G-8 Failure Reflects U.S. Failure on Climate Change
Jim Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, but he writes on this policy-related topic as a private citizen.
It didn't take long for the counterfeit climate bill known as Waxman-Markey to push back against President Obama's agenda. As the president was arriving in Italy for his first Group of Eight summit, the New York Times was reporting that efforts to close ranks on global warming between the G-8 and the emerging economies had already tanked:
The world's major industrial nations and emerging powers failed to agree Wednesday on significant cuts in heat-trapping gases by 2050, unraveling an effort to build a global consensus to fight climate change, according to people following the talks.
Of course, emission targets in 2050 have limited practical meaning -- present leaders will be dead or doddering by then -- so these differences may be patched up. The important point is that other nations are unlikely to make real concessions on emissions if the United States is not addressing the climate matter seriously.
With a workable climate bill in his pocket, President Obama might have been able to begin building that global consensus in Italy. Instead, it looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what 219 U.S. House members who voted up Waxman-Markey last month did not: critically read the 1,400-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 and deduce that it's no more fit to rescue our climate than a V-2 rocket was to land a man on the moon.
I share that conclusion, and have explained why to members of Congress before and will again at a Capitol Hill briefing on July 13. Science has exposed the climate threat and revealed this inconvenient truth: If we burn even half of Earth's remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet as humanity knows it. The added emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide will set our Earth irreversibly onto a course toward an ice-free state, a course that will initiate a chain reaction of irreversible and catastrophic climate changes.
The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere now stands at 387 parts per million, the highest level in 600,000 years and more than 100 ppm higher than the amount at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Burning just the oil and gas sitting in known fields will drive atmospheric CO2 well over 400 ppm and ignite a devil's cauldron of melted icecaps, bubbling permafrost, and combustible forests from which there will be no turning back. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide, coal, we have a chance to bring CO2 back to 350 ppm and still lower through agricultural and forestry practices that increase carbon storage in trees and soil.
The essential step, then, is to phase out coal emissions over the next two decades. And to declare off limits artificial high-carbon fuels such as tar sands and shale while moving to phase out dependence on conventional petroleum as well.
This requires nothing less than an energy revolution based on efficiency and carbon-free energy sources. Alas, we won't get there with the Waxman-Markey bill, a monstrous absurdity hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.
For all its "green" aura, Waxman-Markey locks in fossil fuel business-as-usual and garlands it with a Ponzi-like "cap-and-trade" scheme. Here are a few of the bill's egregious flaws:
- It guts the Clean Air Act, removing EPA's ability to regulate CO2 emissions from power plants.
- It sets meager targets -- 2020 emissions are to be a paltry 13% less than this year's level -- and sabotages even these by permitting fictitious "offsets," by which other nations are paid to preserve forests - while logging and food production will simply move elsewhere to meet market demand.
- Its cap-and-trade system, reports former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs Robert Shapiro, "has no provisions to prevent insider trading by utilities and energy companies or a financial meltdown from speculators trading frantically in the permits and their derivatives."
- It fails to set predictable prices for carbon, without which, Shapiro notes, "businesses and households won't be able to calculate whether developing and using less carbon-intensive energy and technologies makes economic sense," thus ensuring that millions of carbon-critical decisions fall short.
There is an alternative, of course, and that is a carbon fee, applied at the source (mine or port of entry) that rises continually. I prefer the "fee-and-dividend" version of this approach in which all revenues are returned to the public on an equal, per capita basis, so those with below-average carbon footprints come out ahead.
A carbon fee-and-dividend would be an economic stimulus and boon for the public. By the time the fee reached the equivalent of $1/gallon of gasoline ($115/ton of CO2) the rebate in the United States would be $2000-3000 per adult or $6000-9000 for a family with two children.
Fee-and-dividend would work hand-in-glove with new building, appliance, and vehicle efficiency standards. A rising carbon fee is the best enforcement mechanism for building standards, and it provides an incentive to move to ever higher energy efficiencies and carbon-free energy sources. As engineering and cultural tipping points are reached, the phase-over to post-fossil energy sources will accelerate. Tar sands and shale would be dead and there would be no need to drill Earth's pristine extremes for the last drops of oil.
