Sounds like convincing evidence that there really is no scientific consensus on global warming, doesn't it? Well it may sound that way, until you read between the lines.
Here's what physicist Dr. Joseph Romm says about Senator Inhofe's list.
As it turned out, the list is both padded and laughable, containing the opinions of TV weathermen, economists, a bunch of non-prominent scientists who aren't climate experts, and, perhaps surprisingly, even a number of people who actually believe in the consensus. But in any case, nothing could be more irrelevant to climate science than the opinion of people on the list such as Weather Channel founder John Coleman or famed inventor Ray Kurzweil (who actually does 'think global warming is real'). Or, for that matter, my opinion -- even though I researched a Ph.D. thesis at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on physical oceanography in the Greenland Sea. What matters is scientific findings -- data, not opinions. The IPCC relies on the peer-reviewed scientific literature for its conclusions, which must meet the rigorous requirements of the scientific method and which are inevitably scrutinized by others seeking to disprove that work. That is why I cite and link to as much research as is possible, hundreds of studies in the case of this article. Opinions are irrelevant.
from The Cold Truth about Climate Change by Joseph Romm
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/02/27/global_warming_deniers/index.html
Senator Inhofe's list of 413 skeptics included:
20 economists
49 who are retired
44 television weathermen
70 scientists with no expertise in climate study
84 scientists who are either connected with the oil industry or are paid by it.
Scientists who were included against their will, and who agree with the IPCC
Inhofe and Morano misinterpreted a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters. It should be pointed out that Morano is no more a scientist than Senator Inhofe. More on Morano below.
They claimed that it showed proof that the sun was responsible for the warming that's been observed in the last 100 years. The paper they quote says exactly the opposite from what they claim. This has been verified by the author of the paper. http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/12/scientist-our-conclusions-were-misinterpreted-by-inhofe-co2-but-not-the-sun-is-significantly-correlated-with-temperature-since-1850/
note:
The IPCC is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which were both created by the United Nations.
What about that Wall St. Journal article? Let's first look at how science is done. Any scientific theory must pass peer review by other scientists before it can be published in scientific journals. Any science that can't pass that test is not considered legitimate science. The two scientists, who the WSJ quotes, never had their work peer reviewed. Instead of presenting it to other scientists for peer review, they went through the main stream media, the WSJ, to influence the public, rather than convincing scientists first, that their work was valid. And the WSJ was more than happy to print any story discrediting the AGW theory. Here's one climate scientist's take on the article:Prof. Joseph E. ArmstrongThe conclusions reached by Robinson et al., upon which The Wall Street Journal news item was based, in my opinion and that of my class, cannot stand the scrutiny of objective peer-review. Our judgement notwithstanding, The Wall Street Journal presented an unpublished manuscript as actual science to a gullible business world. Giving support and credence to an unpublished manuscript certainly reflects poorly on The Wall Street Journal and its standards of reporting and objectivity. We know The Wall Street Journal’s science reporting cannot be trusted if they don't know the difference between opinion and science, or worse, if they do know the difference, then they're just dishonest.
http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n08/...
And those "scientific conferences" with hundreds of skeptics? These aren't real scientific conferences, they are propaganda events. They are hosted by right wing propaganda mills like the Heartland Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, who offered $1,000 per speech and $10,000 per manuscript to skeptical scientists. The Heartland Insitute is largley funded by Exxon/Mobile. These are both right wing propaganda mills, and are definitely not scientific organizations.
Another climate scientist comments:http://environment.newscientist.com/Keep in mind that with the tens of thousands of climate change skeptics on the planet if only 1% of them are corrupted by the $10,000 payment (or bribe) currently being offered by Exxon through AEI then you will have at minimum 200 skeptics/deniers. So far 200 skeptics/deniers have not turned up.
He's referring to the "tens of thousands" of skeptics who are claimed to exist, obviously.
Maybe you heard about the Oregon Petition, supposedly signed by 19,000 skeptical scientists.Chris Colose in comment at: http://rabett.blogspot.com/2008/11/so-thats-wherethe-junk-mail-came-from.htmlI have a 60-person sample of the signatories of OISM at my website here. While it's refreshing to know that dead people, people who make smoke alarms, my cat's doctor, and a partridge in a pear tree think global warming is a scam, I was unable to find any actual people in the climate science field.
It was a hoax. Go to the link below and read the whole story:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Medicineand here's a quote from Robinson's paper.This group OISM is run off of a farm in Oregon and contains no climate scientists at all. ...The petition is from the 90s and was passed around with a fake article that fooled some scientists into thinking it was a peer reviewed paper from the National Academy of Science.
Arthur Robinson's paper claimed to show that pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is actually a good thing
As a result, Robinson concluded, industrial activities can be counted on to encourage greater species biodiversity and a greener planet.If you believe this claptrap you are not smarter than a fifth grader.As coal, oil, and natural gas are used to feed and lift from poverty vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.
Human activities are believed to be responsible for the rise in CO2 level of the atmosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and natural gas from below ground to the atmosphere and surface, where it is available for conversion into living things. We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the CO2 increase. Our children will enjoy an Earth with far more plant and animal life as [sic] that with which we now are blessed. This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution.
According to the new book "The Carbon Age" by Eric Roston:Humans have sped up the global carbon cycle at least one hundred times faster than usual, transforming the world into one that we eventually might not recognize as our own.
Manmade global warming is a geological aberration, nearly meteoric in speed. Human speed has crunched the geologic timescale in to half a century. Events that typically unfold over many thousands or millions of years have begun to occur within a human life span.
Life has always been driven by geology. The flow of carbon through living things entwines evolution with the inanimate forces of nature. But there is no evidence before now to suggest that biology has ever accelerated the long term carbon cycle onto a short term path. Nothing other than meteorites have changed geology as quickly as humanity. Industry is a powerful new path of interaction between life and geology.
In a short period of time, humanity has gone from an influential species, to the most powerful driver of evolutionary and geological change on the planet - more powerful than plate tectonics, silicate rock weathering, solar hiccups, or orbital perturbations. Some scientists, amateur astronomers, and Hollywood filmmakers look fearfully to the skies for civilization ending bolides. They should look inward. We are the meteor.
Industrial energy policy is a biogeochemical force and should be thought of as a cousin of earthquakes, volcanoes, pandemic disease, erosion and other phenomena that shape the face of the earth.This is not just another global warming book. It’s a facinating book about the beginnings and development of the planet, it’s atmosphere, it’s lifeforms, and how carbon with it’s unique properties, make it all possible. Excellent description of the carbon cycle - how carbon cycles through the atmosphere, soils, oceans, life forms, rocks etc.
It took 60 million years for coal to develop in the earth, by precipitating out of the short term carbon cycle, and being locked away in coal deposits and into the long term carbon cycle. Now we are releasing this 60 million year accumulation of carbon back into the atmosphere and thus, back into the short term carbon cycle, in 150-200 years, or a geological nanosecond. This is an unprecedented occurance, probably in the history of the planet.
I would like a skeptic to explain how this is part of a natural cycle, or is anything like any natural cycle that the earth has been through before. I mean ones that didn’t wipe out 90% of life on the planet.
It took 100 million years to replace the biodiversity that existed before one of the great dying offs.
Not only do the coral and the shellfish we are familiar with depend on a certain pH level in seawater, so do coccolithophores, tiny plankton that are armored with calcium carbonate shells, just like the more familiar shellfish and coral. Except these little guys are critical to a balance in the carbon cycle, that has supported life as we know it for hundreds of millions of years. And besides that, they are the very bottom of the food chain that all other sea life depends on.
They cannot survive in acidic water, because they can't form their alkaline shells. And they are one of the biggest carbon sinks on earth. Their shells eventually fall to the bottom of the deep sea, locking carbon, in the form of calcium carbonate, out of the carbon cycle, and thereby helping keep the cycle in a balance that has supported life as we know it.http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2005/July/01070501.asp'Basic chemistry leaves us in little doubt that our burning of fossil fuels is changing the acidity of our oceans,' said John Raven, professor of biology at the University of Dundee, UK. 'The rate of change we are seeing to the ocean's chemistry is a hundred times faster than has happened for millions of years. We just do not know whether marine life which is already under threat from climate change can adapt to these changes.'
What Robinson and the OISM say is nonsense. Yes, increased CO2 might make plants grow better, but to interpret that to mean that global warming will be good is completely misleading. After all, there was a time much earlier in the life of the planet, when plants thrived in an atmosphere with lots of CO2 and no Oxygon. There were no oxygon breathing animals at all. Scientists say even areas that would initially see increased crop yields, like Canada or Russia, could only expect that for a decade of two, when more serious effects of warming would set in, cancelling out this supposed "benefit" from climate change. Meanwhile much of the world would be devastated with drought, famine, floods, sea water incursion, complete lack of freshwater for one billion people because of lost glaciers and snowpack, etc.
The OISM seems to have forgotton that plants need more than CO2, like water in the right amount at the right time of year, and the right kind of soil. Ask any farmer who has seen crops ruined by not enough rain when it is needed, or too much rain at the wrong time. Like I said, it's claptrap.
As for the new claim of 32,000 leading scientists who are skeptics, unless you are using some very broad measure of what a scientist is, that is impossible. What I mean is that there aren't enough climate scientists in the world for that to be even remotely true. Not when about 99% of climate scientists agree with the IPCC. What are they including as scientists, doctors, engineers, psychologists? They couldn't possibly be climate scientists, other than a handful. The numbers just don't add up. The claim is rediculous. This claim includes the numbers from the Oregon Petition. By the way, Robinson and his son are the source of the phony Wall St. Journal article as well. Neither one is a climate scientist.
For much more on this and the Oregon Petition go here:
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/the-oregon-petition/
This article includes a breakdown of the scientists in this claim of 32,000.
http://cce.890m.com/scientific-consensus/
Perhaps this anectodal story will illustrate the point.
from http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/11/8/1227/22627 posted by Andrew Dessler:
A journalist friend recently sent me this:
"I just got my 'Journalist's Guide to Global Warming Experts' from The Heartland Institute in the mail. They list four 'experts' in Texas. It's an awesome list. ...
Robert Bradley, energy expert.
