Global Warming Theorists Computers Hacked

[Guest Sundancefisher]

London Sunday Times...

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/envi...icle6936289.ece

 

November 29, 2009

 

The great climate change science scandal

Leaked emails have revealed the unwillingness of climate change scientists to engage in a proper debate with the sceptics who doubt global warmingJonathan Leake, Environment Editor

 

The storm began with just four cryptic words. “A miracle has happened,” announced a contributor to Climate Audit, a website devoted to criticising the science of climate change.

 

“RC” said nothing more — but included a web link that took anyone who clicked on it to another site, Real Climate.

 

There, on the morning of November 17, they found a treasure trove: a thousand or so emails sent or received by Professor Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

 

Jones is a key player in the science of climate change. His department’s databases on global temperature changes and its measurements have been crucial in building the case for global warming.

 

What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.

 

In one, Jones boasted of using statistical “tricks” to obliterate apparent declines in global temperature. In another he advocated deleting data rather than handing them to climate sceptics. And in a third he proposed organised boycotts of journals that had the temerity to publish papers that undermined the message.

 

It was a powerful and controversial mix — far too powerful for some. Real Climate is a website designed for scientists who share Jones’s belief in man-made climate change. Within hours the file had been stripped from the site.

 

Several hours later, however, it reappeared — this time on an obscure Russian server. Soon it had been copied to a host of other servers, first in Saudi Arabia and Turkey and then Europe and America.

 

What’s more, the anonymous poster was determined not to be stymied again. He or she posted comments on climate-sceptic blogs, detailing a dozen of the best emails and offering web links to the rest. Jones’s statistical tricks were now public property.

 

Steve McIntyre, a prominent climate sceptic, was amazed. “Words failed me,” he said. Another, Patrick Michaels, declared: “This is not a smoking gun; this is a mushroom cloud.”

 

Inevitably, the affair became nicknamed Climategate. For the scientists, campaigners and politicians trying to rouse the world to action on climate change the revelations could hardly have come at a worse time. Next month global leaders will assemble in Copenhagen to seek limits on carbon emissions. The last thing they need is renewed doubts about the validity of the science.

 

The scandal has also had a huge personal and professional impact on the scientists. “These have been the worst few days of my professional life,” said Jones. He had to call on the police for protection after receiving anonymous phone calls and personal threats.

 

Why should a few emails sent to and from a single research scientist at a middle-ranking university have so much impact? And most importantly, what does it tell us about the quality of the research underlying the science of climate change?

 

THE hacking scandal is not an isolated event. Instead it is the latest round of a long-running battle over climate science that goes back to 1990.

 

That was when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the group of scientists that advises governments worldwide — published its first set of reports warning that the Earth faced deadly danger from climate change. A centrepiece of that report was a set of data showing how the temperature of the northern hemisphere was rising rapidly.

 

The problem was that the same figures showed that it had all happened before. The so-called medieval warm period of about 1,000 years ago saw Britain covered in vineyards and Viking farmers tending cows in Greenland. For any good scientist this raised a big question: was the recent warming linked to humans burning fossil fuels or was it part of a natural cycle?

 

The researchers set to work and in 1999 a group led by Professor Michael Mann, a climatologist at Pennsylvania State University, came up with new numbers showing that the medieval warm period was not so important after all.

 

Some bits of the Atlantic may have been warm for a while, but the records suggested that the Pacific had been rather chilly over the same period — so on average there was little change.

 

Plotted out, Mann’s data turned into the famous “hockey stick” graph. It showed northern hemisphere temperatures as staying flat for hundreds of years and then rising steeply from 1900 until now. The implication was that this rise would continue, with potentially deadly consequences for humanity.

 

That vision of continents being hit by droughts and floods while the Arctic melts away has turned a scientific debate into a highly emotional and political one. The language used by “warmists” and sceptics alike has become increasingly polarised.

 

George Monbiot, widely respected as a writer on green issues, has branded doubters “climate deniers”, a phrase uncomfortably close to holocaust denial. Sceptics, particularly in America, have suggested that scientists who believe in climate change are part of a global left-wing conspiracy to divert billions of dollars into green technology.

 

A more cogent criticism is that there has been a reluctance to acknowledge dissent on the question of climate science. Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned green campaigner, has described the climate debate as “settled”. Yet the science, say critics, has not been tested to the limit. This is why the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia is so significant.

 

Its researchers have built up records of how temperatures have changed over thousands of years. Perhaps the most important is the land and sea temperature record for the world since the mid-19th century. This is the database that shows the “unequivocal” rise of 0.8C over the last 157 years on which Mann’s hockey stick and much else in climate science depend.

 

Some critics believe that the unit’s findings need to be treated with more caution, because all the published data have been “corrected” — meaning they have been altered to compensate for possible anomalies in the way they were taken. Such changes are normal; what’s controversial is how they are done. This is compounded by the unwillingness of the unit to release the original raw data.

 

David Holland, an engineer from Northampton, is one of a number of sceptics who believe the unit has got this process wrong. When he submitted a request for the figures under freedom of information laws he was refused because it was “not in the public interest”.

 

Others who made similar requests were turned down because they were not academics, among them McIntyre, a Canadian who runs the Climate Audit website.

 

A genuine academic, Ross McKitrick, professor of economics at the University of Guelph in Canada, also tried. He said: “I was rejected for an entirely different reason. The [unit] told me they had obtained the data under confidentiality agreements and so could not supply them. This was odd because they had already supplied some of them to other academics, but only those who support the idea of climate change.”

 

IT was against this background that the emails were leaked last week, reinforcing suspicions that scientific objectivity has been sacrificed. There is unease even among researchers who strongly support the idea that humans are changing the climate. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “Over the last decade there has been a very political battle between the climate sceptics and activist scientists.

 

“It seems to me that the scientists have lost touch with what they were up to. They saw themselves as in a battle with the sceptics rather than advancing scientific knowledge.”

 

Professor Mike Hulme, a fellow researcher of Jones at the University of East Anglia and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, said: “The attitudes revealed in the emails do not look good. The tribalism that some of the leaked emails display is something more usually associated with social organisation within primitive cultures; it is not attractive when we find it at work inside science.”

 

There could, however, be another reason why the unit rejected requests to see its data.

