Scientist: Forget Global Warming, Prepare for New Ice Age

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Putting up a list of people proves nothing.

Barbarian also observes:
No, it merely means out of tens of thousands of climatologists, you can always find a few dozen who won’t agree on almost anything. Getting a tiny minority to dissent, is not evidence of fraud. (the part of the statement earlier removed to change what I said, is in red)

Barbarian observes further:
Congressional testimony has dozens of scientists reporting harassment and pressure to deny warming. It’s cost at least one denier his job, and if the FBI investigation can locate some deleted emails, might cost a number of other highly-placed bureaucrats their freedom.

OK. You put your foot in it this time!

I don’t think so. I corrected the quote-mined version you presented, to restore the original meaning.

The tens of thousands

As you can see above, I said something quite different. Hope you don’t mind that I restored the statement to show what I actually said. Out of the tens of thousands of climatologists, showing us a dozen who don’t agree with the consensus is pretty pointless.

and the dozens.

**(CBS/AP) Two private advocacy groups told a congressional hearing Tuesday that climate scientists at seven government agencies say they have been subjected to political pressure aimed at downplaying the threat of global warming.

The groups presented a survey that shows two in five of the 279 climate scientists who responded to a questionnaire complained that some of their scientific papers had been edited in a way that changed their meaning. Nearly half of the 279 said in response to another question that at some point they had been told to delete reference to “global warming” or “climate change” from a report.**
cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/30/politics/main2413400.shtml

Most, remembering the way the current administration retaliated against US attorneys and whistleblowrer employees, didn’t want to be identified. But some did.

**Rick Piltz, a former US government scientist, told the committee that former White House official Phil Cooney took an active role in casting doubt on the consequences of global climate change. Piltz said he resigned in 2005 as a result of pressure to soft-pedal findings on global warming.

Cooney, who was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute before becoming chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, also resigned in 2005. He went on to work for oil giant ExxonMobil, which was recently accused of spending $16 million on supporting climate sceptics.
“Speculative musing”

Documents on global climate change required Cooney’s review and approval, Piltz said, adding that “If you know what you are writing has to go through a White House clearance before it is to be published, …] an anticipatory kind of self-censorship sets in.”

He added: “[Cooney’s] edits of programme reports, which had been drafted and approved by career science programme managers, had the cumulative effect of adding an enhanced sense of scientific uncertainty about global warming and minimising its likely consequences.”**
environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11074

The Bush administration has suffered a spate of accusations of muzzling climate scientists in recent years. In January 2006, James Hansen, director of the US space agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered their staff to review his lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard website and requests for media interviews (see Top climatologist accuses US of trying to gag him).
environment.newscientist.com/article/dn11074

Robert Paine of the University of Washington in Seattle was on a panel that was asked to ignore evidence that supported greater protection of wild salmon. "[We] were told to either strip out our recommendations or see our report end up in a drawer."
environment.newscientist.com/article/mg18324560.400-bush-science.html

Richard Myers, a geneticist at Stanford University, California, who was denied a National Institutes of Health (NIH) post, recalls: "The staffer asked questions that really shocked me. She wanted to know what I thought about President Bush. Did I like him? What did I think of the job he was doing?"
(same source)

Until this administration, American scientists had never seen a genuine Soviet-style approach to politicizing scientific research. Brezhnev isn’t dead, he’s working for the Bush administration.

 

[Al_Masetti]

I thought that this report was interesting:

“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”

Oh, sorry about that. I should have mentioned that the report was from 1922.

In 1922, “tipping points” hadn’t been invented yet. That is probably the only reason that the planet survived. Also, polar bears must have been much better swimmers than they are now.

cei.org/gencon/003,06235.cfm

The article said that at soundings “to a depth of 3,100
meters showing the gulf stream still very warm.” I am
skeptical about that. I really wonder if the report got the
depth wrong because that seems very deep for 1922. But I am
skeptical about some of the modern reports too.

