Scientific Illiteracy and "Climategate"
arthurdent
Posts: 969
Monday, Dec. 07, 2009
Has 'Climategate' Been Overblown?
By Bryan Walsh
The controversy over e-mails stolen from global-warming researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at Britain's University of East Anglia has become so divisive that there is even disagreement over what to call it.
Skeptics of global warming, who have long considered climate change a fraud, refer to the incident as "Climategate," with obvious intimations of scandal and cover-up. Advocates of action on warming call it "Swifthack," a reference to the 2004 character attacks on presidential candidate Senator John Kerry by the group then known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — in other words, an invented scandal propagated by conservatives and the media that does nothing to change the scientific case for climate change. (See TIME's special report on the environment.)
The truth is that the e-mails, while unseemly, do little to change the overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of man-made climate change. But they do hand a powerful political card to skeptics at the start of perhaps the most important environmental summit in history. Still don't know what to make of it? If you're struggling to untangle the details of the e-mail controversy, here are five key things you need to know:
1. How were the e-mails leaked? On Nov. 17, administrators of the website RealClimate, a blog about climate science written by top researchers, discovered that unknown hackers were attempting to upload onto the blog more than 1,000 e-mails apparently sent by and to scientists at University of East Anglia's CRU. The CRU is one of the most important climate-research centers in the world, and one of a handful of scientific agencies that keep the global temperature records used in most major climate models. Officials at East Anglia soon confirmed that electronic theft had occurred and that the e-mails were genuine. By the end of the week, they were widely available on the Internet. (Facebook users, comment on this story below.)
In early December, the e-mail controversy was still burning up the blogosphere, as international negotiators gathered at the Copenhagen climate summit. The head of the CRU and author of several incriminating e-mails, environmental scientist Phil Jones, has stepped down temporarily from his post while University of East Anglia conducts an independent inquiry into the e-mail controversy. The investigation will be led by Muir Russell, a prominent Scottish academic and civil servant. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania State University (PSU) announced it would conduct its own inquiry into the e-mails, after PSU climatologist Michael Mann also emerged as an author of e-mails that were central to the controversy. (See how global warming is threatening penguins.)
2. What exactly do the e-mails say? The more than 1,000 e-mails dating back some 13 years contain a range of information — everything from the mundanities of climate-data collection to comments on international scientific politics to strongly worded criticisms of research by climate-change doubters. It is mainly the last point that has skeptics crying foul. In one e-mail, sent to Mann from Jones, the topic is a pair of papers that criticize the case for man-made global warming; Jones wrote that he and his colleagues would be sure to keep the papers out of consideration for the forthcoming climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is."
In another e-mail exchange, Mann and Jones discuss ways to pressure an academic journal Climate Research to stop publishing submissions from climate skeptics, with Mann suggesting that they consider encouraging colleagues not to submit papers to the journal until it changes its editorial stance. Jones also wrote repeatedly about rebuffing requests by climate skeptics for raw temperature data from CRU, and seemingly encourages his colleagues to delete e-mails concerning a Freedom of Information request for the data.
In other e-mails, scientists appear to have trouble reconciling recent temperature data with the warming expected from climate models. And overall, the correspondence evinces climate scientists' outright scorn for global-warming skeptics; in one message, Ben Santer, a researcher from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory offers — presumably in jest — to "beat the crap out of" a leading skeptic.
See a climate-change edition of the Acoustic Weekly News.
Read "Floods and Droughts: How Climate Change Is Impacting Africa."
Perhaps most damningly, in an e-mail from 1999, Jones refers to one of Mann's studies from the prominent journal Nature in a discussion of his own data: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." (By the "decline," Jones is presumably referring to the fact that temperature data reconstructed from tree-ring density — a common way to estimate global temperatures before the widespread use of the thermometer — diverges somewhat from recorded temperatures after 1960.)
3. How have the e-mails been interpreted? To global-warming doubters, the CRU e-mails are the new Pentagon Papers, proof that the powers that be — in this case, international climate scientists — are engaged in outright fraud and were exposed only by a brave whistle-blower. (See pictures of a glacier melting in Peru.)
