A balanced view does not reflect the scientific consensus on climate change. Credit: iStockphoto
MELBOURNE: Airing the views of climate change sceptics in the media may only be serving to keep the global warming controversy boiling, argue scientists.
Leading climate change experts have warned the World Conference of Science Journalists in Melbourne, Australia, that a balanced view does not always reflect the consensus of the research community.
Kevin Hennessy, a lead scientist with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said yesterday that media attention on “the view of a handful of climate change sceptics” amplifies their opinions and “implies that there is little agreement about the basic facts of global warming”.
Hennessy is also with the marine and atmospheric division of Australian government research body, CSIRO.
Speaking in a session about climate change reporting, he said editors and journalists have a duty to ensure that facts are presented in context. Balanced reporting, he said, “perpetuates the public’s perception that scientists are in disarray, which is misleading in the case of climate change”.
Geoff Love, secretary of the IPCC and former deputy director of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, said that IPCC assessment reports from 1990 through to this year are strong evidence of “the coming together of the scientific community.”
Emphasis on the sceptic view does not help public understanding of climate change, said Love.
Media coverage has not always reflected the consensus of the majority of the scientific community, said Ian Lowe, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation a non-profit environment group. “That only makes the public and political discussion more difficult,” he said.
The problem is compounded by a lack of reporting on climate change, according to Chris Mooney, a U.S.-based science journalist attending the conference. Although the 2006 hurricane season attracted a lot of media attention, Mooney presented statistics from the United States showing that climate change has never been a priority in the media.
The situation is similar in Africa, said Ochieng’ Ogodoa a Kenyan correspondent for London, U.K.-based news web site SciDev.Net. Articles about deaths caused by floods or other natural disasters, and political scandals related to climate change tend to get precedence, he said.
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Thank goodness we have all these politically correct a**&#@s making sure we only read what they want us to read. Wouldn’t want the truth exposed.
When the global warming police start complaining about balanced coverage, or looking at the problem from several viewpoints other than their own, this implies something very important that they would wish to hide. If straight science, not ideology, proves a point, then letting alternate viewpoints exist, to be proved wrong easily and scientifically, only causes the original point to become stronger. But when a group tries to limit debate, the casual observer can see easily that that group does not want the full story made public. The obvious implication is that the group’s point of view is not provable by science but only by ideology, and members of the group are aware of this unpleasant fact.
Remember when all the hot-shot climate scientists were reporting another Ice Age? Global Warming comes down to two things: 1) making sure climate scientists have a steady flow of research grants and 2) Making political hay for Al Gore and his cronies. I’ll buy Global Warming when Al Gore buys an electric car.
Right on! Journalists have to start being more balanced in their coverage. Every balanced story on evolution should have a quote from intelligent design folk, and stories on HIV mention that a clique of scientists deny it causes AIDS. What about the Big Bang? A massive conspiracy of tens of thousands of scientists suppressing the real and valid objections of a number of talented pension-age cosmologists. And why is hat that every time a shuttle is reported to have orbited the Earth, is not the Flat Earth Society asked to comment?
Journalism too readily reflects peer-review science of the highest calibre, while a handful of superannuated objectors get only 50% of air time. How is that fair, I ask you?
When he does buy an electric car, if he gets any change perhaps he can buy a clue or two for the climate change sceptics. From what I see they don’t seem to have one to share between them.
Global warming actually comes down to two different things: 1) Basic laws of physics (thermodynamics etc) 2) A wealth of evidence and historical precedent.
Why is it so easy for some to believe in the implausible yet so hard to accept rational argument?
That picture leaves me parched! I’m dying of thirst!
So, what can we do?
We’ve got too much heat from the sun causing the polar ice caps to melt and raise the level of the oceans.
Meanwhile there are places that have dried up (see picture).
So, why don’t we come up with a solar powered distilling plant and pump the effluent to this poor tree?
I’m just a concept/big-picture guy; somebody else will need to work up the design.
If you make money on this you can send a check to Denny G!
“Rational argument”??? Mt. Pinatubo in the Phillipines put more crap in the atmosphere (toxics, greenhouse, particulates, the whole schmeer) in a single eruption (1991) than mankind has in the last 250 years…but the Earth is dying because the rich won’t stop driving those nasty SUV’s. Rational??? Pardon my guffaw!
Seems these IPCC guys are saying:
-They are the only ones authorized to decide if there’s a problem
-They have decided there is a problem
-The rest of us should shut up and get used to it
My answer to these worthy scientists is: Sorry guys. The reality is a bit different…
-You have not been anointed as the only experts
-We, the people, have not yet decided if there’s a problem
-We’re not going to transform our lives at your direction
You guys will love this!
So, if you some day get cancer shall we ignore the doctor’s diagnosis and wait for ‘we, the people’ to decide if you have it or not, and then let ‘we, the people’ decide on the best way to deal with it?
The IPCC (and others in this field) are not so much authorised as qualified i.e. they have spent many years learning about climate and studying climate. Scientists and scientific bodies cannot force anything on anyone, all they can do is share their findings and recommendations.
Your idea of letting the people decide is almost comical – yet it is also what is happening. Right now, ‘we, the people’ are deciding through government (yes, we vote them in) and our own inaction.
But this is not Australian Idol, we don’t cast our vote to decide if it is happening or not.
When in the US almost half the population believes the earth was created in 6 days about 4,500 years ago, I don’t have too much faith in the collective wisdom of ‘we, the people’.
I don’t think that climate change is our only problem, nor necessarily our biggest problem.
To quote his website “Michael Crichton is a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author of Jurassic Park and the creator of ER.”
