drmiler

Join Date 09/2004

Global Warming, Another fear tactic?

The first is a reprint from the UK Guardian.

Climate change claims flawed, says study

Tim Radford, science editor
Tuesday November 9, 2004
The Guardian

A team of scientists has condemned claims of climate catastrophe as "fatally flawed" in a report released today.
The study appears on the same day that 300 climate scientists warn that winter temperatures in Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia have risen by up to 4 C in the past 50 years - and could warm by up to 7 C.

Martin Agerup, president of the Danish Academy for Future Studies and colleagues from Stockholm, Canada, Iceland and Britain say in their report that predictions of "extreme impacts" based on greenhouse emissions employed "faulty science, faulty logic and faulty economics".

Predictions of changes in sea level of a metre in the next century were overestimates: sea-level rises were likely to be only 10cm to 20cm in the next 100 years. Claims that climate change would lead to a rise in malaria were not warranted.

Extreme weather was not on the increase but more likely to be part of a natural cycle, not yet understood by climate scientists. The report says a warmer world would benefit fish stocks in the north Atlantic and reduce the incidence of temperature-related deaths in vulnerable humans.

But the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, to be presented in Reykjavik today, tells a different story.

The Arctic scientists predict that north polar summer ice may decline by at least 50% by the end of this century. Some computer models predict almost the complete disappearance of ice.

This would have a devastating impact on indigenous populations, who use the ice for hunting and fishing. Warming could also lead to a "substantial" melting of the Greenland ice sheet. If this were to disappear sea levels would rise by about seven metres.

The next is a reprint from the Heartland Institute.

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Latest Global Warming Claims Are Flawed, Inflated

Written By: Patrick J. Michaels
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: May 1, 2004
Publisher: The Heartland Institute

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The release of five gloom-and-doom articles on global warming and climate change, timed just as the Democratic Party was settling on a nominee, was no accident. Nor was it surprising that those articles should contain major flaws, inflated claims, and sweeping generalizations.

But what remains unanswered is how this stuff continues to make it through the scientific review process and editorial boards of major newspapers and magazines.

Testing Hypotheses

Every scientific article on global warming can be considered a hypothesis, and therefore a proposition that can be tested.

Start with Paul Epstein's January 28 piece in the New York Times. Epstein, from Harvard's Center for Health and the Global Environment, blamed the East Coast's somewhat cold winter on global warming, writing, "New Yorkers may be able to blame the city's current cold spell ... on global warming." That is based upon his theory that melting of Greenland's ice is cooling the U.S. Northeast.

That is a testable hypothesis. Check the long climate history of New York's Central Park for any significant January cooling. There isn't any. Nor is there any warming. A mere two years ago, in a warm winter, the same Times quoted the same Harvard Center (this time it was Eric Chivian, the director), on March 10, 2002, claiming the warmth of the Big Apple's winter was caused by global warming.

On a related front, the February 9 issue of Fortune magazine claimed a new ice age is imminent, at least for the U.S. and Europe, within the next 18 years, again caused by the melting of Greenland from global warming.

Another testable hypothesis. Southern Greenland, where it gets warm enough to melt very much, shows a net cooling trend for the last seven decades, even as it has lost glacial ice. If it loses ice while cooling, southern Greenland was simply destined to melt, no matter what. That's because Greenland itself is a huge relic of the last ice age, a frozen mass stuck way too far south by global standards. (Central Greenland shows a buildup of ice, and the island as a whole is neutral with respect to its ice balance in recent decades.)

On February 9, National Geographic Online claimed European Neanderthals were wiped out by the ice age some 60,000 years ago. Apparently they couldn't adapt to a changing landscape that made hunting more difficult. Obviously, National Geographic managed to miss the other side of the coin: The human competition to Neanderthals --i.e., us--was clever enough to adapt to climate change.

Model Adjustment Needed

On February 10, a press release from the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratory predicted "global warming will diminish the amount of water stored as snow in the Western United States by 70 percent" by 2050. According to L. Ruby Lueng, who directed the research, "This is a best-case scenario."

