Coyote Blog: Global Warming Book Comment Thread

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Global Warming Book Comment Thread

I turned off comments on the published HTML version of my Skeptical Layman's Guide to Man-made Global Warming (pdf here) to avoid spam problems. However, it was not my intention to forgo the ability of readers to comment. So I am going to link this comment thread from the bottom of each chapter.

I have gotten several comments back similar to what Steven Dutch says here:

So You Still Don't Believe In Global Warming?

Fine. Here's what you have to do....

Show conclusively that an increase in carbon dioxide will not result in global warming. Pointing to flaws in the climate models, possible alternative explanations, and unanswered questions won't cut it. We know carbon dioxide traps infrared and we know climate is getting warmer. There's a plausible cause and effect relationship there. You have to show there is not a causal link. You can do that either by identifying what is the cause ("might be" or "possible alternative" isn't good enough) or by showing that somehow extra carbon dioxide does not trap solar heat.

This might be correct if we were in a college debating society, where the question at hand was "does man contribute to global warming?" However, we are in a real world policy debate, where the question is instead "Is man causing enough warming and thereby contributing to sufficiently dire consequences to justify massive interventions into the world economy, carrying enormous costs and demonstrable erosions in individual freedoms." Remember, we know monetary and liberty costs of abatement with a fair amount of cerntainty, so in fact the burden of proof is on man-made global warming advocates, not skeptics, who need to prove the dangers from the man-made component of global warming outweigh the costs of these abatements.

That is why the premise for my paper is as follows:

There is no doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and it is pretty clear that CO2 produced by man has an incremental impact on warming the Earth’s surface.

However, recent warming is the result of many natural and man-made factors, and it is extraordinarily difficult to assign all the blame for current warming to man.

In turn, there are very good reasons to suspect that climate modelers may be greatly exaggerating future warming due to man. Poor economic forecasting, faulty assumptions about past and current conditions, and a belief that climate is driven by runaway positive feedback effects all contribute to this exaggeration.

As a result, warming due to man’s impacts over the next 100 years may well be closer to one degree C than the forecasted six to eight. In either case, since AGW supporters tend to grossly underestimate the cost of CO2 abatement, particularly in lost wealth creation in poorer nations, there are good arguments that a warmer but richer world, where aggressive CO2 abatement is not pursued, may be the better end state than a poor but cooler world.

Interventionists understand that their job is not to prove that man is causing some global warming, but to prove that man is doing enough damage to justify massive economic interventions. That is why Al Gore says tornadoes are increasing when they are not, or why he says sea levels will rise 20 feet when even the IPCC says a foot and a half. And I will leave you with this quote from National Center for Atmospheric Research (NOAA) climate researcher and global warming action promoter, Steven Schneider:

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

Comment away. I don't edit or delete comments, except in the cases of obvious spam.

Update: Here is another reason why there is an important difference between "man causes any warming at all" and "man causes most of the warming."

Posted on July 6, 2007 at 08:13 AM | Permalink

Comments

For those wanting to understand C02/temperature link.

The sceptics science:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/05/climate-sensitivity-and-editorial.html

The believers science:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/

Take your time to read the comments and follow-up posts and take your pick.

Posted by: Kit | Jul 6, 2007 9:41:53 AM

What do you think about Greg Mankiw's Pigou Club? In a nutshell, he acknowledges that there is most likely some externality associated with increased anthropogenic CO2 output, and that taxing carbon emissions in the form of an increased gasoline tax is probably a good way to decrease usage. He also advocates the, unfortunately probably politically untenable, solution of offsetting the increased gasoline taxes with repealed income or sales taxes.

Posted by: Mike | Jul 6, 2007 11:13:59 AM

Proving a negative just isn't possible. It's at the core of understanding good logic. Those who say you must accept the positive hypothesis unless you can prove the negative (“…probability is not good enough”) simply do not understand rational debate and logical reasoning.

It’s the very reason we don’t insist that people “prove” they are innocent to avoid being convicted of a crime.

The valid argument goes something like this: “The risk of climate change is greater than the risk of mis-diagnosis”

Keeping in mind that “risk” is a function of the probability of occurrence and the severity (or cost) of effects. This of course brings the debate back to where it should be; i.e debating the probability estimates and debating the estimates on the severity of the effects.

In order to claim that probabilities are irrelevant, those who say you must prove the negative must then argue that the severity of climate change approaches infinity or, conversely the severity of mis-diagnosis approaches zero. Either of those would be valid, but not persuasive, arguments.

Posted by: Lenny | Jul 6, 2007 1:10:36 PM

Check out what i say about POLAR CIITES via GOOGLE and WIKIPEIDA.

Posted by: danny bee | Jul 6, 2007 9:48:26 PM

Mike, Re: Pigou Tax

That is making the assumption that increasing CO2 creates bad externalities. If they are trivial, or even good, then the Pigou Tax will hurt us and future economic growth.

Note: Pigou taxation is far better then "cap and trade" schemes which have the potential of wiping out entire industries.

Posted by: kit | Jul 7, 2007 4:37:05 AM

(basically a repost from another thread, hoping someone (kit?) can help me out here)

I did notice that the Rebuttals section didn't address the function of CO2 concentration vs. warming effect. Motl seems pretty straightforward, but the folks at real climate responded to him here at part 2:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument-part-ii/

I've tried to wade through that, and the best I can figure is that they try to argue that more wavelengths of energy (i.e., a wider band) of energy is absorbed.

That doesn't make sense to me. According to their illustration, they are claiming that "new" absorption at these wavelengths. But at those wavelengths, the absorption factors are several orders of magnitude lower than what is at the peak, and trailing off rapidly.

So even if I believe them, I'm left thinking "So what?" It's like a guy with wads of $1,000 bills picking nickels off the street. And if we give him two more hands, he'll pick up pennies, too.

Am I completely misconstruing them & the graph?

Note that their graph shows log(absorption factor) vs. wavelength.

Absorption factor is defined as:

"At any given wavelength, the amount of light surviving goes down like the exponential of the number of molecules of CO2 encountered by the beam of light. The rate of exponential decay is the absorption factor.

When the product of the absorption factor times the amount of CO2 encountered equals one, then the amount of light is reduced by a factor of 1/e, i.e. 1/2.71282... . For this, or larger, amounts of CO2,the atmosphere is optically thick at the corresponding wavelength. If you double the amount of CO2, you reduce the proportion of surviving light by an additional factor of 1/e, reducing the proportion surviving to about a tenth; if you instead halve the amount of CO2, the proportion surviving is the reciprocal of the square root of e , or about 60% , and the atmosphere is optically thin. Precisely where we draw the line between "thick" and "thin" is somewhat arbitrary, given that the absorption shades smoothly from small values to large values as the product of absorption factor with amount of CO2 increases."

I'm rather confused by this description of absorption factor. Are they arguing that it is not a 1/e relationship except at [CO2] > (1/AF)? Or, are they saying that it is always a 1/e relationship, and that for each doubling of ([CO2] * AF) you absorb 1/e as much CO2?

They also say:

"In fact, noting that the graph is on a logarithmic axis, the atmosphere still wouldn't be saturated even if we increased the CO2 to ten thousand times the present level.?

Doesn't that undercut their own argument? If it takes 10,000 times as much to saturate, doesn't that mean that we won't saturate until we get 10,000 times the amount of CO2 in the air? Being that there's a fixed amount of energy hitting the earth at any one wavelength, doesn' that mean that CO2 isn't doing much at the wavelengths in question?

I'm confused by their argument. Can someone show me where I’m going wrong?

Posted by: Anon E. Mouse | Jul 7, 2007 4:52:55 AM

I wanted to address Lenny's comment about it being impossible to prove a negative. Au contraire. It happens all the time im mathematics. You can often see it as IFF (if and only if) or "necessary and sufficient". The easiest way is to simply provide a counter example that shows when such and such is true, the conclusion is not necessarily so. Olmstead wrote a whole book titled "Counter Examples in Analysis". Another technique for proving a negative is to assume the proposition is true and show that it leads to a contradiction. So, the idea that "Proving a negative just isn't possible. It's at the core of understanding good logic" is clearly itself a misunderstanding of mathematical logic.

The problem with the whole golbal warming crowd is that they want us to believe that CO2 is the problem without ever showing that it is true. They then want the opposition to prove that it is not true. But, it is the responsibility of the global warming crowd to prove not only that CO2 is causing the global but also it is the primary cause and this they cannot do. They simply assert that it is true and move on from there.

Rick

Posted by: Rick Caird | Jul 7, 2007 10:55:27 AM

Bingo, Rick. On the nose. This is also known as the problem of induction.

I’m struggling to wade through the volume of material including Coyote’s well-written challenge/analysis, and there appear to be a lot of bad arguments/evidence/logic embedded in the AGW position. Which on the surface explains a lot of the cover-ups, like Mann’s work for example.

Global warmers need to read “The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable” for a better understanding of how little we actually know [even using empirical data] and why we need to be very cautious, especially in forecasting in areas subject to seemingly high randomness, like weather and climate.

Our scientific knowledge of carbon, it’s emissions, and it’s apparently local effects is quite impressive; very little of it explains global warming. Knowledge of elements of (dynamic) systems does not necessarily translate to knowledge of the systems themselves. That is, as Taleb notes, extreme epistemic arrogance. This new “save the planet” movement is in no short supply of it.

Posted by: Mesa EconoGuy | Jul 8, 2007 4:53:49 AM

Anon E Mouse,

"I'm confused by their argument" - Me too!

