global warming some thoughts

[landscaper]

Just read this review on a couple of books on global warming. It is a bit of a read but it is interesting the following quote came from the review , at least read the review before you slag it.



Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the be-lief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

 

[spatial_k]

Amazingly... I agree with this. I think it's unfortunate that 'global warming' has taken over as the rallying cry for the environment- it tends to obscure the bigger picture and draw attention away from other environmental concerns.

 

[Herodotus]

Only if one is narrow-minded and doesn't look at the big picture. Even still, it is not the worst thing to happen.

The fact is that most human-created greenhouse gases pollution sources are also the cause of most airbourne and many land and water-based pollution. The root causes of climate change are also linked to many of the other threats to the environment - social injustice, environmental degradation, drought, famine, extreme weather patterns, diminishing biological diversity, etc. That being said, there aren't that many environmentalists that are too worried about "nuclear weaponry". The anti-nuclear power movement has fallen by the wayside as we have learned more about the true costs of other forms of energy and the relative safety of nukes. There are only a few hardcore anti-nukies out there...

PS - I believe that the author of this book review isn't really qualified to provide insight, seeing as how he's "just" a theoretical physicist and mathematician. (Just kidding, but weren't you the one who discounted non-climatologists as "experts" in the climate change agenda?) Nor does he back up or quantify any of the claims he makes when he draws his conclusions at the end of the reviews. Just a point of fact.

 

[themexi]

I figure as soon as the global warming cultists can explain to me how mars getting hotter & a 3rd red spot has formed on jupiter due to increased suface temperatures is caused by icky cars & industry & not, oh lets see, the Solar cycle that s caused temperature changes throughout history I'd LOVE to hear all about it.


Seriously, these morons have clung obsessively to one Non issue while forgetting about real environmental issues we can do something about.....

 

[Clear History]

...
Seriously, these morons have clung obsessively to one Non issue while forgetting about real environmental issues we can do something about.....

Couldn't agree more. I used to believe in the Man-made global warming hypothesis but have since changed my mind. I was surprised at how underwelming hard evidence for the hypothesis is. Particularily considering the trillions of dollars the world is being asked to allocate in order to remedy this "problem".

I was also surprised at the lack of transparacy within some influential groups within the climate science community. Seems like an old-boy network particularily around the "Hockey Stick" graph which was discredited (due to bias and bad math) by Torontonian Stephen McIntyre.

Here's a PDF copy of a recent presentation he made at Ohio State University describing the Hockey Stick saga:

http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohioshort.pdf

 

[landscaper]

Only if one is narrow-minded and doesn't look at the big picture. Even still, it is not the worst thing to happen.

The fact is that most human-created greenhouse gases pollution sources are also the cause of most airbourne and many land and water-based pollution. The root causes of climate change are also linked to many of the other threats to the environment - social injustice, environmental degradation, drought, famine, extreme weather patterns, diminishing biological diversity, etc. That being said, there aren't that many environmentalists that are too worried about "nuclear weaponry". The anti-nuclear power movement has fallen by the wayside as we have learned more about the true costs of other forms of energy and the relative safety of nukes. There are only a few hardcore anti-nukies out there...

PS - I believe that the author of this book review isn't really qualified to provide insight, seeing as how he's "just" a theoretical physicist and mathematician. (Just kidding, but weren't you the one who discounted non-climatologists as "experts" in the climate change agenda?) Nor does he back up or quantify any of the claims he makes when he draws his conclusions at the end of the reviews. Just a point of fact.

I posted this because I found his thoughts on the content of the books interesting. I originally got the web link through Chaos Manor Jerry Pournelle's web blog. He has a large amount of differing views on global warming from both sides.

The prime consideration from his point of view is the ostrasization of any scientist who dares to question the climate change /global warming dogma. He bekieves that we should actually find out what is going on before we cripple national economies.

 

[landscaper]

Couldn't agree more. I used to believe in the Man-made global warming hypothesis but have since changed my mind. I was surprised at how underwelming hard evidence for the hypothesis is. Particularily considering the trillions of dollars the world is being asked to allocate in order to remedy this "problem".

I was also surprised at the lack of transparacy within some influential groups within the climate science community. Seems like an old-boy network particularily around the "Hockey Stick" graph which was discredited (due to bias and bad math) by Torontonian Stephen McIntyre.

