Science and Society

The press is sucked in again by statements made by a policy group with only one agenda. This U.N. group has to justify it's existence with more alarming statements because the Kyoto policies are falling apart in Europe and they are afraid their jet setting days will be over. The actual report confirms lower risks of rising oceans, increased storms an a melting Antartica. There is a simple test for the press to learn how they are being bamboozled. Ask for the objective data or analysis that supports the 90% or very likely attribution being made. There is none. In science, like drug testing or any other hypothesis testing there will be observations that can be quantified and statistically analyzed.
Those statistical tests are usually subjected to a 95% confidence interval and are not a proxy for a panel's opinion. You couldn't get a hair growing formula to pass FDA approval with such bizarre claims to certainty as the IPCC document spinners. Ask why the reports keeps shifting base periods (now 1950) to make claims. This is cherry picking points on an historical curve that any student would be drummed out of a science program for attempting.The costs to all of us from fruitless climate policies(which ironically even this report confirms "nothing can be done to reverse the warming trend for centuries") will swamp the costs of adapting to a climate that has always changed.

Thanks for all the good work, as always, Ned. I think a piece on "solutions" would be perfectly timed. Now that no one can deny the fact of global warming any more, the industry and anti-regulation folks have switched their mantra to "there's nothing we can do about it." Let's refute that nonsense from the beginning. There are a wide variety of solutions already proposed, from the no-brainers like increasing vehicle efficiency and switching government subsidies from oil to alternative fuels, to innovative engineering and technology ideas that will greatly increase our overall energy efficiency AND create jobs. No one of these solutions will solve everything, so the key is to move forward on ALL of them, and unleash American ingenuity and resources across a broad front. There are so many smart people ready and excited to get going on this. Let's get started!

The IPCC report tries to be alarmist, but actually has reduced its estimate of the maximum sea level rise, and greatly, to something like 17 inches. And that's maximum, with the most likely being about a foot, the same as we saw, with no ill effects, over the past century. It also greatly reduced its estimate of the warming impacts that humans have on climate. Its best guess of temperature increase is down about 1 degree F since last time, while its worst case temperature increase is based on a scenario for population growth that is just way out of line with recent experience and demographic thinking.

The report fails to note that methane (a more powerful greenhouse gas by far than carbon dioxide) levels are now stable to falling, while the IPCC has in the past assumed an increase. It also fails to note that a central icon of its last presentation, the Hockey Stick, which purported to show that recent temperatures were by far the highest in at least 1,000 years, has been thoroughly discredited. It really does appear to have been about as warm 1,000 years ago as it is now, meaning that we are still near the bounds of natural variation.

The "90%" figure for certainty is utter garbage. 90% of WHAT? It is nothing more than a subjective statement by a bunch of like-minded environmental bureaucrats that wrote this report. It measures absolutely nothing, and is certainly not reflective of any empirical data.

Possibly worst of all, there is a strong theory, lab tested and verified by now, of what may well be behind much of the warming of the 20th Century (at least, whatever portion of it is not just urban heat island effects and incomplete data). The Sun has been abnormally strong, the strongest in 1,000 years, rising in intensity throughout the 20th Century. Growing in strength with this activity (seen mostly by sun spots) is the Sun's magnetic field, which shields out cosmic rays, which have been shown to increase low level clouds on Earth, which in turn deflect the Sun's rays back into space and cool the Earth. So, intense solar activity means fewer clouds and a warmer Earth. The IPCC refuses to seriously examine this increasingly strong theory.

After reading about global warming and climate change, I'm not surprised about the trends and conclusions highlighted in the IPCC report. The summary for policymakers, although jam-packed with tables, figures, and statistics, certainly indicates that climate change is occurring through global warming. Two concerns immediately come to my mind after reading the trends in the report, though: how will the report be received by the current administration, which has been dismissive of claims of climate change in the past? Also, how will the report be attacked (and discredited) by vested interests? I'll definitely be watching to see if the report's methodology or its conclusions will be called into question by scientists who are less than impartial.

Hello readers, I would like to make a comment about this global warming. I think we need to do some history checking here before we make any snap decisions. The first event was the Industrial Revolution in Europe and the Americas at leat 200 years ago. We read all about that in our history books in school. But, the next event most people forget is what happened to the earth about 100 years ago. Off the coast of Norway a major venting of methane gas was released in earth crack underwater on the ocean floor. The scientests verified the emissions at that time. The entire Industrial Revolution to date only generated a miniscule amount of methane into the air compared to what happened of the coast of Norway. In fact it is still venting to this day. So, do not blame man for this global warming scenario when it was the earth's fault (and vault) that caused these changes.