Buried in the comments the Real Comment folk accept that Motl's analysis of the science is correct. Instead they attack a straw man; "already so much CO2 in the air that its effect on infra-red radiation is saturated." I have not read anything anywhere that claims that it is "saturated". (In fact it can only tends towards saturation, never reaching it). As you realised it makes no difference to their AGW position if it "saturates" at 10x or 10000x current levels of C02. So why raise it? I don't know.

As Mr Coyote eloquently explains in his guide it is the positive feedbacks that make AGW catastrophic and this is where there are disagreements.

Posted by: kit | Jul 8, 2007 12:43:15 PM

I suggest that solar forcing better explains the different degrees of warming between the surface and the troposphere over the past 25 years as indicated in the graph on page 29. With solar forcing operative, additional photons of many different frequencies are launched by a brighter sun at the earth. These photons penetrate the earth's atmosphere through many different windows all the way to the ground. There they are mostly absorbed and their deposited energy raises the temperature of the earth's surface.

Some increment of these additional solar photons, but of lower frequencies, are reradiated from the slightly warmer earth's surface into the troposhere where some are absorbed by existing GHG including slightly increased CO2 thereby raising the trosphere's temperature to a lesser extent than that of the earth's surface. QED.

Posted by: Lawrence | Jul 8, 2007 12:58:55 PM

I found your review to be quite interesting and much in line with my own opinions. You have performed a worthwhile service. While I agree with most of your thrust, I find some unevenness in your treatment. While I am no literary critic, I saw varying degrees of personal opinion and sometimes an "attack" mode. In many respects you have been very even handed when describing the AGW "theory" and acknowledge the aspects of skeptical "theory" yet to be established.

I offer the following thoughts as my "proofreading". I can not contribute to the science and my writing skills are not up to the task. Please accept these as good intentions.

Comments on manuscript written by Warren Meyer

A Skeptical Layman's Guide to Anthropogenic Global Warming

pg 14 text This relationship of CO2 to warming is usually called sensitivity, and is often expressed as the number of degrees of global warming that would result from a doubling in global temperature.
Should read .... a doubling in CO2 concentration.

Pg 23 text If Biffra had hadn’t artificially truncated his data at 1950,
Should read ... If Biffra hadn't artificially

pg 27 text Further, these sulfate dimming effects really only can be expected to operate over land, limiting their effect on global temperatures since they effect only a quarter or so of the globe. In fact, research has shown that dimming is three times greater in urban areas close to where the sulfates are produced (and where most university evaporation experiments are conducted) than in rural areas, and that in fact when you get out of the northern latitudes where industrial society dominates, the effect may actually reverse in the tropics.

Question: What is the support for this first sentence above?
Comment: Although this document is informal, a reference to the source document of the research might be helpful.

Pg 29 text (As an aside, remember that AGW supporters write off the Medieval Warm Period because it was merely a local phenomena in the Northern Hemisphere not observed in the south – can’t we apply the same logic to the late 20th century based on this satellite data?)

Comment: Good point

pg 30 text We have greatly increased this network over time, but the changing mix of reporting stations adds its own complexity.

Comment: It is my understanding that the number of stations rose substantially until the 1980-1990 period and then are reduced a bunch with fewer rural and far North stations.

Pg 31 text hotter than its surroundings, an effect entirely different from AGW,
Suggest... an effect entirely different from CO2 driven AGW.

Pg 32 text The only conclusion is that the NOAA did not want the shameful condition of some of
these sites to be publicized.
Strong statement. Suggest ... One might surmise that the NOAA..

pg 34 text All climate forecasting models are created by a pretty insular and incestuous climate science community that seems to compete to see who can come up with the most dire forecast. Certainly there are financial incentives to be as aggressive as possible in forecasting climate change, since funding dollars tend to get channeled to those who are the most dramatic. The global warming community spends a lot of time with ad hominem attacks on skeptics, usually accusing them of being in the pay of oil and power companies, but they all know that their own funding in turn would dry up rapidly if they were to show any bit of skepticism in their own work.

Comment: A common POV of AGW skeptics and also derivative of possible quotable sources. Suggest Wegman or the recent commentary on ClimateAudit of scientific “forecasting”. This is also more in the “attack” mode than descriptive.

Pg 34 text – the modelers, by the assumptions the feed into the model,
Suggest... assumptions they feed ..

pg 36 text The assumptions begin as guesses of dubious quality and come out laundered at
“settled science.”
Suggest ... laundered as ....

pg 40 text scientists assume that processes they meet are negative feedback until proven
otherwise. Except in climate, it seems, where everyone assumes positive feedback is common.

Suggest ... scientists and engineers in real life assume that processes they meet are negative feedback until proven otherwise. Except in “climate science”, it seems, where everyone assumes positive feedback is common.

Pg 41 text stops temperature form rising once it starts?
Suggest ... temperature from ...

pg 41 text the record above seems to claim that CO2 in the atmosphere never really got above there it was say in 1880.
Suggest ... above where ...

pg 51 text For example, clearing relatively dry land and replacing it with irrigated agriculture substantially changes to the local heat balance, not the least by increasing humidity.
Suggest ... changes the local ...

pg 51 text Dr. Pielke explains summarizes
Suggest ... explains ....

pg 60 text (as cities urbanize they get hotter, and effect that is different than CO2-cause global
Suggest ... hotter, an effect ... than CO2-caused global...

pg 60 text In a sense, is the lows,
Suggest ... In a sense, it is ...

pg 62 text Major cities, like Hamburg, Berlin and Munich, have formed heat islands where the climate has been two or three degrees warmer than in the surrounding countryside for decades. If higher temperatures are truly so bad, why do more and more animals and plants feel so comfortable in our cities?

Comment: This is a new one to me but still a valuable point that contrasts with those AGW alarmists who sing about dire times ahead.

Pg 62 text One of the recent hysteria’s has been
Suggest .. recent hysterias has ..

pg 64 text and China is predicted to have higher CO2 production than the United States by 2009.
Comment: I have seen some reports that China has already achieved this due to under-estimates of previous usage.

Pg 68 text Many scientists are technocratic fascists at heart,

Comment: Lots of personal opinion, bias expressed here.

Pg 70 text it might make some winters bit a warmer, for instance,
Suggest: ... winters a bit ... was the original worded this way?

Pg 72 text latitudes, and initially agricultural yields will probably.
Suggest ... will probably rise. was the original worded this way?

Pg 74 text I am starting to notice a trend here of making statements about competing that could be applied equally

Comment: Incomplete thought here. Do you means ... competing theories .. ?

pg 76 text the correction of any temperature measurement the might refute global warming,
Suggest ... measurement that ...

pg 77 text Wouldn’t you expect them to day that they found the speed of light

Suggest ... them to say ..

Posted by: Mike Rankin | Jul 8, 2007 5:22:18 PM

thanks, kit.

Posted by: Anon E. Mouse | Jul 9, 2007 12:54:17 PM

Rick - thanks for your feedback. I had always been taught that a negative could not be proven and my observations in following reasoned arguments has, to date, seemed to bear that out. I guess I have some reading to do.

Posted by: Lenny | Jul 9, 2007 1:37:21 PM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6290228.stm

This statement that solar output has been decreasing over the past 20 years needs to be checked against other sources (e.g., NRL)

Posted by: Lawrence | Jul 11, 2007 6:47:49 AM

On the subject of global warming, how can I save my great state of Florida from our governor? He's just signed an order requiring our state to

1) lower CO2 emissions to 2000 levels
2) "green" building standards
3) a cap and trade system
4) 20% of power from "alternative" sources

Since any well informed person knows that CO2 emissions are a proxy for energy production, the first requirement is tantamount to "reduce economic output to 2000 levels", which will destroy our economy. The new building codes will greatly inflate the price of new construction, bringing existing construction up along with it, just what the poor and middle class of our state need. Cap-and-trade is basically a fraud; just look at the EU. Alternative power sources are a fraud too; their energy density is so low that huge amounts of land are required for them to produce enough total power, land that needn't have been used if we use petroleum or (better) nuclear fission and acts as a carbon sink besides.

Posted by: Bob Smith | Jul 11, 2007 12:59:41 PM

Since no one else mentioned it you should change Biffra to Briffa throughout the text.

Bob Smith: I accept your concern but despite me being a skeptic too there are at least some sensible suggestions coming up and Florida's don't seem that bad. Oil/Gas/Uranium are all running out so lets look for alternatives and let's try not to waste what we have (eg. there are absolutely far too may gas guzzlers on the road); and the houses in Florida don't seem particularly well built to me (eg. why build wooden houses rather than concrete in a hurricane zone?) - a change in building standards will surely save lives and lower insurance costs.

Posted by: JamesG | Jul 16, 2007 3:28:24 AM

JamesG: I'm sitting here waiting a Florida afternoon thunderstorm to run to my V10 Excursion as I read your comment on the 'sensible' solutions for Florida (too many gas guzzlers and concrete construction). I have to take exception to the overly simplistic appeal to emotion.

As to gas guzzler's, how many is too many? When the supply is limited, who decides who gets to drive one? What constitutes a gas guzzler? I won't say 'no' to a little better fuel efficiency at a reasonable cost, but I'm not willing to trade my freedom to choose the vehcile I want, its safety and efficiency (I have 5 kids and Grandma, would two little cars be better?) for any marginal gains. Get rid of all vehicles and you save lots of gas and 50,000+ lives a year (car accidents), but we run through a lot of shoe rubber. Short of that, the solution is to develop and offer a viable alternative.