Here's a PDF copy of a recent presentation he made at Ohio State University describing the Hockey Stick saga:

http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/ohioshort.pdf

There can be no transparancy when you already have the answer you want. Questions are bad etc.

The hockey stick was not the only thing discredited.There was a claim that this was the hottest decade on record and it was run up the flag pole with abandon , unfortunatley a couple of weathermen and a statistion took a good look at the data and they had to redefine the decade into the lower third. Something about incorrect sampling and thermometers not being placed where they needed to be.

There is a study being done now through the admiralty historical records in England. Some bright people are goig through the Captains logs and charting dates temperatures and locations for the last several hundred years. It should prove interesting when it is completed.

 

[Clear History]

There can be no transparancy when you already have the answer you want. Questions are bad etc.

...There was a claim that this was the hottest decade on record and it was run up the flag pole with abandon , unfortunatley a couple of weathermen and a statistion took a good look at the data and they had to redefine the decade into the lower third. Something about incorrect sampling and thermometers not being placed where they needed to be....

Also Steve McIntyre I believe. It turns out the thirties were the hottest decade on record and not the nineties. It was brought to NASA's attention who conceded and very quietly updated their data/website.

As you suggest, it's funny how they were beating us over the head with "the nineties were the hottest..." and when the when this was corrected, it turned out to be "no big deal".

 

[landscaper]

The intenational body responsible for climate change has also been playing with their data. They have changed the start dates on there studies to improve the optics.

 

[alphauniform]

The intenational body responsible for climate change has also been playing with their data. They have changed the start dates on there studies to improve the optics.

....POLICY!!!

"In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.........
The First Global Revolution, Club of Rome,

http://www.clubofrome.org/about/index.php

 

[landscaper]

In some corners the thought is that the people who have elevated global warming to near religious status used to be the hard core left wing blow up the industrialized world faction. The thought is that with the fall of the USSR they needed a new cause that could be used to destroy the western world and make the world safe for socialism. I have not researched this particular theory in any way and only post it to stir up the pot a little

 

[Herodotus]

The intenational body responsible for climate change has also been playing with their data. They have changed the start dates on there studies to improve the optics.

In some corners the thought is that the people who have elevated global warming to near religious status used to be the hard core left wing blow up the industrialized world faction. The thought is that with the fall of the USSR they needed a new cause that could be used to destroy the western world and make the world safe for socialism. I have not researched this particular theory in any way and only post it to stir up the pot a little

How about a little credible proof to back up your anti-climate change rhetoric once in awhile? You obviously want to try and cast doubt, yet you have no evidence to back up your claims, other than the occasional scientific outsider. And then you claim there is a vast scientific conspiracy to silence those that don't fall in line. Sounds like you are emulating the left-wing that you and others excoriate who claim cover-ups for everything big-business and governmet-related...

Stephen McIntyre (mathematician) and Ross McKitrick (economist) are both non-scientists and non-climatologists and yet you want to give them equal standing with noted climatologists, scientific modellers and others who have dedicated their lives to the study of the Earth, its ecosystems and the climate. What's wrong with this picture?

You cannot use one person's (more often than not) bought-and-paid-for research or bogus science to dispute literally hundreds of other scientist's findings and expect to be taken seriously. Well, you can do it if you are associated with or have a vested interest in the fossil fuel or automotive industries, or just want to be contrarian and a conspiracy theorist, I suppose...

When the ratio is tilted that much, there is often a reason - and the reason is not groupthink or conspiratorial. It is based on trends and modelling and the recorded effects that are being seen and felt around the world.

What is wrong with trying to change the current business model? To try and make our economies more sustainable and ecologically sound and shift away from a carbon-based lifestyle? I think even the most skeptical have to agree that the ancillary health and environmental benefits of shifting from a non-sustainable, resources-based business model to one that considers the well-being and the future of the planet and all of its inhabitants is one that we should invest in now, before it's too late and we pass the point of no return.

The idea of sitting idly and waiting for more evidence is asinine, particularly when we know what we're doing to the planet is a bad thing. Making cars more fuel efficient makes sense on every level. Shifting from coal to cleaner power sources is logical. Dumping less pollutants into the atmospheric, aquatic and terrestrial environments is just common sense. Why would you or anyone choose to fight that, unless you have more selfish and nefarious reasons?


(Note: "you" is directed at the naysayers who provide no credible proof against the overwhelming evidence that climate change is very real and that humans do play a role in it - not "you" being one person.)

