Global Warming: Political Movement, Not Science
Don’t bet on the IPCC report having any science involved with it. Here’s what the AP is reporting:
The world’s leading climate scientists said global warming has begun, is “very likely” caused by man, and will be unstoppable for centuries, according to a report obtained Friday by The Associated Press.
The scientists, using their strongest language yet on the issue, said now that world has begun to warm, hotter temperatures and rises in sea level “would continue for centuries” no matter how much humans control their pollution. The report also linked the warming to the recent increase in stronger hurricanes.
“The observed widespread warming of the atmosphere and ocean, together with ice-mass loss, support the conclusion that it is extremely unlikely that global climate change of the past 50 years can be explained without external forcing, and very likely that is not due to known natural causes alone,” said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of hundreds of scientists and representatives of 113 governments.
People shouldn’t mistake global warming with science. Global warming is a political movement, not science. It shouldn’t be treated as science. It’s interesting to note that they said “global warming…will be unstoppable for centuries…”
If it’s unstoppable, then it’s logical that we aren’t having an impact. The only logical conclusion is that we’re in another cycle, just like we had a cooling cycle in the 15th century before it warmed back up again.
What that means in simple language is “we have this nailed,” said top U.S. climate scientist Jerry Mahlman, who originated the percentage system.
Dr. Mahlman is full of it. They haven’t nailed anything. Take a look at another conclusions from the 20 page report:
On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues. But there is some cold comfort. Some, but not all, of the projected temperature and sea level rises are slightly lower than projected in a previous report in 2001. That is mostly due to use of more likely scenarios and would still result in dramatic effects across the globe, scientists said. Many scientists had warned that this estimate was too cautious and said sea level rise could be closer to 3-5 feet because of ice sheet melt.
Anyone thinking that the ocean can rise almost 2′ is absurd. That would wipe out most coastline cities. These other ’scientists’ claiming that sea level might rise 3-5′ are idiots or liars. Frankly, they don’t deserve to be called scientists. They’re a disgrace to the field of science.
UPDATE: You could see it coming. When people started criticizing the IPCC report, the Agenda Media jumped into the fray with this article about Big Oil offered scientists money to refute the IPCC report. To be fair, I’m not saying that the information is inaccurate. I am saying that Big Media has alot to lose if people don’t buy into global warming.
Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
That paragraph sounds ominous, doesn’t it? The message is clearly that Big Oil and Evil George Bush are out to sabotage the findings of this report and they’re willing to pay whatever it takes to ridicule it. I decided to check AEI’s website to see what anti-global warming articles had been posted. What I found was this Norm Ornstein article. To suggest that Ornstein is in Big Oil’s back pocket is laughable. Here’s part of his opening to the article:
New federal legislation on climate change is certain to be enacted in the next few years. If President Bush leaves office without convincing Americans that there is a genuinely credible alternative to the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international treaty to reduce the developed world’s greenhouse gas emissions, his successor is all but certain to put American climate policy back on the Kyoto path in one form or another. The result will be potentially disastrous for both our economy and, in its own way, the environment. Sacrificing the former for the latter is at least a debatable proposition; committing vast resources in pursuit of politically popular but environmentally meaningless goals would be pure folly.
Norm Ornstein is a ‘good government liberal’, not a shill for Big Oil. If he’s writing something negative about Kyoto, it’s because he thinks it’s rubbish. I’d also add that this isn’t an emotional response; it’s the result of hours of research. Let’s return to the Guardian article:
The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.
As I wrote earlier in the article, these idiots don’t deserve the title of scientists because they’re in the business of selling a political movement as science. Here’s what Michael Crichton testified to before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works:
To summarize it briefly: in 1998-99 the American climate researcher Michael Mann and his co-workers published an estimate of global temperatures from the year 1000 to 1980. Mann’s results appeared to show a spike in recent temperatures that was unprecedented in the last thousand years. His alarming report formed the centerpiece of the U.N.’s Third Assessment Report, in 2001.
Mann’s work was immediately criticized because it didn’t show the well-known Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were warmer than they are today, or the Little Ice Age that began around 1500, when the climate was colder than today. But real fireworks began when two Canadian researchers, McIntyre and McKitrick, attempted to replicate Mann’s study. They found grave errors in the work, which they detailed in 2003: calculation errors, data used twice, data filled in, and a computer program that generated a hockeystick out of any data fed to it-even random data. Mann’s work has since been dismissed by scientists around the world who subscribe to global warning.
