Response to global warming

[Alsatian]

I do not buy into the "Global Warming is Caused by Human Beings" theory. I think it is an unsupported speculation that does not conform with some observed facts. Still . . . I could be wrong.

I was thinking today what might be my response if global warming -- even if not caused by human beings but warming nonetheless -- is a fact. When I was 25 I left my home state of Illinois in 1981 for more prosperous economic pastures in the south, Okalhoma particularly. At the age of 40 I left Oklahoma in 1995 for yet more prosperous economic pastures further south in north Texas. Has anyone spotted a pattern? Being Homo Sapiens-- I assume that word "sapiens" has something to do with knowledge or knowing or thinking -- we are endowed with the faculty of analyzing facts and taking actions to improve our present situation. It is really a remarkable faculty, to be able to form an image in the mind of what is not, to identify a sequence of steps by which we can traverse the distance between what is and what is not, take those steps, perhaps consuming a considerable amount of time doing so,and improve our circumstances! So, the pattern is I have moved my residence to improve my standard of living.

My youngest child is 11 and may graduate college, oh, maybe in another 11 years, maybe 12 years. That might be long enough to get a read on whether things really are warming up or whether it is a transient (I have read something from a Russian scientist who argues this position . . . but I cannot evaluate the veracity now of that position). So, if things are warming up, I plan to move to parts further north, particularly where there is abundant water, for example aquifier based water. One of the things the global warming/climate change Cassandras have begun to fuss about is the likelyhood that fresh water will be in short supply in the future. I live in Texas now and I'm not keen on living with weather any hotter than it already is.

Comments? Thoughts? Will Al Gore move north or just continue to live at his compound and fume about the problem?

[Big Duane]

since the last ice age this planet has warmed, with less and less ice being around I think

[Lanse couche couche]

I think that Al is gonna be busy trying to install solar panels in all his mansions since he has been busted on his energy consumption.

[Champlain Islander]

I believe we are in a warming trend and feel that the hands of man play a part in it. Increasing sulfur, CO2 and particulate emissions are making their way into our air at an alarming rate. Couple that with deforestation, especially in South America and the earth's cleansing process is impacted. I don't completely agree with the Gore crowd but do feel they are closer to the truth than thenaysayer crowd. I feel the dwindling amounts of clean, fresh water will become the first major result of global warming. Without abundant water crops won"™t grow and people will not have enough to sustain themselves. Rivers and lakes in certain areas are drying up. If it continues it will become critical.

[DougMD]

What if we have consecutive cooling years to follow last year's cooling? Seems to me we can't have a full year of global cooling to begin with if man's exponentially increasing C02 emissions are warming the earth.

[MountainHunter]

There are a lot of things that change theproportion of gasses, including CO2, in the atmosphere. Including burning though 200 million years of sequestered hydrocarbons in 200 years, massive clearcutting of trees on a global scale,volcanoes, and other natural and man-made processes.

The vast, vast majority of people who study the earth's climate say man-made processes are a significant and persistent factor in the warming trend we're seeing over the past few decades. Even the most right-wing paid-for climatologists agree we're in a warming trend because the data are just too hard to deny. For instance: All 10 of the warmest years on record (since the mid-1800's) have occurred in the past 12 or 13 years.

Does this mean the end of human life as we know it on earth? Probably not, at least in my lifetime. Is it something to consider? I think so.

I"™m going to repeat my call for anyone to provide me with the name of a climatologist (not a geologist, meteorologist (who don"™t even have to have a bachelors degree to be called a meteorologist), biologist, etc.) who claims that human activity is not a significant factor in global warming and who they know is not being funded by the fossil fuel or forestry products industries. I know of one: Dr. Gray, who used to oversee the prediction of the number and seriousness of Atlantic hurricanes (and who has been WAY off the past couple of years). By the way: Dr. Gray also does not believe in using computer modeling to predict hurricanes or anything else about the climate. He believes in only using observations and experience, with no computer modeling. That"™s why he got his funding cut and why he has a chip on his shoulder (and, probably why his hurricane predictions have been so far off the past couple of years).

