Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388" target="_blank">http://www.canada.com/national post/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388</a> >>Claude Allegre received a Ph D in physics in 1962 from the University of Paris. He became the director of the geochemistry and cosmochemistry program at the French National Scientific Research Centre in 1967 and in 1971, he was appointed director of the University of Paris's Department of Earth Sciences. In 1976, he became director of the Paris Institut de Physique du Globe. He is an author of more than 100 scientific articles, many of them seminal studies on the evolution of the Earth using isotopic evidence, and 11 books. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Science.<< >>His break with what he now sees as environmental cant on climate change came in September, in an article entitled "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" in l' Express, the French weekly. His article cited evidence that Antarctica is gaining ice and that Kilimanjaro's retreating snow caps, among other global-warming concerns, come from natural causes. "The cause of this climate change is unknown," he states matter of factly. There is no basis for saying, as most do, that the "science is settled." Dr. Allegre's skepticism is noteworthy in several respects. For one, he is an exalted member of France's political establishment, a friend of former Socialist president Lionel Jospin, and, from 1997 to 2000, his minister of education, research and technology, charged with improving the quality of government research through closer co-operation with France's educational institutions. For another, Dr. Allegre has the highest environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he fought successful battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead pollution. His break with scientific dogma over global warming came at a personal cost: Colleagues in both the governmental and environmental spheres were aghast that he could publicly question the science behind climate change. But Dr. Allegre had allegiances to more than his socialist and environmental colleagues. He is, above all, a scientist of the first order, the architect of isotope geodynamics, which showed that the atmosphere was primarily formed early in the history of the Earth, and the geochemical modeller of the early solar system. Because of his path-breaking cosmochemical research, NASA asked Dr. Allegre to participate in the Apollo lunar program, where he helped determine the age of the Moon. Matching his scientific accomplishments in the cosmos are his accomplishments at home: Dr. Allegre is perhaps best known for his research on the structural and geochemical evolution of the Earth's crust and the creation of its mountains, explaining both the title of his article in l' Express and his revulsion at the nihilistic nature of the climate research debate. Calling the arguments of those who see catastrophe in climate change "simplistic and obscuring the true dangers," Dr. Allegre especially despairs at "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in denouncing man's role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing conferences and preparing protocols that become dead letters." The world would be better off, Dr. Allegre believes, if these "denouncers" became less political and more practical, by proposing practical solutions to head off the dangers they see, such as developing technologies to sequester C02. His dream, he says, is to see "ecology become the engine of economic development and not an artificial obstacle that creates fear."<<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=2938762&page=1" target="_blank">http://abcnews.go.com/Internat ional/story?id=2938762&page=1</a> >>the Babylon of Gilgamesh to the post-Eden of Noah, every age has viewed climate change cataclysmically, as retribution for human greed and sinfulness. In the 1970s, the fear was "global cooling." The Christian Science Monitor then declaimed, "Warning: Earth's climate is changing faster than even experts expect," while The New York Times announced, "A major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable." Sound familiar? Global warming represents the latest doom-laden "crisis," one demanding sacrifice to Gaia for our wicked fossil-fuel-driven ways. But neither history nor science bolsters such an apocalyptic faith. History and Science Extreme weather events are ever present, and there is no evidence of systematic increases. Outside the tropics, variability should decrease in a warmer world. If this is a "crisis," then the world is in permanent "crisis," but will be less prone to "crisis" with warming. Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last ice age, most rapidly about 12,000 years ago. In recent centuries, the average rate has been relatively uniform. The rate was higher during the first half of the 20th century than during the second. At around a couple of millimeters per year, it is a residual of much larger positive and negative changes locally. The risk from global warming is less than that from other factors (primarily geological). The impact on agriculture is equivocal. India warmed during the second half of the 20th century, yet agricultural output increased markedly. The impact on disease is dubious. Infectious diseases, like malaria, are not so much a matter of temperature as of poverty and public health. Malaria remains endemic in Siberia, and was once so in Michigan and Europe. Exposure to cold is generally more dangerous. So, does the claim that humans are the primary cause of recent warming imply "crisis"? The impact on temperature per unit CO2 goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of human-induced greenhouse gases does not relate directly to emission rate, nor even to CO2 levels, but rather to the radiative (or greenhouse) impact. Doubling CO2 is a convenient benchmark. It is claimed, on the basis of computer models, that this should lead to 1.1 - 6.4 C