Global warming--caused by humans?

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by francois, Nov 13, 2006.

  1. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    I have an argumentative research paper for my English class and I decided to do Global Warming as a topic because there's a shitload of literature out there, so I figured it would be easy to research and it is something I've always meant to get around to researching anyway. I may as well get graded for it. Anyway, to narrow my topic, I made the thesis: Global warming--is it naturally occurring, or is it caused by human activity? and if so, to what extent.

    I don't think there are any doubts that global warming is happening. But is it caused by humans or not? I think it's likely that humans are a factor at least to some extent, but just how much is not yet clear to me. However, at some point I'm going to have to pick a side--on or the other, because it is an argumentative research paper. Does anybody have any really convincing scientific data that global warming is caused by humans?
     
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  3. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I suppose you could estimate the amount of greenhouse gasses added to the atmosphere by humans directly, add the amount released indirectly by human activity, and compare it to the volume of releases from natural sources like volcanos, and see if it's in the ballpark as something capable of changing the climate.

    Here's a link that might be helpful:
    http://www.realclimate.org/
     
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  5. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    Hot & Cold Media Spin

    On September 25, Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R.-Okla.) gave a speech on the Senate floor taking to task global-warming alarmists and their enablers in the media. Here are excerpts from his speech.

    "Global warming"--just that term evokes many members in this chamber, the media, Hollywood elites and our pop culture to nod their heads and fret about an impending climate disaster.

    Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Just last week, the vice president of London's Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism.

    During the past year, the American people have witnessed an unprecedented parade of environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, linking every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and cross squarely into global-wanning advocacy.
    "Hockey Stick' Broken

    One of the key aspects that the United Nations, environmental groups and the media have promoted as the "smoking gun" of proof of catastrophic global wanning is the so-called "hockey stick" temperature graph by climate scientist Michael Mann and his colleagues.

    The "hockey stick" purported to show that temperatures in the Northern hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, then spiked upward in the 20th Century, presumably due to human activity. Mann's "hockey stick" came under severe scrutiny and was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and an independent researcher further refuted the foundation of the "hockey stick."

    The NAS report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 AD to 1850 AD. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth's climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland.
    End of Little Ice Age

    The media have missed the big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the Earth's temperatures and mankind's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the one degree Fahrenheit temperature increase during the 20th Century means we are all doomed. First of all, the one-degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest advancement of living standards, life expectancy, food production and human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that the global warming we experienced in the 20th Century was somehow negative or part of a catastrophic trend.

    The climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have continued to ignore the fact that the Little Ice Age, which resulted in harsh winters that froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths, ended around 1850. So trying to prove man-made global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are wanner than during the Little Ice Age is akin to comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend.

    Alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began warming at the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, long before man-made CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then about 1940, just as man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a decline that lasted until the 1970s, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age.
    Kyoto: All Pain, No Gain

    I am approached by many in the media and others who ask: "What if you are wrong to doubt the dire global-warming predictions? Will you be able to live with yourself for opposing the Kyoto Protocol?"

    My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation and death of our oceans. None of these predictions came true, yet the doomsayers continue to predict a dire environmental future.

    It is the global-warming alarmists who should be asked the question: "What if they are correct about man-made catastrophic global warming?" They have come up with no meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisis in the two decades that they have been hyping this issue. If the alarmists truly believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis.

    The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. Legislation that has been proposed in this chamber would have even less of a temperature effect than Kyoto's undetectable impact. Global warming alarmists and the media have been praising California for taking action to limit CO2. But this costly feel-good California measure will have no impact on the climate, only the economy.

    Symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.

    When the history of our era is written, future generations will look back with puzzlement and wonder why we spent so much time and effort on global warming fears and pointless solutions like the Kyoto Protocol.
    Climate Change Coverage

    Many in the media have taken it upon themselves to drop all pretense of balance on climate change and instead become committed advocates for the issue.

    Here is a quote from Newsweek: "There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production--with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."

    A headline in the New York Times: "Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output."

    Here is a quote from Time magazine: "As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval."

