Global Warming: Not Exactly What You Think

[_sphinx_]

I'm not gonna argue anything here. I don't care that most people don't know the "science" behind global warming. Sure, the almighty IPCC released its so called definitive report, that's a smoking gun. Or is it...

Gone are the days when climate researchers would be content to sit in their ivory towers, packed to the gills with supercomputers, crunching numbers. Nowadays, their field is more likely to deliver the material of thrillers, and they themselves have acquired the leading roles. The issue has become so hotly contested and the forecasts so spectacular that they are no longer merely the stuff of media reports. And professionals who make their daily bread staging the apocalypse have taken the bait. Last year, filmmaker Roland Emmerich portrayed a global climate collapse triggered by human activity in his film "The Day After Tomorrow". In January, the film's literary counterpart, the novel State of Fear by bestselling author Michael Crichton, appeared in German bookstores, six month after having been published in English.

Crichton's thriller deals with the violent conflict between sober-minded realists and radical idealists when it comes to the subject of climate. The idealists' weapon is organized fear of abrupt climate change, and they interpret any out-of-the-ordinary weather event as evidence of global warming caused by humans. PR consultants deliver the following advice to environmental groups: "You have to structure your information in such a way that it can always be corroborated, no matter what kind of weather we have." The realists, who claim that there is little evidence that meteorological extremes are caused by human activity, are fighting a losing battle. Their dry scientific facts don't stand a chance in a PR battle with the horrific scenarios painted in Technicolor by the climate idealists.

The film and the novel are similar in some respects. While the impending catastrophe in Emmerich's film is climatic, Crichton predicts an economic collapse in his novel. In both cases, however, the culprits are the greenhouse gases produced by human beings. In the film, it's the emissions themselves that lead to disaster, whereas the novel deals with the effects of fear of an impending climatic catastrophe. In Crichton's book, the idealists are so obsessed by their mission that, in a last-ditch effort to shake up public opinion, they finally trigger the catastrophes they themselves have predicted.

Overselling to get attention

Despite some artful fictionalization of the facts, Crichton has certainly delivered an accurate portrayal of the dynamics of communication among the scientific community, environmental organizations, government and civil society. The scientific community does in fact face a serious problem when it comes to public understanding and perception of climate change. Scientific research faces a crisis because its public figures are overselling the issues to gain attention in a hotly contested market for newsworthy information.

The climate change caused by human activity is an important issue. But is it really what one US senator calls the "most important problem on the planet?" Don't global conflicts and poverty present challenges of a similar magnitude? And what about population growth, demographic changes and more common natural disasters?

Nowadays, there are few people in the United States who are interested in the Greenhouse Effect. At the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s it was a different story. There was the great drought of 1988 and then the 1993 Mississippi floods -- both events that really should have provided a wake-up call to the public vis-?-vis climate change. But it failed to materialize in the United States, and interest in the subject quickly waned. According to a survey conducted by CBS in May 2003, environmental problems were no longer ranked among the six hottest topics. Even among environmental problems, the issue of climate change was only ranked seventh. Although public opinion in Germany has taken a somewhat different course, how much longer will that be the case?

Catastrophe is interesting: Sober analysis boring

Like the protagonists in Crichton's thriller, the general belief is that in order to keep public attention focused on the issue of "climate catastrophe" (a term, incidentally, that doesn't exist outside of German-speaking countries), it has to be presented "somewhat more attractively." In the early 1990s, just as Germany was being hit by severe wind storms, the German media were reporting that the storms were becoming more and more severe. Since then, storms of this magnitude have once again become less common in northern Europe, a fact now ignored by the media. They have also ignored the fact that changes in barometric pressure measured in Stockholm since the days of Napoleon reveal no systematic change in the frequency and severity of storms. Instead, the media are now filled with stories of heat waves and floods. Like the characters in Crichton's novel who incite public fear, the media are now claiming that all kinds of extreme events are increasing in frequency. Using this logic, a drought in the German state of Brandenburg fits together seamlessly with a catastrophic flood of the Oder River and the two events don't contradict each other.

In addition to normal floods and storms, other more dramatic threat scenarios -- such as a reversal of the Gulf Stream that would lead to a drop in temperatures in large parts of Europe or the rapid melting of the Greenland ice shelf -- are being added to the image of approaching disaster. There was even public speculation as to whether the Asian tsunamis could somehow be attributed to the disastrous work of the human race.

Public attention won't remain focused on these issues for long. Soon people will become inured to climate warnings and return to more everyday matters: joblessness, trans-Atlantic enmity, Turkey's joining the European Union or Prince Charles's marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles. Because of our short attention spans, we will experience how the prophets of doom paint the dangers of climate change in ever more lurid detail. One can already imagine the future images of horror: a breaking off of the western Antarctic ice shelf, which would cause sea levels to rise dramatically, and, after a few decades of unbridled carbon dioxide emissions, an abrupt temperature shift that would make the earth's atmosphere as incompatible with human life as that of Venus. Can such predictions, which have been known to the public for a long time, readily compete with the Hollywood images created by directors like Emmerich?

The price for provoking fear is high, because it's a practice that sacrifices the otherwise prized principle of caution. A scarce resource -- public attention and confidence in the reliability of science -- is being consumed without being renewed by a practice of offering positive examples.

But what do climate researchers themselves think about the issue, and how do they interact with the media and the public at large?

Is there scientific consensus?

The public statements made by well-known German climate researchers create the impression that the scientific fundamentals of the climate problems have essentially been solved. They claim that the scientific community has already established the conditions for taking concerted action. In this case, concerted action means reducing greenhouse gases as much as possible.

This is a view that in fact does not correspond to the situation in the scientific community. That's because a significant number of climatologists are by no means convinced that the underlying issues have been adequately addressed. Last year, for example, a survey of climate researchers from all over the world revealed that a quarter of respondents still question whether human activity is responsible for the most recent climatic changes.

But most researchers do believe that a shift in global climate caused by human activity is already occurring, and that it will accelerate in the future and become even more apparent. Higher temperatures and higher sea levels will accompany this shift. Scientists predict that in the more distant future, that is, in about 100 years, a substantial rise in greenhouse gas levels in the Earth's atmosphere will lead to more severe precipitation events in the northern hemisphere; some regions could experience more severe and others weaker storms.

