The joke that consensus exists re: global warming:

[DrDetroit]

Very long, but insightful and throws water on the assertion that there is a consensus re: global warming among scientists:

Global Warming: The Origin and Nature of the Alleged Scientific Consensus
Richard S. Lindzen
Richard S. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


Consensus and the Current "Popular Vision''
Many studies from the nineteenth century on suggested that industrial and other contributions to increasing carbon dioxide might lead to global warming. Problems with such predictions were also long noted, and the general failure of such predictions to explain the observed record caused the field of climatology as a whole to regard the suggested mechanisms as suspect. Indeed, the global cooling trend of the 1950s and 1960s led to a minor global cooling hysteria in the 1970s. All that was more or less normal scientific debate, although the cooling hysteria had certain striking analogues to the present warming hysteria including books such as The Genesis Strategy by Stephen Schneider and Climate Change and World Affairs by Crispin Tickell--both authors are prominent in support of the present concerns as well--"explaining'' the problem and promoting international regulation. There was also a book by the prominent science writer Lowell Ponte (The Cooling) that derided the skeptics and noted the importance of acting in the absence of firm, scientific foundation. There was even a report by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reaching its usual ambiguous conclusions. But the scientific community never took the issue to heart, governments ignored it, and with rising global temperatures in the late 1970s the issue more or less died. In the meantime, model calculations--especially at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton--continued to predict substantial warming due to increasing carbon dioxide. Those predictions were considered interesting, but largely academic, exercises--even by the scientists involved.

The present hysteria formally began in the summer of 1988, although preparations had been put in place at least three years earlier. That was an especially warm summer in some regions, particularly in the United States. The abrupt increase in temperature in the late 1970s was too abrupt to be associated with the smooth increase in carbon dioxide.

Nevertheless, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in testimony before Sen. Al Gore's Committee on Science, Technology and Space, said, in effect, that he was 99 percent certain that temperature had increased and that there was some greenhouse warming. He made no statement concerning the relation between the two.
Despite the fact that those remarks were virtually meaningless, they led the environmental advocacy movement to adopt the issue immediately. The growth of environmental advocacy since the 1970s has been phenomenal. In Europe the movement centered on the formation of Green parties; in the United States the movement centered on the development of large public interest advocacy groups. Those lobbying groups have budgets of several hundred million dollars and employ about 50,000 people; their support is highly valued by many political figures. As with any large groups, self-perpetuation becomes a crucial concern. "Global warming'' has become one of the major battle cries in their fundraising efforts. At the same time, the media unquestioningly accept the pronouncements of those groups as objective truth.

Within the large-scale climate modelling community--a small subset of the community interested in climate--however, the immediate response was to criticize Hansen for publicly promoting highly uncertain model results as relevant to public policy. Hansen's motivation was not totally obvious, but despite the criticism of Hansen, the modelling community quickly agreed that large warming was not impossible. That was still enough for both the politicians and advocates who have generally held that any hint of environmental danger is a sufficient basis for regulation unless the hint can be rigorously disproved. That is a particularly pernicious asymmetry, given that rigor is generally impossible in environmental sciences.

Other scientists quickly agreed that with increasing carbon dioxide some warming might be expected and that with large enough concentrations of carbon dioxide the warming might be significant. Nevertheless, there was widespread skepticism. By early 1989, however, the popular media in Europe and the United States were declaring that "all scientists'' agreed that warming was real and catastrophic in its potential.

As most scientists concerned with climate, I was eager to stay out of what seemed like a public circus. But in the summer of 1988 Lester Lave, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote to me about being dismissed from a Senate hearing for suggesting that the issue of global warming was scientifically controversial. I assured him that the issue was not only controversial but also unlikely. In the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost National Science Foundation funding for data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century. Reviewers suggested that his results were dangerous to humanity. In the spring of 1989 I was an invited participant at a global warming symposium at Tufts University. I was the only scientist among a panel of environmentalists. There were strident calls for immediate action and ample expressions of impatience with science. Claudine Schneider, then a congressman from Rhode Island, acknowledged that "scientists may disagree, but we can hear Mother Earth, and she is crying.'' It seemed clear to me that a very dangerous situation was arising, and the danger was not of "global warming'' itself.

