MaxedOutMama
Sunday, May 01, 2005
The Scientific Rebellion
Update: Carl at No Oil For Pacifists has posted a very logical argument about the Kyoto Protocol which relating the following post to his previous analysis of the Kyoto Protocol. I quickly checked the math and I see the basis. It should be noted that the Kyoto Protocol is based on science from about 8 years ago and that we have done a lot of scientific research since then which should have changed our thinking. And we still need to do more research, because the problem with the Kyoto Treaty is that even if it were put into effect and even if the underlying assumptions turned out to be true, the measures taken would do nothing significant to solve the problem. However, the earth's climate does change on its own without man's intervention, and it changes dramatically, and even natural change may be a far greater threat to our world than meteorites. End update.
This article in The Telegraph describes a growing scientific movement criticizing "Nature" and "Science" magazines for what is seen as the suppression of scientific views that don't wholly support the global warming doctrine. The article is relatively detailed and I recommend reading the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:
A note of humor(pdf) from Newsweek, 1975, on the cusp of a new Ice Age:
Newsweek reports that while no scientific consensus has been reached on causation and exact extent of the temperature changes, the "evidence in support of predictions" of crop failures within ten years "has now begun to accumulate so massively" that scientists can hardly keep up with it. There also seems to be agreement that we will see an increase in extremes in local weather such as droughts, floods, freezes etc:
The bluish line is CO2. There is a very poor correlation between CO2 and temperature, but a very good historical correlation between solar output and temperature. And all current research is supporting the same correlation with solar output. The Huang curve is being confirmed by ice core studies and the like:
As it turns out, it is not warmer now than at any time during the last thousand years. So people freaking out about small temperature changes suddenly melting the ice caps are just drooling in their unscientific beer. It gets you on television, but it's hardly scientifically supported.
Recent research and data continues to support the idea that solar flux is a much stronger force on climate than CO2 levels. This article at Space.com is an excellent resource on some of the new discoveries about the sun and how its cycles affect our atmosphere and our weather:
Here's another Space.com article, casting some light on the dire predictions in Newsweek's 1975 article (the sun was about to get stronger, thus the observed temperature decline did not occur.):
So does this mean that CO2 levels don't affect climate? No, it doesn't. It means that CO2 levels aren't as strong a climate forcer as we feared. It would certainly be prudent to invest in nuclear energy production rather than burning fossil fuels. Other measures, such as planting more trees, would increase the take-up of CO2 from the air.
Logging, building with the wood, and replanting forests turns out to lower CO2 levels! Be a responsible global citizen! Cut down a tree today and plant some new ones. Just don't burn the tree you cut down - treat it with arsenic preservatives and build a playhouse for little squeaking climatologists to hide from the sun's wrath. Then drink the run-off water - it protects against malaria.
Because the global temperatures are rising, we can expect more natural release of CO2 from the oceans as well. On the other hand, if the sun moves into a slowdown period, we may be glad that the atmospheric CO2 level is relatively high. CO2 may tend to cushion the effect of the sun, although no strong case for that can be made from the historic observations.
It is probably psychologically more reassuring to believe that temperature fluctuations on earth are largely the result of something we can control rather than of something we cannot. Nonetheless fact must trump fiction or we will end up dominated by a priesthood of politically correct and scientifically correct public policy makers. Priesthoods dedicated to knowledge systems rather than moral systems always seem to end up recommending human sacrifices, so I'm advocating for science. We are now observing "global warming" on other planets, so it is hard to maintain the fiction that the sun is not affecting our own climate. You've got to admire the dedication of "Science" and "Nature" in trying to fight a global flood of evidence.
This article in The Telegraph describes a growing scientific movement criticizing "Nature" and "Science" magazines for what is seen as the suppression of scientific views that don't wholly support the global warming doctrine. The article is relatively detailed and I recommend reading the whole thing, but here are a few excerpts:
A British authority on natural catastrophes who disputed whether climatologists really agree that the Earth is getting warmer because of human activity, says his work was rejected by the American publication, Science, on the flimsiest of grounds.and:
A separate team of climate scientists, which was regularly used by Science and the journal Nature to review papers on the progress of global warming, said it was dropped after attempting to publish its own research which raised doubts over the issue.and:
The controversy follows the publication by Science in December of a paper which claimed to have demonstrated complete agreement among climate experts, not only that global warming is a genuine phenomenon, but also that mankind is to blame.
