From Madison, Wisconsin:
Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.Meanwhile, Canadian geoscientist R. Timothy Patterson argues that climate change is caused by solar activity and that the earth is on the verge of cooling, but also cautions that "science is many years away from properly understanding global climate".The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it "... there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years..."
Not that scientific critiques seem to sway the liberal arts majors in journalism and government who've convinced each other that the science is settled.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at June 22, 2007 03:50 PM | Email This[/sarcasm]
Posted by: Mike H on June 22, 2007 05:15 PM''Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth.''
If this happens to even a fraction of the extent that resulted in the Little Ice Age several hundred years ago, that will be a REALLY ''inconvenient truth'', won't it......
There are many of us in scientific and engineering communities who have the training, understand the BS they are throwing, and (even though some of us could use the cash) don't get funding from Exxon/Mobile.
With even the less strident of "progressive" press outlets having bought into the AGW propaganda, I sometimes dispair for the triumph of truth. But scientists like Reid Bryson, who willingly risk a lifetime of achievement and their reputations by speaking out in these Stalinistic times, bring me hope.
Posted by: deadwood on June 22, 2007 09:07 PMWe all know about the Albright/Mote story at the UW, but I hadn't heard about the Oregon story. Amazingly, the governor of Oregon is saying that this scientist doesn't know what he is talking about (as though the governor does?) and then throws out that the science is settled and the debate is over (which even the IPCC denies).
Lots of crazy people in this world.
Posted by: pudge on June 22, 2007 10:52 PMGiven the complexity of global climate, and the common hubris of man, I'd say Al Gore has placed a pretty lame bet.
It's going to be loads of fun to remind the lefties of their extreme gullibility in the coming years.
Posted by: Jeff B. on June 22, 2007 11:09 PMIn the past, scientists believed the fluctuations in the Sun's output were
too small to cause the observed amount of temperature change, hence the need
to look for other causes like carbon dioxide. However, these new
experiments show that fluctuations in the Sun's output are in fact large
enough, so there is no longer a need to resort to carbon dioxide as the
cause of the recent warming trend.
The discovery of the real cause of the recent increase in the Earth's
temperature is indeed a convenient truth. It means humans are not to blame
for the increase. It also means there is absolutely nothing we can, much
less do, to correct the situation.
Thomas Laprade
480 Rupert St.
Thunder Bay, Ont.
Ph. 807 3457258
http://www.canadianvalues.ca/diglib.aspx?cid=2
http://www.unikron.com/play/play_display.cgi?speed=hi&id=canadian_values_march1 _________________________________
In the past, scientists believed the fluctuations in the Sun's output were
too small to cause the observed amount of temperature change, hence the need
to look for other causes like carbon dioxide. However, these new
experiments show that fluctuations in the Sun's output are in fact large
enough, so there is no longer a need to resort to carbon dioxide as the
cause of the recent warming trend.
The discovery of the real cause of the recent increase in the Earth's
temperature is indeed a convenient truth. It means humans are not to blame
for the increase. It also means there is absolutely nothing we can, much
less do, to correct the situation.
Thomas Laprade
480 Rupert St.
Thunder Bay, Ont.
Ph. 807 3457258
http://www.canadianvalues.ca/diglib.aspx?cid=2
http://www.unikron.com/play/play_display.cgi?speed=hi&id=canadian_values_march1 _________________________________
In the past, scientists believed the fluctuations in the Sun's output were
too small to cause the observed amount of temperature change, hence the need
to look for other causes like carbon dioxide. However, these new
experiments show that fluctuations in the Sun's output are in fact large
enough, so there is no longer a need to resort to carbon dioxide as the
cause of the recent warming trend.
The discovery of the real cause of the recent increase in the Earth's
temperature is indeed a convenient truth. It means humans are not to blame
for the increase. It also means there is absolutely nothing we can, much
less do, to correct the situation.
Thomas Laprade
480 Rupert St.
Thunder Bay, Ont.
Ph. 807 3457258
http://www.canadianvalues.ca/diglib.aspx?cid=2
http://www.unikron.com/play/play_display.cgi?speed=hi&id=canadian_values_march1 _________________________________
Climate change is inevitable. From a certain way of looking at it, it doesn't matter what the cause is.
Instead of trying to stop climate change, which is impossible, we should learn, as a species, how to deal with climate change. The challenges will be enormous, and we must take the long view, and commit our resources sensibly.
Unfortunately, the resources we are going to spend over the next century will probably be wasted. We are likely to cripple the economy of the industrialized world, and do more damage to civilization in the process.
To see the harm bad public policy can have, just look at the recent push for corn-based ethanol. Corn prices are skyrocketing, and farmers are planting corn in lieu of other crops. Food costs are already rising, and we are all going to pay dearly for it. I feel sorry for the poor folks in South American who are watching their staple food source - corn - become scarce and costly.
To top it off, if you do the math, it takes more energy to produce ethanol than you get! If it weren't so sad and frightening it would be funny.
So what should we be doing? In a word, adapt. We can find the solutions; we just need the will to do so.