    All of this sounds very ominous--until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek and the New York Times, and Time in 1974.

    They weren't referring to global warming--they were warning of a coming ice age.

    In addition to global cooling fears, Time has also reported on global wanning. Here is an example: "[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right … weathermen have no doubt that the world, at least for the time being, is growing warmer."

    Before you think that this is just another example of the media's promoting Vice President Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, you need to know that that quote was from Jan. 2, 1939.

    Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and more than three decades before Time began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.

    In 1951, Time pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

    In 1952, the New York Times noted that the "trump card" of global warming "has been the melting glaciers."
    Flip-Flopping Between Scares

    There are many more examples of the media's and scientists' flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares. Here is a quote from a New York Times report on fears of an approaching ice age: "Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again." That sentence appeared more than 100 years ago in the Feb. 24, 1895, edition of the New York Times.

    A front-page article in the Oct. 7, 1912, New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor "Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age."

    The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the "Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold." An Aug. 10, 1923, Washington Post article declared: "Ice Age Coming Here."

    By the 1930s, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming. "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise" stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933.

    The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.

    An Aug. 9, 1923, front-page article in the Chicago Tribune declared: "Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada." The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be "wiped out" and Switzerland would be "entirely obliterated."

    A Dec. 29, 1974, New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed "the facts of the present climate -change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade."

    The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, "mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence" would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that "a major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable." These past predictions of doom have a familiar ring.
    Media Coverage in 2006

    Has this embarrassing 100-year documented legacy of coverage on what turned out to be trendy climate science theories made the media more skeptical of today's sensational promoters of global warming?

    On Feb. 19, 2006, CBS News's "60 Minutes" produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley's claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast that he barely got off an iceberg before it collapsed into the water. "60 Minutes" failed to inform its viewers of a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that, according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930s than today.

    On March 19, "60 Minutes" profiled NASA scientist and alarmist James Hansen, who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush Administration. In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen. The "60 Minutes" segment made no mention of Hansen's partisan ties to former Vice President Gore or Hansen's receiving a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the left-wing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. There was also no mention of Hansen's subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for President in 2004.

    Why would "60 Minutes" ignore the basic tenets of journalism, which call for objectivity and balance in sourcing, and do such one-sided segments? The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley who told the CBS News website that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of "Holocaust deniers."

    In April, Time devoted an issue to global warming alarmism titled "Be Worried, Be Very Worried." This is the same Time that first warned of a coming ice age in the 1920s before switching to warning about global warming in the 1930s before switching yet again to promoting the 1970s coming ice age scare.

    The April 3 global-warming special report of Time was a prime example of the media's shortcomings, as the magazine cited partisan left-wing environmental groups with a vested financial interest in hyping alarmism. Time did not make the slightest attempt to balance its reporting with any interviews with scientists skeptical of this alleged climate apocalypse.

    The American people should be worded--very worded--of such shoddy journalism.
    The Al Gore Movie

    In May, our nation was exposed to perhaps one of the slickest science propaganda films of all time: former Vice President Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. In addition to having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, Gore had the full backing of the media, and leading the cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press.

    On June 27, the AP ran an article by Seth Borenstein that boldly declared "Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie." The article quoted only five scientists praising Gore's science, despite AP's having contacted more than 100 scientists.

    The fact that more than 80% of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore's brand of climate alarmism.

    Here is a sampling of some of the errors and misrepresentations made by Gore in An Inconvenient Truth:

    • He promoted the now-debunked "hockey stick" temperature chart in an attempt to prove man's overwhelming impact on the climate.

    • He attempted to minimize the significance of the Medieval Warm period and the Little Ice Age.

    • He insisted on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most scientists believe does not exist.

    • He asserted that today's Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930s were as warm or warmer.

    • He claimed the Antarctic was warming and losing ice but failed to note that is true only of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice.

    • He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland's ice is in danger of disappearing.

    • He erroneously claimed that the ice cap on Mt. Kilimanjaro is disappearing due to global wanning, even while the region cools and researchers blame the ice loss on local land-use practices.