Some leaders of big environmental organizations have said I'm naïve to posit an alternative to cap-and-trade, and have suggested I stick to climate modeling. Let's pass a bill, any bill, now and improve it later, they say. The real naïveté is their belief that they, and not the fossil-fuel interests, are driving the legislative process.
The fact is that the climate course set by Waxman-Markey is a disaster course. Their bill is an astoundingly inefficient way to get a tiny reduction of emissions. It's less than worthless, because it will delay by at least a decade starting on a path that is fundamentally sound from the standpoints of both economics and climate preservation.
Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who died this week, suffered for 40 years -- as did our country -- from his failure to turn back from a failed policy. As grave as the blunders of the Vietnam War were, the consequences of a failed climate policy will be more severe by orders of magnitude.
With the Senate debate over climate now beginning, there is still time to turn back from cap-and-trade and toward fee-and-dividend. We need to start now. Without political leadership creating a truly viable policy like a carbon fee, not only won't we get meaningful climate legislation through the Senate, we won't be able to create the concerted approach we need globally to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The Waxman-Markey bill, with its cap-and-trade provisions, heads ...
Steve Kirsch: Waxman-Markey: Three Tough, Unanswered Questions
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Below and on previous pages, fallacies have been repeated ad nauseam, that (1) CO2 is irrelevant because H2O is a more dominant greenhouse gas and (2) H2O may have either a positive or negative net "feedback" effect, so maybe we can keep emitting CO2 all we want and cloud albedo will just magically take care of regulating temperature for us.
Scientifically proven facts are that H2O and CO2 both absorb light in the infrared (heat) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, but different "bands" therein [details in the aip.org articles I've posted previously]; water vapor is confirmed as exacerbating, not ameliorating the warming effect of CO2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090219152132.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081117193013.htm
And H2O doesn't rise as high in the atmosphere as CO2, which mixes right up into the upper layer, thus trapping infrared radiation that passes through water vapor and escapes the troposphere, where we reside. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090420121421.htm
(1) - It is a fact that H2O is a more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. This is for many reasons: H2O absorption bands cover more of the outgoing longwave spectrum than CO2. H2O has a much higher concentration ~50X in our atmosphere. Finally for the true believers out there - the IPCC says so.
Note: what I have said above does not say that H2O is dominating the TREND, just that it is a larger contributor to the greenhouse effect.
(2) - The IPCC's projections of future climate are hinged on the "climate sensitivity" to CO2. That is how much does the temperature increase for a doubling of CO2. Their numbers range for 2 - 5 degrees C based on model predictions. The models rely on a large positive feedback from water vapor to achieve these large climate sensitivities. CO2 alone would not cause the immediate and catastropic predictions coming from the IPCC.
(3) - The positive feedback with water is based on the assumption that increased warming from CO2 will cause more H2O vapor, and thus more warming - a positive feedback. Since H2O is a more powerful greenhouse gas, at a much larger concentration, then an increase in H2O should also cause warming and a positive feedback. CLEARLY there is a larger negative feedback that prevents a "runaway" green house effect with water - otherwise we wouldn't be here arguing about it! - Anthropic Principle). Since the positive feedback is coupled between CO2 and H2O through temperature,
quote:
Since H2O is a more powerful greenhouse gas, at a much larger concentration, then an increase in H2O should also cause warming and a positive feedback. CLEARLY there is a larger negative feedback that prevents a "runaway" green house effect with water - otherwise we wouldn't be here arguing about it! - Anthropic Principle
/quote
What a bunch of baloney! "Positive feedback" does not imply *instantaneous* catastrophe. Gravitation does most of the work in the fusion of hydrogen into helium in the Sun, but heat is kinetic energy, so heat and gravitation make a positive feedback loop, which has continued for 4.5 Billion years and will continue for another 5 Billion years.
(4) - It is a strawman argument that CO2 is "irrelevant" and "we should keep emitting "all we want." I agree that continued dependence on fossil fuels is a losing proposition for many reasons. I question the urgency a.k.a "alarmism" that is coming from the IPCC and others. The case they make is very adversarial ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adversarial_system ) as opposed to objective. By this, I mean they tend to show only the side that supports urgency and catastrophy. Unfortunately, this pushes otherwise objective people into the same mode to try to get some sense of balance to the total discussion.
