Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
All you're saying is that CO2 is part (and actually a minor part) of the greehouse effect which tends to raise local temperature.

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quote:

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Show me actual proof that CO2 drives global warming and show me proof that this present spell of hot weather is man made.

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Posted                         

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
You consistently refuse to look at the what real scientists are saying.

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Show me actual proof that CO2 drives global warming and show me proof that this present spell of hot weather is man made.

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Well, if by the "present spell of hot weather" you mean the current early spring, or even the lack of winter (it's just not right to go from Oct-Apr without any snow), then I can't prove it's due to global warming as it's within the range of natural variations. But, the models all predict that global warming will increase the number of warm winters, so if you mean the string of record temperatures over the last 10 years or so, then yes the evidence is very strongly indicative that that's caused by global warming.

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I'm not sure what I can do to prove the role of CO2 and other greenhouse gases if you're not willing to accept relatively simple physics.

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Re Monkton - no Myrrh, you have missed the point. Monkton (not a scientist) makes scientific claims, which actual scientists have comprehensively debunked. End of story.

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quote:

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John Christy, an IPCC lead author and global warming skeptic, said that "Contributing authors essentially are asked to contribute a little text at the beginning and to review the first two drafts. We have no control over editing decisions. Even less influence is granted the 2,000 or so reviewers. Thus, to say that 800 contributing authors or 2,000 reviewers reached consensus on anything describes a situation that is not reality." [43]Global Warming Controversy


You are strongly influenced by the spin that this theory is supported by actual scientists, but the IPCC is not composed of them and many who did contribute have objected to the crass misuse of their work. And you can't have it both ways, objecting to contradictory views because they are non-scientists or not specifically climate scientists while using such as these to prove your view.

Simple logic shows that global warming itself is not proved and man driven global warming is the emperor's new clothes. Quite frankly, I'm tired of being told there are convincing arguments beyond any reasonable doubt and not having them actually produced.

Note the three steps in this theory: [quote]Step One Scientists for decades have postulated that increases in carbon dioxide and other gases could lead to a greenhouse effect.


Step Two As if on cue, the temperature rose over the course of the 20th century while greenhouse gases proliferated due to human activities.

Step Three No other mechanism explains the warming. Without another candidate, greenhouses gases necessarily became the cause.

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:

quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Show me actual proof that CO2 drives global warming and show me proof that this present spell of hot weather is man made.

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Well, if by the "present spell of hot weather" you mean the current early spring, or even the lack of winter (it's just not right to go from Oct-Apr without any snow), then I can't prove it's due to global warming as it's within the range of natural variations. But, the models all predict that global warming will increase the number of warm winters, so if you mean the string of record temperatures over the last 10 years or so, then yes the evidence is very strongly indicative that that's caused by global warming.

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But not unexpected global warming - these temperatures are measured against a MINI ICE AGE, which indicates a drop from a previous much higher temperature..

..and the global temperature since the peak 10k years ago shows a continuing drop into cold in exactly the same general pattern as for the last 450 years - what you're doing is taking natural variation and pretending that it's unusual, it isn't.

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Posted                         

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Noiseboy, there are a great many scientists debunking global warming.

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quote:

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John Christy: Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere - Understanding and Reconciling Differences:
Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
If you want to really find out what it's all about you have to go back to the actual data and make up your own mind, you cannot discount all those scientists whose research shows no such thing and it is unconscionable for anyone in this debate, scientist or not, to ignore these or the sites which collate them.

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Convince me.

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
Noiseboy, there are a great many scientists debunking global warming.

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Not true of climate scientists. Christy is one of a very tiny handful, whom I cannot take seriously since his own peer reviewed recent research discredits his earlier theories about the troposphere. In 2005, he wrote:

quote:

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John Christy: Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere - Understanding and Reconciling Differences:
Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human-induced global warming. Specifically, surface data showed substantial global-average warming, while early versions of satellite and radiosonde data showed little or no warming above the surface. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde data have been identified and corrected.