As to concrete, Florida already has some of the toughest building codes in the nation and many of the homes built today are concrete block construction. But there are costs associated with them, such as higher materials cost (like the gravel dug out of the everglades to make concrete), higher labor costs and concrete is not as renewable as wood (almost all wood used in construction is from planted, not old growth, trees, which because there are more now than in 1900 and they reduce C02, help offset greenhouse gases). Even if we did replace all of the wood with concrete, you have a couple of issues. First, because wood is more flexible than concrete, it sometimes fairs better than concrete in storms, depending on the specifics of the structure. Second, wind damage generally occurs when there is a failure in the strucure (window or door blows out) creating a pressure differential and usually resulting in the roof coming off. At that point, wood or concrete doesn't matter that much. Third, concrete is no better at fighting off water damage than wood. Finally, insurance costs are a combination of risk, damage and repair/repalcement cost. If the risk of being hit by a storm is the same for wood and concrete, then before forcing everyone to concrete, an analysis would need to be done to determine if the increased cost of concrete would be offset by the reduce repair/replacement cost if damaged. That would probably be done after the fact by the insurance industry. Considering the recent insurance 'savings' statute instituted in Florida which predicted a greater than 10% reduction in property insurance and that has resulted so far in (the first) request for a rate change to be for a double digit increase, I don't hold out any hope for an insurance savings by such a move.

Well, rains stopped, so I guess my rambling should too.

Posted by: KevinH | Jul 17, 2007 4:36:02 PM

The correlation between CO2 levels and temperature does not prove cause and effect. Especially as the temperature changes precede the CO2 changes - go and check out the Vostok ice core data if you dont believe this..

http://www.aquamarinegreen.blogspot.com/

Posted by: anon | Jul 20, 2007 7:32:04 AM

There is reason to believe that this global warming phenomenon what the Earth is experiencing may not exactly be the result of human activity, although it could be a factor. For one, the Earth's climate has undergone changes in the past. Ice ages have come and gone and deserts have spread and shrunk.

It is a fact that Greenland once had a more tropical climate and that the Sahara was once a jungle. In more recent ages, there was what is called the Medieval Climate Optimum, which was a time between the tenth and the fourteenth centuries when the climate in the North Atlantic Region was unusually hot. This was followed by a period called "The Little Ice Age." What I'm trying to say is that even without the influence of human technological activity, the Earth has ahd and will continue to go through changes in it's climate. It is possible that it is now going through another one.

I'd like to share a few facts on two of our neighbors in the solar system, Mars and Venus. These two have roughly the same percentage of the greenhouse, gas carbon dioxide, in their atmosphere. It's level on Mars is at 95% and on Venus, it is at 96.5%. Yet, the planetary climates of these planets are opposites. Mars is cold with temperatures that range from –140 °C (−220 °F) at the poles in winter to highs of up to 20 °C (70 °F) in the summer. Venus, on the other hand is hot enough to melt lead. Logic dictates that these two should be both hot due to the high levels of carbon dioxide in their atmosphere, but only one is. Compared to these two, Earth's percentage is only at .03%, and it has a temperate climate---just right.

I'm not a climate expert or a geologist. I'm just a writer from TheScienceDesk of TheNewsRoom. But in my opinion, we can learn a lot about the present state of our own planet by looking over its past and its neighbors, Mars and Venus. They all have stories to tell which may somehow be helpful to our predicament.

What follows is a link to an item of TheNewsRoom that discusses how a new study counters the human-activity notion of global warming. There are many related news on global warming and many have found useful content in TheNewsRoom for promoting awareness on global warming. If you would like to know more on how TheNewsRoom can help you on your mission, send an email to jtowns@voxant.com.

http://www.thenewsroom.com/details/487644?c_id=wom-bc-ar

- Alvin from TheScienceDesk at TheNewsRoom.com

Posted by: alvinwriter | Jul 22, 2007 1:50:36 AM

I am a regular reader of your blog. And I am very impress with your blog upon Global Warming. Now I am also write a blog upon Global Warming. This blog is collection of news & reviews like the study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation.

Posted by: Tarun K Juyal | Jul 27, 2007 3:22:23 AM

I am a regular reader of your article. And I am very impress with your blog upon Global Warming. Now I am also write a blog upon Global Warming. This blog is collection of news & reviews like the study found that global warming since 1985 has been caused neither by an increase in solar radiation nor by a decrease in the flux of galactic cosmic rays. Some researchers had also suggested that the latter might influence global warming because the rays trigger cloud formation.

Posted by: Tarun K Juyal | Jul 27, 2007 5:55:54 AM

McIntyre did not go after Mann with Canadian FOIAs. I really don't know what you refer to there.

There are also some other mistakes. A general one is the blithe statements about McIntyre destroying the hockey stick or finding out that mistakes in the algorithm produced the effects etc. This is a more complicated issue and McI has gotten a lot of noteriety, but actually done a very poor scientific job at a MECE analysis of what data/method combinations give what effects. Burger and Cubasch (2005 GRL) is a better model to look at.

too tired to find everything wrong right now...

Posted by: TCO | Aug 11, 2007 9:23:25 PM

"..McI has gotten a lot of noteriety, but actually done a very poor scientific job at a MECE analysis of what data/method combinations give what effects..." (sic)

Where McI did a superb scientific job was in forcing the data and methodology out of Mann, in spite of continuous refusals and smear attempts. The one issue which stands out in this topic is the refusal of the warmers to undertake review by anyone outside their own little clique. That alone makes their assertions highly suspect.

Now McI has scored another major victory for science, by reverse-engineering hidden errors in GISS. Note that it is not the magnitude of the correction that is at issue, but the forcing of liars to confront their lies.

Posted by: Dodgy Geezer | Aug 13, 2007 12:03:11 AM

Hundreds of articles prove “GLOBAL WARMING” by observations of CLIMATE CHANGE.

HEAT POLLUTION CAUSES CLIMATE CHANGE NOT CO2.

Look at the hurricane coming into the Gulf. It is following the path of almost all the hurricanes coming into North America. They are following the warm water flowing out of the Gulf. Water heated rivers that have been polluted by industrialization and population growth for the past hundred years. Every year we get more hurricanes coming through the Gulf.

Megatons of water are deposited over the Gulf States taking it away from its goal of reaching the Arctic and Greenland where it provides megatons of BLANKETING SNOW, a natural heat shield for the top of the world.

TODAY

Hurricanes can be minimized or eliminated by AGGRESSIVE cloud seeding BEFORE they reach a height known to be precursors of destructive storms.

SOON

Proper seeding can redirect them and happily send them on the journey over the North Atlantic

LATER

All pollution will be eliminated when we PROPERLY solve the ENERGY problem

Bunker Hill

PDGEE Ret.

Posted by: Don Hill | Aug 18, 2007 8:45:17 PM

Hi,

Just thought you'd like to check out a couple of new research trends in climate science:

1) Soot's unexpected GH warming effect, with particular respect to the vast Asian Brown Cloud. Originally thought to have a -50% GH effect, soot actually has a +50% effect. Soot has also been heavily implicated in the Arctic sea ice recession of the late 19th century until at least the 1920's. Greenland with its colder than predicted temperatures and increased central glaciation is strangely exempt from sootfall. Same goes for central Antarctica. Even in 2003 Hansen published a paper indicating soot was up to a 25% contributory factor to glacial & permafrost loss (but this was overlooked while minor GH effects like contrails were overplayed in the media).

2) CO2's maximal GHG capacity (CO2's role in GH warming is diminishingly logarithmic as CO2 increases and its contribution to GH warming reaches an asymptotic cap. That is, as more CO2 is introduced into the atmosphere, each additional unit causes *less* GH effect, the additional effect rises at a slowing rate until it hits a ceiling. "...The impact on temperature per unit carbon dioxide actually goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is not directly related to the emissions rate or even CO2 levels, which is what the legislation is hitting on, but rather to the impact of these gases on the greenhouse effect." -- MIT's Professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen

3) Like soot, methane is not a long-term GHG.

4) Every two weeks China adds another coal-powered power plant that emits as much as San Diego. *NOTHING* the West can realistically accomplish can mitigate the net increase of GHG against this juggernaut of fossil fuel use in China (and soon to be India & Africa....).

See:

Up to 90% of the "global" warming (it's more regional than global, but OK) in the Arctic is due to dirty snow:

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070506202633data_trunc_sys.shtml

100% difference in modeled outcomes? The conventional thinking was that airborne soot caused global dimming by as much as 50%. Instead the brown clouds increase any already ongoing warming by as much as 50%. Isn't that a 100% difference in what the climate models predict?

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070701162100data_trunc_sys.shtml

"...The air near Kilimanjaro's summit is almost always well below
freezing, there is typically no melting because of air temperature (Global Warming). ... fluctuating weather patterns in the Indian Ocean could also affect the .... before the first explorers reached Kilimanjaro's summit in 1889, and the shrinking that has been going on since."

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20070511215023data_trunc_sys.shtml

More info on airborne soot & glacial sootfall:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22172774-30417,00.html

http://tinyurl.com/3xrsee

Arctic climate study reveals impact of 19th century soot:
http://www.physorg.com/news105888386.html
[ Dating back to 1850 residue from forest fires darkened snow & caused increased absorption of sunlight. Soot concentrations peaked in 1906-1910 and remained high for decades. Might help explain the arctic sea ice loss of the 1920's. ]

Soot currently driving 25% of global warming & heavily contributes to Arctic sea ice loss:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/10/tech/main3154858.shtml

More evidence of soot-driven ice loss in arctic ....
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1144856
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/uoc--dsm060607.php

Ice loss above northern Siberia ... filthy with soot from massive oil field development.

http://energy.usgs.gov/factsheets/Russia/basins.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2005/2005-06-23-02.asp
http://www.rr.ualberta.ca/research/wildlife_impacts/oil_and_gas/image...
http://www.nmsu.edu/~english/hc/IMPACTOIL.html

Posted by: lee | Aug 22, 2007 2:59:31 PM

From what I have seen, and not being an expert, it appears that there is global warming going on. Actually, I am looking forward to it. I think about 200,000 die from heat every year and about 1.5 million freeze to death. I have a problem with the recommendations of taxing us and economic slowdown. If we were to totally change and do as the proponents say, will the climate stay constant? If yes, at what level? If not, why should we be paying these taxes?