warming. What is rarely noted is that we are already three-quarters of the way into this in terms of radiative forcing, but we have only witnessed a 0.6 (+/-0.2) C rise, and there is no reason to suppose that all of this is due to humans. Indeed the system requires no external driver to fluctuate by a fraction of a degree because of ocean disequilibrium with the atmosphere. There are also alternative drivers relating to cosmic rays, the sun, water vapor and clouds. Moreover, it is worth remembering that modelers even find it difficult to account for the medieval warm period. The Real Crisis Our so-called "crisis" is thus neither a product of current observations nor of projections. But does it matter if global warming is a "crisis" or not? Aren't we threatened by a serious temperature rise? Shouldn't we act anyway, because we are stewards of the environment? Herein lies the moral danger behind global warming hysteria. Each day, 20,000 people in the world die of waterborne diseases. Half a billion people go hungry. A child is orphaned by AIDS every seven seconds. This does not have to happen. We allow it while fretting about "saving the planet." What is wrong with us that we downplay this human misery before our eyes and focus on events that will probably not happen even a hundred years hence? We know that the greatest cause of environmental degradation is poverty; on this, we can and must act. The global warming "crisis" is misguided. In hubristically seeking to "control" climate, we foolishly abandon age-old adaptations to inexorable change. There is no way we can predictably manage this most complex of coupled, nonlinear chaotic systems. The inconvenient truth is that "doing something" (emitting gases) at the margins and "not doing something" (not emitting gases) are equally unpredictable. Climate change is a norm, not an exception. It is both an opportunity and a challenge. The real crises for 4 billion people in the world remain poverty, dirty water and the lack of a modern energy supply. By contrast, global warming represents an ecochondria of the pampered rich. We can no longer afford to cling to the anti-human doctrines of outdated environmentalist thinking. The "crisis" is the global warming political agenda, not climate change. Philip Stott is an Emeritus Professor from the University of London, UK. For the last 18 years he was the editor of the Journal of Biogeography. For more information about the debate series, go to www.iq2us.org <<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html" target="_blank">http://www.livescience.com/env ironment/070312_solarsys_warming.html</a> >>Earth is heating up lately, but so are Mars, Pluto and other worlds in our solar system, leading some scientists to speculate that a change in the sun’s activity is the common thread linking all these baking events. Others argue that such claims are misleading and create the false impression that rapid global warming, as Earth is experiencing, is a natural phenomenon. While evidence suggests fluctuations in solar activity can affect climate on Earth, and that it has done so in the past, the majority of climate scientists and astrophysicists agree that the sun is not to blame for the current and historically sudden uptick in global temperatures on Earth, which seems to be mostly a mess created by our own species. Wobbly Mars Habibullo Abdussamatov, the head of space research at St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, recently linked the attenuation of ice caps on Mars to fluctuations in the sun's output. Abdussamatov also blamed solar fluctuations for Earth’s current global warming trend. His initial comments were published online by National Geographic News. “Man-made greenhouse warming has [made a] small contribution [to] the warming on Earth in recent years, but [it] cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,†Abdussamatov told LiveScience in an email interview last week. “The considerable heating and cooling on the Earth and on Mars always will be practically parallel." But Abdussamatov’s critics say the Red Planet’s recent thawing is more likely due to natural variations in the planet’s orbit and tilt. On Earth, these wobbles, known as Milankovitch cycles, are thought to contribute to the onset and disappearance ice ages. “It’s believed that what drives climate change on Mars are orbital variations,†said Jeffrey Plaut, a project scientist for NASA’s Mars Odyssey mission. “The Earth also goes through orbital variations similar to that of Mars.â€<<
Originally Posted By SuperDry The people opposed to the notion of global warming seem to vacillate between "there's no global warming" and "it's not caused primarily by man." Maybe about 4-6 weeks ago, the noise machine had switched to the second stance for just a couple of days (and predictably many of the posts here in WE reflected this viewpoint). That didn't seem to stick for long, though. And equally predictably, as soon as the noise machine stopped pressing the "it exists but it's not man-made" line, the opinions posted here along those lines stopped. Looking at Drudge Report this weekend, it's almost in meltdown mode (sorry!) over global warming. This whole winter, practically every flake of snow and gust of cold wind has been emphasized to the max. As Drudge stands right now as I post this, the headline story plus no fewer than 10 of the links at the top of the three columns below are all directly or indirectly related to global warming. It's very clearly been decided that discounting global warming has been decided to be a primary emphasis at Drudge. And the related link titles over the past few weeks all seem to have a common thread: they seem to be getting at the notion that the fact that there's snow and cold weather somehow discounts the notion of global warming. The thing is, I've never seen anyone that believes in global warming state that they think there will be no snow or cold weather this winter. But then I have to remind myself of what the target market for Drudge is.
