Topic: The Environment
Anthropogenic Global Warming is Nonsense I make an effort to dispel some of the myths surrounding the Global Warming hysteria.by Edward Townes
(Libertarian)
Sunday, December 30, 2007
[Fig 1]
These days it is well nigh impossible to not be aware of the 'Global Warming' hysteria. From the doomsday movies, to alarming media headlines, to politicians scrambling over each other to get on the green bandwagon, one thing is clear - it’s not politically correct to question it.
When I first decided to look into what all the fuss was about on climate change, I was not opinionated on the subject at all. From what I understood then, the only difference between the global warming alarmists and me was a difference in opinion on the economics involved. That has now completely changed.
They have engaged in exaggeration and deception on just about every single last aspect of climate change. In fact, the only thing I can really confirm for you is that carbon dioxide has a 'greenhouse effect' in our atmosphere, and we are responsible for 0.28% of it [6]. Actually, even the word "greenhouse" is misleading because that implies a restriction on convection currents, which is not physically accurate. The moon doesn’t have an atmosphere and experiences an average surface temperature of 107°C and -153°C for day and night respectively, which is obviously a much larger range compared to Earth's. The best explanation for how an atmosphere's "greenhouse" effect acts, is it increases the planet's heat capacity (i.e. it holds more energy and thus takes longer to heat up and cool down) and thus makes the climate more gentle and hospitable.
But let's step back for a moment from the atmosphere and talk about Earth's historical and current temperatures. Global warming alarmists would have us believe that we are now seeing a global temperature at a height not achieved for a very long time. This is simply not true. We have seen temperatures even within the last 1,000 years higher than our present, which is not even a blip in Earth’s history.
Possibly the most infamous display of this garbage is the "hockey-stick graph":
[fig 2]
Although Mann et al compiled it in 1998, it was not until 2003 that the first independent person was able to look at the algorithms used in the graph, because they refused to release it. It turned out that, even using completely randomized data, one could create a graph that looked exactly the same because the algorithms had a bias to exaggerate the last century! Not only that, but it should be obvious from the fact that the Vikings were settling and farming Greenland from the 9th to the 13th century, in places now covered with permafrost and ice, that this graph is just total nonsense! Of course, this was not before the graph had been used as the backdrop for the 2001 UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. You would have thought that was a pretty good indication of their scientific integrity, but I promise you it gets much, much worse. Perhaps even more interesting than the inability of the IPCC to verify its data before using it at all, let alone as a centerpiece, or subsequently apologising after it became public how fraudulent the graph was, is the fact that environmentalists to this day still use this graph to illustrate their points. Al Gore's entire sensationalist "documentary" (boy is that charitable) revolves around this widely discredited graph and others like it. It should honestly occur to us that anyone who continues to use this graph to support their arguements has little interest in actually presenting reality. The IPCC used to publish the real temperature data on the past millennium in its earlier reports, but not anymore because it’s an inconvenient truth to their agenda.
What about recent temperature rises in the last century? Surely it is impossible to deny that we are seeing warming now at an unusual and alarming rate? Well, you'd be surprised. Measuring Earth's average temperature to any interesting degree of precision is a considerably complex task. Even defining exactly what the absolute surface air temperature means is challenging, giving plenty of room for pursuing an agenda. The vast majority of graphs you've seen on this subject will have come from data using land-based measurements, as these allow the graph to continue back beyond the 1970s. There are numerous problems with land-based measurements, ranging from the fact that land only accounts for 30% of the planet's surface, to urban heat islands and other effects from changes in local land use. Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. says, [7] "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (the 2D representation of a sphere which exaggerates the polar area) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance." However, in the last 30 years we've had consistent measurements from weather balloons and satellites, which produce much more reliable results for obvious reasons, and what we've observed from this equipment is a only a very slight warming trend. This data should be puzzling to the people who built the climate models for the IPCC, because they actually predicted the reverse - the troposphere should be warming faster than the surface if the current warming is due to the 'greenhouse effect'.
While we're on the subject of climate models, I'd like to say a few things. Climate models are in their infancy. They are highly dependent on the assumptions that go into them, and there are a lot of them. In fact, there are so many assumptions and parameters that it is genuinely possible to create any relationship you like. Climate models are made fun by the inclusion of "positive feed-backs" (multiplier effects) so that a small temperature increment expected from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide invokes large increases in water vapor, which seem to produce exponential rather than logarithmic temperature response to CO2. It seems to have become somewhat of a game to see who can add in the most creative feedback mechanisms to produce the scariest warming scenarios from their models, but there remains no evidence that the planet behaves in such a manner. Not only is it highly debatable as to whether water vapour acts as a positive or negative feed-back, but what has been observed in laboratories is that CO2 actually has a logarithmic relationship with temperature. The IPCC literally made its entire conclusion from the results of 6 models. Three of these were extreme scenarios with numbers like a global population of 15 billion by 2100 (almost all demographers expect our population to level at 9 billion), and even the 3 that were ‘moderate’ were predicting things like the annual rainfall in Ireland should be equivalent to the Sahara’s. Today. The unreliable nature of these models probably helps to explain why the IPCC cut almost of all its predictions by a third from 2001 to its most recent report. They also failed to predict the fall in methane levels we've seen since 2002, and their predictions for sea temperatures have been halved due to "incorrectly calibrated instrumentation". As the saying in computer programming goes; "Garbage in, garbage out".