Posted by: Zbigniew | Aug 23, 2007 11:59:18 AM

I agree that warming seems to be occuring, whether or not we are able to explain it. As a youngster, I remember walking to school past frozen puddles and frost on the ground. These disappeared altogether within about 10 years and the local climate is now definitely different than it was, with seasons arriving at different times, for instance.

"Looking forward" to global warming and the expected rise in sea levels might be something an alien race waiting to colonise our planet would do; doesn't a 70m rise (if all the ice melts) mean there won't be many humans (or large animals) left to "enjoy" it?

Posted by: Fred056 | Aug 26, 2007 1:03:09 AM

The real reason the Earth is warming up is the
change of the Earths axis,which was 23 degrees
now probably closer to 24 degrees. When the sun
hits earth @ that angle things are going to heat
up!!!!! Think about it.

Posted by: B.D. | Sep 24, 2007 11:35:56 PM

Very good paper!

Speaking as a sceptic myself, I hope you'll take this in the spirit intended. There are a few picky little points I noticed going through, but the only one I regarded as serious was the business about positive feedbacks.

The climate as a whole has to have a massive negative feedback, but perturbations layered on top of that can be either positive or negative. The principal feedback controlling the temperature is of course the rate at which the Earth radiates IR into space. (Or considered more locally, the rate at which the surface radiates and convects heat into the troposphere.) The hotter it is, the more it radiates. There is in principle an equilibrium point where inflow would equal outflow, although what with night and day, seasons, and other changes, such an equilibrium is never achieved. How water vapour might shift this equilibrium point in response to a temperature change could indeed be positive without causing any runaway greenhouse effect.

That said, I've never seen any complete, clear explanation as to *why* it ought to be positive and have the value they think it has.

Other niggles: "Briffa" as someone mentioned above, your explanation of how AGW got incorporated into the computer models is very unclear (you could mention the 100-200 km spatial resolution and how they use parameterizations of anything smaller than that), you miss a trick in not plotting the estimates of polar bear population against time, or mentioning that their numbers are actually controlled by culling (what with them being quite dangerous predators who like to eat the people who live up there), and I've a recollection of someone reporting that coral bleaching is due to nitrates from fertiliser run-off, not acidity or temperature, but I can't remember where I saw that so please fact-check me.

But generally speaking, I thought it was an excellent summary! I look forward to seeing it develop.

Posted by: SB | Sep 25, 2007 2:50:59 PM

There are many inputs to the global warming problem; some as simple as the bathroom devices found almost everywhere that don't get the job of drying ones' hand's done - A lot of hot air everywhere.

The Global Warming also feeds the Southern Oscillation El Nino that brings the North American Monsoon to our Southern States and regularly floods them. We need an especial amount of ordinance changes regarding drainage and runoff to cope with this in Mexico as well as the south. Just look at this years record of two hurricanes on the same day during the week of August 19, in the Texas area and last year the flooding of Hatch and areas in the Barcelona ridge during the same time frame.

Thank's for listening and find out why the Design and Construction Standards using TR55 and SCS programs do not even check for these conditions. The NOAA publishes bogus information as a result when measuring rainfall over a 24 hour period when the monsoon drops a like amount in 10 or twenty minutes, that's like 300 inches in 24 hours but those programs are only good up to 50 inches in 24 hours. Lets get a consortium of federal interest together with the Society of Meteorologica of Mexico and create new Design rules that work for these anomalies that recurr.

Posted by: Cliff Terry | Oct 13, 2007 3:58:24 PM

There are many inputs to the global warming problem; some as simple as the bathroom devices found almost everywhere that don't get the job of drying ones' hand's done - A lot of hot air everywhere.

Posted by: Cliff Terry | Oct 13, 2007 3:58:26 PM

Bravo,
Thank you for your perseverance on this issue.
Your paper is the counter balance to the current wave of ecomania.
Finally a sane voice of reason in the huge "media storm" surrounding the "science" as to the actual causes and the extent of "global warming" either man made or otherwise.Too many people have rushed to embrace these "worm's eye view" thoeries as if they are proven science without questioning any of it or the motives driving it.
As a high school teen I can remember the first EARTH DAY demonstrations.
We were all caught up in it. Many good things developed out of that increased awareness. At the time I even helped to make a film about an eco topic on solid waste that recieved an award at a very small local film festival.Big deal.
There is also now an increased awareness that we were being played by certain political groups in those times too.The dawning of the new ice age was upon us. Well guess what boys and girls? Did na happen!The population bomb, theorized by Paul Ehrlic, did not explode either.
Now the same people are banging the eco drums again.
Now we are all in peril of turning into potato chips.
Mr. Gore , the new "Eco Nostradamus", is playing fast and loose with the facts to use this issue so that he may gain political and financial advantage while taking credit for being at the fore front something he has had literally nothing to do with initially other than to be involved in the making of a misleading documentary about the supposed problem .
This is the same man that as Vice President of the United States acted as a "Bag Man" for the Clinton administration picking up illegal campaign contributions and lying about that.
Well after taking credit for inventing the internet what would you expect?
Is he to be believed ?
Must have been some real serious tobacco he was smokin'.

Now he accepts a Nobel Peace Prize taking credit for his dubious work in presenting the global warming problem(?)to the masses.
Michael Moore, eat your heart out!
I thought the Nobel Peace Prize was intended for people of integrity that actually performed works that benefit mankind.Instead it has been cheapened to the status of the EMMY or OSCAR.
"For best supporting actor in......."
Science does not need Mr. Al Gore to act as it's mouth piece.
Science has enough trouble establishing and maintaining it's own credibility without being used as a tool by this "TOOL".
True scientists will "man up" and admit to the flaws in their work when it is pointed out to them in an actual review by their peers in the whole scientific community.

Follow the money and Mr.Gore is probably standing next to the satchel with the handle in his hand.
"Pssst! Hey buddy wanna buy some carbon offsets?"
"Deal or No Deal?"

Posted by: Ed Emerson | Oct 13, 2007 10:13:00 PM

I'm curious about what you think about ocean acidification due to carbon dioxide, nitrogen compounds and sulfur compounds released in the process of our lifestyles. From what I'm learning, as a carbon sink, the ocean can only handle so much carbon before the carbonic acid - bicarb - carbonate buffering system is affected ... bringing about increasingly acid conditions with the concentration of H+ ions liberated as the chemical reactions (H2CO3 to H+ + HCO3- then to H+ + CO3--)are pushed to the right. I'm working to understand this and how, although the ocean is supersaturated with precursors for shell formation now, the interactions of an acid ocean with the limestone sediments apparently decreases the calcium carbonate needed for shell formation by planktonic and benthic marine animals. Surface seawater pH has declined .1 units (a 30% increase in hydrogen ions) in the past 200 years. There is a projection that by 2100, the ocean acidity will be so high that animals that eat those critters will be affected... and we will be in turn. In fact, fossil records don't show this high a level of acid and the fall-out of shelled animals since the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago... The following links are two of many related articles that have come out lately. I'd be interested to know what your thoughts are.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/050630_oceans_acid.html , 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean3aug03,0,3589668.story

Posted by: S Flaniken | Nov 25, 2007 1:38:20 AM

i read up until you refer to "sunspots" without explaining what they are and then claim someone has records of sunspots and temperatures from 1645 to 1715 without explaining how these records were recorded or observed. I wanted to consider what you had to say but the article is not adequately informative.

Posted by: liam | Nov 28, 2007 8:36:30 PM

in fact the article seems deliberately designed to bamboozle, starting with fine detail and working it's way to eventually stating contentions when the contention should be stated first so i can understand the context of what i'm reading. the article seems to contain some actual information but deliberately make it as difficult as possible to extract.

Posted by: liam | Nov 28, 2007 8:44:09 PM

Another Alternative Explanation for Warming - Increasing Solar Influx Amplified by Increasing Humidity and Decreasing Ice and Snow Cover

AGW proponents now accept that historical CO2-temperature data shows that rising temepratures caused atmospheric levels of CO2 to rise, not the other way around. They hypothesise that the most of the temperature rise was caused by CO2 outgassed from the oceans as a result of an initial temperature rise causing further temperature rises. This is a reasonable hypothesis worth considering but the way is now more open to consider other alternative hypotheses.

Water vapour is a powerful greenhouse gas and the humidity depends on temperature.

During an ice age humidity would be low but humidity would have increased as the planet warmed due to some external cause. Ice and snow, which reflect sunlight, would have retreated, leading to further warming. Warmer weather would have lead to greater rates and geographical extent of terrestrial plant growth, which would have further increased humidity. Increased humidity would have lead to increased precipitation which would have further increased plant growth, increasing humidity further.

A long-term decrease in solar influx causes the earth to cool. Decreasing humidity and increasing ice and snow cover amplify this cooling and the earth enters an ice age. On the other hand, a long-term increase in solar influx causes the earth to warm. Increasing humidity and decreasing ice and snow cover amplify this warming and the earth comes out of an ice age.