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And yet he went on camera on the GCCS to espouse his earlier theory - which he himself has admitted was false and based on erroneous data. This is contemptable.

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
IT HAS NOWHERE BEEN PROVED THAT CO2 DEFINITELY LED TEMPERATURE

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Posted                   

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Originally posted by CrookedCucumber:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
IT HAS NOWHERE BEEN PROVED THAT CO2 DEFINITELY LED TEMPERATURE

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Well, in the strictly deductive sense this may be true -- we may not have sufficient data to deduce the relationship.

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But from the data we do have, it seems a sufficiently compelling working hypothesis that it ought at least to be followed up.

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Your argument seems to me to be along the same lines as that of the Victorian slum landlords who argued that, since it couldn't be proven that shit-infested drinking water was the cause of cholera, it was unnecessary to improve sanitation.

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Posted                         

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
IT HAS NOWHERE BEEN PROVED THAT CO2 DEFINITELY LED TEMPERATURE

Please, this is the whole of the theory.

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You are never ever ever going to get it, are you?

The whole point of that "bullshit" article from an actual peer-reviewed climate scientist that contains oh-my-god-real-science is that historically, CO2 has NOT led temperature. It is an amplifier. A feedback agent. It makes it worse. It amplifies what is already going on. It exacerbates it. It contiunes an upward trend. It warms further. My thesorous is not to hand, so that will have to do.

It has always done so, it is provable in simple experiments. Historically, CO2 has lagged temperature. This time, uniquely, we have added extra CO2 to the atmosphere by human intervention, making it warmer in accordance with the laws of physics. It doesn't matter if it comes 1st or 2nd - it just makes the world wamer. It really isn't that hard to understand, as the rest of the non-Myrrh world realises.

Teufelchen -

[ 03. May 2007, 13:58: Message edited by: Noiseboy ]

Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
IT HAS NOWHERE BEEN PROVED THAT CO2 DEFINITELY LED TEMPERATURE

Please, this is the whole of the theory.

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You are never ever ever going to get it, are you?

The whole point of that "bullshit" article from an actual peer-reviewed climate scientist that contains oh-my-god-real-science is that historically, CO2 has NOT led temperature. It is an amplifier. A feedback agent. It makes it worse. It amplifies what is already going on. It exacerbates it. It contiunes an upward trend. It warms further. My thesorous is not to hand, so that will have to do.

It has always done so, it is provable in simple experiments. Historically, CO2 has lagged temperature. This time, uniquely, we have added extra CO2 to the atmosphere by human intervention, making it warmer in accordance with the laws of physics. It doesn't matter if it comes 1st or 2nd - it just makes the world wamer. It really isn't that hard to understand, as the rest of the non-Myrrh world realises.

Teufelchen -

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quote:

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1. The following table was constructed from data published by the U.S. Department of Energy (1) and other sources, summarizing concentrations of the various atmospheric greenhouse gases. Because some of the concentrations are very small the numbers are stated in parts per billion. DOE chose to NOT show water vapor as a greenhouse gas!

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
For example, why is water vapour excluded from such an important model as the US produced?

Water Vapour

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quote:

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Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect.

as the atmosphere warms due to rising levels of greenhouse gases, its concentration of water vapour increases, further intensifying the greenhouse effect. This in turn causes more warming, which causes an additional increase in water vapour, in a self-reinforcing cycle. This water vapour feedback may be strong enough to approximately double the increase in the greenhouse effect due to the added CO2 alone.

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Luigi:
and the claim that a solar panel won't solve Africa's problems. A bit like I suppose a lump of coal or a canister of gas won't solve them either.

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Posted                   

quote:

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:

quote:

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Originally posted by Myrrh:
For example, why is water vapour excluded from such an important model as the US produced?