And, please, do all of us a favor and check any names you provide to make sure they are (1) climatologists and (2) are not funded by the fossil fuel or forestry products industries.

By the way, as a point of reference, no one on this board has been able to meet this challenge when I have issued it before.

[DougMD]

I can see why many climatologists won't come out against it:

"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."

But even with the threat to climatologists of being blackballed for coming out against the theory of manmade global warming, I was still able to quickly google a few:

Climatologists Reject Media Claims of Global Warming Consensus
Written By: Alan Caruba
Published In: Environment & Climate News
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
Publisher: The Heartland Institute









[hr]








Leading climatologists spent the month of June fighting false proclamations from non-scientists claiming scientists have reached agreement that catastrophic global warming is occurring.

Alarmists Claim Debate Over
On June 1, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) claimed "the debate is over" and global warming alarmists' predictions had carried the day.
The Natural Resources Defense Council on June 9 declared, "The world's leading scientists now agree that global warming is real and is happening right now. According to their forecasts, extreme changes in climate could produce a future in which erratic and chaotic weather, melting ice caps and rising sea levels usher in an era of drought, crop failure, famine, flood and mass extinctions."
On June 13, USA Today declared, "The debate's over: Globe is Warming." In support of its claim, the newspaper cited the positions of some left-leaning religious groups, some corporations who will reap a financial windfall from a switch to alternative fuel sources, and some politicians.

Scientists Disagree
While each of the above claims from non-scientists received significant media coverage, leading climatologists spent the month of June rebutting such proclamations.
Atmospheric physicist S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and former director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, sent a letter to the editor of USA Today directly refuting its claim. "Your editorial ... claim the global warming debate is over. Not so," wrote Singer.
Singer wrote, "Sea level will continue to rise by only seven inches per century as it has for thousands of years no matter what we do or what the EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] says. And temperatures in the next 100 years will likely rise by less than one degree F--not exactly a catastrophe."
Added Singer in a subsequent letter to the Canadian media, "Thousands of scientists from many countries now fully understand that Kyoto and other efforts to control human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are ineffective and entirely unfounded scientifically.
"Even if you ignore the enormous cost of Kyoto (estimated recently by Prof. George Taylor of Oregon State University--see http://www.sitewave.net/news/s49p628.htm--at one trillion U.S. dollars a year for full implementation in OECD countries), climate science research is rapidly moving AWAY from the hypothesis that the human release of greenhouse gases, specifically CO2, is in any way significantly contributing to global climate change."

Sun Called Primary Cause
"If we just look at the historical data, there is a scientific consensus that the global mean temperature has risen modestly during the twentieth century," said Myron Ebell, director of global warming and environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "The impacts have been small and probably beneficial in aggregate. This historical data puts the onus of demonstration on those who think this gradual warming trend will accelerate and lead to dire consequences."
The controlling driver of global temperature fluctuations, according to Dr. Benny Peiser of England's John Moore's University, is solar ray activity. "Six eminent researchers from the Russian Academy of Science and the Israel Space Agency have just published a startling paper in one of the world's leading space science journals. The team of solar physicists claims to have come up with compelling evidence that changes in cosmic ray intensity and variations in solar activity have been driving much of the Earth's climate," Peiser was quoted as saying in the May 17 National Post.
Moreover, reports Peiser, Jan Veizer, one of Canada's top earth scientists, published a comprehensive review of recent findings and concluded, "empirical observations on all time scales point to celestial phenomena as the principal driver of climate, with greenhouse gases acting only as potential amplifiers."
Added Peiser, "In fact, the explicit and implicit rejection of the 'consensus' is not restricted to individual scientists. It also includes distinguished scientific organizations such as the Russian Academy of Science and the U.S. Association of State Climatologists, both of which are highly skeptical of the whole idea."