Actually, the prediction is based upon something that has been dead wrong for decades.

Lueng's climate model increases carbon dioxide--the main cause of warming--by 1 percent a year, which brings the concentration in the atmosphere to 65 percent above today's level by 2050. But that rate of increase stopped nearly a third of a century ago, as more energy-efficient technologies came online and as affluence reduced birthrates over much of the world. The actual increase has fluctuated between being a constant rate and a 0.4 percent increase. Both reduce the increase to 2050 by a whopping two-thirds, and warming must be adjusted down a similar amount.

Several prominent scientists have adjusted their projections of warming downward to accommodate this reality that now spans an entire generation. It is stunning that our most prestigious government laboratories are literally one-third of a century behind the times when it comes to global warming.

Another reason atmospheric carbon dioxide growth has slowed is because the planet is becoming greener, in response to longer growing seasons and slightly warmer temperatures. February's print version of National Geographic took this good news and somehow turned it into gloom and doom.

Page 126 of the issue offers the "Final Edit" section. It shows a peaceful tableaux of the cycle of carbon dioxide through the atmosphere and the biosphere with a picture of seashells, the ocean, and a shorebird, by photographer Peter Essick. According to Geographic, "Peter's dreamy picture of an egret wading on shell-laden rocks on Florida's Sanibel Island seemed to fit the story's mood."

Obviously, that wasn't alarming enough. So they changed the picture. "At the last moment, she [editor Elaine Bradley] and photo editor Dennis Dimick chose a new tack to 'ramp up the energy of the story,' says Dennis. They changed the opening picture to one of a blazing fire ... launching the story with speed and drama."

National Geographic is apparently proud to be hyping climate change. We're in the midst of the biggest publicity splash ever on global warming, which may have something to do with the fact that it's an election year.

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Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of The Satanic Gases. His email address is [email protected].

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Logically to believe that pollution has no negative impact on the environment is to avoid the obvious.

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Reply #1 By: whoman69 - 11/20/2004 5:00:58 PM
Logically to believe that pollution has no negative impact on the environment is to avoid the obvious.

I never said that it didn't, nor did the reprints. What both I and the articles ARE saying is that global warming is iffy at best. The science that it's founded on does not take all the required factors into consideration.

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If there's a chance we could destroy ourselves, why not take heed and at least try to limit greenhouse gases. If nothing else, we are ruining the environment in the Arctic and Antarctic.

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The Australian rainforest in our north has doubled in size in the last 50 years. Researchers claim it's due to global warming Link
If it continues to grow the threat of disease will increase significantly. Add to that the fact that every year the islands of the Pacfic sink a little more into the sea and regardless of the cause it's about time something was done.

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Reply #3 By: whoman69 - 11/20/2004 7:19:01 PM
I never said that it didn't, nor did the reprints. What both I and the articles ARE saying is that global warming is iffy at best. The science that it's founded on does not take all the required factors into consideration.

If there's a chance we could destroy ourselves, why not take heed and at least try to limit greenhouse gases.

Take heed of *what* exactly.

If nothing else, we are ruining the environment in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Unproven theory.

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Reply #4 By: cactoblasta - 11/20/2004 7:33:39 PM
The Australian rainforest in our north has doubled in size in the last 50 years. Researchers claim it's due to global warming Link
If it continues to grow the threat of disease will increase significantly. Add to that the fact that every year the islands of the Pacfic sink a little more into the sea and regardless of the cause it's about time something was done.

Just what do you propose we do about the pacific islands? They have nothing to do with the so-called global warming. And like the articles state, global warming may be *highly* overrated!!!

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They have nothing to do with the so-called global warming.

They are sinking due to rising water levels - allegedly a symptom of global warming. Perhaps global warming is overrated, but it's stupid to ignore the real effects described by the theory simply because the theory is discredited. If the islands aren't saved someone is going to have to take those people. Do we really want a few million extra people who feel they can lay their loss of their homelands on the hands of powerful industrial states?

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Reply #7 By: cactoblasta - 11/20/2004 7:45:25 PM
They have nothing to do with the so-called global warming.

