremists do not want to be bothered with the facts. Nor do they wish to mourn the destruction and death wreaked on a glorious city. To their everlasting shame, they would rather distort and exploit.

so what do i think? it's all BS. Kyoto would have never prevented this. if you believe otherwise, you're a dumbass. politicizing a natural and devastating disaster lies in the mind of very sick people.

Educate Yourselves... or continue to read biased political web-blogs to gain an understanding of how "things" in the envionment work.

 

[Tgace]

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/pointlss.htm

Although all of the greenhouse computer models predict that the greatest warming will occur in the Arctic region of the Northern Hemisphere, temperature records indicate that the Arctic has actually cooled by 0.88 C over the past fifty years.


Corrective environmental policies would have a minuscule impact on the climate. According to its own projections, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s own plan would spare the earth only a few hundredths of a degree of warming by middle of the next century.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aginatur/prog1.htm#suspend

According to Piers Corbyn, Director of Weather Action, many scientists do not accept the idea that pollution is causing global warming. Environmentalists claim that world temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but Corbyn points out that the period they take as their starting point - around 1880 - was colder than average. What's more, the timing of temperature changes does not appear to support the theory of global warming. Most of the rise came before 1940 - before human-caused emissions of 'greenhouse' gases became significant.

According to the Greens, during the post-war boom global warming should have pushed temperatures up. But the opposite happened. 'As a matter of the fact, the decrease in temperature, which was very noticeable in the 60s and 70s, led many people to fear that we would be going into another ice age,' remembers Fred Singer, former Chief Scientist with the US Weather Program.

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA177.html

Forget what you've read in the press or heard on television: There is no scientific consensus on global warming.

http://www.rppi.org/globalwarmingmyth.shtml

But could it be that arguing about current global warming theories is actually distracting our attention and billions of dollars of research funds from other pressing environmental issues such as ozone depletion, over-fishing or the demise of the rain forest? Energy companies—and all good global citizens—would like to be able to make environmental spending and strategy decisions that will have the most impact. Right now, not everyone's agreed on where that will be.

 

[Sapper6]

what's this i see? scientists raising the BS flag as well....? say it ain't so.

 

[Tgace]

Most of these weather geeks claim BS too...
http://www.easternuswx.com/bb/lofiversion/index.php/t35847.html

 

[Tgace]

How Global Warming Research is Creating a Climate of Fear

Science losing objectivity

This self-censorship in the minds of scientists ultimately leads to a sort of deafness toward new, surprising insights that compete with or even contradict the conventional explanatory models. Science is deteriorating into a repair shop for conventional, politically opportune scientific claims. Not only does science become impotent; it also loses its ability to objectively inform the public.

An example of this phenomenon is the discussion surrounding the so-called hockey stick, a temperature curve that supposedly portrays developments of the last 1,000 years. The curve derives its name from its hockey stick-like shape. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel of climate researchers established by the United Nations, rashly institutionalized the hockey stick curve as an iconic symbol of human-induced climate change. In the curve, the upward-tilting blade of the hockey stick that follows decades of stable temperatures represents human influence.

In an article we published in the professional journal "Science" in October 2004, we were able to demonstrate that the underlying methodology that led to this hockey stick curve is flawed. Our intention was to turn back the spiral of exaggerations somewhat, but without calling the core statement into question, which is that human-induced climate change does exist. Prominent members of the climate research community did not respond to the article by engaging use in a dispute over the facts. Instead, they were concerned that the worthy cause of climate protection had been harmed.

Other scientists are succumbing to a form of fanaticism almost reminiscent of the McCarthy era. In their minds, criticism of methodology is nothing but the monstrous product of "conservative think-tanks and misinformation campaigns by the oil and coal lobby," which they believe is their duty to expose. In contrast, dramatization of climate shift is defended as being useful from the standpoint of educating the public.

 

[Makalakumu]

Here is an organization of thousands of scientists claiming...

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release.cfm?newsID=502

Can anyone say consensus?

Or perhaps you prefer some of the voodoo posted above?

 

[Makalakumu]

Preeminent scientists protest the Bush Administrations abuse of science...

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release.cfm?newsID=381