False Consensus Was Predicted
Indeed, back in November 2004, German climatologist Hans von Storch, director of the GKSS Institute for Coastal Research (IfK) in Geesthacht, Germany, foresaw that claims of alarmist consensus would be made by non-scientists and even some scientists.
Von Storch, who has yet to side with either alarmists or skeptics, warned, "We need to respond openly to the agenda-driven advocates, not only skeptics but also alarmists, who misuse their standing as scientists to pursue their private value-driven agendas."

Media Echo Scariest Claims
Noting the propensity of large media organizations to echo the alarmists' claims, von Storch wrote, "Judgments of solid scientific findings are often not made with respect to their immanent quality but on the basis of their alleged or real potential as a weapon by 'skeptics' in a struggle for dominance in public and policy discourse."
Ebell agrees: "If the debate is over, why do they exaggerate so much? It seems that once some scientist makes any sort of speculation about the extent or impact of future warming that sounds even slightly scary, then we never hear the end of it, no matter how many times subsequent research refutes it.
"After reading hundreds of scientific articles and consulting widely on what they mean and how they fit together, I am convinced that if there is a consensus, it is not alarmist," said Ebell.







[hr]








Alan Caruba (acaruba@aol.com) is founder of the weekly publication Warning Signs and founder of the National Anxiety Center.


Here's another:

Climatologist Rejects 'Global Warming' as Cause for Island Evacuation
By Marc Morano
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 07, 2005

Montreal (CNSNews.com) - A climatologist has dismissed a Reuters news report claiming that residents of the Pacific Island of Tegua in Vanuatu had to move to escape "global warming."

The article, published Tuesday, cited United Nations officials' claims that the effects of "global warming" caused rising sea levels and more storms, forcing islanders to flee inland. The article's publication coincided with the 11th annual U.N. Climate Change Conference in Montreal.

"That is a shame, quite frankly, that this issue is being played like this at the [U.N.] climate change conference. It demeans the issue when it's so easy to counter a strident assertion with facts," said Patrick J. Michaels, the author of several books on climate change, including a new one that will be released next week entitled "Shattered Consensus: The True State of Global Warming."

Michaels, who believes claims of catastrophic human-caused "global warming" are scientifically unfounded, is an environmental sciences professor at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

"It would seem that [the Reuters article] about the combination of sea level rise and increased storminess causing people to evacuate (to the island's interior) isn't based upon much real data," Michaels told Cybercast News Service on Tuesday.

The Dec. 6 Reuters article by environmental correspondent Alister Doyle claimed that about 100 residents in the Lateu settlement on Tegua island in Vanuatu were forced to move inland because of cyclone-enhanced "king tides" that caused flooding and made the island uninhabitable.

The Reuters article included a statement from the U.N.'s Environment Program claiming that the residents of Vanuatu had "become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harm's way as a result of climate change." However, the report did not feature any scientists or experts questioning the conclusion that human-caused "global warming" was to blame for the residents' coastal retreat.

Michaels said the scientific data does not back up the claims in the Reuters article about the evacuation of Vanuatu being linked to the U.N.'s projections of melting icecaps and rising sea levels.

"The island in question has experienced no net sea level rise in the last half century, according to the combined satellite and submarine data," Michaels said. "In fact, areas to the west such as [the island of] Tuvalu show substantial declines in sea level over that period," he added.

Michaels added that "the United Nations intergovernmental panel notes a decline in the frequency of tropical storms and hurricanes in the South Pacific in recent decades.

"With sea level not showing a rise and the decline in the frequency of tropical cyclones, it's very hard to make the strident statements that were made in the [Reuters article,]" he added.

The fact that Reuters published the article without quoting experts who question the science behind the "global warming" claim did not surprise Michaels.