(5) The confirmation of the exacerbating effects of H2O you cite do not address any other feedbacks or their relative values. I concur that warming should increase H2O which is a greenhouse gas. However, I am not convinced that there are not larger negative feedback mechanisms at play.
"The case they make is very adversarial as opposed to objective. By this, I mean they tend to show only the side that supports urgency and catastrophy (sic)."
You accuse me of employing a "strawman argument" and then the first statement you make is an outright lie. The IPCC does not prefer reports that support urgency or imply catastrophe, but neither is it responsible to have a thorough enough debate to convince every looney tune and Exxon shill, in debates open to non-scientists and scientists in unrelated fields.
The standard of *participation* in its findings is the same as any other field of science: publication in the leading peer reviewed journals for one's narrow discipline, and in larger journals depending on the general import of the findings. Its mission is to report findings, not submit them for your approval.
quote:
(5) The confirmation of the exacerbating effects of H2O you cite do not address any other feedbacks or their relative values. I concur that warming should increase H2O which is a greenhouse gas. However, I am *not convinced* that there are not larger negative feedback mechanisms at play.
/quote
It is nobody's burden to convince you. If you honestly want to contribute to better science, go and get your better research published. Go, stop being a useless critic, and get in the arena.
(6) - You provide an excellent example of this lack of objectivity on the subject in your last link. The assertion is made that increased CO2 will cause increased ocean temperatures. Increased ocean temperatures will cause increased extreme weather events (hurricanes, cyclones...) The increased extreme weather events will inject more H2O into the stratosphere - thus providing more GHG - more warming - thus a positive feedback!
If you look to the right at the picture associated with the article you see a hurricane from orbit. Note that it is white on a dark background. Increased extreme weather events have increased low level clouds, which increase cloud albedo - negative feedback! That is suspiciously NOT mentioned in the article. Why? Was the research disingenuous? No. It is just that he did not study it - it is likely not in the area he specializes in. The problem is that seeing only this report in isolation can lead us to draw the wrong conclusions. Good science looked at UNobjectively - without proper context - can be deceiving.
"Increased extreme weather events have increased low level clouds, which increase cloud albedo - negative feedback! That is suspiciously NOT mentioned in the article. Why? Was the research disingenuous? No. It is just that he did not study it - it is likely not in the area he specializes in."
Have you read the original paper from Abstract to Conclusion, or are you just assuming that because it wasn't mentioned, it wasn't studied? It was very likely considered, and dismissed as irrelevant because the water ejected into the upper atmosphere stays there much longer than the albedo effect you mention. So in truth, Science Daily objectively reported the facts and you subjectively assumed, or knowingly dissembled, that albedo was emitted from this study.
(7) - The models the IPCC use "robustly" predict an increased warming trend in the tropical upper troposphere. It is important to compare the location and magnitude of the warming trends that are PREDICTED by the models to the ACTUAL DATA from radiosondes and satellites. If they don't match up reasonably well then something is wrong with either the model assumptions or the data. Check it out yourself. The models and the data DO NOT MATCH. The data is obtained by at least two very different techniques, which reasonably agree. The error in the measurements is less than the predicted "Hot Spot" --- Something is wrong with the models (this is usually the case - models are changed to match the data, not the other way around!)
(8) - If the models are wrong, can they be trusted to give reasonable results for projections of future climate. No. Unless you have faith...
The discrepancy in the tropical upper troposphere was resolved more than a year ago.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080530144943.htm
hi onevoice! i just noticed downthread: ''And no, I still dont understand how the atmopshere can be made up of something else than air. That is why I asked the question. Care to enlighten me?''
A : the atmosphere is made of air, water vapor, condensation, dirt and other anomalies.
then you wrote: ''what is making the wv concentrations go up? Is water vapor warming the air making it able to hold more water vapor? Can something like that affect its own concentrations? Something must be increasing the temp which is increasing the water vapor other than water vapor itself!''
