Post by Daniel Packman.....
Post by Ms My RightsPost by Daniel PackmanIn other words, the current scientific consensus is that global
warming is real and largely human caused. This consensus is broad
and extends over scientific groups in man countries.
The specific amount of CO2 increase in the atmosphere agrees well
with global fossil fuel use.
This seems to be a matter of religion to the liberals. There's no proof
that it's man made.
What do you base your statement on? Could you explain in detail
your CO2 budget calculations and how you account for the apparent
increased human source? Are you using currently accepted absorption
profiles for CO2 or have you done fundamental work in the lab that
improves on this? Are you basing your work on using one of the many
modern global climate models or have you developed your own? If so,
have you rigorously validated this model? This last step normally
takes several years.
The global warming scam
Melanie Phillips ^ | 09 January 2004 | Melanie Phillips's Diary
Posted on 01/10/2004 6:01:06 PM PST by Lando Lincoln
The global warming scam
The British government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has
said that global warming is a more serious threat to the world than
terrorism. His remarks are utter balderdash from start to finish and
illustrate the truly lamentable decline of science into ideological
propaganda.
Sir David says the Bush administration should not dismiss global warming
because: 1) the ten hottest years on record started in 1991 2) sea
levels are rising 3) ice caps are melting and 4) the 'causal link'
between man-made emissions and global warming is well established.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. There is no such evidence. The whole
thing is a global scam. There is no firm evidence that warming is
happening; even if it is, it is most likely to have natural, not man-
made causes; carbon dioxide, supposedly the culprit, makes up such a
tiny fraction of the atmosphere that even if it were to quadruple, the
effect on climate would be negligible; and just about every one of the
eco-doomster stories that curdle our blood every five minutes is either
speculative, ahistorical or scientifically illiterate.
To take a few examples from Sir David's litany.
1) Sea levels are rising. As this article explains, this claim is not
the result of observable data. Like so much of the global warming
industry, it is the result of frail computer modelling using dodgy or
incomplete data. It is therefore not an observed value, but a wholly
artificial model construct. Furthermore, the data fed into the computer
is drawn from the atypical North Atlantic basin, ignoring the seas
around Australia where levels have remained pretty static. And anyway,
as this article explains, sea level rises have nothing to do with warmer
climate. Sea levels rose during the last ice age. Warming can actually
slow down sea level rise.
2) Ice caps are melting. Some are, some aren't. Some are breaking up, as
is normal. But some are actually expanding, as in the Antarctic where
the ice sheet is growing, as this article points out. The bit of the
Antarctic that is breaking up, the Larsen ice-shelf, which has been
causing foaming hysteria among eco-doomsters, won't increase sea levels
because it has already displaced its own weight in the sea.
3) The hottest years on record started in 1991. Which records? The
European climate in the Middle Ages was two degrees hotter than it is
now. They grew vines in Northumberland, for heaven's sake. Then there
was the Little Ice Age, which lasted until about 1880. So the 0.6%
warming since then is part of a pretty normal pattern, and nothing for
any normal person to get excited about.
4) The causal link is well established. Totally false. It is simply
loudly asserted. Virtually all the scare stuff comes from computer
modelling, which is simply inadequate to factor in all the --
literally-- millions of variables that make up climate change. If you
put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.
That's why this week's earlier eco-scare story, that more than a million
species will become extinct as a result of global warming over the next
50 years, is risible. All that means is that someone has put into the
computer the global warming scenario, and the computer has calculated
what would happen on the basis of that premise. But -duh! -the premise
is totally unproven. The real scientific evidence is that -- we just
don't know; and the theories so far, linking man, carbon dioxide and
climate warming. are specious. There's some seriously bad science going
on in the environmentalist camp.
After Kyoto, one of the most eminent scientists involved in the National
Academy of Sciences study on climate change, Richard Lindzen, professor
of meteorology at MIT, blew the whistle on the politicised rubbish that
was being spouted. Since his article was so significant, I reproduce it
in full here:
'Last week the National Academy of Sciences released a report on climate
change, prepared in response to a request from the White House, that was
depicted in the press as an implicit endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol.
CNN's Michelle Mitchell was typical of the coverage when she declared
that the report represented "a unanimous decision that global warming is
real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."
'As one of 11 scientists who prepared the report, I can state that this
is simply untrue. For starters, the NAS never asks that all participants
agree to all elements of a report, but rather that the report represent
the span of views. This the full report did, making clear that there is
no consensus, unanimous or otherwise, about long-term climate trends and
what causes them.
'As usual, far too much public attention was paid to the hastily
prepared summary rather than to the body of the report. The summary
began with a zinger--that greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's
atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air
temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise, etc., before
following with the necessary qualifications. For example, the full text
noted that 20 years was too short a period for estimating long-term
trends, but the summary forgot to mention this.