There is an erroneous assumption flying around these days that CO2 is some how an important forcing factor on the global climate, when every last piece of empirical evidence shows otherwise. Al Gore, and I'm positive he's not the only one, has a graph with 500,000 years of ice core samples showing their chronological temperature and respective CO2 levels. There is a nice correlation, and the two are definitely linked, but he lies and pretends the relationship is the other way around. In every single time period it is clear that CO2 levels always trail temperature changes by 500-800 years. Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia had the following to say about this; [8] "Al Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak, that they are pathetic. The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science." The historical evidence consistently shows temperature is independent of CO2. In fact, 450 million years ago when we were in the depths of the coldest period the Earth has had in half a billion years, CO2 levels were 10 times above today's! Even using the last century as evidence for a dependent relationship is meaningless. 65% of the warming this century occurred in the first three decades, and then, while CO2 levels continued to rise, temperatures fell for four decades in a row.
Another misconception that seems to be rife at the moment is that some how CO2 is a pollutant. I'm sure that you've all learned that this gas is actually fundamental to our existence, but this seems to be as good a time as any to re-cap. Estimates vary, but somewhere around 15% seems to be the common number cited for the increase in global food crop yields due to increased carbon dioxide since 1950. This increase has both helped avoid a Malthusian disaster and preserved or returned enormous tracts of marginal land as wildlife habitat that would otherwise have had to be put under the plow in an attempt to feed the growing global population. Commercial growers deliberately generate CO2 and increase its levels in agricultural greenhouses to between 700ppmv and 1,000ppmv to increase productivity and improve the water efficiency of food crops far beyond those in the somewhat carbon-starved open atmosphere. CO2 feeds the forests, grows more usable lumber in timber lots meaning there is less pressure to cut old growth or push into "natural" wildlife habitat, makes plants more water efficient helping to beat back the encroaching deserts in Africa and Asia and generally increases bio-productivity. If it's "pollution," then it's pollution the natural world exploits extremely well and to great profit. What should be obvious is that increases in CO2 directly increase the vitality of the bio-world. It is no wonder that the Sahara has shrunk 300,000 km^2 in the last couple decades, or that the dinosaurs managed to find the sustenance to survive, despite their size, in an era with 5 times our current CO2 levels.
The last myth I'd like to debunk is the idea that global warming is necessarily a bad thing, regardless of whether we have any significant control over it, or that historically warm periods have been the most prosperous for humans. By far the most hyped consequences are increasing intensities of weather storms, and rising sea levels. Global storm intensities are dominated by the temperature difference between the equator and the poles, and it really is that simple. Even by the IPCC's own admission, in manipulating the area of the poles using the Mercator system to distort the global temperature, the poles must be warming at a rate faster than the equator and this subsequently leads to gentler storms, despite the media explicitly or implicitly making an attempt to blame every last weather anomaly on "climate change". Ah yes, you say, but that would imply that we are in danger of rising sea levels because the warming would melt the ice at the poles. Well, consider this. Since the last ice age 18,000 years ago the global sea level has risen by 130 meters, and is still doing so at a current rate of around 20cm per century, which is dwarfed by local tectonic movements. This will obviously displace people, but it will pale in insignificance when compared to the migrations over the next century caused by other factors such as geographical changes in important resources, fresh water locations, industrialization, etc. Dramatic pictures of breaking seasonal ice is just patent propaganda, the reality is that Antarctica’s ice mass has now been growing for the last 30 years against a 6,000 year trend of melting, and it contains over 90% of the world’s land ice (sea ice, by Archimedes’s principle, does not affect sea levels). Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, [9] "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."
Our climate is changing, just as it has always done, and always will. In fact, the only constant about our climate is that it changes, which makes you realise the term "climate change" is at best meaningless, and at worst intentionally ambiguous. It feels silly that I need to say this, but clearly it has to be done. The main determinant of our climate is not some gas, which comprises 0.038% of the atmosphere, but the Sun, the planet's orbital eccentricities and axial wobble, cosmic ray flux, and other celestial factors. Greenhouse gases play an important role, but a passive one. It should not come as a surprise that our entire solar system has been warming for the last quarter century, or that the most accurate weather forecasts come from algorithms that concentrate on solar fluctuations and cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are responsible for cloud formations, which are central to the overwhelmingly most important greenhouse gas. Water vapour accounts for 95% of the ‘greenhouse effect’ and, apart from the elaborate positive feed-back systems in their models that have no actual basis with reality, the global warming alarmists have completely ignored it. This is staggering because H20, by a country mile, in its gas, liquid, and solid form dominates all other terrestrial climate factors. I have included here three graphs to show you how temperature correlates to solar variations, CO2, and the global pirate population.