Many skeptics argue that the case for man-made global warming has been essentially undone, and that before the world goes any further in considering action to control greenhouse-gas emissions, all scientific evidence for warming must be reevaluated. Jones' e-mail about Mann's "trick" appears to indicate that climate researchers have been actively manipulating scientific data to better fit their models on climate change, while other e-mails seemingly confirm what skeptics had long suspected — that the globe in recent years wasn't warming as fast as theories on climate change had assumed. Most of all, the tone of the CRU e-mails suggests that climate scientists are mired in groupthink, utterly resistant to skeptical viewpoints and willing to use pressure to silence dissenters of the global-warming mainstream. In other words, the e-mails showed what Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner called "scientific fascism," which he argues is "at worst ... junk science" and "part of an international scientific fraud." (Facebook users, comment on this story below.)
Climate scientists are taking the e-mail controversy seriously. Inquiries are under way at University of East Anglia and Penn State, and IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri has said that the controversy cannot be "swept under the carpet," promising also that the U.N. body will examine the e-mails independently. But global-warming skeptics have already declared victory. "It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," said Mohammed Al-Sabban, Saudi Arabia's lead climate negotiator, according to the BBC. (Watch TIME's video "The Icy Clues to Global Warming.")
4. Do the e-mails weaken the scientific case for global warming? Put it this way: when it comes to climate-science analysis from the representative of the world's biggest oil-producing state, it's wise to be suspicious. In the weeks since the e-mails first became public, many climate scientists and policy experts have looked through them, and they report that the correspondence does not contradict the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, which has been decades in the making. "The content of the stolen e-mails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming," wrote 25 leading U.S. scientists in a letter to Congress on Dec. 4. "The body of evidence that underlies our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust."
According to PSU's Mann, that statistical "trick" that Jones refers to in one e-mail — which has been trumpeted by skeptics — simply referred to the replacing of proxy temperature data from tree rings in recent years with more accurate data from air temperatures. It's an analytical technique that has been openly discussed in scientific journals for over a decade — hardly the stuff of conspiracy.
As for Mann and Jones' apparent effort to punish the journal Climate Research, the paper that ignited his indignation is a 2003 study that turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute. Eventually half the editorial board of the journal quit in protest. And even if CRU's climate data turns out to have some holes, the group is only one of four major agencies, including NASA, that contribute temperature data to major climate models — and CRU's data largely matches up with the others'.
See the top 10 green ideas of 2009.
See pictures of the effects of global warming.
It's true that the e-mails reveal CRU climate scientists were dismissive of skeptics, often in harsh terms, but that's not unusual for scientists. Science is a rough arena, as anyone who has ever survived a doctoral examination knows, and scientists aren't shy about attacking ideas they believe are wrong — especially in private communication. Still, Jones et al. could have been more open and accepting of their critics, and if it turns out that e-mails were deleted in response to the Freedom of Information request for data, heads should roll. (Jones maintains that no e-mails or documents were deleted.)
Ultimately, though, we need to place Climategate/Swifthack in its proper context: amidst a decades-long effort by the fossil-fuel industry and other climate skeptics to undercut global-warming research — often by means that are far more nefarious than anything that appears in the CRU e-mails. George W. Bush's Administration attempted to censor NASA climatologist James Hansen, while the fossil-fuel industry group the Global Climate Coalition ignored its own scientists as it spread doubt about man-made global warming. That list of wrongdoing goes on. One of the main skeptic groups promoting the e-mail controversy, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, was recently revealed to have links to the energy company Exxon-Mobil, which has long funded climate-change deniers. "This is being used to confuse the public," says blogger James Hoggan, whose new book Climate Cover-Up details Exxon-Mobil's campaign. "This is not a legitimate scientific issue." (See why Russia is dragging its feet on climate change.)
5. Will the controversy derail efforts to curb warming? Although the e-mails have no bearing on the scientific case for climate change, they'll likely have a major political impact. At the very moment when countries around the world — including the U.S. — seem poised, finally, to begin to control greenhouse-gas emissions, the controversy created by the e-mails allows skeptics to roll some of the momentum back, at least by injecting doubt among a confused public. (Facebook users, comment on this story below.)
That strategy might be working. A survey published on Dec. 3 by the conservative-leaning polling group Rasmussen Reports found that 52% of Americans polled believe there remains significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming, and that 84% of Americans believe it is at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified data to support their theories on global warming. Unfortunately, scientific truth matters less than public perception — a doubtful public is that much less likely to support tough caps on greenhouse-gas emissions.
In the aftermath of the e-mails, climate scientists and advocates will need to rethink how they engage with critics. Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Tech, wrote in a much discussed blog post that researchers need to make climate data much more open and transparent, and that scientists need to be wary of falling into what she calls "climate tribalism." She argues that mainstream climate scientists are now resorting to the same smear tactics that skeptics have long used against climate scientists — something Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the think tank Breakthrough Institute have called "climate McCarthyism."