But there are always scientists for whom, in keeping with the maxims of the alarmists in Crichton's book, these scenarios are insufficiently dramatic. For this reason, they are increasingly drawing connections between current extreme weather events and the climate shift caused by human activity. They do, it is true, tend to use cautious language in drawing such parallels and interviews become exercises in understatement. When asked such questions as: "Are high water levels on the Elbe River, the hurricanes in Florida and this year's mild winter evidence of climate catastrophe?" they respond that while this cannot be proven scientifically, some believe it to be the case. None of these statements is incorrect, but when combined they lead to the obvious conclusion that of course these weather events are proof of climate catastrophe, a statement so explicit that no one would venture to volunteer it.

Always choose the most dramatic figure

The pattern is always the same. The significance of individual events is turned into material suitable for media presentation and is then cleverly dramatized. When the outlook for the future is discussed, the scenario that predicts the highest growth rates for greenhouse gas emissions -- which, of course, comes with the most dramatic climatic consequences -- is always selected from among all possible scenarios. Those predicting significantly smaller increases in greenhouse gas levels are not mentioned.

Who benefits from this? The assumption is made that fear compels people to act, but we forget that it also produces a rather short-lived reaction. Climate change, on the other hand, requires a long-term response. The impact on the public may be "better" in the short term, thereby also positively affecting reputations and research funding. But to ensure that the entire system continues to function in the long term, each new claim about the future of our climate and of the planet must be just a little more dramatic than the last. It's difficult to attract the public's attention to the climate-related extinction of animal species following reports on apocalyptic heat waves. The only kind of news that can trump these kinds of reports would be something on the order of a reversal of the Gulf Stream.

All of this leads to a spiral of exaggeration. Each individual step in this process may seem harmless, but on the whole, the knowledge imparted to the public about climate, climatic fluctuations, climate shift and climatic effects is dramatically distorted.

Unfortunately, the corrective mechanisms in science are failing. Public reservations with regard to the standard evidence of climate catastrophe are often viewed as unfortunate within the scientific community, since they harm the "worthy cause," especially because, as scientists claim, they could be "misused by skeptics." Dramatization on a small scale is considered acceptable, whereas correcting exaggeration is viewed as dangerous because it is politically inopportune. This means that doubts are not voiced publicly. Instead, the scientific community creates the impression that the scientific underpinnings of climate change research are solid and only require minor additions and adjustments.

Science losing objectivity

This self-censorship in the minds of scientists ultimately leads to a sort of deafness toward new, surprising insights that compete with or even contradict the conventional explanatory models. Science is deteriorating into a repair shop for conventional, politically opportune scientific claims. Not only does science become impotent; it also loses its ability to objectively inform the public.

An example of this phenomenon is the discussion surrounding the so-called hockey stick, a temperature curve that supposedly portrays developments of the last 1,000 years. The curve derives its name from its hockey stick-like shape. In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a panel of climate researchers established by the United Nations, rashly institutionalized the hockey stick curve as an iconic symbol of human-induced climate change. In the curve, the upward-tilting blade of the hockey stick that follows decades of stable temperatures represents human influence.

In an article we published in the professional journal "Science" in October 2004, we were able to demonstrate that the underlying methodology that led to this hockey stick curve is flawed. Our intention was to turn back the spiral of exaggerations somewhat, but without calling the core statement into question, which is that human-induced climate change does exist. Prominent members of the climate research community did not respond to the article by engaging use in a dispute over the facts. Instead, they were concerned that the worthy cause of climate protection had been harmed.

Other scientists are succumbing to a form of fanaticism almost reminiscent of the McCarthy era. In their minds, criticism of methodology is nothing but the monstrous product of "conservative think-tanks and misinformation campaigns by the oil and coal lobby," which they believe is their duty to expose. In contrast, dramatization of climate shift is defended as being useful from the standpoint of educating the public.

The principle that drives other branches of science should be equally applicable to climate research: dissent drives continued development, and differences of opinion are not unfortunate matters to be kept within the community. Silencing dissent and uncertainty for the benefit of a politically worthy cause reduces credibility, because the public is more well-informed than generally assumed. In the long term, the supposedly useful dramatizations achieve exactly the opposite of what they are intended to achieve. If this happens, both science and society will have missed an opportunity.

Hans von Storch, 55, is the director of the GKSS Institute for Coastal Research (IfK) in Geesthacht, Germany, which researches water and climate in coastal areas. Together with Nico Stehr, 62, a sociologist at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen, Germany, is a long-time researcher of public attitudes about climate change.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Source

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures.

But that may be the sugarcoated version.

Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers.

Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations:

They "don't take into account the gorillas -- Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University earth sciences professor Lonnie Thompson, a polar ice specialist. "I think there are unpleasant surprises as we move into the 21st century."

Michael MacCracken, who until 2001 coordinated the official U.S. government reviews of the international climate report on global warming, has fired off a letter of protest over the omission.

The melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are a fairly recent development that has taken scientists by surprise. They don't know how to predict its effects in their computer models. But many fear it will mean the world's coastlines are swamped much earlier than most predict.

Others believe the ice melt is temporary and won't play such a dramatic role.

That debate may be the central one as scientists and bureaucrats from around the world gather in Paris to finish the first of four major global warming reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel was created by the United Nations in 1988.

After four days of secret word-by-word editing, the final report will be issued Friday.

The early versions of the report predict that by 2100 the sea level will rise anywhere between 5 and 23 inches. That's far lower than the 20 to 55 inches forecast by 2100 in a study published in the peer-review journal Science this month. Other climate experts, including NASA's James Hansen, predict sea level rise that can be measured by feet more than inches.

The report is also expected to include some kind of proviso that says things could be much worse if ice sheets continue to melt.

The prediction being considered this week by the IPCC is "obviously not the full story because ice sheet decay is something we cannot model right now, but we know it's happening," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate panel lead author from Germany who made the larger prediction of up to 55 inches of sea level rise. "A document like that tends to underestimate the risk," he said.

"This will dominate their discussion because there's so much contentiousness about it," said Bob Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a multinational research effort. "If the IPCC comes out with significantly less than one meter (about 39 inches of sea level rise), there will be people in the science community saying we don't think that's a fair reflection of what we know."

In the past, the climate change panel didn't figure there would be large melt of ice in west Antarctica and Greenland this century and didn't factor it into the predictions. Those forecasts were based only on the sea level rise from melting glaciers (which are different from ice sheets) and the physical expansion of water as it warms.

But in 2002, Antarctica's 1,255-square-mile Larsen B ice shelf broke off and disappeared in just 35 days. And recent NASA data shows that Greenland is losing 53 cubic miles of ice each year -- twice the rate it was losing in 1996.

