Posted on 10/07/2007 8:09:23 AM PDT by Nomorjer Kinov
Even though public opinion is inexorably shifting toward concern about man-made climate change, we are still treated to the rants of warming skeptics who trot out the same old arguments.
The interesting thing is how these objections have changed over time, moving the goal posts if you will. It's late in the fourth quarter, though, and the deniers are backed up almost to their own end zone as the melting glaciers of evidence creep slowly forward.
Warming deniers have used two types of counter arguments: ones that attack the messenger or message, and others that try attacking the science.
The first group consist of five general categories: I don't like who's saying it (Al Gore, liberals, Democrats, environmentalists), so it must be wrong; They're too gloom and doom, they can't be right; There's nothing we can do about it anyway; Science is so complicated, who are we to judge?; It won't affect me, so who cares?
The science arguments are more interesting, and have also changed over time. The first line of denial was that CO2 levels are not rising. That became obviously wrong as data accumulated. Then it was that temperatures aren't rising. That also has almost completely bitten the dust. Now the arguments are either this warming is part of a natural cycle and isn't man made, or it's too complicated and big to really understand so we better not do anything until we know exactly why and how all the changes are occurring.
First the natural cycle argument. It can most accurately, if impolitely, be described as baloney. There is a graph readily available on the Internet that shows atmospheric CO2 levels compared to temperature over the last 620,000 years. The data were obtained from ice cores from glaciers in Antarctica, using measurements of chemicals that vary in concentration in ice depending on environmental temperature. CO2 was measured from trapped air bubbles, unchanged over the millennia.
These samples show CO2 and temperature varying in close approximation over thousands of years, going up and down together in a range that didn't change for the entire 620,000 years. Through all these warming and cooling cycles, the global CO2 levels never went below about 180 ppm, or above about 280 ppm. Yet today, atmospheric CO2 levels are over 380 ppm. That change has occurred almost entirely in the last 200 years, coinciding exactly with the development of industry and transportation powered by burning carbon fuels.
And now we're starting to see the temperature measurements start moving up along with CO2, toward some unknown endpoint a lot higher than temperatures in the recorded past.
The second science argument (too complex, wait and see) is either a product of cowardice or laziness. Since when do we wait until the house is on fire before acting?
As to difficulty and complexity, we've already successfully tackled a similar problem, the ozone layer. In less than 30 years scientists identified the problem and its cause, proposed a solution and through combined government efforts, fixed things. The same arguments against action were made, such as economic disruption and the supposed weakness of the science, yet the scientists turned out to be right and the world economy quickly adapted to the new regulations.
Although it may seem like a waste of time constantly rebutting every crank who denies global warming is due to human activity, it is important to keep the record straight. Any lie, if repeated loud and often enough, will eventually be accepted as truth.
Meanwhile, the problem gets worse every day. And every day we waste debating yet again the reality of climate change just creates more work down the road to fix the problem. The political, economic and scientific challenges created by global warming are real and complex. Given the magnitude of change that is occurring, our choices are going to be very difficult ones about how to allocate limited resources to address the effects of sudden climate change, like coastal flooding, droughts, and crop losses. That's when the bickering will really begin.
Robert Wack writes from Westminster, where he serves on the Common Council. E-mail him at rwack1@comcast.net.
Just what Wack is doing in his diatribe through the deniers moniker which he wields to marginalize the opposition.
As to difficulty and complexity, we've already successfully tackled a similar problem, the ozone layer. In less than 30 years scientists identified the problem and its cause, proposed a solution and through combined government efforts, fixed things.
Whoops! Too bad when the item you lob as proof of success is suddenly come under question.
It's too bad Mr. Wack jumped the warming shark so hard when "deniers" are becoming more normalized.
Factually incorrect all the way thru. In fact, the political movement is against the Church of Man Made Global Warming dogmas.
Deniers will be sent to re-education camps where they will stay ubntil they learn that the sun has nothing to do with climate.
Just a few days ago the editor of our local birdcage floor liner declared that the leaves weren’t changing on the trees as fast as they used to.
Guess nobody ever told her that the leaves change due to the shortening days and not because of warm or cool weather.
Warming believes are staggering.
A remarkably inappropriate argument.
Even Mr. Wack would presumably object to firefighters breaking down his door and flooding his house with water when it wasn't actually on fire, on the theory that "you can't wait till the house is on fire to act."
Good find...another Wacko!
