Global Warming debunked.

[Power Wagon]

Last week I had to give a speech on a controversial topic, and I chose environmental conditions.



I decided to find a few links to disprove global warming, and by people who are definitely experts.



The next three links should be read in order, one is a PDF. If you still beleive in Global Warming when you're done reading it, I'm really curious to know why.



http://www.atmos.uah.edu/essc/msu/background.html



http://www.gcrio.org/OnLnDoc/pdf/pdf/christy000517.pdf



http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/essd12jan99_1.htm



These are no wild-eyed people. The are, in fact, people of very serious minds and intent.



Hope you enjoy the reading. It's not long.

 

[illflem]

I highly doubt global warming is wholly human caused but it is true, the climate would change if we were here or not. The period from Nov 1 2001 to Jan 31 '02 was the warmest northern hemisphere winter on record (over 100 years) averaging 4F above normal. Nice winter if you ask me, hope it keeps it up. Last record was set in '98, pretty close for coincedence. Satellite temp recording is only a small part of the warming picture. As the temp increases polar ice melts in effect cooling the surrounding ocean. The whole system is much too complex to figure, but retreat of glaciers and loss of something like 50 feet of the polar caps depth in the last 25 years must indicate something. A very interesting study I read that showed how complex the system is and how fast things are changing was by accident. Scientists tracking radioactive particles from French nuclear tests found that the eastern terminus of the warm water Gulf Stream was retreating an average of 15 miles per year for the last 11 years. This is cooling areas of Northern Europe, many ports that were before ice free are no longer. The reason - global warming - polar areas and iceberg melting is reducing the salt content of the Northern Atlantic which also reduces it's heat carrying ability. Temps from a satellite don't pick up on subtle changes such as these.



I feel man puts himself on too high of a pedestal to believe that our actions can change the climate. There is nothing we can do short of exploding every nuclear bomb we possess that will change the climate, even then it will be short lived although disastrous for humanity. Ice ages have come and gone many times without our help.

 

[Boldt's Wagon]

We are ending a 10,000 year period of warmth and will start into a cooling period for the next ice age on a 100,000 year cycle. Blame orbital mechanics. See:



http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1996/01/16/MN26738.DTL



http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Research-Review/Magazine/1997-fall/village/iceAge.html



http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/glacialmain.htm



http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/news reports/ebexp.htm

 

[Power Wagon]

Originally posted by illflem

I highly doubt global warming is wholly human caused but it is true, the climate would change if we were here or not. The period from Nov 1 2001 to Jan 31 '02 was the warmest northern hemisphere winter on record (over 100 years) averaging 4F above normal. Nice winter if you ask me, hope it keeps it up. Last record was set in '98, pretty close for coincedence. Satellite temp recording is only a small part of the warming picture. As the temp increases polar ice melts in effect cooling the surrounding ocean. The whole system is much too complex to figure, but retreat of glaciers and loss of something like 50 feet of the polar caps depth in the last 25 years must indicate something. A very interesting study I read that showed how complex the system is and how fast things are changing was by accident. Scientists tracking radioactive particles from French nuclear tests found that the eastern terminus of the warm water Gulf Stream was retreating an average of 15 miles per year for the last 11 years. This is cooling areas of Northern Europe, many ports that were before ice free are no longer. The reason - global warming - polar areas and iceberg melting is reducing the salt content of the Northern Atlantic which also reduces it's heat carrying ability. Temps from a satellite don't pick up on subtle changes such as these.



I feel man puts himself on too high of a pedestal to believe that our actions can change the climate. There is nothing we can do short of exploding every nuclear bomb we possess that will change the climate, even then it will be short lived although disastrous for humanity. Ice ages have come and gone many times without our help.

Just a hop, skip and jump from you is Glacier National Park. The glaciers have been receding for our entire recorded history - since the 1800's. Of course, if you want to argue that this is man-caused climate change, you can try, I guess.



If you read carefully the comments of Dr Christy, you'll notice that he does address the issue of surface vs high altitude air warming. And further, if we're going to believe ANY geologist, the whole of North America was once covered in ice, and the measurements of water temperatures in the rivers have been continuing to rise, long before man built any dams, cut down any forests, or otherwise.



The models of "global warming" (which claim the cause is CO2 concentration) all predict the higher altitude air will warm faster than anywhere else. Dr Christy is very circumspect in his comments, but the implication is clear... The global hot airists are full of it.