    • He made assertions of a massive future sea-level rise that is way outside any supposed scientific "consensus" and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.

    • He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing.

    • He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad, despite NASA scientists' concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits.

    • He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving.

    • He failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004

    Following the promotion of An Inconvenient Truth, the press did not miss a beat as advocates for global warming fears.

    ABC News put forth its best effort to secure its standing as an advocate for climate alarmism when the network put out a call for people to submit their anecdotal global-warming horror stories in June for use in a future news segment.

    In July, the Discovery Channel presented a documentary on global warming narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The program presented only those views of scientists promoting the idea that humans are destroying the Earth's climate. A Bloomberg News TV review noted, "You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program."
    Engineered 'Consensus'

    On July 24, 2006, the Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at the University of California San Diego and the author of a 2004 Science magazine study. Oreskes insisted that a review of 928 scientific papers showed there was 100% consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. This study was also featured in former Vice President Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

    However, the analysis in Science excluded nearly 11,000 studies (more than 90% of the papers dealing with global warming), according to a critique by British social scientist Benny Peiser.

    Peiser also pointed out that less than 2% of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called "consensus view" that human activity is driving global warming, and some of the studies actually opposed that view.

    But despite this manufactured "consensus," the media continued to ignore any attempt to question the orthodoxy of climate alarmism.
    Alarmism Leads to Skepticism

    It is an inconvenient truth that 2006 has been a year in which major segments of the media have given up on any quest for journalistic balance, fairness and objectivity when it comes to climate change. The media have so relentlessly promoted global-warming fears that a British group called the Institute for Public Policy Research--a left-leaning group--issued a report in 2006 accusing media outlets of engaging in what the group termed "climate porn" in order to attract the public's attention.

    The media endlessly hype studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile Virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, and damage vineyards and global food crops, to name just a few of the global-warming-linked calamities.

    Fortunately, the media's addiction to so-called "climate porn" has failed to seduce many Americans.

    According to a July Pew Research Center Poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it's from natural factors or not happening at all.

    In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise.

    The American people know when their intelligence is being insulted. They know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.

    The American people deserve better from our fourth estate. Breaking the cycles of media hysteria will not be easy since hysteria sells. But I want to challenge the news media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, to stop ignoring legitimate voices in this scientific debate and to stop acting as a vehicle for unsubstantiated hype.
     
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  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Only Texas senator John Cornyn received more campaign donations from the oil and gas industry in the 2004 election cycle. The contributions Inhofe has received from the energy and natural resource sector since taking office have exceeded one million dollars. [wiki]

    http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/sector.asp?CID=N00005582&cycle=2004

    In a Senate speech, Inhofe said that America should base its Israel policy on the text of the Bible:

    In March 2002, Inhofe also made a speech before the U.S. Senate which included the explicit suggestion that the 9/11 attacks were a form of divine retribution against the U.S. for failing to defend Israel...

    Inhofe outraged some federal employees on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building by stating on national television that there probably weren't very many casualties because federal employees wouldn't be at their desks at 9 a.m. and that they would instead be off having coffee somewhere.

    Inhofe had previously compared the Environmental Protection Agency to the Gestapo.


    Basically, another right-wing crank financed by the oil industry.
     
  8. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,515
    Well then, clearly the guy, himself, is a douche. But what about his arguments? Moreover, I'm curious about this in particular:

    "The NAS report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 AD to 1850 AD. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth's climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland.
    End of Little Ice Age"

    I'm wondering if we're just in another one of those warm periods. Perhaps the greenhouse gases we're dumping in the atmosphere really are insignificant. Perhaps not. How do we know? Has anyone addressed this?

    A lot of people get their information and opinions through the media, which is abhorrent.



    "Many in the media have taken it upon themselves to drop all pretense of balance on climate change and instead become committed advocates for the issue.

    Here is a quote from Newsweek: "There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production--with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."

    A headline in the New York Times: "Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output."

    Here is a quote from Time magazine: "As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval."