[fig 3]
[fig 4]
[fig 5]
As you can see, meaningless correlations are not difficult to produce.
I hope that by this point you are beginning to understand that there are dozens of simple common sense punches that go straight through the global warming alarmists, and you must now be asking why there is a motive for us being lied to in the first place. The anthropogenic global warming proponents consist of three main groups: politicians, the media, and some scientists. The politicians are easy, as always. As long as they have no personal vested interests that may be damaged by their policies, the global warming hysteria is a windfall for the simple reason that it is a cause that virtually everyone supports and is thus a guaranteed way of being able to raise tax revenue with no political backlashes. The media is similarly obvious. The news sells more papers, magazines, and has more viewers when their audience is scared of some imminent catastrophe that your respective service is reporting on. Problem for them is, we’ve been seeing that junk for the last 10 years, so, accordingly, their headlines have had to get more and more shrill to the point of ridiculous. Although, they can't decide whether we're going to burn, starve, freeze, or drown. Perhaps it is indicative that the media has now warned us of impending doom from climate change no less than 4 separate times in the last century. Last, but certainly not least, we come to the scientists themselves. In the late 1980s, the US federal budget for "climate research" was $170 million. Today it is more than $5 billion. There are literally tens of thousands of people who depend on your gullibility, in the US alone. The scientists who produce material to support the anthropogenic global warming theory are rewarded with media attention and political funding. They have abandoned some of the most fundamental principles of science in the pursuit of greed, and I, for one, will certainly not indulge them when the world starts cooling again and they need a job. Of course, there are also plenty of scientists with scientific integrity, but most of them have had their work distorted, misrepresented, suppressed, or passed off as funded by oil companies in the media. These real scientists must find the IPCC’s claim that there is a consensus in the scientific community on anthropogenic global warming at the very least a statement of ignorance on the scientific method, and probably downright offensive. More than 4,000 scientists from 106 countries, including 72 Nobel prize winners, signed the Heidelberg Appeal (1992), calling for a rational scientific approach to environmental problems. Many senior scientists have also supported The Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming (1992), The Leipzig Declaration (1997) and finally the Oregon Petition (1998), which received the signatures of over 19,000 scientists [10]. Dr. Chris Landsea resigned from the IPCC in his own words, because, [11] "I personally cannot in good faith continue to contribute to a process that I view as both being motivated by pre-conceived agendas and being scientifically unsound." The IPCC’s process is highly corrupt. When a report is made, a couple thousand climate scientists each write a small section in their expertise and have no input into any other part of the report. This is the first reason the IPCC produces no scientific consensus. The second reason is that the ‘Summary for Policymakers’ is written first, by policymakers no less, and then the rest of the report is doctored and manipulated by a handful of "lead authors" to fit the summary’s agenda. In fact, some scientists had to threaten legal action before their names were finally removed. But actually all this misses the really big point: Hello?! It’s the United Nations for crying out loud!!
I think it is important to note that this is a fairly isolated case of how politics can hideously corrupt a respectable scientific field. Humans do affect the planet and scientists play a central role in understanding how. I just hope that in the future good lessons are learned from this on how not to have a functional relationship between the scientific community and the public at large, although given humanity’s track record I’m not holding my breath.
The amount of money being wasted on climate change nonsense is amazing. In fact, in my opinion, the only good thing Bush did with his presidency was refuse the US sign the Kyoto Treaty, which would have had the effect of lowering the Earth’s temperature by one tenth of a degree in 50 years time (by the treaty’s own estimates) at the price of $400 billion a year. That’s $2,700 per American family per year, or 20% of the UK’s GDP. At this price the US could provide the entire world with clean drinking water and sanitation, which would prevent 2 million real, not imaginary, deaths (from diseases like infant diarrhea) a year and prevent a half-billion people from becoming seriously ill each year. These initiatives are wasting our money at an enormous opportunity cost.
The point of my article is to show you that the theory of anthropogenic global warming needs to be exposed to criticism to ensure its health. If the theory has merits, then it has to be proved under the rigors of the scientific method, not through political campaigns. It is important for any subject, but especially one on a global scale with so much at stake, to be rationally discussed without the panic, hysteria, and sensationalist rubbish. People who try to suppress this debate are highly irresponsible and their motives should seriously be called into question. A lot of the responsibility for how this is handled rests on you and me. If someone tells you that the world is going to end in 100 years time because of the gases that come out your mouth and backside, you should have the intellectual fortitude to critically question that claim, and not treat like heretics those who do.
S.M. Freidenreich and V. Ramaswamy, "Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models," Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264
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2007 Edward Townes, all rights reserved.
Published: Sunday, December 30, 2007
Last modified: Saturday, April 5, 2008
The views expressed in this
article are those of Edward Townes only and do not represent
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Too bad your "Thumb It" feature doesn't allow for anything but thumbs up votes...I confess I did not click the thumb to see if there are options underlying the graphic...I didn't want to give this a thumbs up inadvertently. Show some objectivity and you will be more credible. My opinion: I'm astonished at the level of denial in the face of such vetted science.