Even so, there are questions about how permanent the melting in Greenland and especially Antarctica are, said panel lead author Kevin Trenberth, chief of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

While he said the melting ice sheets "raise a warning flag," Trenberth said he wonders if "some of this might just be temporary."

University of Alabama at Huntsville professor John Christy said Greenland didn't melt much within the past thousand years when it was warmer than now. Christy, a reviewer of the panel work, is a prominent so-called skeptic. He acknowledges that global warming is real and man-made, but he believes it is not as worrisome as advertised.

Those scientists who say sea level will rise even more are battling a consensus-building structure that routinely issues scientifically cautious global warming reports, scientists say.

The IPCC reports have to be unanimous, approved by 154 governments -- including the United States and oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia -- and already published peer-reviewed research done before mid-2006.

Rahmstorf, a physics and oceanography professor at Potsdam University in Germany, says, "In a way, it is one of the strengths of the IPCC to be very conservative and cautious and not overstate any climate change risk."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source

Climate of Fear

Global-warming alarmists intimidate dissenting scientists into silence.

BY RICHARD LINDZEN

Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

There have been repeated claims that this past year's hurricane activity was another sign of human-induced climate change. Everything from the heat wave in Paris to heavy snows in Buffalo has been blamed on people burning gasoline to fuel their cars, and coal and natural gas to heat, cool and electrify their homes. Yet how can a barely discernible, one-degree increase in the recorded global mean temperature since the late 19th century possibly gain public acceptance as the source of recent weather catastrophes? And how can it translate into unlikely claims about future catastrophes?

The answer has much to do with misunderstanding the science of climate, plus a willingness to debase climate science into a triangle of alarmism. Ambiguous scientific statements about climate are hyped by those with a vested interest in alarm, thus raising the political stakes for policy makers who provide funds for more science research to feed more alarm to increase the political stakes. After all, who puts money into science--whether for AIDS, or space, or climate--where there is nothing really alarming? Indeed, the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

But there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

To understand the misconceptions perpetuated about climate science and the climate of intimidation, one needs to grasp some of the complex underlying scientific issues. First, let's start where there is agreement. The public, press and policy makers have been repeatedly told that three claims have widespread scientific support: Global temperature has risen about a degree since the late 19th century; levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have increased by about 30% over the same period; and CO2 should contribute to future warming. These claims are true. However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred. In fact, those who make the most outlandish claims of alarm are actually demonstrating skepticism of the very science they say supports them. It isn't just that the alarmists are trumpeting model results that we know must be wrong. It is that they are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

If the models are correct, global warming reduces the temperature differences between the poles and the equator. When you have less difference in temperature, you have less excitation of extratropical storms, not more. And, in fact, model runs support this conclusion. Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances. The problem with this is that the ability of evaporation to drive tropical storms relies not only on temperature but humidity as well, and calls for drier, less humid air. Claims for starkly higher temperatures are based upon there being more humidity, not less--hardly a case for more storminess with global warming.

So how is it that we don't have more scientists speaking up about this junk science? It's my belief that many scientists have been cowed not merely by money but by fear. An example: Earlier this year, Texas Rep. Joe Barton issued letters to paleoclimatologist Michael Mann and some of his co-authors seeking the details behind a taxpayer-funded analysis that claimed the 1990s were likely the warmest decade and 1998 the warmest year in the last millennium. Mr. Barton's concern was based on the fact that the IPCC had singled out Mr. Mann's work as a means to encourage policy makers to take action. And they did so before his work could be replicated and tested--a task made difficult because Mr. Mann, a key IPCC author, had refused to release the details for analysis. The scientific community's defense of Mr. Mann was, nonetheless, immediate and harsh. The president of the National Academy of Sciences--as well as the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union--formally protested, saying that Rep. Barton's singling out of a scientist's work smacked of intimidation.

All of which starkly contrasts to the silence of the scientific community when anti-alarmists were in the crosshairs of then-Sen. Al Gore. In 1992, he ran two congressional hearings during which he tried to bully dissenting scientists, including myself, into changing our views and supporting his climate alarmism. Nor did the scientific community complain when Mr. Gore, as vice president, tried to enlist Ted Koppel in a witch hunt to discredit anti-alarmist scientists--a request that Mr. Koppel deemed publicly inappropriate. And they were mum when subsequent articles and books by Ross Gelbspan libelously labeled scientists who differed with Mr. Gore as stooges of the fossil-fuel industry.

Sadly, this is only the tip of a non-melting iceberg. In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions.

And then there are the peculiar standards in place in scientific journals for articles submitted by those who raise questions about accepted climate wisdom. At Science and Nature, such papers are commonly refused without review as being without interest. However, even when such papers are published, standards shift. When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.

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 policymakers.

Mr. Lindzen is Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

Source

Further readings: State of Fear - Michael Crichton

Global warming is not so hot: 1003 was worse, researchers find: This article was published in Harvard Gazette and reflects the views of Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Discover Dialogue: Meteorologist William Gray by William M. Gray, professor of atmospheric science and meteorologist, Colorado State University.

It's your choice. If you believe in the phenomenon, with deep conviction that is, the so be it. If you don not like my opinion, I really could care less. You're entitles to yours and I'm entitles to mine and that's that.

Edited February 8, 2007 by _sphinx_

[_sphinx_]

Amazing...10 minutes in and just 5 views and it's rated a 1. *sigh* Oh the Neowin community...what is becoming of you?

[Vykranth]

Amazing...10 minutes in and just 5 views and it's rated a 1. *sigh* Oh the Neowin community...what is becoming of you?

It's a long read and it requires some attention to get the points (especially without the morning coffee :))

Anyway, these are very interesting articles showing the collusion between media/politics/scientists.

I agree that the media bloodlust for sensationalism and catastrophism is influencing people but it's the trademark of the media.

I am more worried about the scientific community not being able to work independantly from political or financial pressures, the same point that was raised by El Bourricot raised in another thread.

A scientific study is to be built carefully with sufficient data, explainations and can be challenged by its peers.

It's unacceptable to refuse study or papers because they are not fitting in the current vogue or because of over-inflated egos.

Now, does this mean that the whole Global warming problem is not to be studied and potentially addressed?

There are signs like the melting of North and South Polar ice caps that are really worrying and, as far as I am concerned, I do think that the Global Warming is more than brain masturbation over M. Crichton's novel or R. Emmerich's movie.

I would not mind if a global policy to reduce greenhouse gases is set in anticipation so that the scientific community can chill out (pun intended) and get a more final answer by studying carefully the climate changes and the influence of human acitvity on it.