'Our primary conclusion was that despite some knowledge and agreement,
the science is by no means settled. We are quite confident (1) that
global mean temperature is about 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than it was
a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have risen
over the past two centuries; and (3) that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse
gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most
important being water vapor and clouds).
'But--and I cannot stress this enough--we are not in a position to
confidently attribute past climate change to carbon dioxide or to
forecast what the climate will be in the future. That is to say,
contrary to media impressions, agreement with the three basic statements
tells us almost nothing relevant to policy discussions.
'One reason for this uncertainty is that, as the report states, the
climate is always changing; change is the norm. Two centuries ago, much
of the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from a little ice age. A
millennium ago, during the Middle Ages, the same region was in a warm
period. Thirty years ago, we were concerned with global cooling.
'Distinguishing the small recent changes in global mean temperature from
the natural variability, which is unknown, is not a trivial task. All
attempts so far make the assumption that existing computer climate
models simulate natural variability, but I doubt that anyone really
believes this assumption.
'We simply do not know what relation, if any, exists between global
climate changes and water vapor, clouds, storms, hurricanes, and other
factors, including regional climate changes, which are generally much
larger than global changes and not correlated with them. Nor do we know
how to predict changes in greenhouse gases. This is because we cannot
forecast economic and technological change over the next century, and
also because there are many man-made substances whose properties and
levels are not well known, but which could be comparable in importance
to carbon dioxide.
'What we do is know that a doubling of carbon dioxide by itself would
produce only a modest temperature increase of one degree Celsius. Larger
projected increases depend on "amplification" of the carbon dioxide by
more important, but poorly modeled, greenhouse gases, clouds and water
vapor.
'The press has frequently tied the existence of climate change to a need
for Kyoto. The NAS panel did not address this question. My own view,
consistent with the panel's work, is that the Kyoto Protocol would not
result in a substantial reduction in global warming. Given the
difficulties in significantly limiting levels of atmospheric carbon
dioxide, a more effective policy might well focus on other greenhouse
substances whose potential for reducing global warming in a short time
may be greater.
'The panel was finally asked to evaluate the work of the United
Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, focusing on the
Summary for Policymakers, the only part ever read or quoted. The Summary
for Policymakers, which is seen as endorsing Kyoto, is commonly
presented as the consensus of thousands of the world's foremost climate
scientists. Within the confines of professional courtesy, the NAS panel
essentially concluded that the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers does not
provide suitable guidance for the U.S. government.
'The full IPCC report is an admirable description of research activities
in climate science, but it is not specifically directed at policy. The
Summary for Policymakers is, but it is also a very different document.
It represents a consensus of government representatives (many of whom
are also their nations' Kyoto representatives), rather than of
scientists. The resulting document has a strong tendency to disguise
uncertainty, and conjures up some scary scenarios for which there is no
evidence.
'Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority
with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed
citizens. This is what has been done with both the reports of the IPCC
and the NAS. It is a reprehensible practice that corrodes our ability to
make rational decisions. A fairer view of the science will show that
there is still a vast amount of uncertainty--far more than advocates of
Kyoto would like to acknowledge--and that the NAS report has hardly
ended the debate. Nor was it meant to.'
As Professor Philip Stott wrote in the Wall Street Journal on April 2
2001:
'"Global warming" was invented in 1988, when it replaced two earlier
myths of an imminent plunge into another Ice Age and the threat of a
nuclear winter. The new myth was seen to encapsulate a whole range of
other myths and attitudes that had developed in the 1960s and 1970s,
including "limits to growth," sustainability, neo-Malthusian fears of a
population time bomb, pollution, anticorporate anti-Americanism, and an
Al Gore-like analysis of human greed disturbing the ecological harmony
and balance of the earth.
'Initially, in Europe, the new myth was embraced by both right and left.
The right was concerned with breaking the power of traditional trade
unions, such as the coal miners -- the labor force behind a major source
of carbon-dioxide emissions -- and promoting the development of nuclear
power. Britain's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research was
established at the personal instigation of none other than Margaret
Thatcher.
'The left, by contrast, was obsessed with population growth,
industrialization, the car, development and globalization. Today, the
narrative of global warming has evolved into an emblematic issue for
authoritarian greens, who employ a form of language that has been
characterized by the physicist P.H. Borcherds as "the hysterical
subjunctive." And it is this grammatical imperative that is now
dominating the European media when they complain about Mr. Bush, the
U.S., and their willful denial of the true faith.'
Go figure.
--
IF YOU'RE NOT VOTING FOR LIBERTARIANS, YOU'RE ONLY VOTING FOR YOUR
RULERS! If the government wasn't allowed to initiate force, the vote
wouldn't be that important. It's only important because they can.
Why is it that the liberals define things as slavery that arent
slavery, like voluntary mutually consenting employer-employee
relationships, while not defining things as slavery that are slavery,
like taxation?