659 replies to this topic

[biknut]

Global cooling effect

Terence Corcoran, National Post
Published: Saturday, September 16, 2006

News that the Conservatives might be taking a more cautious approach to Kyoto and climate change could not come at a more appropriate time. The science behind the idea of man-made global warming, always theoretical and often speculative, appears set to receive another blow. A report in New Scientist magazine yesterday chronicles the work of a crew of scientists who forecast a new wave of global cooling brought on by a decline in activity in the sun.

The New Scientist report, along with other scientific assessments warning of global cooling, also come as a blow to the campaign -- led by David Suzuki and one of the directors of his foundation -- to portray all who raise doubts about climate change theory -- so-called skeptics -- as pawns of corporate PR thugs manipulating opinion. If the Suzuki claim is true, then the tentacles of Exxon-Mobil reach deeper into science than anyone has so far imagined.

Dramatic global temperature fluctuations, as New Scientist reports, are the norm. A Little Ice Age struck Europe in the 17th century. New Yorkers once walked from Manhattan to Staten Island across a frozen harbour. About 200 years earlier, New Scientist reminds us, a sharp downturn in temperatures turned fertile Greenland into Arctic wasteland.

These and other temperature swings corresponded with changing solar activity. "It's a boom-bust system, and I expect a crash soon," says Nigel Weiss, a solar physicist at the University of Cambridge. Scientists cannot say precisely how big the coming cooling will be, but it could at minimum be enough to offset the current theoretical impact of man-made global warming. Sam Solanki, of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, says declining solar activity could drop global temperatures by 0.2 degrees Celsius. "It might not sound like much," says New Scientist writer Stuart Clark, "but this temperature reversal would be as big as the most optimistic estimate of the results of restricting greenhouse-gas emissions until 2050 in line with the Kyoto protocol."

The New Scientist says this gives the Earth some breathing room in the face of climate change over the next 50 years, but it warns against complacency. "If the Earth does cool during the next sunspot crash and we do nothing [about man-made global warming], when the sun's magnetic activity returns, global warming will return with a vengeance," says Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University in California.

Well, that's one man's view based on his take on the science. But other scientists have differing views. Last month, the Russian Academy of Sciences' astronomical observatory reported that global cooling could develop in 50 years. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, head of the agency's space research branch, is reported to have said a period of global cooling similar to one seen in the late 17th century could start in 2012-2015 and reach its peak in 2055-2066. "The Kyoto initiatives to save the planet from the greenhouse effect should be put off until better times," he said.

A few excerpts from the New Scientist report appear below, and the full text is available through the magazine's Web site for a nominal fee. Readers can judge for themselves to what degree the magazine's report highlights the need for much greater scientific certainty over the causes of climate change.

Debate over the role of the sun in forcing temperature change is nothing new. Professor Ian Clark of the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa, wrote on this theme on this page in 2004. The climate models used by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change do not take adequate account of solar activity, Mr. Clark said. "Past and recent climate warming can be explained by changes in solar activity," he said.

Another scientist tracking the sun, one among many, was Theodor Landscheidt, the late and renowned German solar expert and forecaster. "Analysis of the sun's varying activity in the last two millennia indicates that contrary to the IPCC's speculation about man-made global warming as high as 5.8 degrees Centigrade within the next 100 years, a long period of cool climate with its coldest phase around 2030 is to be expected."

Worth noting here is Timothy Ball, the former University of Manitoba climatologist and frequent contributor to the idea that official government science is ignoring the role of the sun and that global cooling may be looming, not warming. Mr. Ball, for his thoughts, has become the victim of a slanderous campaign by David Suzuki and his associate, Vancouver public relations guru James Hoggan. They charge Mr. Ball with being a climate change "denier" -- as if it were akin to denying the Holocaust. They also portray him, and all "skeptics" who raise doubts about official climate science, as being in the pockets of corporations.

Mr. Hoggan and Mr. Suzuki appear to be the leading backers of a major disinformation campaign run out of the Vancouver offices of James Hoggan & Associates. Mr. Hoggan sits on the Suzuki Foundation board, and among other things somehow funds two full-time researchers to operate a blog that is focused solely on discrediting scientists who do no uphold the official UN view on climate change.
It's all a corporate scam, they claim. "There are people," says Mr. Hoggan, a veteran self-promoting pro in the PR business, "mainly people who are getting paid by oil and coal interests, and [some] who are just basically ideologues, who are trying to confuse the public about climate change." Says Mr. Suzuki: "The skeptics are a small group known for their support of corporations like the fossil fuel industry. In fact, many are receiving money directly from the industry."