This hypothesis is similar to the hypothesis based on outgassed CO2 but replaces CO2 with H2O as the greenhouse gas responsible. Choosing CO2 as the greenhouse gas while virtually ignoring H2O is just ridiculous given the power of H2O as a greenhouse gas and the vaste quantities of it that exist on our planet.

Posted by: Paul | Dec 8, 2007 4:07:45 AM

I guess what I miss in all this is that there are other, extremely good, reasons to cut carbon emmisions here in the USA. It's called energy independence. This independence would allow us to not have to rely on foreign oil from places that have no desire to have us there and would like nothing better than to get rid of us. Yes, you can debate all day long whether we have a "right" to these resources, but the bottom line is that our dependence on these foreign resources is the reason for many of our (failed) foreign policies, wars and general meddling in places of the world where it would be better that we don't meddle. So even if burning all this fossil fuel actually has a net positive effect on the environment (pretty unlikely), it still would have a net overall negative impact if you factor in geo-political implications.

Before you jump all over me, I still have an open mind on the issue, which is why I'm here. The subject is complex enough to warrant doubt, and I'm still in the process of learning and gathering facts.

Posted by: Bud | Dec 17, 2007 10:01:29 AM

Coyote,

You and your readers might enjoy this:

Gag gift for environmentalists:

www.unclegeorge4motherearth.com

There's one in every family....

That environmentalist whacko at the family Christmas gathering, who babbles about the horrors of Global Warming to come, quoting Algore on dead polar bears, and flooded cities.

The "scientific consensus" has these a**holes terrified.

They constantly remind the rest of us how we must sacrifice to prevent the coming Apocalypse.

They're hard to shop for, aren't they?

Well, now you can kill two birds with one eco-friendly stone: Uncle George's Amazing Earth SaversTM

Methane is 20 times more powerful as a Greenhouse Gas than Carbon Dioxide....Where is it coming from?

Environmental A**holes are a known source of methane.

So plug those environmental a**holes on your Christmas list.

Earth SaversTM come in a variety of sizes, from Insect (termites emit more methane than any other source) to Algore (a supersized environmental a**hole).

Get one for every environmental a**hole in your life!

www.unclegeorge4motherearth.com

Gaia will love you for it !

Love,

Uncle George
unclegeorge@unclegeorge4motherearth.com

Posted by: Uncle George | Dec 18, 2007 4:03:00 PM

I watched your video, planning on reading your report. I like how you explain that Ice melting in the arctic won't raise the sea level by itself. I constantly have to explain to people this. I usually go, take some ice put it in a glass mark the level and come back. I think you raised some interesting points, I've think the sensitivity is very convincing and I've head it before but it wasn't explain as throughly. The whole GW conspiracy, or propaganda, is just a mess. People actually just take it as a given, I have argued the skeptic side many times in many places to many people and I find that rarely does anyone do any actual research on the subject. I try to look at both sides and the skeptics just have better science, and use various amounts of of data, that are fundamentally different and from a wide variety of sources. Looking forward to the read.

Posted by: A | Dec 22, 2007 11:26:21 PM

http://amap.no/acia/. Read the effects of warming on the Arctic. This isn't a layman's paper, it was done by people that actually know what they're talking about.

Posted by: Hominatrix | Dec 23, 2007 8:08:17 AM

Ladies and Gentlemen, I should like your comments on this PART of the Scientific/Technical paper I am preparing for Peer review in the IEEE. I only trust that this blogs buffer can hold all of this part of the document without "hiccuping". Here goes:

Abstract: Acquiring a first stage control over our Planetary Weather Systems.

The purpose of this paper is to present evidence of a recently discovered reoccurring oceanic phenomena that is expected to provide a possible explanation for the volumetric heating effects being observed in our planets ocean’s and then present a set of preliminary specifications for a series of physical constructs that are well within our current technology to build and put into place as the means for combating this phenomena and its expected effects on or planet. Currently this oceanic phenomena has not yet received wide recognition in Scientific circles as the possible “cause-and-effect” being described euphemistically, as “Planetary Warming”.

Introduction:

I am a 63 year old Electronics and Computer Engineer, Amateur Scientist and Systems Analysis. I am Co-Inventor in two U.S. Patents. Published Author. Member, IEEE’s Power Engineering and Oceanic Engineering Societies. Co-Author in two IEEE Publications. I am a Retired 20+ year Veteran of the US Armed Forces.

Beginning sometime in early 1996, I became aware of discussions in Scientific circles about a subject being euphemistically referred to at that time as “Planetary Warming”. This “Planetary Warming” aroused my interest. I have subsequently acquired over the years, as time and money permitted, numerous published Scientific Papers, US Government and International (IPCC) Public documents and Private Research Organizations that had funded Research Projects for individual Scientists and Scientific Organizations, into the causes of “Planetary Warming”.

Interested readers can access the National Geographic News article: “Global Warming Fast Facts” on the Global Internet at:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1206_041206_global_warming.html

Updated June 14, 2007 and get a wide view of the “Fast Facts” as they are, allegedly, known today.

The above Global Internet article demonstrates the vast repertoire of published documents and information which has become available for study and analysis. Numerous History Channel, Learning Channel, Science Channel and Public Broadcasting Network Documentaries have presented a collage of thoughts and opinions about the causes and recommended “corrective” actions. Readers should see: http://www.climate-skeptic.com for a far more detailed analysis into the current “disagreements” with various Scientists and their supporting organizations and individuals who have prepared and presented opinions on the causes of Planetary Warming in the many and diverse public forums.

It is not my intent in this Paper to engage in useless commentaries about the pros or cons of “Planetary Warming”, “Climate Sensitivity” or “Empirical conclusions” and the vast repertoire of “truths, half truths and alleged prevarications”.

I will only provide these indisputable facts:
1. “Sudden climate change is an established scientific reality.”
2. “Over the last 2.8 million years, climate shifts have happened many times.”
3. “Studies of the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores show conclusively that abrupt climate change over the last 2.8 million years is an indisputable reality of life, given this planets current geological configuration.”
4. “The rising of the Central American land bridge 2.8 million years ago changed the fundamental organization and pattern of the Earth’s ocean currents, which combined with small variations in solar energy output and perturbations in Earth’s orbit, has led to a much less stable climate since that land bridge was pushed into its current position by the forces that continuously shift the Tectonic plates over Earth’s mantle.”
5. “A severe climate shift, should one occur as currently “predicted”, has never happened before to a civilization with six billion people, living in a planet wide civilization that absolutely depends for it existence on continued climate stability.”
6. “The United States has adopted, not with out economic justification, a posture of “considered” indifference, as its Public policy, considering the expected economic consequences of adopting the Kyoto accords and its severe economic impact on the lives of many Americans.

Understanding the Origins of the Oceanic Thermal phenomena

My interests as an Amateur Scientist and Systems Analysis in the subject of “Planetary Warming”, and its causes, covers many of the Natural Sciences that includes, but is NOT limited to:

Basic Astronomy
Our Solar Systems Planetary motions
Planetary Gravity interactions
The Solar “wind”
Planetary Atmospheric Physics
Oceanic and Atmospheric Interactions
Origins and types of “Green House” gasses
Planetary thermal conveyer and convection systems
The Atlantic Thermal Conveyer System
El-Nino and La-Nina’s Planetary weather interactions

I am by no means an “Expert” in any of the above Natural Sciences.

What I AM, can be best described as an Engineer/Amateur Scientist/Systems Analysis, examining pieces of an enormous “puzzle”. When I come across a piece-of-the-puzzle that is left dangling out there “inside the box” stating that this, or that, conclusion or supposition, has been arrived at by the Scientific Community, either with an “unknown’ or “inconclusive” result, I endeavor to take an action that can best be described as a Detective, searching for “clues” to a “mystery”.

Just as there is the “Law-of-Nature”, “Law-of-Proximity”, “Law-of-Reciprocity”, “Law-of-Reciprocal Proportions, and others, I use the “Law-of-Simplicity” embodying the concepts in Occam’s Razor and the “Law of Pharsimony” (i.e.: when alternate or multiple explanations exist, the simplest is usually correct), in examining all aspects of these “clues”. to arrive at the simplest explanation.

Assembling a picture of the entire Scientific “puzzle” called “Planetary Warming” has taken approximately eleven years to put together. Thus far, I am confident that I have a good “view” of the problem as demonstrated in my assembled “picture puzzle”. From this assembled “picture puzzle”, I have spent the last year and a half studying possible “high level” and “low level” solutions to this problem of “Planetary Warming”.

Only recently have I discovered the oceanic thermal phenomena described above. It is resident in the Archives of the Oceanic Engineering Society o the IEEE.

The Oceanic thermal phenomena: Magna Domes

The planet Earth is being heated INTERNALLY by the absorption of the vast electromagnetic energies of the Solar Wind. It is estimated that over the last several thousand years, sufficient high electron flow rates INTO the core of our planet has raised the internal operating temperature of our planetary cores electrically equivalent “brushless saturable core amplidyne motor”. This for want of a better word, “motor/engine”, is what essentially “drives” this planets 24 hour daily rotation. Added to our planets internal electro-magnetic drive motors physical action is the counter-electromagnetic field generated by our planets falling through the suns own electromagnetic field, causing our planets circumnavigation rate-of-motion about the sun to be slowed BY the suns induced counter-electromagnetic field, via negative feedback. Otherwise, our planet would be spun either into a decaying orbit or spun further out into space creating a vast elliptical orbit, instead of the near circular stable orbit that is now enjoys.