For me the point of the article was that the article
describes “hitherto unheard of temperatures in the arctic
zone.” It said that “well known glaciers have entirely
disappeared.” “Great masses of ice have been replaced by
moraines of earth and stones.” I wonder if there exist any
photographs?

The earth has warmed and cooled in the many times in the
past. The arctic has warmed and cooled many times in the
past. I suspect that those cycles will continue long after
humanity goes the way of the dinosaurs. The recent arctic
warming was probably a similar event. Ice will melt. Ice
will form again. That is a natural cycle. I doubt that
anthropogenic CO2 has much influence on climate compared to
the natural cycles.
Thanks to my friend Bruce R for this knee-slapper.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Barbarian observes:
Putting up a list of people proves nothing.

Barbarian also observes:
No, it merely means out of tens of thousands of climatologists, you can always find a few dozen who won’t agree on almost anything. Getting a tiny minority to dissent, is not evidence of fraud. (the part of the statement earlier removed to change what I said, is in red).

Barb, where did the tens of thousands come from??? Hmmmm

The biggest number you have previously come up with was 279.

Hmmmmm???

 

[Al_Masetti]

I know; I know; I know … numbers don’t mean nuthin’.

Hyever:

Oregon Petition Project: Dr. Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute
of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce that more than 31,000
scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of global warming
alarmism at 10:00 AM on Monday, 19 May 2008 at the National Press Club
in Washington D. C. The complete list will be available at
<click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?
r=3604470&msgid=103774&act=P8PE&c=174876&admin=0&destination=http%3A%2F%
2Fwww.petitionproject.org%2F>www.petitionproject.org on Monday morning.

This blurb was on Dr. S. Fred Singer’s e-newsletter which is available on www.climatechangedebate.org and at www.sepp.org

Private e-subscriptions may be obtained by request at info@sepp.org

 

[steveandersen]

Perhaps you meant to say that temperature differences in the atmosphere drive stronger winds - rather than the average temperature of the atmosphere i.e. a “warmer atmosphere”. And therefore atmospheres with larger temperature differences are more energetic - as measured by wind speed.

In total, I think you’d agree that Venus’ atmosphere is warmer than Neptune’s atmosphere. But Neptune has stronger winds.

temperature and pressure differences drive winds
but if you had a 100 degree difference in an atmopshere with an average temp of 100 degrees and a 100 degree tempoerature difference in an atmoshphere wiht an average temp of 101 dagrees teh 101 degree atmosphere will be more energetic since temperature is a mesure of internal energy

as for Neptune and Venus, the temperature at the bottom of Neptune’s atmopshere is estimated to be about 10 times that of Venus’.

compressive heating is very significant in a Gas Giant

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian also observes:
No, it merely means out of tens of thousands of climatologists, you can always find a few dozen who won’t agree on almost anything. Getting a tiny minority to dissent, is not evidence of fraud. (the part of the statement earlier removed to change what I said, is in red).

Barb, where did the tens of thousands come from???

Universities. Meteorology and climatology degrees are offered by hundreds of colleges. If you can only find a few dozen who object to the consensus, that’s a pretty good tip-off.

If you’re asserting that a significant majority of the rest also dissent, I’d be pleased to see your evidence. Show us.

And I’d love to see that list of the “31,000 scientists” but the link doesn’t work. Would you care to wager how many of them are actually PhD meteorologists or climatologists?

I bet I have a good idea; I’ve seen this scam used by the Discovery Institute before.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Hey Barb,

You gotta quit making stuff up.

It don’t do nothin’ fer yer creds.

All you’re doing is making stuff up.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Heh, pointing out that a few dozen scientists out of tens of thousands isn’t a significant number, that’s not “making stuff up.” It’s just an observation.

Now, if you can show that a significant number of those tens of thousands are deniers, that would be something.

Can you do that? Apparently, no one else can.

BTW, the word is that a preliminary check on those “31,000 scientists” turned up about 40 climatologists. Can you tell me how many of them are actually meteorologists or climatologists?

The list was, last time I looked, not available to the general public.

