Global Warming and Katrina...

[Tgace]

More Than 15,000 Scientists Protest Kyoto Accord; Speak Out Against Global Warming Myth

 

[Feisty Mouse]

If we all waited for a 100% consensus on anything in the field of science, which at the higher levels is remarkably democratic, we'd be waiting...well, a very long time. Is string theory valid if it's descriptive but not testable? What's the deal with all that dark matter?

OK. The majority of scientists who discuss global climate change (Note: "global warming" is a sadly popular misnomer - we are talking about increases in climate fluctuation, not in the planet becoming, oh, Venus) agree that something is happening that is different than in the past. Global temperature increases in the last 3-4 decades have been larger than would be predicted from the data previous to that. The scientific explanation of "greenhouse gasses" is valid.

Does this mean that the climate does not fluctuate without us? Of course not. Does that mean we can say "it's 50% human-induced and 50% 'natural'?" No. Should we be concerned when the polar ice caps are melting (and by that, I mean, now)? Most definetly.

It's always fun for "armchair generals" (someone refered to me as that once in a different thread, I thought it was a funny term) to talk about what this scientist thinks and what that scientist thinks, and conclude that if there isn't total agreement, there is nothing. That is, of course, hooey.

For a decent summary....

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/index.cfm

For anyone convinced that to think global climate change is happening is "brainwashed"...well, I don't know what to say, except that maybe you want to actually engage people of differing opinions.

And the "Reason" website is quite amusing in how much it loathes governmental regulations. To which I say, More mercury in your fish?

 

[Tgace]

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/000253.html

Sir David says the Bush administration should not dismiss global warming because: 1) the ten hottest years on record started in 1991 2) sea levels are rising 3) ice caps are melting and 4) the 'causal link' between man-made emissions and global warming is well established.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. There is no such evidence. The whole thing is a global scam. There is no firm evidence that warming is happening; even if it is, it is most likely to have natural, not man-made causes; carbon dioxide, supposedly the culprit, makes up such a tiny fraction of the atmosphere that even if it were to quadruple, the effect on climate would be negligible; and just about every one of the eco-doomster stories that curdle our blood every five minutes is either speculative, ahistorical or scientifically illiterate.

To take a few examples from Sir David's litany.

1) Sea levels are rising. As this article explains, this claim is not the result of observable data. Like so much of the global warming industry, it is the result of frail computer modelling using dodgy or incomplete data. It is therefore not an observed value, but a wholly artificial model construct. Furthermore, the data fed into the computer is drawn from the atypical North Atlantic basin, ignoring the seas around Australia where levels have remained pretty static. And anyway, as this article explains, sea level rises have nothing to do with warmer climate. Sea levels rose during the last ice age. Warming can actually slow down sea level rise.

2) Ice caps are melting. Some are, some aren't. Some are breaking up, as is normal. But some are actually expanding, as in the Antarctic where the ice sheet is growing, as this article points out. The bit of the Antarctic that is breaking up, the Larsen ice-shelf, which has been causing foaming hysteria among eco-doomsters, won't increase sea levels because it has already displaced its own weight in the sea.

3) The hottest years on record started in 1991. Which records? The European climate in the Middle Ages was two degrees hotter than it is now. They grew vines in Northumberland, for heaven's sake. Then there was the Little Ice Age, which lasted until about 1880. So the 0.6% warming since then is part of a pretty normal pattern, and nothing for any normal person to get excited about.

4) The causal link is well established. Totally false. It is simply loudly asserted. Virtually all the scare stuff comes from computer modelling, which is simply inadequate to factor in all the -- literally-- millions of variables that make up climate change. If you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.

That's why this week's earlier eco-scare story, that more than a million species will become extinct as a result of global warming over the next 50 years, is risible. All that means is that someone has put into the computer the global warming scenario, and the computer has calculated what would happen on the basis of that premise. But -duh! -the premise is totally unproven. The real scientific evidence is that -- we just don't know; and the theories so far, linking man, carbon dioxide and climate warming. are specious. There's some seriously bad science going on in the environmentalist camp

'One reason for this uncertainty is that, as the report states, the climate is always changing; change is the norm. Two centuries ago, much of the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from a little ice age. A millennium ago, during the Middle Ages, the same region was in a warm period. Thirty years ago, we were concerned with global cooling.