The New Scientist article yesterday, and many other science studies and reports over the years, suggest the Suzuki group is operating an empty political campaign. The Harper Conservatives should fear nothing as they work to set a Kyoto policy.

http://www.canada.co...06-8af9cf743c95

[biknut]

How's this for a scenario? A hundred years from now, after America has burned up all the oil in the world, we head into a ice age and we're the only ones to survive because we're sitting on all the coal.

Are we lucky or what?

[biknut]

Read the sunspots

The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling

R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.

My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.


Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.

My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.

Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.

Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."


R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.

http://www.canada.co...84068db11f4&p=4

[Zarrka]

ok, this is why i hate funky titles.

Its not global warming. and its not global cooling.

Its weather change.

Also Sunspots are by no means the whole story. Nor are sun flares or anything else to do with the sun. there is a theory, rightly pointed out that it can be a contributing factor, but thats not going to change the fact that we are experienceing environmental issues and changes that need to be addressed. Kyoto is going to decrese emitions, and thats going to be good DESPITE warming OR cooling. it may very well help our current environment and a clean source of energy is always desired, despite the earths temprature.

If it turns out that we are cooling to the point of not being able to grow crops of create food, then it will happen gradually, and so will change. In Oz, all our usual farming lands have been in drought and not producing at all, sdo the smart crop growers / animal farmers have been moving to the central north where there has been much rain and good crops and abundance in grass.

Whatever the changes, the farmers will adapt before the laws are changed. Thats my experience anyway. Yes, always try and find out whats happeneing, no, dont launch scare campaigns that is simply going to force people into rash decisions that may not be right. Currently there are too many theories and not enough agreement. But whatever is happeneing, it will become apprent soon enough and we will be able to adapt to it. There is no other choice, anyway.

[DJS]

I thought this video seemed credible and well grounded, so I'm curious as to the response of the mainstream global warming proponents.

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[Live Forever]

Well the guys in the video (at least the first segment, I am still watching it) even say that global warming is happening, just that it is just not being driven by man. (or, more specifically, from man's CO2 emissions) Whether or not man is the prime cause, just a partial factor, or not a factor at all, it is still a problem that will eventually cause huge problems down the road if not handled effectively in a timely manner.

[JonesGuy]

This is as debunked as "Loose Change".

- One interviewee (the ocean guy) is suing for being edited so that all of his comments were horribly out of context

- Another intervieee presents a(n alternate GW) theory in this documentary, but has since disproven (with evidence) his own theory, showing that science works.

- Timothy Ball is a well-known oil industry advocate

- The data regarding cosmic rays has been disproven repeatedly, but the researcher keeps on coming back with a modification to his theory

- The video fails to mention sulphates as the most common theory for the post-40s cooling trend (something commonly known).

- There are currenlty hundred of vineyards in Britain

(that's all from memory)
.......................................

If you're going to watch this, then seek out the myriad rebuttals available on the web.

[DJS]

Well the guys in the video (at least the first segment, I am still watching it) even say that global warming is happening, just that it is just not being driven by man. (or, more specifically, from man's CO2 emissions) Whether or not man is the prime cause, just a partial factor, or not a factor at all, it is still a problem that will eventually cause huge problems down the road if not handled effectively in a timely manner.

Okay Nate, but the questions that would then would follow:

1. What is the strategy for reducing/offsetting global warming if CO2 emissions are not the cause?

2. How can we have any confidence that the current global warming trend will continue?

3. As there could be/are delays between climatic trends and their causes (something already witnessed in many studies), how could we successfully hone our environmental policy for "homeostasis" without having a highly accurate understanding of the cause&effect?

The issue of global warming highlights the need for accurate information so that the effectiveness of public policy can be maximized. Operating under false assumptions is suboptimal and leads to inefficiency, as well as potentially to disasters. If global warming was not being caused by CO2 emissions (or human civilization in general) the implications would be profound.

[advancedatheist]

Well the guys in the video (at least the first segment, I am still watching it) even say that global warming is happening, just that it is just not being driven by man. (or, more specifically, from man's CO2 emissions)

I don't know why advocates of dominator economics (which includes people as diverse as Lyndon LaRouche and the late Jerry Falwell), who want to use economic progress to control more and more of nature, have latched onto man-made global warming as some kind of hoax or "swindle." You'd think they would want to know how to control Earth's climate, and would thank the climate scientists for finding an imprecise but definitely effective method for doing so.