[megamanXplosion]

Gone are the days when climate researchers would be content to sit in their ivory towers, packed to the gills with supercomputers, crunching numbers. Nowadays, their field is more likely to deliver the material of thrillers, and they themselves have acquired the leading roles. The issue has become so hotly contested and the forecasts so spectacular that they are no longer merely the stuff of media reports. And professionals who make their daily bread staging the apocalypse have taken the bait. Last year, filmmaker Roland Emmerich portrayed a global climate collapse triggered by human activity in his film "The Day After Tomorrow". In January, the film's literary counterpart, the novel State of Fear by bestselling author Michael Crichton, appeared in German bookstores, six month after having been published in English.

The author leads the reader on to believe “The Day After Tomorrow” was filmed to show what scientists predicted would happen. This is blatant nonsense. “The Day After Tomorrow” was based off the book “The Coming Global Superstorm” which was written by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber. Art Bell is known for being the host of Coast to Coast, which is a paranormal-focused talk show that involves everything from NASA conspiracies to cover up information from the public but this was discovered by their Illuminati involvement, which is secretly ran by extraterrestrial reptiles. Whitley Strieber is known for horror novels. Combine a horror novelist with a pseudoscientific paranormalism and you’ve got the work of some great science-fiction, as the movie “The Day After Tomorrow” is properly labeled as. “The State of Fear” is also a work of fiction, which is written by a man who disputes the scientific consensus that second-hand smoke is dangerous. Clearly, portraying these individuals as if they were climatologists is downright dishonest. The author of this article is either too lazy to do just five minutes of research or the author intended to deceive the reader, probably for political purposes. Either way, I see no reason to even continue reading the article, let alone discussing it.

The next article doesn’t really say anything worth discussing.

However, what the public fails to grasp is that the claims neither constitute support for alarm nor establish man's responsibility for the small amount of warming that has occurred.

The heating cycle that normally takes 10,000 to 20,000 years has occurred within the last one hundred or more and it directly coincides with the industrial revolution and the dramatic increase in greenhouse gases that it caused. How else can one explain this peculiarity without bringing mankind into the equation? *scratches head*

Alarmists have drawn some support for increased claims of tropical storminess from a casual claim by Sir John Houghton of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that a warmer world would have more evaporation, with latent heat providing more energy for disturbances.

The author leads the reader to believe a whole slew of claims, including recent ones, are the result of a single casual claim. This is utter nonsense.

http://www.physorg.com/news70203350.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...n-op-ed-in-wsj/

Bleh. I’m not going to waste anymore of my time…

[Fred Derf Veteran]

These articles conflict. The first one suggests that there isn't a scientific consensus (which isn't an idea that is discussed much anymore since several climate change deniers have recanted their claims). The second one says that the report was understated and the results could be worse for the environment. I didn't bother reading any further because there doesn't seem to be a point.

I wouldn't advise reading a Michael Crichton novel (or watch Al Gore's movie for that matter) if you wish to reach any kind of intellectual enlightenment. Those items are just fluff.

[_sphinx_]

These articles conflict. The first one suggests that there isn't a scientific consensus (which isn't an idea that is discussed much anymore since several climate change deniers have recanted their claims). The second one says that the report was understated and the results could be worse for the environment. I didn't bother reading any further because there doesn't seem to be a point.

- Carbon dioxide levels have been rising in the last 100 years, and you can contribute that to pollution.

- We are in the midst of a natural warming trend that began around 1850, as we emerged from a 400 year-old cold spell called the Little Ice Age. No body know

- Nobody how much of the present warming trend might be man made and no body knows when this warm spell is going to end. It's really anyone's guess; go ahead, take a whack at it...your opinion is as useless as anyone else's (including mine). People now believe we are going to die because of global warming...the world has lost its mind.

If you can find a graph of the period between 1940 and 1970 showing the mean global temperature and CO₂ levels, you'd see that, in this period, CO₂ went up (dramatically I might add) while temperatures went down. That damaged crops in the United States and caused glaciers to advance.

GISS of course took down the graph from their website but if you fiddle around, you'll find it.

Edited February 8, 2007 by _sphinx_

[Fred Derf Veteran]

- Carbon dioxide levels have been rising in the last 100 years, and you can contribute that to pollution.

- We are in the midst of a natural warming trend that began around 1850, as we emerged from a 400 year-old cold spell called the Little Ice Age. No body know

- Nobody how much of the present warming trend might be man made and no body knows when this warm spell is going to end. It's really anyone's guess; go ahead, take a whack at it...your opinion is as useless as anyone else's (including mine). People now believe we are going to die because of global warming...the world has lost its mind.

I don't know why people have so much trouble getting their heads around the facts.

Global warming is a normal natural process. We, however, are accelerating it and making the problem worse. When you look at the big picture, it isn't global warming that is the problem, it is climate change.

Everyone isn't going to die from global warming but areas that currently experience occasional droughts are going to see prolonged dry spells. When the rains do come the storms will be more intense and do a lot of crop damage. None of this is good for the American mid-west.

Likewise, wet areas will get wetter. That isn't good for hurricanes and tropical monsoons. Polar ice will melt and low-lying islands will be flooded. Species will be threatened.

This isn't a movie where everything happens all at once. It will be a slow and gradual process. People (and animals) will be displaced rather than killed in some violent cataclysm.

The biggest fallout from all of this will be economic and the fact that it will probably disappropriately affect the world's poor who are usually the least able to respond to change.

The damage that will be done will not be reversible. Species that become extinct cannot be brought back. The sooner we try to reduce the damage done the cheaper it will be. It is irresponsible to future generations for us to continue to go on as we have to this point.

[curme]

Amazing...10 minutes in and just 5 views and it's rated a 1. *sigh* Oh the Neowin community...what is becoming of you?

What did you expect to happen in ten minutes? 1000 views, posts, and a top rating?

[_sphinx_]

What did you expect to happen in ten minutes? 1000 views, posts, and a top rating?

No. I just can't imagine how someone (1 out of 5 people) can read three articles (around 10000 words) about a complex subject like this in ten minutes and have time to judge my opinion. But hey, what do I care?!

I don't know why people have so much trouble getting their heads around the facts.

1) Global warming is a normal natural process. We, however, are accelerating it and making the problem worse. When you look at the big picture, it isn't global warming that is the problem, it is climate change.

2) Everyone isn't going to die from global warming but areas that currently experience occasional droughts are going to see prolonged dry spells. When the rains do come the storms will be more intense and do a lot of crop damage. None of this is good for the American mid-west.