 

This weekend it emerged that the unit has thrown away much of the data. Tucked away on its website is this statement: “Data storage availability in the 1980s meant that we were not able to keep the multiple sources for some sites ... We, therefore, do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (ie, quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

 

If true, it is extraordinary. It means that the data on which a large part of the world’s understanding of climate change is based can never be revisited or checked. Pielke said: “Can this be serious? It is now impossible to create a new temperature index from scratch. [The unit] is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.”

 

WHERE does this leave the climate debate? While the overwhelming belief of scientists is that the world is getting warmer and that humanity is responsible, sceptical voices are increasing.

 

Lord Lawson, the Tory former chancellor, announced last week the creation of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a think tank, to “bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant”.

 

Lawson said: “Climate change is not being properly debated because all the political parties are on the same side, and there is an intolerance towards anybody who wants to debate it. It has turned climate change from being a political issue into a secular religion.”

 

The public are understandably confused. A recent poll showed that 41% accept as scientific fact that global warming is taking place and is largely man-made, while 32% believe the link is unproven and 15% said the world is not warming.

 

This weekend many of Jones’s colleagues were standing by him. Tim Lenton, professor of earth system science at UEA, said: “We wouldn’t have anything like the understanding of climate change that we do were it not for the work of Phil Jones and his colleagues. They have spent decades putting together the historical temperature record and it is good work.”

 

The problem is that, after the past week, both sceptics and the public will require even more convincing of that.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Flushing out the high priests of climate changeCharles Clover

 

Some future historian will enjoy the irony. The week before last the United States and China both stated that, yes, they finally buy the theory of man-made global warming. And a foot of rain fell on Cockermouth, a record downpour entirely consistent with predicted rainfall patterns. Cue — with immaculate timing — an explosion of sceptical triumphalism in the blogosphere, as emails containing exchanges between leading climatologists, stolen from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit, apparently “proved” that scientists had colluded to hide the fact that man-made global warming is a con.

 

At the hour when the heavens opened over Cumbria, the high priests and sages of the research unit were struggling to shield themselves from a hail of blows for allegedly using questionable methods to stand up their theories.

 

At first it was difficult to know who had come off the worst: the scientists whose emails were published, or the bloggers who vilified the outed academics, describing “climategate” as “the greatest scandal in modern science” and branding the research unit “disgraced”.

 

The science of climate change has become a lot more polarised over the past five years and last week it got decidedly worse, with the former chancellor Lord Lawson’s new think tank of sceptics and its outlying cavalry of angry bloggers and man-made global warming deniers furiously spurring on the debate.

 

One of the most absurd moments came when George Monbiot of The Guardian, a columnist normally strident in his view that climate change is the most important problem facing mankind, appointed himself judge, jury and executioner and called for Professor Phil Jones, head of the research unit, to resign.

 

Well, he doesn’t need to resign — yet. We need to know whether the unit has done anything wrong, which an independent review set up by the university will examine.

 

And while we are waiting for the result? The scientific establishment, in the form of the Royal Society, the research councils and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, needs to do a lot more thinking — not about Jones’s methods, but about its own.

 

The theft of emails is just another chapter in a sustained debate that has focused on Jones for some time — but we need to look beyond him. Freedom of information demands and requests for shared data often pursue the work of the most controversial scientists. The scientific establishment has no consensus on how to deal with such requests.

 

Is it right to withhold public interest data, with the excuse of commercial confidentiality of the meteorological institutes involved, which often own the information and want to profit from it? And were the scientists at the research unit right to refuse to give up, as alleged, data and the codes and algorithms needed to analyse them to bona-fide researchers who wanted to examine their statistical methods? That is perhaps the most damaging allegation that has emerged, because it suggests a deliberate attempt to hold up scientific progress.

 

This is not necessarily incriminating, but it is stupid. The testing of hypotheses in an adversarial manner often looks, close up, like cats fighting in a sack. You can hardly blame busy scientists who have spent their lives amassing a pile of data, which they have interpreted in their own way, for not wanting to release it to people who want to rubbish it. Still, release it they should, and it is up to the scientific establishment to set out better ground rules and insist on more openness. The problem is that establishment science has no means of engaging with outsiders in the blogging age. It needs to wake up.

 

As well as asking whether anything untoward has been going on in massaging the figures to make warming look more alarming, we should also resolve how best to defend from vexatious attacks evidence that has been accumulated over years. At the moment it’s just frustration and stonewalling all round. If you ask anyone associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change where the science is going, they tell you to wait for their next five-yearly assessment report.

 

No wonder the public is confused. No wonder journalists have a choice between waiting for the occasional tablet of stone from the keepers of the global warming flame, or joining the newer, hipper fraternity of bloggers who snigger about ManBearPig, the bogus global warming monster in South Park’s skit on Al Gore. This polarisation means that a considered view on global warming is much harder to achieve, so in the end people simply go for the belief that feels right for them.

 

Working scientists may be grumpy about the unfairness, but far higher standards are expected of them than of the rude blogger-sceptics who are crowing about the embarrassment.

 

Tough. They should get over it. If the high priests of global warming want to convince us that we could face a man-made rise of 4C in the global temperature this century, then they have to engage with their critics instead of hiding away in their ivory towers.

 

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle6936404.ece

[SupremeLeader]

Flushing out the high priests of climate changeCharles Clover

 

Some future historian will enjoy the irony. The week before last the United States and China both stated that, yes, they finally buy the theory of man-made global warming. And a foot of rain fell on Cockermouth, a record downpour entirely consistent with predicted rainfall patterns. Cue — with immaculate timing — an explosion of sceptical triumphalism in the blogosphere, as emails containing exchanges between leading climatologists, stolen from the University of East Anglia’s climatic research unit, apparently “proved” that scientists had colluded to hide the fact that man-made global warming is a con.

 

At the hour when the heavens opened over Cumbria, the high priests and sages of the research unit were struggling to shield themselves from a hail of blows for allegedly using questionable methods to stand up their theories.

 

At first it was difficult to know who had come off the worst: the scientists whose emails were published, or the bloggers who vilified the outed academics, describing “climategate” as “the greatest scandal in modern science” and branding the research unit “disgraced”.

 

The science of climate change has become a lot more polarised over the past five years and last week it got decidedly worse, with the former chancellor Lord Lawson’s new think tank of sceptics and its outlying cavalry of angry bloggers and man-made global warming deniers furiously spurring on the debate.

 

One of the most absurd moments came when George Monbiot of The Guardian, a columnist normally strident in his view that climate change is the most important problem facing mankind, appointed himself judge, jury and executioner and called for Professor Phil Jones, head of the research unit, to resign.

