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Recently I wrote a church pastor advising the pastor that a peer review completed on Senator Gore's movie was available on line (see link), wrongly believing he would find it useful. The response from the pastor was disappointingly political. Here is the pastor's response:
"Well … in looking over the material I'm convinced. As I read through the supportive organizations … Heartland Institute, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine … I find significant political/economic philosophy perspectives employed which scream "Agenda!!"
They must be all in a dither over the Nobel Peace Prize!"
It would seem from his comments that the politics of global warming remains of greater importance to him (or by implication, to his church) after all, than the integrity of the science involved in the process... and therein lies the very point that we skeptics make. I would hope that as science eventually reaches a real consensus that we skeptics are more open and do not treat others with the contempt we are made to suffer.
R Buckley, Livermore, CA
UK Court Rules on Gore Movie Integrity
Climate warming skeptics: Is the research too political?
The above two links are excellent CS Monitor links while they last.
A Key Threshold Crossed. An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report to be released next month will show that the limit on greenhouse-gases scientists hoped to avert has already been surpassed.
Oct 4, 2007 from The Christian Science Monitor (CS Monitor). Note To Reader: The Christian Science Monitor is running a series letters from it readers. These are not letters to this website; they are reprints from CS Monitor who we want to thank for allowing us to reprint. The above CS Monitor direct link will automatically terminate in a few days. Their home page link is CS Monitor.
Readers eye climate-change debate
Regarding the Monitor series, "Global-warming skeptics: a closer look": The sunspot argument is far more persuasive than the man-made CO2 argument. While it is true that correlation does not equal causation, it is even more true that noncorrelation does not equal causation. Man-made CO2 emissions do not correlate well with observed global temperatures; sunspots do. One suspects a herd mentality is preventing many scientists from rejecting the familiar and accepting the obvious.
David R. Snyder
Cary, N.C.
What criteria – other than the ultimate rise in maximum projected Earth temperature of about 7 degrees C by 2100 – would convince mankind of the anthropogenic contribution? What would cause humans to change before we reach the point when it becomes irreversible?
If the projected increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs) is greater than what has been found in more than 600,000 years, then we should try to avoid the environmental condition that existed before we inhabited the planet. Considering that the atmosphere would be continually adjusting to the increased, probably doubling of, GHGs to achieve chemical equilibrium, we have no evidence that we could adjust to the new atmospheric chemical equilibrium. It would appear logical to pursue a path that would slow the chemically changing atmosphere. Especially in the United States, we could easily do what is more efficient and, individually, reduce the wasted 20 percent of our energy use.
Joseph L. Goldman
Alpine, Texas
There's no doubt in my mind that burning fossil fuels has created some difference in our climate; however, I think the difference is minuscule in the overall scheme of things. The subject of global warming has been turned into a political football and it is pushed by entities that stand to profit from it.
Norman Streeter
Lebanon, Ore.
If the issue of global warming serves as a rallying cry to unite nations to clean up our increasingly dirty and wasteful environmental habits, so be it. We will have done ourselves and future generations the favor of a lifetime.
Alison Chabonais
Bonita Springs, Fla.
The skeptics raise persuasive points. Not only must the sunspots be considered, but also the Earth's internal ability to generate heat through plate tectonics resulting in seismic and volcanic activity. The Earth's systems are extremely dynamic, thus the inability to forecast with great accuracy next week's weather, never mind years in the future. In my humble opinion, "global warming" and "global cooling" are natural events, and if our climate ever became "static," then we would really need to worry.
John E. Dye
Clermont, Fla.
We know global warming is probably caused by greenhouse gases. Some say not. Let's curb the gases just in case, and the benefit will be much cleaner air and water. Isn't it worth doing it just for that?
Charles Napier
Ray City, Ga.
Research in the mid-20th century said that we would be in a period of global cooling and even maybe an ice age at this time period. So here we are in the 21st century – and no ice age.