Why did the UN accept Mann’s report so uncritically? Why didn’t they catch the errors? Because the IPCC doesn’t do independent verification. And perhaps because Mann himself was in charge of the section of the report that included his work.
In other words, the UN didn’t review the validity of the IPCC’s report. They simply publish it and accept it as fact. When they didn’t review it’s findings, some real scientists did. When these scientists reviewed it, they found it full of errors, errors that made the report useless except as political cover.
In other words, the media and the scientists can talk all they want about “nailing” the results of this study or how sea levels might rise as much as 5 feet or whatever as though it were etched in stone by God’s own finger. The truth is that global warming is quickly getting discredited as junk ’science’.
Technorati Tags: Global Warming, Al Gore, United Nations, Politics
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:33 am
[...] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: Corruption, United Nations, Environmental Extremism, Science | [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:39 am
[...] Original post by Gary Gross and software by Elliott Back [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:31 am
Warming ‘very likely’ due to man…
The world’s leading climate scientists, in their most powerful language ever used on the issue, said…
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:42 am
What scientific background do you have to back up these claims?
If it’s unstoppable, then it’s logical that we aren’t having an impact.
It really is not.
just like we had a cooling cycle in the 15th century before it warmed back up again.
The medievil cooling period was far far slighter then it is to day the temperature change was far more minimal. Next time you are trying to make that arguement go back about 100,000 years. There was a simular temperature rise then
Anyone thinking that the ocean can rise almost 2′ is absurd. That would wipe out most coastline cities.
And your scientific basis of why the sea can’t rise is because their is cities there. Now that is absurd.
February 2nd, 2007 at 8:24 am
Mars Is Warming, NASA Scientists Report
Data coincide with increasing solar output
Written By: James M. Taylor
Published In: Environment News
Publication Date: November 1, 2005
Publisher: The Heartland Institute
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The planet Mars is undergoing significant global warming, new data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) show, lending support to many climatologists’ claims that the Earth’s modest warming during the past century is due primarily to a recent upsurge in solar energy.
Martian Ice Shrinking Dramatically
According to a September 20 NASA news release, “for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars’ south pole have shrunk from the previous year’s size, suggesting a climate change in progress.” Because a Martian year is approximately twice as long as an Earth year, the shrinking of the Martian polar ice cap has been ongoing for at least six Earth years.
The shrinking is substantial. According to Michael Malin, principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera, the polar ice cap is shrinking at “a prodigious rate.”
“The images, documenting changes from 1999 to 2005, suggest the climate on Mars is presently warmer, and perhaps getting warmer still, than it was several decades or centuries ago,” reported Yahoo News on September 20.
Solar Link Possible
Scientists are not sure whether the Martian warming is entirely due to Mars-specific forces or may be the result of other forces, such as increasing solar output, which would explain much of the recent asserted warming of the Earth as well.
Sallie Baliunas, chair of the Science Advisory Board at the George C. Marshall Institute, said, “Pluto, like Mars, is also undergoing warming.” However, Baliunas speculated it is “likely not the sun but long-term processes on Mars and Pluto” causing the warming. However, until more information is gathered, Baliunas said, it is difficult to know for sure.
Pat Michaels, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists and senior fellow at the Cato Institute, similarly expressed a desire for more information about the Martian climate. “What is the internal dynamic that is warming Mars?” asked Michaels. “Given the fact that there are not a lot of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on Mars, and given the fact that new research indicates that 10 to 30 percent estimated conservatively of Earth’s recent warming is due to increased solar output, the Martian warming may support that new research.”
Models May Be Wrong
The new research mentioned by Michaels is the October 2 release of findings by Duke University scientists that “at least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output rather than factors such as increased heat-absorbing carbon dioxin gas released by various human activities.”
“The problem is that Earth’s atmosphere is not in thermodynamic equilibrium with the sun,” Duke associate research scientist Nicola Scafetta explained in a Duke University news release. Moreover, “the longer the time period [that the Earth's atmosphere is not in thermodynamic equilibrium] the stronger the effect will be on the atmosphere, because it takes time to adapt.”
Examining a 22-year interval of reliable solar data going back to 1980, the Duke scientists were able to filter out shorter-range effects that can influence surface temperatures but are not related to global warming. Such effects include volcanic eruptions and ocean current changes such as El Niño.
Applying their long-term data, the Duke scientists concluded, “the sun may have minimally contributed about 10 to 30 percent of the 1980-2002 global surface warming.”
“[Greenhouse] gases would still give a contribution, but not so strong as was thought,” Scafetta observed.