 

[alphauniform]

"You cannot use one person's (more often than not) bought-and-paid-for research or bogus science to dispute literally hundreds of other scientist's findings and expect to be taken seriously. Well, you can do it if you are associated with or have a vested interest in the fossil fuel or automotive industries, or just want to be contrarian and a conspiracy theorist, I suppose...

When the ratio is tilted that much, there is often a reason - and the reason is not groupthink or conspiratorial. It is based on trends and modelling and the recorded effects that are being seen and felt around the world.".....Heroditus.

Believe global warming is not occurring or has ceased

* Timothy F. Ball, former Professor of Geography, University of Winnipeg: "[The world's climate] warmed from 1680 up to 1940, but since 1940 it's been cooling down. The evidence for warming is because of distorted records. The satellite data, for example, shows cooling." (November 2004)[ "There's been warming, no question. I've never debated that; never disputed that. The dispute is, what is the cause. And of course the argument that human CO2 being added to the atmosphere is the cause just simply doesn't hold up..." (May 18, 2006; at 15:30 into recording of interview) "The temperature hasn't gone up. ... But the mood of the world has changed: It has heated up to this belief in global warming." (August 2006)[ "Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. ... 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." (Feb. 5, 2007)

* Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia: "the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998 ... there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming."

* Vincent R. Gray, coal chemist, climate consultant, founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition: "The two main 'scientific' claims of the IPCC are the claim that 'the globe is warming' and 'Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible'. Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed."

Believe accuracy of IPCC climate projections is inadequate

Individuals in this section conclude that it is not possible to project global climate accurately enough to justify the ranges projected for temperature and sea-level rise over the next century. They do not conclude specifically that the current IPCC projections are either too high or too low, but that the projections are likely to be inaccurate due to inadequacies of current global climate modeling.

* David Bellamy, environmental campaigner, broadcaster and former botanist: a doubling of atmospheric CO2 "will amount to less than 1°C of global warming [and] such a scenario is unlikely to arise given our limited reserves of fossil fuels—certainly not before the end of this century."
* Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute: "The blind adherence to the harebrained idea that climate models can generate 'realistic' simulations of climate is the principal reason why I remain a climate skeptic. From my background in turbulence I look forward with grim anticipation to the day that climate models will run with a horizontal resolution of less than a kilometer. The horrible predictability problems of turbulent flows then will descend on climate science with a vengeance."
* Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists : "models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view".

 

[alphauniform]

Believe global warming is primarily caused by natural processes
Individuals in this section conclude that the observed warming is more likely attributable to natural causes than to human activities.

* Khabibullo Abdusamatov, mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovskaya Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences: "Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy - almost throughout the last century - growth in its intensity...Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated...Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."
* Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "The recent warming trend in the surface temperature record cannot be caused by the increase of human-made greenhouse gases in the air."
* Reid Bryson, emeritus professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison: "It’s absurd. Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air."
* George V. Chilingar, Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California: "The authors identify and describe the following global forces of nature driving the Earth’s climate: (1) solar radiation ..., (2) outgassing as a major supplier of gases to the World Ocean and the atmosphere, and, possibly, (3) microbial activities ... . The writers provide quantitative estimates of the scope and extent of their corresponding effects on the Earth’s climate [and] show that the human-induced climatic changes are negligible."
* Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: "That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation - which has a cooling effect. ... We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle."
* David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester: "The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming."
* Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University: "global warming since 1900 could well have happened without any effect of CO2. If the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end soon and global temperatures should cool slightly until about 2035"
* William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University: "This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential." "I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more."
* William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology: "There has been a real climate change over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that can be attributed to natural phenomena. Natural variability of the climate system has been underestimated by IPCC and has, to now, dominated human influences."
* George Kukla, retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an interview: "What I think is this: Man is responsible for a PART of global warming. MOST of it is still natural."
* David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware: "About half of the warming during the 20th century occurred prior to the 1940s, and natural variability accounts for all or nearly all of the warming."
* Marcel Leroux, former Professor of Climatology, Université Jean Moulin: "The possible causes, then, of climate change are: well-established orbital parameters on the palaeoclimatic scale, ... solar activity, ...; volcanism ...; and far at the rear, the greenhouse effect, and in particular that caused by water vapor, the extent of its influence being unknown. These factors are working together all the time, and it seems difficult to unravel the relative importance of their respective influences upon climatic evolution. Equally, it is tendentious to highlight the anthropic factor, which is, clearly, the least credible among all those previously mentioned."
* Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: global warming "is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities. The atmosphere hasn’t changed much in 280 million years, and there have always been cycles of warming and cooling. The Cretaceous period was the warmest on earth. You could have grown tomatoes at the North Pole"