Enough said really.
Hey, I know, let’s ask the cast and crew of Star Trek to unify gravity, the weak and strong nuclear forces and the electromagnetic force!!
Seems these Hollywood types really have the answers!
I think Mt Pinatubo released around 45 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide and about 20 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide in the 1991 eruption.
We’re currently releasing between 6000 and 7000 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxode into the atmosphere each year.
Not sure where you’re getting your figures from, but seems like someone misplaced a decimal point (or several!) somewhere.
Take a look at some standard graphs of carbon dioxide emissions over the last 250 years – there is no massive spike in 1991.
Good idea…follow the examples set by Hitler and Stalin: silence the critics at all cost! What is this world coming to that only one theory is allowed to exist? These so-called scientists are as bad as religious zealots who demand death to the unbelievers.
The know they can’t stand up to the scrutiny of public examination, so they have to shut the other side down. Such a typical resposnse from the left wingers that follow this non-sense.
Telling scientists that they can’t stand up to arguments from the other side is just pure insanity. that’s what science is all about!!!!
And he also let on to a key point out there. “Consensus” is not the same as scientific fact. Consensus is simply an agreement among a group of people. It’s certainly not PROOF! Although they want to make you think they have it all wrapped up.
Like that moron OwlGore said, “We don’t need any more debate on this subject, because it’s been decided!” Who the hell decided??? If they decided, why are they trying to shut down debate on the subject!
Bunch of lying leftists.
Another storm forming on Jupiter.
Ice caps on Mars melting. (No aliens there I suppose, unlike what most Americans believed in the 1930s vis a vis “War of the Worlds”).
So what is the explanation? The Sun is increasing its energy output.
That’s all.
And that volcano that erupted in the Philippines, in one day it released more of these so called dangerous gasses into the atmosphere than every car and factory in human history combined. I pity Al Gore.
Be it Aids, South Africa, global warming, guns, abortion, (a baby has a heartbeat and fingerprints in under two months!) whatever the liberal crusade of the hour is, you know the transnational elite and their media whores will be spouting lies for their own benefit.
You are a credit to your public education.
“Michael Crichton is a writer and filmmaker, best known as the author ofJurassicPark and the creator of “ER.” Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. He has been a visiting instructor at Cambridge University and MIT. Crichton’s 2004 bestseller, State of Fear, challenged extreme anthropogenic warming scenarios.”
http://www.intelligencesquaredus.org/Event.aspx?Event=12
Everything the man said is factual…and this is the best you can do? Falsely attack his credentials? Al Gore is a politician, and he’s the self-annointed guru of the global warming propaganda machine. Nothing more to say…those who will not see will not see…..
If the true science of climate change was as one sided and well defined as those that wish to stifle discussion claim then there would be no need for them to be concerned—the facts would prove their point.
The fact of the matter is that climate change is ongoing and very complicated. There is nothing unique about the current changes. The IPCC people only wish to view one perspective of this issue.
Sad that so-called “science” would be so unscientific, but it has happened before and will happen again! Remember if you wish to stifle discussion you may be on the other side of the issue the next time someone else tries to end discussion “for our own good”.
Climate Seer
Take an hour to help learn the facts about the science… the skeptics are right, the ‘consensus’ is wrong… when the science is examined this conclusion is not arguable. That we are asked to stop being skeptics is hilarious.
Check this out, its free and it answers all the alarmists arguments irrefutably… enjoy,
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2332531355859226455&q=the+great+global+warming&hl=en
When we were told that cow flatulence increased global warming.They lost me
Sharing this with others…..the voice of sanity is refreshing….
There was a time that a large sector of the scientific community believed
the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around the Earth. They ostracized dissenting opinion just as they are doing now. The global warming crowd is a political movement.Science is fact,not concensus.
just like those idiots Galileo and Copernicus. Defying the majority of scientists who knew the planets revolved around the Earth!
Could someone please tell me why these global warming “scientists” NEVER talk about heating degree-days? Well, they don’t know what they are! Why is this subject important? Well please hear this very educated fellow out:
I am a physics educator whose chief hobby is proto-heating engineering. Basically, I’m an expert on 19th century type hot water and steam heating systems. If you own an old house with a steam heating system that’s driving you crazy, I’m a fellow you’d want to consult with about tuning it up so it won’t knock and bang and also to radically reduce your heating costs. Unfortunately, no major American university has offered any classes in this technology in the last 40 years, so people of my education are pretty damn hard to find, considering that just about every building in any American city built between 1850 and 1950 features such systems.
This sort of engineering was one of the first areas of thermal engineering developed way back in the early 1800′s. Steam engines powered by steam boilers first hit the scene in the late 1700′s; later by 1850 this technology was applied to the heating of buildings. Around 1869 John H. Mills patented numerous ideas that essentially surpassed building heating technology above that level perfected by Imperial Rome. Around the late 1870′s to early 1880′s hot water heating was developed and the Mills system was adapted to work on the circulation of hot water by the thermo-syphon system. This same system is STILL used by an estimated 700,000,000 Chinese to heat their buildings, so it certainly isn’t obsolete.
One of the things you learn about in my area is how one can estimate fuel consumption using a non-metered fuel; i.e., coal. Since so many cities by the end of the 19th century adopted district steam heating and STILL use the same systems today, this was an item of critical importance. The delivery of coal was a very time consuming pastime considering the transportation technology of the time. Coal deliveries had to be planned very carefully, for if large amounts of coal had to be reordered in the depths of winter to re-supply the pile, a system operator might realize their running out of coal and an entire city freezing. A system had to be devised to plan ahead for fuel deliveries in the event more fuel was being used than was considered “normal”
The concept of the Heating-Degree Day was formulated to solve this problem. Every engineering manual even today has Heating-Degree Day Charts for just about EVERY American city. These charts aided a heating engineer in determining the amount of fuel consumed during an AVERAGE winter.