Edit:
It’s up now. Just a long list of names, with no qualifications listed. Apparently, the biggest number aren’t even scientists, but are engineers, and those having bachelor’s degrees. The smallest group of deniers are, if we can trust the guys who put the list together, climatologists. They could only find 40 real climatologists, out of thousands of climatologists in the world, to support their story.

And that’s a rather telling revelation, isn’t it?

 

[Al_Masetti]

Prove that the “tens of thousands” of climatologists is a real number.

Heh, pointing out that a few dozen scientists out of tens of thousands isn’t a significant number, that’s not “making stuff up.” It’s just an observation.

Now, if you can show that a significant number of those tens of thousands are deniers, that would be something.

Can you do that? Apparently, no one else can.

BTW, the word is that a preliminary check on those “31,000 scientists” turned up about 40 climatologists. Can you tell me how many of them are actually meteorologists or climatologists?

The list was, last time I looked, not available to the general public.

Edit:
It’s up now. Just a long list of names, with no qualifications listed. Apparently, the biggest number aren’t even scientists, but are engineers, and those having bachelor’s degrees. The smallest group of deniers are, if we can trust the guys who put the list together, climatologists. They could only find 40 real climatologists, out of thousands of climatologists in the world, to support their story.

And that’s a rather telling revelation, isn’t it?

 

[The_Barbarian]

(Barbarian is challenged to show that there are tens of thousands of climatologists in the world)

Let’s see… I counted 146 universites offering degrees in climatology/meteorology/atmospheric science in the United States, Europe, and New Zealand. Don’t have the numbers for Asia, South America, or Africa, but no doubt they would have added substantially to the number.

Let’s take an absurdly short period of time to make the point: If they graduated ten per year for the past 20 years, that would be, um… 29,200.

I say “absurdly” since journals of climatology go back as far as the 1800s, and I know of several that go back to the 60s and 70s.

 

[Al_Masetti]

That is an example of how one fakes a number.

(Barbarian is challenged to show that there are tens of thousands of climatologists in the world)

Let’s see… I counted 146 universites offering degrees in climatology/meteorology/atmospheric science in the United States, Europe, and New Zealand. Don’t have the numbers for Asia, South America, or Africa, but no doubt they would have added substantially to the number.

Let’s take an absurdly short period of time to make the point: If they graduated ten per year for the past 20 years, that would be, um… 29,200.

I say “absurdly” since journals of climatology go back as far as the 1800s, and I know of several that go back to the 60s and 70s.

 

[Al_Masetti]

There might be 50; one for each state. But if they want to keep their jobs, they have to toe the politically correct line about man-made global warming.

global-warming.accuweather.com/2007/02/state_climatologist_in_hot_wat.html

 

[Al_Masetti]

A more prominent climatologist than even Al Gore has weighed in. No exact date is given, but we are nonetheless doomed. Given the advanced state of the science, they SHOULD be able to give us the exact time, day and date.
No link; sorry.

---

Prince Charles: Eighteen months to stop climate change disaster
By Andrew Pierce
Last updated: 1:08 PM BST 18/05/2008

The Prince of Wales has warned that the world faces a series of natural
disasters within 18 months unless urgent action is taken to save the
rainforests.

In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change
debate, he said a £15 billion annual programme was required to halt
deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire
consequences.

“We will end up seeing more drought and starvation on a grand scale.
Weather patterns will become even more terrifying and there will be
less and less rainfall,” he said.

“We are asking for something pretty dreadful unless we really
understand the issues now and [the] urgency of them.” The Prince said
the rainforests, which provide the “air conditioning system for the
entire planet”, releasing water vapour and absorbing carbon, were being
lost to poor farmers desperate to make a living.

He said that every year, 20 million hectares of forest – equivalent to
the area of England, Wales and Scotland – were destroyed and called for
a “gigantic partnership” of governments, businesses and consumers to
slow it down.

“What we have got to do is try to ensure that these forests are more
valuable alive than dead. At the moment, there is more value in them
being dead,” he said.