Originally Posted By jonvn What's interesting to me is the absolute hysteria in trying to somehow show via really silly arguments that the scientific findings of the last few years are not true. It really does not make any sense at all. I don't see what these people have to gain by making these ridiculous assertions regarding the findings of the various scientific organizations. They try to discredit Al Gore, and they repeatedly try to quote random scientists who have a different viewpoint, as if that's not already taken into account. What do they expect to accomplish? That people who are paying attention to the NSF is going to ignore that information and instead start listening to some crazy on the internet? It really is senseless. We've now just had the warmest winter in over a century (I forget the actual number of years, I think it is 162 years). It's an indicator, but it's not entirely what science is going by, not in the least. It's just weird to see people try to say these things are just not happening, when every credible scientific organization says that it is.
Originally Posted By Darkbeer <a href="http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/longversionfinal.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.lavoisier.com.au/pa pers/articles/longversionfinal.pdf</a> >>Nine Facts about Climate Change 1. Climate change is a constant. The Vostok Ice Cores show five brief interglacial periods from 415,000 years ago to the present. The Greenland Ice Cores reveal a Minoan Warm Period 1450–1300 BC, a Roman Warm Period 250–0 BC, the Mediaeval Warm Period 800–1100AD, the Little Ice Age and the late 20th Century Warm Period 1900–2010 AD. 2. Carbon dioxide is necessary for all life on earth and increasing atmospheric concentrations are beneficial to plant growth, particularly in arid conditions. Because the radiation properties of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are already saturated, increasing atmospheric concentrations beyond current levels will have no discernible effect on global temperatures. 3. The twentieth century was almost as warm as the centuries of the Mediaeval Warm Period, an era of great achievement in European civilisation. The recent warm period, 1976–2000, appears to have come to an end and astrophysicists who study sunspot behaviour predict that the next 25–50 years could be a cool period similar to the Dalton Minimum of the 1790s-1820s. 4. The evidence linking anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide emissions and current warming is limited to a correlation which holds only for the period 1976 to 2000. Attempts to construct an holistic theory in which atmospheric carbon dioxide controls the radiation balance of the earth, and thus determines aver-age global temperatures, have failed. 5. The anthropogenists claim that the overwhelming majority of scientists are agreed on the anthropogenic carbon dioxide theory of climate control; that the science is settled and the debate is over; and that scientific sceptics are in the pay of the fossil fuel industries and their arguments are thus fatally compromised. These claims are an expression of hope, not of reality. 6. Anthropogenists such as former US Vice President Al Gore blame anthropogenic emissions of CO2 for high temperatures, droughts, melting polar ice caps, rising sea levels and retreating glaciers, and a decline in the polar bear population. They also blame anthropogenic CO2 for blizzards, unseasonable snow, freezing weather generally and for hurricanes, cyclones and other extreme weather events. There is no evidence at all to justify these assertions. 7. Increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will have negligible impact on the earth’s radiation balance and will promote plant growth everywhere. There is no need to sequester CO2in the ground or to subsidise nuclear or other non-carbon based methods of energy production. 8. ‘Tropical’ diseases such as malaria and dengue fever are not related to temperature but to poverty, lack of sanitation and the absence of mosquito control practices. 9. The decarbonisation of the world’s economy would, if attempted, cause huge economic dislocation. Any democratic government which seriously sought to fulfil decarbonisation commitments would lose office. Shutting down coal-fired power stations and replacing them with renewable energysources such as windmills or solar panels will cause unemployment and economic deprivation.<<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer >>Nine Lies about Global Warming 1. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant. 2. The twentieth century has been the hottest in recorded history and the decade 1990–2000 the hottest ever. 3. The evidence linking anthropogenic (man-made) carbon dioxide emissions and current warming is decisive. 4. The scientific consensus is that anthropogenic CO2 emissionshave already caused significant global warming and must be severely curtailed to prevent future climate catastrophe. 5. Anthropogenic emissions of CO2 and the global warming caused thereby are responsible not only for higher temperatures and more droughts than in the past, but also for more blizzards, unseasonal snow, and freezing weather. They are also responsible for increasing numbers of cyclones. 6. Because of anthropogenic emissions, the polar ice caps aremelting and sea levels are rising. The rising sea levels threatenlow lying island states in the Pacific and Indian Oceans with complete inundation. 7. Unless anthropogenic emissions of CO2 are reduced by 50–60 per cent of current levels by the year 2050, by 2100 our descendants will have to endure global temperatures of between1.4 to 5.8°C warmer than the present. 8. Tropical diseases such as malaria and dengue fever will spread from the tropics to the temperate regions. 9. Shutting down coal-fired power stations and replacing them with renewable energy sources such as windmills and solarpanels (or even nuclear power plants) will not cause unemployment or economic deprivation.<<