In the spring of 1989 I prepared a critique of global warming, which I submitted to Science, a magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The paper was rejected without review as being of no interest to the readership. I then submitted the paper to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, where it was accepted after review, rereviewed, and reaccepted--an unusual procedure to say the least. In the meantime, the paper was attacked in Science before it had even been published. The paper circulated for about six months as samizdat. It was delivered at a Humboldt conference at M.I.T. and reprinted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

In the meantime, the global warming circus was in full swing. Meetings were going on nonstop. One of the more striking of those meetings was hosted in the summer of 1989 by Robert Redford at his ranch in Sundance, Utah. Redford proclaimed that it was time to stop research and begin acting. I suppose that that was a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make, but it is also indicative of the overall attitude toward science. Barbara Streisand personally undertook to support the research of Michael Oppenheimer at the Environmental Defense Fund, although he is primarily an advocate and not a climatologist. Meryl Streep made an appeal on public television to stop warming. A bill was even prepared to guarantee Americans a stable climate.

By the fall of 1989 some media were becoming aware that there was controversy (Forbes and Reader's Digest were notable in that regard). Cries followed from environmentalists that skeptics were receiving excessive exposure. The publication of my paper was followed by a determined effort on the part of the editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Richard Hallgren, to solicit rebuttals. Such articles were prepared by Stephen Schneider and Will Kellogg, a minor scientific administrator for the past thirty years, and those articles were followed by an active correspondence mostly supportive of the skeptical spectrum of views. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll of climate scientists in the American Meteorological Society and in the American Geophysical Union shows that a vast majority doubts that there has been any identifiable man-caused warming to date (49 percent asserted no, 33 percent did not know, 18 percent thought some has occurred; however, among those actively involved in research and publishing frequently in peer-reviewed research journals, none believes that any man-caused global warming has been identified so far). On the whole, the debate within the meteorological community has been relatively healthy and, in this regard, unusual.

Outside the world of meteorology, Greenpeace's Jeremy Legett, a geologist by training, published a book attacking critics of warming---especially me. George Mitchell, Senate majority leader and father of a prominent environmental activist, also published a book urging acceptance of the warming problem (World on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth). Sen. Gore recently published a book (Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit). Those are just a few examples of the rapidly growing publications on warming. Rarely has such meager science provoked such an outpouring of popularization by individuals who do not understand the subject in the first place.

The activities of the Union of Concerned Scientists deserve special mention. That widely supported organization was originally devoted to nuclear disarmament. As the cold war began to end, the group began to actively oppose nuclear power generation. Their position was unpopular with many physicists. Over the past few years, the organization has turned to the battle against global warming in a particularly hysterical manner. In 1989 the group began to circulate a petition urging recognition of global warming as potentially the great danger to mankind.

Most recipients who did not sign were solicited at least twice more. The petition was eventually signed by 700 scientists including a great many members of the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel laureates. Only about three or four of the signers, however, had any involvement in climatology. Interestingly, the petition had two pages, and on the second page there was a call for renewed consideration of nuclear power. When the petition was published in the New York Times, however, the second page was omitted. In any event, that document helped solidify the public perception that "all scientists'' agreed with the disaster scenario. Such a disturbing abuse of scientific authority was not unnoticed. At the 1990 annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Frank Press, the academy's president, warned the membership against lending their credibility to issues about which they had no special knowledge. Special reference was made to the published petition. In my opinion what the petition did show was that the need to fight "global warming'' has become part of the dogma of the liberal conscience--a dogma to which scientists are not immune.

At the same time, political pressures on dissidents from the "popular vision'' increased. Sen. Gore publicly admonished "skeptics'' in a lengthy New York Times op-ed piece. In a perverse example of double-speak he associated the "true believers'' in warming with Galileo. He also referred, in another article, to the summer of 1988 as the Kristallnacht before the warming holocaust.

The notion of "scientific unanimity'' is currently intimately tied to the Working Group I report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued in September 1990. That panel consists largely of scientists posted to it by government agencies. The panel has three working groups. Working Group I nominally deals with climate science.