Posted By: No Name Supplied
Date: 2007-12-30 12:13:31
Truth is not always what it seems to be in life or science,,objective reporting is its own petard.
The Planets history did not begin with the Human species and it will not end when we have left for other relms
Without a time machine to show us exactly what happened in each century we literally guess at each cause of change be it asteroids or Volcanic eruptions or just wild fires and droughts.
We have effected changes trying to solve what we perceive as problems with out the full knowledge of the reason for the events around us.
To not include the shift of the planets magnetic core as a part of the reason that the climate changes or it (the planets) relative position to the sun and in turn to the Galaxy is to look at a minuscule event without a comprehension of how things work universally.
We need to learn about perspective before we make generalities. This is something that those who claim Global warming is something this planet has never experienced before, seem to ignore. The fact that Antarctica and the Arctic were not polar regions in eons past nor were they always frigid does not appear anywhere in their presentations.
Nor has the fact that industrial crop fertilization with its contribution of salts to both land and sea has had any effect good or bad to the climate been calculated
Insufficient data and lack of comprehension is like the well known GI GO of early computation days Garbage in = Garbage out.
The author of the article make some good points that should be expanded upon and researched further.
The time for arguing this subject is over. The evidence is over whelming, and there is no point in discussing this subject any further. Action now must be taken. Poeple still arguing against global warming are people stuck in the 60's still considering data covering the entire century, the fact of the matter is, is that temperature changes in the last 20 years is the most important data for identifying that we have a problem.
As mankind faces the most dramatic natural disaster in history we are squabbling instead of taking action. Quit arguing and let's come up with a plan.
Our poles are melting, temperature and weather patterns are changing. Those are facts. Whose fault it is, man made or natural is almost irrelevant. The important thing is that we take action to prepare for the unavoidable consequences of climate change NOW.
Past climate changes have happened quick, the most recent having taken only about a decade. We have seen weather patterns change over the last few years, lost a bunch of ice, witnessed massive amounts of species going extinct and see a slow-down of the ocean's conveyor which regulates temperature patterns around the globe. My gut feeling is to say that we are in the midst of climate change. Whether it's caused by CO2, an active sun or any other cause is not the issue. The issue is... we can't change, avert or avoid it so we have to figure out how to deal with it and survive it's effects.
The focal point of all the issues surrounding climate change is energy. More specifically, present and future energy. The energy we currently use, which most say changes the climate, and the energy we will need in the future to supply more people and to stave off the effects of a changed climate. We need cleaner fuel now, not only because of pollution or the fact that we are running out, but because we will need much more fuel in the future.
The world economy is currently dependant upon CO2 emitting fossil fuels and we won't just be able to throw a switch to convert to another source so we have to start now. We have to stop spending billions fighting over the remaining oil. No matter who owns it, we will use it up. As demand increases and supply dwindles it will become more expensive and economic factors will dictate that we replace it. If we're lucky, mankind will be reasonable enough to spend more money finding new energy sources than fighting over obsolete ones. That's a long shot but there's always hope.
We will need more energy and there is no denying that burning oil and coal pollutes our planet. We have 2 choices if we want to survive as a species.
1. Come up with more, preferably cleaner energy.
2. Shrink our global population to a size that our current energy supply can sustain.
The first is preferable but considering our primitive human nature, the second is more probable. Let's let common sense overpower human nature and strive towards option 1.
Think about it. There are many sources of energy, known and yet to be discovered that we can use. Wind, water, tidal, and solar are clean technologies that we have explored and can improve. We have started tinkering with ways to use the Earth's magnetic field. There is gravity and countless types of cosmic rays that we haven't even tried to harness yet. Nuclear has been around for decades and if it doesn't blow up on you, it is extremely clean.
My suggestion, no, my demand is that mankind stop it's economic and religious squabbling and start taking the action we need for our survival as a species. It will be impossible to get mankind to act as one, but someone has to start. If the US trimmed it's government and military to a minimum, keeping enough troops and nukes to sustain sovereignty, we could save billions and use it to develop energy sources.
That scenario might even be good for the economy. Imagine all of the workers needed to make electric cars or cosmic ray powered toasters. Besides, whoever discovers a technology usually has a lead when it comes to selling it's usage or the products it spins off.
New energy won't solve global warming but it will help us deal with it better. Right now it's the only option we have so let's get on it!
Anthropogenic climate change is real, and only someone who does not truly care about their impact on this planet would say otherwise... or someone whose salary dictates their views. The amount of glacier melt and the rapidity of it is not just due simply to "natural" variations, and anyone with half a brain who can read and think for themselves can figure that out. And I would dare say by the ridiculous cartoon you plastered here with your garbage that this is purely political to you.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2007-12-30 14:58:48
Those who cry for a "thumbs down" button are actually saying that they want to disrespect what someone else writes without actually having to take the time to provide evidence that he is wrong and to document that evidence. "Thumbs down" is merely an excuse for an ad hominem attack.
Thank you for taking the time to read what I have to say on this subject.