[DJS]

This is as debunked as "Loose Change".

- One interviewee (the ocean guy) is suing for being edited so that all of his comments were horribly out of context

- Another intervieee presents a(n alternate GW) theory in this documentary, but has since disproven (with evidence) his own theory, showing that science works.

- Timothy Ball is a well-known oil industry advocate

- The data regarding cosmic rays has been disproven repeatedly, but the researcher keeps on coming back with a modification to his theory

- The video fails to mention sulphates as the most common theory for the post-40s cooling trend (something commonly known).

- There are currenlty hundred of vineyards in Britain

(that's all from memory)
.......................................

If you're going to watch this, then seek out the myriad rebuttals available on the web.

Oh, I have (and will continue to) sampled a number of different perspectives on global warming, which only adds to my sense of befuddlement. [lol]

BTW QJones, I'm not saying that I agree or "believe" the position being staked out in this video. I simply found that, for myself, it passed "the smell test" after a cursory review. The issue of global warming is one that I have become more and more reluctant to maintain strong beliefs about.

[JonesGuy]

It doesn't pass the smell test the least! The first 10 minutes talk about the post 40s 'cooling' as a great 'debunker' of CO2-linked warming ... without the least mention of atmospheric sulphates. Any informed climatologist knows about the sulphate-escalation, and the strongly-suspected cause of the post-40s cooling should be mentioned in the documentary (if the goal is to inform). But it wasn't.

It's a glaring omission, showing the massive inherent bias of the documentary director. This director does not have a good reputation already (in his last documentary, his science advisor quit because he wouldn't listen to her scientific explanations for events and continued with his unfounded theories).

It's as bad as an anti-evolution documentary neglecting to mention that there are a myriad of known ways for DNA to be harmlessly added to a genome. All biologists know about (at least) a few of these mutations, and so failing to mention them as a source of 'new information' is glaring in its absence.

As well, the ocean interviewee has publically stated that the documentary was edited to imply that he was saying pretty well the opposite of what he actually believes.

[Live Forever]

Okay Nate, but the questions that would then would follow:

1. What is the strategy for reducing/offsetting global warming if CO2 emissions are not the cause?

Well, I am not convinced CO2 is not the cause (it would seem prudent to act to reduce CO2 emissions even if there is a chance that they could be the cause), but leaving that aside for a second as the premise of your question presupposes that they are not the cause; There are a number of fixes (such as a solar shield/reflector) for which it doesn't matter what the cause for global warming is.

2. How can we have any confidence that the current global warming trend will continue?

Past history of global climate change as recorded in a number of geological sources. These trends (global warming and cooling) when they happen as we are seeing them now (although they never happen as quickly as we are seeing them, which lends credence to the idea that something is different now than in past warming periods) generally go in long arcs.

3. As there could be/are delays between climatic trends and their causes (something already witnessed in many studies), how could we successfully hone our environmental policy for "homeostasis" without having a highly accurate understanding of the cause&effect?

I don't believe that we could. We most definitely do need to have an accurate understanding of the cause and effect. Anyone saying otherwise is mistaken.

[DJS]

It doesn't pass the smell test the least!  The first 10 minutes talk about the post 40s 'cooling' as a great 'debunker' of CO2-linked warming ... without the least mention of atmospheric sulphates.  Any informed climatologist knows about the sulphate-escalation, and the strongly-suspected cause of the post-40s cooling should be mentioned in the documentary (if the goal is to inform).  But it wasn't.

It's a glaring omission, showing the massive inherent bias of the documentary director.  This director does not have a good reputation already (in his last documentary, his science advisor quit because he wouldn't listen to her scientific explanations for events and continued with his unfounded theories).

It's as bad as an anti-evolution documentary neglecting to mention that there are a myriad of known ways for DNA to be harmlessly added to a genome.  All biologists know about (at least) a few of these mutations, and so failing to mention them as a source of 'new information' is glaring in its absence.

As well, the ocean interviewee has publically stated that the documentary was edited to imply that he was saying pretty well the opposite of what he actually believes.

Well these are good counter arguments QJones! I said that it passed my smell test...I didn't mean to imply that my perspective on this matter is all that refined.