    All of this sounds very ominous--until you realize that the three quotes I just read were from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek and the New York Times, and Time in 1974.

    They weren't referring to global warming--they were warning of a coming ice age.

    In addition to global cooling fears, Time has also reported on global wanning. Here is an example: "[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right … weathermen have no doubt that the world, at least for the time being, is growing warmer."

    Before you think that this is just another example of the media's promoting Vice President Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, you need to know that that quote was from Jan. 2, 1939.

    Yes, in 1939. Nine years before Vice President Gore was born and more than three decades before Time began hyping a coming ice age and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.

    In 1951, Time pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

    In 1952, the New York Times noted that the "trump card" of global warming "has been the melting glaciers."
     
  9. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    54,036
    Which science do you trust more, that of the 50's, 70's, or today?
     
  10. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    2,515
    Definitely today's science. But how do we know when the science the media is reporting is good or non? I'm still looking for some science stuff that implies a causal connection between human activity and global warming. So far I haven't found anything especially convincing, except that the IPCC said that humans are causing global warming at least to some extent. Of course they are. But I'm looking for something that says that humans are a major force behind global warming. I'm willing to accept that humans causing some of it.

    But here's something. Most sources I've seen blame high CO2 concentrations for the higher temperatures. Is this right?

    That's an excerpt written by astronomer Jocelyn Tomkins from the University of Texas.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    54,036
    I would get my science news from a reputable source, not the popular media. I like New Scientist, but specialized climate journals might be more comprehensive.

    As to the contribution of water vapor, that is true. But hasn't it been stable? Is there a feedback effect from the increase in CO2 (and methane from cows, and industrial chemicals), whereby as temperature increases, so does the amount of water vapor?

    Actually, evaporation rates for water have been decreasing, due to global dimming, which happens due to soot and other particulates. So, there has been less water vapor in the atmosphere, which seems to be heating up anyway.
     
  12. valich Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,501
    This topic has been posted numerous times. 99% of reputable scientists now acknowledge that current global warming is at least in part caused by humans. This is undeniable. since the advent of the industrial revelution, we have been pumping tons of C02 into the atmosphere. There is a new posted article on MSNBC.com today that states how oceans are now becoming acidic, causing bleached coral reefs, due to the increased C02. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15654293/

    I can supply you with countless more links if you need further proof.
     
  13. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    2,515
    A news article is hardly proof. So yeah. I could use more information--but not if it's just a bunch of news links. Thanks.
     
  14. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    17,455
    according to the chart at the following link:
    http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/ggccebro/chapter1.html
    the concentration of greenhouse gases increased more than usual after about 1950 or so. my guess would be that humans have shortened the onset of global warming. you must also remember we are talking about climate not weather.
    i remember reading an article about this subject in the early 70's and they predicted then that we should be seeing an increase in temperature within 25 years (1995). yes, i believe that humans are largly responsible for the current trend.
     
  15. URI IMU Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    729
    >> financed by the oil industry.

    Indeed, client science has confused even themselves..

    For an unbiased list of articles, plus views and weightings. The premise is that oil is pivotal to what is happening with the climate, which is a consequence of the use of oil.
    see Whole World Alert
    http://omegafour.com/forum/
    Natural Consequences

    A micro-layer of oil on the world's seas is inhibiting water evaporation, reducing clouds which leads to drought... and extinction.

    On Edit

    Francois you appear to be a casualty of scientific opinions, where the observations have been interpreted, trouble is the interpretations may not be correct.
    Without a knowledge of scientific method you can not sift the confused and conflicting opinions from the actual factual observations.

    Forget the hype/opinions, collect the facts... then you need to interpret the picture shown by these facts
    Client science has ruined science. Good luck
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2006
  16. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,515
    I'm not a victim of anything really. You shouldn't take my apparent opinions literally. I'm just putting forth other people's arguments and testing them out. Just testing the waters so I can know what's strong and what's not so I can decide what side to pick eventually.
     