He estimated that the cost would be about £15 billion a year but said
that this should be viewed as an insurance policy for the whole world.
“That is roughly just under one per cent of all the insurance premiums
paid in the world in any one year. It is an insurance premium to ensure
the world has some rainfall and reasonable weather patterns. It is a
good deal.”

Last month, the Prince had a meeting at St James’s Palace with four
state governors from Brazil to discuss the best way to allocate the
money. One option would be for an organisation such as the World Bank
to administer the fund. The Prince made clear yesterday that if nothing
was done there was a “severe danger of losing a major part of the
battle against climate change”.

In an interview on Radio 4’s Today programme, the Prince disclosed that
he had raised his concerns with the White House, Vladimir Putin, the
Russian prime minister, and President Sarkozy, of France. He said he
had pressed Barclays, Shell, Goldman Sachs and McDonald’s to join his
campaign.

But he also said consumers had to play their part by choosing products
that were environmentally sustainable and called for improvements in
labelling.

He denied, however, that he was interfering in the political process.
“All I am ever trying to do is to provide an enabling facility,” he
said.

He conceded that at times he had been forced to keep his counsel when
he would have liked to have spoken out. “You learn as you go along. I
am going to be 60 this year. I would be a blinding idiot if I had not
learnt a bit by now.”

•The number of birds, animals, marine and freshwater creatures in the
world has dropped by almost one third, according to the WWF
conservation organisation. It found that between 1970 and 2005
land-based species fell by 25 per cent, marine species by 28 per cent
and freshwater species by 29 per cent.*

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian points out that even if each climatology department in the US, Europe and New Zealand graduated only ten people a year, we’d have tens of thousands of climatologists.

That is an example of how one fakes a number.

Drawing inferences from evidence probably feels like fraud to deniers. But that’s how science works.

BTW, there is abundant evidence that there is tremendous pressure on climatologists to be “politically correct.” But the evidence is from government bureaucrats who want them to deny that warming exists. There is congressional testimony and the public exposure by whistle-blowers like Hansen to confirm these charges.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Barb,

You need to learn to make a distinction between college debate and science.

In a college debate, the parties can make up all sorts of things. They can imply and infer and use verbal slight of hand. They can distract the folks with opposing points of view.

These approaches even carry over into court rooms and hearing rooms.

But science is different. And in science you can’t go around making up stuff … creating numbers by multiplying one inapplicable number by an assumption and then further multiplying it by a leap of faith.

It just doesn’t work that way in science.

In college public speaking classes you’re allowed to ignore opposing points; in science, opposing points must be explored.

In college public speaking and debating classes and in so-called research papers, it’s acceptable to just pick up the points that favor the argument you are trying to make.

But in real science, you are working to advance human knowledge, NOT score points …so, therefore, in real science you MUST read and consider everything, regardless of how tedious and regardless of how it might damage your own talking points.

The ten thousand is a made-up number. There is no data to support it.

Arthur Robinson’s 31,000 number is real; he has their signatures and they’ve all been vetted. That’s a lot more than you can say for your made-up number of ten thousand.

Barb, you have to do the work. You can’t just dismiss Robinson’s work out of hand because it’s easy to dismiss someone’s else’s work.

With respect to the number 40 you brought up; I’ve given you more than 40 names.

Quit making stuff up.

We’re talking about real science.

This is not a college public speaking course.

[Readers are encouraged to visit www.oism.org and find the petition project as well as other interesting things to read.]

Barbarian points out that even if each climatology department in the US, Europe and New Zealand graduated only ten people a year, we’d have tens of thousands of climatologists.

Drawing inferences from evidence probably feels like fraud to deniers. But that’s how science works.

BTW, there is abundant evidence that there is tremendous pressure on climatologists to be “politically correct.” But the evidence is from government bureaucrats who want them to deny that warming exists. There is congressional testimony and the public exposure by whistle-blowers like Hansen to confirm these charges.

 

[Al_Masetti]

Lawrence Solomon is a serious writer and environmentalist.

Here’s part of what he had to say recently about Arthur Robinson and the 32,000 “deniers”.

I have previously posted links to Solomon’s writing and also to his appearance on BookTV.