 

Well, he doesn’t need to resign — yet. We need to know whether the unit has done anything wrong, which an independent review set up by the university will examine.

 

And while we are waiting for the result? The scientific establishment, in the form of the Royal Society, the research councils and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, needs to do a lot more thinking — not about Jones’s methods, but about its own.

 

The theft of emails is just another chapter in a sustained debate that has focused on Jones for some time — but we need to look beyond him. Freedom of information demands and requests for shared data often pursue the work of the most controversial scientists. The scientific establishment has no consensus on how to deal with such requests.

 

Is it right to withhold public interest data, with the excuse of commercial confidentiality of the meteorological institutes involved, which often own the information and want to profit from it? And were the scientists at the research unit right to refuse to give up, as alleged, data and the codes and algorithms needed to analyse them to bona-fide researchers who wanted to examine their statistical methods? That is perhaps the most damaging allegation that has emerged, because it suggests a deliberate attempt to hold up scientific progress.

 

This is not necessarily incriminating, but it is stupid. The testing of hypotheses in an adversarial manner often looks, close up, like cats fighting in a sack. You can hardly blame busy scientists who have spent their lives amassing a pile of data, which they have interpreted in their own way, for not wanting to release it to people who want to rubbish it. Still, release it they should, and it is up to the scientific establishment to set out better ground rules and insist on more openness. The problem is that establishment science has no means of engaging with outsiders in the blogging age. It needs to wake up.

 

As well as asking whether anything untoward has been going on in massaging the figures to make warming look more alarming, we should also resolve how best to defend from vexatious attacks evidence that has been accumulated over years. At the moment it’s just frustration and stonewalling all round. If you ask anyone associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change where the science is going, they tell you to wait for their next five-yearly assessment report.

 

No wonder the public is confused. No wonder journalists have a choice between waiting for the occasional tablet of stone from the keepers of the global warming flame, or joining the newer, hipper fraternity of bloggers who snigger about ManBearPig, the bogus global warming monster in South Park’s skit on Al Gore. This polarisation means that a considered view on global warming is much harder to achieve, so in the end people simply go for the belief that feels right for them.

 

Working scientists may be grumpy about the unfairness, but far higher standards are expected of them than of the rude blogger-sceptics who are crowing about the embarrassment.

 

Tough. They should get over it. If the high priests of global warming want to convince us that we could face a man-made rise of 4C in the global temperature this century, then they have to engage with their critics instead of hiding away in their ivory towers.

 

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol...icle6936404.ece

 

Since you're posting opinions pieces...

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ci...en-climate-deal

[SupremeLeader]

Some more oil companies planning on doing their best!

 

http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/alberta/20...003066-sun.html

[SupremeLeader]

Keep goin' Sun. It's as if you have a guilty conscious?

 

For me the shrinking polar ice caps, acidification of the ocean, overwhelming percentage of rapidly shrinking glaciers, spreading desertification, mass destruction of Boreal forest, pollution and waste of our water, reliance on non-renewable energy, and creation of toxic by-products speak for themselves. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of data that supports rising temperatures (not the 10 year cycle that you use which has been debunked).

 

Not get back to drilling, cutting, pasting and surfing.

 

[TerryH]

Here's some interesting reading from a Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T.

 

The Climate Science Isn't Settled -- Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted

 

Sure hope our politicians figure out what a boondoggle AGW is before they spend billions on pumping CO2 into the ground and other nonsensical schemes. Terry

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Keep goin' Sun. It's as if you have a guilty conscious?

 

For me the shrinking polar ice caps, acidification of the ocean, overwhelming percentage of rapidly shrinking glaciers, spreading desertification, mass destruction of Boreal forest, pollution and waste of our water, reliance on non-renewable energy, and creation of toxic by-products speak for themselves. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of data that supports rising temperatures (not the 10 year cycle that you use which has been debunked).

 

Not get back to drilling, cutting, pasting and surfing.

 

Most of your so called studies use catch phrases like "may", "could", "suspected", "likely". These studies are often full of holes, start with a conclusion then tweek, change, select or alter data (shown through email leaks) to prove their personal opinions.

 

Now the latest caper shows that some of these so called experts you refer to not only used poor judgement in how they manipulated data but to keep from getting caught DESTROYED data so that no one can catch them at it. It Britian...it is illegal. As a scientist it is immoral and disgusting.

 

Updated December 01, 2009

Think 'Climate-Gate' Is Nonevent? Think Again

By John Lott

 

The big question is whether universities have too much at stake, both ideologically and financially, to impartially investigate what has happened with Climate-gate

 

President Obama's climate czar, Carol M. Browner, and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs might think that Climate-gate is a nonevent, but on Monday Pennsylvania State University announced that it was launching an investigation into the academic conduct of Michael Mann, the school's Director of the Earth System Science Center. And Tuesday, Phil Jones, the director of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, announced that he would stand aside as director while his university conducted an investigation.

 

Dozens of researchers at other institutions could soon face similar investigations. While Dr. Jones has been the center of much of the discussion because the e-mails were obtained from the server at his university, Mann is named in about 270 of the over 1,000 e-mails, many of which detail disturbing and improper academic behavior.

 

Last week, Mann told USA Today that the controversy over the leaked e-mails was simply a "smear campaign to distract the public from the reality of the problem and the need to confront it head-on in Copenhagen" next week at the climate summit.

 

Take one of Mann's e-mail exchanges with Jones. In an e-mail entitled "IPCC & FOI" (referring to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Freedom of Information Act) Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, wrote Dr. Mann: "Mike: Can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [briffa] re [the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report]? Keith will do likewise. . . . Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don't have his new e-mail address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise."

 

Mann acknowledges that he received the e-mail, but he claims that neither he nor anyone else actually deleted any e-mails to hide information from a Freedom of Information Act request on how the U.N.'s IPCC report was written. Yet, his response is quite damning as it seems that he goes along with Dr. Jones. Far from criticizing the request, Dr. Mann wrote back: "I'll contact Gene about this ASAP. His new e-mail is: generwahl@yahoo.com. talk to you later, Mike."