Just as any human mechanical apparatus designed with an inadequate cooling system will eventually break down, so our own planets internal electro-magnetic drive motor is starting to break down. This is becoming increasingly evident by the slow reduction in the planets electromagnetic fields intensity over the last 55-60 years and the appearance of south pole magnetic anomalies appearing north of the equator and north pole magnetic anomalies appearing south of the equator. In any magnetic material currently known, as that magnetic material heats up, its ability to “hold” it magnetic characteristics decreases with the rise of the magnetic materials internal temperature. This destabilization of our planetary cores electro-magnetic, “motor/engine”, may also be the cause of an observed increase in the frequency of small earthquakes along the boundaries of the Tectonic plates.

The increasing temperature of our planets internal mantle is causing it to expand, pressing the mantel OUTWARD, toward the surface of the planet. We see this as an increase in the number of pockets of magma pressing up against the tremendous ocean pressures on the bottom of the ocean floors in what are called “magna domes”. There are more frequent occurrences of these magma domes “bursting” and creating mega plume “events”. Only recently has a very LARGE magma dome been discovered at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. It has been thermally imaged as having a diameter of forty-three (43) miles!

Note: the currently plotted Atlantic Conveyer “river” that distributes the heat from the Pacific Ocean via a TOPSIDE flow, sub-ducts near the Greenland/NewFoundland/Grandbanks area in the North Atlantic and then RETURNS to the Pacific Ocean by BOTTOMSIDE flow, passes near and OVER part of this enormous magna dome.

Oceanic Scientists believe that there are MANY more magma domes scattered across the ocean floors. Exactly where and how large these magma domes may be is unknown!

Our technology is only now making us aware of these extraordinary phenomena’s. Only now is there becoming an awareness in the Oceanic Engineering Society and Scientific Community that these magma domes MAY be the actual cause of out oceans rising temperatures! Clearly, instabilities are appearing!

The rest of this paper describes two solutions to this, as yet, minor problem and includes extensive drawings and photographs which cannot be displayed in this blogs limited format. My bibliography is approaching almost 80 entires. I estimate at least several months more to assemble the full paper. Looking forward to your "Peer' Review comentaries.

Posted by: Roy D. Shepard | Dec 31, 2007 4:04:35 PM

Yes, you can debate all day long whether we have a "right" to these resources, but the bottom line is that our dependence on these foreign resources is the reason for many of our (failed) foreign policies, wars and general meddling in places of the world where it would be better that we don't meddle.

try manage your wealth..
http://www.bwm-financial.com

Posted by: adi | Jan 2, 2008 3:20:20 AM

Video #3 has a serious error! It says the NOAA Quality Control adjustments are in Celsius they are not, they say at the bottom of that page:

"The cumulative effect of all adjustments is approximately a one-half degree Fahrenheit warming in the annual time series over a 50-year period from the 1940's until the last decade of the century."

I'm glad I found this error myself rather than suffer the other side pointing it out to me with the obvious, "See, he's exaggerating!"

Posted by: Steve Case | Jan 6, 2008 6:47:18 AM

As a retired metallurgist, I am astonished by the loose science and unabashed manipulation of data in the anthopogenic global warming camp, even while realizing that environmentalists are basically negative people. It is incredible that graphs are published showing temperature changes to a fraction of a degree celsius over the last 200 or so years, when the data would have been collected using a mercury and glass or an alcohol and glass theremometer graduated in one degree increments, and when those taking the temperatures would report to the nearest whole number. Another aspect is the current use of "average annual global temperatures", a particularly inane statistic given that we have arctic, temperate, sub tropical and tropical climate zones. However such meaningless values are useful for the gormless politicians that control our fortunes. I realize that small amounts of some elements can have a profound effect in some systems, for example carbon in iron, but air is a mixture and although carbon dioxide is a vital but very small constituent of the atmosphere I fail to see how minor variations in the carbon dioxide concentation can have the claimed decisive effect on atmospheric temperature.
Much of the historic carbon dioxide and temperature data, if it really can be called data, comes from ice core sampling, and I wonder if the solubility of carbon dioxide in ice under pressure and over thousands of years was considered. I would imagine probably not since the goal of the researchers would have been to come up with the lowest possible numbers. The time ranges for some of this published data are interesting also since it shows the arrogance of those involved. For example 647426 BC to 411548 BC by U.Stocker et al "Stable Carbon Cycle-Climate Relationship During the Late Pleistocene" Science 310: 1313-1317. The accuracy of the year dating defies description.
The impending tragedy of all this is the near term effect on our economy. Apart from whatever "remedies" that Congress may impose, several stateslike California and Florida are hell bent on imposing their own solutions that are soon likely to double or tripple electricity prices, as they try to elliminate coal as a fuel. The old expression "Who needs enemies with friends like these?" is getting a new meaning. The environmentalists, rushing like lemmings to the cliff edge, are on the verge of achieving what the Luddites failed to do in the early nineteenth century, the tactic being to go after the fuel rather than the machines.

Posted by: Ed Nisbett | Jan 19, 2008 1:34:04 PM

You're all missing an important point. Those who advocate anthropogenic warming present emotional arguments. We who deny it respond with reasoned discussion. Alas, emotion trumps logic every time. And when politicians, for power, money and glory are only too eager to pump up the fear factor, the irrational becomes virtually unstoppable. Perhaps all we can do is watch in fascination as our fellows rush to get into that storied handbasket...

Posted by: Barry E Lerner | Jan 21, 2008 10:47:10 AM

What I find striking is this communal notion that science is democratic.

It is not. There is a right answer and a wrong answer. I am a scientist, and I apologize in advance for seeming arrogant.

A clear understanding of climate change is hard to come by. You can read all the books at Borders that you want, but you will not be presented scientific evidence so much as opinion. It's possible to obtain knowledge with which to determine for yourself whether a study that is presented to you is convincing or not. This process takes years of study, and generally, one will be qualified to become an engineer or a scientist before this is accomplished.

I.E. please get an advanced degree in a scientific discipline that is related to this subject before becoming vocal about it. The water is far too muddy. The most basic step to thinking rationally and scientifically is to withhold judgement of the truth until you see proof. This is what we go through 20 or 23 years of school to learn how to do. It's OK to not have an opinion. It's OK to ignore even engineers or PhD's of intermediate renown. When information is accurate, it will eventually be reiterated by scientists who have established a lifetime's track record. Case in point: listen to the IPCC. Don't listen to this fellow. He is decades too inexperienced to challenge the scientific establishment.

That being said, the highest authority in the scientific establishment concerning global climate change is probably the IPCC. Such a large body of internationally famous scientists work for them that they are more likely to have the correct assessment than anyone else. Their assessment is that climate change is man-made, semi-reversible, extremely dangerous, and requires immediate committment to reduce the damage that it has begun and will continue to cause.

Posted by: James Barker | Jan 25, 2008 6:13:22 PM

I've processed 33 years of Longwave outgoing IR data from NOAA.

There is no noticible trend.

This is telling evidence of the CO2 "greenhouse" being over-evaluated.

Enjoy!

http://junkscience.com/blog_js/2008/01/12/processing-33-years-of-ir-longwave-data/

Posted by: Jim Kingsley | Jan 27, 2008 5:56:48 PM

I guess you've seen this, but in case you missed it :
Scientists Find Active Volcano in Antarctica
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/world/21volcano.html
Reported in Nature Geoscience

Posted by: Gavin | Jan 30, 2008 2:26:57 PM

It is amazing & disappointing how this paper can ignore the core scientific evidence offered by the 1600 scientists from all over the world who through the IPCC have conservatively concluded that human activity, especially through carbon dioxide, has created a true progressive warming of the globe.

Posted by: Rich Miller | Jan 30, 2008 3:21:33 PM

Have you seen the article on wikipedia on solar variation? It trashes some of the graphs used by Svensmark and Lassen, saying that once corrected for "filtering errors" they show no correlation between solar activity and recent global warming (after 1989).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variation

Any comment?

Posted by: Ralph | Feb 1, 2008 5:35:43 PM

I have read the the majority of what you have posted on the website, and I can say, "Job well done." I have devoted hundreds of hours reading pro and skeptical AGW websites, and if I had read your website first, many items would have been easier to understand. I do believe that you are covering major issues of the AGW debate. (There are a few more issues -- such as what is happening in European businesses / economies as Europe enters an enforcement phase of CO2 cap and trade), but there is only so much that one blog can cover!
I read the post from Gavin with interest. On one hand, I can have sympathy for the task of trying to counter dozens of pages with which one disagrees; but on the other hand, his wave the hand and appeal to nebulous #s of scientists is much too characteristic of the pro-AGW movement. My main source of information used to RealClimate, but their answers (as exemplified by Gavin) got me to thinking of why their statements were so superficial and laced with amateurish debate tactics -- tactics that are typically used when one lacks substance.
So again, you have done a great job in summarizing and explaining key issues in the debate. AND THERE IS A DEBATE! My impression is that one side of the debate is hiding behind an accommodating media, and the other side is raising legitimate questions and is very open about their analysis and procedures. Of course, any side of any political/religious/cultural issue will have extremists who bring embarassment. One feature of the AGW debate is that the leaders of the pro-AGW side are themselves bring embarassment to their side.

Posted by: An Inquirer | Feb 4, 2008 1:10:40 PM

First let me say I prefer a more conversational tone. But, don't worry, I'm every bit as arrogant as Mr. Lerner.

A word on proving the negative. Yes, it is, in theoretical systems possible to prove the negative. However, in practical systems where knowledge is gained by observation, it is nearly impossible to prove the negative. Simply because, in observed systems, due to the usual limits on observation, you can't logically conclude from "I didn't observe it" that "it doesn't exist" unless you also prove "no way dude, I really looked everywhere, it couldn't possibly exist and be unobserved." That last part is a real hum-dinger to prove. We in computer science call it
intractable, meaning, at least in this sense, while theoretically possible, it is so difficult that it is
practically impossible. Which is why most of science constrains itself to proving the positive. On to AGW...