If the debate is really open, then the MainStreamMedia should be encouraging open discussion, but instead they ignore what is politically incorrect.

---

32,000 deniers
Posted: May 16, 2008, 7:20 PM by Jeff White
Lawrence Solomon, The Deniers, Climate change, global warming, carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases, Al Gore
That’s the number of scientists who are outraged by the Kyoto Protocol’s corruption of science

Freeman Dyson is one of the world’s most eminent physicists.

                                           By Lawrence Solomon

Question: How many scientists does it take to establish that a consensus does not exist on global warming? The quest to establish that the science is not settled on climate change began before most people had even heard of global warming.
The year was 1992 and the United Nations was about to hold its Earth Summit in Rio. It was billed as — and was — the greatest environmental and political assemblage in human history. Delegations came from 178 nations — virtually every nation in the world — including 118 heads of state or government and 7,000 diplomatic bureaucrats. The world’s environmental groups came too — they sent some 30,000 representatives from every corner of the world to Rio. To report all this, 7,000 journalists converged on Rio to cover the event, and relay to the publics of the world that global warming and other environmental insults were threatening the planet with catastrophe.
In February of that year, in an attempt to head off the whirlwind that the conference would unleash, 47 scientists signed a “Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming,” decrying “the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuels and requires immediate action.”
To a scientist in search of truth, 47 is an impressive number, especially if those 47 dissenters include many of the world’s most eminent scientists. To the environmentalists, politicians, press at Rio, their own overwhelming numbers made the 47 seem irrelevant.
Knowing this, a larger petition effort was undertaken, known as the Heidelberg Appeal, and released to the public at the Earth Summit. By the summit’s end, 425 scientists and other intellectual leaders had signed the appeal.
These scientists — mere hundreds — also mattered for nought in the face of the tens of thousands assembled at Rio. The Heidelberg Appeal was blown away and never obtained prominence, even though the organizers persisted over the years to ultimately obtain some 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners.
The earnest effort to demonstrate the absence of a consensus continued with the Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change — an attempt to counter the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. Its 150-odd signatories also counted for nought. As did the Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship in 2000, signed by more than 1,500 clergy, theologians, religious leaders, scientists, academics and policy experts concerned about the harm that Kyoto could inflict on the world’s poor.
Then came the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine’s Petition Project of 2001, which far surpassed all previous efforts and by all rights should have settled the issue of whether the science was settled on climate change. To establish that the effort was bona fide, and not spawned by kooks on the fringes of science, as global warming advocates often label the skeptics, the effort was spearheaded by Dr. Frederick Seitz, past president of the National Academy of Sciences and of Rockefeller University, and as reputable as they come.
The Oregon petition garnered an astounding 17,800 signatures, a number all the more astounding because of the unequivocal stance that these scientists took: Not only did they dispute that there was convincing evidence of harm from carbon dioxide emissions, they asserted that Kyoto itself would harm the global environment because “increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
The petition drew media attention, but little of it was for revealing to the world that an extraordinary number of scientists hold views on global warming diametrically opposite to those they are expected to hold. Instead, the press focussed on presumed flaws that critics found in the petition. Some claimed the petition was riddled with duplicate names. They were no duplicates, just different scientists with the same name. Some claimed the petition had phonies. There was only one phony: Spice Girl Geri Halliwell, planted by a Greenpeace organization to discredit the petition and soon removed. Other names that seemed to be phony — such as Michael Fox, the actor, and Perry Mason, the fictional lawyer in a TV series — were actually bona fide scientists, properly credentialled.
Like the Heidelberg Appeal, the Oregon petition was blown away. But now it is blowing back. Original signatories to the petition and others, outraged at Kyoto’s corruption of science, wrote to the Oregon Institute and its director, Arthur Robinson, asking that the petition be brought back.
“E-mails started coming in every day,” he explained. “And they kept coming. “ The writers were outraged at the way Al Gore and company were abusing the science to their own ends. “We decided to do the survey again.”
Using a subset of the mailing list of American Men and Women of Science, a who’s who of Science, Robinson mailed out his solicitations through the postal service, requesting signed petitions of those who agreed that Kyoto was a danger to humanity. The response rate was extraordinary, “much, much higher than anyone expected, much higher than you’d ordinarily expect,” he explained. He’s processed more than 31,000 at this point, more than 9,000 of them with PhDs, and has another 1,000 or so to go — most of them are already posted on a Web site at petitionproject.org.
Why go to this immense effort all over again, when the press might well ignore the tens of thousands of scientists who are standing up against global warming alarmism?
“I hope the general public will become aware that there is no consensus on global warming,” he says, “and I hope that scientists who have been reluctant to speak up will now do so, knowing that they aren’t alone.”
At one level, Robinson, a PhD scientist himself, recoils at his petition. Science shouldn’t be done by poll, he explains. “The numbers shouldn’t matter. But if they want warm bodies, we have them.”
Some 32,000 scientists is more than the number of environmentalists that descended on Rio in 1992. Is this enough to establish that the science is not settled on global warming? The press conference releasing these names occurs on Monday at the National Press Club in Washington.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