Approximately 150 scientists contributed to the report, but university representation from the United States was relatively small and is likely to remain so, since the funds and time needed for participation are not available to most university scientists. Many governments have agreed to use that report as the authoritative basis for climate policy. The report, as such, has both positive and negative features. Methodologically, the report is deeply committed to reliance on large models, and within the report models are largely verified by comparison with other models.

Given that models are known to agree more with each other than with nature (even after "tuning''), that approach does not seem promising. In addition, a number of the participants have testified to the pressures placed on them to emphasize results supportive of the current scenario and to suppress other results. That pressure has frequently been effective, and a survey of participants reveals substantial disagreement with the final report. Nonetheless, the body of the report is extremely ambiguous, and the caveats are numerous. The report is prefaced by a policymakers' summary written by the editor, Sir John Houghton, director of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office. His summary largely ignores the uncertainty in the report and attempts to present the expectation of substantial warming as firmly based science. The summary was published as a separate document, and, it is safe to say that policymakers are unlikely to read anything further. On the basis of the summary, one frequently hears that "hundreds of the world's greatest climate scientists from dozens of countries all agreed that.|.|.|.'' It hardly matters what the agreement refers to, since whoever refers to the summary insists that it agrees with the most extreme scenarios (which, in all fairness, it does not). I should add that the climatology community, until the past few years, was quite small and heavily concentrated in the United States and Europe.

While the International Panel on Climate Change's reports were in preparation, the National Research Council in the United States was commissioned to prepare a synthesis of the current state of the global change situation. The panel chosen was hardly promising. It had no members of the academy expert in climate. Indeed, it had only one scientist directly involved in climate, Stephen Schneider, who is an ardent environmental advocate. It also included three professional environmental advocates, and it was headed by a former senator, Dan Evans. The panel did include distinguished scientists and economists outside the area of climate, and, perhaps because of this, the report issued by the panel was by and large fair. The report concluded that the scientific basis for costly action was absent, although prudence might indicate that actions that were cheap or worth doing anyway should be considered. A subcommittee of the panel issued a report on adaptation that argued that even with the more severe warming scenarios, the United States would have little difficulty adapting. Not surprisingly, the environmentalists on the panel not only strongly influenced the reports, but failing to completely have their way, attempted to distance themselves from the reports by either resigning or by issuing minority dissents. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the New York Times typically carried reports on that panel on page 46. The findings were never subsequently discussed in the popular media--except for claims that the reports supported the catastrophic vision. Nevertheless, the reports of that panel were indicative of the growing skepticism concerning the warming issue.

Indeed, the growing skepticism is in many ways remarkable. One of the earliest protagonists of global warming, Roger Revelle, the late professor of ocean sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who initiated the direct monitoring of carbon dioxide during the International Geophysical Year (1958), coauthored with S. Fred Singer and Chauncy Starr a paper recommending that action concerning global warming be delayed insofar as current knowledge was totally inadequate. Another active advocate of global warming, Michael McElroy, head of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard, has recently written a paper acknowledging that existing models cannot be used to forecast climate.

One might think that such growing skepticism would have some influence on public debate, but the insistence on "scientific unanimity'' continues unabated. At times, that insistence takes some very strange forms. Over a year ago, Robert White, former head of the U.S. Weather Bureau and currently president of the National Academy of Engineering, wrote an article for Scientific American that pointed out that the questionable scientific basis for global warming predictions was totally inadequate to justify any costly actions. He did state that if one were to insist on doing something, one should only do things that one would do even if there were no warming threat. Immediately after that article appeared, Tom Wicker, a New York Times columnist and a confidant of Sen. Gore, wrote a piece in which he stated that White had called for immediate action on "global warming.'' My own experiences have been similar. In an article in Audubon Stephen Schneider states that I have "conceded that some warming now appears inevitable.'' Differences between expectations of unmeasurable changes of a few tenths of a degree and warming of several degrees are conveniently ignored. Karen White in a lengthy and laudatory article on James Hansen that appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine reported that even I agreed that there would be warming, having "reluctantly offered an estimate of 1.2 degrees.'' That was, of course, untrue.