H.Sterling Burnett, policy analyst
Dr. John Dale Dunn, emergency physician
Michael Economides, petroleum engineer
As you probably know, the Heartland Institute is one of the world's premier climate denialist organizations, so you can be pretty sure these guys reject the mainstream scientific view.
Notice anything odd about the list? Despite the fact that there are dozens if not hundreds of reputable climate scientists working in Texas, the Heartland Institute is unable to get a single one of them onto their list. Apparently expertise is not required to be an expert for Heartland. In fact, I'm pretty sure if you can repeat the following phrase -- "the climate stopped warming in 1998!" -- you qualify.
This reinforces a point I've been making for a while: there are a few credible scientists who dispute the basic message of the IPCC. But not many. You can probably count them on your fingers and toes: Singer, Lindzen, Michaels, Spencer, Christy ...
Fred Singer has not had a peer reviewed paper published in 20 years. He is linked to the fossil fuel industry and was once a hired gun for the tobacco industry to give "expert" testimony that cigarette smoke is not bad for you.
Linzen is paid $2,500/day to be a consultant for the fossil fuel industry. His trip to Washington to testify before a Senate committee was paid for by Western Fuel co. Lindzen appeared in "The Great Global Warming Swindle" a documentary that was denounced by the Royal Society, the chief scientific advisory group to the British government, and the equivalant of our National Acadamy of Science. Some parties threatened to sue the director of the film for gross misrepresentation of science.
The Heartland Intitute also received funding from tobacco companies in their effort to deny the science on the dangers of tobacco and smoking.
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-deniers-take-tobacco-smokeNo group typifies this more than the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based "think" tank that simultaneously operates the "smoker's lounge" and "global warming facts" sections on their website. The former arguing for "smoker's rights" and railing on about the need for "sound science" on tobacco issues and the latter arguing that "global warming is not a crisis.
http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute-and-academy-tobacco-studies
Here's what others say about scientific consensus:
-Dr. James Baker - National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationThere's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics.
Stephen H. Schneider Ph.D. Professor at Stanford UniversityA handful of "contrarian" scientists and public figures who are not scientists have challenged mainstream climatologists' conclusions that the warming of the last few decades has been extraordinary and that at least part of this warming has been anthropogenically induced. What must be emphasized here is that, despite the length of this section, there are truly only a handful of climatologist contrarians relative to the number of mainstream climatologists out there.
Great site showing overwhelming support for IPCC findings.
http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus.htm
from comments posted by LeeAnnG at grist.orgThe global warming is a hoax believers don't understand the difference between informed opinion, uninformed opinion, misinformed opinion and totally ignorant opinions.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/
Scientific skepticism is a healthy thing. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge, improve their understanding and refine their theories. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and yet eagerly, even blindly embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog, study or 15 year old that refutes AGW
Remember what I said about peer review?
The AGW theory, as reported on by the IPCC in the fourth assessment of over 20 years of research, has been called the most thoroughly peer reviewed scientific paper in the history of science. There were over 900 peer reviewed papers on climate change. Not one opposed the conclusions of the IPCC.
As far as skeptic arguments getting a fair shake in the peer review process:
http://www.reall.org/newsletter/v06/n08/
Honest skeptics persist at trying to convince their colleagues of alternative conclusions, and they do it by submitting their manuscripts for publication. If they do not get published, then it is because their data, their arguments, their assumptions, and their conclusions did not stand up to careful scrutiny, not because reviewers were predisposed to a different opinion. Oh sure, some reviewers can be opinionated and have their own political ax to grind, but with persistence, you can find enough fair academics to get any legitimate conclusion published. My years as a journal editor, as a reviewer, and as an author of scientific articles validates my position that most academics will give a valid minority position a fair evaluation.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10...And please don't forget that anthropogenic global warming has been for a century the underdog theory, it is only very recently that the mountains of research have dragged a generally conservative scientific community inexorably to a very unpleasant conclusion.
The following scientific organizations support the findings of the IPCC. The reason I list the National Academy of Sciences first, is because they are like the Supreme Court of science in America. They decide what is real science and what is junk science.
National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
NASA
Woods Hole Resesarch Center
US Geological Survey (USGS)
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
American Association of State Climatologists
Federal Climate Change Science Program, 2006 (the study authorized and then censored by Bush)
American Chemical Society - (world's largest scientific organization with over 155,000 members)
Geological Society of America
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
American Association of State Climatologists
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
American Astronomical Society
American Institute of Physics
American Meteorological Society (AMS)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Stratigraphy Commission - Geological Society of London - (The world's oldest and the United Kingdom's largest geoscience organization)
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Royal Society, United Kingdom
Russian Academy of Sciences
Royal Society of Canada
Science Council of Japan
Australian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
Brazilian Academy of Sciences
Caribbean Academy of Sciences
French Academy of Sciences
German Academy of Natural Scientists
Indian National Science Academy
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Royal Irish Academy
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy)
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Union of Concerned Scientists
The Institution of Engineers Australia
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
National Research Council
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospherice Sciences
World Meteorological Organization
State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)
International Council on Science
Deniers would have you believe that somehow all these organizations and the thousands of scientists from 120 countries, who have been doing the research for 20 years, and over 30 years for some, are all scamming you in some dark conspiracy. Wow, and they call the scientists alarmists!
NASA's Gavin Schmidt:Regardless of these spats, the fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the AGU or EGU meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists (not the famous ones, the ones at your local university or federal lab). I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts at the Fall meeting (the biggest conference in the US on this topic) that support your view - you won't be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/02/11/how-do-we-really-know-humans-are-causing-global-warming/The position of a vast majority of people that believe in the seriousness of climate change as a human induced problem is that they believe so because of the following line of reasoning… see if you can follow the complicated steps of logic…
1) An overwhelmingly vast majority of the scientists that actually study climate science hold this view.
by RhapsodyInGlue
To hear Rush Limbaugh tell it, a few scientists doing quazi or quack science are behind the global warming hoax. Now, who would you believe?
Of course skeptics, or deniers, don't give up easy. Show them this overwhelming scientific consensus and they tell you it's a hoax, or it's a scam, or conspiracy to raise your taxes, or make you give up your SUV, or even become a communist. I'm not making this up. This is how they talk. In fact, this is often how the Republican party talks. The Minnesota State Republican website proclaims such things in bold banner headlines at the top of the page. And they call the scientists alarmists.
The truth of the matter is that the IPCC scientists have understated their case. They have actually been conservative in their projections. Actual recent observations have been worse than what they have predicted. http://www.skepticalscience.com/Comparin...
Here's an article about the conservative nature of climate science and the IPCC.
http://getenergysmartnow.com/2007/03/19/optimists-or-pessimists-what-is-it-with-those-ipcc-types/
and another on the same topic at Scientific American:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=conservative-climate
Make no mistake. There is a concerted and very well funded campaign to muddy the scientific debate about climate change and to keep you misinformed. A large part of the problem is that the news media plays right into the hands of the science deniers. In a misguided effort to appear fair and balanced, they give equal exposure to the skeptics whenever the topic is discussed. If they wanted to be truly fair and balanced, then you would see TV news shows with a few thousand climate scientists who agree with the AGW theory on stage with 2 or 3 skeptics.
Comments on the massive PR campaign funded by the fossil fuel industry from
http://www.desmogblog.com/slamming-the-climate-skeptic-scam
I strongly recommend reading this article.
On the issue of climate change, journalists have consistently reported the updates from the best climate scientists in the world juxtaposed against the unsubstantiated raving of an industry-funded climate change denier - as if both are equally valid. This is not balanced journalism. It is a critical abdication of journalistic responsibility.
The media, which in a lazy and facile attempt to provide "balance" is willing to give any opinion equal time as long as it is firmly in contradiction with another.
But few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change. Few have been so coldly calculating and few have been so well documented. For example, Ross Gelbspan, in his books, The Heat is On and Boiling Point sets out the whole case, pointing fingers and naming names. PR Watch founder John Stauber has done similarly exemplary work, tracking the bogus campaigns and linking various pseudo scientists to their energy industry funders.
This is a triumph of disinformation. It is a living proof of the success of one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history, primarily financed by the energy industry and executed by some of the best PR talent in the world.
The author of the article goes on to say.
Read everything.
Check out the sites that deny the reality of climate change and then check on www.sourcewatch.org to see who paid for those opinions, read DeSmogBlog. Don't accept the word of people who pass themselves off as "skeptics." Be skeptical yourself. Ask yourself what motive the scientific community has to gang up and invent a phony climate crisis. Compare that to the motives that ExxonMobil or Peabody Coal might have to deny that burning fossil fuels indiscriminately could change irrevocably our existence on the planet.
There was a recent global warming skeptic book called "The Deniers" by Lawrence Solomon. He called Fred Singer (one of the sources for his book) "one of the world's renowned scientists". Singer can't even get his work peer reviewed, never mind have it pass peer review. That's how discredited he is in the scientific community.
But skeptics gobble up stuff like this, as if it were the gospel truth.
Comment from climatedenial.org:
Solomon (who is not a scientist) is not really an independent searcher after truth- he is a frontline communicator for a large and influential denial industry that aims to prevent political action and undermine public concern about climate change.
Another recent piece of denier propaganda with no credibility is the movie called "The Great Global Warming Swindle". The one and only "scientific advisor" for the movie is Martin Livermore, who has no scientific credentials other than being the director of an online right wing think tank called The Scientific Alliance, which was established by the anti-green lobbying and public relations company, British Aggregates Association.
One credible climate scientist, Dr. Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at MIT was quoted out of context and "duped" into appearing in the documentary. He says the movie was grossly distorted and as close to pure propaganda as anything since WW2.
He is considering filing a complaint with the British broadcast regulator, Ofcom.
There is Tim Ball, a retired professor of the department of geography at the University of Winnipeg. In the documentary, he is listed as Professor Tim Ball, University of Winnipeg, Department of Climatology. There is no Department of Climatology at the University of Winnipeg! He has not published a research paper in eleven years.