 

After the first week of revelations of academic fraud and intellectual wrongdoing, the University of East Anglia denied there was a problem. Professor Trevor Davies, the school's pro vice chancellor for research, issued a statement on Tuesday claiming: "The publication of a selection of the e-mails and data stolen from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) has led to some questioning of the climate science research published by CRU and others. There is nothing in the stolen material which indicates that peer-reviewed publications by CRU, and others, on the nature of global warming and related climate change are not of the highest-quality of scientific investigation and interpretation."

 

The move to investigate the destruction of information requested under the Freedom of Information Act is a big change. In Britain, the destruction of such documents is a criminal offense and the e-mails indicate that Jones had been warned at least once against destroying such information.

 

On Monday, Mann tried to justify the damaging e-mails by telling the Penn State college newspaper: "Someone being constantly under attack could be what causes them to make a poor decision." On the one hand, he denies that anything improper happened, but he then seems to accept that improper actions did occur. Regarding pressure, possibly, Mann should ask what the academics, who Mann and others involved in Climate-gate tried to prevent them from publishing in academic journals, think about these events. The e-mails discussed above involve the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's controversial assessment report and raise additional questions about what subterfuge might have been involved in its production.

 

The big question is whether universities have too much at stake, both ideologically and financially, to impartially investigate what has happened with Climate-gate. Given the amount of taxpayer money at stake, Congress should follow Sen. Inofe's suggestion and investigate these charges issues of destroyed documents and data as well as the general unwillingness to share the raw data paid for by taxpayers.

 

John R. Lott, Jr. is a FOXNews.com contributor. He is an economist and author of "Freedomnomics."

 

 

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/12/01/...nonevent-think/

 

*******************************

while you can't win this one SL...I really want to see you keep trying. The studies are crumbling. Pick a study and post it and we can discuss scientifically that study.

 

As for ice...the Arctic grew in the last year and probably will grow more. As posted before...this is not a new event. Ice like the weather is fickle to mother nature's ambitions for normal change. Glaciers in Antarctica are getting thicker.

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Some more oil companies planning on doing their best!

 

http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/alberta/20...003066-sun.html

 

SUNDANCES TOP 10 LIST OF When global warming zeolots start feeling like they are losing an argument they either:

 

1) try and change the subject

2) Scream you are killing your kids if YOU DON'T BELIEVE!!!!!!

3) talk about that hot spell a while back...really hot...sweated a lot...cause it proves global warming

4) start to mention hurricanes but realize that "study" never proved correct

5) talk about the hockey stick...then scream it is real even though the IPCC dropped it after it was proven wrong...but...Mann is such a good guy...even though he refused to share his raw data...then deleted it...and people tried to hide the declines...

6) blame the oil companies and yet NEVER MAKE A COMMON SENSE ARGUMENT AS TO HOW THE OIL COMPANIES ARE GOING TO BE HARMED LOL

7) Consider the photos of the poor polar on the ice flow...taken totally out of context...but still gives a nice impression for the cause

8) Blame the latest earthquake on global warming

9) Blame the deniers for everything wrong in the world and their lame questioning as to why trillions of dollars can't be spend putting carbon in the ground or increasing cost of living and starving poor people to death.

10) jump in a plane, fly to a city, jump in some SUV and drive somewhere to party and protest

 

 

[SupremeLeader]

SUNDANCES TOP 10 LIST OF When global warming zeolots start feeling like they are losing an argument they either:

 

1) try and change the subject

2) Scream you are killing your kids if YOU DON'T BELIEVE!!!!!!

3) talk about that hot spell a while back...really hot...sweated a lot...cause it proves global warming

4) start to mention hurricanes but realize that "study" never proved correct

5) talk about the hockey stick...then scream it is real even though the IPCC dropped it after it was proven wrong...but...Mann is such a good guy...even though he refused to share his raw data...then deleted it...and people tried to hide the declines...

6) blame the oil companies and yet NEVER MAKE A COMMON SENSE ARGUMENT AS TO HOW THE OIL COMPANIES ARE GOING TO BE HARMED LOL

7) Consider the photos of the poor polar on the ice flow...taken totally out of context...but still gives a nice impression for the cause

8) Blame the latest earthquake on global warming

9) Blame the deniers for everything wrong in the world and their lame questioning as to why trillions of dollars can't be spend putting carbon in the ground or increasing cost of living and starving poor people to death.

10) jump in a plane, fly to a city, jump in some SUV and drive somewhere to party and protest

 

SL's top ten reasons people deny Global Warming

 

1) Money

2) Money

3) Money

4) Money

5) Money

6) Money

7) Money

8) Money

9) Money

10) Money

 

 

 

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Keep goin' Sun. It's as if you have a guilty conscious?

 

For me the shrinking polar ice caps, acidification of the ocean, overwhelming percentage of rapidly shrinking glaciers, spreading desertification, mass destruction of Boreal forest, pollution and waste of our water, reliance on non-renewable energy, and creation of toxic by-products speak for themselves. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of data that supports rising temperatures (not the 10 year cycle that you use which has been debunked).

 

Not get back to drilling, cutting, pasting and surfing.

 

Take Terry's posted link above...

 

Tell me specifically what you disagree with in this article...please...pretty please... use red and insert what you say is false statements... You can't keep saying you disagree without some specific examples...so this should work nicely.

*******************************************************************************

The Climate Science Isn't Settled

Confident predictions of catastrophe are unwarranted.

 

By RICHARD S. LINDZEN

Is there a reason to be alarmed by the prospect of global warming? Consider that the measurement used, the globally averaged temperature anomaly (GATA), is always changing. Sometimes it goes up, sometimes down, and occasionally—such as for the last dozen years or so—it does little that can be discerned.

 

Claims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

 

The general support for warming is based not so much on the quality of the data, but rather on the fact that there was a little ice age from about the 15th to the 19th century. Thus it is not surprising that temperatures should increase as we emerged from this episode. At the same time that we were emerging from the little ice age, the industrial era began, and this was accompanied by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2, methane and nitrous oxide. CO2 is the most prominent of these, and it is again generally accepted that it has increased by about 30%.

 

The defining characteristic of a greenhouse gas is that it is relatively transparent to visible light from the sun but can absorb portions of thermal radiation. In general, the earth balances the incoming solar radiation by emitting thermal radiation, and the presence of greenhouse substances inhibits cooling by thermal radiation and leads to some warming.

 

That said, the main greenhouse substances in the earth's atmosphere are water vapor and high clouds. Let's refer to these as major greenhouse substances to distinguish them from the anthropogenic minor substances. Even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2%. This is essentially what is called "climate forcing."