 

[DocStressor]

I’m a scientist and I usually avoid political discussion, but I’ll wade in here a bit. First of all, you should never base your view on anything on one scientific opinion. John Christy’s interpretation of his own data is refuted by nearly all the other scientist working in his field. To summarize, he finds that satellite infrared temperature measurements don’t agree with temperature measurements from ground stations using good old thermometers. He goes on to argue that there simply are not enough surface temperature stations to cover most of the earth’s surface, so the increase in temperatures that people are measuring on the ground is not an accurate representation of the global atmosphere picture. Most people feel that he is just trying to explain his own satellite data which must rely on a number of assumptions in order to be interpreted. Others feel that cooling of the upper atmosphere is exactly what would be expected as increased CO2 (and clouds) would prevent heat from escaping from the lower levels of the atmosphere out into space.



I don’t know who is right and I’m not an atmospheric scientist. But I want to point out that science works by testing ideas or hypotheses over time. And most of the evidence indicates that accelerated global warming as the result of human activity is very real. Nearly all mainstream scientific arguments over global warming are about the rate that it will occur, and not over whether or not it is happening. But you can find some guys who will argue any position and we shouldn’t use there point of view to support convenient political positions. For example, there is a well know American scientist named Peter Peter Duesberg who still argues that the HIV virus does not cause Aids. This flies in the face of a huge amount of data that has shown that controlling the spread of growth of HIV are effective means of prevention and treatment, respectively. South Africa, which can’t really afford to do much about the AIDs epidemic in their country (1 out of 5 people are HIV positive), has used Duesberg’s arguments to support their decision not to provide medicine for their population. So let’s not fall into the same trap and believe that “Global warming is de-bunked” by Christy’s argument.



We have indeed been in a period of post glacial global warming over the past 12,000 or so years. Most of the warming has taken place before significant human activity. But CO2 levels in the atmosphere have increased greatly since the industrial revolution. CO2 levels are expected to reach almost double the pre-industrial levels in another 50 years. CO2 reflects heat back to the surface which will increase temperatures at the surface. We can’t argue against that reality. It’s like sleeping with a blanket on and feeling pretty comfortable and then arguing that putting on a second blanket isn’t going to make you warmer. It is the rapid rate of change in atmospheric temperatures over the next 50-100 years that has everyone concerned. This could have major effects on sea levels and agriculture that will affect human populations that has everyone concerned. And that is because we don't really understand what controls global climate change over time.



Bet you didn’t know that there are scientists who drives diesels. But you have to understand that as individuals, we are wrong most of the time. If my own ideas turn out to be correct even 10% of the time, I figure I’m ahead of the game. It is the aggregate result of many scientist testing and re-testing each other’s ideas over time that leads to the best scientific information.

 

[Diesel Freak]

Shoot, if you want to know why the Ocean Temperatures are rising, just look at how many 1. 1 GW mobile seawater heaters the US Navy has parked in the Persian Gulf.

 

[Power Wagon]

Originally posted by Lee Weber

I’m a scientist and I usually avoid political discussion, but I’ll wade in here a bit. First of all, you should never base your view on anything on one scientific opinion. John Christy’s interpretation of his own data is refuted by nearly all the other scientist working in his field. To summarize, he finds that satellite infrared temperature measurements don’t agree with temperature measurements from ground stations using good old thermometers. He goes on to argue that there simply are not enough surface temperature stations to cover most of the earth’s surface, so the increase in temperatures that people are measuring on the ground is not an accurate representation of the global atmosphere picture. Most people feel that he is just trying to explain his own satellite data which must rely on a number of assumptions in order to be interpreted. Others feel that cooling of the upper atmosphere is exactly what would be expected as increased CO2 (and clouds) would prevent heat from escaping from the lower levels of the atmosphere out into space.

I disagree that Christy is "refuted"... He his "disagreed" with by many, but not refuted. To refute means his ideas are discredited, but they are not necessarily so. If you read the 3 full documents, you'll see that he addresses many of the complaints made about his data. My research uncovered a number of other sources that solidly refute the "evidence" used to criticise Christy.



He also addresses the thermometers vs satellite data in another paper I did not post. He states that clearly, balloon readings vs satellite readings demonstrate extremely close agreement at all altitudes. Only surface temperature readings - and there are 99 points commonly used, vary from the satellite data. Surface temperature readings are NOT reliable at all. They are taken in boxes about 5 or so feet from the ground, and located in such places as airports and universities. Since these are dramatically affected by the development around them, thier readings are unreliable, since their immediate environment has been significantly altered over the decades. In most cases, cities have grown up around them, which alone would cause significantly raised average temperatures.