'Distinguishing the small recent changes in global mean temperature from the natural variability, which is unknown, is not a trivial task. All attempts so far make the assumption that existing computer climate models simulate natural variability, but I doubt that anyone really believes this assumption.

'We simply do not know what relation, if any, exists between global climate changes and water vapor, clouds, storms, hurricanes, and other factors, including regional climate changes, which are generally much larger than global changes and not correlated with them. Nor do we know how to predict changes in greenhouse gases. This is because we cannot forecast economic and technological change over the next century, and also because there are many man-made substances whose properties and levels are not well known, but which could be comparable in importance to carbon dioxide.

'What we do is know that a doubling of carbon dioxide by itself would produce only a modest temperature increase of one degree Celsius. Larger projected increases depend on "amplification" of the carbon dioxide by more important, but poorly modeled, greenhouse gases, clouds and water vapor.

 

[Tgace]

Eco nuts are so easy to rile up.

 

[Makalakumu]

And the "Reason" website is quite amusing in how much it loathes governmental regulations. To which I say, More mercury in your fish?

Certain individuals, particularly those that President Bush put directly in charge of environmental policy of the United States, have spent billions to craft this message. The bottom line is that they want to pollute for short term profits at the expense of your health and safety.

There is no solution that can "solve" global warming overnight. And all of the solution are going to hurt someone...some more then others...like oil, gas and coal corporations...which all happen to be DIRECTLY involved in some of the highest roles in the Bush Administration.

The conflict of interest is absolutely staggering and I can only believe that some people have willingly forgone their ability to reason so they can deliberately ignore it.

 

[Makalakumu]

Eco nuts are so easy to rile up.

In the future, you are going to get real riled up when some of these policies bear their malformed fruit. I would say, "time will tell" but that does nothing to defer the price that our children will pay.

I won't gamble with my kids health...

 

[Tgace]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/1017027.stm
Over 1500 years ago the Romans grew wine grapes at Hadrian's Wall and the Vikings grew wine grapes in Norway. There is no way they would grow there today. So climate change happens all the time. We should stop basing totally unscientific deductions on empirical weather data (where the oldest data is barely 300 years old) and start using biological evidence more that goes back much farther. Any self-proclaimed doomsday expert can get his name in the paper by predicting catastrophe. It doesn't mean catastrophe is impossible, it just means we don't know from the source data.
Conrad, Norway (British)

 

[Feisty Mouse]

More Than 15,000 Scientists Protest Kyoto Accord; Speak Out Against Global Warming Myth

lol, for a site that has things written such as

specifically an apparent anti-correlation

I'm not amazed.

What exactly is an anti-correlation? A negative correlation? A zero correlation?

May sound like nitpicking, but if the writer were in my Research Methods class, that would earn him or her a 0.

 

[Makalakumu]

Here is some more from RFK jr. Very well researched...

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1120-01.htm

Cooking the Books on Global Warming

There is no scientific debate in which the White House has cooked the books more than that of global warming. In the past two years the Bush administration has altered, suppressed or attempted to discredit close to a dozen major reports on the subject. These include a ten-year peer-reviewed study by the International Panel on Climate Change, commissioned by the president's father in 1993 in his own efforts to dodge what was already a virtual scientific consensus blaming industrial emissions for global warming.

After disavowing the Kyoto Protocol, the Bush administration commissioned the federal government's National Academy of Sciences to find holes in the IPCC analysis. But this ploy backfired. The NAS not only confirmed the existence of global warming and its connection to industrial greenhouse gases, it also predicted that the effects of climate change would be worse than previously believed, estimating that global temperatures will rise between 2.5 and 10.4 degrees by 2100.