 Unfortunately it would seem that some of you wasted your time because you missed the entire point of the article: declaring the debate "over" is irresponsible and potentially very damaging.  Besides, in science the debate is never "over".Â
If the baby has a fever and the doctor says, "get her a lobotomy", you need to open up the debate.
If someone wants me to pay for your climate change projects, they need to ask me politely, or go away.
If climate change is the fault of human beings, and the ideal CO2 level was in 1900, you would have to get the human population of the earth down to 1.5 Billion. Those committed to this point of view are welcome to leave the planet.Â
The argument is long over. The warnings were 30 years ago. Yes I was alive then. As usual mankind always focuses on the symptoms rather than the problem. The symptom is CO2; the problem is population, and Mrs. Nature will resolve the problem if we don't. This is just another of those articles by one who refuses to admit that he is killing his own children and probably doesn't care about them anyway. As to the 100 scientists; How many of them are electrical engineers, accounting specialists, etc. What percentage of all the scientists in the world does 100 represent. Is it 1/2 of 1% or less than that. All scientists were not created equal and apparently that applies to writers too.
The article reads like the refuse of Xmas passed - re-collected, re-collated, and re-presented. Industrial pollution is responsible for a 35% increase in GHGases (not the .28% cooked up by numb spinners). The entire solar system has not been warming for the last 30 years, and the disappearance of the second of two tiny colonies of Vikings is not a proxy for global climate conditions.
The rest of this article is the usual throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. If it doesn't hide it for a year and then try again. Hopefully the author believes in accountability for his position.
I think that it is so easy to sit back and call others liars and fools. It is much harder to face the truth without trying to find out the real facts. It hasn't dawned on you yet that there is no reason to lie about such a fact as global warming. What we need to do is to begin to make changes that will control human effects on the planet, whether it is called global warming or just stupidity.
Posted By: Michael Malloy
Date: 2007-12-30 21:03:16
Edward: as I understand your article it can be summarized something like this: blah blah blah alarmist. blah blah blah blah hockeystick, blah blah blah global tempurature blah blah. no consensus blah blah. grant funding blah blah. Hmm. Must be a slow news day on your end. And I didn't even know you where a scientist. shame on me.
When the well regarded philosopher and logician Socrates was tasked with defining wisdom, he famously dervied the "humility theory" (the most practically knowledgable men, like politcians and craftsmen, falsely claimed to know things well beyond the scope of their specializations and their knowledge, while philosophers like Socrates - practically illiterate men - claimed to know very little or nothing, so wisdom, then, is posessed most by those who claim to not be wise).
This argument has formed the foundation of logical thinking for all of human history. Any scientist with a legitimate claim to the title will readily acknowledge that however well he may regard his own theories, their inherent truth value is basically unknowable, and therefore the scientist really knows nothing, but believes many things. When a man stands up and declares the "scientific debate" over (a definitively impossible state of existence), that man is obviously no rational natural philosopher in any classical Socratic sense, and therefore can not claim to be a "scientist" nor to represent "science." He is a preacher, and his statements are dogma, not theory.
Mr Townes is wrong, and his misjudgement is catastrophic. It is an elementary physical property of carbon dioxide (and methane) that it behaves as a greenhouse gas. The Cheney 3C rule states that if the CO2 level in the air is doubled from pre-industrial, the temperature will rise 3C (and Dr James Hansen of NASA adds it will rise another 3C in the long run due to feedbacks).
To explain the warming now observed, Mr Towne would have to postulate a "factor X," when instead the current warming can be adequetly explained by the rise in CO2 (and CH4) levels in the air, caused by mankind's emissions. That is why the IPCC states with over 90% certainty that warming is occurring, and it is caused by mankind's emissions.
I challenge Mr Towne to identify the source of the additional warming in a peer reviewed paper, instead of writing the above psudo-science meant for gullible public consumption. Remember all the psudo-science casting doubt that smoking tobacco caused cancer?
The consequence of Mr Townes' misjudgement is that the CO2 (and CH4) level in the air will continue to rise, rapidly changing the mild climate we live in now to the hothouse climate of 55 million years ago when most life died.
By the way, the last severe global warming episode was ended when ocean life removed the excess CO2 from the air over thousands of years. In my opinion, it is very unlikely that mankind will cut their emissions so fast and drastically to avoid abrupt climate change or runaway global warming. I suggest improving nature's ability by seeding a GMO into the ocean.
Biosequestration is a low cost, technically feasible, and highly scalable method of removing the excess CO2 from the air. The CO2 level in the air is the highest it has been for hundreds of thousands of years-what is the harm of using a low cost method to bring it back to the level of the last ten thousand years when the climate has been abnormally mild, and human civilization blossomed?
Very interesting article that shows (again) that the discussion is not over.
The official monthly and yearly data in http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2007/nov/global.html#temp shows that the land rank of Northern Hemisphere shows up quite higher than the Southern Hemisphere. That does not look global. It should be much closer if it is a global issue.
November 2007 is the 24th warmest November in the southern hemisphere measured for land and ocean. Ok, it is the most extreme one I found on the above page but it makes me wonder. The trend is not just up. Even the global land and ocean temperature is only the 8th warmest November.