The Weather Channel can predict weather only out to a few days, so how are we supposed to believe global warming advocates when they say they "know" that within 25 to 50 years we'll all be living in a sauna atmosphere? There are just too many variables to take into account. The earth is just too big, and we are just too small, for us to make a prediction in the overall effect.
Greg Weinfurtner
Albany, Ohio
I vacationed at the Jersey shore for decades, and in two winters, 1976-77 and 1977-78, I saw saltwater freeze between the jetties. Everyone was saying we were in for a new ice age and "scientific evidence" presented in the media supported it. Now the scientists are certain of a "greenhouse effect," with equal certainty. I do not think that science has shown anything one way or the other.
Ronald C. Ruloff
Burlington Vt.
The cosmic ray theory seems to fit so many diverse facts that it is becoming hard for me to think that other explanations hold water. Even very long timelines, extending to billions of years, seem to correlate the state of the planet with the average cosmic ray density coming both from the galaxy and from outside galaxies. It's hard to explain the correlations as coincidence, which, frankly, would be akin to winning the lottery a few weeks in a row.
Given that the oceans take about 800 years to reach thermal equilibrium, it does strain credulity that ocean temperatures (and hence the rise in level) is the result of activities that only started around 1850 and have become intense only in the last century. One would think that today's ocean temperatures have to be the result of activities that took place around 1200, well before the Industrial Revolution.
Marwan Nusair
Cincinnati
The Monitor's recent article on this subject referred to the possibility that sunspots are the cause and asked the question whether climate-change skeptics are ignoring strong scientific evidence. I cannot escape the conclusion that they are ignoring the evidence.
I attach a link to a paper by the Royal Society (an organization that is based in the United Kingdom, which is not only one of the oldest scientific bodies in the world, but also one of the most authoritative). The study reviews the data and concluded that, while sunspots do have some effect, they do not explain global warming.
Anyone interested in this subject would do well to review this paper: www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedingsa/rspa20071880.pdf
Bruce Sanderson
Manukau, New Zealand
We're like dangerous children with short attention spans, chasing the climate catastrophe of the month. We do so with such narrow focus that scientific credibility suffers along with those who have the most to gain from continuing development. We can test and explore a lot of information, and not understand what it means.
The hills of South Dakota survived the little ice age, the big droughts and fires of the last four centuries, and even the woodsman's ax. They don't seem to have cared if the planet warmed and cooled a few degrees, at a time when humans could not have made a difference.
Franklin Carroll
Custer, S.D.
Part I of this series ran Sept. 20. Part II ran Sept. 27. Part III appears in today's paper on Page 13.
Note to Reader, the following is a direct letter to this website:
heb113 (posted 9-22-2007 4:44pm) What bothers me is that studies I'v read appear to leave out, and discount more complex functions, equations, and values with a greater response than to the 4th or 5th power-- supposedly because it takes far too long, and too much computer time to give it credence.
- My understanding of the atmosphere, and atmospheric computer modeling are the following.
- The regions of the earth/atmosphere that are being studied have a square grid design of somewhere between 10 x 10 to 100 x 100 kilometers.
- The partial differential equations (PDE's) are developed from data collection that can be then determined by the "boundary" parameters, obtained from those data sets. (for those not familiar, PDE's are mathematical equations that can solve multiple variables- x, y, z, t, r, q, etc..., in various coordinate systems simultaneously. This allows for incredibly powerful tools in solving complex problems of motion.)
- The PDE's are then converted into algebraic equations-- by mathematically approved solutions-- to "make them easier" for computers to process. I.e., for reasons presently beyond my knowledge base, computer cannot actually perform derivatives, and integrals, which are mathematical equations used to solve/define fluid, and systems of motion.
- The atmosphere is a fluid system. Therefore, it requires fluid dynamics equations. Which is quite a complex set of equations.
- These equations are then "processed" by the computer in what can only be defined as an iterative process. Or, it keeps stepping through each elemental point until it reaches the end.
My initial questions are to those who are computational physicists, in the Atmospheric science realm:
1- Why are greater/higher order computations dismissed?
