Comments on 60 scientists call on Canadian Prime Minister to revisit global warming

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I thought I pointed you in the right direction, Xeno...

I cannot understand why a person would argue something scientific without the scientific knowledge to back up the arguments. I'll spend a bit of time with you once more, because you seem like a nice guy. But I'm not going to waste a lot of time defending positions, and arguing ad nauseum just because you cannot understand simple scientific principles.

Let's look at the Arctic:

This is a website that presents some of the latest information about Arctic temperatures during the last 10,000 years or so. Please read the article and then come back here. The abbreviated bottom line is that temperatures all around the Arctic some 10,000 years ago were 5 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today. The Arctic is not becoming warmer in the long scale, although it has fluctuated considerably on much shorter timescales: in 1936 it was significantly warmer than today, for example.

Sea levels rising:

Where is this happening? I know of no place on the planet where there is any significant rise in sea level. I know that Al Gore cites Tuvalu, Polynesia, as a place where rising sea levels force residents to evacuate their homes. In reality, sea levels at Tuvalu fell during the latter half of the 20th century and even during the 1990s, allegedly the warmest decade of the millennium. Al is flat-out lying about this one.

Al Gore presents 10 pages of before-and-after “photographs” showing what 20 feet of sea level rise would do to the world’s major coastal communities. There is no credible evidence of an impending collapse of the great ice sheets. We do have fairly good data on ice mass balance changes and their effects on sea level. NASA scientist Jay Zwally and colleagues found a combined Greenland/Antarctica ice-loss-sea level-rise equivalent of 0.05 mm per year during 1992-2002. At that rate, it would take a full millennium – that's 1,000 years – to raise sea level by just 5 cm.

Antarctica:

Gore warns of “significant and alarming structural changes” in the submarine base of West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), but does not tell us what those changes are or why they are “significant and alarming.” Actually, the melting and retreat of the WAIS “grounding line” has been going on since the early Holocene (some 10,000 years ago), which was when the last great glaciation period "officially" came to an end. At the rate of retreat observed in the late 1990s, the WAIS should disappear in about 7,000 years.

Glaciers melting, etc.:

Okay – which glaciers? Where? The facts are that some glaciers are retreating, but others are advancing. On balance, there seems to be a small retreat, but this is not surprising, since the last global glaciation began retreating about 10,000 years ago, at the start of the Holocene.

The Hudson ice is, indeed, thinner, but not so thin as it was in 1936. This is simply a local warming phenomenon, driven by many factors, most of which nobody really understands yet.

Extreme weather would actually not be driven by climate warming – just the opposite. This is not arguable; it's just how it is.

 

The bottom line is that many scientists, including myself, used to think global warming was happening, and that it was being driven by human activity, in the guise of increasing CO2. This is what current atmospheric models told us, and we had no reason to disbelieve them – until we started to get some very serious anomalies – data that simply did not fit the models. For example, temperatures in the second atmospheric layer over Antarctica are all over the place, and none of them are what the models predict. We don't know why, except that the models obviously are wrong.

Ice cores going back 875,000 years indicate that world atmospheric temperatures and CO2 levels do track each other, temperature precedes increases in CO2 – just the opposite of what the models predict. There are literally thousands of data elements that cannot be explained by any of the current models. These are not single, isolated points, these are whole ramps of data, results from entire experiments, everywhere.

This is why nearly half of the 2,500 scientists who initially endorsed or contributed to the IPCC report that underlies the summary statement from last Friday, the report that will be released in May, have baled out of the program. They don't want their names sullied by the obviously bad science,contaminated with the political positions of the Union of Concerned Scientists, who was responsible for most of the words in the summary report.

Even world-famous Israeli Astrophysicist Nir Shariv recently recanted his earlier position supporting anthropogenic global warming. He is now convinced that all significant climate change is driven by the slightly varying output of our sun. He states that whatever effect humans have is so far below the "noise level" as to be insignificant.

 

posted by arGee on February 6, 2007 at 4:11 PM | link to this | reply

it's not in this section; it's in News & Politics

posted by Xeno-x on February 3, 2007 at 11:01 AM | link to this | reply

here are a few facts for you to digest -- with your infamous misinformation
ice cores of Greenland ice sheet show that this is the warmest period for several hundred thousand years.

sea levels are rising, and now West Coast cities are worrying about what to do with lowland inundation.

about Antarctica?  yes -- there is an ice sheet growing, but that was predicted by global warming backers as a result of increased snow due to warmer temperatures (precipitaton caused by greater difference in temps).

but what about glaciers melting, snow caps on mountains shrinking, thinner ice in Hudson's Bay, chunks of ice as big as the State of Connecticut breaking off or Arctic ice caps, extreme weather?

see my newest entry in this section -- a link to a NY Times article.

posted by Xeno-x on February 3, 2007 at 11:00 AM | link to this | reply

Xeno...Xeno...give me a break here...

Scientists are right when they are right, and wrong when they are wrong, as we all are.