And then there's Dr. Paul Reiter, who's connected with the Annapolis Centre for Science Based Public Policy, another right wing think tank, which received $763,500 from Exxon Mobile.
and there's
Dr. Paul Copper, Listed as an "Allied Expert" for the Natural Resource Stewardship Project (NRSP), a lobby organization that refuses to disclose it's funding sources. The NRSP is led by executive director Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball. An Oct. 16, 2006 CanWest Global news article on who funds the NRSP, it states that "a confidentiality agreement doesn't allow him [Tom Harris] to say whether energy companies are funding his group." The NRSP also has ties to Canadian energy-sector lobbyists http://www.desmogblog.com/search/node/Great%20Global%20Warming%20Swindle
http://www.desmogblog.com/a-global-warming-swindle-play-by-play
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/george-will-and-the-swindle-tell-you-all-you-need-to-know/
Have you read "The Skeptics Handbook"?
The author, Joanne Nova, has no credentials in climate science and is basically a public speaker on various subjects related to science.
She rehashes old worn out skeptic arguments, like the claim that global warming has stopped. See the skeptic arguments section below, for more on that topic. The handbook is debunked in three parts here:
http://www.desmogblog.com/skeptics-handbook-carbon-dioxide-climate-change
http://www.desmogblog.com/debunking-joanne-nova-climate-skeptics-handbook-global-warming-real-and-happening
http://www.desmogblog.com/debunking-joanne-nova-climate-skeptics-handbook-part-3-climate-models-have-it-right
and here:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/skeptics_handbook_not_novel_no.php
and here:
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2009/02/global-warming-denial.html
John Coleman makes a lot of noise in the denier-sphere. Being the founder of the Weather Channel leads many to believe that he has some expertise in climate change.
Not exactly:
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/02/09/john-coleman-put-up-or-shut-up/
Apparently the hope is that people will mistake you (Coleman) for a meteorologist, which as discussed previously is not the same as a climatologist, but is at least a related profession.
It is not generally known that you trained as a journalist. No doubt members of that profession are deeply grateful that this is scarcely known as you are discrediting them with your flagrant disregard for facts or accuracy, never mind your bias.
You went on to be a weathercaster (in effect, a performer) and a business person. None of which discredits anything you may say as such, but it is not the credential you pretend.
At this next link you will learn how oil and coal industry money is funneled through different foundations to bury the money trail, and "wipe the oil" off of it.
They set up organizations like Policy Communications, The Western Business Roundtable, Partnership for America, and Americans for American Energy, to make it seem like there is this groundswell of grassroots organizations opposing the scientific theory of man made climate change and opposing the move to sustainable energy. These are actually all the same people from the fossil fuel industry and mining industry. They are all staffed by the same executives.
http://www.desmogblog.com/policy-communications-inc-astroturf-shell-gameIt's called "astroturfing" - the setting up of fake grassroots organizations and it's one of the oldest tricks in the books.
Policy Communications
An energy industry-backed astro-turf network concocted by a single PR/Lobbying firm that is working to undermine the efforts of environmental groups and organizations like the Western Climate Initiative (WCI). that are pushing for solutions to climate change.
More on the astroturf group Western Business Roundtable(aka Policy Communications) and what they're up to.
http://www.desmogblog.com/about-western-business-roundtable-wbr
If you're unsure of how some of these fossil fuel industry leaders think, perhaps the words of the CEO of Massey energy will give you a clue.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/11/24/blankenship-bin-laden/Last Thursday, Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth largest United States coal company, described his critics as “communists,” “atheists,” and “greeniacs.” In an address before the Tug Valley Mining Institute in Williamson, WV, Blankenship said those who criticize him are “our enemies” like Osama bin Laden:
Blankenship has spent millions of dollars to influence West Virginia judgeships and state legislative races, and palled around in Monte Carlo with state Supreme Court Chief Justice Elliott “Spike” Maynard and their “female friends” in July 2006. The state court reversed a $77 million verdict against Massey in 2008.
Massey Energy violated the Clean Water Act 4500 times between 2000 and 2007. In 2000, a subsidiary of Massey Energy had a 300 million gallon spill of black toxic sludge from a coal processing plant in Kentucky ( nearly 30 times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill). The EPA called it the worst environmental disaster in the history of the southeastern United States. The water of 27,000 people was contaminated. A plume of sludge extented 75 miles to the Ohio River. There was an investigation by MSHA that was squelched after Bush's election. The investigators were ready to proceed with 8 serious violations, with possible criminal charges. The lead investigator was reassigned, and demoted then fired.
He was replaced with another, who on the first day said he would close the investigation within a week. He later got a seat on the board of directors of Massey Energy. It probably didn't hurt that the coal industry and Massey Energy virtually won W. Virginia for Republicans in an upset victory, after contributing heavily to the campaign.
Massey Energy got off with a $55,000 fine.
Now this environmental disaster has been superceded by an even worse spill of coal sludge in Tennessee just before Christmass 2008. This one is estimated at one billion gallons, or three times as big as the previous spill in 2000.
So much for "clean coal".
http://cleanergy.blogspot.com/2008/12/this-is-clean-coal-massive-coal-sludge.html
Jeff Severinghaus - Professor of Geosciences - UC San DiegoMany, many other studies have found that carbon dioxide causes the earth to warm. This is not controversial, and to continue to deny it is akin to denying that cigarette smoking causes cancer. The evidence for a human-caused warming of the globe is overwhelming. The scientific debate is over, and what we are seeing now is an attempt to mislead the public.
Deniers have used a misquote of Severinghaus' writings in their propaganda.
See here:
http://getenergysmartnow.com/2008/12/20/deniers-quote-true-but-not-truthful/
Seveinghaus says: “At the very least I would like it to go on record that Bolt’s abuse of my science is not done with my approval.
Newsflash 12/19/08
President elect Obama's pick for Presidential Science Advisor
John Holdren -
an expert on Energy and Climate Change, Highly regarded Nobel Prize winner: Former President- American Association for the Advancement of Science:
Current director of the Woods Hole Research Center. (Woods Hole is one of the premier oceanography institutions in the world.): Professor at Harvard and Berkeley on environment:
In Holdren's own words:
The few climate-change “skeptics” with any sort of scientific credentials continue to receive attention in the media out of all proportion to their numbers, their qualifications, or the merit of their arguments. The attention and credence they receive are a menace, of course, insofar as this delays the development of the political consensus that will be needed before society embraces remedies that are commensurate with the magnitude of the climate-change challenge.
Members of the public who are tempted to be swayed by this vocal fringe should ask themselves how it could be, if human-caused climate change is just a hoax, that the leaderships of the national academies of sciences, of every country in the world that has one, are repeatedly on record saying that global climate change is real, dangerous, caused mainly by humans, and reason for early and concerted action to reduce those causes; that this is also the overwhelming consensus view among the faculty members of the earth sciences departments at every major university in the world; and that all three of holders of the one Nobel prize in science that has been awarded for environmental science, are all leaders in the climate-change scientific mainstream.
The fact is that anybody who could believe that the cream of the part of the world scientific community that has actually studied this phenomenon could be co-opted by hoaxers or suffering from mass hysteria is just not thinking clearly.
Finally, some sanity in the White House.
And of course the anti science crowd is already piling on the criticism of Obama's pick. Read about it here.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/21/john-holdren-john-tierney-rogerpielke-bjorn-lomborg-and-competitive-enterprise-institute/
More of John Holdren's words quoted in the above article:
We should really call them “deniers” rather than “skeptics”, because they are giving the venerable tradition of skepticism a bad name.
As my original reference to “the venerable tradition of skepticism” indicates, I am in fact well aware of its valuable and indeed fundamental role in the practice of science. Skeptical views, clearly stated and soundly based, tend to promote healthy re-examination of premises, additional ways to test hypotheses and theories, and refinement of explanations and arguments. And it does happen from time to time — although less often than most casual observers suppose — that views initially held only by skeptics end up overturning and replacing what had been the “mainstream” view.
Appreciation for this positive role of scientific skepticism, however, should not lead to uncritical embrace of the deplorable practices characterizing much of what has been masquerading as appropriate skepticism in the climate-science domain. These practices include refusal to acknowledge the existence of large bodies of relevant evidence (such as the proposition that there is no basis for implicating carbon dioxide in the global-average temperature increases observed over the past century); the relentless recycling of arguments in public forums that have long since been persuasively discredited in the scientific literature (such as the attribution of the observed global temperature trends to urban-heat island effects or artifacts of statistical method); the pernicious suggestion that not knowing everything about a phenomenon (such as the role of cloudiness in a warming world) is the same as knowing nothing about it; and the attribution of the views of thousands of members of the mainstream climate-science community to "mass hysteria” or deliberate propagation of a “hoax”.
The purveying of propositions like these by a few scientists who do or should know better –and their parroting by amateur skeptics who lack the scientific background or the motivation to figure out what’s wrong with them — are what I was inveighing against in the op-ed and will continue to inveigh against. The activities of these folks, whether witting in the case of the scientists or unwitting in the case of their gullible adherents, have nothing to do with respectable scientific skepticism.
Finally, some truth in the Whitehouse. Scientists will once again be free to speak without fear of officially sanctioned censoring and denigration.
The Bush administration has played a major role in the propaganda campaign to discredit science. President Bush authorized a major study on climate change, then had his lawyers censor the report made by scientists.
They also tried to prevent world renowned climate scientist James Hansen from releasing a report about global temperature for 2005. There was a systematic attempt to stifle the free speech of climate scientists at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where Hansen works. They had public policy people inserted into the Institute to ride herd over the scientists.
To learn much more about this, read the book:
"Censoring Science: the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming" by Mark Bowen
I also recommend the books "The Boiling Point" and "The Heat Is On" by Ross Gelbspan, which were mentioned in the quote from Desmogblog above.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/19/bush-climate-impacts-climate-change-science-program-ccsp-muzzling/
Four global warming impact studies Bush tried to bury in his final days
More articles concerning the Bush administration and obstruction of science and environmental progress:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/1/22/13834/1335
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/8/133241/5405
http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2004/03/02/she/index.html
http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/12/19/EPA/index.html
Ever wonder who makes up those phony lists of skeptic scientists? How about Marc Morano, who was the main source of the equally phony swiftboat attack on Sen John Kerry, and who launched the attacks on and censoring of NASA climate scientist James Hansen. (Hansen is head of NASA's Goddard Intitute for Space Studies.)