Before I get started. I concede the point that there is more than enough good reasons to bias a report to say AGW is not real. I want to focus on the opposite bias. Where is the motivation to fabricate something this big?

Let me start out with a couple postulates. If you want to argue either of these you have a whole lot of history to re-explain.

1. Generally people in government actually like being there and enjoy being in charge.
2. Governments tend to try and expand power not contract them.

Now before you pull your "Conspiracy Theorist" brand out of the fire and sear my forehead, I'm not talking about a bunch of white guys in the smoke filled back room grinning evilly as they come up with a new way to put their thumb on the working class. What I am talking about is more passive than that. All I suggest is that the people involved act with their own interests in mind. In yesteryear, when a government decided to expand power, decree and force seemed adequate avenues. In the modern world, with all of these democratic and republican governmental hurdles in your way (those are processes by the way not parties) the efforts of the government to expand must rely on at least tacit approval of the people. A process Noam Chomsky calls manufacturing consent. The format is simple. Identify a widespread problem, convince the people that the only reasonable solution is new laws and/or government agency
control and over site, expand government. Whether or not the problem really exists is irrelevant to the process, only that the people are convinced it exists. Whoa! I see the brand coming my way again! Let me give you a more practical view. Politicians are much more likely to get elected and gain higher office if they can advertise what they have done and what they plan to do, not what they blocked and what they won't do. So, is it so far fetched that politicians look for issues to champion to get press and help their career? And here we have AGW, the biggest potential threat to mankind since nuclear winter. Politicians involved with AGW have far more to gain politically from the belief that AGW is real. The IPCC is important to governments, in the spotlight, funded, because they say AGW is real. They were created solely for studying AGW. What would happen to them if they decided global climate change was simply due to natural causes and unavoidable? IPCC would no longer be important, or in the spotlight, or funded, oh my. Studies get published by the IPCC not because they say the IPCC stance on AGW is false.

If AGW is widely believed, decades of progressive new laws based on climate control are in our future. If believed, decades of new climate studies, evaluating in minutia how our efforts are helping are in our future. It would be a boon for the political careers of AGW's supporters, especially the early supporters proven "right". It would also herald the importance of expanding climatology. In my opinion, there is more than enough reason here to bias the majority of a scientific community into group support. So in my opinion there are ample reasons to bias reports in both directions.
On to Mr. Lerners comments. You say that science is not a democracy, there is a right and a wrong answer. Quite right, however, scientific consensus is a democracy, just one in which only the "qualified" get a vote, keeping in mind that such consensus does not constitute the "right" answer. And while science is not a democracy, almost all industrialized government on this planet follows some sort of democratic process. And last I checked we were discussing the possibility of radically changing how our society functions economically in order to address this issue. And that sir, is a function of government, a process whose ultimate check against uncontrolled expanse of power is the average citizen. Giving government absolute control over carbon emissions gives them tremendous power to structure our lives and economy as they see fit. So pardon me for taking a deep breath and being little apprehensive of a government telling me about how they have to save me from the disaster of my own carbon emissions; backed up by a scientific community that has a huge amount to gain from supporting that conclusion. Sorry boys and girls, no easy final answer on this one, you HAVE to show your work to convince me. And if you want to convince me you're going to have to...

1. Publish all available raw data for scrutiny. Studies should survive such scrutiny, even the scrutiny of a layman like Mr. Meyer. No brushing serious critical work aside because the author doesn't meet your qualifications standard.
2. Stop using worst case scenarios as conclusions, conclusions should include best case, worst case, and most likely case. As a computer scientist I know there is ALWAYS more than one model that will work on a system this complex.
3. Stop exaggerating risks. All risks should be justified and backed by observation not speculated or hypothesized. I'm not going to hand the government the keys to my car because of a fear of change. If you don't know then first say "We don't know" then BRACKET; e.g. this is the worst that will happen, this is the least impactive etc. See a trend?
4. Stop bashing dissenters. Suing someone for having an opinion? Saying "The debate is over" ?... does nothing to convince me your position is correct. It only makes me suspicious that your hiding something.
One last thing. Government operates off of tacit approval. Simply stated, if the people do not speak out against government action they approve of it, tacitly. That means it is NOT OKAY TO NOT HAVE AN OPINION. To not have an opinion means that you agree with the governments position, whatever that might be. There is no such thing as sitting on the fence as a citizen, you are either a vocal dissenter against government opinion or you agree with it, there is no in between. A failure to educate yourself as best you can, and form the best opinion that you are capable of, on a topic as important as this one, is nothing less than a full negligence of your civic duty.

Sorry for the length, if I had more time I would have made this shorter.

Posted by: Michael C Keehn | Feb 15, 2008 7:01:08 PM

"However, we are in a real world policy debate..."

This is where I take issue. Skeptics of AGW always resort to discussions of politics or perceived religious zealotry. If you stick with the science, policy follows in course.

All major global temperature assessments concur that we are undergoing a significant trend of rising temperatures over an extremely short period of geologic time. Even the skeptics no longer cling to the feeble "warming is not happening" tack. However, skeptics remain dismissive of billions of tons of greenhouse gases being injected in increasing amounts into an incredibly thin atmosphere and which can remain in that atmosphere for upwards of a hundred years.

If skeptics refuse to attribute this rapid rise in temperature to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, it should be easy enough to pinpoint the actual, natural cause. It should stick out like a sore thumb. However, since no such obvious natural attribution exists, skeptics ignore the elephant in the room of GHG emissions and generalize attributions to some mysterious "natural cycle" and sidestep the question of causation, as you demonstrated in your opening paragraphs here.

The problem is that it's not solar irradiance; it's not galactic cosmic rays; it's not tectonic plate shifts; it's not shifting ocean currents; it's not volcanic activity; it's not orbital obliquities and eccentricities. Before you can decide on appropriate policy, you have to have a handle on the science. So....what is it?

Posted by: Michael S. | Mar 2, 2008 9:10:00 PM

I had to chuckel with recognition as I read An Inquirer's comments. What he says about the bureaucracy is dead on. I am an engineering geologist, 28 years in the field. I have many times seen this tendency for the bureaucrats to seize on a concept and ride it as far up the chain of command as they can, whether it gets debunked or not. What follows is one good case in point.

I and a partner completed a series of landslide mapping projects for the BLM in Oregon in the late 1980s. They had a model created by an expert that explained that the cause of landslides in steep headwater stream channels in forest terrain, in a particular sedimentary geologic formation, is a build up of water pressure in stream sediments fed by a funnel effect as flow is concentrated into the incised channel below the headwall. At the first point below the concentration where the gradient of the stream decreased, a "blow-out" would occur (kind of like a ski-jump effect) causing a debris slide and usually a debris torrent which would strip the channel of sediments down to the confluence with a large tributary, contibuting to the local sedimentation problems. Sounds logical.

Our job was to seek out these "critical points' as they were referred to and make a series of measurements that would be fed into a computer program that would "predict" whether failure would occur there during specific design storms, with or without timber harvesting. You can see where this was going. One of the factors in this model was forest clearcutting which reduces both root strength in the soils and evapotranspiration, effects reducing the slope materials resistance to landslide driving forces.

During our mapping across miles and miles of terrain we found that the vast majority of existing failures were located where stream channels crossed springs issuing from sandstone oucrops on the down dip sides of ridges. These sandstones were layered between low permaility, groundwater perching mudstone layers. On the updip sides of the riges there were generally no landslides. I guess water really does run downslope. This rendered the model completely useless, since it included no consideration of the ground water component deeper than the soil mantle. The primary driving force - the increased outflow from the sandstone aquifer layers during major storms - was completely ignored!

We were able to convince the lower grade level geologists from the local office of the problem, but when they tried to get permission from the regional office to change the contract terms to allow us to apply what we had learned to the methodology and emphasis of future mapping, they were told no. Their explanation was that the careers of the regional officers who were driving the projects were based on application of the model and refused to consider any refutation of its validity or any changes in the contract methodology.

So we completed the contracts, getting paid to gather the same useless data. One bright spot was that the local geologists asked for, and we gladly supplied, a separate report on our findings for their eyes only because they actually had to work in that terrain and wanted to know the real truth.

So it goes.

Posted by: Tom | Mar 3, 2008 12:14:16 PM

I misidentified the writer I was responding to in my comment above.

I cited An Inguirer.

It was actually Michael C Keehn.

Posted by: tom | Mar 3, 2008 12:18:28 PM

Confession of a Potentially Global Warming Causing Biomass
An introspective self recrimination of a net CO2 emitter and non-renewable resource consumer probably not modeled or accounted for in any of the projections or calculations of the Anthropogenic Global Warming debates.

I am a global warming gas emitter. I admit it. I have been a net CO2 emitter for all of my 54 years of life and will continue to be one for as long as possible. And if any of the other six billion human net CO2 emitting biomasses on this planet want me to stop doing so before I am ready to, I will do my darnedest to ensure that they completely stop first.

I do not know the science of any of the issues surrounding the global warming debates, though I had the opportunity to learn some of it a few decades ago. It may have been what today would be considered ecologically criminal behavior to not have done so, but I had a lot more fun releasing vast stores of captured CO2 gas from brown bottles and twelve ounce cans and an unknown amount of other harmful gases through the open air combustion of several pounds of a somewhat renewable resource, CO2 fixing, O2 producing green biomass. I admit that it was selfish and hedonistic consumption, but I gotta tell ya, the memories of it still bring a smile to my intransient face. So add incorrigible to my list of crimes against Gia.