Most recently, I testified at a Senate hearing conducted by Sen. Gore. There was a rather arcane discussion of the water vapor in the upper troposphere. Two years ago, I had pointed out that if the source of water vapor in that region in the tropics was from deep clouds, then surface warming would be accompanied by reduced upper level water vapor.

Subsequent research has established that there must be an additional source--widely believed to be ice crystals thrown off by those deep clouds. I noted that that source too probably acts to produce less moisture in a warmer atmosphere. Both processes cause the major feedback process to become negative rather than positive. Sen. Gore asked whether I now rejected my suggestion of two years ago as a major factor. I answered that I did. Gore then called for the recording secretary to note that I had retracted my objections to "global warming.'' In the ensuing argument, involving mostly other participants in the hearing, Gore was told that he was confusing matters. Shortly thereafter, however, Tom Wicker published an article in the New York Times that claimed that I had retracted my opposition to warming and that that warranted immediate action to curb the purported menace. I wrote a letter to the Times indicating that my position had been severely misrepresented, and, after a delay of over a month, my letter was published. Sen. Gore nonetheless claims in his book that I have indeed retracted my scientific objections to the catastrophic warming scenario and also warns others who doubt the scenario that they are hurting humanity.

Why, one might wonder, is there such insistence on scientific unanimity on the warming issue? After all, unanimity in science is virtually nonexistent on far less complex matters. Unanimity on an issue as uncertain as "global warming'' would be surprising and suspicious.

Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to "global warming,'' any scientist's agreement will do.

The answer almost certainly lies in politics. For example, at the Earth Summit in Rio, attempts were made to negotiate international carbon emission agreements. The potential costs and implications of such agreements are likely to be profound for both industrial and developing countries. Under the circumstances, it would be very risky for politicians to undertake such agreements unless scientists "insisted.'' Nevertheless, the situation is probably a good deal more complicated than that example suggests.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

I can't see how we're polluting the planet so quickly seeing as though we've only been here
6000 years.

[Diego in Seattle]

There's not a consensus that we've been to the moon, either.


Dumbfuck.

[Diego in Seattle]

There's not a consensus that we've been to the moon, either.


Dumbfuck.

Correct. It is an established fact.

Dumbfuck.

So is global warming, dumbfuck. Just because you can find some fringe scientists who say otherwise doesn't make it true.

[Mikey]

You're right, it's not a consensus. There are still a few people like Dr. Lindzen making a good living and promoting their careers denying what 99% of the reputable scientists in the atmospheric field accept as truth.

[RadioFan]

That's it, I'm about to lay out a truth here, a truth that no one in the scientific community wants to admit ....

Hurricanes aren't really "fueled" by the so-called warm ocean "air."

Ridiculous. There's no proof that they are, anyway.

Could be oil rigs. After all, hurricanes have been getting worse, and we do have more oil rigs out there.

Coincidence? Well, we really don't know for sure, but one thing's clear: The increase in oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico has no bearing whatsoever on how hurricanes are born nor how they grow.

There. That should prove the Weather Channel wrong once and for all.

Paycheck, please. Thanks.

[DrDetroit]

There's not a consensus that we've been to the moon, either.


Dumbfuck.

Correct. It is an established fact.

Dumbfuck.

So is global warming, dumbfuck. Just because you can find some fringe scientists who say otherwise doesn't make it true.

Fringe scientists?? This guy is a climate expert @ MIT.

That's unlike the economists, environmentalists, etc. who wrote the UN's report....LMAO!!!

[DrDetroit]

You're right, it's not a consensus. There are still a few people like Dr. Lindzen making a good living and promoting their careers denying what 99% of the reputable scientists in the atmospheric field accept as truth.

Another guy with the 99% bit. My guy just demonstrated that you are wrong.

First, there is no 99% consensus.

Second, the group of scientists you're asserting as reflective of a consensus are not climate scientists nor atmospheric scientists...as my guy here demonstrates.

[Hapday]

Global warming is happening. What exactly causes it, is what is up for debate and is without consensus.

[DrDetroit]

Ian Murray:

One of the pillars on which the alarmist case for doing something about global warming rests is the contention that the 20th century was the warmest in the last thousand years. This proposition is most dramatically expressed in the "hockey stick" graph contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's third assessment report.