The only accurate data that could exist as given by ground stations is that which would be taken in remote, undeveloped areas, and no high quality data exists - since the highly accurate monitoriing stations for which we have good records are all within areas which have experienced tremendous human development between the start and present collection of data.



Even the IPCC report that was made a few years ago, did not even produce a majority of the scientists involved that say global warming is factual, or that it's man-made. The summary, which was written by the political hacks (the green movement IS political, not scientific) mostly ignored the full report and wrote thier own draft which conveniently picked and chose a few details to support the pre-drawn conclusion that global warming was a crisis.



The report itself, which is very long, mostly states that we're simply unable to figure out what's going on because of conflicting data and oversimplified theories, and perhaps another 2 to 5 decades of study will gain us sufficient knowledge to make a judgement.



The political hacks then went on to insist that the POSSIBILITY of global warming meant we should immediately massively disrupt life and governmental bodies, specifically international ones, take control over the affairs of all the wealthy nations - specifically, rape ours. This is not surprising in the least, since that has been the outcome of every global conference in the last half century.



Science, as it was viewed in the days when I was a kid and in grade school, implied that those people who were engaged in it's furtherance, were of high moral stature, of impeccable integrity because they were only interested in the ultimate truth. That has become less and less so, with the politicization of science. Too much of it is funded by congress and only those outcomes which fit it's goals get funded repeatedly... Government agencies need outcomes that fit thier goals of expansion and justified budgets. Green groups need outcomes or predictions that give them headlines to use to raise large sums of money and gain the support of a panicked public.



Who's going to fund or listen to people who study the data and come to the conclusion there is little or no problem? The media does not. In fact, many of our scientific journals now seem to believe that activism is both acceptable and good. That skewing data or writing conclusions not fully justified by your facts is just fine, as "erring on the side" of the politically correct outcome will never get you fired or in trouble.



Lee, nobody, including me, is saying that we should not study, we should not be aware, or we should not attempt to determine what's going on, and what effect our actions have on the world we live in. But the refutation of popular crisis mentality by solid evidence provided by Christy and a whole host of others is sufficient to turn the presently politial mantra of "factual global warming" into the hot air it really is.



You stated that presently everything you read is an argument about how MUCH global warming there is, not whether it exists. In every case, when someone pops up and manages to make a voice for himself, stating that there is contrary evidence, he is immediately attacked, usually by science writers as being "politically motivated" or some other such argument. I read quite a bit of the "anti" publications against Christy and found they were little more than diatribes against the idea, not by researchers, but by spokesmen for universities, agencies, laboratories, activists, and so on.



I deliberately chose the title "global warming debunked", because I'm totally convinced it has never been factual anyway. In my view (and hey, I'm just an average schmuck who likes to pay attention to things like scientific discovery), it has always been a political cause in search of evidence to support it. I would not say this so lightly, except that those who advance it the most are the most politically motivated.

 

[The patriot]

Originally posted by Boldt's Wagon

We are ending a 10,000 year period of warmth and will start into a cooling period for the next ice age on a 100,000 year cycle. Blame orbital mechanics.

I agree. Many say it's the earth in a "wobble".



The time man was on earth taking measurements is so miniscule in the realm of the existance of the earth, it's reduculious.



Granted, you can say that such and such animal was alive umpteen million years ago, and only ate the whatever plant that would only grow in a certain climate. But how accurate is that? Were talking minor gradual change over many many years.



I'm not saying that the earth isnt warming, I'm saying that it's not abnormal for this to happen.

Eric

 

[me4osu]

Originally posted by The patriot





The time man was on earth taking measurements is so miniscule in the realm of the existance of the earth, it's reduculious.



Granted, you can say that such and such animal was alive umpteen million years ago, and only ate the whatever plant that would only grow in a certain climate. But how accurate is that? Were talking minor gradual change over many many years.



I'm not saying that the earth isnt warming, I'm saying that it's not abnormal for this to happen.

Eric

I absolutely agree. How do we know that the earth is not in some sort of 10,000 year cycle? We have only been measuring temperature variances for 50 years or so. Hmm... 50 / 3 E9; quite a small fraction of geologic time in my opinion.



BTW, I once read that the Mt. Pinatubo eruption emitted many times man's entire production of ChloroFlouroCarbons (CFCs) in three days (and it erupted for 27 days). I wonder how much CO and CO2 were released during that same eruption. Also, I sure would hate to have a name like Peter Peter.