“public opinion is inexorably shifting toward concern about...” Algore’s cult of Wacko scientists.
“public opinion is inexorably shifting toward concern about...” any attempt by any US administration toward any progress on Kyoto, a failed attempt to immasculate the West.
“public opinion is inexorably shifting toward concern about...” a whole laundry list of more important issues than the SUN’s current effects on the earth...since we all know we do a better job of taking care of things in our control than taking care of things out of our control!
“public opinion is inexorably shifting toward concern about...” Environmentalism replacing Communism as a political tool of the looney left!
LOL
Mars Emerging from Ice Age, Data Suggest
By SPACE.com
posted: 03:00 pm ET
08 December 2003
Scientists have suspected in recent years that Mars might be undergoing some sort of global warming. New data points to the possibility it is emerging from an ice age.
NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter has been surveying the planet for nearly a full Martian year now, and it has spotted seasonal changes like the advance and retreat of polar ice. It’s also gathering data of a possible longer trend.
There appears to be too much frozen water at low-latitude regions — away from the frigid poles — given the current climate of Mars. The situation is not in equilibrium, said William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an ice age,” Feldman said. “In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated. In others, that process is slower and hasn’t reached an equilibrium yet. Those areas are like the patches of snow you sometimes see persisting in protected spots long after the last snowfall of the winter.”
Frozen water makes up as much as 10 percent of the top 3 feet (1 meter) of surface material in some regions close to the equator. Dust deposits may be covering and insulating the lingering ice, Feldman said.
Feldman is the lead scientist for an Odyssey instrument that assesses water content indirectly through measurements of neutron emissions. He and other Odyssey scientists described their recent findings today at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
“Odyssey is giving us indications of recent global climate change in Mars,” said Jeffrey Plaut, project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
High latitude regions of Mars have layers with differing ice content within the top 20 inches (half-meter) or so of the surface, researchers conclude from mapping of hydrogen abundance based on gamma-ray emissions.
“A model that fits the data has three layers near the surface,” said William Boynton of the University of Arizona, Tucson, team leader for the gamma-ray spectrometer instrument on Odyssey. “The very top layer would be dry, with no ice. The next layer would contain ice in the pore spaces between grains of soil. Beneath that would be a very ice-rich layer, 60 to nearly 100 percent water ice.”
Boynton interprets the iciest layer as a deposit of snow or frost, mixed with a little windblown dust, from an era when the climate was colder than nowadays. The middle layer could be the result of changes brought in a warmer era, when ice down to a certain depth dissipated into the atmosphere. The dust left behind collapsed into a soil layer with limited pore space for returning ice.
More study is needed to determine for sure what’s going on.
Other Odyssey instruments are providing other pieces of the puzzle. Images from the orbiter’s camera system have been combined into the highest resolution complete map ever made of Mars’ south polar region.
“We can now accurately count craters in the layered materials of the polar regions to get an idea how old they are,” said Phil Christensen of Arizona State University, Tempe, principal investigator for the camera system.
Temperature information from the camera system’s infrared imaging has produced a surprise about dark patches that dot bright expanses of seasonal carbon-dioxide ice.
“Those dark features look like places where the ice has gone away, but thermal infrared maps show that even the dark areas have temperatures so low they must be carbon-dioxide ice.” Christensen said. “One possibility is that the ice is clear in these areas and we’re seeing down through the ice to features underneath.”
Global warming is not due to humans, it is due to Solar changes.
What a turkey! After James Hansen of NASA was forced to change his incorrect temperature it now shows that 7 of the 11 hottest years in the USA all occurred before 1955. And Mt. Shasta in California is gaining in glaciers. And Antarctica is gaining is ice cover and temperatures are below the mean.
Let’s not forget that Pluto is also warming. Since it’s not a planet anymore I guess it doesn’t count.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/pluto_warming_021009.html
National Geographic: Melting Mars Means Man-Made Global Warming a Myth
By Noel Sheppard | March 1, 2007 - 10:07 ET
An absolutely startling report about climate change was published Wednesday in National Geographic which stated “the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun” and not by man.
Unfortunately, as this goes counter to the position of an alarmist media and their seeming field general, Dr. Global Warming aka Al Gore, it seems quite unlikely that these revelations will be covered in today’s papers or evening newscasts.
Regardless, the earth-shattering piece began (emphasis mine throughout):
Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet’s recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human-induced—cause, according to one scientist’s controversial theory.