Dr Peiser is not the only academic to have had work turned down which criticises the findings of Dr Oreskes's study. Prof Dennis Bray, of the GKSS National Research Centre in Geesthacht, Germany, submitted results from an international study showing that fewer than one in 10 climate scientists believed that climate change is principally caused by human activity.Deane Esmay has been covering this war against scientific censorship and wrote earlier in reference to the M&M debunking of the hockey stick graph and the implications:
It makes you wonder who the hell's running the show over at Nature these days. But beyond that, it also makes one wonder at the influence of money on science. You don't have to believe in conspiracy theories, or even that most people are acting in bad faith, to believe that when big money (government or corporate) gets into a scientific issue, objectivity can go out the window. Ditto when large bureaucracies amass power based on a scientific theory.Uh huh. And this is quite an amazing story of the creation and maintenance of a facade of consensus where there is none, and in a field in which the current scientific research seems to be consistently undermining the facade. You might want to see Climate Audit about the true meaning of the hockey-stick's collapse.
A note of humor(pdf) from Newsweek, 1975, on the cusp of a new Ice Age:
Newsweek reports that while no scientific consensus has been reached on causation and exact extent of the temperature changes, the "evidence in support of predictions" of crop failures within ten years "has now begun to accumulate so massively" that scientists can hardly keep up with it. There also seems to be agreement that we will see an increase in extremes in local weather such as droughts, floods, freezes etc:
"Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."and:
"...the present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a reversion to the "little ice age" conditions that brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and 1900..."The same melody, different words. Temperature fluctuates naturally. Trying to figure out long term trends and the factors producing the changes is a very complicated scientific problem. It's known that orbital changes have an effect, but that is a long cycle. See here for more information and primary data of different kinds. We do have one good set of observed correlations, but they don't support the IPCC conclusions. See Silfley Hraka for a nice, short explication of the correlation between temperature and solar radiance, and the historical lack of correlation between CO2 rises and temperature:
The various arguments over the causes of global warming rest entirely on dueling temperature graphs. Proponents of global warming as a result of human activity base their opinions on the "hockey stick" temperature chart produced by University of Virginia professor Michael Mann. Those who posit a more stellar origin for global warming use the 1997 Huang temperature chart, most recently referred to by Drs. Soon and Baliunas in their recent paper, Climate History and the Sun.So the debunked hockey stick graph is very significant. These charts show a very different story:
The bluish line is CO2. There is a very poor correlation between CO2 and temperature, but a very good historical correlation between solar output and temperature. And all current research is supporting the same correlation with solar output. The Huang curve is being confirmed by ice core studies and the like:
As it turns out, it is not warmer now than at any time during the last thousand years. So people freaking out about small temperature changes suddenly melting the ice caps are just drooling in their unscientific beer. It gets you on television, but it's hardly scientifically supported.
Recent research and data continues to support the idea that solar flux is a much stronger force on climate than CO2 levels. This article at Space.com is an excellent resource on some of the new discoveries about the sun and how its cycles affect our atmosphere and our weather:
Solar activity was persistently high prior to the 13th Century, when things were warmer, according to Sallie Baliunas, a researcher at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.In other words, the critics of this do so on the basis that it doesn't fit their models. But evidence in science is supposed to either confirm or overrule hypotheses, not the other way around. The observed correlation is very strong although not quite intuitive. At peaks, the upper-level warming causes more clouds and thus less energy reaching the earth:
"Activity then dropped to low levels during the Little Ice Age, and recovered by the early 20th century," Baliunas says.
"The period of least solar activity coincided with the coldest century of the last millennium -- the 17th century."
Critics frequently charge that the Sun's total output does not change enough to affect Earth's climate so strongly.
Baliunas says that's a good argument. "But that leaves unanswered the fact that the Sun's signal is so strong in the climate records."
Here's another Space.com article, casting some light on the dire predictions in Newsweek's 1975 article (the sun was about to get stronger, thus the observed temperature decline did not occur.):
In what could be the simplest explanation for one component of global warming, a new study shows the Sun's radiation has increased by .05 percent per decade since the late 1970s.But no worries, mate. It is still quite a bit cooler than it has been during much of the interval since the end of the Last Ice Age. The polar bears are safe, and it turns out that it is darned lucky we didn't decide to melt the polar ice cap after all in the 1970s. It would have gotten a bit warm if we had.
So does this mean that CO2 levels don't affect climate? No, it doesn't. It means that CO2 levels aren't as strong a climate forcer as we feared. It would certainly be prudent to invest in nuclear energy production rather than burning fossil fuels. Other measures, such as planting more trees, would increase the take-up of CO2 from the air.