 

[Al_Masetti]

A poster on www.climatechangedebate.org just posted this article.

A link to the full article is at the bottom, but may require some tinkering to make it work.

The arguments are valid still:

---

Interesting piece written by Stephen J. Gould in 1990

IT’S NOT TOO LATE, IF WE’RE NOT TOO CRAZY

By STEPHEN JAY GOULD; STEPHEN JAY GOULD, A PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY AT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, IS THE AUTHOR OF ‘‘WONDERFUL LIFE.’’
Published: April 22, 1990

DEAD HEAT
The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect.
By Michael Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle.
268 pp. New York:
A New Republic Book/Basic Books. $19.95.

MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLANET
By Barry Commoner.
292 pp. New York:
Pantheon Books. $19.95.

DEAD HEAT
The Race Against the Greenhouse Effect.
By Michael Oppenheimer and Robert H. Boyle.
268 pp. New York:
A New Republic Book/Basic Books. $19.95.

MAKING PEACE WITH THE PLANET
By Barry Commoner.
292 pp. New York:
Pantheon Books. $19.95.

Environmentalists are faced with a paradox on this 20th anniversary
of Earth Day. They wish to spread the news of environmental danger as
widely as possible, yet a kwikwrite virus of books, timed to exploit
the occasion, threatens both to weaken their message and to thin out
the forests they have designated for protection. The two books under
review rise above the ephemera of the occasion, though they also
illustrate the twin perils of environmental preaching. Michael
Oppenheimer and Robert Boyle’s ‘‘Dead Heat’’ (on global warming) does
not insulate itself sufficiently from the heat of the hype
surrounding the subject, while Barry Commoner’s ‘‘Making Peace With
the Planet’’ (on the general global crisis) suffers the commonest of
unkind fates: to be so self-evidently true and just that we pass it
by as a twice-told tale.

No ecological or environmental subject has received more attention in
the past year than global warming - and quite rightly. What with
ozone holes and rising levels of carbon dioxide, we have reason to
suspect that the recent long hot summers are the inception of a
potentially tragic trend, not just a random and reversible blip on a
curve. In the face of such putative danger, we may understand Mr.
Oppenheimer and Mr. Boyle’s impatience with scientists who do not
mount the soapbox. Yet good oratory demands not just passion but hard
information and valid predictions. So we must also understand the
caution shown by most scientists, who do not want their credibility
buried in scenarios of imminent disasters that do not come to pass.

Predictions of global warming derive from the most difficult and
tentative of all scientific efforts - the modeling of complex
systems. I doubt that the general public has any sense of the
uncertainties that attend such an enterprise. Most people are taught
that science is the discipline that makes predictions by evaluating
data in terms of the universal laws of nature. They believe that when
data go into a computer, which then churns out complex graphs, the
result is rigor in canonical form. However, climatic modeling on a
global scale requires not only that the computer be fed scores of
variables (many of which cannot be precisely measured), but also, and
more important, that the complex and nonlinear interactions among
these variables be assessed (and here we haven’t the ghost of
adequate knowledge or even, in many cases, of suggestive theory).
Thus, honorable people all trying their darnedest to model the global
climate come up with the most disparate predictions.