The graph shows temperatures mostly flat for the last 1,000 years, before a sudden, sharp rise in the 20th century that, on a graph, looks like the blade of a hockey stick. The graph is very persuasive — it caused Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) to express alarm when he first saw it in May 2000, and played a part in McCain's bringing to the Senate floor the misguided and economically destructive Climate Stewardship Act, which was defeated last year.

One of the problems with the graph is that its smooth progression through the first 900 years is at variance with established scholarship in the field. We know that there was both a Medieval Warm Period in the early middle ages — when the Vikings colonized Greenland — and a Little Ice Age in the 1600s-1800s, when the River Thames froze over regularly in London. The graph does not show much variance for either of these occurrences. It was constructed by calibrating many different proxies for temperature, such as tree-ring widths or measurements from ice deposits at the poles. It should also be noted that the blade of the hockey stick consists of actual temperature readings from thermometers, not the proxies, which themselves do not show nearly as great a spike. But the graph's defenders argue that the well-documented temperature swings of history were localized, and only the 20th-century warming is a global phenomenon.

The debate over the graph exploded into new life in late October 2004 when two Canadian experts in statistical analysis — Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick (known as "M&M" in discussions of the climate debate) — published what they called an "audit" of the data underlying the hockey-stick graph. Their audit was based on information provided by an associate of Michael Mann, whose articles inspired the hockey-stick graph in the first place. M&M investigated the data underlying the graph with the original source data.

They found numerous and worrying errors. As they put it, the data "for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects." They used the original source data to correct these errors, after which they concluded that "the particular 'hockey stick' shape . . . is primarily an artefact of poor data handling, obsolete data, and incorrect calculation of principal components."

If true, this conclusion is devastating to the "hockey stick" argument, and we must conclude that 20th century was not unusual at all. The warming trend could simply be natural phenomenon; support for the greenhouse theory dissipates; and we therefore have little need to enact restrictions on carbon-dioxide emissions (restrictions that, in practice, amount to restrictions on energy use and, therefore, restrictions wealth).
Michael Mann's reaction has so far been dismissive. He attacked the M&M paper as a "political stunt," seemingly before reading it. His retort was transmitted through the website of a sympathetic freelance journalist, and has muddied the debate considerably.

Mann claims that M&M used the wrong data set, and that they only used 112 proxies when 159 were needed. But M&M point out on their web site that Mann's original research paper contained only 112 proxies, and that these were the proxies Mann instructed his associate to provide to them.
Mann also asserts that many other paleoclimatologists have been able to replicate his results closely. But this response does not address the question whether those experts uncovered the same errors in the data that M&M, coming to the issue fresh, were able to find.

The whole affair bears strong resemblance to the recent Bellesiles controversy. Emory University historian Michael Bellesiles won a Bancroft Prize for his argument that gun ownership in early America was not widespread. It took an amateur historian, Clayton Cramer, to point out that this claim could not be substantiated on the basis of actual gun-ownership records. Eventually, an Emory University investigation strongly criticized Bellesiles, and the Bancroft Prize was withdrawn.

So far, it looks like the errors in Mann's data set were accidental. Yet it will be interesting to see how far the proponents of strong action on climate change go to defend the data without addressing the fundamental question: Are the numbers as proposed by M&M right? If they are, then the climate debate will need to change.

Ooops...

Looks like people like Mikey, Bizarro, RadioFan are all being duped.

It's hilarious that their "faith" in global warming is more like a religious radicalism...lol.

[Mikey]

You're right, it's not a consensus. There are still a few people like Dr. Lindzen making a good living and promoting their careers denying what 99% of the reputable scientists in the atmospheric field accept as truth.

Another guy with the 99% bit. My guy just demonstrated that you are wrong.

First, there is no 99% consensus.

Second, the group of scientists you're asserting as reflective of a consensus are not climate scientists nor atmospheric scientists...as my guy here demonstrates.

LOL.

Why do you insist on lying? Or are you really that igonrant. All of the evidence that "your guy" presents in your post is at least 15 years old. Do you think that the research community has been inactive in all that time?