Several Forces Affect Temperature
“We don’t know what the sun will do in the future,” Scafetta added. “For now, if our analysis is correct, I think it is important to correct the climate models so that they include reliable sensitivity to solar activity.”
Iain Murray, senior fellow and global warming specialist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the Mars warming adds another level of uncertainty to claims that the Earth’s modest recent warming is a result of human activity. “It is probably too much to claim that any one source is the principal driver of the warming trend on Earth,” said Murray.
“The number of significant temperature forcings on the climate system grows yearly as we get to know more and more about it, but we really are at a very early stage of our exploration of this very complex system,” Murray noted. “If all the estimates are true about the relative effects of forcings like the sun, black carbon, and greenhouse gases, then it is quite possible that we would have been in a sharply cooling phase over recent years were it not for these forcings. In which case, one might say, thank goodness for global warming!”
——————————————————————————–
James M. Taylor (taylor@heartland.org) is managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
——————————————————————————–
For more information …
The September 30 news release announcing the findings of the Duke University research, “Sun’s Direct Role in Global Warming May Be Underestimated, Duke Physicists Report,” is available online at http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/2005/09/sunwarm.html.
February 2nd, 2007 at 9:24 am
at least 10 to 30 percent of global warming measured during the past two decades may be due to increased solar output
That still leaves 90-70% coming from other sources.
Also the medievil warming period was colder then now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:51 am
1. The Earth has been warming and cooling ever since the beginning.
2. The media have been running around like headless chickens ever since the 1880s, first warning us about unstoppable global cooling, then warming, then cooling, then warming again. They’ll tell you, “but this time we’re right”. Yeah, right.
3. Notice the subtle change in wording, from “global warming” to “climate change”. The new term lets them take credit for anything that happens. More hurricanes? See, we were right, global warming. Fewer hurricanes? See, we were right, global warming. Cold winters? See, we were right, global warming. Warm winters? …..
4. This article summarizes the decades of the media’s lemming-like following of the “trend du jour”:
Fire and Ice
Before anyone sets out to debunk their conclusions, they’ll have to check through the 40 or 50 references in their bibliography (newspapers from the early 1900s (NYT, LA Times…), magazines from the early 1900s (Atlantic, Fortune, …), …)
February 2nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
I’m impressed by the thoughtful responses… not the usual right-wing hackery posted here. That said, let’s suppose for a moment that global warming is not real, and ask a few questions, like: who does our dependence on fossil fuels hurt and help? Why can’t we have a national strategy to develop alternative fuels (much like the space race of the ’60’s)? Maybe if we realized that the first country to develop alternative fuels will rule the next century, it would motivate the politicos to think more than the next election cycle ahead. Wouldn’t you rather buy a product made or grown in Iowa, or do you like sending your hard-earned cash to Iran? The world’s supply of fossil fuels is finite; how much longer the supply lasts is hotly contested but the fact remains, it will eventually run out. What are we going to do then, whether in 10 years or 100?
And one (albeit) political question: what is it about science that scares conservatives?
February 2nd, 2007 at 3:24 pm
[...] I was surfing today and came across the blog California Conservative. Since today is coming out day for the global warming movement, Gary Gross of California Conservative, of course felt he should weigh in on the subject. If you did not already know the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officially released a 21 page report today that basically said the following: [...]
February 2nd, 2007 at 4:26 pm
After lots of reading, I have decided that global warming is real but insignificant and unrelated to human causes. Two recent books raise real doubts about the legitimacy of the science quoted to justify fears of melting polar ice and soaring temperatures. You can check out their main arguments in the link below.
Entirely apart from this, I think Al Gore is an idiot. Sometimes I even wonder if he really invented the Internet.
Global Warming
February 3rd, 2007 at 6:25 am
[...] I was surfing today and came across the blog California Conservative. Since today is coming out day for the global warming movement, Gary Gross of California Conservative, of course felt he should weigh in on the subject. If you did not already know the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officially released a 21 page report today that basically said the following: [...]
February 3rd, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Well, if Gary the non-scientist from Minnesota is going to pontificate about global warming and you people are going to suck it up, have fun, ya’ll. I’ll go find some place where they realize that science isn’t something you read off of the back of a box of Wheaties. Ya’ll notice Gary and Amy don’t answer criticisms anymore.
March 11th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Here is an url that you can send to friends and family that will direct them to the video “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.
http://gorelied.notlong.com
For more information on the documentary you can go here.
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html