A : yes.. water vapor is a runaway ghg.. e.g. thunder storms, tornadoes, hurricanes.
Found this good reference to the current increase in Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
Keeling curve to July 2009 at NOAA:
www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
CO2 has been going up and is going up. The world is getting warmer and is going to get much warmer unless we do something about it.
I am with Dr. Hansen. It is time to not only do something about it, but to be certain that we do enough!
I love your work on global warming---and for your informative scientific findings of your research--Dr. Hansen! I also deeply appreciate your public openess in sharing your battles in fighting the suppression of this corporate adversary culture, especially of the Bush Adminstration, on CBS 60 MINUTES. 60 MINUTES has also been an invaluable source of information, for my research into Xenotransplantation : biotech experimentation and genetic tampering engineering and the associated closed-society adversary culture behind these industries that has been going on in our country since the seventies, when the energy industry became deregulated during the Nixon Adminstration. Some of these often occult-based cover up behaviors and belief systems go back, in my findings to WWII occult-based practices. There are also lethal social health RISKS of pandemics from biotech experimentation as well as serious "occult-based" or pseudo-science ( "belief systems" ) that attack moral culture and ten to aim their attacks on spirit-oriented belief systems and moral intelligence.
Carl Sagan often wrote metaphorically in: "THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD: SCIENCE AS A CANDLE IN THE DARK", chapter 16 "WHEN SCIENTISTS KNOW SIN." We need more Federal government legal funding for our TRANSPARENCY concerns AND FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT rights with this biotech-crazed closed-society ( mass pharmaceitical drug pushing ) corporate hierarchy. This is a major battle for moral social health choice concerns that deeply affects our science and light energy technologies and engineering hierarchies, mass corporate greed and our economy woes.
we don't always understand the ways of nature because it seems so mysterious to us. Knowing we could be the only life in the universe makes sense somehow. We were not created by design but an accidental fluke. Being distracted from knowing this sets us back from understanding how nature is reacting. Global warming is an evolution. and often a battlement between nature and man. If we seek out the greatest detractors from simple scientific discoveries, that being religion, we might see how we become mislead and even afraid even today of what we do not understand. Religions ability to keep us ignorant and afraid must be taken into consideration before we sound the alarm. There is so much we do not see, so much we do not understand. We are spiritual, emotional, mental and physical beings, these are the 4 components of life. but for thousands of years we have allowed religions to monopolize the spirit. Spirit is the language of nature, and when we observe the physical evidence of nature as in storms for example .. we see the power religions have over us.
Gypsy
Too bad Sarah Palin wasn't shown this article before she wrote her zany op ed to the Washington Post. No where does she mention Fee and Dividend. Beyond this, does Sarah Palin really know what "cap and trade" is? Does anyone in this country? :)
''There is evidence supporting the existence of a climate cycle called the Arctic Oscillation that affects temperatures, precipitation and storminess at high latitudes. This cycle oscillates over several decades. But because there are only about 50 years of high quality climate data from the Arctic, it's hard to determine to what extent changes now being observed are natural or due to human influence. River delta sediments might allow scientists to reconstruct Arctic climate for thousands of years into the past, and possibly confirm this natural baseline. The paper "Large-river delta-front estuaries as natural "recorders" of global environmental change" (PDF) appears in the May 19 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author is Thomas Bianchi, a professor in Texas A&M University's Department of Oceanography who specializes in estuarine and marine systems. The research was funded by NASA, the Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation.'' hmm.. natural climate change? say it's not so!!
According to recent study,,,
"The Arctic Oscillation (AO) is thought to be the most significant influence on polar climate, affecting cloud cover, sea surface temperature, heat flux, frequency and intensity of storms, sea ice variability and precipitation patterns. In this study, we examined the relationship between the AO, sea ice extent, and polar precipitation anomalies."
Conclusion:
"As the AO has been fluctuating over the past decade while sea ice extent has been steadily decreasing, it is likely that there are additional factors at work beyond the natural cycle of the AO."