Morano is the source of Senator Inhofe's phony list of 413 "prominent scientists" who dispute the AGW theory. Morano has no science background.
http://www.desmogblog.com/400-prominent-scientists-dispute-global-warming-bunk
Now Morano is claiming
"650 International scientists who dissent over man made global warming"
The list includes 3 dead people, the usual fossil industry paid deniers Fred Singer, Tim Ball, Sallie Baliunas, an even larger group of "experts" who are not climate scientists, TV weather forecasters, and a sizable number of scientists who agree with the IPCC findings. Also on the list are an anthropologist and a historian who are both strong and outspoken advocates for acting on climate change; and James Peden, who calls himself an atmospheric physicist even though he long ago left climate science, to be a web designer.
The original list of 413 (which was discussed at the beginning of this post) included Meteorologist George Waldenberger, who sent Inhofe an email asking to be removed from the list. They had miscontrued statements of his, to make it sound like he was a skeptic. He told Inhofe that he has never disagreed with the consensus on climate change. And Waldenberger said:
Guess what? He's on the new list of 650 also.You quoted a newspaper article that’s main focus was scoring the accuracy of local weathermen. Hardly Scientific … yet I’m guessing some of your other sources pale in comparison in terms of credibility.
You also didn’t ask for my permission to use these statements. That’s not a very respectable way of doing “research”.
Inhofe and Morano's list gets more debunking:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/650_international_scientists_e.php#more
This article has a thorough analysis of Morano and Inhofe's list of 650:
http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/PSEUDOSC/650Skeptics.HTM
and:Bottom line: 58% of the "experts" quoted on Inhofe's blog have no credentials in climate research and only 16% have top-notch credentials.
http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2009/02/global-warming-denial.html
Compare these 650 (really less than 100) "skeptics" with the American Geophysical Union (AGU) which has 50,000 members, most of whom really are earth scientists. Only a few dozen AGU members are on this latest denier list.
Who sponsored this latest paper? - Fred Singer's "Science and Environmental Policy Project". Remember Fred Singer, paid by Philip Morris to testify to cigarette smoke's safety?
Oh, did I tell you that Singer also disputes that CFCs deplete the ozone layer? The effect of CFCs on the ozone layer is a well established scientific fact. Since the use of CFCs was limited by the Montreal Protocol, the hole in the ozone has diminished substantially.
Singer even uses skeptic arguments that are so wrong that serious scientists don't even respond to such nonsense anymore. I'm referring to statements from Singer like:
This is the dumbest of arguments, the type repeated by the least knowledgeable "me too" skeptics. For a climate scientist like Singer to point to one month in one location as proof against global long term climate change, is to emulate the least informed and most credulous of warming skeptics. (See Skeptic Argument "It's so cold this winter in Peoria" below.) The other reason he is off base is that the IPCC actually predicted less warming in Antartica than in the Arctic. This is a common tactic of deniers, claiming the IPCC made predictions that they didn't make.Both greenhouse theory and computer models predict that global warming should be more rapid in the polar regions than anywhere else, but in July the Antarctic experienced the coldest weather on record.
If you think this is an isolated case of twisting what others say and mean, you are dead wrong. It's modus operandi for the deniers. Why? Because it works in misleading the public.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/12/inhofe_less_honest_than_the_di.php#moreInhofe and sidekick Morano know that it is far easier to perpetuate and mass distribute deception and disinformation than it is to educate and inform people as to the real situation.
Inhofe's list is lacking in climate scientists. It does have a lot of meteorologists, but these are people who present weather forecasts on TV, not scientists who study climate.
Now, (1/27/08) Morano and Inhofe are attacking Hansen again, with false accusations.
http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/28/james-inhofe-marc-morano-john-theon-nasa-skeptic-muzzling/#more-4746
Then there's the nonsense put out by Michael Asher on the Daily Tech website. His latest misrepresentation of science claims that the Arctic sea ice is increasing and is now the largest since 1979. That's interesting, since just a few weeks ago, a report presented at the American Geophysical Union conference stated that the Arctic sea ice is retreating 15-20 years ahead of what was predicted just a few years ago. Asher writes complete trash. Not a word of it is factual. Deniers gobble it up like it was the Holy Grail of science. Here's what actual climate scientists say.
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-change-cancelled-whewJust last month NASA released a chilling report showing that between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted at an accelerating rate since 2003 – enough to fill Chesapeake Bay 21 times.
The satellite survey of global ice loss showed that in the past five years, Greenland has lost between 150 gigatons and 160 gigatons each year. One gigaton equals one billion tons or enough to raise global sea levels about .5 mm per year
"It's not getting better; it's continuing to show strong signs of warming and amplification," said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally. "There's no reversal taking place."
For a clear demonstration of how Asher "cooked" the graph of Arctic sea ice extent, in order to make his false claim, go here.
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/cold-hard-facts/#more-1387
More on graphs and 2008 global temperatures:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/01/15/what-if/
More on arctic sea ice extent:
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/northern-ice/#more-1189
http://rabett.blogspot.com/2009/02/dive-dive-dive-arctic-sea-ice-cover-has.html
Skeptic Jon Jenkins doctored graphs of global temperature to skew them away from the warming that is happening. He not only skewed the chart but cherry picked the ending date to avoid having to include data from the latest three month period (which was readily available). This three month period included a strong upward move, which would have contradicted what he was claiming the chart showed.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/sixth-degree_polynomial_fits_j.php
This junk science was used in an article by Jenkins in the "Australian", the only major national newspaper in Australia.
Jenkins is known for statements like the following.
and thisThe warmaholics, drunk on government handouts and quasi-religious adulation from left-wing environmental organisations, the fraud of the IPCC
This is absolutely false according to just about every climate scientist in the world; yet he makes claims like this, which then become more pieces of disinformation that gets spread on the internet, as if they were pearls of wisdom. See the Skeptics Arguments section below.Cataclysmic volcanic eruptions have often placed more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in (a) few minutes than man induces in a decade.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/the_australians_war_on_science_32.php
For some media outlets, the problem goes way beyond just misguided attempts at balance. The newspaper "Australian" is known for publishing junk like this, as this article discusses. Another junk science article in the Australian, this time by Bob Carter, on cooling, with this title "Facts debunk global warming alarmism"
It gets debunked here:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/the_australians_war_on_science_34.php
There seems no end to the junk science. Here's another example.
http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/easterbrook-and-the-coming-global-cooling/Prof. Don Easterbrook has a piece "Global Cooling is Here: Evidence for Predicting Global Cooling for the Nest Three Decades" that has been getting some attention in the blogosphere in which he claims global warming has ended and that global cooling will occur over the next several decades.
Easterbrook’s analysis is hopelessly flawed, and one is left to wonder just why he would intentionally shoot down his own credibility with such sloppiness. Any support of this work on internet sources is not a support of any actual science or data, but an appeal to authority.
In short, there is absolutely no science in Easterbrook’s article, and much of it is based on misrepresentations of the IPCC and ignorance of the climate system he is analyzing. His implication that a changing PDO almost assures us for a coming cooling period is just wishful thinking, but he doesn’t understand the difference between a “signal” and “noise” or what the PDO actually does. He effectively assumes that greenhouse gases have had minimal impact, and will do so, without quantifying this argument. As such, there is no basis for his conclusion that global warming is over and that global cooling is awaiting us.
This must have been the koolaid that Lou Dobbs was drinking, when he made the following brilliant statement on CNN.
How reasonable.I don't know that it matters to me whether there is global warming or we are moving toward another ice age. It seems really to me that we should be reasonable stewards of the planet. The debate over whether it's global warming, or whether it is moving toward perhaps another ice age, or it's simply business as usual is moot in my mind.
More on Easterbrook
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2008/12/03/easterbrook-no-nothing/
http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/13/gregg-easterbrook-still-knows-nothing-about-global-warming-and-less-about-clean-energy/
David ArcherThe target audience of denialism is the lay audience, not scientists. It’s made up to look like science, but it’s PR.
Another example of "wiping the oil' off the money is how the inaptly named Friends of Science(FOS), had money funneled to what they called the Science Education Fund. The money came from the Alberta oil and gas industry through the Calgary Foundation, who funneled it through the University of Calgary and ultimately ending up at FOS.
FOS has funded Fred Singer, Sherwood Idso, Robert Balling and Pat Michaels.
And then there's the misrepresentation of science in the ISPM(Independent Summary for Policymakers) published by the Fraser Institute. It was issued days after the release of the Summary for Policy Makers by the IPCC, in Febuary 2007. According to the Fraser Institute:
Just the use of the word "alarmism" should ring a bell that this is not an unbiased paper. It's a derisive term used by the denier crowd, and you wouldn't find such terms in any real scientific study.An independent review of the latest United Nations report on climate change shows that the scientific evidence about global warming remains uncertain and provides no basis for alarmism.
The ISPM claimed that the report from the IPCC
This was not true. Here's what Desmogblog says about it.is neither written by nor reviewed by the scientific community.
In fact, the IPCC summary was written and reviewed by some of the most senior climate scientists in the world, without political or bureaucratic input . And the Fraser Institute’s 'scientific' staff – which is led by an economist – includes a group of junior or retired scientists, most of whom have direct connections to energy industry lobby groups.
Fraser Institute said:
Compare that claim with what Dr Andrew Weaver, lead IPCC author and chairman of the Canada Research in Climate Modelling and Analysis says.There is no compelling evidence that dangerous or unprecedented changes are underway.
Sourcewatch says that Fraser Institute's ISPM errors include:The IPCC report presents 1,600 pages of compelling evidence, that’s the whole point.
The ISPM states:Several incorrect statements concerning tropospheric temperature trends derived from satellite data.
Misdentification of peak temperature year in GISS and NCDC global surface temperature data sets (1998 given instead of 2005).
Mistaken citation of projected sea level rise to 2100 of only 10-30 cm, instead of 21-48 cm given by IPCC
Several examples of "cherrypicking", inexplicable omissions and misrepresentations.
Sourcewatch:There would also appear to be an unstated implication that temperature may have reached a plateau or even decreased since 1998.
the ISPM fails to mention that the smoothed temperature statistic for the combined data sets continued to show an upward trend through 2005.
The ISPM conveniently omitted the following information from the IPCC report.
http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ISPM#Errors_and_discrepancies2002 to 2004 are the 3rd, 4th and 5th warmest years in the series since 1850
Eleven of the last 12 years (1995 to 2006) ... rank among the 12 warmest years on record since 1850.