Mr. Oppenheimer, a senior scientist with the Environmental Defense
Fund, and Mr. Boyle, the author of ‘‘The Hudson River’’ and ‘‘Acid
Rain,’’ seriously compromise their otherwise valuable book by
choosing but one of these computer models (from the Goddard Institute
for Space Studies) among plausible alternatives, and then unleashing
cannonades of dire predictions, often in a lurid mode. They write,
for instance, that ‘‘the potential loss of plant and animal species
from the impending global warming appears overwhelming.’’ As a
paleontologist who knows that even the worst scenarios of global
warming would yield an earth far cooler than that of many quite
prosperous times of a prehuman past, I object. After all, species
migrate as climates shift - and have done so up and down latitude
throughout geological history. (Although Mr. Oppenheimer and Mr.
Boyle recognize this, they conclude that migration will now be
blocked by ''cities, towns, factories, rail lines, and
other ‘infrastructure.’ ‘’) I doubt that greenhouse warming is a
danger to the planet at geological time scales, as Mr. Oppenheimer
and Mr. Boyle suggest. Why make such hyped-up claims? Isn’t it enough
that global warming (and the consequent rising of sea level) would be
tragic for us humans? Isn’t it enough that most of our large cities,
situated at sea level (ports and harbors), would be flooded, and that
masses of people and agricultural systems would have to move? This
parochial focus is entirely appropriate and defensible.

Difficulties cannot be swept under a rug of invented concord for
purposes of political clout. But surely environmentalists can make
adequately strong statements without making unjustifiable
predictions: they can say that greenhouse gases, byproducts of human
technology, are increasing (the data on carbon dioxide are
particularly impressive); that the ozone hole is real; that the
warming of the past few years may well represent the beginning of a
general trend; and that if the dumping of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere continues unabated, it will eventually induce global
warming. Thus, at the very least, we may look upon the warming of the
last few years, whatever its causes, as a model for a dangerous
future.

If many arguments are overstated by Mr. Oppenheimer and Mr. Boyle,
their good points are often compromised by purple prose and downright
silly imagery. Consider this mixed zoological and sexual metaphor for
the ills of the internal combustion engine: ‘‘The energy-inefficiency
mouse embedded in the automobile is as big as a rat. . . . The mouse
was conceived in the mating of two desires: fast, high-power driving
and easy, single-clutch shifting.’’

The crux of my displeasure with Mr. Oppenheimer and Mr. Boyle’s
tactic, though, is their castigation of cautious scientists
(ecologists are their main targets). ‘‘For a modern ecologist,’’ they
write, ''it all comes to this: in drawing conclusions, don’t wander
too far from the data, or the ‘ground truth.’ ‘’ In response, they
argue ‘‘that now, with the world changing so fast, a little more
intellectual risk taking is required.’’ Yet just two sentences later,
they undermine their own prescription: ‘‘Politicians don’t want to
hear what you don’t know; they want to hear what you are confident
about, particularly if you are a scientist.’’

How can we take the advised risks and, at the same time, proffer the
necessary certainty? We cannot. History is littered with the refuse
of overenthusiasms; necessary caution is a mark of vibrant and
compassionate professionalism, not a conceit of effete disengagement.
We will only be effective if we can speak with the authority of
genuine intellectual integrity.

I have no quarrel with Mr. Oppenheimer and Mr. Boyle’s general path
to salvation. They recommend that we pursue ‘‘bridge’’ technologies
based on much more efficient use of current fuels until we can
develop new technologies based on renewable energy sources that won’t
release greenhouse gases. I applaud their emphasis on solar power,
but must note that their enthusiasm for hydrogen is by no means
universally shared; the image of the Hindenburg in flames dies hard.

The rest of the essay can be found at
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9C0CE0DD1F38F931A15757C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

I’ve always enjoyed Stephen J. Goulds books.