Originally Posted By Darkbeer From the link in post 8 >>The science debate is at the heart of the global warming campaign. On one side of that debate we have those prominent scientists who preach the gospel of anthropogenic(man-made)carbondioxide-generated global warming.Without exception, their careers have been made in the shadowy world where science and politics intersect; a world described by the once celebrated but now forgotten novelist of the 1950s, CP Snow. Lord May and Sir David King in the UK, and James Hansen in the US, are outstanding examples of the genre. On the other side of the debate is a long and growing list of scientists whose careers have been built on successful research into the extraordinarily complex physics and chemistry of the earth’s atmosphere and oceans, and the influence which the Sun has on the earth’s climate. The most recent example of devastating critique of the anthropogenist carbon dioxide school comes from William Gray, the doyen of American hurricane scientists. Commenting on the apparent one-sidedness of the debate Gray said: Most of the strong advocates of human-induced global warming appear to be too personally invested in global warming both from a scientific and a career perspective. They cannot (and will not) back away from their unrealistic warming ideas. It appears that only a new set of climate researchers who are not already committed to the warming straight-jacket will be able to render an objective assessment of human influence on climate. Despite the influence within government and the media which the science-politicians such as Lord May and James Hansen have in their respective domains, the weight and authority of real experts who are able to refer to real data is beginning to impinge upon the public debate. One consequence is the increasingly maniacal desperation of the anthropogenist school, who seek to impose censorship and even imprisonment of their critics. Those who have seen Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, and who are acquainted with American history, will have recognised the religious tradition of millenarian preaching to which it conforms. The end of the world is nigh! Judgment Day is at hand! Repent you of your sins and resolve to lead a better life! Missing from the Gore version is God’s participation in these climactic events. Nature has taken God’s place, but otherwise the script is unchanged. Man’s sin is responsible for the coming catastrophe, and unless we repent of our sins and give up our use of fossil fuels, then catastrophe will surely bring the world to an end. Environmentalism has largely superseded Christianity as the religion of the upper classes in Europe and to a lesser extent in the US. It is a form of religious belief which fosters a sense of moral superiority in the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth. As the former Canadian Environment Minister Christine Stewart put it: No matter if the science is all phony (sic), there are collateral environmental benefits … Climate change [provides] the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world.<<
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <and they repeatedly try to quote random scientists who have a different viewpoint, as if that's not already taken into account. > And as soon as you say that, we have posts 8-10. It's like a self-parody.
Originally Posted By melekalikimaka What I find interesting is that liberals are constantly accused of being obsessed with this issue yet most of the threads about global warming in WE are created by non-liberals. Darkbeer seems to be posting a new anti-global warming thread everyday. Someone's obsessed alrighty but it's not the liberals.
Originally Posted By tiggertoo The sad thing is 99% of those “myths†and “lies†have been addressed and thoroughly crushed in past threads. But nothing should get in the way of some good old nutwing rightist propaganda. This is exactly why science should not be a political topic. It’s comical and disheartening to those who work in scientific fields. Partisan politics is the archenemy of objectivity; and science without objectivity is worthless.
Originally Posted By avromark It's time to turn on every air conditioner in the world to combat global warming
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh What I find annoying is when people point to a study that talks about what may happen and claim it says what will happen.
Originally Posted By mrichmondj ^^ I expect that you would have been annoyed by the writings of Galileo if you were around in the 16th Century.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh You might expect that, but that expectation is not based on anything I have written.
Originally Posted By jonvn please ignore him. Anyway, yes. The thing is science is saying something. It's fairly objective. If science eventually discounts what is currently being said, ok, fine. But it is not. The arguments I've seen on this boil down to place like the NSF vs. Some nutcase rag from Canada. There really is nothing to argue about, except what do we need to do. Personally, I think we need to start going for nuclear power. Nuclear waste is a major issue, but is it a worse problem than hydrocarbon emissions? That's something we need to concern ourselves with. Not whether what is basically being shown by science is true or not. The folks who keep wanting to disprove this are just so misguided, it's incredible. They are a pathetic bunch, and they do anything they can to show that their utterly discredited viewpoint has some validity. It simply does not.