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=Arctic+Oscillation+that+affects+temperatures%2C+precipitation+&page=1&qsrc=2417&ab=5&u=http%3A%2F%2Fadsabs.harvard.edu%2Fabs%2F2008AGUFM.C51A0535W
Fumes, when are we supposed to go golfing with President Obama?
i have his cell #..
he said to get back to him as soon as we can find a fourth!
i'm thinkin' onevoice or mioffe..
fumes,
I think your point here is that it is very complicated. However, I think it is simpler than you think.
The atmosphere is primarily made up of Nitrogen(78%), Oxygen(20.9%), Argon(0.9%) and Carbon Dioxide. Carbon Dioxide makes up about 0.380 percent of the atmosphere from sea level to 100,000 meters.
Below 100,000 meters the earths atmosphere has a more or less uniform composition. As you would expect water vapor is all over the place but pretty much always below 10,000 meters. Clouds are rarely higher and apart from the clouds most water vapor is at sea or ground level.
Despite its small percentage in the atmosphere, Carbon Dioxide is everywhere and because of this it is water vapors equal as a green house gas trapping radiation. Thus if the amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere goes up it will definitely trap more radiation in our atmosphere. Carbon Dioxide has and is definitely going up.
At this point it is the worlds scientific consensus that this measured increase in Carbon Dioxide is causing global warming.
Regards,
CO2 is only 0.0383% (you missed a zero.)
I have been looking through the IPCC report for a good analysis of HOW CO2 acts to absorb outgoing long wave radiation in an actual atmosphere and what the implications are.
Problems:
The blackbody emission from the Earth's surface will quickly be stripped of the shorter wavelength IR CO2 absorption bands (2.7, 4.3 um) by the H2O. So additional CO2 would not increase the absorption.
The longer wavelength band at 15 um will be absorbed to extinction very close to the Earth's surface by CO2. So additional CO2 would not increase the absorption.
The only region that would actually see more absorption with increasing CO2 concentration would be the very edges of the 15 um band. The problem here is that the amount of energy available to absorb in those small slivers of wavelength is tiny - about a tenth of what the IPCC is using.
If you go to RealClimate they have a discussion of this that talks about a higher altitude, colder emission - it doesn't make any sense at all. They treat an emission/absorption line from a cold gas as if it were a black body radiator - I couldn't rationalize it with what I know of absorption and emission. I have not seen where this is adressed at all by IPCC.
http://www.launc.tased.edu.au/online/sciences/physics/linespec.html
RealClimate also talks about the reduction of pressure and temperature broadening making the lines more distinct allowing more absorption, but this doesn't make much sense either since the affected wavelengths were already stripped out lower in the atmosphere.
Also, I would expect any effects that would apply to the CO2 would also apply to the edges of the H2O absorption lines, so variations in H2O would have an overwhelming effect UNLESS the greenhouse warming occurs only in the upper atmosphere (see RealClimate and IPCC.) The problem here is that the charactistic 'hot spot' predicted robustly by the IPCC models has NOT BEEN FOUND using either radiosondes or satellites! So either the greenhouse effect works low in the atmosphere where it is dominated by H2O, or high in the atmosphere where it should show a characteristic signature if it were CO2.
Additionally, the IPCC relies heavily on a positive H2O feedback to leverage the effect of CO2 GW. I understand that warmer surface temperatures could put more H2O in the atmosphere resulting in higher greenhouse warmig, but it also will cause increased cloud cover and thus increased cloud albedo reflecting more sunlight back into space. I would have expected the H2O greenhouse effect to have caused runaway warming (without man's help) unless the positive greenhouse feedback was dominated by a larger negative feedback (albedo?) to keep our climate stable up to this point (since we are talking about it, it should be true - anthropic principle.)