3) Likewise, wet areas will get wetter. That isn't good for hurricanes and tropical monsoons. Polar ice will melt and low-lying islands will be flooded. Species will be threatened.

This isn't a movie where everything happens all at once. It will be a slow and gradual process. People (and animals) will be displaced rather than killed in some violent cataclysm.

4) The biggest fallout from all of this will be economic and the fact that it will probably disappropriately affect the world's poor who are usually the least able to respond to change.

The damage that will be done will not be reversible. Species that become extinct cannot be brought back. The sooner we try to reduce the damage done the cheaper it will be. It is irresponsible to future generations for us to continue to go on as we have to this point.

1) NO! who said we were?!

If you can draw a median line through either graph, you'd see that temperatures have risen by no more than 0.5 a degree in the last 100+ years.

And this is a graph of temperatures in 2000-2004:

These are just two random graphs I extracted from GISS. As you can see, the graph is not steeping upwards. if anything, it's going down...up and down, up and down. Temperatures are rising at a very slow rate....and you can't be sure how much of that is man-made.

2) Correlation in cot causation. Droughts have always been occurring. Why do we suddenly have to attribute all natural disasters to "global warming"?

Somalia had the worst drought spell in 1993 which recurred two years later but is now gone...global warming sparred them I guess. I don't see what storm intensity has to do with droughts.

3) The Earth is constantly changing. Its' now on its third atmosphere; during the three atmospheric phases, the climate has changed and will always be changing. Organisms that can't adapt to the new conditions will die out just as many organisms that did.

Sea levels are not rising at a rate at which we can attribute to global warming; the IPCC has mentioned that...of course, to compensate, they said that they "will" rise. Meteorologists who can't get tomorrow's weather right are forecasting 100 years into the future now.

4) I assume you haven't read Sir Nicolas Stern's report on climate change...he was trying to predict how much we will be adversly affected by GW. An article was published in The Economist in which Economist William Norhaus and many others criticized his equations and predictions. The argued that "future generations will not only be born later than us, they will also be richer - much richer. He [Nordhaus] points out that if consumption per person grows by 1.3% a year, it will rise from $7600 a year today to $94000 by 2200. And yet Sir Nicholas asks the present geenration to make an economic sacrifice to help its richer successors." How is that sustainable development? If anything, it's absurdity.

Get real Fred, the world is growing. And as we grow, we need to consume more energy and that means more pollution. At the astronomical rate of "global warming", no one will probably live to feel the full effects of the prognosticated catastrophe. There's always a chance the population of the Earth might get wiped out by a meteorite...it's only a matter of time, we all know that.

Look, Fred, I respect your opinion. I do believe we are to blame for damaging the environemtn. I lobby for environemtnnal causes all the time in this ###### of a country but my voice is too faint and too pathetic for the higher authority here...I believe we should clean up our act.

But I don;t think Global Warming should be at the very top of our agenda as it is. Their are many reasons why we shoudl reduce pollution...cancer, the ozone (which no one mentions any more...It's far scarier than global warming), disease etc...Millions are dying in Africa every year of preventable diseases, conflict and famine. Don't those people deserve more attention? Don't they? They don't give a **** about global warming. They're dying today of the causes I mentioned. They're probably gonna die tomorrow of the same causes; I wouldn't exactly say Global Warming would be the culprit here. It's us...you actually, the Western World.

The following is an article pub'd in 1997, a year before the warmest year ever recorded...

Holes in the Greenhouse Effect?

by Patrick J. Michaels

Patrick Michaels is professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute.

Global warming is about to heat up and enter the presidential sweepstakes for the year 2000. The fun starts in December, when the United States is going to agree to an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, also known as the "Rio Treaty," that requires the signatories to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

That's the end of the easy part. Then the administration (read: Vice President Gore) is going to have to sell it to the Senate, which must approve treaties by a two-thirds majority. The amendment, which is likely to mandate a reduction of current emissions of between l0 percent and 20 percent by the year 2020; will carry an impressive price tag, perhaps several percent of gross national product per year by the time reductions become serious, according to several economists. It will first go to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Jesse Helms, the senior senator from North Carolina. Think it's going to get out of there alive?

Along the way, Gore is going to have to confront a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom. Once dismissed as "a small but vocal band of skeptics," usually supported by industry, the critics of the global warming thesis now have a rather formidable armada of facts.

As pointed out by Ross Gelbspan in The Washington Post four weeks ago, some of these scientists, myself included, enjoy industry research support. (In my case, 84 percent of my university research is funded by taxpayers.) His figures show an average of 835,000 per year to a few people. The U.S. government spends $2.1 billion per year on global change research and it's hard to believe so much would be spent on researchers who would say "no problem." Accepting Gelbspan's contention that there are 2,000 climate scientists (there are actually about 60 PhDs in climatology in the entire United States), that's a cool million dollars per scientist, every year. How could the vice president lose the global warming argument with these odds?

Easily. Arguments against highly deleterious global warming have a charm and internal consistency that the arguments of the critics-- who emphasize caution and uncertainty-- lack. It's worthwhile to review the way the global warming thesis evolved. In 1990, the first Scientific Assessment of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a document that is the underpinning for the Rio Treaty, stated, "When the latest atmospheric models are run with the present atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, their simulation of climate is generally realistic on large scales."

Several critics cried foul. The "largest scale" of simulation of planetary climate is surely the average surface temperature, and it was apparent, even back in 1990, that the computer models used to simulate global warming were predicting much more warming than had been observed. Since then, it has become generally accepted that the "generally realistic" models were saying that it should have already warmed between 1.3 degrees and 2.3 degrees Celsius, globally, with the higher figure for the Northern Hemisphere. The observed warning of the earth's surface temperature since the late 19th century is about one and a half of a degree. The first IPCC assessment is a busted forecast.

Why it took the U.N. five years to realize this is anyone's guess, but it sure did generate a lot of frequent flier miles for skeptics like me. Finally, in their second Assessment, published in 1995, the IPCC admitted the skeptics had a point: "When increases in greenhouse gases only are taken into account .... most Climate models produce a greater mean warning than has been observed to date, unless a lower climate sensitivity [to the greenhouse effect changes]is used .... There is growing evidence that increases in sulfate aerosols are partially counteracting the [warming] due to increases in greenhouse gases."

Sulfate aerosols are tiny bits of dust also emitted during the combustion of fossil fuel that cool global warning by reflecting away the sun's radiation.

Translation of the 1995 report: Either it's not going to warm up as much as we said it was, or something (like sulfate aerosol) is reducing the warming. I bet that many in my profession will do everything in their power to prove the latter and disparage the former, because no one wants to write the letter, "Dear Mr. Vice President: We are sorry but we goofed. Thanks for the $$. Hope you get your carbon tax. Yours truly, the Consensus of Scientists."