 

[alphauniform]

* Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
* Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology, The University of Adelaide: "We only have to have one volcano burping and we have changed the whole planetary climate... It looks as if carbon dioxide actually follows climate change rather than drives it".
* Tom Segalstad, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo: "It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere. It is all a fiction".
* Nir Shaviv, astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "The truth is probably somewhere in between [the common view and that of skeptics], with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. ... [A]bout 2/3's (give or take a third or so) of the warming [over the past century] should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes." His opinion is based on some proxies of solar activity over the past few centuries.
* Fred Singer, Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia: "The greenhouse effect is real. However, the effect is minute, insignificant, and very difficult to detect." “It’s not automatically true that warming is bad, I happen to believe that warming is good, and so do many economists.”
* Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "There's increasingly strong evidence that previous research conclusions, including those of the United Nations and the United States government concerning 20th century warming, may have been biased by underestimation of natural climate variations. The bottom line is that if these variations are indeed proven true, then, yes, natural climate fluctuations could be a dominant factor in the recent warming. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed."
* Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London: "...the myth is starting to implode. ... Serious new research at The Max Planck Institute has indicated that the sun is a far more significant factor..."
* Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center: "Our team ... has discovered that the relatively few cosmic rays that reach sea-level play a big part in the everyday weather. They help to make low-level clouds, which largely regulate the Earth’s surface temperature. During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up. ... most of the warming during the 20th Century can be explained by a reduction in low cloud cover."
* Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, Professor Emeritus from University of Ottawa: "At this stage, two scenarios of potential human impact on climate appear feasible: (1) the standard IPCC model ..., and (2) the alternative model that argues for celestial phenomena as the principal climate driver. ... Models and empirical observations are both indispensable tools of science, yet when discrepancies arise, observations should carry greater weight than theory. If so, the multitude of empirical observations favours celestial phenomena as the most important driver of terrestrial climate on most time scales, but time will be the final judge."

 

[alphauniform]

Believe cause of global warming is unknown

Scientists in this section conclude it is too early to ascribe any principal cause to the observed rising temperatures, man-made or natural.

* Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks: "An almost linear global temperature increase of about 0.5°C/100 years (~1°F/100 years) seems to have occurred from about 1800 to the present, namely for about 200 years. This value may be compared with what the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists consider to be the manmade greenhouse effect of 0.6°C/100 years. This 200-year long linear warming trend is likely to be a natural change. One possible cause of the linear increase may be Earth’s continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age (1400-1800). This trend (0.5°C/100 years) should be subtracted from the temperature data during the last 100 years when estimating the manmade contribution to the present global warming trend. As a result, there is a possibility that only a fraction of the present warming trend is attributable to the greenhouse effect resulting from human activities. In addition, there are quasi-periodic changes, which are superposed on the linear change. One of them is referred to as a ‘multi-decadal oscillation’. This particular change has a positive slope from about 1975 and was most prominent in the continental Arctic, contributing to the present global warming trend. But this particular positive change in the continental Arctic almost stopped after 2000. These facts are contrary to the IPCC (2007) Report (p.10), which states that “most” of the present warming is due to the manmade greenhouse effect. There is an urgent need to correctly identify natural changes and remove them from the present global warming trend, in order to accurately identify the contribution of the manmade greenhouse effect."