"Heavy-handed efforts to narrow the scientific debate have seriously damaged the credibility of climate science," says Nordhaus, whose work has come under sharp criticism from many environmentalists. "Environmental advocates and sympathetic scientists have set back efforts to address global warming."
And yet climate scientists cannot be expected to debate with a skeptical monolith. While the largely conservative doubters of man-made climate change are a small minority, they remain immovable. What scientists view as healthy debate, critics tend to see as evidence that the scientific case is still open — and the American public, large portions of which are all but scientifically illiterate, are not equipped to make the distinction.
Despite the e-mail controversy, however, momentum on climate-change action is still building. Environmentalists are feeling increasingly hopeful that the Copenhagen summit could produce concrete action on emissions cuts, with U.S. President Barack Obama changing his schedule to arrive on the final day of negotiations. "The clock has ticked down to zero," said the U.N.'s climate chief Yvo de Boer on the first day of the talks. "After two years of negotiation, the time has come to deliver." There's nothing invented about that urgency.
* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 82,00.html
Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Has 'Climategate' Been Overblown?
By Bryan Walsh
The controversy over e-mails stolen from global-warming researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at Britain's University of East Anglia has become so divisive that there is even disagreement over what to call it.
Skeptics of global warming, who have long considered climate change a fraud, refer to the incident as "Climategate," with obvious intimations of scandal and cover-up. Advocates of action on warming call it "Swifthack," a reference to the 2004 character attacks on presidential candidate Senator John Kerry by the group then known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — in other words, an invented scandal propagated by conservatives and the media that does nothing to change the scientific case for climate change. (See TIME's special report on the environment.)
The truth is that the e-mails, while unseemly, do little to change the overwhelming scientific consensus on the reality of man-made climate change. But they do hand a powerful political card to skeptics at the start of perhaps the most important environmental summit in history. Still don't know what to make of it? If you're struggling to untangle the details of the e-mail controversy, here are five key things you need to know:
1. How were the e-mails leaked? On Nov. 17, administrators of the website RealClimate, a blog about climate science written by top researchers, discovered that unknown hackers were attempting to upload onto the blog more than 1,000 e-mails apparently sent by and to scientists at University of East Anglia's CRU. The CRU is one of the most important climate-research centers in the world, and one of a handful of scientific agencies that keep the global temperature records used in most major climate models. Officials at East Anglia soon confirmed that electronic theft had occurred and that the e-mails were genuine. By the end of the week, they were widely available on the Internet. (Facebook users, comment on this story below.)
In early December, the e-mail controversy was still burning up the blogosphere, as international negotiators gathered at the Copenhagen climate summit. The head of the CRU and author of several incriminating e-mails, environmental scientist Phil Jones, has stepped down temporarily from his post while University of East Anglia conducts an independent inquiry into the e-mail controversy. The investigation will be led by Muir Russell, a prominent Scottish academic and civil servant. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania State University (PSU) announced it would conduct its own inquiry into the e-mails, after PSU climatologist Michael Mann also emerged as an author of e-mails that were central to the controversy. (See how global warming is threatening penguins.)
2. What exactly do the e-mails say? The more than 1,000 e-mails dating back some 13 years contain a range of information — everything from the mundanities of climate-data collection to comments on international scientific politics to strongly worded criticisms of research by climate-change doubters. It is mainly the last point that has skeptics crying foul. In one e-mail, sent to Mann from Jones, the topic is a pair of papers that criticize the case for man-made global warming; Jones wrote that he and his colleagues would be sure to keep the papers out of consideration for the forthcoming climate assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), "even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is."
In another e-mail exchange, Mann and Jones discuss ways to pressure an academic journal Climate Research to stop publishing submissions from climate skeptics, with Mann suggesting that they consider encouraging colleagues not to submit papers to the journal until it changes its editorial stance. Jones also wrote repeatedly about rebuffing requests by climate skeptics for raw temperature data from CRU, and seemingly encourages his colleagues to delete e-mails concerning a Freedom of Information request for the data.
In other e-mails, scientists appear to have trouble reconciling recent temperature data with the warming expected from climate models. And overall, the correspondence evinces climate scientists' outright scorn for global-warming skeptics; in one message, Ben Santer, a researcher from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory offers — presumably in jest — to "beat the crap out of" a leading skeptic.
See a climate-change edition of the Acoustic Weekly News.