Here are just a few problems we should be paying attention to:
Water Management - We need to learn how to manage water on a global scale. Droughts will impact population centers, and we should be prepared to be able to move and manage large quantities of water.
Agriculture - As temperate zones changes, we will need to change what we grow and where. While some areas will become less productive, others will become more productive.
Sea Levels - It is unclear how much sea levels will rise and fall over the millenia, but some regions will become uninhabitable. The choices will be to either fight back the sea or move.
Again, the time scales we need to plan for are hundreds and even thousands of years, not just the next decade. We should start working on these problems now. But I fear that we are squandering our resources paying attention to the wrong things.
The ecosystem is a massively complex multiple loop, multiple input-output system. Pushing the buttons and twiddling the knobs must be discouraged. Instances - The Dutch control the North Sea with massive amount of intellectual and financial input that they are now wed to for the foreseeable future. The Corps of Engineers, however, does not have a grip on the enormous geological/geographical ecosystem of the Mississippi delta. (Parenthetically, whose fault is it when people do not move out of the path of a storm or from the side of a volcano, anyway? There is some immaturity there.)
Big fixes will backfire simply because nature has built in reactions that cannot be anticipated. Our lifspan is too short the notice that sea level has already risen 125 m in the last 18,000 years, but we can read about it in our religious books and mythbooks.
All the oxygen we breath comes from plants and CO2 is plant food. This is sufficient reason to offer that we should tamper with nature with extreme caution.
The UN has cooked the books as bad as Enron on CO2, The Mann Hockey Stick, and ignored the solar Research of the Danish National Space Center. Pardon my ramble, but it's time for (rare) common sense before we let the ideolog Environmental Lobby Groups and Al Gore predict and determine our collective economic future.
Posted by: Dr. Francis T. Manns on June 23, 2007 08:26 AMThe ecosystem is a massively complex multiple loop, multiple input-output system. Pushing the buttons and twiddling the knobs must be discouraged. Instances - The Dutch control the North Sea with massive amount of intellectual and financial input that they are now wed to for the foreseeable future. The Corps of Engineers, however, does not have a grip on the enormous geological/geographical ecosystem of the Mississippi delta. (Parenthetically, whose fault is it when people do not move out of the path of a storm or from the side of a volcano, anyway? There is some immaturity there.)
Big fixes will backfire simply because nature has built in reactions that cannot be anticipated. Our lifspan is too short the notice that sea level has already risen 125 m in the last 18,000 years, but we can read about it in our religious books and mythbooks.
All the oxygen we breath comes from plants and CO2 is plant food. This is sufficient reason to offer that we should tamper with nature with extreme caution.
The UN has cooked the books as bad as Enron on CO2, The Mann Hockey Stick, and ignored the solar Research of the Danish National Space Center. Pardon my ramble, but it's time for (rare) common sense before we let the ideolog Environmental Lobby Groups and Al Gore predict and determine our collective economic future.
Posted by: Dr. Francis T. Manns on June 23, 2007 08:26 AMhttp://www.surfacestations.org/
Posted by: Keb on June 23, 2007 09:04 AMHe has the chutzpah to be peddling a bestseller that plagiarizes Neil Postman's breakthrough book from 1985. And his dumbass mouthbreathing fans don't even know it.
Now that's cynical demagoguery. You go, Gore-man!
Straight to hell.
Posted by: Rey Smith on June 23, 2007 11:57 AMLet us know when you come up with the required factor of a thousand or so to equal the real scientific world.
Posted by: Reader on June 23, 2007 11:59 AMIt only takes one correct scientist to disprove the many. Recall Einstein, Galileo, Bohr, etc. Science is not consensus.
Posted by: Jeff B. on June 23, 2007 12:27 PM1. Be suspicious of anyone who seeks to stifle debate ("concensus" talk):
Al Gore attempts to debunk even IPCC findings (the findings of the actual study--not the Policy Summary) by arguing that the debate is already over, the concensus is we should now focus on solutions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqUHM2gf5g4
Gore cohort James Hansen, as quoted by the Associated Press on September 24, 2006.
"Some of this noise won't stop until some of these [skeptic] scientists are dead."
2. Be suspicious of anyone who engenders fear rather than presents facts.
Open almost any website, policy statement, or news article for examples. Sea levels will rise by 30 feet, mass starvation, drought, famine, desease, human migration, polar bears, etc. Yet aside from concensus talk, no one can produce a base of scientific study and volume of repeatable data collection that demonstrates an anthropogenic causality for warming.
3. Follow the money:
"Funding for poor countries now includes the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which has 30-plus donor countries, and carbon trading under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, but these are not nearly enough.
The World Bank's idea is for a fund which will lend money on soft terms to poor nations to help them cut emissions, getting in return interest payments plus carbon credits equivalent to the amount of the emissions reductions, which the fund could then sell on."
http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2007/03/al_gores_inconv.html
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20565136.htm
http://newsbusters.org/node/10989
For Laughs:
http://newsbusters.org/node/11015
"Alarm rather than genuine scientific curiosity, it appears, is essential to maintaining funding. And only the most senior scientists today can stand up against this alarmist gale, and defy the iron triangle of climate scientists, advocates, and policy makers."
