Climate change: is the science really settled?

[fastpat]

The Satanic Gases In addtion to other texts, I've own this one since it was new. Highly recommended.


Dr. Patrick J. Michaels
Senior Fellow in Environmental Studies

Pat Michaels is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a research professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia. According to Nature magazine, Michaels is one of the most popular lecturers in the nation on the subject of global warming. He is a past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and was program chair for the Committee on Applied Climatology of the American Meteorological Society. Michaels is a contributing author and reviewer of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He was an author of the 2003 climate science "Paper of the Year" awarded by the Association of American Geographers, for the demonstration that urban heat-related mortality declined significantly as cities became warmer. His writing has been published in the major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science; and his articles have appeared also in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, and the Journal of Commerce. He has appeared on ABC, NPR's All Things Considered, PBS, Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, BBC and Voice of America. He holds A.B. and S.M. degrees in biological sciences and plant ecology from the University of Chicago, and he received his Ph.D. in ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979.

Dr. Robert C. Balling, Jr.

Dr. Balling is the Director of the Laboratory of Climatology at Arizona State University, and the author of The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions versus Climate Reality and The Satanic Gases. Dr. Balling is one of the world's most prolific contributors to the refereed scientific literature on global warming, and has lectured around the planet on the issue of climate change.

See also: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

[island911]

Originally posted by Rondinone
...
3. That it's a threat we should be concerned about.

To me, this is the key reason agreement is found. People don't want to risk dismissing the idea of man induced global warming.

The thing is, for me, all that I've seen only one major point:
1. the earth has warmed since the last ice age. --therefore, we have global warming.

From there, I see equivocation on "global warming." That is, people will use "man caused g.w." interchangebly with "g.w. (ice-age)" . . .and claim that there is agreement on man caused g.w.

[Rondinone]

Originally posted by island911
To me, this is the key reason agreement is found. People don't want to risk dismissing the idea of man induced global warming.

The thing is, for me, all that I've seen only one major point:
1. the earth has warmed since the last ice age. --therefore, we have global warming.

From there, I see equivocation on "global warming." That is, people will use "man caused g.w." interchangebly with "g.w. (ice-age)" . . .and claim that there is agreement on man caused g.w.

When I say global warming, I mean anthropogenic. The whole debate with the modelling is separation of natural from man-made. The separation is now accepted at the 95% confidence interval, which is enough for most to say "OK, it's a problem."

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Rondinone
When I say global warming, I mean anthropogenic. The whole debate with the modelling is separation of natural from man-made. The separation is now accepted at the 95% confidence interval, which is enough for most to say "OK, it's a problem."

Well, you see, it's not accepted at that level by everyone in the field. It's only accepted at that level by those that have a vested interest in having it acted upon by government.

More interesting publications dealing with the government's churning out crap posing as science.

Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media

[ckissick]

Originally posted by Rondinone
When I say global warming, I mean anthropogenic. The whole debate with the modelling is separation of natural from man-made. The separation is now accepted at the 95% confidence interval, which is enough for most to say "OK, it's a problem."

Coincidentally, NOAA predicted with 95% confidence that 2006 would be a year of abnormally high hurricane activity in the Atlantic. 'Nuff said.

[ckissick]

Originally posted by fastpat
Well, you see, it's not accepted at that level by everyone in the field. It's only accepted at that level by those that have a vested interest in having it acted upon by government.

More interesting publications dealing with the government's churning out crap posing as science.

Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media

Reading the front flap of "Meltdown" reminds me of a very similar but obscure controversy in theoretical physics. String Theory. Almost every physicist is studying String Theory as if it's fact, because that's where the funding is. But there are a lot of huge holes in String Theory. "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin goes into this issue. You could almost substitute Global Warming with String Theory in his book, right down to the fact that there is no experimental evidence to support it.

Here's a quote from Smolin's front flap: "As a scientific theory, it [String Theory] fails. And because it has soaked up the lion's share of funding, attracted some of the best minds, and effectively penalized young physicistsfor pusuing other avenues, it is dragging the rest of physics down with it." Sound familiar?

Of course, everyone knows Lee Smolin is just s shill of the... of the... well, of some big evil megcorp that wants to silence the String Theory naysayers.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by ckissick
Reading the front flap of "Meltdown" reminds me of a very similar but obscure controversy in theoretical physics. String Theory. Almost every physicist is studying String Theory as if it's fact, because that's where the funding is. But there are a lot of huge holes in String Theory. "The Trouble with Physics" by Lee Smolin goes into this issue. You could almost substitute Global Warming with String Theory in his book, right down to the fact that there is no experimental evidence to support it.

Here's a quote from Smolin's front flap: "As a scientific theory, it [String Theory] fails. And because it has soaked up the lion's share of funding, attracted some of the best minds, and effectively penalized young physicistsfor pusuing other avenues, it is dragging the rest of physics down with it." Sound familiar?