They are sinking due to rising water levels

Can you show me a link to this? That is one that I can read? And you said it best "allegedly a symptom of global warming"!

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First of all, you do realize that you are citing a conservative think tank for your scientific analysis, right? They may be correct, and they may be grasping at straws for political boilerplate -- but if I were you I would read up on what a variety of scientists without a political axe to grind have to say. There are many books available.

From one good book on the subject:

How will human actions affect the long-term integrity of the atmosphere? Are they, seen from an evolutionary perspective, just ephemeral perturbations that will leave peculiar traces in the sedimentary record but will not fundamentally alter the natural course of the biosphere's development? Or will they amount, judged on a civilizational time scale, to major dreailment, if not to a catsrophic demise, of human aspirations as they the very biophysical foundations of our existence? Plausible arguments can support either of these extreme positions. What we need is not more clever arguing, and what we cannot get, given the inherent complexities of biosphereic transformations and major uncertainties concerning their outcomes, is a confident, albeit probablistic apraisal of our prospects...

Anthropogenic climate change poses unprecedented risks to the biosphere, not only because it would be truly global, but also because it might proceed at a very rapid rate. Although we cannot forecast the actual degree of future warning with high confidence, we understand that once the troposphere becomes, on average, several degrees warmer, there would be inevitable and appreciable changes to a number of basic biosphereic parameters, ranging from the length of the growing season to the amount and distribution of precipitation. As for the magnitude of change, we have to go bacfk about 15,000 years to encounter the most recent rise of more than 1-2 degrees Celsius in the average annual temperatures of the Northern Hemisphere. And as it took about 5,000 years of postglacial warming to raise the mean temperature by 4 degrees, a globabl warming of more than 2 degrees during the twenty-first century would proceed at a rate unprecedented since the emergence of our species... (The Earth's Biosphere by Vacliv Smil -- Professor at the University of Manitoba)

I think that this is pretty representative of expert views in the field. In any case, my read of the situation is that 1) the stakes are extremely high for our descendants, 2) the people who know the most about it are far from certain -- but they are a long ways from reassuring for those who evince certainty that there is nothing to worry about, 3) the situation is very easily demagogued and manipulated because a small portion of the population has the patience to look into this stuff, yet every year brings some sort of headline grabbing weather someplace in the country.

And 4) The issue is too important to let it get caught up in hurt feelings of the 2004 election. I mean, Republicans have to admit they won the election and get over it.

I don't think I have ever heard so much sense of grievance from the winners of an election. We all know that both sides did their best to spin everything -- the economy, the war, etc. -- to their advantage in the leadup to November 2. No need to get all breathless upon the discovery that people did the same over environmental issues. Personally, I have no interest in anyone's political spin on this issue -- but I care too much about my grandchildren to shut my eyes to the risks.

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The reason I don't listen to the global warming potbangers is the fact that, when I was a kid, the big alarm from the left was "global cooling".
They kept saying how we were headed for another ice age, and the major effects of it were supposed to come in "twenty years"...sometime in the early '90s. Which makes it a little late.
So now, they say that the world is getting warmer, but the worst effects won't really begin to be seen until sometme within the next 50 years. Gives them a little more time to work with.
I posted on this too, with "Global warming---it's a myth".

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Reply #9 By: Don Bemont - 11/20/2004 8:48:23 PM
First of all, you do realize that you are citing a conservative think tank for your scientific analysis, right? They may be correct, and they may be grasping at straws for political boilerplate -- but if I were you I would read up on what a variety of scientists without a political axe to grind have to say. There are many books available.

Did you read the entire post? I would hardly call the Cato Institute a conservative think tank. Which BTW is where the 2nd half is from.

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So basically

300 climate scientists warn that winter temperatures in Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia have risen by up to 4 C in the past 50 years - and could warm by up to 7 C.

And you take the work of

Martin Agerup, president of the Danish Academy for Future Studies and colleagues from Stockholm, Canada, Iceland and Britain

who aren't even climatoligists, but instead are lead by Martin Agerup Link chairman of the board of Addition, a small IT-company based in Copenhagen. Against scientists that actually konw what they are talking about.