Surface temperatures in 1998 were enhanced by the major 1997–1998 El Niño but no such strong anomaly was present in 2005.
More on Fraser Institute's twisting of science at:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/fraser-institute-fires-off-a-damp-squib/
Sterling Burnett, a "leading authority" on climate, who appears frequently on Fox news, now claims that global warming is a hoax because it is cold in Minnesota this winter. Will someone please tell Mr. Burnett that what he is referring to is called weather, not climate, and it isn't global. It's Minnesota.
And let him know that the numbers are in for 2008, which was cooled by the La Nina ocean phenomenon. It was the 9th warmest since 1880. Globally that is.
Burnett is the same guy who on Fox tv compared Al Gore's movie to Nazi war time propaganda.
Burnett is financially linked with Exxon/Mobile.
For someone who claims to be a climate expert, he doesn't sound very bright, if he's using beginner skeptic arguments that everyone knows are bogus. But it actually doesn't matter to some of these guys. They know the public doesn't follow the subject close enough to know the difference, or to know who funds the message.
Danish author Bjorn Lomborg wrote a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" that sought to portray environmentalists as completely offbase. Lomborg is not a scientist. He does have a doctorate in political science. He is a skillful debater, who uses a lot of scientific truthiness, but little truth.
http://www.grist.org/news/daily/2003/01/08/loser/index.htmlThe Danish Research Agency has condemned Lomborg for "scientific dishonesty," deeming the book "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice" and systematically one-sided. The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty conducted a six-month review of the book after several scientists filed complaints; despite the damning conclusions it reached, the group stopped short of finding Lomborg guilty of gross negligence or deliberate attempts to mislead readers. Lomborg rejected the committee's findings and said it could get him fired from his new post as director of the Danish Institute for Environmental Assessment, but government officials said his job was not in danger.
My greatest regret about the Lomborg scam is the extraordinary amount of scientific talent that has to be expended to combat it in the media. We will always have contrarians like Lomborg whose sallies are characterized by willful ignorance, selective quotations, disregard for communication with genuine experts, and destructive campaigning to attract the attention of the media rather than scientists. They are the parasite load on scholars who earn success through the slow process of peer review and approval. The question is: How much load should be tolerated before a response is necessary? Lomborg is evidently over the threshold.
Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark a Skeptical look at the "Skeptical Environmentalist" by a panel of specialists.
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2001/12/12/of/
including the one on extinctions below:
by biologist Edward O Wilson - Harvard professor for fourty years, author of 20 books, winner of two Pulitzer prizes, and discoverer hundreds of new species.Lomborg's estimate of extinction rates is at odds with the vast majority of respected scholarship on extinction. His estimate, "0.7 percent over the next 50 years" -- or 0.014 percent per year -- is an order of magnitude smaller than the most conservative species extinction rates by authorities in the field.
Before humans existed, the species extinction rate was (very roughly) one species per million species per year (0.0001 percent). Estimates for current species extinction rates range from 100 to 10,000 times that, but most hover close to 1,000 times prehuman levels (0.1 percent per year), with the rate projected to rise, and very likely sharply.
Other links that debunk Lomborg
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/
A whole website devoted to debunking Bjorn Lomborg's work.
Joseph Romm - Debunking Bjorn Lomborg Part 1 http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/13/105130/672
Debunking Bjorn Lomborg Part 2 http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/14/142514/357
Debunking Bjorn Lomborg Part 3 http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/17/151133/245
NY Times aricle by Andy Revkin on Lomborg's book.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940CE5DB123EF93BA35752C0A9659C8B63
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/bjorn-lomborg-admits-his-intellectual-bankruptcy/
http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2009/03/09/lomborg-yet-again-tries-to-mislead-on-slr-gets-taken-to-the-woodshed-by-rahmstorf/
In 1991, Western Fuels Association(coal) paid $250,000 to have a video produced, which they called "The Greening of Planet Earth". This video was shown around Washington extensively in an effort to undermine policy making aimed at mitigating global warming. It was similar to the writings of Arthur Robinson of Oregon Petition infamy, in that it sought to paint a picture of a greener more lush world as a result of industrialization and increased CO2 emissions. There is no doubt that some areas might enjoy increased crop yields as a result of increased CO2 and warmer temperatures, but this would be short lived, and ignores every other negative consequence of global warming, like devestating impact on crop yields in much larger areas of the world. To use this as an argument against taking action to reduce CO2 emissions is downright dishonest.
And it still misses the point that it is the rate of change that is so dangerous. (See skeptic argument section below.)
Western Fuels Association created the World Climate Review magazine in an attempt to counter the mainstream view of climate change, they had the help of Pat Michaels, Robert Balling, Fred Singer.
Their Greening the Earth video had Sherwood Idso as narrator and featured Richard Lindzen.
ICE (The Information Councel on the Environment) was founded in 1991 by a group of coal and utility companies to launch a propaganda campaign to convince people that global warming was only a theory and not a scientific fact. According to Ross Gelbspan in his book "The Heat is On",
they targeted "older less educated men" and "young low income women" in electoral districts where coal powers the electricity. The plan was to use Robert Balling, Fred Singer and Pat Michaels in media interviews, op ed pieces etc.
After using misleading ads in newspapers with the lamest examples of skeptic arguments, ICE was exposed by some environmental groups, which put an end to the group.
This handful of dissenting scientists, has gotten equal time with congress, and with the media out of all proportion to the weight their opinions carry in the scientific community. This, despite the fact that they are paid by the single largest entity in the world, with a stake in denying global warming -the fossil fuel industry.
Pat Michaels received over $165,000 over a five year period in the 90s from the fossil fuel industry. Michaels' books and other publications are funded by the coal industry.
Robert Balling and his associates received $300,000 from the fossil fuel industry in the 90s. He recieved $50,000 from mining company Cyprus Minerals. Cyprus is the largest funder of an extreme anti environmental group called Wise Use. Cyprus also gave money to Pat Michaels. Balling has received money from the German coal industry and the British coal industry as well.
Ballings book "The Heated Debate" was funded by a right wing think tank(Pacific Research Institute) whose goal is the elimination of environmental regulations.
Kuwait funded his Arabic edition of the book.
Only under oath have either Michaels or Balling disclosed who funds them. Disclosure of funding is normally considered mandatory in science, for obvious reasons.
Singer clung to his claim that CFCs weren't harming the ozone layer in the atmosphere, even after the scientific evidence became unassailable, and a Noble prize was awarded to three scienists who dug up the evidence, and even after CFCs were banned and the ozone layer hole mostly closed up as a result. He is funded by Exxon, Unocal, Shell, Atlantic Richfield, Sun Oil and the Reverand Sun Myung Moon.
Richard Lindzen doesn't dispute that CO2 emissions contribute to global warming, but he believes it won't be that bad. Lindzen is the most credible of the well known skeptic scientists and has the best scienitific credentials of the bunch. His main difference with the IPCC is centered around the issue of water vapor as a feedback mechanism, which he believes is self limiting.
Lindzen's theory was that convection in the atmosphere would move water vapor into the upper atmosphere, where it would dry out and stop amplifying the greenhouse effect.
Satellite and baloon observations have shown this not to be the case. Lindzen subsequently withdrew this theory. Four years later, he tried to use the same argument. He is on the advisory board of the George C. Marshal institute, an extreme right wing group that seeks to discredit the IPCC and it's findings.
He has made false accusations against leading figures in the IPCC, accusations that have been proven false.
Interestingly, Lindzen has also criticized fellow skeptics, Pat Michaels and Robert Balling. In a conversation that author Ross Gelbspan describes in his book "The Heat is On", Lindzen tells him that Michaels comes to the climate debate from the "scientific backwaters of climatology- he doesn't really know physics like he should". And he said Ballings had a crude understanding of climate dynamics. Gelbspan describes Lindzen as someone with the most extreme political ideology, that is decidedly anti-environmental.
Obviously, the fact that a scientist is connected with an industry, doesn't necessarily mean that his science or his opinions aren't his own. But are you starting to see a pattern here? Where are the well known skeptical climate scientists who aren't funded by the fossil fuel industry? Notice how the same names come up over and over again?
Most of the debate about global warming has taken place in the United States. It was almost uniquely American, until Pat Michaels, Robert Balling and Fred Singer helped found the skeptic organization, ESEF, in Europe in 1996. The ESEF takes the same absurd position as OSIM, the group who issued the Oregon Petition . They want you to think global warming will be good for you.
Those three skeptics sure get around, don't they?
Chris Mooney May/June 2005 Issue- As The World Burns -for the full article go to:Forty public policy groups have this in common: They seek to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat. And they all get money from ExxonMobil.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2005/05/some_like_it_hot.html
And how else, but by virtue of the fossil fuel industry's influence in Washington, could it possibly be, that Congress, during congressional hearings before the House Science committee, gave more weight to the opinion of Pat Michaels than to that of their own scientists at NOAA, Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, and a co-chairman and lead author of the IPCC's 1995 report? Well, they say Michaels has a charming personality. I'm sure.
Pat Michaels was pitted against Jerry Mahlman, Chairman of NASA's Mission to Planet Earth Scientific Advisory Committee, and director of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
They were questioned by Representative Rohrabacher (R CA), who by his own words doesn't know the difference between carbohydrates, hydrocarbons or CO2. He grilled Malhlman, and didn't listen to anything he said, then gave a free ride to Pat Michaels, praising him for his contribution. Mahlman had the disadvantage of talking in unemotional, factual scientific terms, which Rohrabacher couldn't care less about.
Scientists are not usually trained in public speaking. As a rule, they are not skilled debaters, and are at a disadvantage when debating media savvy skeptic mouthpieces, who are not really interested in truth, so much as winning the hearts and minds of an audience, and advancing the political agenda of their fossil fuel paymasters. Real scientists tend to understate conclusions and speak in terms of probabilities of outcomes, which to the untrained ear, make it sound like they are unsure of the science. This is all people like Rohrabacher need to hear, as they percieve this as a weakness to be exploited.
Robert Watson
lead author 1995 IPCC report on climate change impacts:
Senior scientist of White House Office of Science and Technology
Elected Chairman of IPCC by unanimous vote in 1996.