The article marvelously continued:
AdvertisementEarth is currently experiencing rapid warming, which the vast majority of climate scientists says is due to humans pumping huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. (Get an overview: “Global Warming Fast Facts”.)
Mars, too, appears to be enjoying more mild and balmy temperatures.
In 2005 data from NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide “ice caps” near Mars’s south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row.
Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of the St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.
“The long-term increase in solar irradiance is heating both Earth and Mars,” he said.
To be sure, Abdussamatov is not the first scientist to make this claim. However, for a publication like National Geographic to report it should stoke some interest in the press – but don’t hold your breath.
With that in mind, the article then elaborated by almost thoroughly refuting the hysterical claims being made by an alarmist media and their current leader, soon-to-be-Dr. Al Gore:
Abdussamatov believes that changes in the sun’s heat output can account for almost all the climate changes we see on both planets.
Mars and Earth, for instance, have experienced periodic ice ages throughout their histories.
“Man-made greenhouse warming has made a small contribution to the warming seen on Earth in recent years, but it cannot compete with the increase in solar irradiance,” Abdussamatov said.
Yet, in an article about a somewhat contrary concept as far as the mainstream media are concerned, National Geographic expressed great skepticism. In a piece that debunked what the supposed consensus believes on this issue, the magazine spent almost the bulk of the space alloted citing scientists that don’t buy Abdussamatov’s conclusions starting with, “Abdussamatov’s work, however, has not been well received by other climate scientists.”
However, the idea that National Geographic would present such a contrary view just when so many are buying into the junk science might be an indication that the work of skeptics is finally beginning to pay off.
Well, by gollies that settles it for me. If it's "on the internet" it must be true.
Having just read the article you linked to, and it’s conclusion, I’m not sure the CFC cause has been disproven. Just some methodoly questions at this time.
“Nothing currently suggests that the role of CFCs must be called into question, Rex stresses. “Overwhelming evidence still suggests that anthropogenic emissions of CFCs and halons are the reason for the ozone loss. But we would be on much firmer ground if we could write down the correct chemical reactions.”
Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers" (a series of articles on the view of scientists who have been labelled "Global Warming Deniers"):
Other References:
Antarctic Temperature Trend 1982-2004:
This map (left) shows key areas of Antarctica, including the vast East Antarctic ice sheet. The image on the right shows which areas of the continent's ice are thickening (coloured yellow and red) and thinning (coloured blue). © (Left)British Antarctic Survey, (Right)Science
debate is over.
use one square.
that is the newspeak behind the article.
But, don't forget, algore invented the internet.
So what's causing the increase in temperatures if not CO2?
We call it the SUN - solar cycles.
Funny how global warming scare mongers always want to avoid the elephant in the room -- THE SUN!!
What I haven’t heard anyone discuss is where all the carbon is coming from. Obviously, the carbon in fossil fuels was at one point in the atmosphere. Plants used this CO2 to grow, they died and the remnants got trapped. After some amount of heat, time, pressure this turned into coal, natural gas, oil etc. Saying the the level of CO2 stayed relatively constant over 620,000 years would mean either a) no fossil fuels were created for 620,000 years, or b) there is some other source of carbon that can make its way into the atmosphere.
So, since the chemical equations in a lab at UC Irvine were the reason the whole thing came up in the first place, could we perhaps say that the ozone hole problem is "fake but accurate?"
His statement "Then it was that temperatures aren't rising. That also has almost completely bitten the dust." got me to laughing.
Oh, yeah, the most recent high guru of GW (which I don't deny happens), Hansen, has been revealed to benefit from Soros' money, and that can never be good, and, worst of all (from the GW standpoint) he's written off all the temperature readings made in the "Lungs of the World", namely Africa and South America.
Some things just aren't that well tied down ~ knowing what the temperature is happens to be one of them.
Your birdcage liner woman probably has no idea why leaves turn, but the drought driven deviation from the norm left her dizzy.
Perfect analogy. What WAS, in fact, the "problem" with the ozone layer? As I recall, it was something to the effect that chloroflourocarbons were depleting it, allowing massively greater number of ultraviolet rays to strike the earth, which in turn threatened everything from the paint on your Chevy to your skin.
So the government phased out Freon and deodorant sprays, and now nobody gets skin cancer anymore. Right?