[JonesGuy]

Sorry for being snippy. This "documentary" was released quite awhile ago, and it keeps resurfacing as a source of misinformation. It's like running into someone who quotes a Hovind arguments that were discredited a long time ago ...

[maestro949]

1. What is the strategy for reducing/offsetting global warming if CO2 emissions are not the cause?

Send a bunch of rockets equipped with robots, miles of strong canvas and long telescopic poles into orbit between earth and venus. Have them stabilize an orbit that is synchronized with the earths orbit around the sun. Extend poles to link up, unfurl canvas and redirect some of the sun's radiation away from earth off into a different direction. Might need to create a sizable mesh of these to have much of an impact. Even if it takes a decade though, we might save a lot of valuable microorganisms from cooking.

[DJS]

1. What is the strategy for reducing/offsetting global warming if CO2 emissions are not the cause?

Send a bunch of rockets equipped with robots, miles of strong canvas and long telescopic poles into orbit between earth and venus. Have them stabilize an orbit that is synchronized with the earths orbit around the sun. Extend poles to link up, unfurl canvas and redirect some of the sun's radiation away from earth off into a different direction. Might need to create a sizable mesh of these to have much of an impact. Even if it takes a decade though, we might save a lot of valuable microorganisms from cooking.

Why couldn't we have this as part of our overall strategy regardless? Of course, I figure this type of approach is probably outside of our current capabilities, but then again so is reducing CO2 emissions to any significant degree...

[DJS]

Sorry for being snippy.  This "documentary" was released quite awhile ago, and  it keeps resurfacing as a source of misinformation.  It's like running into someone who quotes a Hovind arguments that were discredited a long time ago ...

No worries, I didn't perceive you as being snippy anyway.

From my perspective, I've never watched this video before, it aired on the BBC (which I tend to view as a fairly unbias news source), and the arguments were at least on the surface level logically consistent. If it is agenda driven misinformation, which I acknowledge it could be, then it is of the highly effective variety.

[zoolander]

I enjoyed watching the doco

[biknut]

  The data regarding cosmic rays has been disproven repeatedly, but the researcher keeps on coming back with a modification to his theory

Not true. It was proved 2 years ago.

[Mind]

Not true. It was proved 2 years ago.

From what I have followed/read, the cosmic ray researcher's theory (Henrik Svensmark) was not disproven, just openly ridiculed and not allowed publication. He was recently published in a peer reviewed journal after conducting experiments showing that cosmic rays affect the amount of cloud nuclei. Still, the quantitative effect of more or less cloudcover on global warming is an open question.

[biknut]

  The data regarding cosmic rays has been disproven repeatedly, but the researcher keeps on coming back with a modification to his theory

Not true. It was proved 2 years ago.

And that's one of the biggest things killing the global warming theory now. That and the fact that warming peaked 10 years ago, soon to be 11, and in that time CO2 emissions have increased about 20%.

[JonesGuy]

What indicator are you looking at when you declare that GW has 'peaked'? Average surface ocean temp? Total ocean temp? Ocean rising? Rate-of-change in permafrost cover?

From what I have followed/read, the cosmic ray researcher's theory (Henrik Svensmark) was not disproven, just openly ridiculed and not allowed publication. He was recently published in a peer reviewed journal after conducting experiments showing that cosmic rays affect the amount of cloud nuclei. Still, the quantitative effect of more or less cloudcover on global warming is an open question.

He has to show a correlation, too, between cosmic rays and temperature. Given the half-life of cloud cover, it's not a significant forcing unless the cloud cover is consistent.

No one doubts that cosmic rays influence the development of cloud nuclei (I'd hope, we've known it for over a decade). But to be the 'cause' of Global Warming, you need a correlation.

[JonesGuy]

http://environment.n...-change/dn11651

Here's a New Scientist summary on the problem. He's mangled his data, and there's no movement trend in cosmic rays to correlate to the increase in temperature. Remember, the half-life of water vapour is very important to consider. It's an importantly powerful GHG, but it's a short-lived one. To be a consistent forcing, it would need to trend with the temperature.

[Lazarus Long]

I want to change the subject slightly, I do think there is a swindle but the motives of that swindle are a little complicated, some want to create plausible deniability, others exploitability and still others obfuscation.