Read "Floods and Droughts: How Climate Change Is Impacting Africa."
Perhaps most damningly, in an e-mail from 1999, Jones refers to one of Mann's studies from the prominent journal Nature in a discussion of his own data: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline." (By the "decline," Jones is presumably referring to the fact that temperature data reconstructed from tree-ring density — a common way to estimate global temperatures before the widespread use of the thermometer — diverges somewhat from recorded temperatures after 1960.)
3. How have the e-mails been interpreted? To global-warming doubters, the CRU e-mails are the new Pentagon Papers, proof that the powers that be — in this case, international climate scientists — are engaged in outright fraud and were exposed only by a brave whistle-blower. (See pictures of a glacier melting in Peru.)
Many skeptics argue that the case for man-made global warming has been essentially undone, and that before the world goes any further in considering action to control greenhouse-gas emissions, all scientific evidence for warming must be reevaluated. Jones' e-mail about Mann's "trick" appears to indicate that climate researchers have been actively manipulating scientific data to better fit their models on climate change, while other e-mails seemingly confirm what skeptics had long suspected — that the globe in recent years wasn't warming as fast as theories on climate change had assumed. Most of all, the tone of the CRU e-mails suggests that climate scientists are mired in groupthink, utterly resistant to skeptical viewpoints and willing to use pressure to silence dissenters of the global-warming mainstream. In other words, the e-mails showed what Republican Representative Jim Sensenbrenner called "scientific fascism," which he argues is "at worst ... junk science" and "part of an international scientific fraud." (Facebook users, comment on this story below.)
Climate scientists are taking the e-mail controversy seriously. Inquiries are under way at University of East Anglia and Penn State, and IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri has said that the controversy cannot be "swept under the carpet," promising also that the U.N. body will examine the e-mails independently. But global-warming skeptics have already declared victory. "It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change," said Mohammed Al-Sabban, Saudi Arabia's lead climate negotiator, according to the BBC. (Watch TIME's video "The Icy Clues to Global Warming.")
4. Do the e-mails weaken the scientific case for global warming? Put it this way: when it comes to climate-science analysis from the representative of the world's biggest oil-producing state, it's wise to be suspicious. In the weeks since the e-mails first became public, many climate scientists and policy experts have looked through them, and they report that the correspondence does not contradict the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, which has been decades in the making. "The content of the stolen e-mails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming," wrote 25 leading U.S. scientists in a letter to Congress on Dec. 4. "The body of evidence that underlies our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust."
According to PSU's Mann, that statistical "trick" that Jones refers to in one e-mail — which has been trumpeted by skeptics — simply referred to the replacing of proxy temperature data from tree rings in recent years with more accurate data from air temperatures. It's an analytical technique that has been openly discussed in scientific journals for over a decade — hardly the stuff of conspiracy.
As for Mann and Jones' apparent effort to punish the journal Climate Research, the paper that ignited his indignation is a 2003 study that turned out to be underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute. Eventually half the editorial board of the journal quit in protest. And even if CRU's climate data turns out to have some holes, the group is only one of four major agencies, including NASA, that contribute temperature data to major climate models — and CRU's data largely matches up with the others'.
See the top 10 green ideas of 2009.
See pictures of the effects of global warming.
It's true that the e-mails reveal CRU climate scientists were dismissive of skeptics, often in harsh terms, but that's not unusual for scientists. Science is a rough arena, as anyone who has ever survived a doctoral examination knows, and scientists aren't shy about attacking ideas they believe are wrong — especially in private communication. Still, Jones et al. could have been more open and accepting of their critics, and if it turns out that e-mails were deleted in response to the Freedom of Information request for data, heads should roll. (Jones maintains that no e-mails or documents were deleted.)
Ultimately, though, we need to place Climategate/Swifthack in its proper context: amidst a decades-long effort by the fossil-fuel industry and other climate skeptics to undercut global-warming research — often by means that are far more nefarious than anything that appears in the CRU e-mails. George W. Bush's Administration attempted to censor NASA climatologist James Hansen, while the fossil-fuel industry group the Global Climate Coalition ignored its own scientists as it spread doubt about man-made global warming. That list of wrongdoing goes on. One of the main skeptic groups promoting the e-mail controversy, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, was recently revealed to have links to the energy company Exxon-Mobil, which has long funded climate-change deniers. "This is being used to confuse the public," says blogger James Hoggan, whose new book Climate Cover-Up details Exxon-Mobil's campaign. "This is not a legitimate scientific issue." (See why Russia is dragging its feet on climate change.)