  17. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,515
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/05/01/wglob01.xml



    Leading scientific journals 'are censoring debate on global warming'


    Two of the world's leading scientific journals have come under fire from researchers for refusing to publish papers which challenge fashionable wisdom over global warming.

    A British authority on natural catastrophes who disputed whether climatologists really agree that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, says his work was rejected by the American publication, Science, on the flimsiest of grounds.

    Radcliffe on Sour power station with Dr Benny Peiser (inset)
    Radcliffe on Sour power station with Dr Benny Peiser (inset). He disagrees with the pro-global warming line

    A separate team of climate scientists, which was regularly used by Science and the journal Nature to review papers on the progress of global warming, said it was dropped after attempting to publish its own research which raised doubts over the issue.

    The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.

    The author of the research, Dr Naomi Oreskes, of the University of California, analysed almost 1,000 papers on the subject published since the early 1990s, and concluded that 75 per cent of them either explicitly or implicitly backed the consensus view, while none directly dissented from it.

    Dr Oreskes's study is now routinely cited by those demanding action on climate change, including the Royal Society and Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser.

    However, her unequivocal conclusions immediately raised suspicions among other academics, who knew of many papers that dissented from the pro-global warming line.

    They included Dr Benny Peiser, a senior lecturer in the science faculty at Liverpool John Moores University, who decided to conduct his own analysis of the same set of 1,000 documents - and concluded that only one third backed the consensus view, while only one per cent did so explicitly.

    Dr Peiser submitted his findings to Science in January, and was asked to edit his paper for publication - but has now been told that his results have been rejected on the grounds that the points he make had been "widely dispersed on the internet".

    Dr Peiser insists that he has kept his findings strictly confidential. "It is simply not true that they have appeared elsewhere already," he said.

    A spokesman for Science said Dr Peiser's research had been rejected "for a variety of reasons", adding: "The information in the letter was not perceived to be novel."

    Dr Peiser rejected this: "As the results from my analysis refuted the original claims, I believe Science has a duty to publish them."

    Dr Peiser is not the only academic to have had work turned down which criticises the findings of Dr Oreskes's study. Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity.

    As with Dr Peiser's study, Science refused to publish his rebuttal. Prof Bray told The Telegraph: "They said it didn't fit with what they were intending to publish."

    Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: "It's pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It's the news value that is most important."

    He said that after his own team produced research casting doubt on man-made global warming, they were no longer sent papers by Nature and Science for review - despite being acknowledged as world leaders in the field.

    As a result, says Prof Spencer, flawed research is finding its way into the leading journals, while attempts to get rebuttals published fail. "Other scientists have had the same experience", he said. "The journals have a small set of reviewers who are pro-global warming."


    Concern about bias within climate research has spread to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose findings are widely cited by those calling for drastic action on global warming.


    In January, Dr Chris Landsea, an expert on hurricanes with the United States National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, resigned from the IPCC, claiming that it was "motivated by pre-conceived agendas" and was "scientifically unsound".

    A spokesman for Science denied any bias against sceptics of man-made global warming. "You will find in our letters that there is a wide range of opinion," she said. "We certainly seek to cover dissenting views."

    Dr Philip Campbell, the editor-in-chief of Nature, said that the journal was always happy to publish papers that go against perceived wisdom, as long as they are of acceptable scientific quality.

    "The idea that we would conspire to suppress science that undermines the idea of anthropogenic climate change is both false and utterly naive about what makes journals thrive," he said.

    Dr Peiser said the stifling of dissent and preoccupation with doomsday scenarios is bringing climate research into disrepute. "There is a fear that any doubt will be used by politicians to avoid action," he said. "But if political considerations dictate what gets published, it's all over for science."
     
  18. Absane Rocket Surgeon Valued Senior Member

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    8,989
    Within this time frame (last 200 years or so).. the Artic was at its WARMEST in the 1930s. It is now on a cooling trend.
     
