I'm not sure if you guys have read this but this is an interesting article I found the other day:
http://www.telegraph...lit/nwarm05.xml
mike 250, that's the best read yet about global warming. I'm going to repost this in the global warming thread.
Better post this along with it...
"Perhaps the most extraordinary and telling thing is that a paper like the Sunday Telegraph has to rely on Christopher Monckton, a journalist and former political advisor to Margaret Thatcher, to attack the science behind contemporary climate change. As far as I can tell he has no qualifications in the field of climate science and I doubt he was written a single scientific paper on the issue. The fact that nowadays the skeptics camp can hardly field a single informed scientist to support their views and have to rely on Monckton, surely says something about the weakness of their arguments."
Read the entire refutation of Monckton's denialism here: http://www.turnupthe...org/?page_id=30
Of the 2 articles the first seems to be the most believable. I like his response too.
RESPONSE FROM LORD MONCKTON:
This was letter was received from Viscount Monckton on Wednesday 22nd November 2006.
Dear Mr. Monbiot, - You are a zoologist. You say I’m not qualified to discuss climate physics. With all respect, no more are you. Your blog, like your column, misunderstands the fundamentals of radiative transfer. Your blog repeats the error made by the weblog of the “scientists” responsible for the now universally-discredited “hockey-stick” graph. You say I treated the Earth as a “blackbody”, taking the change in mean temperature for each unit change in radiative forcing (the UN calls this variable “lambda”) as 0.27C per watt per square metre. This is wrong on two counts. First, the blackbody value of lambda is 0.223C. Secondly, the value I took for lambda was not 0.27C but 0.3C, which correctly assumes that the Earth is not a blackbody but a rather badly-behaved greybody. The UN’s value of 0.5 to 1C is unsupported either by the laws of physics or by observation. You say lambda is a constant. It isn’t: it’s a variable. You say it’s a term in the Stefan-Boltzmann radiative-transfer equation. It isn’t, though it’s derivable from that equation. By now, readers unfamiliar with the elements of climatological physics may wonder why any of this matters. So let me explain. Several recent papers (e.g. Barnett et al., 2005, Levitus et al., 2005, Hansen et al., 2006) draw attention to the fact that, exactly as my own entirely uncontentious calculations demonstrate, observed temperature has risen by very much less than it would have done if the UN’s exaggerated value for lambda were correct. The three papers I have cited all attribute the shortfall to what is known as the “ocean notion”: namely, that the ocean, with a density around 1,100 times that of the atmosphere, is absorbing heat from the atmosphere. As Hansen rightly concedes, if this is what is happening then we have more time for remedial action than had formerly been thought, since elementary thermodynamics dictates that for as long as the atmosphere is warming it will continue to transfer heat to the oceans, and that the oceans (barring the occasional El Nino event) will not return the heat to the atmosphere unless and until it begins to cool. However, there is no unanimity among the supposed “consensus” scientists as to the reason for the very substantial failure of observed temperature to match the projections taken from the UN’s models. The Hadley Centre, for instance, decided to divide all its projections by three to bring then into line with observation, blaming the discrepancy on atmospheric pollutant aerosols. Lyman (2006) throws up a further complication to the “ocean notion”, demonstrating that the climate-relevant mixed or surface layer of the ocean has cooled very sharply in the last two years. Until my articles appeared, it was not generally known that there was so large a discrepancy between the UN’s projections and observed outturn. Readers interested in studying these matters further may like to refer to my commentary on Al Gore’s response to my Sunday Telegraph articles, which will be found at:
http://ff.org/center...061121_gore.pdf. This commentary is well referenced, allowing readers to decide for themselves whether and to what extent my own calculations and findings are reasonable. Finally, my sole aim in looking at the question of climate change has been to try to find out the truth for myself, since I found the rather polemical and hysterical stances taken by both sides in the debate to be unsatisfactory. My only agenda is an innocent quest for the truth.
Because I have provided rather more in the way of references and calculations than is usual in this debate, it is easier than usual for anyone who is interested to verify the facts for himself. With all good wishes - Monckton of BrenchleyIn other words, Mr. Monbiot, screw you.