He was pitted against Robert Balling who out and out lied about what science knew about rising temperatures in the Arctic, claiming temperature there hadn't risen in the last 50 years. In fact, NOAA had found temperatures at 9 Arctic stations in Alaska had increased by 5.5 C (9 F) over thirty years. Soil temperature had increased 2-5 C. Rohrabacher dismissed outright whatever Watson had to say, and only gave credence to Balling's testimony
This is the same group from Congress who fought against the moratorium on CFCs which damage the ozone layer of the atmosphere. And of course Fred Singer, who they can always depend on to testify against mainstream science, and not necessarily in the best interest of the public, but in the interests of tobacco, chemical companies and the fossil fuel industry, was there to help them.
If you read Ross Gelbspan's book "The Heat is On" you will see that far from the mainstream scientists being the alarmists, it is the skepics like Michaels and Singer. In Congressional testimony, scientists like NOAA's Mahlman and Watson of the IPCC, are conservative and cautious in all their statements, not making bold claims and sweeping generalizations, which is in direct contrast to the testimonies of the skeptics.
But these Congressmen listened with their minds already made up. They never deviated from the script. Rohrabacher, who has no grasp of science whatsoever, showed nothing but contempt for the testimony of Mahlman, and Watson, valuing his own ignorant opinion over theirs.
Science fiction writer Michael Crichton was even given more credence than the distinguished scientists from NOAA, NASA IPCC etc. Senator Inhofe invited this "climate expert" to testify before the Environment and Public Works committee. There is apparently no difference between science fiction and actual science in Inhofe's confused mind.
Crichton wrote a novel called "State of Fear" that portrayed the whole global warming issue as cooked up to raise money for scientists. See the Skeptic Arguments section for why this is an absurd accusation.
Crichton is thoroughly debunked here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74
More on Inhofe and Crichton here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=188
Remember these names. They are some of the anti science congressman who should be voted out of office at the first oppurtunity.
Sen Inhofe, Representatives Tom De Lay, Dana Rohrabacher, John Doolittle, Robert Walker
This disinformation campaign has little to do with science and much to do with political ideology and corporate interests. People like Morano are nothing but right wing mouthpieces and strategists. That is their only motivation. It is transparently obvious to what lengths the tobacco industry went to hide, deny and play down the dangers of cigarette smoke, yet deniers can't seem to imagine the same kind of agenda when it comes to the fossil fuel industry, which has an even larger financial stake in denying scientific evidence. The fossil fuel industry makes the tobacco industry look like a mom and pop grocery store by comparison. It's the biggest economic enterprise in the history of the world. And it isn't going to give up easy.
Can you say gullible and ideologically blinded?
This is how the blinding occurs.
"Why Climate Denialists are Blind to Facts and Reason: The Role of Ideology"
by Johnny Rook
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/12/143145/743/173/513430Your adversary will deny the facts, cherry pick the scientific evidence for bits of data that, taken out of context, support his/her denialist view, or drag out long-debunked counter-arguments in the hope that they are unfamiliar to you and that you will not be able to refute them. If you succeed in countering all of his arguments he will most likely reword them and start all over again.
The answer is simply that you are operating off of a mistaken premise. You think that the question of whether or not climate change is real and has an anthropogenic (human) cause is a question to be answered by application of an open mind, research, facts, and critical thinking. Isn't that how scientists approach these problems? They're skeptical and critique each others work, discarding ideas which fail to stand up to scrutiny by their colleagues and replacing them with ones that better describe the facts.
Denialists, however, have no interest in facts except as weapons in an ideological struggle. They don't even care if "facts" are correct or not, since their intention is not to establish that something is true or false, but rather to win a battle in an ideological war.
I'm not talking about people who are skeptical only because they are uninformed about the issue. Nor, am I talking about scientists who disagree with other scientists over the details of global warming.
For conservative/libertarian ideologues who compose the overwhelming majority of denialists, Climaticide is just such a case. If a conservative/libertarian ideologue were to accept global warming as real then he/she would be forced to admit that the problem is so big and so complex that government action is required to deal with it. But for an conservative/libertarian ideologue that is impossible because he/she believes that government is the cause of ALL problems and that the solution to all problems is "freedom".
Denialists frequently make this attitude explicit when they accuse the "liberals" concerned about climate change of having invented it as an excuse to expand government. The latest version of this tactic that I've encountered is that none of the science in support of global warming need be taken seriously because it is the product of government-paid scientists who are only doing their bureaucratic masters' bidding, apparently forgetting that the current "masters" are themselves Climaticide denialists. (Bush was President when he wrote this)
Government science is corrupt science because it's government science. "Scientists" in the pay of the oil and gas industries on the other hand are free of this corruption because they are doing science for the capitalist heroes who defend our "freedom".
And they call the scientists alarmists!
Climatologist James HansenThe disinformation campaign today borders on crimes against humanity. We do know the consequences of inaction.
Religous fundamentalism plays a part for some climate change skeptics.
In the words of Edward Blick, Professor Emeritus of the Mewbourne School of Petroleum and Geological Engineering, Universtity of Oklahoma, who is on both Inhofe's list and the list of evolution deniers from the Discovery Institute.
The predecessors of today's unbelievers replaced the Holy Bible's book of Genesis with Darwin's Origin of the Species. Now with the help of Al Gore and the United Nations they are trying to replace the Holy Bible's book of Revelation with the U.N.'s report Anthropogenic Global Warming.
I think the following pretty much sums up the denier position.
posted in a comment by Phila 1/15/08 at: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/01/the_australians_war_on_science_33.php#moreThe current stance among the denialists of my acquaintance is that global warming, for which no evidence exists, is part of a harmless natural cycle that will increase agricultural yields and save lives, unless we try to do something about it, which is a) impossible; and b) pointless, because the climate has actually been cooling this whole time, so there. Which proves that the entire thing is the invention of unregenerate Marxists searching for post-USSR relevance.
Charles DarwinIgnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge
Skeptic Arguments:
The problem with arguing with skeptics is that they continually repeat arguments after they have been thoroughly disproven by science.
Michael Tobis Ph.D. - University of Texas Institute for GeophysicsIt's easy to refute all the contrarian arguments, but that seems to have very little effect on how commonly they are believed. Refuted arguments seem to live on in the public imagination.
Australia's chief climatiologist Michael Coughlan had this to say about skeptic arguments.
We have produced rebuttals of all of these arguments - they have all been addressed. But they just keep trotting them out. No matter how many times you tell them they're wrong, they just keep going. The general approach seems to be - if we keep banging away at an untruth, people will start to believe it.
Roy Spencer and John Christy are both well known scientists among the climate change denier crowd . These two single handedly gave deniers amunition for a skeptic argument, about whether satellite data confirmed the global warming that the surface data showed. Deniers used this argument for a decade, encouraged by Spencer and Christy. It is well known that Spencer and Christy made serious and numerous errors in their data analysis. They were wrong. But this skeptic argument is still repeated all the time by deniers. Read more here: http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/22/should-you-believe-anything-john-christy-or-roy-spencer-say/
and more of Spencer's miscalculations and blatant mis-reprepresentaion of facts to reach an invalid conclusion.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/how-to-cook-a-graph-in-three-easy-lessons/langswitch_lang/in
Here you'll find a decent debunking of many skeptic arguments and myths.
http://techskeptic.blogspot.com/2007/04/techs-post-on-global-warming.html
These are the same points brought up 10-20 years ago and are truly unchanged and tired. They were excellent points back then. However anyone still using these points are sadly and terribly not up to date with their data.
Here are some common arguments which are repeated hundreds of times a day on the internet. Maybe you believe some of them. None of them are true.
Argument:
It's so cold this winter in Peoria (fill in the location of your choice), what happened to global warming?
Answer:
That's not climate, that's weather. One week, month, winter or year are way too short to be meaningful, when talking about long term global climate change. Climate is measured over time periods of 30-100 years, not year to year fluctuations.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/10The chaotic nature of weather means that no conclusion about climate can ever be drawn from a single data point, hot or cold. The temperature of one place at one time is just weather, and says nothing about climate, much less climate change, much less global climate change.
You wouldn't notice the difference in temperature that scientists say has happened over the past 100 years. They only say the average global temperature has risen 0.8 C degrees in 100 years, or 1.44 F. They didn't say winter would be 10 degrees warmer at your house this winter. Nevertheless, that 1.44 F rise is enough to melt the ice caps and glaciers and have other effects, like earlier spring, changing weather patterns, disrupted feeding and migration of many species, acidification of the oceans, etc. In the Arctic, the temp has risen over 3 C degrees (5.4 F).
Argument:
Scientists in the 1970s were predicting global cooling. Why should we believe their warnings of global warming?
Answer:
Global Cooling in the 70s was NOT the issue. Seven scientific papers predicted cooling. The lead scientist recanted three years later, saying he had underestimated the amount of CO2 in the atomosphere. At the same time there were 42 scientific papers predicting global warming - AGW. So there were six times as many scientific papers predicting global warming as there were for global cooling. But the popular mass media got a hold of the cooling story and publicized it. That's why skeptics need to learn not to look to the popular press for their information. It rarely reflects the views of real climate scientists and certainly not the vast majority who support the IPCC findings.
Argument:
It's the sun or cosmic radiation.
Answer:
This has been completely disproven.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htmThe correlation between sun and climate ended in the 70's when the modern global warming trend began. "The most commonly cited study by skeptics is a study by scientists from Finland and Germany that finds the sun has been more active in the last 60 years than anytime in the past 1150 years (Usoskin 2005). They also found temperatures closely correlate to solar activity.
However, a crucial finding of the study was the correlation between solar activity and temperature ended around 1975. At that point, temperatures rose while solar activity stayed level. This led them to conclude "during these last 30 years the solar total irradiance, solar UV irradiance and cosmic ray flux has not shown any significant secular trend, so that at least this most recent warming episode must have another source.
You read that right. The study most quoted by skeptics actually concluded the sun can't be causing global warming. Ironically, the evidence that establishes the sun's close correlation with the Earth's temperature in the past also establishes it's blamelessness for global warming today.