* Claude Allègre, geochemist, Institute of Geophysics (Paris): "The increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere is an observed fact and mankind is most certainly responsible. In the long term, this increase will without doubt become harmful, but its exact role in the climate is less clear. Various parameters appear more important than CO2. Consider the water cycle and formation of various types of clouds, and the complex effects of industrial or agricultural dust. Or fluctuations of the intensity of the solar radiation on annual and century scale, which seem better correlated with heating effects than the variations of CO2 content."
* Robert C. Balling, Jr., a professor of geography at Arizona State University: "t is very likely that the recent upward trend [in global surface temperature] is very real and that the upward signal is greater than any noise introduced from uncertainties in the record. However, the general error is most likely to be in the warming direction, with a maximum possible (though unlikely) value of 0.3 °C. ... At this moment in time we know only that: (1) Global surface temperatures have risen in recent decades. (2) Mid-tropospheric temperatures have warmed little over the same period. (3) This difference is not consistent with predictions from numerical climate models."
* John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports: "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time."
* Petr Chylek, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory: "carbon dioxide should not be considered as a dominant force behind the current warming...how much of the [temperature] increase can be ascribed to CO2, to changes in solar activity, or to the natural variability of climate is uncertain"
* William R. Cotton, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University said in a presentation, "It is an open question if human produced changes in climate are large enough to be detected from the noise of the natural variability of the climate system."
* Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland: "There is evidence of global warming. ... But warming does not confirm that carbon dioxide is causing it. Climate is always warming or cooling. There are natural variability theories of warming. To support the argument that carbon dioxide is causing it, the evidence would have to distinguish between human-caused and natural warming. This has not been done."
* David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma: "The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause--human or natural--is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria."
* Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences: "We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 °C higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2 is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But--and I cannot stress this enough--we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future." "There has been no question whatsoever that CO2 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 CO2 should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed."
* Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville: "We need to find out how much of the warming we are seeing could be due to mankind, because I still maintain we have no idea how much you can attribute to mankind."

 

[alphauniform]

Believe global warming will benefit human society

Scientists in this section conclude that projected rising temperatures and/or increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide will be of little impact or a net positive for human society.

* Craig D. Idso, faculty researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University; founder of The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: "the rising CO2 content of the air should boost global plant productivity dramatically, enabling humanity to increase food, fiber and timber production and thereby continue to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for their still-increasing numbers...this atmospheric CO2-derived blessing is as sure as death and taxes."
* Sherwood Idso, former research physicist, USDA Water Conservation Laboratory, and adjunct professor, Arizona State University: "[W]arming has been shown to positively impact human health, while atmospheric CO2 enrichment has been shown to enhance the health-promoting properties of the food we eat, as well as stimulate the production of more of it. ... [W]e have nothing to fear from increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and global warming."[
* Patrick Michaels, part-time research professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia: "scientists know quite precisely how much the planet will warm in the foreseeable future, a modest three-quarters of a degree (Celsius), plus or minus a mere quarter-degree...a modest warming is a likely benefit."

........Absolutely, lets change the business model!!! It IS the best business in the world to be in. Don't you think that we already KNOW that???? The fear is for POLITICAL gains, NOT business ones. (although I'll take the competitive advantages it affords me)

 

[alphauniform]

.......here endeth today's lesson!!!!

 

[Herodotus]

.......here endeth today's lesson!!!!

What lesson? Oh right, the one where you use the term "global warming" when I (and most of the world's scientific community) was talking about climate change... meaning different areas are affected differently (hot or cold) by the change in the Earth's climate.

Now, I can go and individually tear apart the credibility of your so-called experts - such as how does a geographer (Tim Ball) have the academic background and qualifications to determine all greenhouse gas sources and the effect on global warming? - but that would take more effort than its worth.

Your throwaway sentence at the end about the business model is disingenuous and screams self-interest, not environmental protection.

 

[landscaper]

What lesson? Oh right, the one where you use the term "global warming" when I (and most of the world's scientific community) was talking about climate change... meaning different areas are affected differently (hot or cold) by the change in the Earth's climate.

Now, I can go and individually tear apart the credibility of your so-called experts - such as how does a geographer (Tim Ball) have the academic background and qualifications to determine all greenhouse gas sources and the effect on global warming? - but that would take more effort than its worth.

Your throwaway sentence at the end about the business model is disingenuous and screams self-interest, not environmental protection.

If you have peer reviewed information that the scientists that were quoted are wrong please put it on the thread. If youare just going to rant rave and spew about people who have a differing view that is entirley supported by science please don't.

The whole point of this thread was that some people have a differing opinion of climate change or global warming or what ever next weeks name is.

Differing scientific opinion is BELIEVE IT OR NOT a good thing it stops issues from being hi jacked by special interest groups be that group big oil or environmental activists.

Immediatly announcing that anybody who disagrees with the global warming hypothysis is either in the pay of big oil or takeing money from other interest groups is insulting to both the scientist and to any of us who want to actually take a look at the science and the issues with out taking an immediate side. This part is called examining the issue.

The concept that a geographer is not qualified to have an opinion on this matter is more than insulting. As part of his education in his specialty he would have had to look climate and changes to climate as they pertain to the local geographic area. Changes to climate and to geography would likely be noticable over geological time stretches.