 

There is general agreement on the above findings. At this point there is no basis for alarm regardless of whether any relation between the observed warming and the observed increase in minor greenhouse gases can be established. Nevertheless, the most publicized claims of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) deal exactly with whether any relation can be discerned. The failure of the attempts to link the two over the past 20 years bespeaks the weakness of any case for concern.

 

The IPCC's Scientific Assessments generally consist of about 1,000 pages of text. The Summary for Policymakers is 20 pages. It is, of course, impossible to accurately summarize the 1,000-page assessment in just 20 pages; at the very least, nuances and caveats have to be omitted. However, it has been my experience that even the summary is hardly ever looked at. Rather, the whole report tends to be characterized by a single iconic claim.

 

The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (a point of anomalous cold) was due to man. This claim was based on the weak argument that the current models used by the IPCC couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some forcing, and that the only forcing that they could think of was man. Even this argument assumes that these models adequately deal with natural internal variability—that is, such naturally occurring cycles as El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, etc.

 

Yet articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for this natural internal variability. Thus even the basis for the weak IPCC argument for anthropogenic climate change was shown to be false.

 

Of course, none of the articles stressed this. Rather they emphasized that according to models modified to account for the natural internal variability, warming would resume—in 2009, 2013 and 2030, respectively.

 

But even if the IPCC's iconic statement were correct, it still would not be cause for alarm. After all we are still talking about tenths of a degree for over 75% of the climate forcing associated with a doubling of CO2. The potential (and only the potential) for alarm enters with the issue of climate sensitivity—which refers to the change that a doubling of CO2 will produce in GATA. It is generally accepted that a doubling of CO2 will only produce a change of about two degrees Fahrenheit if all else is held constant. This is unlikely to be much to worry about.

 

Yet current climate models predict much higher sensitivities. They do so because in these models, the main greenhouse substances (water vapor and clouds) act to amplify anything that CO2 does. This is referred to as positive feedback. But as the IPCC notes, clouds continue to be a source of major uncertainty in current models. Since clouds and water vapor are intimately related, the IPCC claim that they are more confident about water vapor is quite implausible.

 

There is some evidence of a positive feedback effect for water vapor in cloud-free regions, but a major part of any water-vapor feedback would have to acknowledge that cloud-free areas are always changing, and this remains an unknown. At this point, few scientists would argue that the science is settled. In particular, the question remains as to whether water vapor and clouds have positive or negative feedbacks.

 

The notion that the earth's climate is dominated by positive feedbacks is intuitively implausible, and the history of the earth's climate offers some guidance on this matter. About 2.5 billion years ago, the sun was 20%-30% less bright than now (compare this with the 2% perturbation that a doubling of CO2 would produce), and yet the evidence is that the oceans were unfrozen at the time, and that temperatures might not have been very different from today's. Carl Sagan in the 1970s referred to this as the "Early Faint Sun Paradox."

 

For more than 30 years there have been attempts to resolve the paradox with greenhouse gases. Some have suggested CO2—but the amount needed was thousands of times greater than present levels and incompatible with geological evidence. Methane also proved unlikely. It turns out that increased thin cirrus cloud coverage in the tropics readily resolves the paradox—but only if the clouds constitute a negative feedback. In present terms this means that they would diminish rather than enhance the impact of CO2.

 

There are quite a few papers in the literature that also point to the absence of positive feedbacks. The implied low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed. So how do models with high sensitivity manage to simulate the currently small response to a forcing that is almost as large as a doubling of CO2? Jeff Kiehl notes in a 2007 article from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the models use another quantity that the IPCC lists as poorly known (namely aerosols) to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

 

What does all this have to do with climate catastrophe? The answer brings us to a scandal that is, in my opinion, considerably greater than that implied in the hacked emails from the Climate Research Unit (though perhaps not as bad as their destruction of raw data): namely the suggestion that the very existence of warming or of the greenhouse effect is tantamount to catastrophe. This is the grossest of "bait and switch" scams. It is only such a scam that lends importance to the machinations in the emails designed to nudge temperatures a few tenths of a degree.

 

The notion that complex climate "catastrophes" are simply a matter of the response of a single number, GATA, to a single forcing, CO2 (or solar forcing for that matter), represents a gigantic step backward in the science of climate. Many disasters associated with warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is falsely claimed to be evidence of warming. And all these examples involve phenomena that are dependent on the confluence of many factors.

 

Our perceptions of nature are similarly dragged back centuries so that the normal occasional occurrences of open water in summer over the North Pole, droughts, floods, hurricanes, sea-level variations, etc. are all taken as omens, portending doom due to our sinful ways (as epitomized by our carbon footprint). All of these phenomena depend on the confluence of multiple factors as well.

 

Consider the following example. Suppose that I leave a box on the floor, and my wife trips on it, falling against my son, who is carrying a carton of eggs, which then fall and break. Our present approach to emissions would be analogous to deciding that the best way to prevent the breakage of eggs would be to outlaw leaving boxes on the floor. The chief difference is that in the case of atmospheric CO2 and climate catastrophe, the chain of inference is longer and less plausible than in my example.

 

Mr. Lindzen is professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

 

 

[wtforward]

Sun

 

All rhetoric aside we can all goggle any particular position we

care to support at any particular time. Sure data has been

manipulated and destroyed...not good but we will get past it.

It does not change the the fact that our society is buzzing

along at warp speed and it still is not fast enough. Improve gas

mileage on vehicles and we just drive further. I do it. More

is better right ? Do you honestly believe that the earth can support

the Current North American lifestyle with the addition of China and India ?

There is not enough carbon resources to go around never mind

that you probably could not breathe the air. Think Mexico city.

The one problem I sense is that there is a brick

wall out there, unfortunately I don't know how far out but we

are going to hit it. Our whole existence is based on non-renewables

and I don't think you will find many deniers. So what to do ?

Continue to subsidize and prop up the non -renewable consumption

or forge ahead and get off the carbon. Were going to spend the money anyway

so why not direct it toward assisting a supportable, nature friendly,

sustainable quality of life for the next generation. God knows we have

had our day in the sun and maybe just maybe we should start introducing it

( the sun ) along with other renewables into our way of living on this rock.

We need a level playing field for this to happen. Cut the carbon subsidies or

at least direct some reasonable subsidies to renewables to help kick start.

What could renewables do with what we are going to spend on a still unproven

CO2 sequeestering experiement ?