5. Will the controversy derail efforts to curb warming? Although the e-mails have no bearing on the scientific case for climate change, they'll likely have a major political impact. At the very moment when countries around the world — including the U.S. — seem poised, finally, to begin to control greenhouse-gas emissions, the controversy created by the e-mails allows skeptics to roll some of the momentum back, at least by injecting doubt among a confused public. (Facebook users, comment on this story below.)
That strategy might be working. A survey published on Dec. 3 by the conservative-leaning polling group Rasmussen Reports found that 52% of Americans polled believe there remains significant disagreement within the scientific community over global warming, and that 84% of Americans believe it is at least somewhat likely that some scientists have falsified data to support their theories on global warming. Unfortunately, scientific truth matters less than public perception — a doubtful public is that much less likely to support tough caps on greenhouse-gas emissions.
In the aftermath of the e-mails, climate scientists and advocates will need to rethink how they engage with critics. Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Tech, wrote in a much discussed blog post that researchers need to make climate data much more open and transparent, and that scientists need to be wary of falling into what she calls "climate tribalism." She argues that mainstream climate scientists are now resorting to the same smear tactics that skeptics have long used against climate scientists — something Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the think tank Breakthrough Institute have called "climate McCarthyism."
"Heavy-handed efforts to narrow the scientific debate have seriously damaged the credibility of climate science," says Nordhaus, whose work has come under sharp criticism from many environmentalists. "Environmental advocates and sympathetic scientists have set back efforts to address global warming."
And yet climate scientists cannot be expected to debate with a skeptical monolith. While the largely conservative doubters of man-made climate change are a small minority, they remain immovable. What scientists view as healthy debate, critics tend to see as evidence that the scientific case is still open — and the American public, large portions of which are all but scientifically illiterate, are not equipped to make the distinction.
Despite the e-mail controversy, however, momentum on climate-change action is still building. Environmentalists are feeling increasingly hopeful that the Copenhagen summit could produce concrete action on emissions cuts, with U.S. President Barack Obama changing his schedule to arrive on the final day of negotiations. "The clock has ticked down to zero," said the U.N.'s climate chief Yvo de Boer on the first day of the talks. "After two years of negotiation, the time has come to deliver." There's nothing invented about that urgency.
* Find this article at:
* http://www.time.com/time/health/article ... 82,00.html
Copyright © 2009 Time Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Rock me Jesus, roll me Lord...
Wash me in the blood of Rock & Roll
Wash me in the blood of Rock & Roll
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
I tried to say this with only 5% of the words in the other thread ... obviously, i couldn't articulate it properly for the skeptics on here ...
private jets for almost everyone.
Delegates staying in 5 star hotels.
Exotic food flown in from all over world.
The hypocrisy is not surprising.
The only thing that will come out of Copenhagen will be the menu and which hotels to
stay at in Mexico 2011.
What a scam.
is that exactly what I thought I read."
although what you point out is definitely legitimate and something i don't support ... it doesn't change the fact we need to act on climate change ...
this must be all over Fox. It is getting brought up A LOT.
As it should be.
How nice that people would rather focus on the hypocrisy and propaganda rather than the facts. Not only do our leaders focus on their limos, but so does the general public. You'll see. We won't act on climate issues until it's way too late. One can only imagine what our future generation will think of us, when we actually had the chance to improve things.
http://www.greenpeace.org/international ... eace101209
And with that, I ask "Why THIS?"
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/07-13
Talk about going backwards. :x
obama does not have the power to considerably bring change in this world ...
What do you consider facts? That the numbers at the CRU were falsified. This summit is all about politics and ideology.Make ordinary people change their lives while the leaders do nothing to show they care.
It's not about climate change as a natural impact on the climate.But climate change as a way to regulate people's income and lives.This is a UN scam to make rich countries pay(carbon taxes) to help poorer countries.Without any impact on climate.This is about showing their moral superiority by making people think they care about the climate.DO SOMETHING.It's all just symbolism.Nothing gets done.How long has this been going on?The next thing you know ,they will give Obama the Nobel Peace Prize for nothing.Oops,they've already done that.Without the artificial correction this "warming" trend is the fourth greatest in the last 8000 years.It is up to the leaders to show the way,but no one really cares.
is that exactly what I thought I read."
Yet, he has the executive privilege to declare more war. Nothing went through Congress for a vote in increasing troops ten-fold in Afghanistan. Kucinich reminds us of that. Yet people will say that Big Oil has more say over whether we drill in Alaska or not???