A May 2002 report by scientists from the EPA, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, approved by Bush appointees at the Council on Environmental Quality and submitted to the United Nations by the U.S., predicted similarly catastrophic impacts. When confronted with the findings, Bush dismissed it with his smirking condemnation: "I've read the report put out by the bureaucracy. . . ."

Afterward, the White House acknowledged that, in fact, he hadn't. Having failed to discredit the report with this untruth, George W. did what his father had done: He promised to study the problem some more. Last fall, the White House announced the creation of the Climate Research Initiative to study global warming. The earliest results are due next fall. But the White House's draft plan for CRI was derided by the NAS in February as a rehash of old studies and established science lacking "most elements of a strategic plan."

In September 2002, administration censors released the annual EPA report on air pollution without the agency's usual update on global warming, that section having been deleted by Bush appointees at the White House. On June 19th, 2003, a "State of the Environment" report commissioned by the EPA in 2001 was released after language about global warming was excised by flat-earthers in the White House. The redacted studies had included a 2001 report by the National Research Council, commissioned by the White House. In their place was a piece of propaganda financed by the American Petroleum Institute challenging these conclusions.

This past July, EPA scientists leaked a study, which the agency had ordered suppressed in May, showing that a Senate plan -- co-sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain -- to reduce the pollution that causes global warming could achieve its goal at very small cost. Bush reacted by launching a $100 million ten-year effort to prove that global temperature changes have, in fact, occurred naturally, another delay tactic for the fossil-fuel barons at taxpayer expense. Princeton geo-scientist Michael Oppenheimer told me, "This administration likes to emphasize what we don't know while ignoring or minimizing what we do know, which is a prescription for paralysis on policy. It's hard to imagine what kind of scientific evidence would suffice to convince the White House to take firm action on global warming."

Across the board, the administration yields to Big Energy. At the request of ExxonMobil, and with the help of a lobbying group working for coal-burning utility Southern Co., the Bush administration orchestrated the removal of U.S. scientist Robert Watson, the world-renowned former NASA atmospheric chemist who headed the United Nations' IPCC. He was replaced by a little-known scientist from New Delhi, India, who would be generally unavailable for congressional hearings. The Bush administration now plans to contract out thousands of environmental-science jobs to compliant industry consultants already in the habit of massaging data to support corporate profit-taking, effectively making federal science an arm of Karl Rove's political machine. The very ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have institutionalized dishonesty and made it the reigning culture of America's federal agencies. "At its worst," Oppenheimer says, "this approach represents a serious erosion in the way a democracy deals with science."

 

[Feisty Mouse]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/1017027.stm
Over 1500 years ago the Romans grew wine grapes at Hadrian's Wall and the Vikings grew wine grapes in Norway. There is no way they would grow there today. So climate change happens all the time. We should stop basing totally unscientific deductions on empirical weather data (where the oldest data is barely 300 years old) and start using biological evidence more that goes back much farther. Any self-proclaimed doomsday expert can get his name in the paper by predicting catastrophe. It doesn't mean catastrophe is impossible, it just means we don't know from the source data.
Conrad, Norway (British)

Uummm... scientists have data that goes back much further. Tree ring data. Ice core data.

 

[Tgace]

http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba230.html

Myth #2: Humans Are Causing Global Warming. Scientists do not agree that humans discernibly influence global climate because the evidence supporting that theory is weak. The scientific experts most directly concerned with climate conditions reject the theory by a wide margin.


A Gallup poll found that only 17 percent of the members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society think that the warming of the 20th century has been a result of greenhouse gas emissions - principally CO2 from burning fossil fuels. [See Figure II.]

Only 13 percent of the scientists responding to a survey conducted by the environmental organization Greenpeace believe catastrophic climate change will result from continuing current patterns of energy use.

More than 100 noted scientists, including the former president of the National Academy of Sciences, signed a letter declaring that costly actions to reduce greenhouse gases are not justified by the best available evidence.

While atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased by 28 percent over the past 150 years, human-generated carbon dioxide could have played only a small part in any warming, since most of the warming occurred prior to 1940 - before most human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.

 

[Feisty Mouse]

Eco nuts are so easy to rile up.

Well, Tgace, with that one witty and decisive comment [/end sarcasm], you have demonstrated one of two things.

#1 You, as you have stated in the past, are just here on MT to "rile people up", and don't really stand behind, or mean, any of your posts. So we should disregard what you write.

or

#2 You are not interested in anyone else's opinions, and any disagreement with you means that the other person is clearly "a nut". So you're not really interested in a conversation or discussion with all those "nuts" (some of whom might actually be scientists).

Either way, I'm disappointed, it used to be fun to read your posts.

 

[Tgace]

And from the same source and relevant to the thread.....

Periodic media reports link human-caused climate changes to more frequent tropical cyclones or more intense hurricanes. Tropical storms depend on warm ocean surface temperatures (at least 26 degrees Celsius) and an unlimited supply of moisture. Therefore, the reasoning goes, global warming leads to increased ocean surface temperatures, a greater uptake of moisture and destructive hurricanes. But recent data show no increase in the number or severity of tropical storms, and the latest climate models suggest that earlier models making such connections were simplistic and thus inaccurate.


Since the 1940s the National Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory has documented a decrease in both the intensity and number of hurricanes.

From 1991 through 1995, relatively few hurricanes occurred, and even the unusually intense 1995 hurricane season did not reverse the downward trend.

The 1996 IPCC report on climate change found a worldwide significant increase in tropical storms unlikely; some regions may experience increased activity while others will see fewer, less severe storms.

Since factors other than ocean temperature such as wind speeds at various altitudes seem to play a larger role than scientists previously understood, most agree that any regional changes in hurricane activity will continue to occur against a backdrop of large yearly natural variations.

What about other effects of warming? If a slight atmospheric warming occurred, it would primarily affect nighttime temperatures, lessening the number of frosty nights and extending the growing season. Thus some scientists think a global warming trend would be an agricultural boon. Moreover, historically warm periods have been the most conducive to life. Most of the earth's plant life evolved in a much warmer, carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere.

 

[Tgace]

Not at all fiesty...just find it interesting how personally involved people can get over their pet topics. And how offended they can get when some person they dont even know disagrees with them over the internet. This is a Martial Arts board for crissakes. People around here need to lighten up....

Im here to share, discuss, and yes sometimes rile people up. Unless Im breaking the rules (in which case I will apologize and learn) read me or dont. Even when I get "into it" with some folks here, I realize this is just an internet board. When the computer is off life goes on.

This is primarily entertainment is it not? Unlike the martial arts sections what besides some debate and "verbal fencing" does anybody hope to accomplish in the study?

 

[Sapper6]

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?

consensus my ***...the voodoo posted in post #14 is fact. i checked the first link you posted above and the material contained therein is just false. allow me to clarify....

your link states...

...recent peer-reviewed research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows that a combined measure of both the duration and intensity of hurricanes has doubled over the last 30 years. This trend corresponds to increases in average ocean surface temperatures over the same period. Most of the strongest hurricanes on record have occurred during the past 10 years, when ocean surface temperatures reached record levels.

did you even check the hurricane table mentioned in post #14...? please do. the statements bolded above are false. data taken from the NOAA/AOML/Hurricane Research Division proves they are false. these people are in the business of studying hurricanes, that's it. it's their job. i would imagine their numbers are more truthful than those of a "peer-reviewed study".

 

[Rich Parsons]

To take a few examples from Sir David's litany.

1) Sea levels are rising. As this article explains, this claim is not the result of observable data. Like so much of the global warming industry, it is the result of frail computer modelling using dodgy or incomplete data. It is therefore not an observed value, but a wholly artificial model construct. Furthermore, the data fed into the computer is drawn from the atypical North Atlantic basin, ignoring the seas around Australia where levels have remained pretty static. And anyway, as this article explains, sea level rises have nothing to do with warmer climate. Sea levels rose during the last ice age. Warming can actually slow down sea level rise.