The 2007 International Committee for Climate Change states the worlds scientific consensus that:
1) Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
2) Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
The conclusions from the summary of the 2007 IPCC for policy makers can be downloaded and reviewed at:
ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/docs/WG1AR4_SPM_Approved_05Feb.pdf
The physical science basis for the concensus are at:
ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
Right on!
re: ''scientific consensus''
''There is evidence supporting the existence of a climate cycle called the Arctic Oscillation that affects temperatures, precipitation and storminess at high latitudes. This cycle oscillates over several decades. But because there are only about 50 years of high quality climate data from the Arctic, it's hard to determine to what extent changes now being observed are natural or due to human influence. River delta sediments might allow scientists to reconstruct Arctic climate for thousands of years into the past, and possibly confirm this natural baseline. The paper "Large-river delta-front estuaries as natural "recorders" of global environmental change" (PDF) appears in the May 19 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The lead author is Thomas Bianchi, a professor in Texas A&M University's Department of Oceanography who specializes in estuarine and marine systems. The research was funded by NASA, the Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation''
What about Greenland and the butterflies?
Do you mean the 2007 InterGOVERNMENTAL Panel on Climate Change?
Read the Truth.
AGW exists only in Hansen’s head.
31,000 American scientists have agreed global warming is a complete fraud
http://www.petitionproject.org/
The current list of petition signers includes 9,029 PhD; 7,153 MS; 2,585 MD and DVM; and 12,711 BS or equivalent academic degrees. Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/ Roy W. Spencer received his Ph.D. in meteorology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites.
http://www.amazon.com/Climate-Confusion-Pandering-Politicians-Misguided/dp/1594032106/ref=pd_sim_b_5
Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor 2008
by Roy Spencer
...In Climate Confusion, distinguished climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer observes that our obsession with global warming has only clouded the issue. Forsaking blindingly technical statistics and doomsday scenarios, Dr. Spencer explains in simple terms how the climate system really works, why man's role in global warming is more myth than science, and how the global warming hype has corrupted Washington and the scientific community...
VS,
Your arguments are a pathetic intellectual fraud. The petition you reference was circulated in 1998!
Here is the world's scientific consensus from the 2007 IPCC report:
1) Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
2) Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
3) Anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries due to the timescales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, even if greenhouse gas concentrations were to be stabilized... .[42]
4) The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.
5) World temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 °C (2.0 and 11.5 °F) during the 21st century (table 3) and that:
5a) Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59 cm (7.08 to 23.22 in) [table 3].
5b) There is a confidence level >90% that there will be more frequent warm spells, heat waves and heavy rainfall.
5c) There is a confidence level >66% that there will be an increase in droughts, tropical cyclones......
6) Both past and future anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions will continue to contribute to warming and sea level rise ......
7) Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values over the past 650,000 years
Regards,
Your faith-based counterarguments show you to be an adherent of the AGW religion, and therefore incapable of rational critical assessment. There is no "2007 scientific consensus" but rather just another communique from the holy church of impending doom (and limitless research funding). Refuse to be a dupe!
Really? The petition was circulated in 1998? Really? Did you look at the "Summary of Peer-Reviewed Research" citing information from 2007?
You don't actually read anything that doesn't support your past conclusions on this topic, do you? This is the primary difference between a "skeptic" and a "supporter". Most skeptics once considered the plausibility of anthropogenically induced GCC. Computer modelling is very compelling, actual data is more convincing.
Remember the Scientific Method:
- Define the question
- Gather information and resources (observe)
- Form hypothesis
- Perform experiment and collect data
- Analyze data
- Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
- Publish results
- Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
Anyone who says "the science is settled" is being disingenuous or unscientific.
This petititon is nonsense. It is called the Oregon Petition.
"This fraud is the source of the climate change Denier myth that (variously) 17,000, 30,000, 60,000 etc “scientists have signed a petition saying climate change is not real etc."
"The Oregon Petition is a project by Arthur B. Robinson head of the tiny, industry funded so-called Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine. It is an updated version of his notoriously fraudulent earlier attempts , the most recent being the 1998 Oregon Petition."
"It’s even been debunked at the Skeptics Society
"Most of the names (of those that are legitimate, which aren’t many) are from over a decade ago, in some cases almost twice that age – like there’s been no updates in the science recently?"
Quote from National Academy of Sciences
“The petition was so misleading that the National Academy issued a news release stating that:
"The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science.”"
Some of the alleged signatories are actually dead.
And on and on; it’s a joke. A sad pathetic joke that is a waste of everyone’s time.