This couldn't be an example of specious cause and effect, right? In fact, have we seen any statistics regarding the incidence of skin cancer now that we can't use Right Guard anymore? Did any of the doomsday predictions materialize, or are we supposed to believe that the quick response by the government (as I recall, the same people were whining then about how LONG it took the government to "do something!") headed these catastrophes off? Is it possible that the problem was overstated to begin with and that the ridiculous regulations imposed on us did nothing to address this concern, since it was fictional to begin with?
Just like global warming ...
or the patents expired and the new requirments for a new chemical rebooted a new patent period.
For some reason the article writer neglects to mention that the (excellent) Vostok Ice Core data he cites shows that CO2 levels LAG changes in temperature by ~800 years.
Why would he gloss over that? Oh yeah, it DEMOLISHES the AGW argument. Right there. End of discussion.
One of the key researchers gloomily told me in a phone conversation that the chlorine compounds then existing in the air (1993) were sufficient to ensure the total breakdown and loss of the protective ozone layer; that none of the corrective measures would impede or reverse the process and that it was simply a matter of time until it was all gone.
He was a co-signer of the high-altitude work where the relationship between PSCs and CFCs was firmly established.
The hole does seem to be about the same if not larger when it is reported now.
We should see some new pictures in a few weeks.
Those "same old arguments" generally tend to be unrefuted facts, something which the alarmist/socialists don't seem to want to acknowledge. Reality just doesn't have a place in their plans, I guess.
The CFCs in all those spray cans have now been replaced with either CO2 or propane, for the most part.
We can still spray away.
“”fake but accurate?”
As much as I would like to believe that the whole anthropogenic causes for the Ozone Hole are wrong, I don’t think this article says that. I was terrible in high school chem 45 years ago, so the article is on the outer bounds of my understanding, but it seems to say that a reaction is happening, but one of the chemical reactions is not well understood.
Surface ozone is a subject left mainly to the regulators and was never a concern to the atmospheric physicists; they had their heyday in the 80s and 90s and those who didn’t jump on the global warming train as it passed through town are mere footnotes in some headline reporter’s archived notebook.
As soon as the desired political and resultant changes are put into practice in this GW fight, we will see another train down the tracks, rumbling our way and it will be time for a fresh pad.
But we would be on much firmer ground if we could write down the correct chemical reactions.
That sounds like they are back to having a theory in search of evidence.
That should have been, “...political and resultant economic changes...”
UK Court Calls Gore Film “Pure Rubbish”
Ignoring the Academy Award won by the film, as well as rumors that former U.S. vice-president Al Gore is in line for a Nobel Peace Prize, a United Kingdom High Court judge said Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was “assembled by a cretin of minimal understanding and even less sense.” The movie has been distributed to more than 3500 schools for children aged 11 to 14 as part of their “Climate Change” curriculum.
The case reached the court when truck driver and father of two, Stewart Dimmock brought action to ban the film from UK schools. The court’s ruling substantially agreed with Dimmock’s contention that the film is “unfit for schools” because it contains scientific inaccuracies, “sentimental mush” and is politically biased.
Gore called the ruling “deplorable” and promised that “this judge and his ilk will pay a heavy price for their efforts to thwart me when I am named global climate czar next year.”
read more...
http://www.azconservative.org/Semmens1.htm
“Scientists say this year’s smaller hole – a thinning in the ozone layer over the South Pole – is due to natural variations in temperature and atmospheric dynamics (illustrated in the time series to the right) and is not indicative of a long-term trend.”
“The scientists say it’ll all wash away
But we don’t believe anymore
‘Cause we’ve got our recruits
In their green mohair suits
So please show your I.D. at the door”
The earth may be on a warming trend but man did not cause it and it is not evil. The sky is not falling and the earth may warm or cool. Big Whoop.
It’s 20 today in the bellwether subArctic and 2 inches of GW on the ground. It there is any warming trend it ended about 2001 or 1994; it was warmer then.
Mr. Wack,
You are a Manmade Global Warming (MGW) pusher and a hypocrite, for you use the same methods to attack real scientist who dispute the Socialist propaganda of anthropogenic warming. Your article attacks the messenger and you use junk science or outright lies to push your accretions. You are a Stalinist that wants to stop all discussion, the proof you have no argument is that you use insults and name calling, i.e. “…described as baloney. ….is either a product of cowardice or laziness. …rebutting every crank.”
What proof do you have that general global warming is ALL bad, when in fact civilizations have prospered more under periods of warming?
