Climate Change: Science vs. Religion
Considering how much attention would have been lavished on a comparable run of hot weather or on a warming trend that was plainly accelerating, shouldn't the recent cold phenomena and the absence of any global warming during the past 10 years be getting a little more notice? Isn't it possible that the most apocalyptic voices of global-warming alarmism might not be the only ones worth listening to?
There is no shame in conceding that science still has a long way to go before it fully understands the immense complexity of the Earth's ever-changing climate. It would be shameful not to concede it. The climate models on which so much global-warming alarmism rests "do not begin to describe the real world that we live in," says Freeman Dyson, the eminent physicist and futurist. "The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand."
But for many people, the science of climate change is not nearly as important as the religion of climate change. When Al Gore insisted yet again at a conference last Thursday that there can be no debate about global warming, he was speaking not with the authority of a man of science, but with the closed-minded dogmatism of a religious zealot. Dogma and zealotry have their virtues, no doubt. But if we want to understand where global warming has gone, those aren't the tools we need.
From Jeff Jacoby's latest column "Where's Global Warming?"
21 Comments:
Thank you for this. I was appalled when Gore insisted that the debate is over. As I walk over three feet of ice in our barnyard it is hard for me not to feel that a bit more debate might be a good thing.
Funny thing, all the SCIENTISTS agree on the SCIENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING. Yet in the public sphere it is very much a DEBATE. Maybe that's because oil companies hired the same publicists that tobacco companies used to use smoking does not cause cancer, to tell us global warming is just a debate. If global warming is not real then smoking does not cause cancer. What you fail to mention is that the polar icecaps are melting and islands in the pacific are flooding from rising sea levels!!!
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Shamin: Plenty of scientists with no oil company ties refute global warming. I approximate that that among scientists, the fraction of global warming skeptics receiving petro bucks does not exceed the fraction of global warming alarmists receiving government grants premised on this hypothesis.
‘Stimulating’ Scientists Into Proving Global Warming
Increasingly, government grants are used to defend dogma, not discover new truth: 28 percent of the scientists supported by NIH admitted recently to cooking data to support establishment theory, and 66 percent admitted to cutting corners to achieve the same end. I myself no longer trust the data claims appearing in the leading science journals.
The United States and the European nations have spent billions of dollars to build the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) outside Geneva, Switzerland. The new bill will spend more. The Standard Model of particle physics predicts that the central particle of the Standard Model, the Higgs Boson, must have a mass-energy of around 220 GeV, an energy well within the range of the LHC. But the particle physics establishment does not want the Higgs Boson to exist, because if it does, then particle physics would be complete, and the particle physicists would be out of a job. Gary Taubes, in his book Nobel Dreams, has documented that the same people now in control of the LHC tried years ago to cook the data to refute the Standard Model. Can they be trusted now?
The new Wreak-America Bill will throw billions of dollars more into global warming research, a field in which data cooking has become an open scandal. Once again, the data is being adjusted to confirm the establishment theory: humans are responsible for global warming. In actual fact, satellite observations show that the Earth is now cooling, and has been cooling for about 10 years. This confirms the anti-establishment theory that the Earth warmed prior to the late 1990s due to the then-increasing number of sunspots, and is now cooling due to the now decreasing number of sunspots. The Wreak-America bill contains funds to “adjust” those pesky satellite observations, so that the data will confirm what powerful politicians wish to be true.
Universities have essentially been nationalized, like the banks. For years, government research grants have been pork grants: between 30 and 50 percent of all grant money is for “overhead,” which is spent at the discretion of university administrators. Surprise, surprise: administrators always decide that more administrators are needed, and administrator salaries increase. Over the last 50 years — the period of increasing government grant money — the administrator-student ratio at universities has increased more than 100 percent, while the faculty-student ratio has stayed the same or decreased. Today, a science professor cannot get tenure unless he has a government grant. A scientist’s teaching skills, her contributions to scientific knowledge, are irrelevant.
Frank J. Tipler is Professor of Mathematical Physics at Tulane University.