The various government weather offices actually calculate the Heating-Degree Days on a daily and monthly basis, and some of these stations have such records going back to the 1830′s. As a result, a systems operating engineer could compare how their daily fuel consumption compared to the AVERAGES based on the AVERAGE Heating-Degree Day statistics provided by the weather offices.
For example, if there were an average of 400 heating-degree days for the month of December in the City of B.F.E., Maine, and your heating system supposedly used 1000 tons of coal based on that average for the month of December, you would keep a running tally of what the current degree-days were. Let’s say there were 600 heating-degree days for the current December. You now would know that you really burned 1500 tons of coal, and that you would immediately need to order an extra 500 tons of coal to resupply the coal that you were supposed to burn later that winter. Simple enough.
Now it’s time to make my point. I have seen so-called global warming charts and graphs that claim our average temperatures have increased by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the year 1900. This would thus result in 2 less degree-days per day, on average, over the span of the heating season, which typically runs about 180 days (you would have to run your furnace at least once a day during that time period). In other words, due to global warming, it should be easier and cheaper to heat a building, and on average there would be 360 fewer heating-degree days to contend with. There is a problem, however. THE CURRENT ENGINEERING HEATING-DEGREE DAY CHARTS ARE ESSENTIALLY NO DIFFERENT THAN THE ONES PRINTED IN BOOKS AROUND CIRCA A.D. 1900; they show NO decrease at all. ASHVAE (The American Society of Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning Engineers) has not made ANY announcements about updating these charts due to the supposed effects of global warming)In other words, global warming is non-existent. Nada!
Now, I know that this current crop of climate physicist “experts” are supposedly well educated, but how come NONE ever talks about this subject? Of course, as I stated earlier, these concepts haven’t been taught at any major American college in at least 40 years!
Would someone care to discuss how actual REAL data collected during 100 years of temperature measurements does not agree with their THEORETICAL computer-generated models?
Would someone please tell me why various Governments are pouring over $200 Billion per year into this ficticious “science” when all one has to do is look at old records? If this is what they call “research” nowadays then I believe the public really needs to start asking questions as to what real benefit some of these colleges and universities are serving, other than to fill their own pockets and to act as pimps for their government benefactors who no doubt would love some sort of justification to levy more taxes upon us and control us even more. This is nothing more than rank, vile Stalinist corruption.
Thanks! This needs to be read by every one who is not blinded by the PC junk science funded by government grants.
Cliff
Kevin Hennessy, as a lead scientist on the IPCC has committed a grave error.
According to the scientific method of inquiry, a 99% probability is still a 100% uncertainty, something wholly ignored by the latest report. On a more practical level, none of the computer climate models his group deals with have accurately predicted anything — remember the famous hocket stick graph which has now magically disappeared after being ripped to shreds by two amateurs?
Mary McLemore
Alabama, USA
half of the U. S. Population believe the Earth was created about 45000 years ago? Where might I ask did you come up with this bit of moronic nonsense? Has global cooling frozen your brain? Oh, wait, that was last year. This year the wacko left has a new religion. Global warming. Has global warming cooked your brain?
I am an Agnostic and have no axe to grind regarding religion. Only with ignorance.
“a 99% probability is still a 100% uncertainty”
On that basis, we know nothing for certain: not the speed of light, the fact that objects fall to earth at a predictable velocity, or that the sun is the centre of our solar system.
Heck we can prove with only a 99% probability that you and I exist and that elves don’t.
What we CAN say with 100% certainty is that your argument is feeble and you, quite clearly, are not a mental giant.
Polls by Newsweek suggest around 45% of people in the United States agreed with the statement that, “God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.”
Yes, it’s moronic, but it isn’t nonsense – quite scary actually. As is the level of ignorance surrounding climate change data.
What a wonderful thought that the world has as its major super power and biggest polluter a religious fundamentalist state. What hope is there for rational argument?
Methane is given off in large quantities by many biological processes.
Rice production produces a lot of methane, and yes, cattle do too. Most methane from cattle is actually released from their mouth rather than as flatulence. It’s a by product of their digestion process, and with as many cattle as there are in the world today, the production of methane from this source is significant.
Methane as a greenhouse gas is around 20 times as bad as carbon dioxide and is released by agriculture (mainly rice, cattle and sheep), from landfill waste, mining, the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) as well as from natural wetlands.
What’s so hard to comprehend?
Yeah, because we all know that the junk science is just going to say what the government wants it to say so that they’ll receive more funding!
Oh wait, most of these studies are coming out saying that climate change is a threat, while the government has been a constant climate change sceptic.
So, who instead should fund scientific study? The energy companies? Will that provide balance and objectivity? Do they have enough money left after bank rolling the current president?
That really is a blistering come back, oh it hurts so bad – if only it were true.
Is that really the best defence of your position you have?
If you dont like people thinking for them selves get a plane ticket to a COMMUNIST DUMP.
Nice one Cleetus. Now, back in your trailer. Hurry! The reds are comin’ to getchya!
You don’t like me thinking for myself – unless I agree with you. There’s some real twisted logic there.
Man, there are some dumb people making deeply stupid comments here. If they so dislike science and what its best men and women can produce, why do they bother coming to a science magazine site at all?