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=31%2C000+who+disagree+with+climate+change+debunked&page=1&qsrc=2106&ab=0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgreenfyre.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F03%2F29%2Fmore-climate-change-denial-crocks-debunked%2F
I noticed you mentioned Roy Spencer twice. He also believes in Intelligent design. "Spencer is listed as a member of the Heartland Institute and a contributor to the George C. Marshall Institute. Both are funded by Exxon.
"More recently, the George Marshal Institute has focused on disputing mainstream scientific opinion on climate change. Funded by ExxonMobil and chaired by a former official of the American Petroleum Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute has been described by the Union of Concerned Scientists as a "clearinghouse for global warming contrarians", and by Newsweek as a "central cog in the denial machine." Historian Naomi Oreskes states that the institute has, in order to resist and delay regulation, lobbied politically to create a false public perception of scientific uncertainty over the negative effects of second-hand smoke, the carcinogenic nature of tobacco smoking, and on the evidence between CFCs and ozone depletion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_C._Marshall_Institute
Your list of 31,000 scienitists is even more bogus, if that is possible.
Let's not forget who penned the letter for the Oregon Petition, Mr. Seitz, yes the same scientists of RJ Reynolds fame for debunking the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer for years.
http://selections.rockefeller.edu/cms/science-and-society/frederick-seitz.html
He did this intentionally, just like he is(was) doing it for the Oregon petition.
the dutch meterological society says in a report from last Oct. that there has been no rise in sea levels since 1998, and I would think they would be most concerned. Also, the russians believe that the earth is cooling and not warming. I am sitting in the Great Basin which was under water several million years ago. The earth is 6 billion years old. do you really think people are making a difference in climate changes? Why is the temp on mars getting warmer?
""As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," says historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research. ICE ads asked, "If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis [or Kentucky, or some other site] getting colder?""
http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482/page/2
hi rp!
say.. downthread you said, "The radiative forcing of the climate system is dominated by the long-lived GHGs."
but you don't consider ever-present water vapor as long-lived why?
Fumes have you ever thought about how long a molecule of wv lives in the atmosphere?
have you considered same for co2?
there in lies your answer
Well, I guess the IPCC does not consider water vapor as long-lived because the molecules stay in the atmosphere only ten days or so. With a slight cooling they would disperse even sooner. (Ten days is about the time it takes Fumes to finish a round of golf!)
hi guys..
say onevoice that's my point: water vapor molecules are ever present in greater quantity than CO2 molecules. the fact that they change makes them the worker molecules while the CO2 molecules have accumulated with diminishing effect.
a q again for either one of you: does water vapor need CO2 to exist?
"Tell the climate scientists that the science is unsettled! "
I took a quick read of the refer you linked below
http://downloads.globalchange.gov/usimpacts/pdfs/climate-impacts-report.pdf
and saw some disturbing omissions. Although it admits on page 15 that H2O is the most abundant and important GHG in the atmosphere it relagates it to a positive feedback from the CO2. Why is a gas at .038% driving the behavior of a gas at ~4%? Tail wagging the dog! H2O has the added effect of reflection of incoming radiation which is an even stronger negative effect. From what I read, this is not well understood or modeled (i.e. science not settled!). The glaring omission is in the chart on page 16, where they neglect the effect of NATURAL H2O entirely - likely because it would put some perspective on the contribution of CO2, and doesn't provide the desired response in the reader.
I fear that declaring the "Science Settled" is merely a tool for silencing those with differing views.
Have you even heard of "confidence intervals"? Whatever the net effect of water vapor, it isn't good enough. CO2 pollution has to stop.
Hansen is a truly remarkable human being. Get real people! It's bye-bye H. sapiens--not to mention how many other species. At least many microbes will make it.
Money makes the world go around, and, will continue to do so even if it kills us!
Too little, too late!
We're all going to die!
second
I'm libing forever.
Before any conclusions are drawn, it might be interesting to determine if life forms other than carbon-based can be as selfish, egotistical, delusional, and arrogant as the author of this blog. Perhaps exploration of the universe should continue on certain levels, but with a leader possessive of higher human values; integrity, ethics compassion and a passion for human understanding rather than a self-serving financial and political agenda.
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