I confess to taking part in deforestation and the erection of non-green habitats that use the processed remains of destroyed CO2 fixing, O2 producing biomasses that will eventually be filled with non-recyclable materials made from non-renewable resources. That’s as far as I’ll let that guilt trip go, though. I have to earn a living and I’m not the one that is going to install, let alone pay for the overpriced petroleum based carpets, fire and stain resistant sofa fabrics in patterns of questionable taste and plastic laminate cabinets that only look like real wood. Besides, I usually couldn’t afford to live there anyhow. Or would I want to.

I do not car pool or use mass transit and I have no intention of starting to do so. I confess to driving to and from work sites by myself, and am responsible for the ensuing pollution, release of greenhouse gases and use of non renewable oil and petroleum products. So jot me down for about 1100 gallons of gasoline, 5 gallons of motor oil and one set of tires a year. I can’t help it. I don’t live anywhere near the other CO2 emitting biomass units in the crew I normally work with and most of the job sites are beyond the end of the bus routes. I am willing to meet any dedicated environmentalist halfway on this, though, if they are willing to meet me at the Park and Ride at 4 A.M. and then carry the sixty to seventy pounds of tools between the two transfers and the mile and a half from the last stop to the jobsite. It’s a “if you build it, they will come” sort of thing. Buses go where people are, not where they may be one day. And I had quite enough of carrying a seventy pound rucksack in the Army as a young man, thank you very much. I ain’t going to do it as a curmudgeon in training, especially if the globe is getting warmer. I could not care less if that is a positive or negative feedback cycle. I’ll take the hit in the negative column either way.

It is a 1995 Ford Escort station wagon, by the way. Only two of the young guys drive new SUV type vehicles. All of us older guys with kids in college can only afford to drive older cars or beaten up pickups.

Now, to my employer’s credit, be that CO2 credits or just kudos, we do recycle all the wood waste that we can. Some of it is only suitable for making particle board and some of it gets chipped up for mulch and we separate what we can on his fifty five dollar an hour wage plus employer tax plus benefits package time. So it only goes so far.

Mulching that wood for ground cover is one of those “green initiative mandates” so thoughtfully enforced by our environmentally in-tuned politicos that I just don’t get. It used to be that we buried that fixed carbon in a nice hole where it would be safely locked away or available for future generations. Now we spread it around so called “green” areas to keep all but a few select green things from growing there and this is called progress and is good. I remember the days when having a “green thumb” meant you were good at growing things instead of today’s reality of being under environmentalist tyranny.

At home, I and my net CO2 emitting mate and one net CO2 emitting offspring continue to be responsible for the destruction of CO2 fixing, O2 producing biomass and the consumption of non-renewable petroleum products. At least we stopped at two net CO2 emitting offspring, so if there is a ZPG credit available, I could sell that to my “rancher” brother, who has seven, for some extra cash.

I confess that I mow my lawn at least twenty times every year, though my net CO2 emitting mate thinks it should be done at least forty times a year. Add another twenty five gallons of gasoline and a gallon of two stroke motor oil a year to my ungreenliness. My Torro mulches the clippings and the leaves from the trees in the fall, so at least I’m not putting that into a land fill.

Then add about 150 rolls of toilet paper, three hundred pounds of newsprint, three reams of copier/print paper and a Christmas tree a year. Actually, all that gets recycled one way or the other except for the Christmas tree from three years ago, which is still sitting behind the garage, completely bare of needles and partially covered with Blackberry vines.

The three of us are collectively responsible or the release of trapped CO2 from no less than 600 cans and 100 2 liter bottles worth of soda and beer (that part would be mine) a year. I confess to having never considered for one moment if this is environmentally sound behavior. The cans and bottles do get recycled, though and we take the aluminum in to the recycler for cash, not credits.

Since the rest of this is pretty much about recycling, I will end the recriminations here and ask for forgiveness for my transgressions and humbly beg for compassion for those things that I can not or will not change unless forced to do so.

Now, then, I ask for some credits. We do recycle. No so much out of a sense duty to the environment, but because we were told we have to do it and stop arguing about it. We can be fined for not doing it. A Green Thumb of Tyranny thing. I really pissed an environmentalist off once by pointing out the ironies of a “liberal” dialectic that creates Garbage Inspectors and Garbage Police. She must have been an English Lit major rather than Poly Sci because she was incapable of any defense against my assertions that the Green positions she was spouting were in fact Neo Fascist.

Well, ok. We recycle. Unlike some places where you have to separate recyclables, here everything goes into the one bin. Paper, plastic, glass, cardboard; all in the same bin. But I am still required to remove all the labels and clean it all first. I am supposed to spend my time, use water that I pay for and electricity that I pay for to heat the water in order to wash, what was just two year ago, garbage. I’m supposed to take the paper label off the can of corn and put both in the same bin. For metal cans that aren’t going to stay in the US any longer than it takes to fill a container ship. Are there no Malaysians that can remove the labels?

That’s not so bad, but with all the recycling going on around the country, why is it that the glass container industry has made it so much harder by using newer and stronger glues. A few years ago, a simple one hour soak in water got the label to fall off a jar. Now it takes 24 hours, five gallons of hot soapy water and a scour pad that is strong enough to remove paint from walls to just get most of the glue off of the glass. That same scrubbing is also needed on plastic jars, even to the point of scratching the plastic.

What I do now with any jar with a label that takes more than 1 minute to remove is chuck it into the Bio Hazard bags along with the cat litter box stuff and toss it in the garbage. Let the Garbage Police find it if they want. If they want me to spend my time, then don’t waste my time.

Doggone it, I’m back to recriminations again, for which I am sorry for, I think.

We try our darnedest to help lower AGW associated green house gases by eating at least .80 of one cow, .60 of a pig and 90 to 110 chickens every year to remove these C02 emitters from any possible equations. No turkeys in the past few years, however. None of us really care for turkey. And little seafood. The five cats ate nine times the amount of Tuna than we did last year. That was nine cans to my one. I’m not sure if any of this part should go into a data set, though, because in spite of our good intentions to rid the planet of some of the hundreds of millions of C02 emitting and methane causing animals, the meat industry seems to view this as “demand” and like the Keebler Elves, they just make more.

I’m also unsure if there is any guilt to be assigned or shared for the two pounds of ripe cherries I paid almost four dollars a pound for in February. The outrageous price should be my total penance if there is any. Four bucks a pound is more than three times the price for the cherries that are grown locally, but only available in the fall. If someone needs to get the blame, maybe it should be Safeway for selling them in the first place or the Chileans for the audacity to ship them here. I’m for calling this one a push and leaving it off the table.

That’s about it, or at least all that I’m going to admit to in public without a subpoena. One final word on this confession: While some of the data presented above is true, much of it had to be embellished and some even created out of thin air (or would that be hot air?) in order to fit in to the kind of model of my AGW transgressions that would be worth apologizing for.

Posted by: Rand | Mar 16, 2008 8:41:41 PM

Recently the sun has gone into a cooling trend. Not suprisingly, so has earth. Man can't do much to nature, besides blowing up the world with nukes. (even then scientists theorize that life would come back after radiation levels lowered enough, or an entirely new form of life would exist)

All the glory of thousands of years of civilization has been erased from earth's memory by nature. Nature even outdoes us in poluting the world. Every volcanic eruption produces more greenhouse gases than man does with current technology in 500 years.
and past meteors that have hit earth have cooled the earth to ice ages.

The sun is the 'god' of Mother Nature. It isn't constant either. Most climate changes that have occured that wern't caused by any known disaster was caused by fluctuations in the Sun's activity.

Basically all these GW 'experts' are inflating man's ego. Man is powerless to change Nature. It Nature who changes Man. and then the Sun changes Nature.

A never ending cycle

A good paper by the way!

Posted by: | Apr 13, 2008 3:05:26 PM

Regarding your comment "One wonders why the movie, with glacial retreats around the world that are provably due to warming, would focus on one that is probably not due to warming":

I say:

It's my experience that most folks involved in media (news, entertainment -- really has over time become one in the same) do not know much outside their proscribed personal worlds, they have no idea what is science and what is not, so their own ideas pop up as truth and reality. And unfortunately they are able to influence others who think that if they see it, read it, or hear it, it must be true. I have a lot more cynical observations but will just stick to this: The reason that "the movie" focuses on what it does is that the producer's knowledge is limited and so the movie could only be limited also. Does that make sense?

Posted by: hazeleyes | Apr 24, 2008 7:01:37 AM

Funny that all reports use the word "proposed".Look up at the sky,they have been spraying extreamly heavy all winter and havent let up yet. loads of photos to prove it!!!

Posted by: FYCT | Apr 28, 2008 8:42:24 AM

Global Warming and Climate Change believers insist there has been global warming which they cannot know becuase there is no data confirming it. Nor is there a "problem" or
"phenomenon" which they are answering with the Global Warming and Climate Change theory. They are as dishonest as most and have not, as most people, worked on being honest. So much for modern education: humility before your ignorance and admission of wrong is not allowed for the super educated and well fed children of affluence. The rest of the world should work and exist in controlled low technology to keep them affluent. (Now that I can understand! But they would never be honest enough to admit even that.)

Posted by: BR♀TH♂R_S♥RR♥WS | Apr 30, 2008 4:31:12 PM

To change the CO2 in the atmosphere would not one have to first change the Ph of the ocean?

Posted by: Carl | May 7, 2008 12:54:17 PM

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