It must be because their lives are so empty and pointless, their hatred of science is the only thing that keeps them going. Or hatred of global warming. Or leftists. Apparently, all of them are connected. Probably run by a secret United Nations cabal that drinks the blood of white virgins and has been manufacturing evidence of climate change for a century.
Being stuck in a room with idiots like these for all of eternity is as close to Hell as I can imagine. In fact, I think it would be a fate worse than Hell. Maybe they’re in training to serve as footmen in the antechamber to Extreme Hell.
Probably run by a secret United Nations cabal that drinks the blood of white virgins and has been manufacturing evidence of climate change for a century.
It IS a conspiracy all this climate change, leftist, white virgin blood stuff – didn’t you read between the lines in the da Vinci code? It’s all there man!!!
It’s so easy to spot a sheeple…one who never uses their own brain, and only follows wherever their human gurus lead, even over a cliff….when you can’t refute the message, you attack the messenger(s), and you did a great job of it. You have shone the spotlight on your own ignorance brilliantly. Too much factual anti-global warming info here for your atrophic brain to handle, so we are treated to the usual personal attacks with no facts, cuz’ you have none!
Climate always changes – always has, always will.
Some people will always try to increase the power of government – always have, always will.
Trustifarians, idiot celebrities, collectivists, entrenched bureaucrats – count on these people to support eugenics, communism, fascism, over population, global cooling, global warming, or any other trend that comes along to “scientifically” justify reducing the freedom of the unwashed masses.
I would take these climate change ‘scientists’ a lot more seriously if they stuck to the science and left the policy advocacy to others.
The Stalinists are taking over the Global Screaming Debate, kicking out even the Trotskyites.
In the schools they are brainwashing little kids with their scarey stories, just like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and every other totalitarian dictator did with Jews and Capitalists/Imperialists.
Don’t turn around
the Kommissar’s in town
It seems that the general consensus of sceptics on here is that climate change, government control, loss of freedom and the spread of communism are all linked in some way.
I find this incredibly bizarre and more than a little bit worrying.
Put your guns down, there is no one out to get you. Global warming wasn’t invented to take away your freedom. There is no conspiracy, so just calm down.
Sheesh, I don’t know that climate change is our biggest worry. All these paranoid conspiracy theorists seem to be a bigger concern. I don’t even want to contemplate that they probably also believe that every man woman and child should be armed – ’cause it’s their right, yeehaw!
Keep your head in the sand if you like, but the attempt to quash debate on the subject of climate is not a “grass-roots” phenomenon. It is indeed a top-down political machination. Regardless of its source, Brussels, the Kremlin, Washington, New York, etc., there is a concerted effort to pervert science into an agenda-driven political device. The day that debate is over is the day science truly dies.
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
P.S. Is everyone afraid to take responsibility for their opinions, refusing to sign their posts?
Newsweek! Now there’s a source for you. Good grief!
I have lived in the United States all my life and the idea that half the population of the United States believes that the world is 4500 years old or even 10,000 years old is ludicrous.
As for your knee jerk anti Americanism? I say the same to you that I said to my misguided British and European friends in the 60′s. Ho hum, Booorrring…..
So all those experts advocating limits on what you can drive, where you can live, mandating public transportation, and driving to increase taxes on gasoline, heating fuels, & air travel, have no interest in controling your life and lowering your standard of living. Here in Minnesota, the DEMS, (socialists) are advocating a $1500.00 per family per year increase in taxes and fees to ‘save the planet’.
Stifling debate is not the way to arrive at the truth. Scientists who are genuinelt interested in the Science of alleged global warming should welcome open debate because as was earlier stated, it encourages participation in the discussion furthering our knowledge of the topic.
Unfortunately too many scientists have become politically motivated and not objective enough and now some even want to tell you what you can be told. I am an engineer, not a scientist but it seems to me that there is alot more to this than just Americans burning too much fossil fuel and putting too much CO2 in the atmosphere.
Ice ages have come and gone and will come again, warming periods have all happened before and they will happen again. The sun “pulsates” on a long term cycle and will increase and decrease it’s energy output over time affecting the temperature here on earth. Considering the only reason the earth isn’t a frozen block of ice is because of the sun, I’d say that that is the primary source of our heat problem.
Another thought to ponder, if you have been following the whole debate about global warming, the leading gas is not CO2 but H2O!! Moisture in the air traps and holds heat, condensed moisture in the air forms clouds that reflect heat. Everyone of us has experienced both of these phenomena so we know what I’ve just said is true. CO2 traps so little infrared radiation and in such a narrow band width that to say it or even methane are the real dangers is truly remarkable. I don’t know the composition of the atmosphere, but the amount of each of those gases is so minute relative to H2O as to make them insignificant.
Incidentally, the amonut of CO2 produced by humans is only +/- 2-4% of the total produced by the planets other mechanisms. even if we produced ZERO it wouldn’t make the slightest difference.
Bottomline is this, Seek the truth, and you will find it.
Matthew Epp P.E.
Wyoming, USA
Truth is an illusion. The matrix is the reality.
OK, so you want the freedom to be able to go and use the town water supply as your toilet if you want, build a house anywhere you want, drive as fast as you want and anywhere you want, even shoot anyone you want, all because you think anything less is eroding your freedom? That may be fine for you, but what about the rights and freedoms of every other citizen?
Taxes are not about controlling your life, it’s about payment for services used. Did you build those roads and maintain them? Did you treat that effluent? Did you pump that water to your house? Do you provide all those countless ancillary services that allow you to live your day to day life?
Limits are not to control you, they are an attempt to provide a balance in society so that freedom and rights are equal for everyone.