Water Vapour

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I've not checked your link, the URL looks like another one-man-in-his-shed type sites. So, I don't know what he's working from when he cites "US DOE data" - most descriptions of the chemical composition of the atmosphere give the composition of dry air for the very good reason that that's effectively uniform across the earths surface, whereas water vapour content is highly variable both regionally and temporally. That doesn't mean that the scientist composing the table has been negligent in omitting water vapour, it's just that including it would make the table impossible to comprehend or relevant to a very specific situation ("on the average June day in Washington DC, at noon, the atmospheric composition is ...", fat lot of good that'll be for a January night in Glasgow).

It's certainly not true that climate scientists ignore water vapour. Here's a quote from the recently released IPCC WG1 report, from the FAQs pages because I haven't had time to read the rest yet

quote:

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Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas, and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the second-most important one. Methane, nitrous oxide, ozone and several other gases present in the atmosphere in small amounts also contribute to the greenhouse effect.

as the atmosphere warms due to rising levels of greenhouse gases, its concentration of water vapour increases, further intensifying the greenhouse effect. This in turn causes more warming, which causes an additional increase in water vapour, in a self-reinforcing cycle. This water vapour feedback may be strong enough to approximately double the increase in the greenhouse effect due to the added CO2 alone.

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quote:

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(The Tunguska Event and Ice Crystals)

However, the most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth's surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth's surface more then 4 degrees Celsius

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quote:

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Saturation, Nonlinearity and Overlap
in the Radiative Efficiencies of Greenhouse Gases


If one pursues the question of how much of the greenhouse effect is due to each of the various greenhouse gases one finds a perplexing variety of answers in the literature. One source says that 95 percent of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapor, another 98 percent. These figures may be referring to the proportion, by weight or volume, of water vapor among the greenhouse gases of the atmosphere. Another source says that proportion water vapor is responsible for is between 36 and 70 percent. Water droplets in clouds account for another 10 to 15 percent so water as liquid or vapor accounts for between 46 and 85 percent of the greenhouse effect. The same source attributes 9 to 26 percent of the greenhouse effect to carbon dioxide (CO2).

The perplexingly wide range is explained by the source as being due to the nonlinearity of the response of the atmosphere to greenhouse gases and the overlap of the absorption spectra of the various greenhouse gases. The phenomenon is explained no further than evoking the terms nonlinearity and overlap. This material below is an attempt to clarify the situation.

.....


Climate Change 2001 gives a figure for the radiative efficiency of CO2 of 0.01548 W/m²/ppmv but emphasizes this figure is to be used only for the computation of global warming potentials. It is incredible how the scientific works on global warming can leave H2O entirely out of the picture. A diligent search of source other than Climate Change 2001 reveals that the radiative efficiency of water vapor is fifty to sixty percent greater than that of CO2. For more on the role of water, in liquid and vapor forms, on the climate see Water.

The climate modelers of course presume that the level of water vapor in the atmosphere is a function of the global temperature and is therefore a derived effect. Even if this were strictly true it would not hurt to have the data on water vapor displayed for comparison. However those modelers, despite the criticality of the assumption, never display a graph showing the data in which global humidity is a function of the level of global temperature. There is a crucial conceptual error involved in those models. It is one thing for water vapor concentration to be a function of global temperature, but an entirely different matter for water vapor concentration to be a function only of temperature. For more on this topic see Water Vapor.

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Luigi's point re the solar panel in Africa was entirely fair. We were shown one ridiculous setup, and asked to deduce from this that all attempts to reduce carbon emissions in developing countries are evil.

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Chris Lansea, former research meteorologist, NOAA, Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center, said on PBS, "we certainly see substantial warming in the ocean and atmosphere over the last several decades on the order of a degree Fahrenheit, and I have no doubt a portion of that, at least, is due to greenhouse warming."

Landsea explains his resignation from the IPCC in 2005.

Dear colleagues,

After some prolonged deliberation, I have decided to withdraw from participating in the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). I am withdrawing because I have come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized. In addition, when I have raised my concerns to the IPCC leadership, their response was simply to dismiss my concerns.