We are squandering our most precious commodity...time and yes we need carbon

to buy us what little time we have left to make the transition. But no bones about

it, we need to kick the carbon habit before it kicks us. It is definitely a

moral and ethical decision for me. Denial is a very important coping mechanism

that helps our survival otherwise in todays world some of us would not even get out

of bed but carried too far and I think we can inflict irreparable harm as in

cease to exist as a species. Techo fixes to carbon issues will not change

the inevitable....at some point no carbons left.

 

More rhetoric I know but take the time to watch and points scored

on both sides don't even talk about botched Anglia CRU.

 

http://www.munkdebates.com/

 

Ohh and by the way 'tight lines'

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Sun

 

All rhetoric aside we can all goggle any particular position we

care to support at any particular time. Sure data has been

manipulated and destroyed...not good but we will get past it.

It does not change the the fact that our society is buzzing

along at warp speed and it still is not fast enough. Improve gas

mileage on vehicles and we just drive further. I do it. More

is better right ? Do you honestly believe that the earth can support

the Current North American lifestyle with the addition of China and India ?

There is not enough carbon resources to go around never mind

that you probably could not breathe the air. Think Mexico city.

The one problem I sense is that there is a brick

wall out there, unfortunately I don't know how far out but we

are going to hit it. Our whole existence is based on non-renewables

and I don't think you will find many deniers. So what to do ?

Continue to subsidize and prop up the non -renewable consumption

or forge ahead and get off the carbon. Were going to spend the money anyway

so why not direct it toward assisting a supportable, nature friendly,

sustainable quality of life for the next generation. God knows we have

had our day in the sun and maybe just maybe we should start introducing it

( the sun ) along with other renewables into our way of living on this rock.

We need a level playing field for this to happen. Cut the carbon subsidies or

at least direct some reasonable subsidies to renewables to help kick start.

What could renewables do with what we are going to spend on a still unproven

CO2 sequeestering experiement ?

We are squandering our most precious commodity...time and yes we need carbon

to buy us what little time we have left to make the transition. But no bones about

it, we need to kick the carbon habit before it kicks us. It is definitely a

moral and ethical decision for me. Denial is a very important coping mechanism

that helps our survival otherwise in todays world some of us would not even get out

of bed but carried too far and I think we can inflict irreparable harm as in

cease to exist as a species. Techo fixes to carbon issues will not change

the inevitable....at some point no carbons left.

 

More rhetoric I know but take the time to watch and points scored

on both sides don't even talk about botched Anglia CRU.

 

http://www.munkdebates.com/

 

Ohh and by the way 'tight lines'

 

Not sure how we can ignore the problems we are seeing in the science. They have massive consequences to the world's economy. Some "green" friends of mind just see this whole thing as a way of taking over popular opinion and controling the media and directing politicians to think only as they think. Kind of a take over of the public purse. They see Greenies having control as good. I think Greenies have a voice is good...power really, really bad. Some people say better do something than nothing. Sometimes even in science...doing nothing is the right thing. Just like a doctor may hear you say you have a head ache...they don't automatically operate thinking you have a brain tumor. That would be over reacting and making a poor decision based upon facts and researching the problem.

 

We don't subsidize oil companies. Not sure what you are referring to there. Let's start a different oil company bashing thread though...this is already complicated. Also I would have to argue as an oil company guy that the CO2 sequestration is great for oil companies...bad for me personally. I would also like to ask you...how do you think the oil companies benefit from debunking the CO2 global warming theories?

 

As for reduce, reuse, recycle...I am totally on that band wagon.

 

As for better fuel economy cars...I am all for that although I have not put my money where my mouth is on that...except that I predominately ride transit every day. Have you bought a Prius?

 

We must use common sense in every day business and personal but we also can't put blinders on to the fact that we need oil and gas. Without it we would have serious trouble living and breathing. Alternatives are not out there currently unless you want a proliferation of nuclear plants. Wind, solar, tidal, water are not sufficient. Many also have bad footprints and environmental problems. Nothing is perfect and yet green thinking types think anything is better than petroleum. That is neither true nor feasible. I would love if fission power was a reality.

 

There has been an opinion that we are reaching the end of new oil (new discoveries) and that after that we are all doomed like we will hit a brick wall.

 

Supply and demand principles in our capitalist economy will not allow that to happen. As commodity quantities shrink, price increases. As prices increases consumption decreases through less use and greater efficiencies. Our oil and gas will last a long, long time to come. Conservation is great...but our individual consumption has to decrease and that is where guys like you and me come into play. What can we do? Buy a small fuel efficient car, use transit, not use applicance requiring residual power, unplug such appliances...etc. etc.

 

I am all for your concerns about living in a clean, safe and healthy environment. Unfortunately you may think CO2 is poison. It is not. It is also not part of smog in Mexico City. One the best things I have seen come out of all this is hopefully the reduction of non CO2 emmisions. That would be awesome. Unfortunately rather than Alberta spending $5 billion on renewable energies and more efficient use of power...we are paying to use energy/power to pump CO2 into the ground. That is a waste of money IMHO.

 

While I am looking for facts that say either way man causes global warming...the science so far is inconclusive. With the fraud claims coming out...I sadly think the science is going to now also become less one sided and the facts will show...nobody knows crap about the weather conditions in Calgary 5 days from now let alone 20 years from now.

 

As such...I can agree...if we have the money...let's spend it wisely... Reduce real pollution, think of better energy sources and more efficiences etc.

 

Cheers

 

Sun

[SupremeLeader]

Not sure how we can ignore the problems we are seeing in the science. They have massive consequences to the world's economy. Some "green" friends of mind just see this whole thing as a way of taking over popular opinion and controling the media and directing politicians to think only as they think. Kind of a take over of the public purse. They see Greenies having control as good. I think Greenies have a voice is good...power really, really bad. Some people say better do something than nothing. Sometimes even in science...doing nothing is the right thing. Just like a doctor may hear you say you have a head ache...they don't automatically operate thinking you have a brain tumor. That would be over reacting and making a poor decision based upon facts and researching the problem.

 

We don't subsidize oil companies. Not sure what you are referring to there. Let's start a different oil company bashing thread though...this is already complicated. Also I would have to argue as an oil company guy that the CO2 sequestration is great for oil companies...bad for me personally. I would also like to ask you...how do you think the oil companies benefit from debunking the CO2 global warming theories?