Sure, they aren’t perfect and a lot of times governments get it wrong, but I’d rather see some limits imposed than the general chaos and mayhem that absolute freedom with no social responsibility would bring.
“I don’t know the composition of the atmosphere”
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7a.html
You are right about water vapour, and when the earth heats up (for whatever reason), water vapour will increase due to increased evaporation rates, which will cause more warming – it’s a positive feedback system. Yes, cloud formation will most likely change and this may lead to more reflection of solar radiation, but whether that balances out, over compensates or under compensates for the water vapours heat trapping ability is for someone with more knowledge than me to work out and answer (gasp! maybe even a scientist!).
Natural, organic carbon dioxide production (allowing for natural fluctuations over time) is negated by carbon capture and storage in sinks like forests and oceans primarily through photosynthesis by plants and phytoplankton which convert it to oxygen and carbohydrates – hence why they call it the carbon cycle.
World wide volcanic activity produces around 1% of the carbon dioxide that humans do. This amount is largely negated by the process of silicate weathering, so even these is basically a neutral cycle.
Incidentally, the amonut of CO2 produced by humans is only +/- 2-4% of the total produced by the planets other mechanisms.
+/-??? How can we produce -2% of the natural CO2 production levels? Are we eating the stuff and taking it out of the atmosphere? You only need one person to light a match and that statement is wrong.
Considering that, if anything, the natural carbon cycle has actually been slightly lowering CO2 levels in the atmosphere over the last 10′s to 100′s of million years, where then is all this extra C02 coming from?
I know of a lazy 6000-7000 million tonnes a year that was never part of the natural cycle that has been pumped up there last year. And for 150 years or so before that there’s been plenty too (slightly less as you go back each year of course).
Bottomline is this, get your facts at least partly right, and you will know what the truth might look like when you go to find it.
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html
This one suggests that at least 30% take the Bible literally…..that includes the creation story.
Have you got any sort of figures to refute it?
For the record, I have some wonderful US friends. I have nothing against citizens of the US generally. I do have a dislike for close-minded idiots whatever their nationality.
The imaginary positive feedback you suggest is unproven. In fact it is very unlikely. If it existed we probably wouldn’t be here. The northern hemisphere, where most of the habitable landmass is, undergoes a warming of about 15K every year, and the planet does not self destruct. Periods in the past have been warmer, and the biosphere survived. It is the inevitabe cooling in 10 or 20 years that we should be concerned about and be preparing for.
You should get your facts straight. CO2 has never been demonstrated to drive climate. In the past, it has been a consequence of temperature rise, not a cause, following increases in temperature by an average of 800 years. And don’t forget there hasn’t been any warming to speak of for 8 years even as CO2 continues to rise. Alarm over CO2 is a dog that just won’t hunt. You might as well try to outlaw water, it makes about as much sense. This planet is not a fragile thing. Negative feedbacks dominate or life could not exist. All life evolved during times of higher CO2. It is actually very likely that the Earth has been starved for the essential trace gas for a long time. RELEASE THE CARBON FOR A GREENER EARTH!!!
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
Absolutely! Giving equal weight to both sides of the issue is misleading if the scientific community is heavily skewed to one side.
It doesn’t matter if there is a consensus, which there isn’t. Science doesn’t work by popular vote. That kind of “science” led to Bruno’s burning and Galileo’s imprisonment because they dared to go against the consensus that the sun revolved around the earth. You would stifle valid skepticism and contrary evidence because some bureaucrats masquerading as scientists have declared the impending doom of the world due to a trace gas, a gas that is not a pollutant but is essential to life!
Yes, let’s censor science to fit a misanthropic agenda. Let’s condemn billions in the developing countries to poverty and death rather than “permit” them to burn that nasty carboniferous fuel. Let’s torpedo our own economies by blindly casting ourselves into the pit of privation because of a slight possibility that CO2 has had a minor positve effect on temperature. As Joe Goebbels opined, if you tell a lie often enough and loud enough the masses of sheep will be convinced it is true. Al Gore has learned that lesson well.
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
When it comes to climate change, there IS a consensus among climate scientists … but not between climate scientists and butchers, brain surgeons, politicians, mechanics or geneticists. By consensus, I mean more than 99% of climate scientists. There are a handful who challenge it, but there are also a handful of sceintists who challenge that HIV causes AIDS, that the Big Bang ever happened, or that Einstein’s relativity is a real phenomenon.
You nutjobs seem keen to quote Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus. But these guys lived in the age before science was respected, and before the scientific method we use today was accepted. The people who persecuted them were the Church, not other scientists. A consensus odf other naturalists (as scientists were known then) DID support them. A minority did not.
Almost all scientists who work in this field (and know something about it) do agree that climate change is real, and that industrial carbon emissions are exacerbating. It’s you people who challenge them without knowing s&*t from shinola who wanna burn them at the stake … as you would have burned Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus.
But nothing can convince your crowd. Not until the seas rise and cities start collapsing like New Orleans will you sad sacks of s&*t ever realise there might just be something to this climate change stuff.
Unfortunately, climate change is gonna kill millions of innocent people, not just your sorry asses. On the other hand, if you represent the majority of humanity, then perhaps it’s best humans say bye bye to this planet.
William Wood
Insightful comment! Gee, the seasons occur! Wow, those scientists never calculated that one in!!
There is really no question that life will go on as it has for billions of years when the earth was both hotter and cooler than it is at present. What is in question is how habitable it will be for humans at their present levels of population, their current living conditions and levels of society.