With this open letter to the community, I wish to explain the basis for my decision and bring awareness to what I view as a problem in the IPCC process. The IPCC is a group of climate researchers from around the world that every few years summarize how climate is changing and how it may be altered in the future due to manmade global warming. I had served both as an author for the Observations chapter and a Reviewer for the 2nd Assessment Report in 1995 and the 3rd Assessment Report in 2001, primarily on the topic of tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons). My work on hurricanes, and tropical cyclo nes more generally, has been widely cited by the IPCC. For the upcoming AR4, I was asked several weeks ago by the Observations chapter Lead Author---Dr. Kevin Trenberth---to provide the writeup for Atlantic hurricanes. As I had in the past, I agreed to assist the IPCC in what I thought was to be an important, and politically-neutral determination of what is happening with our climate.

Shortly after Dr. Trenberth requested that I draft the Atlantic hurricane section for the AR4's Observations chapter, Dr. Trenberth participated in a press conference organized by scientists at Harvard on the topic "Experts to warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense hurricane activity" along with other media interviews on the topic. The result of this media interaction was widespread coverage that directly connected the very busy 2004 Atlantic hurricane season as being caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas warming occurring today. Listening to and reading trans cripts of this press conference and media interviews, it is apparent that Dr. Trenberth was being accurately quoted and summarized in such statements and was not being misrepresented in the media. These media sessions have potential to result in a widespread perception that global warming has made recent hurricane activity much more severe.
I found it a bit perplexing that the participants in the Harvard press conference had come to the conclusion that global warming was impacting hurricane activity today. To my knowledge, none of the participants in that press conference had performed any research on hurricane variability, nor were they reporting on any new work in the field. All previous and current research in the area of hurricane variability has shown no reliable, long-term trend up in the frequency or intensity of tropical cyclones, either in the Atlantic or any other basin. The IPCC assessments in 1995 and 2001 also concluded that there was no global warming signal found in the hurricane record.

Moreover, the evidence is quite strong and supported by the most recent credible studies that any impact in the future from global warming upon hurricane will likely be quite small. The latest results from the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2004) suggest that by around 2080, hurricanes may have winds and rainfall about 5% more intense than today. It has been proposed that even this tiny change may be an exaggeration as to what may happen by the end of the 21st Century (Michaels, Knappenberger, and Landsea, Journal of Climate, 2005, submitted).

It is beyond me why my colleagues would utilize the media to push an unsupported agenda that recent hurricane activity has been due to global warming. Given Dr. Trenberth's role as the IPCC's Lead Author responsible for preparing the text on hurricanes, his public statements so far outside of current scientific understanding led me to concern that it would be very difficult for the IPCC process to proceed objectively with regards to the assessment on hurricane activity.

continued on:(Global Warmer believer who resigned from the IPCC)

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Before I get a hell warning, I think for my own sanity I think I better skip Myrrh's posts from here on in...

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quote:

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Antarctic sea ice edge expanding

A study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate (Yuan, X. and Martinson, D.G., "Antarctic sea ice extent variability and its global connectivity," Volume 13: 1697-1717 (2000)) demonstrated the Antarctic polar ice cap has been expanding. According to the study, 18 years of satellite data indicate the mean Antarctic sea ice edge has expanded by 0.011 degrees of latitude toward the equator each year.

A later study, also published in Journal of Climate (Watkins, A.B. and Simmonds, I., "Current trends in Antarctic sea ice: The 1990s impact on a short climatology," Volume 13: 4441-4451 (2000)) reached a similar conclusion. The study reported significant increases in Antarctic sea ice between 1987 and 1996. The study further indicated the 1990s exhibited increases in the length of the sea-ice season.


Arctic ice thickening, expanding

A study published in Geophysical Research Letters (Winsor, P., "Arctic sea ice thickness remained constant during the 1990s," Volume 28: 1039-1041 (2001)) found the same to be true in the Arctic. The study concluded, "mean ice thickness has remained on a near-constant level around the North Pole from 1986-1997." Moreover, the study noted data from six different submarine cruises under the Arctic sea ice showed little variability and a "slight increasing trend" in the 1990s.