I get that they have so minute an affect as to be almost-- <-key word-- inconsequential, but one would think there would be a naturally occurring accumulative affect in the long term. Not quite what some have called the butterfly effect, but something close.
2- Due to highly fluid systems, and the complex nature of micro-climates on "downwind macro-climates," why are the more minute systems "dumped" out of the computations?
There are correcting factors in certain equation groupings that routinely dump equations that run off towards infinitesimally tiny values. However, since fluidic systems are about infinitesimally tiny responses to input stimuli, it seems counter-productive to monitoring these systems.
3- Due to these routine dumping's that take place, how is it that we can take the results as reasonable models for predicting the future of our planet's atmospheric responses?
It seems to me that the models would be flawed at best, limited due to our limiting the data, or equation groups that are used, and downright dangerous at worst.
General Comments:
I suppose here that I should state that I do not believe that humans have enough power to cause our global atmosphere to change. Even our most powerful nuclear weapons can't come close to a single Mt. St. Helens type of pyroclastic blast. Our construction crews would take tens of years to move the same amount of dirt, and rock as that one volcano displaced in a matter of seconds. And since we have approx. 15 volcanoes active at any given moment on earth, the amount of particulate matter being spewed into the atmosphere would dwarf our capacity to do much in the way of affecting our climate.
A scientific theory can never be proven. It can only be dis-proven, and it only takes one piece of data to have it so. If this is true, then how is it that the scientists, and researchers have demonstrated beyond the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that we are in fact responsible for Global Warming (GW)?
P&CR.org states it is concerned about the lack of solar cyclical studies to determine the energy output variances of our sun. Apparently others are equally concerned. I recently heard a report stating that the sun's output has not changed enough to affect earth. However, it's done something to affect Mars. <http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Mars+temperature+increase>
(http://www.physorg.com/news6892.html-- however this one is making my point quite clearly. )
While I have no problem with a planet warming up, I wonder what the natural weather response will be.
I.e., the warmer that air becomes the more moisture it can hold. The greater the moisture level the more clouds are produced. The more clouds produced, the more the sun's energy is blocked from reaching earth's surface. The less energy reaching the surface the cooler it becomes. How then are we to be concerned about too much warming? Shouldn't we actually be concerned about global cooling, as they were 35 years ago?
Or, so we warm up a few degrees. While it'd no doubt change the face of the planet, who are we to state with any clarity, and certainty that this temperature range we've enjoyed is THE temperature range for optimum human life, or the planet's well-being?
Another item that I find very disconcerting about the GW "crisis" is that many are acting like it's never happened before, or that the planet is so young as to not able to respond appropriately to the natural stresses it's enduring. I.e., if humanity has only lived here on earth for some 6000 years as some believe, then perhaps we have something to be concerned about. But, if humanity has in fact lived on earth as others believe, for some 1.2 million years, then we will adapt accordingly.
What I find most intriguing is that most of our planetary climate data is only from the last 150 years, and then only from Europe, and New England. With a few ice core samples from only two locations-- Antarctica, and Greenland.
What about the rest of the planet? Why hasn't China given up their 5000 years of detailed data? They studied just about everything else. Or ancient civilizations such as Egypt, Persia, etc.... Or the Aboriginal peoples of Australia? Surely some other cultures dating back at least 5000 years have climate, or seasonal weather data-- if they did farming, one would think they'd have kept some type of records for each successive generation to benefit from. Especially ancient Babylon since they kept records of almost everything else.
It seems to me that unless we gain a more comprehensive perspective from the entire planet, stating with certainty that humanity is responsible for global climate change is foolhardy. And definitely NOT scientific
P&CR.org Response: Dear Heb113. While your question exceed our lay knowledge, some of your questions where addressed in "Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1,500 Years," by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery. Maybe others will chime in and some answers.... hopefully in simple grade school English. Also see LLNL Climate Modeling Studies. They may lead you directly back to project sponsors who might also answer your questions. Please share answers with P&CR. Also you may want to search the Denial Machine, WAGtv's site . Another good resource university is located through our link at Petition Projects