On the side of the recognizer of threat there is a bit of a problem too, they tend to become partisan and do deny contrary ideas at times without assessing them adequately however that is the normal problem of debate in science and finding a middle ground between parochialism of progress.

The real swindle I see coming is the system of carbon trading that I see as a means to sidestep and exploit rather than promote carbon sequestration technology.

[JonesGuy]

Well, carbon sequestration is not necessary as long as carbon pollution is priced appropriately (though it's probably cheaper to sequester ... at least for as much is efficient). It's utterly inevitable that we'll continue damaging the ecosystem as we progress, it's just utterly important that we do so sustainably.

[decide2evolve]

I think many of you will like my blog

I am discussing energy, fuel, how we make these decisions, how current energy sources are a threat to consciousness.

I think you'll like last weeks post best, but please go through the whole thing, watch all my videos, and tell me what you think.

July 08, 2007
This week

* Brief and compact new update format

* A new feature which allows you to get paid for reviewing my posts if you have a blog of your own

* A Continuation of the discussion of Social Intentionality

* New links to articles by Jared Diamond on how Societies make disastrous decisions

* The Gilmartin Waterwheel: A tiny water wheel that powers a small cottage from and 8 inch waterfall, and much more new material in the sidebars; new articles, books, resource websites and blogs.

Next week we will get into "memes" and the way they can cause people to operate against their own best interest.

On to this week's info:

Establishments v. Institutions: The Difference, Why it Matters, and the Role of "Critical Mass"

http://thelastgasstation.typepad.com

You're the Best,

Your Devoted Attendant

Robert Run

[decide2evolve]

there is a rebuttal to the "swindle", out there on google video somewhere.. when i have a minute i will find it and post it. it shows a lot of how these guys manipulatated their data and charts..

but what is the point of debating this issue when there are so many reasons to switch to new energy sources any way?

seems like a bad choice of focus

http://thelastgasstation.typepad.com

[decide2evolve]

Here is that info on the "Scam of the Great Global Warming Swindle":

[Description]:An excellent debunking of the scam "documentary": "The Great Global Warming Swindle". This analysis shows how the film's editor and the speakers in the film use every trick in the book to attempt to deceive the viewers of "Swindle" film. For example, the presentation shows how the film used the fact that the Earth's climate has always been changing (correct) to "prove" that humans could not now be causing global warming (incorrect). A detailed rebuttal of the film is here:
http://www.chase-it....-A_Rebuttal.pdf

Here is the link to the video of the "Scam of the Great Global Warming Swindle":

http://video.google....earch&plindex=4

[wis]

[sentrysnipe]

US officials, such as Philip Cooney, have repeatedly edited scientific reports from US government scientists, [5] many of whom, such as Thomas Knutson, have been ordered to refrain from discussing climate change and related topics.[6][7][8]

Climate scientist James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, claimed in a widely cited New York Times article [9] in 2006 that his superiors at the agency were trying to "censor" information "going out to the public." NASA denied this, saying that it was merely requiring that scientists make a distinction between personal, and official government, views in interviews conducted as part of work done at the agency. Several scientists working at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have made similar complaints;[10] once again, government officials said they were enforcing long-standing policies requiring government scientists to clearly identify personal opinions as such when participating in public interviews and forums.

The BBC's long-running current affairs series Panorama recently investigated the issue, and was told that "scientific reports about global warming have been systematically changed and suppressed."[11]

Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research, wrote how increasing use of pejorative terms like "catastrophic," "chaotic" and "irreversible," had altered the public discourse around climate change: "This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as 'climate change is worse than we thought', that we are approaching 'irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate', and that we are 'at the point of no return'. I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric."[12]

According to an Associated Press release on January 30, 2007,

"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."[13]

Critics writing in the Wall Street Journal editorial page claim that the survey [14] was itself unscientific.[15]

Attempts to suppress scientific information on global warming and other issues have been described by Chris Mooney as constituting a Republican War on Science.



Source: http://en.wikipedia....e_on_scientists

Edit: For the record, I see that both sides of the political spectrum are hypocrites, but I just feel that this attempt to censor the scientists is terrifying, although not surprising.

[lucid]

I just watched the rebuttal, and it is very compelling. Most importantly, it showed how they had manipulated the sun data clipping off the last 25 years. Global warming swindle was definitely biased. However, I was originally compelled by the sunspot analysis saying that temperature on earth was dictated primarily by sunspots. However, this analysis is flawed and misleading.

nice link.