Dr. Richard Dindzen of MIT
Sorry for the long reply.
Eck
Posted by: Dr. Eckleburg on June 23, 2007 12:56 PMSame credibility quotient as here.
Posted by: Smoker on June 23, 2007 02:17 PMCancer is NOT caused by cigarettes. Cancer is caused by mutation of the body's cells. Cigarettes (and many other substances both man-made and natural) weaken cells through many years of constant exposure and through doing so make the cells more susceptible to the type of mutation that causes cancer.
I will assume that your depth of knowledge on AGW is as deep as it is for cancer.
Posted by: deadwood on June 23, 2007 03:09 PMNow let's consider the possibility that a majority of scientists are correct. We wait the 10 years your two scientists say it will take for the world to start cooling. We arrive at the year 2017 and, lo and behold, nothing changes - the planet just keeps getting warm. Now we find ourselves in an urgent situation, where change must occur rapidly if we are to avoid the severe consequences scientists have been telling us about since the 90s. Now we must make very real economic sacrifices if we want to avoid massive drought and famine in Africa. You get the idea.
So we can wait it out, not do anything for a decade, and hope your two scientists are right, or we can play it safe, and start making some changes now, so that just in case doctor genius from Wisconsin is wrong, we don't find ourselves in a sudden climate crisis.
To me, it doesn't matter whether or not the science is settled. It's a matter of responsibility and morality. Gambling with the world's future is not an activity we should partake in.
Posted by: nick on June 23, 2007 11:52 PMFirst of all, the possible ill effects of trying to stop global warming that doesn't exist are drastically underestimated. What if we are headed into another "little ice age" that in fact could be accelerated by our attempts to stop global warming? We could be speeding up our own demise.
And don't give me this "slightly lower growth" stuff. If we did all the Al Gores of the world want, we would likely go into a massive recession at the very least, and perhaps far worse. And maybe it's easy for YOU to say that this isn't such a bad thing, but tell that to the many families whose lives are ruined because of your pointless efforts.
And on the other side, yes, let's listen to the majority of scientists, who agree that we will see only a rise of a few degrees over the next century, which is far from even remotely catastrophic.
Saying we should act based on the worst possible scenario doesn't work because a. neither way is worse than the other and b. the probability of catastrophe so important that we have to act is so low that it shouldn't reasonably come into play. By that same thinking, we were right to go into Iraq, because if we didn't invade and he did have WMD, well, we'd be screwed. Also, that means we should invade Iran, right away.
Also, are you a Christian? If not, you should be one: after all, that's the whole reason Pascal's Wager exists, so if you're using that argument, you must agree it's a good one, and therefore that you should be a Christian.
I am being a little facetious here, but seriously, it's a terrible argument. Yes, we should weigh potential consequences even if we don't know for sure, but no, we shouldn't simply choose to avoid the worst possible outcome (even if we knew what it was, which we don't).
Posted by: pudge on June 24, 2007 01:51 AMThis "principle" states that we should change our ways just in case they are right. I find this hillarious coming out of the same mouths that say a preventative strike against a military target is a war crime (Or arresting a terrorist before he triggers his bomb).
Posted by: deadwood on June 24, 2007 12:59 PMYou made my point. You belong here.
Posted by: Drinker on June 24, 2007 02:51 PMI agree that it's foolish to attempt to prove a negative, but let's not shift the burden of proof. AGW is the forwarded hypothesis, so let's see the conclusive tie between human activity and temperature rise. No one on either side of this debate can claim to have sufficient data to draw that conclusion. Even the IPCC has not made such a claim (again read the research not the policy summary that's written by policy makers). I can show you the data for a competing hypothesis relating solar activity and global mean temperature from 1880 forward. Unlike CO2 levels, which vary widely and are mathematically uncorrelated, temperature and solar radiation levels are lock step.
Look up the work of Dr. Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Lab. It's not online, that I can find, so you'll actually have to go to a library. It's clearly the most comprehensive examination of its kind. This study is much more than trend data, like IPCC findings. This is a year by year multi-source comparison of CO2 levels and solar radiation data as they relate to temperature. The results are truly astonishing.
For a more cursary examination, check out the 1000 year multi-phase (ice core, tree ring, poleo-research) study by Dr. Solanki et al. from a joint Swiss and German research team.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/18/wsun18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
All I want is data supporting the AGW hypothesis that is backed by statistically sound and repeatable research methods that find even strong correlations between human activity and temperature fluctuations. I've searched high and low for the most accurate data correlatives for temperature increase and decrease, and the Soon study is it. A must read.
Which means there's at least a 10 percent chance, according to the IPCC, that the hypothesis is wrong.
Which means it's stupid for anyone to say the debate is over.
And note that this isn't even an actual probability, of course. You can't actually quantify such a "probability." It's more like a degree of certainty.
So yes, there is no causation being proven here. That's simply true. And correlations are, as you say, pretty weak.
Posted by: pudge on June 24, 2007 11:34 PM"IPCC Scientists Challenge Al Gore's View of Global Warming Consensus"
http://newsbusters.org/node/13833
As they say at McDonalds....I'm lovin it!