 

As for reduce, reuse, recycle...I am totally on that band wagon.

 

As for better fuel economy cars...I am all for that although I have not put my money where my mouth is on that...except that I predominately ride transit every day. Have you bought a Prius?

 

We must use common sense in every day business and personal but we also can't put blinders on to the fact that we need oil and gas. Without it we would have serious trouble living and breathing. Alternatives are not out there currently unless you want a proliferation of nuclear plants. Wind, solar, tidal, water are not sufficient. Many also have bad footprints and environmental problems. Nothing is perfect and yet green thinking types think anything is better than petroleum. That is neither true nor feasible. I would love if fission power was a reality.

 

There has been an opinion that we are reaching the end of new oil (new discoveries) and that after that we are all doomed like we will hit a brick wall.

 

Supply and demand principles in our capitalist economy will not allow that to happen. As commodity quantities shrink, price increases. As prices increases consumption decreases through less use and greater efficiencies. Our oil and gas will last a long, long time to come. Conservation is great...but our individual consumption has to decrease and that is where guys like you and me come into play. What can we do? Buy a small fuel efficient car, use transit, not use applicance requiring residual power, unplug such appliances...etc. etc.

 

I am all for your concerns about living in a clean, safe and healthy environment. Unfortunately you may think CO2 is poison. It is not. It is also not part of smog in Mexico City. One the best things I have seen come out of all this is hopefully the reduction of non CO2 emmisions. That would be awesome. Unfortunately rather than Alberta spending $5 billion on renewable energies and more efficient use of power...we are paying to use energy/power to pump CO2 into the ground. That is a waste of money IMHO.

 

While I am looking for facts that say either way man causes global warming...the science so far is inconclusive. With the fraud claims coming out...I sadly think the science is going to now also become less one sided and the facts will show...nobody knows crap about the weather conditions in Calgary 5 days from now let alone 20 years from now.

 

As such...I can agree...if we have the money...let's spend it wisely... Reduce real pollution, think of better energy sources and more efficiences etc.

 

Cheers

 

Sun

 

Check out this Sun,

 

The report to support this news is linked to the article.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8387137.stm

[Guest Sundancefisher]

Check out this Sun,

 

The report to support this news is linked to the article.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8387137.stm

 

 

You missed the point.

 

All these "effects" studies have nothing to do with proving anthropormorphic global warming. Scientist blamed global warming on Hurricanes. Said we were doomed and hurricanes were going to destroy the US. Never materialized... Media dropped it. IPCC dropped it. They speculate and seem to hope and pray a calamity will happen and then say ah ha! Eureka... Proved it. Said hurricane would kill us and well...then didn't so shhhhh... Say nothing about THAT effect study.

 

Yes...if the Earth warms...the potential for sea level rise is there. Yes since the last little ice age the Earth has been warming and seas have risen.

 

...but...since 1998 it has not warmed more with added yearly giant increases in CO2 emmisions.

 

...but other studies say 1 to 3 mm per year sea level rise. Sea levels have been rising pre industrialization. Why? It talks nothing about sea level rise over a significant period of time. These short term narrow viewed studies seem more fluff then fact most of the time. There was an article once that said the last big tsunami was caused by global warming. CNN I believe posted it.

 

...but other scientists think that increasing water level rises could also increase precipitation in a feedback loop...their position on that?

 

...but someone once pointed out that the majority of ice in the Arctic is already under water (think iceburgs) and therefore melt Arctic ice should not do much when balanced over the entire world's oceans.

 

...but last year a study on Antarctic glacier shrinkage showed a) temperature dropped over the study period b.) leading edge was still calving off c) center was actually getting thicker (all backed up with satelite links). So the scientist speculated that maybe some volcanic warming was occuring. I also think it would make sense that maybe there is a serious of growth and shrink cycles in glaciers. As we all know they used to cover Calgary.

 

Anyways...I want to discuss a study that actually has evidence that directly proves global warming...

[canadensis]

I can just see the cliquey club of global warming scientists who up until now controlled the puppet strings of mainstream media scratching thier heads strategizing what their next move will be, making sure to delete the cache after the emails are sent...

 

Folks we have been grossly misled! The crime of the millenium....

 

 

And Polar bear populations are increasing, but you would never know that watching the news..

[Guest Sundancefisher]

a little comedy central for anyone to lighten up the topic?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Wt0ZaXu_CA

 

come on SupremeLeader...you have to have a little chuckle with this.

[Guest Sundancefisher]

I really dislike Glen Beck...but man does he have the fodder now LOL

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D6Fk1vAjUE

 

He did not even really dwell on all the raw data that was deleted by scientists after they were told not to.

[wtforward]

Folks we have been grossly misled! The crime of the millenium....

 

What happened to

 

Invasion of Iraq

Vietnam

Year 2000

H5n1n1

Sub prime

nearly 40 years of conservative rule in Alberta

 

??

[Guest Sundancefisher]

I know people hate seeing lots of articles on global warming fraud and climategate but...gezzz...we sure have been fed a pile from the other side of the debate over the years.

 

This article mentions that NASA...thought 1998 was the warmest year in the US... Turns out a error was in their data...it has now been correct to 1934!

 

http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/stor...tory/TPComment/

 

and for additional information...Steve McIntyre is one of the most persecuted Canadians these days... Man those emails trashed him fierce...yet...he proved to the IPCC he was right on the hockey stick mess and also proved NASA he was right on their typo! Not a dumb guy and very credible...except...he is a denier LOL... in the eyes of the fanatics.

 

******************************************

Climate science's PR disaster

 

MARGARET WENTE

 

E-mail Margaret Wente | Read Bio | Latest Columns

December 1, 2009

 

mwente@globeandmail.com

 

Steve McIntyre is a mild-mannered Toronto businessman who dabbles in statistics as a hobby. But to some climate scientists, he's Public Enemy No. 1. They mention him often in their e-mails and try to make sure his criticisms of their work aren't published. "They're really showing a siege mentality," he says.

 

Mr. McIntyre is a bit player in a scandal that has swept the world of climate science like a mighty hurricane. It features leading scientists who, to the conspiratorially minded, seem to be colluding to manipulate data, withhold information, delete records and stifle dissent. "The worst scientific scandal of our generation," declared one opinion writer in the Telegraph. Not quite. But the so-called "Climategate" affair - thousands of hacked e-mails made public on the eve of the Copenhagen convention - gives a pile of ammunition to those who believe global warming is a giant boondoggle.