Just off the Arctic polar ice cap, ice coverage in Greenland was also shown to be steady and likely increasing. A study in Journal of Geophysical Research (Comiso, J.C., Wadhams, P., Pedersen, L.T. and Gersten, R.A., Volume 106: 9093-9116 (2001)) concluded that, annual variances notwithstanding, the Odden ice tongue in Greenland exhibited no statistically significant change from 1979 to 1998. Moreover, proxy reconstruction of the ice tongue utilizing air temperature data indicated the ice covers a greater area today than it did several decades ago. (Polar Ice Cap Studies Refute Catastrophic Global Warming Theories
by James M. Taylor (December 16, 2001))

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
Wrong.

It was about telling African people what to do when they are trying to crawl out of poverty. That kind of western arrogance makes me puke.

It was a good point well made. You're bound to be derisive as you wrote off the programme before you even watched it!

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
unless every country signs up to drastic changes, hundreds of millions more in Africa will probably die.

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It was about telling African people what to do when they are trying to crawl out of poverty. That kind of western arrogance makes me puke.
It was a good point well made.

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
Except it failed to mention that:
(a) In rural parts of Africa, solar panels can be far more cost effective than building an entire transmission network of pylons etc.
(b) The problems could have been solved with an extra solar panel...Africa has a resources problem that is nothing to do with Evil Greens.
(c) Africa is likely to be one of the places hardest (and soonest) hit by global warming.
(d) Africa (and the rest of the developing world) is acknowledged to be a different case to the West, and so the Annex II countries are specifically exempt from Kyoto obligations.

Failing to mention the last point seemed a very big omission.

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The "Western Imperialism crushing the African dream" idea also runs contrary to one of the main objections many people in the West seem to have - that global warming is a UN scam engineered by third world countries to rob the industrial nations of their hard-earned wealth. Remarkably, some people seem to be able believe both ideas, provided it gives them cause to doubt AGW.

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Littlelady wrote:
It failed to omit a thousand and one things. So does every programme. So what?

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:

quote:

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Littlelady wrote:
It failed to omit a thousand and one things. So does every programme. So what?

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It matters because if Durkin is making the case that Africa is specifically being "interfered with" then he needs to show (a) that this is happening, and (b) how it is happening.

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Btw I do agree with you that the way Africa has often been interfered with is vile. I just don't see any evidence to think this is necessarily one of those times.

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Originally posted by Clint Boggis:
In this case, why did the person who specified the components of the solar panel system not do so with regard to the expected load?

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The thing that annoyed me more than the irrelevance, was that it ignored the fact that GW effects will impact the poor most of all, while trying to suggest that the best chance we have to solve the problem is just naughty people wanting to stop this poor man having enough electricity!

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You are looking for an entirely different programme to justify your own skepticism. If he had wanted to make a dull documentary then that is what he would have done. But his intention appeared to be to counter the party line with a different viewpoint. The way the programme was constructed and the numerous aspects to the debate that were presented made it compelling viewing to someone who watched it with an open mind, as I did.

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It isn't up to hypocritical self-righteous colonialist westerners to start ordering Africans around or depriving them of the means to crawl out of poverty and deprivation. The West doesn't have a God-given right to dictate what other nations do.

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So African nations are free to develop any natural gas or oil or coal reserves they may have? No-one will object?

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[...] it is hypocritical of Western nations (or organisations within them) to pressurise African nations not to do something those same Western nations have been happily doing for decades just because those same Western nations (according to the pro-manmade lobby) have fucked it all up.

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
You're right, it was compelling viewing, as well as being beautifully filmed. It's caused a massive stir, and doubtless will continue to do so

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I have to say, that's encouraging. I don't feel quite as now because someone does seem to have grasped the context of the programme: it was intended to stir.

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However, as compelling as it was emotionally, it didn't seem to offer much in the way of rational argument. I'm not asking for pages of statistics, just some sort of plausible reasoning.