Both positive and negative feedbacks drive earth’s physical and biological cycles. Things stay in a roughly steady state, absorbing influences of positive or negative feedback systems until a critical point where they move suddenly into a new steady state.
And don’t forget there hasn’t been any warming to speak of for 8 years even as CO2 continues to rise.
Over the last 30 years Earth’s average temperature has risen by around 0.2 degrees celcius per decade.
You’re right, the Earth is not a fragile thing, it can take all we throw at it and will bounce back over time – question is, will we as a species, in our present way of life, be around to see it?
While that is seen in historical records, the temperature changes measured cannot be fully accounted for without the effects of this increase in CO2.
So, without this CO2 release, the temperatures wouldn’t have risen as high as they did through the initiating factor alone.
So, this raises two points.
1. CO2 does have a warming effect on global temperature.
2. If global temperatures increase then more CO2 will be released (as you have pointed out, natural CO2 increases lag temperature rises).
What is different in the anthropogenic case is that the inital driver of temperature increase has been CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases such as methane).
So, we get the double whammy. Anthropogenic CO2 increase leads to temperature increase which leads to greater natural CO2 release to add to the anthropogenic releases.
Mr. Wood
Hyperbole is the essence of warming alarmism.
“Unfortunately, climate change is gonna kill millions of innocent people, not just your sorry asses. On the other hand, if you represent the majority of humanity, then perhaps it’s best humans say bye bye to this planet.”
Prove it! And don’t give me video games. There has been no significant tropospheric warming in the last ten years! Get a clue, the facts don’t fit the hypothesis. The only consensus is the simple fact that we don’t know very much about the subject, but the little we do know suggests that climate change, from whatever source, will be positive for some regions and negative for others. That will always be the case. Warming in the past has generally been associated with progress and plenty, while cooling has presented some of the most trying times.
I suppose the most disturbing aspect of the discussion is the religious fervor with which your message is delivered. Rather than rational discussion, which you are apparently capable of, you descend to vulgarity, personal attacks, and Al Gore sound bites. That is the classic recourse for someone who has no rational argument.
It is rather childish, as well, to entertain the “bye bye to this planet” mentality. It displays a profound ignorance of the history of the resilience of this magnificent orb, and of its dominant species of which I am a proud member.
I hope I do represent the majority of humanity. I insist on an honest appraisal without histrionics and exaggeration. I require that science be divorced from political mechanics. And I demand a discussion devoid of the constraints of some imagined consensus. As Einstein answered a political “consensus”, it only takes one scientist to prove a hypothesis wrong. The alarmists have yet to meet that burden of proof.
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
I would address you directly, but you seem to lack either the courtesy or the courage to attach your name.
First, I would like you to name some of the positve feedbacks that drive earth’s cycles–no computer models, real observations. Don’t be afraid to be specific.
And, “Over the last 30 years Earth’s average temperature has risen by around 0.2 degrees celsius per decade.”
First of all, which temperature series are you referring to?
Second, way to cherry-pick! Choose the coolest period of the 20th and start there. Brilliant. I can do that too. Let’s start in 1940 and go to 1970. Oh my goodness! We’re entering an ice age!
Third, 0.2K/decade X 3 = 0.6K. This is the IPCC figure for the entire 150 ybp, and most of that occured prior to 1940, then a multi-decadal cooling while CO2 was booming. What’s your point? Climate changes, film at 11:00!
A longer, more sober view suggests that nothing unusual is occurring.
You are making the usual error in assuming that humans are a bunch of dumb people at the mercy of their surroundings. It seems you are capable of ignoring several millennia of the demonstration of the human capacity to adapt and endure, and even to prosper.
The best way to insure habitability for humanity is to invigorate development, not to hamstring it with mindless, useless, wasteful measures such as the Kyoto Protocol.
If left alone, free of the restraints of impulsive interference, people tend to be pretty smart and can deal with a wide variety of adverse conditions. We’ll be around to see it.
Mark Whitney
Sandy, Utah
USA
Hey Mark: we’re all getting sick of your rantings. You’re not a climate change skeptic, you’re a climate change denier. You ain’t gonna change your mind ever, because no evidence will
a) be considered by your or
b) ever be accepted.
Here’s an an editorial in your own local paper, Salt Lake Tribune, debunking your views – and naming you personally. I’ll let your home state newspaper speak for all of us.
Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Climate science a factual contrast to global warming ‘skepticism’
The human species is at a crossroads. We can continue to ignore the rapidly increasing devastating impacts of our behavior. Or we can take responsibility for these impacts and start working together to solve the most pressing issue of our time, the warming of our planet, due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels.
Despite the incredible challenges posed by global warming, which has the potential to destroy all life on Earth, some still seek to discredit, often on a purely partisan and ad hominem basis, the robust science that testifies to the reality of climate change.
Sandy resident Mark Whitney, for example, claims global warming science is merely an “unstable foundation underpinning the Gore-heads,” and insinuates that scientists who are warning the public about the dangers of global warming are doing so merely to benefit from “the funding gravy train that has supported their flights of fancy” (“Alarmists losing ground,” Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 21).
Contrary to Whitney’s claims, scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is occurring – and at a rapidly accelerating pace. Since its formation in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest worldwide scientific collaboration in history, has “assessed and scrutinized the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced global warming.”
The IPCC concluded that the Earth’s climate is warming and that all signs point primarily to the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas.
The National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science also agree that global warming pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, are accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities. They also agree that this accumulation has resulted in a dangerous increase in surface air temperatures.
Even President Bush joined the other heads of state at the 2005 G8 Summit in recognizing the reality of global warming and the role of fossil fuel emissions in rapid global temperature increases.