More on this subject at these links:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/09/30/study-suns-contribution-to-recent-warming-is-negligible/
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/09/sunspots-vs-global-temperature.html
http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/12/scientist-our-conclusions-were-misinterpreted-by-inhofe-co2-but-not-the-sun-is-significantly-correlated-with-temperature-since-1850/
There has been no change in solar activity or cosmic radiation that would explain the warming between the 70s and today. None. In fact, if anything they have been in decline. And why did warming speed up after 1975? It was partly because we cleaned up our emissions of sulpher oxides and other "aerosols", which counteract the warming effect of greenhouse gases like CO2 and methane. These aerosols block incoming sunlight, whereas, greenhouse gases block outgoing thermal radiation, or infrared. This resulted in a speeding up of the warming with the effect of CO2 dominating. In the U.S., we drastically increased our use of coal in the 70s, as domestic oil supplys fell. Oil now only accounts for a tiny fraction of U.S. electric generating capacity. Coal plants emit more CO2 than any other form of power generation.
Argument:
Scientists are in it for the money, including grant money.
Answer:
-RayPierre Ph.D.The problem with this argument is that climate scientists aren't asking you to give them more money. They are asking you to fix the problem. Climate scientists simply do not have the expertise and training to develop nuclear fusion, the next generation of solar panels, or other forms of alternative energy. If we develop those technologies then money would go to people who have nothing to do with climate research. Climatologists also aren't in the position to benefit from carbon taxes. So this argument has some serious flaws. "There is not really a lot of money in science. To paint scientists as greedy and self interested is absurd. "Money and perks! Hahahaha. How in the world did I miss out on those when I was a lead author for the Third Assessment report? Working on IPCC is a major drain on ones' time, and probably detracts from getting out papers that would help to get grants (not that we make money off of grants either, since those of us at national labs and universities are not paid salary out of grants for the most part.) We do it because it's work that has to be done. It's grueling and demanding, and not that much fun, and I can assure everybody that there is no remuneration involved...
- William Connolley Ph.D.One of the many absurd arguments against global warming is that scientists are only in it for the money.... The idea that there are vast wealth and perks to be made from climate science is wrong, and would raise a laugh (albeit a rather bitter one) from anyone "inside"
Learn about ten other flaws with this argument here:Scientists are competitive. It doesn't pay to jump on bandwagons.
Each individual scientist must compete for funding. The best way to advance your career within the scientific community is to prove everyone else wrong. It is their job to poke holes in each others arguments. The fact that nobody can come up with a legitimate theory that debunks the consensus on climate change speaks volumes about the strength of the evidence.
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/funding.html
Argument:
It's volcanos
Answer:
Man releases 100-150 times more greenhouse gases than volcanos do. Volcanos are also big emitters of sulpher oxides, which cause cooling. Scientists had a good chance to study the effects of volcanoes when the large eruption in the Phillipines happened in the 90s.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/223957/72
Argument:
If AGW is real, why did they change the name from "global warming" to "climate change"?
Answer:
The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded and named in 1988. That's twenty years ago. The term "climate change" is hardly new. Scientists have been using the terms climate change and global warming interchangably since the mid 70s.
As is pointed out in the next Argument, the threat from global warming is largely in the rate of change, and the changes that may bring to climates around the world.
Some will be dryer, some wetter, for instance. The change in timing of seasons, like the beginning of spring, is already too fast for many species to adapt to. Hurricanes are expected to be more intense because of warmer sea water, which they thrive on. So the term climate change more accurately describes what we are seeing and are likely to see in the future. This goes along with what I said in the argument about it being cold in Peoria.
Argument:
The earth has had much warmer climates in the past. What's so special about the current climate? Anyway, it seems like a generally warmer world will be better.
Answer:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/1/...I don't know if there is a meaningful way to define an "optimum" average temperature for planet earth. Surely it is better now for all of us than it was 20,000 years ago when so much land was trapped beneath ice sheets. Perhaps any point between the recent climate and the extreme one we may be heading for, with tropical forests inside the arctic circle, is as good as any other. Maybe it's even better with no ice caps anywhere.It doesn't matter. The critical issue is not what the temperature is, or may be, or will be. The critical issue is how fast it is moving.
Rapid change is the real danger. Human habits and infrastructure are suited to particular weather patterns and sea levels, as are ecosystems and animal behaviors. The rate at which global temperature is rising today is likely unique in the history of our species.
This kind of sudden change is rare even in geological history, though perhaps not unprecedented. So the planet may have been through similar things before -- that sounds reassuring, right?
Not so much. Once you look at the impact similar changes had on biodiversity at the time, the existence of historical precedent becomes anything but reassuring. Rapid climate change is the prime suspect in most mass extinction events, including the Great Dying some 250 million years ago, in which 90% of all life went extinct.
Argument:
It's water vapour, a powerful greenhouse gas.
Answer:
Water vapour acts as a feed back mechanism, amplifying the effects of CO2. It is not a cause of global warming, but amplifys it, as more water evaporates at higher temperatures.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htmWater vapour is indeed the most dominant greenhouse gas. The radiative forcing for water is around 75 W/m2 while carbon dioxide contributes 32 W/m2 (Kiehl 1997). Water vapour is also the dominant positive feedback in our climate system and a major reason why temperature is so sensitive to changes in CO2.
Unlike external forcings such as CO2 which can be added to the atmosphere, the level of water vapour in the atmosphere is a function of temperature. Water vapour is brought into the atmosphere via evaporation - the rate depends on the ocean and air temperature and is governed by the Clausius-Clapeyron relation.
If extra water is added to the atmosphere, it condenses and falls as rain or snow within a week or two. Similarly, if somehow moisture was sucked out of the atmosphere, evaporation would restore water vapour levels to 'normal levels' in short time.
Water Vapour as a positive feedback As water vapour is directly related to temperature, it's also a positive feedback - in fact, the largest positive feedback in the climate system (Soden 2005). As temperature rises, evaporation increases and more water vapour accumulates in the atmosphere. As a greenhouse gas, the water absorbs more heat, further warming the air and causing more evaporation.
How does water vapour fit in with CO2 emissions? When CO2 is added to the atmosphere, as a greenhouse gas it has a warming effect. This causes more water to evaporate and warm the air more to a higher (more or less) stabilized level. So CO2 warming has an amplified effect, beyond a purely CO2 effect."
How much does water vapour amplify CO2 warming? Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 would warm the globe around 1°C. Taken on its own, water vapour feedback roughly doubles the amount of CO2 warming. When other feedbacks are included (eg - loss of albedo due to melting ice), the total warming from a doubling of CO2 is around 3°C (Held 2000).
Argument:
Al Gore got it wrong.
An Inconvenient Truth was criticized by a high court judge who highlighted "nine scientific errors":
Answer:
This has been grossly exaggerated. To start with, Al Gore is not a scientist. He is trying to educate the public about what the scientists have found. The judge is not a scientist either.
The judge disputed his claim that Himalayan glaciers are melting. The judge was wrong. One section, in the Karakoram mountains was growing, but overall, Himalyan glaciers have been shown to be retreating. According to satellite measurements, they have shrunk 21% between 1962 and 2007.
Gore attributed hurricane Katrina to global warming. While no one hurricane can be specifically attributed to global warming, most climate scientists think hurricanes will intensify because of warmer ocean waters. They predict that these strong hurricanes, like we've seen in recent years, may become the norm in the future.
Gore was wrong on the melting of Mt Kilamanjaro glacier, as it is thought to be a direct result of deforestation in the area. The study that showed deforestation as the culprit came out after Gore's movie, so he could not have known about it.
The movie spoke of glacial ice melt shutting down the ocean conveyor belt of currents, as depicted in a recent movie. This could cause a deep freeze in northern Europe and the eastern North American seaboard, if the warm Gulf Stream stopped. The judge was correct in saying that the IPCC thought this was unlikely. That's true, most scientists say it is unlikely, but not impossible.
The movie said that coral reefs were bleaching because of global warming. The judge said separating the impacts of stresses due to climate change from other stresses, such as over-fishing and pollution, was difficult. There are two issues here. Scientists say warmer ocean waters cause coral bleaching. Acidification is another issue.
It is well known that acidification of ocean waters is threatening coral reefs. The ocean is absorbing excess CO2, which is dissolved in ocean water, forming carbonic acid. Coral and the shells of shellfish are made of alkaline compounds that depend on the pH of the water being within certain bounds. A recent study found that we have lost 19% of coral in 20 years! Species that rely on coral reefs account for 25% of life in the sea.
Another article on ocean acidification here:
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/02/02/tech-acidic-ocean.html
Al Gore is accused of exaggerating possible sea level rise, based on the melting of Greenland's ice cap. The judge said Gore's suggestion that sea levels could rise by 7 meters was alarmist and not in line with the IPCC's view.
http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/10/al-gores-inconvenient-truth.htmlGore does not explicitly say that Greenland's ice will disappear in the immediate future, merely that coastal areas will be dramatically flooded very soon. That point aside, there is, as Burton says, some debate over how quickly the ice caps and Greenland in particular could melt. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report predicts a sea-rise of up to 59 centimetres by 2100, but explicitly states that this excludes any water contributed by melting in Greenland and Antarctica because of the huge uncertainties involved. Many scientists agree that neither is likely to melt significantly before the end of the century. One exception is James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, US. Hansen strongly believes we may see several metres of sea level rise by 2100.
Recent studies have shown that the Greenland ice cap is indeed melting faster than previously reported.
Climate scientists often point out that the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC literature are minimal and don't take into account any melting of Greenland or Antarctic ice caps. Nor do these estimates take into account possible acceleration of warming from factors like loss of albedo(reflective power) near the poles. And they don't include the amplifying effects from methane and CO2 escaping from melting tundra. The ice on Greenland alone is enough to cause a 7 meter sea level rise. And just because it may not melt in this century doesn't give much assurance for following centuries, if the warming goes unchecked.
It's been two years since the latest IPCC report, the 4th Assessment. Climate scientists are now projecting sea level rise twice that of the 2007 report. They estimate sea level rise of one to two meters by 2100 on our current path. One meter sea level rise would devastate Bangladesh for starters. And sea levels would continue to rise after 2100.
And here's the judge's conclusion. "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate" and "substantially founded upon scientific research and fact."
And the judge never said Gore had 9 errors. He said there were 9 points that some skeptics disagreed with and that "might" be errors.