I know that someone can turn this around (again) and make it to prove that we in the Northern Hemisphere are the cause. ;-)
One more meaningless correlation is the combination of the CO2 increase and the increase of the human population, which look like that the humans are responsible for the increase. Stop breathing out!
Posted By: Ken VanderPloeg
Date: 2007-12-31 08:42:54
As usual, those who believe the myth of AGW engage in their common tactics of ad-hominem attacks on the people who oppose the AGW myth. "...he's received money from the oil industry." "...he is misinformed." etc., etc...
Please address the facts presented in a rational manner - skip the abuses directed at those presenting the facts.
Mr. Nolan has presented facts. Refute those facts with logic and reason, if you can. I don't think you can.
>The argument is long over. >The warnings were 30 years >ago. Yes I was alive then.
Well Stueyplace,
I was alive then as well.
30 years ago I was afraid about the coming ice age. All the data where there, the consensus, and the theory.
Well it did not happen.
The data where short-term data (climate is more long-term and complex than that), consensus (??scientist voting??) is too stupid too talk about, and the theorie was wrong. Exit. Over and out.
Thanks for the informative and factual article on the biggest threat mankind now faces - and I don't mean AGW. The real threat is the mindless following of the AGW dogma and the costly remedies to be prescribed by the newly empowered.
Without the support of the masses, such a hoax wouldn't have a chance. Unfortunately, AGW has evolved into a sort of 'personal brand'. In a superficial world, they 'wear' the AGW brand so as to appear more caring, more compassionate, and more intelligent - see how they worry for us all, watch as they demand immediate action to protect us. It's the ideal mask for those too lazy, stupid and lacking in courage to actually contribute in any meaningful way to a better world.
Their agenda is anti-life, anti-progress and anti-science. Their chief 'action' these days is to shout down truth at all costs.
When the ice caps totally melt and the southeast U.S. turns into a Sahara, Edward Townes, Rush Limbaugh, et al will still be arguing that there is no such thing as global warming and even if there is, it is not caused by human activity and even if it is, doing anything to mitigate the negative effect of human activity on the earth's climate would stifle economic growth and stifling economic growth would definitely negatively impact the pocket books of Edward Townes, Rush Limbaugh, et al so there is no such thing as global warming.
Posted By: one real scientist
Date: 2007-12-31 12:02:52
Very well done! This really should be published in some classic venues as well and I encourage you to push it forward. It will never convince committed alarmists of course but thinking people will almost certainly find it refreshing.
I would have preferred more links and footnotes, but I think you got all the facts straight. Of course, the AGW true believers aren't interested in facts or genuine debate: "The issue is settled. Just shut up, or help us find the best way to destroy capitalism."
Since global mean temperatures have fallen for the past decade, hysteric socialists will soon need to find another global crisis to justify their destruction of civil society. I predict it will be fear-mongering about "world killer" meteorites.
Excellent and I will be bulletenting this on Myspace soon! Many points are perfect, those points that aren't are just way too complex to go into...the shear amount of complexities is enough to spin heads on the basics then we enter realms we still do not understand that may have considerable effect on our climate.
 The very ones screaming the debate over and demand action now are the ones who need be held accountable! It's this witch hunt and attack on logic and skeptical science that's wrong, how are we to advance man kinds understanding of climate science when they are screaming while holding their ears? They say we are paid to say it that we do not care with absolutely no basis what-so-ever when it is us who sacrafice to stand in the face of tramendous adversity for what is right!Â
 The most complex scientific issue every tackled and it's been long over? If that is true we should be long gone....absolutely no concept or grip on reality some of these bafoons here.
So many of the comments here are just typical of the problem. Rather than actually present any real information, "educate yourself" with a link to a biased site is as good as useless. Yeah, there's denial, but it's not on the part of the "skeptics" (a convenient label used to demonize someone). The "believers" are in complete denial. The science does not show AGW, and the sources that do have demonstrated that they are NOT CREDIBLE.
It has been said that 2007 is the year that the tide has changed. Rather than being cool and hip with doom and gloom scenarios, those continuing to push the debunked AGW "theory" are beginning to look like fools.
If you push the belief that "even if it's not AGW, we still need to make changes", then you are nothing more than a liar. We could change our current pattern of energy use, sure, but not for a lie. It is this constant barrage of dishonesty that will kill the entire AGW industry. Considering what is at stake (no, not the "danger" of destroying the planet, but the danger of completely destroying our economy and society), you better have the science right, and AGW is based on emotion, not science.
Why not face the truth? Go to disclosureproject.org to see who is hiding what, and why. We have NOT NEEDED fossil fuels for over 60 years. It's all been to line the pockets of a few fat cats. Insist upon OPEN Congressional Hearings today.
An excellent article, very clear, very accurate, and yet, I had to stop reading the comments because there were too many naive, gullible fools who couldn't understand what they were reading. Since so many of you can't all be benifitting from this scam what in God's Name makes you cling so pathetically to your simpleton beliefs. "Action must be taken, now!" What action do you think would possibly have any effect? Arrogant ninnies!