Unfortunately, it has become easier than ever to disseminate misleading and inaccurate information about global warming. Those skeptical about the reality of global warming frequently cite a petition circulated in 1998 by The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Jim Elwell, for example, cited this petition when he criticized The Tribune for asserting that global warming is occurring (“Tribune ignores scientists,” Aug. 9).
The petition offered on OISM’s Web site provides a long list of signatures by “scientific experts” who contend global warming is nothing more than a myth. However, OISM provides no means to authenticate the names or verify their academic credentials. The site seems to permit anyone with a mouse and a keyboard the chance to weigh in, whether they have any relevant expertise or not.
Furthermore, the National Academies of Science has determined the scientific study attached to the petition is a sham, created by a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology. OISM has repeatedly declined to reveal the funding sources for the petition campaign, merely acknowledging that “industry” groups have been the main sources of funding.
This sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, by industry cronies and lobbyists who stand to gain financially from disputing global warming, undermines scientific work and obstructs the pursuit of solutions to the most urgent challenge facing our world.
Fringe “experts” and fraudulent advocacy campaigns are not the only beneficiaries of scientific chicanery. Many leaders in government have been hoodwinked into a head-in-the-sand policy of ignorance, sometimes even relying on works of fiction, rather than science, to justify their dangerous apathy.
Global warming is real and poses enormous risks to humanity and all life on Earth. Our obligations to future generations compel us to stop quibbling about whether global warming is occurring and start acting. The future will be determined by what each of us does now, at all levels of government, in business and in our individual lives.
At times such as this, it’s all I can do to restrain myself from having an “Ann Coulter moment,” but I digress….
Since it seems you are incapable of using the brain God gave you to think beyond the scope of your beloved “experts,” let’s try a different tactic.
Before coming home to raise my children, I was a medical researcher and patient care giver at the local university. This university includes a college of medicine, college of nursing, and bio-terrorism studies- it’s a major university.
My area of expertise is Ophthalmology, and my studies involved HIV/ AIDS research. Although I have been in my field since 1988, I did not go into research until 1999, and that was my first and last time doing it.
I learned several important things while there:
1 – The university environment is completely politically motivated to the detriment of all involved in academia.
2 – The results of any given study can be manipulated to match what the dollar-givers want. It’s all about keeping those grant dollars flowing in, results be damned.
3 – Points 1 and 2 led me to become very skeptical of all “consensus” science wherein the people making said-consensus have millions of dollars being pumped into their pockets. This is exactly what is happening with global warming, but far more sinister, since this is a political trojan horse being used to steal the people’s liberty on a global scale.
All those skeptics (heretics) who are rising up to refute this scam are losing their jobs, friends, credibility, and standing in the scientific community. There’s no stronger proof in my book that they are being honest, while the consensus is getting rich, and powerful.
No Mr. Wood, I’m not an “expert climatologist,” but I know a scam when I see one.
You say, “You nutjobs seem keen to quote Bruno, Galileo and Copernicus. But these guys lived in the age before science was respected, and before the scientific method we use today was accepted.”
Do tell, what new scientific method do we use today? Either a scientific fact can be irrefutably proven, or it can’t, making it not a fact. That hasn’t changed, and it never will.
Liza B.
USA
Hey Mark: we’re all getting sick of your rantings. You’re not a climate change skeptic, you’re a climate change denier. You ain’t gonna change your mind ever, because no evidence will
a) be considered by your or
b) ever be accepted.
Here’s an an editorial in your own local paper, Salt Lake Tribune, debunking your views – and naming you personally. I’ll let your home state newspaper speak for all of us.
Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Climate science a factual contrast to global warming ‘skepticism’
The human species is at a crossroads. We can continue to ignore the rapidly increasing devastating impacts of our behavior. Or we can take responsibility for these impacts and start working together to solve the most pressing issue of our time, the warming of our planet, due in large part to the burning of fossil fuels.
Despite the incredible challenges posed by global warming, which has the potential to destroy all life on Earth, some still seek to discredit, often on a purely partisan and ad hominem basis, the robust science that testifies to the reality of climate change.
Sandy resident Mark Whitney, for example, claims global warming science is merely an “unstable foundation underpinning the Gore-heads,” and insinuates that scientists who are warning the public about the dangers of global warming are doing so merely to benefit from “the funding gravy train that has supported their flights of fancy” (“Alarmists losing ground,” Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 21).
Contrary to Whitney’s claims, scientists overwhelmingly agree that global warming is occurring – and at a rapidly accelerating pace. Since its formation in 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the largest worldwide scientific collaboration in history, has “assessed and scrutinized the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced global warming.”
The IPCC concluded that the Earth’s climate is warming and that all signs point primarily to the burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas.
The National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science also agree that global warming pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, are accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities. They also agree that this accumulation has resulted in a dangerous increase in surface air temperatures.
Even President Bush joined the other heads of state at the 2005 G8 Summit in recognizing the reality of global warming and the role of fossil fuel emissions in rapid global temperature increases.
Unfortunately, it has become easier than ever to disseminate misleading and inaccurate information about global warming. Those skeptical about the reality of global warming frequently cite a petition circulated in 1998 by The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. Jim Elwell, for example, cited this petition when he criticized The Tribune for asserting that global warming is occurring (“Tribune ignores scientists,” Aug. 9).
The petition offered on OISM’s Web site provides a long list of signatures by “scientific experts” who contend global warming is nothing more than a myth. However, OISM provides no means to authenticate the names or verify their academic credentials. The site seems to permit anyone with a mouse and a keyboard the chance to weigh in, whether they have any relevant expertise or not.