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Shamim,
What you fail to mention is that the earth was warmer during the medieival warm period than it is now. You also fail to mention that many of the areas in the arctic that are just now becoming passible by ship were sailed without problem around 1907.
There is a correlation between CO2 and temperature but alarmist have the cause and effectg backwards. Ice Core records clearly demonstrate that warming termperatures lead to CO2 increases not the other way around.
Your comment that all the scientist agree is nothing short of a lie. Here's proof:
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/GlobalWarming.html
Paul, great point. It should also be mentioned that Mr. Gore is rather well-funded by alternative sources of energy.
Chistopher Horner authoer of Red Hot Lies, points out that when he worked for Enron, they were secretly doing everything possible to get the U.S. to ratify the Kyoto agreement. It offered a price fixing scam greater than anything they could have come up with themselves. Horner also points out that all of the major energy companies are heavily invested in alternative energy. Shamims's point is a tired old arguement that is often used by the alarmist, but doesn't carry much weight with anyone who takes the time to look into it. Paul, thank you for setting the record straight.
Dash RIPROCK III
Hootervillegatte.com
http://www.hootervillegazette.com/GlobalWarming.html
Scientist fired by Al Gore was told, "science will not intrude on public policy".
Noted energy expert and Princeton physicist Dr. Will Happer has sharply criticized global warming alarmism. Happer, author of over 200 scientific papers and a past director of energy research at the Department of Energy, called fears over global warming "mistaken".
"I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect", said Happer. "Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science."
Dr. Happer views climate change as a predominately natural process. "The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past."
In 1991, Happer was appointed director of energy research for the US Department of Energy. In 1993, he testified before Congress that the scientific data didn't support widespread fears about the dangers of the ozone hole and global warming, remarks that caused then-Vice President Al Gore to fire him. "I was told that science was not going to intrude on public policy", he said. "I did not need the job that badly".
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Organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change ...
The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming. The APS is also sponsoring public debate on the validity of global warming science. The leadership of the society had previously called the evidence for global warming "incontrovertible."
In a posting to the APS forum, editor Jeffrey Marque explains,"There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution."
The APS is opening its debate with the publication of a paper by Lord Monckton of Brenchley, which concludes that climate sensitivity -- the rate of temperature change a given amount of greenhouse gas will cause -- has been grossly overstated by IPCC modeling. A low sensitivity implies additional atmospheric CO2 will have little effect on global climate.
Larry Gould, Professor of Physics at the University of Hartford and Chairman of the New England Section of the APS, called Monckton's paper an "expose of the IPCC that details numerous exaggerations and "extensive errors".
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More than 31,000 scientists sign petition rejecting global warming ...
... have you ever heard of the Global Warming Petition Project? If not, ask yourself “Why not?”
The Global Warming Petition Project is a rejection of the global warming agreement that was written in Koyoto, Japan in December, 1997. It has been signed by 31,072 American scientists – 9,021 with Ph.D’s!
A letter by Professor Frederick Seitz has been circulated with the petition. "Physicist Frederick Seitz was President of the US National Academy of Sciences and of Rockefeller University. He received the National Medal of Science, the Compton Award, the Franklin Medal, and numerous other awards, including honorary doctorates from 32 Universities around the world."
Here’s an excerpt from his letter:
. . .The treaty is, in our opinion, based on flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful. . .”
The purpose of the Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climatological damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. . .
These scientists are instead convinced that the human-caused global warming hypothesis is without scientific validity and that government action on the basis of this hypothesis would unnecessarily and counterproductively damage both human prosperity and the natural environment of the Earth.
Link to petition homepage
Link to orginal article
The problem for the MSM is that it long ago nailed its colors to the climate alarmist mast. No ice cap meltdown, no rising waters. No disappearing islands, no reason for alarm. No alarm, no story. Worst of all having called yet another global apocalypse wrong: No credibility. So the MSM has a significant stake in running highly selective warm-mongering headlines. Not to mention disparaging those scientists who have the temerity to disagree as 'holocaust deniers' and 'pseudo-scientists'.