Posted By: Peter Hale, Climate Concern UK
Date: 2008-01-01 04:19:24
Mr. Townes' article includes some interesting points, although the "AGW" scientists have counter arguments. The science should remain open.
My own summary of the position is as follows:
There is a chance that the sceptical view is correct. Let's hope it is. But unless you believe that most climate scientists are corrupt, this seems a small chance. And isn't it a rather extreme position to believe that the enormous amounts of extra greenhouse gas we are putting into the atmosphere (so far +33% CO2, +100% methane) will be benign?
If AGW science is correct, life will be very uncomfortable and possibly unsurvivable.
Polarised political positions (the point of this web site?) mustn't override objective thinking. Ditto any religious motives.
Even if AGW is not proven (and may never be), let's do whatever we can to reduce the risks. Our grandchildren are not expendable.
As I "see" scientific method, it is about putting forward a hypothesis that explains what we see and observe in a particular field.
Empiracal data and observation is then used to "skeptically" test the hypothesis.
This process continues forever.
As advances in measurement and observation techniques enable us to observe and measure new data, this new evidence should always be included in the skeptical testing of hypothesises, whether they be old or new. To not do this is completely unscientific. If a hypothesis fails the new data, then the hypothesis has failed. It really is that simple.
"The (AGW) hypothesis has been tested, and it has failed" Professor R. Carter.
That is the scientific method, as I "see" it. This I believe, is a far better "method" than the usual AGW proponents "discussion technique" of,
1) Dismiss the science, empiracal data or observation that questions AGW.
2) Rubbish the source.
3) Repeat the mantra.
Examples of both approaches will be found in virtually every "Climate debate" nowadays, and the same sides use the same tactics constantly. I'm proud to be a skeptic, it is the scientific way, is it not.
NB - Why is Mann still in a job when he has been proved to have produced such fraudulent material.
If he is such a good scientist he must have known how made up, and deliberately misleading his graph was,
therefore his motive can not have been scientific.
I apologise,people. I came back today and forced myself to continue reading your comments. I find that the majority of comments are logical and well thought out, and not of the 'Reality Denier' type at all. I feel better that the 'Lemmings' are not leading us to our doom, but are becoming a desperate minority, still shrilly demanding that we listen to their alarmist prophecies, even as their voices fade into the distance. It's a great new year, everyone. Happy New year!
I'd like to ask Todd, Franky, Ronny, Janny, Stuey, owly, Gino, Mickey, Bradly, Petee, et al, if any of them have actually tested the raw data being presented? I expect the answer is no, because only a ship of fools would continue to repeat the AGW mantra in the face of the peer-reviewed contrarian science, most of which provides solid irrefutable evidence of the natural state of an ever changing climate - warming on other planets, the fact that anthropogenic CO2 amounts to less than 1/11 of 1% of the greenhouse effect when we include the most prevalent greenhouse gas, aka water vapor, the subsequent fact that anthropogenic CO2 as a "force" factor doesn't even represent a blip on the Bell Curve when the data are subjected to statistical analysis, the historic record that shows increased CO2 always lagging temperature increases, the growing evidence of variable manipulation (or in some cases outright fraud) on the part of pro-AGW hyperboholics. Why are you all so willing to sell your souls to this fraud in the face of basic common sense? Or perhaps this is a case of their politico-religious tenet being exposed, in that the ends (their collective dream of an utopian socialist society) justify the means (proliferation of psuedoscience).
Whatever the case may be, we are apparently on the precipice of yet another world-wide Nazi movement - in this case it's the Greens who are donning the brown shirts. Climate fraud is a much greater threat to Western ideology than anything Hitler could have imagined or that Osama et al can throw at us today.
Check out John Stossel's take on global warming. The video is available on Youtube. He accepts the obvious notion that the climate is changing, but easily points out that there is absolutely no real proof that it's because of man. He points out Gore's emotional propaganda, he points out the same numbers that show climate change preceeds increasedCO2 levels, and he points out that plenty of prominent scientists agree the climate change is nothing but perfectly natural.
Thanks for the article - people are waking up to the carbon-taxers bogus agenda.
FACT: We are currently enjoyinga warm interval (interglaciation) between ice ages. Our interglaciation is called the Holocene. The last interglacial (before the last ice age) was called the Eemian. The Eemian Interglacial was WAAY HOTTER THAN TODAY AND CO2 WAS SKYROCKETING AS WELL!!! Modern Man was not here yet during the Eemian but if we were some Al Gore type would have been blowing hot air and blaming "human activity."
Thank God the Earth naturally warmed up from the last ice age, because my country was covered by ice several kilometers thick about 12,000 years ago. These warm interglacials typically end after about 12,000 years so statisticly the next ice age is getting close.
That makes over 40 blatant lies exposed from Al Gore's movie. Gore just wants to make as much money as possible for his company called Generation Investment Management(GIM).