Thus began a frantic effort to save face. Ben Santer, a fine and aggressive scientist from the Lawrence Livemmore Laboratory, published an article in Nature magazine last year that seemed to show a remarkable correspondence between the evolution of planetary temperature patterns and a model that included both the warming from the greenhouse gases and the cooling from sulfates. This result argued against the skeptics' proposition that our planet was simply not prone to big-time warming. Santer's study period began in 1962 and ended in 1987.

The critics immediately pointed out that the model he relied on had only half of the known changes in the greenhouse effect. The fact is critics and proponents of the global warming thesis agree that human activities like driving cars and burning coal have changed the amount of warming radiation in the atmosphere only about 2.5 watts (or about one-quarter the power of a good flashlight). The central issue is how much this affects the world's climate.

Santer's model had attempted to answer that question based on the assumption that the "change" in the amount of warming radiation was only 1.25 watts.

When the right number is put in to Santer's model, things get even hotter than in the old models that were already abandoned. Worst of all, from Santer's point of view, when all of the available data, which ran from 1958 through 1995, are used, the correspondence between the model and reality vanishes.

Then there's the problem of the satellite measured temperatures. These measurements, accurate to .01 degrees Celsius, find a statistically significant cooling trend in the lower atmosphere since they started taking measurements in 1979. The old models, which the U.N. said in 1990 were "generally realistic," predicted a warming of about .6 degrees Celsius since the satellite measuring started, and even newer models predict warming of .35 degrees of Celsius. This warming simply isn't happening according to the satellite data.

The satellite data also match up perfectly, on a year-to-year basis, with temperatures measured in the lower atmosphere by weather balloons. This is a completely independent corroboration of the lack of predicted warming.

Then there's the problem of identifying the type of warming that is going on. Warming up the planet's coldest air masses clearly creates little harm, because no plant or animal can feel the difference between -40 degrees and -35 degrees. Greenhouse physics predicts that warming is more likely in the coldest air masses. Indeed, there is some evidence that this is already occurring in Siberia and northwestern North America in winter. But it's no threat. It's pretty hard to melt ice caps at temperatures that are way below freezing.

Conversely, a warm, humid air mass, where things are living and growing, doesn't respond much at all to greenhouse changes. So we expect to see less change in the summer. In fact, most observed summer changes are either small or insignificant, even in Siberia. All totaled, the effects of winter warming and little summer change lengthens the growing season, costs less energy and is, in general, hard to label as a big negative.

Some people have made careers out of labeling what I just wrote as the carpings of that "small band of vocal skeptics." I hope they read the May 16 issue of Science magazine. There, senior environmental reporter Richard Kerr found widespread discontent over the magnitude and even the detection of global warming. Kerr found, as predicted by the skeptics for 15 years now, that when climate models are cleansed of their "fudge factors" (his words) that they will produce precious little greenhouse warming in the next century.

Do this, and put in the most likely changes in the greenhouse effect for the next century, and you get 1.2 degrees Celsius of warming in a new climate model from the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research. From the new model of the United Kingdom Meteorological Organization, the same exercise will give you 1.3 degrees Celsius of warming. Or look at Tom Wigley's completely independent calculation in Nature last year. Same number: 1.3 degrees.

The message is that this is less than half of the warming predicted by the U.N.'s "Consensus of Scientists" in 1990. And further, it's now appreciated that most of this has to be in winter, as the rising temperature in Siberia is now informing us.

So the vice president is going to have to defend expensive and disruptive measures in the face of a very modest climate change whose most noticed effect will be to lengthen the growing season and reduce energy demand. The Senate will use the strength of the skeptics' arguments to turn down any amendment to the Rio Treaty--which may actually be a blessing for Gore.

Defeat will enable the vice president to campaign in 1998 and 2000 on the attractive but spurious claim that Helms and the Republican leadership are going to kill our children because they won't stop global warming. With global warming, as with Gore's presidential ambitions, losing is winning.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Post

SOURCE

You know what's funny...I was reading an article today and it said "2005: the warmest year in the century!"

This century is only 7 years old, but of course when you use a dramatic title like that....you get the point...STATE OF FEAR.

Edited February 9, 2007 by _sphinx_

[davemania]

I've been through the fictional, inaccuracy and generalization nature of "State of Fear" before so i am going to bother to post it again.

1) Those are 3 local area temperature, global warming is called global for a reason

and the scale of those graph are wrong for climate change theories, if you are expecting human contribution to temperature to be in a number of whole degrees in a a time span of a few decade than thats the same media over-exaggeration.

2) I don't doubt that the media has exaggerate climate change in the past but thats the media's problem. I haven't seen any claim of doom from any reputable science journal or science news (they seem to suggest that weather will get more extreme, nothing apocalyptic). This could be easily used against to any other issue that they cover and its a bad argument to use to challenge the theory of climate research as there isn't even any scientific basis to it.

3) Meteorology and Climate research is different. Again I think we've been through this.

4) Thats a bit contradictory to your conclusion, most people agree that in the long term it is the third world country that will take the brunt of climate change, so from your conclusion why shouldn't we be doing anything now.

Get real Fred, the world is growing. And as we grow, we need to consume more energy and that means more pollution. At the astronomical rate of "global warming", no one will probably live to feel the full effects of the prognosticated catastrophe. There's always a chance the population of the Earth might get wiped out by a meteorite...it's only a matter of time, we all know that.

Look, Fred, I respect your opinion. I do believe we are to blame for damaging the environemtn. I lobby for environemtnnal causes all the time in this ###### of a country but my voice is too faint and too pathetic for the higher authority here...I believe we should clean up our act.

But I don;t think Global Warming should be at the very top of our agenda as it is. Their are many reasons why we shoudl reduce pollution...cancer, the ozone (which no one mentions any more...It's far scarier than global warming), disease etc...Millions are dying in Africa every year of preventable diseases, conflict and famine. Don't those people deserve more attention? Don't they? They don't give a **** about global warming. They're dying today of the causes I mentioned. They're probably gonna die tomorrow of the same causes; I wouldn't exactly say Global Warming would be the culprit here. It's us...you actually, the Western World.

Alot of conflicting emotions there, people do care and not everyone is a heartless ****** as you might think. I don't think most government have become so useless that they can't tackle multiple problems at once. Although there may be hypocritical or contradictory policy in the world, this is related to the politics rather than the science behind theory.