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It isn't up to hypocritical self-righteous colonialist westerners to start ordering Africans around or depriving them of the means to crawl out of poverty and deprivation. The West doesn't have a God-given right to dictate what other nations do.

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Those are strong words.

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I know. I get like that sometimes.

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[...] it is hypocritical of Western nations (or organisations within them) to pressurise African nations not to do something those same Western nations have been happily doing for decades just because those same Western nations (according to the pro-manmade lobby) have fucked it all up.

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Definately. But are they doing that?

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Posted                          

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Originally posted by Littlelady:

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Originally posted by Clint Boggis:
In this case, why did the person who specified the components of the solar panel system not do so with regard to the expected load?

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Who knows?

What did people expect of this programme? A degree in physics or electrical engineering or something? It wasn't supposed to be Open University, you know! And with all the elements that people on here have suggested should have been included, the programme would have been about three days long!

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quote:

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The thing that annoyed me more than the irrelevance, was that it ignored the fact that GW effects will impact the poor most of all, while trying to suggest that the best chance we have to solve the problem is just naughty people wanting to stop this poor man having enough electricity!

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Well, at least you sort of got the point that was being put across, even if you appear defensive about it.

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quote:

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You missed the implication of hypocrisy, however. For it is hypocritical of Western nations (or organisations within them) to pressurise African nations not to do something those same Western nations have been happily doing for decades just because those same Western nations (according to the pro-manmade lobby) have fucked it all up.

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Another issue that the whole programme raised by implication rather than overtly was that of the now -v- future aspect of the global warming debate. How that relates to Africa is what matters more? The relief of poverty, starvation and fatal sickness now (which may mean using fossil burning fuels, if a country has such available to them) or of death by another means (which is not yet tangible) at some point in the future? Which is more important - to the African?

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Originally posted by Noiseboy:
Little Lady - is it fair to assume you would also approve of slavery or cannibalism if any African nations were to favour it? Don't want to impose our imperialism after all, so each to their own (literally, if they fancy it). Or perhaps it is not so vomitous to have a few necessary global standards in our global village...

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The point about hypocrisy is rather unfair, also. You, famously, still are unconvinced about the reality of ACC. Every government in the world now disagrees with you, but this is only a very recent thing - even 10 years ago you'd have had the majority on your side.

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What is your problem with Africa being liberated from the crippling financial tie to oil?

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Posted                       

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Littlelady wrote:
[...] what matters more? The relief of poverty, starvation and fatal sickness now (which may mean using fossil burning fuels, if a country has such available to them) or of death by another means (which is not yet tangible) at some point in the future? Which is more important - to the African?

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I assume Africa can't make much of a contribution to CO2 compared with heavily industrialised countries and those with lots of planes, cars and coal or gas power stations. Lots of wood fires can't help but tha's not the main problem.

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My choice would be for the rich west to reduce our CO2 output just a bit more (we've caused it, not them) so the poorest can carry on whatever they have to do (with our help if they want it) to survive and develop, until they start to pollute significantly (or the climate gets unbearable!)

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Hiro's Leap:
It always seems odd to me that people demand the science be proved 100%.

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I just don't get why the UK spends billions and billions on the Olympics, Millennium Dome, Trident etc, when the chance of catastrophe is looming.

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The point the programme was making was that the "until" bit in your second statement could stop Africans from enjoying the content of your first statement: things we have been enjoying for a long time. In other words, what right have we to determine just how far they could develop before they became 'naughty boys and girls' given our track record?

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Timothy Ball is no wishy-washy skeptic of global warming. The Canadian climatologist, who has a Ph.D. in climatology from the University of London and taught at the University of Winnipeg for 28 years, says that the widely propagated “fact” that humans are contributing to global warming is the “greatest deception in the history of science.” (The politics of global warming)Bill Steigerwald
TRIBUNE-REVIEW Saturday, February 10, 2007

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Q: The mainstream media would have us believe that the science of global warming is now settled by the latest IPCC report. Is it true?