"Reuters has generally been very radical on 'global warming.' This is nothing new for them," he said, noting that in much of the media, "the appropriate level of journalistic cynicism does not apply to 'global warming.'"

Cybercast News Service previously reported on a December 2004 article, in which the Reuters reporter Doyle linked the tsunami that devastated parts of Asia to "global warming."

"A creeping rise in sea levels tied to global warming, pollution and damage to coral reefs may make coastlines even more vulnerable to disasters like tsunamis or storms in [the] future," wrote Doyle in last year's article. He attributed the opening paragraph of the story to "experts." However, Doyle's story did not contain any quotes directly mentioning the theory of "global warming."

Michaels challenged the accuracy of computer-generated models that project an alarming rise in sea levels to the melting of icecaps.

"There is a lot of recent research showing that Antarctica has been gaining ice, in other words is contributing negatively to sea level rise. Research published just two months ago in Science Magazine shows that Greenland is still gaining ice at two inches per year, average, over the island," Michaels said.

"I expect that the estimates of sea level rise are going to have to be revised downward. That's a prediction that you just heard from me based upon reality. Computer models eventually have to come in line with reality," he added.

More than 8,000 government leaders, environmentalists and scientists are attending the U.N. conference to discuss what steps to take to further limit greenhouse gases beyond the Kyoto Protocol's provisions. Organizers are calling the conference, which runs until Dec. 9, the largest meeting since the Kyoto Climate Conference in 1997.

There are a couple important facts about our planet that more people should recognize.

#1. Our Planet is not a static body. It is ALWAYS drifting in one direction or another. We've analyzed ice cores and tree rings, and compared them to current trends enough times to have firmly established that the planet is always heading in a heating or cooling direction. It never just stays the same for a couple thousand years.

#2. Our Planet works on the geologic timescale, not the human timescale. To a human, 10 years is a long time, in Geology, 10 years is nothing, the planet has been around for billions of years (or a few thousand if your a fundie), and a human's lifespan is hardly a blip in comparison. As such trends are measured on a much larger scale than your average Joe 6 pack is used to thinking in.

#3. Climate and Weatherare two different things. Day to day weather events do no a climate make. General climate trends are instead the grand aggregate of yearsand decades of data. Whether its a record high or low on any given day, week, month or year means little in the grand scheme.Thedirection the climate is heading in is the grand aggregate of decades of weather data.Highs and lows mean nothing, just another data point among many.


j

[Fieldmouse]

I"™m going to repeat my call for anyone to provide me with the name of a climatologist (not a geologist, meteorologist (who don"™t even have to have a bachelors degree to be called a meteorologist), biologist, etc.) who claims that human activity is not a significant factor in global warming and who they know is not being funded by the fossil fuel or forestry products industries. I know of one: Dr. Gray, who used to oversee the prediction of the number and seriousness of Atlantic hurricanes (and who has been WAY off the past couple of years). By the way: Dr. Gray also does not believe in using computer modeling to predict hurricanes or anything else about the climate. He believes in only using observations and experience, with no computer modeling. That"™s why he got his funding cut and why he has a chip on his shoulder (and, probably why his hurricane predictions have been so far off the past couple of years).

Dr Roy Spencer, however, he doesn't take a stand one way or the other as to if humans are impacting the climate. He just poinst out all the models are flawed because they can't take into account the dynamics of water vapor the number green house gas.

[Champlain Islander]

Nature all by itself will change as the planet tips. Climate change is constantly ongoing and has since the planet was formed. The world's population has experienced a dramatic increase with a resulting draw on natural resources. The byproduct of a populated planet has to have some effect on the environment due to waste associated with industrialization. Look at the smog shrouded sky line of New York today and if possible try to imagine what it looked like in 1492 when the first Europeans set foot at Plymouth Rock and headed south. The earth's atmosphere is huge but man's presence has to have some effect. As populations grow the carrying capacity will be exceeded. To think we aren"™t negatively impacting our planet is putting ones head in the sand.