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Thursday evening I enjoyed the pleasure of an off-the-record dinner conversation with a leading "skeptic" of anthropogenic global warming. He talked at length about the political pressure that is brought to bear against scientists who have openly broken with the "consensus" promulgated by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore, and other putative authorities on the subject. .... Author Patrick Michaels describes the plight of those state climatologists, academics all, who have expressed opinions or even just distributed data that tended to refute the AGW opinions of state governors. In each case, a Democratic governor has driven a state climatologist from his university job for the expression, in good faith, of scientifically informed opinions about anthropogenic climate change.
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There is no scientific "consensus"
EDMONTON - Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported today.
The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural evolution of the planet.
A 99-per-cent majority believes the climate is changing. But 45 per cent blame both human and natural influences, and 68 per cent disagree with the popular statement that "the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled."
The divisions showed up in a canvass of more than 51,000 specialists licensed to practice the highly educated occupations by the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta.
"We're not surprised at all," APEGGA executive director Neil Windsor said today. "There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of."
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But wait, doesn't global warming cause all of THIS?
Not So Hot
The latest twist in the global warming saga is the revision in data at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, indicating that the warmest year on record for the U.S. was not 1998, but rather 1934 (by 0.02 of a degree Celsius).
Canadian and amateur climate researcher Stephen McIntyre discovered that NASA made a technical error in standardizing the weather air temperature data post-2000. These temperature mistakes were only for the U.S.; their net effect was to lower the average temperature reading from 2000-2006 by 0.15C.
The new data undermine another frightful talking point from environmentalists, which is that six of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. Wrong. NASA now says six of the 10 warmest years were in the 1930s and 1940s, and that was before the bulk of industrial CO2 emissions were released into the atmosphere.
... environmentalists have been making great hay by claiming that recent years, such as 1998, then 2006, were the "warmest" on record. It's also not clear that the 0.15 degree temperature revision is as trivial as NASA insists. Total U.S. warming since 1920 has been about 0.21 degrees Celsius. This means that a 0.15 error for recent years is more than two-thirds the observed temperature increase for the period of warming. NASA counters that most of the measured planetary warming in recent decades has occurred outside the U.S. and that the agency's recent error would have a tiny impact (1/1000th of a degree) on global warming.
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Thank you anon for your nine (?) links...
Good stuff...
Sham, do you worry about your glass overflowing when ice makes it full all the way to the top?
Wow...looks like these scientists should be excommunicated from Pope Gore's Church of Climate Change! Religion indeed! I wonder when the Reformation will come along?
I don't quite understand why people are disagreeing so much on this topic. One thing is to believe scientists and another seeing it in reality. For hundreds of years scientists have made so many predictions, many of them catastrophic, but yet few of them became true, yet we believe them. And if somebody doesn't, he/she is accused of being deranged and skepticism. Of course the human race has been not very kind to earth and provided it with a little too much CO2 but CO2 is not the only reason of the climate change. Like the previous ice ages thousand years ago, earths climate changes. We may have sped it up but it is inevitable.
Take care, Jay
This is an example of how far off the rails the global warming "debate" has gotten.
Criticizing Al Gore is equivalent to killing 1,000 people.
No kidding. These are two "scientists" debating each other. https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=8524070301101240472&postID=3140415761794770807
Also, science says that the oceans would be rising right now regardless of temperature. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/06/basic-geology-part-3-sea-level-rises-during-interglacial-periods/
And lastly, the NOAA released this not long ago. http://icecap.us/images/uploads/US_Temperatures_and_Climate_Factors_since_1895.pdf
The conclusion to their science?
"Clearly the US annual temperatures over the last century have correlated far better with cycles in the oceans and sun than carbon dioxide. The correlation with carbon dioxide seems to have vanished or even reversed in the last decade.
Given the recent cooling of the Pacific and Atlantic and rapid decline in solar activity, we might anticipate given these correlations, temperatures to accelerate downwards shortly."
Stay clueless Shamim and global warming zealots. We got your number.
let's see if i can believe the science w/o believing in the religion: show me examples of each.
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