Global warming is a normal natural process. We, however, are accelerating it and making the problem worse. When you look at the big picture, it isn't global warming that is the problem, it is climate change.

The term global warming has basically become the defacto phrase for human caused climate change (I've occasionally used that as well).

Edited February 9, 2007 by davemania

[_sphinx_]

Jesus davemania, the book includes a 22 page bibliography and countless works cited; what do you know better than Crichton?

Over the last 200+ years, do you honestly think every single weather station on Earth maintained accurate records of temperatures?!

In Poland or Russia during the 1930s, do you think their data was reliable?

The US, which we claim to be the biggest polluter of this planet has probably the most reliable temperature records in the world it wouldn't be inaccurate using them as a reliable standard. At least we can count on their data.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/new.Fig.D_lrg.gif/img]

As you can see, there is hardly a "dramatic" change in temperature. AGAIN, DAMN IT, I AM NOT SAYING THAT TEMPERATURES ARE NOT RISING. THEY ARE. BUT, they are not rising at the rate we would assume it is (thanks to our reliable media). And the rate at which temperatures are rising is not a threatening as our glorious media says and it could be that this is the climate of the Earth.

People DO NOT CARE about global warming no matter how much you tell them. Assuming we're not killed off in the next 200 years, they may start listening if and when global warming proves threatening.

Either they believe, like me, that the threat of the temperatures rising by a degree or so every 60 years is minimal or they really could care less as I mentioned, and I believe the latter holds true). If they did care, the temperature wouldn't still be rising would they dave?

Even the countries that signed the Kyoto protocol aren't conforming with the it...My beautiful country Egypt for example:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/artic...3cf7a2f5659e467

The governments are doing almost nothing to help Africa (famines are on the rise and conflicts are raging all over the continent). They also can't afford to reduce output to reduce pollution. All corporations and governments are doing are either denying GW or exploiting it, a theory Crichton dubbed "Politicization of Science". Also a theory I studied in a political science course. I could tell you about it but, like you, I've been over it...but no one listened. No oner cared.

Edited February 9, 2007 by _sphinx_

[davemania]

Jesus davemania, the book includes a 22 page bibliography and countless works cited; what do you know better than Crichton?

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/scien...te-of-fear.html

James Hansen rebuttal to State of fear. His testimony to congress was used in his book and he doesn't seem to happy about it.

However, I recently heard that, in considering the global warming issue, a United States Senator is treating words from Crichton as if they had scientific or practical validity. If so, wow -- Houston, we have a problem!

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/hansen_re-crichton.pdf

More inaccuracies ...

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/scien...te-of-fear.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...lacier-retreat/

Other refutes by authors that Crichton has cited

Dr D.R. Hardy. whose paper this claim is based on has publicly said ?using these preliminary findings to refute or even question global warming borders on the absurd.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publi...Kilimanjaro.pdf

<insert your religous figure/> Sphinx, its a fictional book, get over it. If you want to use it as a moral story fine, don't portray it as an accurate description of real life.

Over the last 200+ years, do you honestly think every single weather station on Earth maintained accurate records of temperatures?!

In Poland or Russia during the 1930s, do you think their data was reliable?

The US, which we claim to be the biggest polluter of this planet has probably the most reliable temperature records in the world it wouldn't be inaccurate using them as a reliable standard. At least we can count on their data.

As you can see, there is hardly a "dramatic" change in temperature. AGAIN, DAMN IT, I AM NOT SAYING THAT TEMPERATURES ARE NOT RISING. THEY ARE. BUT, they are not rising at the rate we would assume it is (thanks to our reliable media). And the rate at which temperatures are rising is not a threatening as our glorious media says and it could be that this is the climate of the Earth.

Which rate would that be ? the IPCC estimation or some media report citing some other source ? (You need to clarify this, I don't know what data you're picking on). IPCC suggests 1.8-4 by the end of this century that will affect the weather pattern and intensity, agreed and signed off by countless researchers and most countries in the world.

People DO NOT CARE about global warming no matter how much you tell them. Assuming we're not killed off in the next 200 years, they may start listening if and when global warming proves threatening.

Either they believe, like me, that the threat of the temperatures rising by a degree or so every 60 years is minimal or they really could care less as I mentioned, and I believe the latter holds true). If they did care, the temperature wouldn't still be rising would they dave?

Who says anything about human extinction ? and if they did do something about it now (which most aren't) the best we can do is minimize the damage, hence the dialog and request for more actions. Europe, Japan have implemented a number of policy to conserve or control their Co2 output before. If indifference is your defense not to challenge your government or do anything than thats that.

Even the countries that signed the Kyoto protocol aren't conforming with the it...My beautiful country Egypt for example:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/artic...3cf7a2f5659e467

The governments are doing almost nothing to help Africa (famines are on the rise and conflicts are raging all over the continent). They also can't afford to reduce output to reduce pollution. All corporations and governments are doing are either denying GW or exploiting it, a theory Crichton dubbed "Politicization of Science". Also a theory I studied in a political science course. I could tell you about it but, like you, I've been over it...but no one listened. No oner cared.

Are you refereing to the stuff where Crichton or someone you linked who generalized that climate researchers are only in for the money ? Thats a tad unfair of a generalization don't you think.

[Jowood]

We have to do something about that methane from animal ****.

There is something looming, but who knows. Maybe we are going through the stuff that Europe went through back during the Medieval era...but then again that warm spell was fairly localized.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Speaking of Crichton

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74 and http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=76

[_sphinx_]

Who says anything about human extinction ? and if they did do something about it now (which most aren't) the best we can do is minimize the damage, hence the dialog and request for more actions. Europe, Japan have implemented a number of policy to conserve or control their Co2 output before. If indifference is your defense not to challenge your government or do anything than thats that.

Are you refereing to the stuff where Crichton or someone you linked who generalized that climate researchers are only in for the money ? Thats a tad unfair of a generalization don't you think.

Human extinction is something inevitable. It will happen and with it's a reason why we shouldn't overestimate the effect on sustainable development. I agree, we can minimize the damage, we have to.

We need to stop polluting now, but I've seen the ugly truth; we will not stop polluting. On the contrary, pollution will increase (speculation). All the promises by the corporations...all different instances of the same theme: try to shut up the environmentalists. To get Greenpeace to shut up, you just say something like "I want my Apple green" and you will damped the lobbying effectiveness of an organization like PETA who're whining about animal testing for example. It's all politics, you see.

My point is, by mentioning how pollution is on the rise in Egypt, is that 3rd world countries have all the reason not to implement the Kyoto protocol, Emerging Economies especially.