Furthermore, the National Academies of Science has determined the scientific study attached to the petition is a sham, created by a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology. OISM has repeatedly declined to reveal the funding sources for the petition campaign, merely acknowledging that “industry” groups have been the main sources of funding.
This sort of behind-the-scenes manipulation, by industry cronies and lobbyists who stand to gain financially from disputing global warming, undermines scientific work and obstructs the pursuit of solutions to the most urgent challenge facing our world.
Fringe “experts” and fraudulent advocacy campaigns are not the only beneficiaries of scientific chicanery. Many leaders in government have been hoodwinked into a head-in-the-sand policy of ignorance, sometimes even relying on works of fiction, rather than science, to justify their dangerous apathy.
Global warming is real and poses enormous risks to humanity and all life on Earth. Our obligations to future generations compel us to stop quibbling about whether global warming is occurring and start acting. The future will be determined by what each of us does now, at all levels of government, in business and in our individual lives.
Firstly, degrees Kelvin is different to degrees Celcius (which I quoted).
Secondly, positive feedback systems?
1. Population growth. Simple. As a population increases the number of breeding individuals increases, increasing the number of births, which increases the population size….and so on. Look at human population size for a pefect real world example.
2. Contractions in child birth. Contractions cause the body to release oxytocin, which causes the body to have more contractions, which releases more oxytocin. Both of these get checked at some point by various mechanisms (as all feedback system do). But there you go, maybe you need to go back and do some basic high school science.
Thirdly, it’s obvious you are a nut case, so I won’t waste any more time on you.
Skeptics are only skeptic with everything they don’t believe in. They consider their talks like the absolute truth. Though, i’ve read so much technical stupidities in the thread that i would like to remind the casual and open minded reader a few points.
Temperature increase rate is currently a never-seen situation.
CO2 levels are nearly the highest level known.
The extra CO2 is clearly from human activities.
CO2 (or methane or any greenhouse effect gases) does not create warmth.
Greenhouse gases work like a greenhouse. They just work as a mirror for the infrared light bounced back by the Earth. This infrared light should go away in space, but with the “blanket” of gases, these IR are sent back to Earth to heat up. Warmth is not stored in the gas.
These basic facts just say that we are making the blanket thicker, with the obvious (though hardly predictable) effect of storing more energy in the atmosphere/ocean/rock masses system. You don’t need an increase in solar output, and if you have one, it’s just worse.
This energy will participate in temperature, winds, air humidity, sea currents and certainly many other effects.
Nothing is certain and climatology is a recently very-well-funded science. So don’t expect perfection.
When you sum up :
an incredible absence of basic knowledge,
an automatic rejection of any official work while adhering to any contradictory theory,
a curious way of mixing Trotsky and CO2,
you end up with a paranoid, sour vision of the problem with, evidently, no reason to be taken seriously.
You may be right. All this fuss may be way too exagerated. CO2 may not be the biggest culprit. But the way you mix “politics”, anti-everything feelings and science just make you look like the ones who thinks US never sent anyone to the Moon… or that Iraq had some WMD.
Controversies need to be kept on the boil!
Regarding the IPCC reports…..since when has science been a democratic process? You don’t determine the charge on the electron by a show of hands!
The physics – is that of chaotic dynamic systems, something that is ineherently unpredictable, Doh! What wealth of evidence? Real data shows a confusing picture, and certainly no hockey stick crap. Models, well they are a bit flawed, as the hacked code shows. Oh and the data they used to run their “very artificial” corrections over – to hide the recent decline in temperature, was pretty crap too. It’s also hard for many skeptics believe so many “educated” people can be so gullible and vulnerable to a collective fear psychosis – but the green religion is an ugly reality, that threatens all of science. It is irrational to say the science is settled and the debate is over. It is stoopid not to realise the world has changed, post climategate. Before the CRU hack, most skeptics smelt the bullshit, but now, it’s all over for chicken little.
I haven’t made my mind up either way; I’m a joe public member who welcomes clear, concise reporting with a balanced view, clear data and true statistics so that I can make my mind up rather than rely on higher political beings to do this for me. I am not a hard target to convince but need substantive, concrete clear evidence; probably like the millions of other Brits who need convincing.
I do think, general debate regarding pro and anti human involvement in global warming is not helped by sensationalism reporting and I don’t think that either sides of the pro and anti argument are helped with their causes when it is reported in the media that ‘so and so says this ( we then have a personal description re the so and so plus what their affiliation is, the school their kids go to, their political persuasion ad nauseum….).
To sway us impartial and want to be convinced public members out there there needs to be more round the table scientific debate that gives us hard facts and less of the passionate mud swinging which gives neither side scientific credibility.
I am convinced 100% that fossil fuels are being seriously depleted and will run out – we need to seriously invest in other forms of energy….but please do not cloud this issue by equating this with global warming and tying up your scientific passion; these are resources that should be seriously looked into: the problem of energy depletion and resolving this, a common ground that both pro and anti sides can build bridges on and take foward.
Both sides: carry on with encouraging people to conserve energy, carry on with research into other energy sources but please treat and report on the serious research and energy put into the other forms of energy that should be developed, irrespective of the climate change circus.
If neither side do this, if Jo public is not convinced, no amount of government intervention, media highlighting, local taxes etc etc is going to sway the public out there and win the hearts and minds.
except it was “common sense” and the Catholic Church that claimed that the sun and planets revolved around the earth. Galileo and Copernicus were the scientists and they were proved to be correct. Just as today’s climatologists “almost certainly” will be.
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