 

[Royk]

All I know is that I'm putting the plow on the truck less and less each year. Haven't had it on at all this season; its still surrounded by last summers weeds.



Last winter I had it on only twice, but didn't really need it either time. Just figured it should get at least SOME use.



I realize this is not scientific evidence of anything. Just a silly observation.

 

[The patriot]

Originally posted by me4osu

BTW, I once read that the Mt. Pinatubo eruption emitted many times man's entire production of ChloroFlouroCarbons (CFCs) in three days (and it erupted for 27 days). I wonder how much CO and CO2 were released during that same eruption. Also, I sure would hate to have a name like Peter Peter.

When was that, late 80's very early 90's?

I remember we had the absolutely most beautiful weather after a volcano blew, back in the early 90's. The most fantastic sunsets too!

Eric

 

[Boldt's Wagon]

There was a show on Discovery or similar program a few weeks ago. They claimed the last ice age ended when there was an eruption/blowout from the sea floor off Norway caused by methyl hydrate crystals decomposing. From the size of the craters they calculated the release of methane. Methane is 20 times as effective as CO2 for greenhouse warming. They calculated that the average temperature increased 12 degrees in 15 years (or something close to that as I recollect CRS).

 

[Power Wagon]

The link below has some interesting information. I'll past some below for the flavor...



http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1833000/1833902.stm



By Alex Kirby

BBC News Online environment correspondent





A group of scientists in the US and the UK says the accepted wisdom on climate change remains unproved.

They say rising greenhouse gas emissions may not be the main factor in global warming. They argue that temperature rise projections this century are "unknown and unknowable".



They claim it is "a media myth" to suppose that only a few scientists share their scepticism.



The scientists, a group convened by the American George C. Marshall Institute, first published their report in the US.



'Political conclusions'



It has been republished in the UK by the European Science and Environment Forum (Esef), entitled Climate Science and Policy: Making the Connection.



Esef says it is "the result of an extensive review by a distinguished group of scientists and public policy experts of the science behind recent findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)".



The US group included a former CIA director and defence secretary James Schlesinger, and Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.



The report says the IPCC's conclusions "have become politicised and fail to convey the underlying uncertainties that are important in policy considerations".



Its detailed criticisms of the IPCC include:





projections of climate change based on models and assumptions which "are not only unknown, but unknowable within ranges relevant for policy-making"



models which "do not adequately characterise clouds, water vapour, aerosols, ocean currents and solar effects"

a failure "to reproduce the difference in trends between the lower troposphere and surface temperatures over the past 20 years".



The authors conclude: "The IPCC simulation of surface temperature appears to be little more than a fortuitous bit of curve-fitting rather than any genuine demonstration of human influence on global climate. "





Accused of lying



Philip Stott, emeritus professor of biogeography at the University of London, is a prominent British climate sceptic.



He said: "The authors challenge the key contradiction at the heart of the Kyoto Protocol, the global climate agreement - that climate is one of the most complex systems known, yet that we can manage it by trying to control a small set of factors, namely greenhouse gas emissions. Scientifically, this is not mere uncertainty: it is a lie. "



Professor Stott told BBC News Online: "The problem with a chaotic coupled non-linear system as complex as climate is that you can no more predict successfully the outcome of doing something as of not doing something. Kyoto will not halt climate change. Full stop. "



Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, used to work at the State Department and helped to shape US climate policy.



Heavyweight backing



She told BBC News Online: "This report dismisses the findings of the IPCC as alarmist, yet they are widely accepted as representative of the current state of scientific knowledge.



"A panel of the US's own National Academy of Sciences (which included Richard Lindzen) expressed general agreement with the IPCC's finding that warming is occurring, and that it is at least partly caused by humans.



"Uncertainty cuts both ways. Some of the IPCC's scenarios have been criticized as unduly pessimistic, others as unduly optimistic.



"What is important is that they reflect a balance of reasonable futures, and that the scientific findings should be based on the peer-reviewed literature. The IPCC has been able to accomplish exactly that.



"And Kyoto was only intended to be a first step in a long journey. "





You can get the entire report here in .pdf format:

(it's 800K, so be prepared for a wait)



http://www.scienceforum.net/pdfs/climate.pdf

 

[Lhotka]

Now... . if you guys could only convince Bush that global warming isn't happening. Once strongly opposed to the idea, now admitting that it's true.