A new look on global warming

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Citing primarily from here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,334682,00.html

Yes, this is a Fox News Opinion piece, but this guy has done his research. I urge you all to read the links in his article.

To summarize:
1.) Climate change from 1998 to 2008 has largely eliminated the 1 degree C warming that occurred from 1898 to 1998 and more than countered the warming from 1988 to 1998. We now seem to be in a global cooling, or at least a plateau, phase.

2.)A conference in New York on Monday and Tuesday this week brought 100 scientists together to discuss "significant new peer reviewed research" that has cast even more doubt on "dangerous human-caused global warming". Though this was written before that and I don't have any quotes from it.

3.)In December, a letter was written to the UN signed by another 400 scientists that question manmade global warming. A link is provided to it.

4.)The recent observations of things like glacial retreats, sea-level rise, migration of temperature-sensative species, and the 0.1 to 0.2 degree Celsius per decade temperature changes are all well within established norms for the past 10,000 years.

The breakdown of the arguement works like this:

1.)Global temperatures don't seem to be rising anymore, but rather falling.

2.)Even if they were rising, only about .3% of the Greenhouse Effect is caused by human contributions, and only about .11% of that is from the much demonized man-made CO2 contributions.

3.)Even if we were causing it, it looks like its more good than bad. Both higher temperatures and higher concentrations of CO2 would produce greater amounts of habitable and farmable land, significantly greater. And how many people would actually die from a 7-inch to 2-foot sea level rise over 100 years? I'm sure the European dikes could be raised that much and more in that time.

For those of you that don't want to hunt for the link to the letter to the UN, here it is:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport#report

Please note that several of the signators were on the UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers, which only had 52 and apparenly "more closely resembling a political party’s convention platform battle, not a scientific process".

Sorry, Drew, but that much-vaunted "X years without a single peer-reviewed paper disagreeing with man-made global warming" is going to have to go.

 

I've been enjoying John Coleman's comments as well.

 

Yes, they found a guy from FOX to disagree with most eveyone!

Isn't that just a brilliant statement? People can't buy more fuel-efficient, less polluting, more affordable cars, because they are "Unsafe At Any Speed." That statement stands on the merits of its own stupidity. Wow, thanks for bring AM talk radio to SP, NOG.

 

Hey, everyone is allowed their heroic last stand. I bet even The Committee for the Flat World had a heroic last stand before they disbanned

 

Here's a link to John Coleman's Article.

John Coleman's Comments About Global Warming

John Coleman was the founder and owner of The Weather Channel.

 

Cooling as a result of warming isn't exactly a surprise. That's been predicted. For a while.

Hence 'climate change', not 'global warming'.

 

Tal, SourceWatch specifically states the Science and Public Policy Institute is funded by Frontiers of Freedom, not ICECAP. You're being a bit misleading.

John Coleman's articles are found on the KUSI site (TV station in San Diego).

Coleman's Corner

They are an interesting read -- especially given his background.

 

Read the links. There's a lot more than one year of it here. One of them has a whole chart of the global temperature ups and downs for the past few decades, and while a warming trend can be noticed from 1988 to 1998, it pretty much caps there. After that, it seems to kind of plateau, going up and down roughly evenly.

If the Arctic loosing ice is evidence of global warming, what is the Antarctic gaining ice evidence of?

By the way, I've heard a lot of bashing of Coleman, but I haven't heard anything talking about the science he discussed. Now I generally don't like opinion pieces any more than the rest of you, but, as Drew said in another thread, the truth is the truth, regardless of who's spouting it.

Does anyone want to comment on the statement that man-made global warming currently amounts to about .3% of the Greenhouse Effect? How about the fact that CO2 is the least effective greenhouse gas? How about the actual effects of global warming?

Sorry, Chandos, but I was actually talking about the hundreds of scientists, not a single Fox News reporter.

 

Wait... ICECAP also has four FOX meterologists as members. There is clearly a conspiracy here. I think Tal may be on to something.

 

Actually, anthropogenic global warming is not as much a consensus as the politicians would like you to believe.