I was told about an issue from the R&D department. A guy made a model and had anothe engineer go out and collect data. After collecting the data, the guy from R&D told him his data was wrong, incorrect, or corrupted. He went back and collected the data again. It showed the same thing. After a couple of months of talking to other experts in production development, the data looked right and was what everyone had seen in production. The R&D guy was asked why he knew the data was wrong? He replied he had verified his model. This was early on, then after the couple of months, he was asked again, and what data he had verified his model against? The R&D guy replied he had verified his model against another existing model.

I would like to see the trends of the old cultures that kept records in the Med, and see if it truly is an issue of errosion of the coast line or the tides rising.

2) Ice caps are melting. Some are, some aren't. Some are breaking up, as is normal. But some are actually expanding, as in the Antarctic where the ice sheet is growing, as this article points out. The bit of the Antarctic that is breaking up, the Larsen ice-shelf, which has been causing foaming hysteria among eco-doomsters, won't increase sea levels because it has already displaced its own weight in the sea.

I have stated this before. To test the ice issue, let us conduct an experiment.

Take hot water, boiling if there is an adult around and put into an ice tray.

Take room temeprature water and fill another ice tray

Take cold water from the refridgerator and fill a third tray.

Place all three trays in the freezer all level and near the center.


Check every five minutes to see which one freezes first, and the size of the ice cubes.

The Biggest ice cubes will come from the cold water.

Now to conduct this experiment in another manner take 500 ml in a 1000 ml beaker that has measuring on the side. Use hot water and cold water, this will let you see the expension or contraction of the water based upon the temperature when entering the freezer.

Now the Ice in the caps did not flash freeze, so my expectation is that they are displacing more volume as frozen water then as liquid water. The Ice on land needs to be adjusted for, but we need to see what the expected increase in volume when water freezes. This will allow for the understanding of how much of the ice on the land will enter the system of oceans.

3) The hottest years on record started in 1991. Which records? The European climate in the Middle Ages was two degrees hotter than it is now. They grew vines in Northumberland, for heaven's sake. Then there was the Little Ice Age, which lasted until about 1880. So the 0.6% warming since then is part of a pretty normal pattern, and nothing for any normal person to get excited about.

Is this hotter than the ages when Dinosaurs roamed the world?

4) The causal link is well established. Totally false. It is simply loudly asserted. Virtually all the scare stuff comes from computer modelling, which is simply inadequate to factor in all the -- literally-- millions of variables that make up climate change. If you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.

That's why this week's earlier eco-scare story, that more than a million species will become extinct as a result of global warming over the next 50 years, is risible. All that means is that someone has put into the computer the global warming scenario, and the computer has calculated what would happen on the basis of that premise. But -duh! -the premise is totally unproven. The real scientific evidence is that -- we just don't know; and the theories so far, linking man, carbon dioxide and climate warming. are specious. There's some seriously bad science going on in the environmentalist camp

I thought a lot of species died because of change from warmer to colder when man took over as the dominate species.

 

[Sapper6]

here's more enlightening voodoo....oops, i mean facts.

THE DEADLIEST, COSTLIEST, AND MOST INTENSE UNITED STATES HURRICANES FROM 1900 TO 2000

 

[Tgace]

Dont ya know sapper...the trick is when the data doesnt support your theory, the data must be worng and you need to study it to find an explanation for the error.....data must be wrong because Im always right.

 

[Tgace]

BTW..all good points there Rich.

 

[Sapper6]

Dont ya know sapper...the trick is when the data doesnt support your theory, the data must be worng and you need to study it to find an explanation for the error.....data must be wrong because Im always right.

aaahhhh....selective scientific reasoning, i get it.

i'm wondering WTF when it comes to RFK Jr. talking science. all of his BS revolves around politics affecting the environment, especially the Bush administration. he's a moron. he needs to check fire and stay in his lane. the environment is WAY out of his league.