  19. guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

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    4,089
    Peiser in 2005? You do realise that he was wrong?
    http://www.desmogblog.com/deltoids-tim-lambert-bursts-peisers-bubble

    "In 2004, Naomi Oreskes looked at a sample of 928 papers in refereed scientific journals and found that not one disagreed with the scientific consensus: that humans are responsible for most of the warming in the last few decades. Benny Peiser disputed this, claiming that 34 of them rejected or doubted the consensus. I asked him for his list of 34 and posted it. It was obvious that there was only paper in his list that rejected the consensus and not only was that paper not peer-reviewed it was from the AAPG (American Association of Petroleum Geologists)."
     
  20. guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

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    4,089
    If you want more information, try www.realclimate.org.
    They also had links to some sceptic sites, last I knew.
     
  21. francois Schwat? Registered Senior Member

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    2,515
    Yikes, there's a shitload of disinformation out there! Thanks for the information, guthrie.
     
  22. ToRaSQue Registered Member

    Messages:
    13
    Wow. That's a bunch of info, francois. But my focus is not on global warming.
    I'll tell you one thing- the scientists who think reducing gas from cars and using different types of light bulbs will help, are quite stupid. The carbon dioxide the atmosphere gain each year from ALL the cars in the world is only 5-6% of the total amount. 4% are from random sources, and 90% come from factories. We need to get rid of factories, NOT cars.
     
  23. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    François:
    Your text “Carbon Dioxide: A Minor Player” quoted in post 7 is correct.
    I explained why in another thread concerned with what happens to sunlight.
    I do not want to double post so here are 3 of the 4 “water paragraphs” from:

    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=1199622&postcount=9

    “Water molecules are polar. (Both hydrogen atoms are positive bound ions on one side of oxygen atom with 105 degrees between them.) This makes possible a strong interaction (read that as absorption in this case) with IR radiation, much stronger than with CO2. - I.e. Water, not CO2 is by far the dominate and controlling molecule to worry about when considering global warming. Unfortunately as oceans warm, evaporation increases. Consequently, there is more of water in the atmosphere to accelerate the global warming. I.e. possibly an instability can be triggered and Earth converted to a cooler version of Venus. (Lead is a liquid on the surface of Venus, so I do not recommend we let that happen to Earth, even if GDP growth needs to be slightly reduced.) If this is to happen, this water thermal instability will be “just the match” that sets off the “Methane thermal instability.” (More on this briefly given at end.)

    Now consider the sun light striking the Earth where there are no clouds to consider. It will to a large extent be absorbed where there are individual H2O molecules. (Dust also absorbs well and re radiates much longer wave length IR, but I will neglect that in this post.) Fortunately, there is not much H2O in the high atmosphere. It is lighter than O2 and N2, but they are not polar so do not become liquids easily where as polar water molecules become ice crystals high up. Thus, much more than half of the atmospheric absorption of sun light takes place in the lower half of the atmospheric mass. (I do not know the numbers - just how it works, but guess that the lower 15% of the atmospheric mass is where more than half of the sun light is atmospherically absorbed. - Trees and dirt claim much more.)

    Thus, one would expect (and does) find solar IR absorption in the lower atmosphere to be larger compared to that in the high atmosphere. However, CO2 is also polar* but does not liquefy or freeze out* as "dry" ice in the high atmosphere. Thus, increasing it in the atmosphere, tends to warm the higher atmosphere wrt to the lower atmosphere. This is in fact being observed. I.e. the IR absorption in the high atmosphere is increasing - a clear sign that Earth is heating up and almost certainly this high atmospheric heating is due to the release of carbon sequestered in fossil fuels. …”

    For more go on effect of clouds and brief comments about the potential methane hydrate disaster, which could end life on Earth, go to the link above.
    ----------------------------
    *I work from memory and understanding. I think CO2 is O-C-O which would appear to be non-polar, but when the vibrational mode is excited (as it would be in most temperatures of interest) the mode with the both "O" displace "up" and the C displaced "down" is polar, at least dynamically. Thus, compared to O2 and N2 which are never polar, CO2 is much better IR absorber. H2O is statically polar and a stronger absorber still than CO2. This difference also explains why H2O, despite being much ligher than CO2, freezes at a much higher temperature.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 15, 2006

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