Politicization of science in Crichton does not infer financial gains...what is the correlation anyway?!

It inferred that science is always being twisted to conform with politicians' own greedy reasons. That is one side of it.

The other side is media exaggeration...You are the editor of a newspaper:

1) "Temperature rise by 0.08 degrees since 2005"

2) "2006: Highest recorded temperature of decade and temperature"

Get what I'm hinting at here.

You seem like a smart guy Dave, why don't you read the book. Yes, it's a work of fiction but the facts behind it are true.

Now I have a question for you mate; if Global Warming is the catastrophic phenomenon that you believe all of of us should be worried about, why haven't governments and/or corporations taken positive action towards reducing pollution?

I'll be glad to make a bet with you right here, right now. If this curve, so much as FLATTENS I will wire you 1000 AUD!

BTW, if we keep shooting articles at each other like this:

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=19358

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=16260

We won't get anywhere.

I'll stop arguing here. I was just trying to make a point and I'm glad some people actually constructed a counter-argument.

Edited February 9, 2007 by _sphinx_

[El Bourricot]

Great thread. Don't have time to read through all of it but by the looks of what I have read we're on the same page :p

Good luck though - it's very hard to make your voice heard above the global warming sheep.

[Fred Derf Veteran]

Using a novel as a source of scientific learning tends to discredit your knowledge on the subject.

It isn't any more valid that watching the Al Gore movie or some Michael Moore flick. They are all entertainment products.

You do realize that the list of scientists that you have linked to has shrunk significantly in the last few years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scien...rming_consensus

How many scientists are there in the world? 480,000 to 21 is a consensus. Heck, 21 out of 480,000 scientists would probably argue that gold isn't a metal.

Now I have a question for you mate; if Global Warming is the catastrophic phenomenon that you believe all of of us should be worried about, why haven't governments and/or corporations taken positive action towards reducing pollution?

That is the one glaring flaw with democracy. If a problem won't happen within their four year term then politicians leave it to someone else to solve.

[Hurmoth]

How many scientists are there in the world? 480,000 to 21 is a consensus. Heck, 21 out of 480,000 scientists would probably argue that gold isn't a metal.

While I agree that number is small, I personally believe there's more than 21, but because they fear of loosing grants, respect in the scientific community, and/or other personal reasons they do not speak out against Global Warming. Just look at The Weather Channel who is calling for any meteorologist who speaks out against Global Warming to have their scientific certification stripped.¹

About the book, is there anything wrong with referencing the same sources that Crichton uses? There's pages and pages of references that lead him to the conclusion he came to about Global Warming. And Crichton himself says he's not against Global Warming, he's against making messy policy that does more harm than good.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

If a climate scientist has real evidence to show that global warming isn't happening, or isn't caused by humans, there won't be any "loss of respect" or loss of grant money (the main people speaking out against it either mis-represent the facts, plain don't understand them, etc.)

Hell, it wasn't that long ago you would get in trouble for saying global warming was happening, and at that time it was still said you would loose your grant money if you said it was happening (what I'm getting at, is that that argument is meaningless)

[Hurmoth]

Hell, it wasn't that long ago you would get in trouble for saying global warming was happening, and at that time it was still said you would loose your grant money if you said it was happening (what I'm getting at, is that that argument is meaningless)

Actually I think you just proved that argument is real. The table has just turned.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

You're right, i did, it was a mistake though.

What i meant to say was as such.

Hell, it wasn't that long ago you would get in trouble for saying global warming was happening, and at that time it was still said you would loose your grant money if you said it wasn't happening (what I'm getting at, is that that argument is meaningless)

So if you said it was happening, you would get in trouble (documents edited, etc.), at the same time it was claimed that if you said it wasn't happening, you would get in trouble (damned if you do, damned if you don't)

Of course, for that argument to be as such, it's taking a simplistic view on science as a whole (there's more than one lab, more than a handful of scientists, differentiating opinions, etc.)

[blessani]

what an insightful read. all i'd like to know, however, is who is from what country and what their opinion is. im not going to pretend im some kind of geological genius - just an ever so slightly informed member of the public.....but

even if global warming was a natural procedure, where is the issue in people reducing their emissions anyway? extra cost, maybe, extra difficulty, probably - but whats plain to see is that resources are decreasing at an increasing rate - and are they going to become any cheaper once they're limited - almost certainly not.

reducing emissions, energy usage, recycling more are all key concerns that people should be focusing on. clearly the debate on "global warming" is a touchy one, but it still provides enough logic for us to make a change.

i do have an honest belief that global warming is real - i mean, it goes without saying. without even looking at any data sheets, its just plain common sense. i dont think dinosaurs produced the same level of pollution as humans do. we're a clever race (to a certain extent ;) ) and it seems silly that preventing the possible just isnt an option to most people. countries like the usa with their ignorant viewpoints (not the whole, but a fair majority) on global issues just fuel the fire, literally.

whether changes are as a result of our pollution or not - surely it still makes sense to be sensible with our waste levels anyway, then our planet may be able to sustain our race for that little bit longer.

ive got to say i like this quote

If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful

i too like the idea of swimming to work

Edited February 11, 2007 by blessani

[El Bourricot]

even if global warming was a natural procedure, where is the issue in people reducing their emissions anyway? extra cost, maybe, extra difficulty, probably - but whats plain to see is that resources are decreasing at an increasing rate - and are they going to become any cheaper once they're limited - almost certainly not.

The problem lies in that it would mean curbing our economy. China and India are already catching up fast (about 3 times as fast as Japan did) and we can't afford to give them the edge by self-sabotaging our own economy.

[curme]

The problem lies in that it would mean curbing our economy. China and India are already catching up fast (about 3 times as fast as Japan did) and we can't afford to give them the edge by self-sabotaging our own economy.

Do you know that pollution is so bad in Hong Kong, they never have clear days, due to smog? Tourists have to take a picture in front of a picture of Hong Kong's old skyline, because the current skyline is obscured by pollutants. Residents have to wear masks when they go outside because of the poison in the air. Do you want the USA to be like that so corporations can get richer?

[Vykranth]

The problem lies in that it would mean curbing our economy. China and India are already catching up fast (about 3 times as fast as Japan did) and we can't afford to give them the edge by self-sabotaging our own economy.

Since global warming is likely to affect every countries regardless of frontiers, it's likely that, at some point, China or Indra will have to play ball and reduce their pollution or their greenhouse gas emissions.

Considering the economy sounds really secondary compared to what can be at stake because of global warming.