Of course, everyone knows Lee Smolin is just s shill of the... of the... well, of some big evil megcorp that wants to silence the String Theory naysayers.

Big Tobacco?

[island911]

Originally posted by ckissick
Coincidentally, NOAA predicted with 95% confidence that 2006 would be a year of abnormally high hurricane activity in the Atlantic. 'Nuff said.

OUCH

Funny, wasn't it that confidence that ran up fuel oil futures? hmmmmm....

[red-beard]

Originally posted by Rondinone
When I say global warming, I mean anthropogenic. The whole debate with the modelling is separation of natural from man-made. The separation is now accepted at the 95% confidence interval, which is enough for most to say "OK, it's a problem."

From a statistical stand point, that statement is pure statistical BS. I can set the confidence interval to 95% on anything, by widening the acceptance criteria.

[IROC]

I must admit that I have not read this entire thread, but thought I would mention that I happened to talk to a NASA scientist yesterday that is involved with global temperature measurement and climate model development. He works with one of the researchers (John Christie) who - until recently - has been a relatively vocal opponent to the global warming hysteria.

He said that even Dr Christie is now acknowledging that the phenomenon is real. He said that the models are getting better and better and that it is no longer a question of whether it is occuring or not - only how much increase in temp we're going to see.

Mike

[thrown_hammer]

Here’s a little experiment for you. Fill a glass with ice. Next fill it with water. Measure the level of the water. Now sit and watch the ice melt. Wait until all the ice melts, every last bit of it. Now measure the water level again. Now compare the levels. Did the water level go up? Down? Stay the same?

Maybe I am simple but could someone explain how the world is going to flood when the ice caps melt based on this experiment?

[red-beard]

Not all of the ice is floating. The Water level in the world has risen 400 feet in the past 18,000 years. This is about 2.3 feet per 100 years. The latest report on global warming indicated that our ocean level will rise 17 inches (less than 1.5 feet) in the next 100 years.

Admittedly, you would expect some variation in each 100 years, but 17 inches is well inside the normal expected variation.

Hmmmmm.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by IROC
I must admit that I have not read this entire thread, but thought I would mention that I happened to talk to a NASA scientist yesterday that is involved with global temperature measurement and climate model development. He works with one of the researchers (John Christie) who - until recently - has been a relatively vocal opponent to the global warming hysteria.

He said that even Dr Christie is now acknowledging that the phenomenon is real. He said that the models are getting better and better and that it is no longer a question of whether it is occuring or not - only how much increase in temp we're going to see.

Mike

While Global Warming may be occuring, it's well within ranges that have been documented in the past. As someone else pointed out, Global Warming has been underway, with ups and downs, since the last period of glaciation.

Support Global Warming grow more food.

[thrown_hammer]

Originally posted by red-beard
Not all of the ice is floating. The Water level in the world has risen 400 feet in the past 18,000 years. This is about 2.3 feet per 100 years. The latest report on global warming indicated that our ocean level will rise 17 inches (less than 1.5 feet) in the next 100 years.

Admittedly, you would expect some variation in each 100 years, but 17 inches is well inside the normal expected variation.

Hmmmmm.

Not all the ice in the glass is floating or on the Earth?

How about this...When water freezes doesn’t it expand? So wouldn’t ice contract when it melts? I just don’t understand how by melting the ice, the resulting water will take up more space? Seriously.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by thrown_hammer
Not all the ice in the glass is floating or on the Earth?

How about this...When water freezes doesn’t it expand? So wouldn’t ice contract when it melts? I just don’t understand how by melting the ice, the resulting water will take up more space? Seriously.

The glaciers on Greenland (and everywhere else) are sitting on land, when they melt, the runoff will go into the ocean eventually. It's not that they will take up more space, it's where they move to.

[red-beard]

Ice in a glass is floating. The displacement of the ice when floating is the same as the water it will melt into.

However, if the water is 32F and the Ice is 32 F and the ice only phase changes, the water will not run over the rim. If the water then warms up to say 60F (15 C), it will expand and run over the glass.

[thrown_hammer]

So if I wait until the ice in the glass melts the water level won’t change, but if I wait for the water to reach room temp it will overflow? I will try that tonight and report back.

I thought most of Greenland was ice, and the land was only around the perimeter?

[fastpat]

Originally posted by thrown_hammer
So if I wait until the ice in the glass melts the water level won’t change, but if I wait for the water to reach room temp it will overflow? I will try that tonight and report back.

I thought most of Greenland was ice, and the land was only around the perimeter?

Well, I suppose it could be a coral atoll, with that ancient, and quite rare, cold water coral at it's finest.

[Rick Lee]

I'm more worried about the moon's orbit increasing by almost 2" per year or the sun's expansion. Eventually, the sun will engulf the inner planets, boil off our oceans and become a red giant. That's what I call global warming.

[thrown_hammer]

Originally posted by fastpat
Well, I suppose it could be a coral atoll, with that ancient, and quite rare, cold water coral at it's finest.

Listen, Patty....