For more analysis of Gore's movie, by climate scientists, see these links.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/convenient-untruths/
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/10/an_error_is_not_the_same_thing.php
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/3/12/233737/021
http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/02/al-gore-no-exaggeration-roger-pielke-andy-revkin/
http://climateprogress.org/2009/03/02/al-gore-no-exaggeration-roger-pielke-andy-revkin-2/
Argument:
Global warming has stopped, we are now cooling.
Answer:
This is a common argument currently. It is also wrong.
It's most common form is where the year 1998 is used as a starting point, then saying that the earth has cooled for the last ten years or at least stopped warming.
First of all, they pick a year as a starting point that was an anomally for two reasons. 1998 featured the most powerful El Nino event in the last century. El Nino years are known to be warmer for much of the world. Warm water in the southern Pacific ocean releases great quantities of heat into the atmosphere.
We are now in a La Nina event, known to produce cooler temperatures, when cold water from deep in the Pacific, wells up to the suface, cooling the atmosphere.
And 1998 was also at or near the peak of a well known eleven year solar cycle. We are now at the bottom of that cycle. Both of these contributed to 1998 being very warm, in comparison. Using data like this in comparisons is known as cherry picking; intentionally using an anomaly to skew the data, in order to back up your claims.
Nevertheless, this is what NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies climatologists have to say.
2006 was the 4th warmest year.Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth's second warmest year in a century.
The eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.
http://skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-january-2007-to-january-2008.htmCurrently, the Pacific Ocean is in a La Niña phase. During La Niña, cold waters upwell to cool large areas of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This has the effect of cooling the atmosphere. During the La Niña episode of 1999, global temperatures dropped around 0.5°C
In case you don't think that 0.5C is a significant temporary cooling from La Nina, scientists are only saying global temperature average has increased about 0.8C in the last 100 years or so.
Here's another way of looking at it. Anyone who has ever studied or used stock charts knows what trendlines and moving averages are. During a long bull market for instance, the chart will have many fluctuations along the way, but as long as stock price stays above a trendline, the bull trend is ongoing. The charts of earth's atmospheric temperature data have not broken the uptrend at all. This year was not as hot as it would have been without La Nina cooling the atmosphere.
And it was still one of the warmest on record.
NASA temperature records show 2005 as the warmest year on record. They show 2007 tied with 1998 for second warmest.
Here's a chart of global temperature from NASA's GISS
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
Excellent spoof/demonstration of how deniers cook up their phony claims, like that the earth is cooling now.
http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/02/14/global-cooling-proof-that-summer-2008-never-happened/
Since this is such a popular skeptic argument presently, here are more links on supposed cooling of late.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/07/the_australians_war_on_science_16.php
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/index.php?p=632
http://climateprogress.org/2008/08/21/debunking-the-myth-global-warming-stopped-in-1998/
http://climateprogress.org/2008/07/08/yes-the-globe-is-warming-but-how-fast/
http://www.desmogblog.com/skeptics-need-chill-about-global-cooling
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1866862,00.html
Argument:
Anthropogenic global warming is not proven. It's just a theory.
Answer:
People who say this don't understand how science works. Generally speaking, in science there is no such thing as absolute proof. If you want proof you are in the wrong discipline. Absolute proof only happens in mathematics. In science, there is either enough evidence to support a theory, or there isn't. If there's enough evidence, the theory is considered valid.
Gravity is a theory.
Evolution is a theory.
We know black holes exist, there is ample evidence to validate the theory, but much is unknown
There is overwhelming evidence that the AGW theory is correct. The IPCC for instance, says the chance that the theory is correct is over 90%. They don't claim absolute proof.
The scienific evidence that cigarette smoke is bad for you is well accepted and demonstrated. We generally trust this as good science. But not everything is known about the biochemical mechanism which are involved in the body getting sick as a result. So should we then reject the overwhelming scientific evidence becuase it isn't 100% proven? This is what we are supposed to do with climate science, according to the deniers.
One of the founders of quantum physics, Neils Bohr, once said: "anyone who thinks they understand quantum physics just doesn't get it" yet quantum physics is used all the time, in electronics for example.
To give another example, gravity is a pretty well understood phenomenon. But no one knows what gravity is. The concept of gravity changed radically from the ideas of Issac Newton, with the introduction of the relativity theory of Albert Einstein. Yet we use it everyday, and it was useful before Einstein's theory of relativity, which changed the whole concept. It's a valid theory, it's useful. You wouldn't want to test it by jumping off a tall building.
Newton's theories of mechanics have made the modern world, modern science possible, enabling much greater understanding of astronomy, and enabling industrialization, etc. Yet modern theoretical physics, like quantum physics, describe a universe that is far more complex and far more mysterious than the simple 3 dimensional cause and effect universe Newton imagined. Newtons laws break down in the world of subatomic particles.
But you still wouldn't want to jump off that tall building to prove the inconclusiveness of Newton's laws of physics. Are you willing to risk the future of civilization to test the theory of global warming?
I have avoided doom and gloom talk in this article because it can be counter-productive. It can cause some people to go into denial, and skeptics tend to dismiss it as exaggeration (I'm not claiming there's been no exaggeration). On the other hand, if you think the IPCC has exaggerated, you are completely misinformed. If anything, the somewhat political nature of the IPCC, which skeptics use as an argument against it's conclusions, has served to water down the scientific evidence, not exaggerate it. Current observations support this entirely. Observations have been consistently worse than what the IPCC predicted just a short time ago.
To a certain extent, the denial and skepticism are one and the same thing. It can be a lot more comfortable to dismiss the scientific evidence, than to face the reality of what it might mean. For one thing, people are afraid their lifestyle will be interrupted. If we do nothing about global warming, the idea of a lifestyle might become a quaint notion from a bygone gilded age.
I am much more interested in solutions and gaining the political will to use them. In fact, it should be seen as an opportunity. That's what my article - "Renewable Energy Potential and Disinformation" is about.
Suppose the vast majority of the world's astronomers told you there was a 90% chance that an asteroid or comet was on a collision course with the earth, but we had the technology to do something about it before it hit, if we acted right away. Would you be arguing about balancing that with economic interests? Would you be questioning whether such actions were worth it economically? Would you refuse to support the efforts because it meant some cooperation with other countries? Would you oppose the efforts because it meant government involvement and action, which went against your political beliefs about small government?
There are some concepts that the public needs to grasp about climate change. One is the idea of tipping points or threshholds. The reason that scientists are recommending immediate steps to combat warming, is that they are concerned that certain tipping points will be reached, beyond which doing anything about global warming will be increasingly difficult and expensive. Worst case scenario is that we wait so long that we can't slow it down. One such tipping point could trigger methane gas and CO2 being released from melting land based tundra in the arctic. Methane is a stronger greeenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though it doesn't stay in the air nearly as long as CO2. (CO2 can remain in the upper atmosphere for 200 years.)
Another concept is time lags. CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere now, will have effects decades from now. The ocean is a huge heat sink, that can absorb large amounts of heat without it's temperature rising that much. This tends to lower the rate of global warming. This thermal inertia, or dampening effect, causes a lag of decades. That would mean we are seeing effects from emissions of decades ago. More on this here: http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/9/223615/983
A report at the recent AGU meeting in San Francisco said methane is already bubbling up from the arctic sea floor as a result of melting sea ice and warmer water.
Another report at the AGU meeting said arctic sea ice is retreating 15-20 years ahead of what was predicted just a few years ago.
And another report said that Antartica is indeed warming overall, and not just on the western penninsula, as previously thought.
http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/22/another-agu-stunner-evidence-that-antarctica-has-warmed-significantly-over-past-50-years/
These findings all reinforce the idea that we don't have time to waste. Global warming is not just some future problem, it's here and is already effecting humans.
The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at the start of the industrial revolution was 280 parts per million( ppm). That was roughly the concentration for at least the past 420,000 years, if not longer. It is now at about 387 ppm. That's an increase of over 35% in about 150 years. If we take no steps toward mitigating man's impact, it will be at least 550 ppm by the end of the century and maybe as much as a tripling of CO2 from pre industrial levels, or close to 1000 ppm. Irregardless of the complex science of climate change, common sense would tell you that messing with the balance of gases in the atmosphere even by the current 35%, might not be such a good idea.
The mainstream climate scientists could be wrong. There is always that possibility. In fact, let's hope they are. However, we have to weigh the possible outcomes of following their advice or ignoring it. Many economic studies have been done, 25 of them peer reviewed, that forecast a slight economic loss over the next 20 years from climate change mitigation. A few studies have even predicted a slight gain. One study predicted that GDP would reach $23 trillion in April rather than January of some year in that time frame. If we assume the 0.1% loss in GDP over the next 20 years from one major study, and compare that with the consequences if we take no action and the scientists are right, there is no comparison. In the first case we end up with energy independence and a much cleaner environment and new industries, but at a slight economic cost. In the second case, well, I don't even want to go there. But I will leave you with this one little possible consequence. NOAA just released a report projecting drought in the southwestern U.S., and many other parts of the world, that would last 1000 years, if we don't curb emissions.
For a detailed analysis of the likely outcomes according to climate models, assuming we either: ( 1.) act now decisively, (2.) act now but not decisively enough, (3.) wait too long to act on global warming, (4.) do nothing:
see the following article:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/12/21/hadley-study-warns-of-catastrophic-5%c2%b0c-warming-by-2100-on-current-emissions-path/
I've covered some of the common skeptic arguments.
New Scientist covers most of them at:
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11654 "Climate Change-A guide for the perplexed."
as do these sites:
http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/sceptic_guide/index.php?page=7
Sources on the internet:
The Scientific Basis for Anthropogenic Climate Change http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2007/12...
The 2008 National Academy of Sciences Summary Brochure on Climate Change http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/clim...
http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?id=1630
The Royal Society "A Guide to Facts and Fictions about Climate Change"
http://www.logicalscience.com/climate_change/climate_change_intro.htm
An Introduction to Climate Change
http://www.logicalscience.com/ Logical Science
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/ NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
IPCC 4th Assesment Working Group 1 report
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faqIndex.html
IPCC 4th Assesment Working Group 1 Frequently Asked Questions
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science/
Union of Concerned Scientists
http://www.skepticalscience.com/ Skeptical Science
http://www.realclimate.org/ Climate Science from Climate Scientists
http://cce.890m.com/ The Global Warming Debate
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html
Read more!