FACTS are found in science. Politicians are wrapped up in the money they collect, not the facts. That's why nothing will get done. Because we entrust a bunch of crooks to make the right decisions for our civilization's future.
"M.Y.T.H. is
Belief in the game controls that keeps us in a box of fear"
Quoting a band who's very environmental doesn't really work here for you.
it's called scientific illiteracy just as the subject of this thread
I think this debate could go on forever (or not if you believe we are all doomed), and no matter what is said, there will always be a counter argument. Please post the concrete scientific PROOF that this is man made. I don't believe the dispute is about global temperatures so much, as it is the cause. As I've said before, do people trash the Earth? Unfortunately, yes, but I believe we are trying to get better thanks to the awareness from environmental movements. We should absolutely do everything we can to keep our planet as clean and healthy as possible. But there is absolutely no solid proof that humans have effected our actual climate, at all....NONE!
There seems to be a steadily growing number of international scientists and professors (not just people like me who post on a band's message board) who think this is all pretty much complete BS. Here are just a few that also seem to suffer from "scientific illiteracy".
Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks: "[T]he method of study adopted by the International Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) is fundamentally flawed, resulting in a baseless conclusion: Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations. Contrary to this statement ..., there is so far no definitive evidence that 'most' of the present warming is due to the greenhouse effect. ... [The IPCC] should have recognized that the range of observed natural changes should not be ignored, and thus their conclusion should be very tentative. The term 'most' in their conclusion is baseless."
Claude Allègre, geochemist, Institute of Geophysics (Paris): "The increase in the CO2 content of the atmosphere is an observed fact and mankind is most certainly responsible. In the long term, this increase will without doubt become harmful, but its exact role in the climate is less clear. Various parameters appear more important than CO2. Consider the water cycle and formation of various types of clouds, and the complex effects of industrial or agricultural dust. Or fluctuations of the intensity of the solar radiation on annual and century scale, which seem better correlated with heating effects than the variations of CO2 content."
Robert C. Balling, Jr., a professor of geography at Arizona State University: "t is very likely that the recent upward trend [in global surface temperature] is very real and that the upward signal is greater than any noise introduced from uncertainties in the record. However, the general error is most likely to be in the warming direction, with a maximum possible (though unlikely) value of 0.3 °C. ... At this moment in time we know only that: (1) Global surface temperatures have risen in recent decades. (2) Mid-tropospheric temperatures have warmed little over the same period. (3) This difference is not consistent with predictions from numerical climate models."
Khabibullo Abdusamatov, mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences: "Global warming results not from the emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but from an unusually high level of solar radiation and a lengthy – almost throughout the last century – growth in its intensity...Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated...Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."
Ian Clark, hydrogeologist, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: "That portion of the scientific community that attributes climate warming to CO2 relies on the hypothesis that increasing CO2, which is in fact a minor greenhouse gas, triggers a much larger water vapour response to warm the atmosphere. This mechanism has never been tested scientifically beyond the mathematical models that predict extensive warming, and are confounded by the complexity of cloud formation – which has a cooling effect. ... We know that [the sun] was responsible for climate change in the past, and so is clearly going to play the lead role in present and future climate change. And interestingly... solar activity has recently begun a downward cycle."
David Douglass, solid-state physicist, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester: "The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming."
Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University: "global warming since 1900 could well have happened without any effect of CO2. If the cycles continue as in the past, the current warm cycle should end soon and global temperatures should cool slightly until about 2035"
William M. Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University: "This small warming is likely a result of the natural alterations in global ocean currents which are driven by ocean salinity variations. Ocean circulation variations are as yet little understood. Human kind has little or nothing to do with the recent temperature changes. We are not that influential." "I am of the opinion that [global warming] is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people." "So many people have a vested interest in this global-warming thing—all these big labs and research and stuff. The idea is to frighten the public, to get money to study it more."
William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology: "There has been a real climate change over the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that can be attributed to natural phenomena. Natural variability of the climate system has been underestimated by IPCC and has, to now, dominated human influences."
George Kukla, retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said in an interview: "What I think is this: Man is responsible for a part of global warming. MOST of it is still natural."
David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware: "About half of the warming during the 20th century occurred prior to the 1940s, and natural variability accounts for all or nearly all of the warming."
