Posted on 04/02/2002 3:32:39 PM PST by liberallarry
Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and now James Hansen of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies all generally agree that greenhouse gas warming will be somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 C this century. Hansen's estimates have been edging down, primarily based on energy/emissions projection changes.
2 deg. C (the middle of the estimate range) would be annoying but not catastrophic. I'll be posting an article summarizing a just-published paper in Nature that shows ecosystem changes are being noted due to the warming of the last 30 years, most notably due to earlier onset of spring.
That's funny, I read that the environmentalists were invited but refused to attend. I suppose that we should rely on the opinions of Hollywood stars in the crafting of our energy policy rather than anyone that is actually in the energy industry?
I don't think Hollywood stars should have been consulted, but groups that are familiar with alternative sources and useful energy conservation measures should have been.
In his Congressional testimony last year (www.senate.gov/~epw/lin_0502.htm), Lindzen said that there was widespread agreement that a doubling of CO2 concentration would result in about a 2 degree F temperature increase. That's 1.1 degrees C.
He also said that such warming "is likely to be concentrated in winters and at night"..."on the whole a beneficial pattern". He states that the points people agree on are consistent with minimal impacts of increased CO2.
Lindzen notes the disconnect between the IPPC Summary written by representatives from governments and the rest of the IPPC report written by scientists. Would you trust information summarized by governments of the world when they can benefit by taking positions that cripple your economy but have little effect on theirs? If so, you are naive.
Doubts and qualifications expressed by the scientists didn't make it to the Summary. He notes that the media rarely reflects what is actually in the Summary and express results in terms of upper limits. Lindzen notes that there is evidence that even the bottom of the IPPC temerature increase ranges are overestimates..
Yes, but according to the global warming crowd, that's because the sun can't shine through all the clouds of smog. I swear, I've read it! Go figure.
We have been down this path before. IMO alternate sources of energy will be utilized when they are economically viable, either through advances in technology or prohibitive prices of petroleum products.I believe this is called the law of supply and demand.
I am currently reading a book called Northwest Exposures
I would like to get your comments on this work and the authors opinion that we are currently in a warming trend in geologic time following the ice ages of as few as 15,000 years ago.
While my leisure time is limited (3 toddlers!) and my reading list is correspondingly backlogged, tell me more (author, availability, etc.) and I'll see what I can do.
Publisher is Mountain Press Publishing Company from Missoula, Montana
You do realize that scientists are not necessarily "impartial", right?
Scientists, like all other people, may in fact have these things called "political opinions" which color their worldview and consequently their scientific output. Scientists come from the world of academics, and as such could conceivably be more tilted toward a left-wing/socialist agenda (which all "climate treaties" favor) than the general public.
There is also the fact that scientists rely largely on tax money for their funding. You are correct point out the "direct financial interest" which businessmen (legitimately!) have in these political debates, but for some reason you neglect or pretend not to notice that scientists also have a "direct financial interest" in the outcome of these debates.
A scientist who sticks to the conventional political wisdom and says Global Warming Is Real And Requires Massive Government Powers might just get a big new grant to pay for his lab and graduate students and such (from people in that Government eager to justify their grab for such Powers, of course). Meanwhile a scientist who says I'm Not So Sure It's Absolutely Necessary For You To Have So Much Power, Mr. Politician just might get the cold shoulder from.... Mr. Politician.
Gee, you think?
My father helped a lot, he was a chemical engineer and his work took him to a lot of mines. And though Wisconsin isn't Idaho/Washington in terms of geological interest, there's a lot of glacial period features. My real interest got piqued when I went the wrong way in my grad school career at Berkeley (you can't get a Ph.D. in chemistry if you're not very good at math). But while I was slumming in IT to realign my career in a paycheck-oriented direction, I took a few courses in geochemistry, especially geochemical cycling, and got really interested. In case anyone wonders why I am environmentally-minded, there you go. I was originally interested in climate change that took place over thousands and millions of years, and the natural "extension" is to be interested, and at times concerned, about what might currently be happening.
Well, with regard to Advanced Physical Chemistry, for me it was a foreign language that I never learned to speak very well.
Why did you stop the sentence there? Let's continue with the rest of the sentence and the whole paragraph, and see if you can rebut ALL(or ANY) of what the petitioners claim, not just the first five words of it.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."
IF you had bothered to read the rest of the information on the linked site, specifically this you would have wisely cowered away instead of posting the BS that you did.
How many billions of bucks have been wasted on this "sky is falling" BS!
For every "Chief Scientist of the World Bank", (AKA Chicken Little), I can find ten others with equal or better credentials who offer solid refutation.
The world and its climate changes for cripes sake. Get over it.
What do you think of the correlations between the length of the solar cycle and climate, such as that presented in the journal Science by Friis-Christensen and Larsen (Science 254, 698-700, 1991)? When this article was published I thought it effectively ended the greenhouse gas argument. But you can't kill Dracula that easily (or scientists feeding at the funding trough).
A plot from the 1991 article made it to this Stanford site: http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html
Others have extended this plot farther back in time, and the agreement with the reconstructed temperature record is fairly good. At the ends of some upswing cycles the observed temperature sometimes exceeds that predicted by the correlation for a few years before rejoining the correlation line. I think we may be in such a period now.
Solar variations can predict the ups and downs of the global temperature record, like the cooling observed in the 50s and 60s. A steadily increasing CO2 would just drive the temperature higher.
I don't think the paleo record(or the current record) bears that statement out, because most of the CO2 in fossil fuels was deposited during the Cretaceous period, and the temp then was only slightly higher than it is now. More CO2 means more plant and animal growth as they thrive in higher levels.
Now if you were to alter the water vapor(H20) somehow, that would cause a more direct effect on temperature. CO2, and all others are a minor GHG compared to water vapor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.