This guy contributed to a book called Adapt or Die. It's about how current emmissions are going to ruin the global economy and hurt poor countries AND THE WORLD CLIMATE, but that it's okay because humans are capable of adapting to the "new earth". here's some info from the book. Link

Here's a synopsis of the book for yall. We ain't sure whats going to happen. Frankly we are all guessing. If we believe that a possible cataclismic climate changes are on the way, the economic cost of preventing it is too great to pursue. To be honest the 20th century especially the period of Industrial Revolution has done us in already, so we better stick our heads between our knees and kiss our butts good-bye. None-the-less some of us will survive, because that's what's great about us humans, we are able to adapt. So economically it's really not worth it. We might as well take the money that we could spend on fixing the "supposed" problem and just make our lives more comfortable now.

Keep in mind this guy is a supporter and student of Bjørn Lomborg (see Link) who has been widely discredited for his work in The Skeptical Evironmentalist Link for a failed attempt to discredit the Envronmental movement by uncovering the uncertainties of environmental modeling. Unfourtunately it has been admitted by everyone one involved whether in large type or small print.

And now you know the rest of the story.

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Reply #12 By: Cappy1507 - 11/20/2004 11:27:17 PM
So basically
300 climate scientists warn that winter temperatures in Alaska, western Canada and eastern Russia have risen by up to 4 C in the past 50 years - and could warm by up to 7 C.

And you take the work of

Martin Agerup, president of the Danish Academy for Future Studies and colleagues from Stockholm, Canada, Iceland and Britain

who aren't even climatoligists, but instead are lead by Martin Agerup Link chairman of the board of Addition, a small IT-company based in Copenhagen. Against scientists that actually konw what they are talking about.

This guy contributed to a book called Adapt or Die. It's about how current emmissions are going to ruin the global economy and hurt poor countries AND THE WORLD CLIMATE, but that it's okay because humans are capable of adapting to the "new earth". here's some info from the book. Link

Here's a synopsis of the book for yall. We ain't sure whats going to happen. Frankly we are all guessing. If we believe that a possible cataclismic climate changes are on the way, the economic cost of preventing it is too great to pursue. To be honest the 20th century especially the period of Industrial Revolution has done us in already, so we better stick our heads between our knees and kiss our butts good-bye. None-the-less some of us will survive, because that's what's great about us humans, we are able to adapt. So economically it's really not worth it. We might as well take the money that we could spend on fixing the "supposed" problem and just make our lives more comfortable now.

Keep in mind this guy is a supporter and student of Bjørn Lomborg (see Link) who has been widely discredited for his work in The Skeptical Evironmentalist Link for a failed attempt to discredit the Envronmental movement by uncovering the uncertainties of environmental modeling. Unfourtunately it has been admitted by everyone one involved whether in large type or small print.

And now you know the rest of the story.

No, I do however take the word of...

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of The Satanic Gases. His email address is [email protected].

I think this man would handily qualify for knowing what he's talking about, don't you?And while I'm at it...Can *you*explain why the ice age ended? There certainly were no hydrocarbons back then were there?

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Just to clarify a few points.

Global warming can indeed lead to an ice age for parts of the planet. The largest risks for the US and Europe in particular is that global warming would cause a collaspe of the north Atlantic current. Almost all scientists will admit that should this happen it would significantly lower temperatures across Western Europe and the Eastern US seaboard.

ALL scientists will also admit to the heating effect that greenhouse gases have on the atmosphere. That is known and agreed upon. What is also known and agreed upon is that the Earth IS warming at a faster rate than at anytime since at least the last ice age and possibly up to 2 million years ago. The real debate is between those who believe that mankinds contribution is just a small addition on top of a natural warming process, and those that believe it is the primary cause for warming. There are far more environmental scientists who believe the latter.

Paul.

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Reply #14 By: Solitair - 11/21/2004 5:44:16 AM
Just to clarify a few points.