William Happer, physicist Princeton University: "all the evidence I see is that the current warming of the climate is just like past warmings. In fact, it's not as much as past warmings yet, and it probably has little to do with carbon dioxide, just like past warmings had little to do with carbon dioxide"
Sherwood Idso, former research physicist, USDA Water Conservation Laboratory, and adjunct professor, Arizona State University: "[W]arming has been shown to positively impact human health, while atmospheric CO2 enrichment has been shown to enhance the health-promoting properties of the food we eat, as well as stimulate the production of more of it. ... [W]e have nothing to fear from increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 and global warming."
Tad Murty, oceanographer; adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa: global warming "is the biggest scientific hoax being perpetrated on humanity. There is no global warming due to human anthropogenic activities. The atmosphere hasn’t changed much in 280 million years, and there have always been cycles of warming and cooling. The Cretaceous period was the warmest on earth. You could have grown tomatoes at the North Pole"
Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
Ian Plimer, Professor emeritus of Mining Geology, The University of Adelaide: "We only have to have one volcano burping and we have changed the whole planetary climate... It looks as if carbon dioxide actually follows climate change rather than drives it".
Tom Segalstad, head of the Geology Museum at the University of Oslo: "The IPCC's temperature curve (the so-called 'hockey stick' curve) must be in error...human influence on the 'Greenhouse Effect' is minimal (maximum 4%). Anthropogenic CO2 amounts to 4% of the ~2% of the "Greenhouse Effect", hence an influence of less than 1 permil of the Earth's total natural 'Greenhouse Effect' (some 0.03°C of the total ~33°C)."
Nir Shaviv, astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: "[T]he truth is probably somewhere in between [the common view and that of skeptics], with natural causes probably being more important over the past century, whereas anthropogenic causes will probably be more dominant over the next century. ... [A]bout 2/3's (give or take a third or so) of the warming [over the past century] should be attributed to increased solar activity and the remaining to anthropogenic causes." His opinion is based on some proxies of solar activity over the past few centuries.
Patrick Michaels, a retired professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute: "scientists know quite precisely how much the planet will warm in the foreseeable future, a modest three-quarters of a degree (Celsius), plus or minus a mere quarter-degree ... a modest warming is a likely benefit... human warming will be strongest and most obvious in very cold and dry air, such as in Siberia and northwestern North America in the dead of winter."
Fred Singer, Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia: "The greenhouse effect is real. However, the effect is minute, insignificant, and very difficult to detect."[39][40] “It’s not automatically true that warming is bad, I happen to believe that warming is good, and so do many economists.”
Robert M. Carter, geologist, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia: "the accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998 ... there is every doubt whether any global warming at all is occurring at the moment, let alone human-caused warming."
Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics: "[T]here's increasingly strong evidence that previous research conclusions, including those of the United Nations and the United States government concerning 20th century warming, may have been biased by underestimation of natural climate variations. The bottom line is that if these variations are indeed proven true, then, yes, natural climate fluctuations could be a dominant factor in the recent warming. In other words, natural factors could be more important than previously assumed."
Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville: "I predict that in the coming years, there will be a growing realization among the global warming research community that most of the climate change we have observed is natural, and that mankind’s role is relatively minor".
Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London: "...the myth is starting to implode. ... Serious new research at The Max Planck Society has indicated that the sun is a far more significant factor.
Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center: "Our team ... has discovered that the relatively few cosmic rays that reach sea-level play a big part in the everyday weather. They help to make low-level clouds, which largely regulate the Earth’s surface temperature. During the 20th Century the influx of cosmic rays decreased and the resulting reduction of cloudiness allowed the world to warm up. ... most of the warming during the 20th Century can be explained by a reduction in low cloud cover."
Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, Professor Emeritus from University of Ottawa: "At this stage, two scenarios of potential human impact on climate appear feasible: (1) the standard IPCC model ..., and (2) the alternative model that argues for celestial phenomena as the principal climate driver. ... Models and empirical observations are both indispensable tools of science, yet when discrepancies arise, observations should carry greater weight than theory. If so, the multitude of empirical observations favours celestial phenomena as the most important driver of terrestrial climate on most time scales, but time will be the final judge."
John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, contributor to several IPCC reports: "I'm sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see. Rather, I see a reliance on climate models (useful but never "proof") and the coincidence that changes in carbon dioxide and global temperatures have loose similarity over time."
Vincent R. Gray, coal chemist, founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition: "The two main 'scientific' claims of the IPCC are the claim that 'the globe is warming' and 'Increases in carbon dioxide emissions are responsible'. Evidence for both of these claims is fatally flawed."