Dennis

 

[The_Barbarian]

You need to learn to make a distinction between college debate and science.

In a college debate, the parties can make up all sorts of things.

Ah, but this isn’t a college debate. Here, you have to ground your assertions in facts.

They can imply and infer and use verbal slight of hand. They can distract the folks with opposing points of view.

Heh, an opposing point of view shouldn’t be a “distraction”, if you’ve got something to offer in rebuttal. If you have something.

But science is different.

You’re a scientist? You don’t seem very much like a scientist. It is different, as a few bureaucrats learned when they tried to suppress data that the deniers found “politically incorrect.” One lost his job, and if the FBI investigation on whistleblowers goes forward, some may lose their liberty as well.

And in science you can’t go around making up stuff … creating numbers by multiplying one inapplicable number by an assumption and then further multiplying it by a leap of faith.

I’d be pleased to see your estimate, and the evidence for it. But you haven’t offered any. And if you let me be the only person to actually use data in making an estimate, then you’re pretty much dead in the water.

In college public speaking classes you’re allowed to ignore opposing points; in science, opposing points must be explored.

Actually, science isn’t a dialectic. It’s a methodology. And it’s findings are what they are.

But in real science, you are working to advance human knowledge, NOT score points …so, therefore, in real science you MUST read and consider everything, regardless of how tedious and regardless of how it might damage your own talking points.

I’m surprised you admit that. The deniers spend a great deal of time ignoring data.

The ten thousand is a made-up number.

You made it up, in fact. I said “tens of thousands.”

There is no data to support it.

I was able to find the number of colleges in the US and a few other places offering degrees in climatology, meteorology, and atmospheric science. As you know, I didn’t enumerate those in Asia, South America, and Africa, which makes my estimate rather conservative. If each program only graduates ten people a year, a couple of decades gives you tens of thousands.

Deniers look on data the way a vampire regards a crucifix.

Arthur Robinson’s 31,000 number is real;

Did Arthur tell you how many are actually climatologists?

he has their signatures and they’ve all been vetted.

Less than a hundred out of 31000 seems a trifle sloppy to me.

That’s a lot more than you can say for your made-up number of ten thousand.

Barb, you have to do the work. You can’t just dismiss Robinson’s work out of hand because it’s easy to dismiss someone’s else’s work.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, the “31,000 climatologists” scam is over. No need to

With respect to the number 40 you brought up; I’ve given you more than 40 names.

I’m using Arthur’s numbers. He didn’t tell you, did he?

Quit making stuff up.

It’s always hard to learn that someone you trusted, lied to you. But I didn’t do it. He did.

We’re talking about real science.

You don’t seem to know what that is.

[Readers are encouraged to visit www.oism.org

and find the petition project as well as other interesting things to read.]

Do they have more the 40 climatologists out of the tens of thousands of them, who support your story?

 

[JimG]

The Prince of Wales has warned that the world faces a series of natural disasters within 18 months unless urgent action is taken to save the rainforests.

In one of his most out-spoken interventions in the climate change
debate, he said a £15 billion annual programme was required to halt deforestation or the world would have to live with the dire
consequences

Wait a minute… “deforestation”? Isn’t he talking about greenhouse gases like CO2 here? Forests like CO2! Plants use CO2. That’s why they call it a greenhouse gas. More carbon dioxide, more plant growth. It seems we should be watching out for excessive re-forestation.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Wait a minute… “deforestation”? Isn’t he talking about greenhouse gases like CO2 here? Forests like CO2! Plants use CO2. That’s why they call it a greenhouse gas. More carbon dioxide, more plant growth. It seems we should be watching out for excessive re-forestation.

If only. The problem is that carbon isn’t the limiting factor for forests now. It’s nitrogen usually. I don’t think that it would be technically feasible on the level we’d need to do, but if you scatter millions of tons of soluble iron over a wide area of ocean, great blooms of phytoplankton will occur, which will sop up some carbon.

It will be followed by huge numbers of zooplankton, and then fish. Might be a good way to increase fishing yields. I’m not aware of anything like that for land-based producers.