A: No. It’s absolutely false. As soon as people start saying something’s settled, it’s usually that they don’t want to talk about it anymore. They don’t want anybody to dig any deeper. It’s very, very far from settled. In fact, that’s the real problem. We haven’t been able to get all of the facts on the table. The IPCC is a purely political setup.

There was a large group of people, the political people, who wanted the report to be more harum-scarum than it actually is. In fact, the report is quite a considerable step down from the previous reports. For example, they have reduced the potential temperature rise and they’ve reduced the sea level increase and a whole bunch of other things. Part of it is because they know so many people will be watching the report this time.

Q: Why should we be leery of the IPCC’s report -- or the summary of the report?

A: Well, because the report is the end product of a political agenda, and it is the political agenda of both the extreme environmentalists who of course think we are destroying the world. But it’s also the political agenda of a group of people ... who believe that industrialization and development and capitalism and the Western way is a terrible system and they want to bring it down. They couldn’t do it by attacking energy because they know that would get the public’s back up very quickly. ... The vehicle they chose was CO2, because that’s the byproduct of industry and fossil-fuel burning, which of course drives the whole thing. They think, “If we can show that that is destroying the planet, then it allows us to control.” Unfortunately, you’ve got a bunch of scientists who have this political agenda as well, and they have effectively controlled the IPCC process.

Q: You always hear the argument that the IPCC has several thousand scientists -- how can you not accept what they say?

A: The answer, first of all, is that consensus is not a scientific fact. The other thing is, you look at the degree to which they have controlled the whole IPCC process. For example, who are the lead authors? Who are the scientists who sit on the summary panel with the politicians to make sure that they get their view in? … You’ve got this incestuous little group that is controlling the whole process both through their publications and the IPCC. I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I hate being even pushed toward that, but I think there is a consensus conspiracy that’s going on.

Q: What is your strongest or best argument that GW is not “very likely” to be caused by SUVs and Al Gore’s private planes?

A: I guess the best argument is that global warming has occurred, but it began in 1680, if you want to take the latest long-term warming, and the climate changes all the time. It began in 1680, in the middle of what’s called “The Little Ice Age” when there was three feet of ice on the Thames River in London. And the demand for furs of course drove the fur trade. The world has warmed up until recently, and that warming trend doesn’t fit with the CO2 record at all; it fits with the sun-spot data. Of course they are ignoring the sun because they want to focus on CO2.

The other thing that you are seeing going on is that they have switched from talking about global warming to talking about climate change. The reason for that is since 1998 the global temperature has gone down -- only marginally, but it has gone down. In the meantime, of course, CO2 has increased in the atmosphere and human production has increased. So you’ve got what Huxley called the great bane of science -- “a lovely hypothesis destroyed by an ugly fact.” So by switching to climate change, it allows them to point at any weather event -- whether it’s warming, cooling, hotter, dryer, wetter, windier, whatever -- and say it is due to humans. Of course, it’s absolutely rubbish.

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Q: Is the rising CO2 level the cause of global warming or the result of it?

A: That’s a very good question because in the theory the claim is that if CO2 goes up, temperature will go up. The ice core record of the last 420,000 years shows exactly the opposite. It shows that the temperature changes before the CO2. So the fundamental assumption of the theory is wrong. That means the theory is wrong. ... But the theory that human CO2 would lead to runaway global warming became a fact right away, and scientists like myself who dared to question it were immediately accused of being paid by the oil companies or didn’t care about the children or the future or anything else.

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Originally posted by Littlelady:
Science makes some enormous claims. It's making one in this context. If science wants to claim it's virtually certain we're all going to die soon from drowning or heatstroke (depending on where we live) if we don't do this or that then it has to be held accountable to a very high standard for such a life-changing claim. If it can't stand the heat of resistence, it shouldn't make the claim in the first place. I've no sympathy for scientists here. They think they know it then they have to show it.

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