 

The damaging e-mails were hacked from the servers of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England. Its temperature databases provide much of the case for global warming. Some of them appear pretty damning. One says, "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." Another refers to a "trick" that can be used to "hide the decline" in temperature. One from Phil Jones, the centre's director, says, "I will be e-mailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor."

 

Even sympathizers concede the e-mails are a PR disaster. "It isn't worth pretending that this isn't a major blow," wrote well-known British environmentalist George Monbiot, who's making an appearance this evening in Toronto.

 

"Climategate" brings a long-running and very bitter battle into the open. On one side are the "warmists," characterized by their opponents as true believers who manipulate the science to make it look as if the world is about to end. On the other side are the "denialists," who, backed by Big Oil billions, are out to prove that global warming is a hoax. Both sides accuse the other of dirty tricks.

 

Mr. McIntyre, a semi-retired mining executive with a math background, claims he belongs to neither camp. "I'm an anarchist," he says. If so, he sure knows how to lob bombs. He has sought to discredit the data underlying the famous "hockey stick" (the temperature graph that shows global temperatures suddenly spiking up after centuries of being flat) and has taken a run at tree-ring data. He even found a technical error that forced NASA to revise its claim that 1998 was the warmest year on record in the United States. (It was 1934.)

 

Some climate scientists dismiss him as a nut - but a dangerous one. "Michael Mann [the scientist behind the 'hockey stick'] accuses me of scientific fraud," says Mr. McIntyre. "He says I'm on the same payroll as the other deniers."

 

For us ordinary mortals, when it comes to climate change, "objective science" can be awfully hard to find. As a few dismayed scientists point out, the real issue is not whether the University of East Anglia torques its temperature records. It's the effort to suppress research you don't like. "What has been noticeably absent so far in the Climategate discussion is a public reaffirmation by climate researchers of our basic research values: the rigours of the scientific method (including reproducibility), research integrity and ethics, open minds, and critical thinking," American climate scientist Judith Curry wrote. She figures the damage inflicted by this affair on the credibility of climate research "is likely to be significant."

 

Academic spats, name-calling, data-massaging and cozy peer review by friends are not exactly rare in the world of science. You'll find them anywhere that careers, reputations and resources are on the line. The difference is we are not usually asked to wager billions on the findings. Given the stakes, it's hard not to conclude that climate science is too important to be left to scientists.

 

[canadensis]

What happened to

 

Invasion of Iraq

Vietnam

Year 2000

H5n1n1

Sub prime

nearly 40 years of conservative rule in Alberta

 

??

 

 

I wonder what the next Y2K, Global Warming, end of the world scenario will be?

[Guest Sundancefisher]

I wonder what the next Y2K, Global Warming, end of the world scenario will be?

 

2012

 

Here is two points of view on ice cores...SL...which do you believe?

 

 

 

[Guest Sundancefisher]

More effects studies

 

 

Major study doubles sea level rise projections

 

Days before the Copenhagen conference on climate change kicks off, a major study by a group of 100 international scientists has said that sea levels are likely to rise by as much as 1.4 metres (more than 4 feet) by the end of this century. That's twice as much as previously predicted in IPCC's fourth assessment report of 2007.

 

The report released by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) is the first comprehensive review of the impact of global warming on Antarctica. The IPCC's 2007 report had projected that sea-levels could rise by 18cm to 59cm by 2099. Subsequent studies of glacial melts in Greenland and Antarctica had raised fears that sea rise could be much higher than that. Now they are altering their studies and down playing earlier fears probably since the public is getting fed up with the constant doom for everything

 

We can see the west Antarctic glaciers are shrinking at a rate fast enough to contribute to a sea level rise of 1.4 m by 2100, but it will be no more than that,'' SCAR executive director Colin Summerhayes told reporters at a media briefing in London.

 

If these projections come true, most areas in low-lying island nations like the Maldives would go under the sea. Based on earlier studies, the UN's environmental panel has already warned that sea levels would be high enough to make the Maldives uninhabitable by 2100. The new study also significantly enhances the threat to the Indian coast — and cities like Mumbai, Chennai and the low-lying Kolkata. Speculation

 

Anybody who lives in coastal cities needs to be slightly worried by projections of 1 metre or more,'' Summerhayes said. fear mongering

 

Since 1870, global sea level has risen by about 20cm at an average rate of 1.7 mm/year. But in recent decades, the rate has risen sharply to 2.5mm/year, according to the latest figures. The rise in sea level is mainly a result of thermal expansion of the ocean due to global warming as well as increased water inflows from melting glaciers and ice caps. So why admit that the water had been rising...yet have no explanation for that? So the water has been rising since 1870. Their greatly reduced impact sits at 4 feet rise. Based upon their comments...about 1.3 feet would be attributed to global warming...the balance 2.7 feet would be attributed to pre water level rise effects...and as per this study an unexplained reason.

 

The reports says that central Antarctica, that has so far been protected from warming due to a hole in the ozone layer, will also see the full effects of greenhouse gas increases as the ozone hole heals. Speculation again

 

The scientists found that there has been significant thinning of the west Antarctic ice sheet and 90% of glaciers across the Antarctic peninsula had retreated over recent decades. But the bulk of the Antarctic ice sheet has shown little change over recent decades. One IPCC study showed temperatures actually decreased and that glacier movement and calving could be caused by volcanic forces rather than global warming...no mention here...why?

However, the report says, historically, small-scale climate variability has caused rapid ice loss, shifts in ocean and atmospheric circulation in the continent. This shows Antarctica is highly sensitive to even minor climate changes. It says studies of sediments under recently lost ice shelves suggest ice shelf loss in some regions is unprecedented during this time scale. Normal changes in weather can have profound changes on a localize or regional context. A massive snowstorm in Calgary...does not affect Australia for instance. Also from a time perspective 1870 to today is an insignificant number as the Earth is way older than that!

 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/en...how/5290100.cms

 

Now go out and spread more doom so that everyone is too scared to ask if the raw data was thrown out, data was manipulated, fixed, declines were hid or people were threatened to ruin their publication or just plain beat them up...

[reevesr1]

Global Warming Truisms: (Or Climate Change Truisms)

 

My side of the argument is truth

Your side of the argument is speculation.

 

Doesn't matter which side you are on.

[bigbowtrout]

I like cake

[reevesr1]

Cake lickers occupy the middle ground.