Global warming can indeed lead to an ice age for parts of the planet. The largest risks for the US and Europe in particular is that global warming would cause a collaspe of the north Atlantic current. Almost all scientists will admit that should this happen it would significantly lower temperatures across Western Europe and the Eastern US seaboard.

ALL scientists will also admit to the heating effect that greenhouse gases have on the atmosphere. That is known and agreed upon. What is also known and agreed upon is that the Earth IS warming at a faster rate than at anytime since at least the last ice age and possibly up to 2 million years ago. The real debate is between those who believe that mankinds contribution is just a small addition on top of a natural warming process, and those that believe it is the primary cause for warming. There are far more environmental scientists who believe the latter.

Paul.

First off global warming can not lead to ANY ice age only global *cooling* can do that. Warming means it *melts* ice, not forms ice. The scientists that believe the latter are the ones who can NOT explain how the first ice age ended. Until they can I'm not buying their theory. It warmed up enough to do it the first time why can't people believe it could happen again. I believe it's a cyclic event.

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think this man would handily qualify for knowing what he's talking about, don't you?And while I'm at it...Can *you*explain why the ice age ended? There certainly were no hydrocarbons back then were there?

Previous ice ages were cause by impacts of meteors or small asteroids that caused the sun to be blotted out by the foreign matter thrown into the upper atmosphere. Eventually they settled back down and allowed the sun to shine thru.

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Dr Miller,
If you compare north europ and north east coast of america with other land with same longitude, you will notice a very different type of weather, actually harder and cooler. The reason come from the existence of the Gulf stream which is an enormous water current.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Stream

As impressive the Gulf stream is shouldn't hide the fact that it is very sensitive to temperature, salt content of sea water ,etc. ... . One of the potential consequence of global warming would be to destroy the slight equilibrium that keep gulf stream moving. Hence causing eventually a local cooling on the area affected by gulf stream.

The biggest question about global warming is not about it's existence or either its consequences, but about human responsibilities for causing it and if actually we can now do something about it.

The hole in ozone layer give you a fair example of human policy actually solving problem created by human. The same thing is not so sure with global warming because, the system is the earth as a whole, and that it is a complexe one.

The scientific community is now supporting the global warming phenomena. That's up to you of not acknowledging their work, you might be even an expert yourself, but you'd better have evidences backed by better sources than politically oriented groups.

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Reply #17 By: Jepel - 11/21/2004 10:48:55 AM

The scientific community is now supporting the global warming phenomena. That's up to you of not acknowledging their work, you might be even an expert yourself, but you'd better have evidences backed by better sources than politically oriented groups.

So your calling these people politcally oriented?

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of The Satanic Gases. His email address is [email protected]

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Drmiler,
global warming CAN lead to an ice age for parts of the planet. It's a well understood concept that few scientists disagree with. What is your scientific objection to the concept of warming disrupting the gulf stream and causing an ice age? This is a scientifically sound hypothesis. It's all about equilibrium. Movement in one direction can result in loss of equilibrium and huge shifts in the other direction. The huge shifts in the otehr direction (ice age) are not possible without the initial shifts causing loss of equilibrium (global warming).
There are also plenty of potential reasons for cyclic warming and for how the ice ages end. Examples include greenhouse gases concentration (ice ages produce greenhouse gases faster than they can store them and so eventually will come to an age due to warming), ocean current variation (ocrean currents are driven by temperature and salininity, eventually the build up of ice will cause a reverse of key ocean currents taking warm water north and melting the ice), magnetic pole fluctuations (magnetic pole fluctuations can cause instabilities in the earths crusts releasing serious volcano activity thus warming the planet through gas release). None of these can ever be conclusively proven though.

Paul.

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kingbee

Join Date 04/2004

+42

don't try to blind the good drmiler with science nor confuse the issue by mentioning the cato institute--nominally libertarian-oriented--is increasingly the beneficiary of donations from organizations with a definite financial interest in curbing environmental regulations including: Chevron Companies, Exxon Company, Shell Oil Company and Tenneco Gas, the American Petroleum Institute, Amoco Foundation and Atlantic Richfield Foundation. Eli Lilly & Company, Merck & Company and Pfizer, Inc

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