  • When it was warmer in 1936 in the arctic than now, but a scientist says otherwise, then he or she is wrong.
  • When a scientist says we are undergoing an unprecedented warming period, but temperatures in the Arctic between 7,000 and 10,000 years ago (BP – before present) were 5 to 10 degrees Celsius warmer, and got there in a matter of a few years, then he or she is wrong.
  • When a scientist claims the Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking, when it is actually growing faster during the last 25 years than we have ever measured, than he or she is wrong.
  • When a scientist says that increasing CO2 always causes an increase in atmospheric temperature, but 875,000 years BP by actual measure, atmospheric temperature increased several thousand years before CO2 increased, then that scientist is wrong.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I agree or disagree. We all have access to the facts. All anyone need to do is examine them to see what really is happening. Nearly all scientists actively involved with atmospheric and climate research are on record questioning the viability of the current atmospheric and climate models some are using to predict atmospheric warming, precisely because these  models do not predict what has actually happened in the past.

This isn't something people can vote on, or where one idea is as sound as another. This is real life, and in real life, some ideas are factual, backed by evidence collected over time in Nature, whereas others simply are wrong, period.

I don't care what you think, but I can tell you with a degree of certainty that I can specify mathematicaly, what probably is actually happening in the world we live in. What you do with this information is your business.

posted by arGee on January 30, 2007 at 6:00 PM | link to this | reply

you say these scientists might be right

while in the previous post you intimate that those scientists might be wrong

are scientists right because they're scientists?  are they wrong because you disagree with them?

re: global warming, I have made mentions dozens of times of certain indications  -- all anyone has to do is show that those indications are faulty.  that's all.

posted by Xeno-x on January 30, 2007 at 3:22 PM | link to this | reply

An important part of this discussion, Sarooster...

Is the prevailing belief that scientific concepts are consensus matters. In actuality, there are no sides to this discussion. There is the Truth (with a capital "T"), and there is everything else. The more data we collect, the more we learn, the closer we come to the Truth. At some point researchers begin to see glimmerings of the Truth, and begin to form opinions. Scientists call these opinions "working hypotheses." They form the basis for continuing to fit the data into the picture. Sometimes one scientist will prefer working hypothesis A over working hypothesis B, whereas another will see it the other way.

Eventually, however, as the data continues to come in, the various working hypotheses meld into one basic understanding. To hold onto one or the other hypothesis just because one "believes" in it is plain silly, and to proselytize one hypothesis over another before we have reached the Truth is beyond silly, it's just plain stupid.

Years ago George Gamov and Fred Hoyle had a well publicized disagreement on which hypothesis better explained the available data about the origin of the universe: the "Big Bang" (Gamov) or "Steady State" (Hoyle). Basically Big Bang said that everything started with a big bang at some point in the past, whereas Steady State discounted a "beginning," and postulated continuous creation of matter in a universe that has always existed. Initially, both hypotheses adequately explained the data. Eventually, however, new data clearly pointed toward the Big Bang hypothesis, and Fred Hoyle abandoned the Steady State hypothesis, because it no longer presented a viable explanation of how things started.

This is how science works – we don't need prophets with books and movies traveling the highways and byways, preaching the gospel of Global Warming, we don't need pseudo-scientists attempting to pull the scientific credentials from researchers who dare to stand up and proclaim that we don't have sufficient information yet to be drawing conclusions, let alone setting draconian social policy.

As I state clearly in my book, The Chicken Little Agenda, the sky is not falling ladies and gentlemen, so take a deep breath and get on with it.

posted by arGee on January 21, 2007 at 7:45 AM | link to this | reply

arGee,
Thanks for this post. It should be required reading by all. We have to look at both sides of this issue. The mainstream media only presents one side of this story. Al Gore conveniently leaves out some pretty important facts in his "movie". To get to the bottom of what is happening all sides need to look at all the facts and then make reasoned decisions on the issue. Until then we will just have a big tug of war on what is right or wrong.

posted by sarooster on January 21, 2007 at 7:05 AM | link to this | reply

I am delighted, Mysteria...

That you were able to see clearly so soon. It is a compliment to your parents that you were able to do this. I just wish we could find an effective way to get more young people to learn critical thinking.

Just this morning in California, for example, a State Legislator introduced a bill to ban spanking of children, because, she said, her vet had told her that she should not hit her cat (she has no children herself), and if one should not hit a cat, then why should one hit a child? She is completely unaware of the contorted logic she applied to justify her bill.

posted by arGee on January 19, 2007 at 11:42 AM | link to this | reply

arGee, thanks for posting this. I find it absolutely incredible how easily

people will take up the blame for what goes on with the climate, environment, etc.  One of my earliest and most prolific memories from public indoctrination were lessons that basically said:

I am by my mere existence and nature, a destroyer of the poor and helpless planet earth. 

I don't deserve to be here.

and

I should feel very guilty for being here and pay great penance for being scum of the earth each and every opportunity that I get.

Even as a small I child I didn't believe it.  I could see clear through it.  I was never angered by it, just saddened that my poor fellows didn't have the wits to know when they were being so obviously hornswoggled!!!  Outrageous!

posted by mysteria on January 19, 2007 at 11:28 AM | link to this | reply