Logging, building with the wood, and replanting forests turns out to lower CO2 levels! Be a responsible global citizen! Cut down a tree today and plant some new ones. Just don't burn the tree you cut down - treat it with arsenic preservatives and build a playhouse for little squeaking climatologists to hide from the sun's wrath. Then drink the run-off water - it protects against malaria.
Because the global temperatures are rising, we can expect more natural release of CO2 from the oceans as well. On the other hand, if the sun moves into a slowdown period, we may be glad that the atmospheric CO2 level is relatively high. CO2 may tend to cushion the effect of the sun, although no strong case for that can be made from the historic observations.
It is probably psychologically more reassuring to believe that temperature fluctuations on earth are largely the result of something we can control rather than of something we cannot. Nonetheless fact must trump fiction or we will end up dominated by a priesthood of politically correct and scientifically correct public policy makers. Priesthoods dedicated to knowledge systems rather than moral systems always seem to end up recommending human sacrifices, so I'm advocating for science. We are now observing "global warming" on other planets, so it is hard to maintain the fiction that the sun is not affecting our own climate. You've got to admire the dedication of "Science" and "Nature" in trying to fight a global flood of evidence.
Comments:
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Nope, at the present time we don't have a good investment opportunity either there or in pre-glacial Wisconsin.
If you are up for a decent read on this put into a fictional book, read Micheal Crichton's "state of fear." It is an interesting look at the issue. Its pretty harsh on the Enviros.
Mover Mike has commented on your post.
Maxedoutmama on Global Warming
by movermike
Maxedoutmama has a post, The Scientific Rebellion that not only points out how two magazines, "Nature" and "Science", have been influenced to report only on scientific studies supporting Global Warming, but does a very good job showing that cyclcal solar energy reaching the earth may have more of an effect on global warming than rising levels of CO2. The Post concludes by saying:
Maxedoutmama on Global Warming
by movermike
Maxedoutmama has a post, The Scientific Rebellion that not only points out how two magazines, "Nature" and "Science", have been influenced to report only on scientific studies supporting Global Warming, but does a very good job showing that cyclcal solar energy reaching the earth may have more of an effect on global warming than rising levels of CO2. The Post concludes by saying:
# posted by 
: 12:39 PM
: 12:39 PM
From the web admin of climateaudit:
Thanks for the link. I agree with your pragmatic approach to climate science. My personal belief is that enhanced carbon dioxide helps plant growth but has a tiny effect on climate itself, the earth's climate system being controlled by negative feedbacks which keep the climate relatively stable despite the changes in the sun and the position of the earth to it.
I've just turned 40 myself, and can remember well the "global cooling" scare of the 1970s (I have a couple of books "The Genesis Strategy" and "The Cooling" from 1976 which encapsulate the majoritarian view at the time). Interestingly, some of the scientists now proclaiming the "scientific consensus" now are claiming that the "global cooling" scare did not enjoy such a consensus. I find this too Orwellian for words.
John A
Thanks for the link. I agree with your pragmatic approach to climate science. My personal belief is that enhanced carbon dioxide helps plant growth but has a tiny effect on climate itself, the earth's climate system being controlled by negative feedbacks which keep the climate relatively stable despite the changes in the sun and the position of the earth to it.
I've just turned 40 myself, and can remember well the "global cooling" scare of the 1970s (I have a couple of books "The Genesis Strategy" and "The Cooling" from 1976 which encapsulate the majoritarian view at the time). Interestingly, some of the scientists now proclaiming the "scientific consensus" now are claiming that the "global cooling" scare did not enjoy such a consensus. I find this too Orwellian for words.
John A
# posted by : 10:51 AM
: 10:51 AM
John, I remember the flap over the next ice age. You're right - it is Orwellian. The Scientific Memory Hole.
My parents taught me when I was in grade school that the weather and temperature moved in cycles. I think this sort of thing is harder to put over on a rural population, because those people remember. My mother's family remembered the big weather and precip swings back to the 1860s.
The thing is, the temps had gotten a bit cooler by the 70's, but not as cool as during previous drops. What is really odd is scientists ignoring their own scientific history.
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My parents taught me when I was in grade school that the weather and temperature moved in cycles. I think this sort of thing is harder to put over on a rural population, because those people remember. My mother's family remembered the big weather and precip swings back to the 1860s.
The thing is, the temps had gotten a bit cooler by the 70's, but not as cool as during previous drops. What is really odd is scientists ignoring their own scientific history.
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