Petr Chylek, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory: "carbon dioxide should not be considered as a dominant force behind the current warming...how much of the [temperature] increase can be ascribed to CO2, to changes in solar activity, or to the natural variability of climate is uncertain"
William R. Cotton, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University said in a presentation, "It is an open question if human produced changes in climate are large enough to be detected from the noise of the natural variability of the climate system."
David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma: "The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150 years is poorly constrained, and its cause – human or natural – is unknown. There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation and irrational hysteria."
Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland: "There is evidence of global warming. ... But warming does not confirm that carbon dioxide is causing it. Climate is always warming or cooling. There are natural variability theories of warming. To support the argument that carbon dioxide is causing it, the evidence would have to distinguish between human-caused and natural warming. This has not been done."
Ross McKitrick, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Guelph, Ontario. His research found a strong correlation between surface temperature data and a nation's gross domestic product. A regression analysis revealed that a state's GDP explained about half of the warming over the observed period. Mckitrick has remarked, "I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent. ... I get exasperated with fellow academics, and others who ought to know better, who pile on to the supposed global warming consensus without bothering to investigate any of the glaring scientific discrepancies and procedural flaws."
Craig D. Idso, faculty researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University and founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change: "the rising CO2 content of the air should boost global plant productivity dramatically, enabling humanity to increase food, fiber and timber production and thereby continue to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for their still-increasing numbers ... this atmospheric CO2-derived blessing is as sure as death and taxes."
you guys don't like TAXES and big government - I get it!!! ... but the science is overwhelming on this topic - stop arguing about the science and using these guys that are getting their funding from Exxon ... focus on why carbon taxes are a scam and i will gladly listen but just as others have done before ... posting tainted links and sources just shows that you aren't reading the science - all you are doing is propagating a PR conceived strategy for the big polluters ...
No you won't because you've already decided it's part of the "liberal agenda". And that's sad because this should really have nothing to do about politics. But now days everything is - it's really amazing. It's hard to have a conversation about anything any more without it turning into a political debate.
I've said this many times before and I'll say it again. The basic science of human induced global warming is quite simple. Humans are buring copious amounts of fossil fuels that would otherwise stay sequestered in the earth. These fossil fuels are releasing copious amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas. There are minor variations that could mildly affect this process, but it's basic science. In addition, we have the ability to affect change to limit these greenhouse gases and actually use renewable, clean energy sources. What exactly is the issue here??
I want the hypocrites that live in excess to set an example.....if they lived a Greener life the world would not be sucking up the fossil fuel. Who are they to go screw with my life until they get it together themselves!
you know what, Idso's been spouting the same retarded bullshit for almost 20 years now. There's a good reason why we used to say "Idso's a crack baby."
Wash me in the blood of Rock & Roll
yep. follow the dollars. Most of these guys are no better than common whores being pimped out by the petroleum industry.
Wash me in the blood of Rock & Roll
if the enviro's are wrong about man made global warming....no big deal...we spen d afew trillion clea ning up the planet, we all go on with our selfish little lives, no harm done.
if the cons are wrong....we're fucked. we all die.
i think i'll side with the people who are trying to save the race, as opposed with the fools trying to make a buck.
I'll let you in on something.We are not going to die from "climate change".Our children will not die,nor our grandchildren.The numbers were falsified to make it seem worse.ie climategate.
It's the "enviro's" who are the fools trying to make a buck.Al Gore and his propaganda movie which was full of countless lies and mistruths.Indoctrinating kids in grade schools.Telling these same young kids that they will die if something is not done.How irresponsible is that?
Kids not being able to sleep at night,crying,worrying that the world will end.And Gore travels around the world in private jets,limos,high class living.But hey,it's okay,he buys carbon credits.From a company he OWNS!
There are many more like him.The few trillion you speak about will do absolutely nothing to "clean up" the planet.
The carbon tax scheme put together by the UN will not work.Money will be funneled to poor countries whose dictators will keep almost all of it.Meanwhile China,India, and other fast developing nations will talk a good game but nothing will be done.We will end up paying for this with virtually no results.Higher cost for fuel,and "smart meters" for your electricity just means more regulation and higher costs for you.
Cleaning up the planet is a noble cause,but not at the cost basic rights and scams that will make no difference.
is that exactly what I thought I read."
fuck the planet, more pollution!!
Global warming is a hoax dreamed up by scientists you fools.....along with evolution.
that get it........Thanks RoughMix & Battan1120 love your post....just hope it sinks in..