Gore is Chairman of GIM:
http://www.generationim.com/philosophy/
GIM invests in companys that cause massive toxic waste and deadly air pollution. Here is their investment details:
NOW YOU KNOW WHERE YOUR CARBON CREDIT MONEY GOES!!
It's pathetic that this guy got a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe the staff at Guantanamo Bay will get the next one.
About 1 year ago a forum like this would have been loaded with fools who bought into Al Gore's bogus claims, but things are changing for the better. Now it appears a majority are better informed and Al Gore's train is going off the track and into the ditch where it belongs.
The truth always prevails in the end. You can't fool people forever.
There should be no argument about this; what's done is done. It is our responsibility to respect our planet. God will provide the consequences for mistreating it.
IPCC predicted about 3 degrees C or 5.5 degrees F increase in "surface temperature" with the doubling of CO2.
I asked an AGW alarmist the following question.
Since GHG computer models say that CO2 drives our climate, why don't we have CO2 induce climate control systems in our homes? After all, I can control the water vapor and heat output.
She said it didn't work that way.
I said bingo, it will not work. So who is BSing who?
Well said Edward. It's an indictment that the climate warmists/alarmists have never been able to set out a clear concise argument for their case that relies only on the facts, as yours does. There is much greater credibility in the non-CO2 and non-anthropogenic warming scenario (if the surface temperatures can be relied upon, which again, if you look at the facts, is highly doubtful) than in the AGW case.
They must be feverishly working away in the back rooms trying to explain WHY there has been zero warming in the last 10 years even though CO2 continues to increase. 5 years ago, we only had 10 years, right? Time is running out with every snowflake and with every shiver they plot their next step.
Since the atmosphere weights something akin to 44.3 million billion tons, what effect will a few tons of CO2 have which is constantly be absorbed and reprocessed for human benefit?!
It appears that the case of global warming is not really a plot level, but it becomes self-sustaining and endures as a result of a collusion of interests between five players: Policies (who are so good conscience), industry (which are fighting a business CO2), scientists (who are insured sustain labs, climate studied on a very long-term ...), environmentalists (who have a new cause to defend) and journalists (who are assured of a lot of issues catastrophic virtually inexhaustible).
It seems impossible to thwart a movement now too committed. We have seen, on the occasion of reports, investigations and interviews conducted for our book "The Green sham" that the public has an opinion and made almost irreversible on the subject. The media hype has been such that even the arguments of common sense can no longer influence the general opinion. What to do when you know that in France the fight against the greenhouse effect has been declared a "national priority" by both the Assembly and the Senate?
Our feeling is that - apart from a few colleagues "engaged" - most of the journalists were abused in good faith by misinformation remarkably organized on an international scale. Having placed the IPCC under the auspices of the United Nations is a stroke of genius. Our view is that it is now too late - at the media - to correct the course of events. But nothing forbids us to try anyway.
They are so well organized that a website tells GW apostels how to respond to GW sceptics. Have a look at:
Before I really started checking out all the facts about global warming, I felt that anthropogenic global warming is very realy, needing quick action. Now I am convinced beyond doubt that AGW is nothing but sheer nonsense. Those who criticize the so call sceptics, will very soon be looking for a place to hide their face. Ten years have passed and all we can see is colder and more harsh winters.
I hope more Edward Townes will show themselves up to bring the truth before the people.
Well, there was that 22 years from 1976 to 1998 when carbon dioxide level and average earth temperature both increased. This resulted in a scary Hollywood movie and world wide global warming hysteria. Group-think developed in the climate science community where peer-review bias led to de facto censorship and a paucity of published studies that objectively investigate the extent to which human-produced carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. Apparently no one did any real research or they would have discovered that 440 mya the planet plunged into the Andean-Saharan ice age when atmospheric carbon dioxide was over ten times the present level. With a little further real research they would have discovered that, in the current ice age, temperature trends have changed direction at many different temperature levels. This could not occur with positive feedback. The forced conclusion from all this is that non-condensing green house gas has no significant influence on global temperature.
Mr. Townes, Every once in a while I read an article that makes me want to stand up and cheer. Your article is one of those. Excellent work!! Now let me compare your work to some of your detractors:
You provided facts and figures to support your claims. Your detractors provided no facts or figures.
You provided references. They provided nothing.
You provided references to lists of scientists who don't support the AGW theory. The warmers will claim thousands of scientists support the AGW theory, but they never provide the list.
The warmers immediately claim that scientists who don't support AGW are being paid by the oil companies, but they don't present a single shred of evidence to support that claim. At the same time they ignore the fact that Al Gore is the chairman of Generation Investment Co., a company which could profit from "green" government energy policies.
This is one of the best essays I've ever read! I am cheering! And with the recent paper published in Nature stating that there will be no warming for the next 10 years we'll have 20 years of no warming. That's quite a trend.
What always surprises me is how the alarmists seem to think the 1998 warming was human-caused instead of El Nino. It's amazing how many people have herd mentality and resign themselves from independant thought.
Keep up the excellent work. I have faith it will all eventually go away - especially when A1 countries who ratified see their bill from the Kyoto gang.
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