Have a look at these:

http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973.htm

http://www.dailytech.com/Solar+Acti...hers+Predict+Another+Ice+Age/article10630.htm

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Monitors+Report+Widescale+Global+Cooling/article10866.htm

 

Has any other major news source commented on this yet or is it strictly being blogged about and on Fox?

 

Oops, you're right. I was thinking of local (or regional, or whatever) temperature decreases occurring at the same time as a global warming trend.

 

I saw an opinion piece on CNN about it, but it boiled down to "I don't like these guys and they must be idiots to doubt global warming,regardless of their credentials." The article on Fox also links to one on Newsweek (I think), but that looked like another opinion piece. Face it, global warming critics don't get news time, regardless of their their credentials, training, news, etc.

Now, I would really like to see this topic discuss the issues here:

1.) Is there a geologically significant global warming trend?

2.) If so, how much does human activity contribute to it?

3.) How dangerous is global warming?

For my part, I see it as thus:

1.) Yes, there is a geologically significant global warming trend. It has been going on since roughtly 1400, the bottom of the Little Ice Age. Before the mid 1300's, the average planetary temperature (or at least, across Europe, Asia, and Africa) were higher than they are today. Ever since the bottom of teh Little Ice Age, the planet has been 'recovering'.

2.) Not very much. As previously stated, 95% of the greenhouse effect comes from water vapour, to which mankind makes no significant contribution. Of the various other gasses, it looks like mankind contributes only about .3%, which alots us a whopping .18 degrees F of the 60 degrees F that the greenhouse effect produces. Of that, our CO2 contributions produce about .066 degrees F (.11%). Considering the predictions the climatoligists are constantly producing of 1-2 degrees C, I really don't think we're at risk of producing that kind of an effect.

3.) Even if we presume we are producing a noticable impact, of all the 'dire consequences', the worst I've heard that's even halfway reasonable (i.e. not a 400 ft sea level rise) is a 1 foot increase in sea level. Together with that, however, is a massive increase in habbitable and farmable land, an increase in plant size due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere, and faster and more growth due to increased nitrates (the limiting factor in the ecosystem today).

Now don't worry, I'm not encouraging a complete deregulation of all pollution-causing activities. I don't like toxic waste being dumped into the rivers any more than the rest of you. I don't even like coal or oil power plants (they have a nasty tendency to release things like sulfer dioxide, lead, mercury, and arsenic). But I would really like to see an end to the rediculous retoric about the world having a 'fever' and 'dying' and such. The lack of an ice shelf in Greenland is not indicative of a 'sick planet', but rather of one that is recovering to pre-Little-Ice-Age temperatures.

 

Well, considering that:
1.) the base line seems to have been chosen rather arbitrarily, I don't think the individual numbers above the baseline are the important part, plus
2.) the important part is actually the relationship between the various numbers (i.e. do we see an increase or a decrease), which leads us to
3.) a plateau, as predicted in models from the early '90s and as opposed to the latest models, not an overall cooling trend.

 

I've stayed out so far, and will continue to stay out after commenting here. There is still a consensus within the global climatological community. Sure, some people disagree with parts of it, but that is for the climatological community to work out amongst themselves. Global warming is not and should not be a political issue. The only question politicians should be asking is "where does the burden of proof lie?" Does it lie with the vast majority warning dire consequences for inaction or does it lie with the small minority arguing that nothing needs to be done? It comes down to a simple risk/reward scenario.

If we listen to the majority and they are right, we may well avoid (or at least stave off) a catastrophe. If we listen to the majority and they are wrong, we have lower pollution and cleaner air. We lose little to nothing. If we listen to the minority and they are right, we also lose nothing, but if they are wrong and we do nothing, the consequences will be dire.

It is reckless, arrogant, and downright stupid to politicize this issue. Let the climatological community work it out and, when the consensus recommendation changes, our governments should change accordingly. Until then, the governments of the world should shut up, stop bickering, and act in line with the climatological community's recommendations.