A real scientist proposes a theory, which includes predictions. All theorys of MGW is due to computer models, and EVERY PREDICTION made by the pushers has failed. In fact, you failed to point out that the computer models used to predict MGW have been proven to be useless. http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=13830&ch=biztech
Your article does not give one scientific proof of MGW, nor can they explain why temperatures have been rising since the 1800’s, way before the industrial revolution. The undisputed fact is that in the last 100 years global warming temperatures have risen 0.5C, with almost all of that prior to 1940. Therefore, most of the 0.5 C rise must be natural. http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=12
The so called facts you gave, along with socialist name calling, are half truths. CO2 follows warming, it does not precede it. The lag is about 800 years, the time it takes for the oceans to react to increased warming. http://www.cei.org/pages/ait_response-book.cfm
Further, you say “Through all these warming and cooling cycles, the global CO2 levels never went below about 180 ppm, or above about 280 ppm.” If this is the case, what were the CO2 levels on December 25 the year Jesus was born? What you fail to understand is that past recording are studied for patterns and magnitudes, and are very difficult to obtain and highly inaccurate. It is like a comparing the weight of a rock by a gloved hand to one measured on an electronic scale. It is irresponsible to compare imprecise measurement from the past, with the precise measurement of the present. A trick often used by the pushers is to assume all measurements are equal in precision.
You failed to point out why satellites show no temperature change in the past 20 years. The small rise in temperatures in cities has several explanations, among them the fact that cement reflects heat more than grass does. Recently some researches found out that some sensors used to record temperatures in cities were place with in a few feet of air conditioning exhaust ports.
As for the fact that it is too complex to predict the weather, there are two retorts. The weather is an open system, like the stock market. If computers can predict the weather hundreds of years into the future, why can’t they do the same for the stock market? And, when given the same information, but from past documentation, the systems are so poor that cannot even predict past temperatures.
Finally, you use the pushers lie of coastal flooding. NO ONE AGREES WITH THAT, and rising ocean water has been constant for the last thousand years or more. Global warming sea level gain of about 1.8 millimeters per year—or 4 inches per century. The rise has remained constant during the 20th century despite the moderate 0.6 degree C warming of the planet. John Stone of the University of Washington, reporting in Science on January 3, 2003, says the West Antarctic ice sheet has been retreating so slowly for the past 10,000 years that it still has not fully accommodated the end of the last Ice Age, and apparently still has about 7,000 years of ice to melt—and the East Antarctic ice sheet is melting even more slowly than that. The math is that if you could maintain a temperature of at least 68C, it would take over 10,000 years to melt the East Antarctic ice sheet. Compare this to the fact that in the Antarctic Winter temperatures on its high, cold interior plateau range from 40 to 95 degrees F below zero! In the summer (December) it “warms,” with temperatures dipping only to 49 degrees F below zero. Dry ice is frozen at about minus 100 degrees, and the Antarctic has gone as low as minus 120 degrees.
If you are so sure you are right, then why not collect the $100,000 prize given to those who can give scientific proof of global warming, as offered by several groups?
Or you can just not worry about MGW, for I understand both the Good Tooth Fairy and Santa Clause have said that they will take care of it, and there is more proof they exist than there is for Manmade Global Warming.
While this is perhaps technically true, Robert Wack fails to tell the most important thing: That CO2 levels trailed the temperature levels all through these samples.
This is easily explained, as the oceans warm up they release CO2 and when they cool they absorb CO2.
The Great Global Warming Swindle, available on-line, covers this and more very clearly.
I wasn't aware that anyone was doing this. And you say no takers so far?
Wack, what an appropriate name.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBCRStksqL0
JunkScience.com is offering it. I also understand there are several others.
This guy is a WACK-JOB.
Let us look at the ice core data he speaks of but would likely not want us to see graphically.
We seem to have some natural cycles there eh?
We seem to have even WARMER temps then today eh?
We seem to have ENJOYED a lovely 10K year warm period where the ascendency of man occured. Lucky us.
And in this graph, we see the C02 levels TRAIL the warming trend, did not cause the warming. So that is at a minimum still questionable what caused the past warming cycles.
And finally, the peak CO2 in the past was 300 PPM,
today is 380 PPM. BIG FRIGGIN WHOOP!!!
Water vapor is the larest contributor, NOT C02.
I looked this guy up, I think he is a peditrician.
Doctor Wack seems an appropriate name for someone so willing to dismiss serious skeptical challenging of human induced global warming. It's called "science" Dr. Wack.
We QUESTION THEORYS to determine their validity.
Duh!
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