Another great money grab of the socialists of the world. Remember when this nonsense got started twenty years ago, we had only 10 years left or Florida would be under water by 2010. Now of course when unbiased observations show us the predictions of fifteen years ago are bunk, the argument goes to "climate change". There are two major reasons that I feel this is truly junk science. First, notice major news organizations are saying that the weather is getting strange. Could someone please tell me a "normal" weather year in the last century. Notice how "Katrina"is used as an example. When you look at the observations it was barely a Category 3 hurricane when it made landfall. What if it would have been a Category 5 hurricane like "Camille" or the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 which had winds 100mph stronger than Katrina. The meteorologists are just setting us up for a hurricane hitting New England which is wildly overdue but will be blamed on Global climate change when it happens. Any old-timers remember the New England hurricane of 1938? It was stronger than Katrina. The second raeson is the ridiculous statement that droughts will become more extreme in order to scare the ignorant vast public. Read the report, it tries to say that there is less water on the Earth due to man. There is more water on the surface of the Earth at this time than ever before. Water isn't destroyed, polluted yes, but not destroyed. With irrigation techniques bringing more water to the surface of the Earth, the amount of available condensible water has increased not decreased. Also if the Earth is warming the amount of available condensation will increase (anybody in these study groups take high school physics) providing more rainfall (which of course is not happening). It is sad this bastardization of science is happening and shows the same ignorance akin to the Black Plague or the beginning of the Ice Age (25 years ago).

NED,AS USUAL YOUR PIECE ON GLOBAL WARMING TONIGHT WAS GREAT KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK

There was a great piece in Canada's National Journal about the "global warming deniers".

It makes fairly clear that the credibility of the "deniers" is a lot better than that of the alarmists. It is a 10 part piece, with links out to the other parts. But it does not even begin to cover all of the eminent scientists who have come forward to blast global warming alarmism.

By the way, why does the UN tout global warming as a "crisis"? Simple: power and money. There certainly is no "solution" to this "crisis" without some international agreement - and that would be under the UN umbrella, giving that organization more power and access to revenues via administration of some international carbon credit trading program. And the UN finds no shortage of scientists willing to take the alarmist line, because their fantastically expensive modeling work and their careers have been made by the alleged global warming crisis. Government research money for global warming amounts to $billions each year, financing a huge industry with absolutely no incentive to report back that there really isn't a problem.

Interesting.
If this response is indicative of the general beliefs held by many, I can see that we have a long way to go along the global warming trend before we begin corrective actions to make amends.
Sad that as people, we are not interested in prevention, but much rather deal with the crisis only when people's lives and well being have been compromised.
Oh - and just so people keep a little unbiased truth, just look at market trends. Trading companies building ports that will use water passages over the north pole that are now nearing navigability for the firt time in human history; ski resorts suffering due to lack of snow - levels lower than in all of recorded history; ice shelves being lost in both north and south poles that have existed for tens of thousands of years.
Do I sound alarmist? Maybe, but somtimes the truth is alarming.

You can waste a devastating amount of resources on prevention of "problems" that would never greatly bother anyone. Living with them can be a lot less wasteful than a Pyrrhic effort to fight them. Global warming looks very much like exactly this sort of problem.

Here in the Midwest right now, we are suffering near record cold for this date. (Perfect time for the UNIPCC's attempted scare!) Although a bogus and now pretty thoroughly discredited horror story about the Gulf Stream shutting down threatened to freeze Europe, no such scare has been threatened for us. This is just weather, exactly like ski resorts have to suffer. And the Arctic still has not warmed to its 1930's levels yet. Where were those navigation companies then?

Antarctic ice shelves collapsed - ON THE PENINSULA, which juts pretty far north, and that area did warm quite a bit. Most of Antarctica, however, has shown no warming trend or even cooling trends, as at the South Pole.

So, no, the basis for climate alarmism does not look good at all.

Don't worry, Thomas. Ralph is only indicative of professional climate change deniers. As an economist for the Marathon Oil Company, he apparently spends a great deal of his time on blogs and comment lines trying to mislead people into believing his Company line that there is nothing to worry about.

The 1930's warm spell in the Arctic was restricted to the high latitudes, as might be expected by natural oscillations in that area. Today's warming trend is more widespread and is accompanied by the overall global warming trend. Will this turn out to be the same? Maybe, but probably not. All other evidence points to a more long-term trend caused by greenhouse gases.

Science is a body-of-evidence endeavor. This does not mean picking out the odd temperature readings here and there that fit your worldview, or trying to refute this or that "hockey stick." The body of evidence clearly indicates a problem.

If we start working on the problem now, we can slow global warming without hurting the economy (so why NOT do it?), but in 10 or 20 years we may not have that luxury.

Read this and then start your talking, uh, jock!

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm

Just written by the first person in Canada to earn a PhD in Climatology. Should at least make you listen to the scientists and not the politicians. that would be like going to your accountant and having him figure out why your blood pressure is high. Just silly.

Dear NED Potter ABC. Science corresponden.

There is still time to act UNIPCC experts say but we got to cut the greenhouse gases to make it E-OK= Environmentally OK

E-OK may become a Big little word someday

Just a thought.

E-OK
WILLIAM B