Not climate scientists or atmospheric scientists? Please. Get your head out of your ass before you suffocate. Frankly I would give a lot more credence to the list below than to "your guy", the sum of whose "research" on the subject consists of sitting on his throne at MIT and trying to shoot down other peoples' work in the press, without actually contributing anything of substance to the body of knowledge.

PS, I can add the name of at least one other scientist who has won the Nobel Prize for his work in atmospheric chemistry who would agree that "your guy" is completely full of shit.

The Honorable Joe Barton, Chairman
Committee on Energy and Commerce
The Honorable Ed Whitfield, Chairman
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
2125 Rayburn House Office Building
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Friday, July 15, 2005

Dear Chairman Barton and Chairman Whitfield,

As scientists with expertise relevant to the understanding of Earth’s changing climate, we are writing to help inform the inquiry you are conducting on the work of Drs. Michael Mann, Ray Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes. We understand that as a representative of the American people, you have a responsibility to inform yourself and your colleagues about
scientific knowledge that is relevant to policy decisions. However, we are deeply concerned about your approach and we respectfully submit the following clarifying context.

In your letters of June 23, 2005, to these scientists, you state, “We open this review because this dispute surrounding your studies bears directly on important questions about the federally funded work upon which climate studies rely.” In fact, the specific findings of Mann et al. constitute only one item among literally thousands of pieces of evidence that have contributed to the present consensus on the serious nature of climate change. While the 2001 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted this work as a useful illustration of our understanding of the impact of fossil fuel-related emissions on climate change, in no way does the report suggest that it is an essential element of that understanding. This understanding has been developed over many years from many diverse lines of inquiry.

There are legitimate areas of scientific debate over the best methodologies to apply in reconstructing historic temperatures, as there are in many topics of current scientific interest. However, the essential points of the Mann et al. study .that the late twentieth century likely included the warmest decades in the last millennium .are supported by
numerous other studies. We refer the committee to the full reports by the IPCC, the 2001 review of the Third Assessment report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and the June 7 statement from the NAS and other leading science academies for balanced assessments of the current state of the science.

We also note that much of the information that you have requested from the scientists involved is unrelated to the stated purpose of your investigation. Requests to provide all working materials related to hundreds of publications stretching back decades can be seen
as intimidation .intentional or not .and thereby risks compromising the independence of scientific opinion that is vital to the preeminence of American science as well as to the flow of objective advice to the government.

We welcome your interest in the science of climate change and hope that as a community, we can help your committee shape public policy in the light of the best available scientific knowledge.

Respectfully,

Michael Bender
Professor
Department of Geosciences
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Robert W. Corell
Senior Fellow
AMS Policy Program
American Meteorological Society
Washington, DC
Chair
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment

Christopher B. Field
Director
Department of Global Ecology
Carnegie Institution of Washington
Stanford, CA
Member, National Academy of Sciences

James E. Hansen
Director
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Columbia University Earth Institute
New York City, NY
Member, National Academy of Sciences

John P. Holdren
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Director, Woods Hole Research Center
President-Elect American Association for the Advancement of Science
Member, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering,
and American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz
Associate Professor
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia

Paul A. Mayewski
Professor
Department of Earth Sciences
Director
Climate Change Institute
University of Maine
Orono, ME

James J. McCarthy
Agassiz Professor of Oceanography
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Michael B. McElroy
Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies
Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Mario Molina
Professor
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Center for Atmospheric Sciences
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
University of California, San Diego
San Diego, CA
Member, National Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1995

Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
Professor
Department of Geophysical Sciences
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

Alan Robock
Distinguished Professor
Department of Environmental Science
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ
Fellow, American Meteorological Society

William H. Schlesinger
James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry
Dean
The Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Duke University
Durham, NC
Past President, Ecological Society of America, 2003-04
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Gavin Schmidt
Research Scientist
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Columbia University Earth Institute
New York City, NY

Paul Shepson
Director
Purdue Climate Change Research Center
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN

Susan Solomon
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Boulder, CO
Recipient, National Medal of Science, 1999
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Eric Steig
Associate Professor
Department of Earth and Space Sciences
University of Washington
Seattle, WA

Pieter Tans
Chief Scientist
Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Boulder, CO
Fellow, American Geophysical Union

Lonnie G. Thompson
Distinguished Professor
Department of Geological Sciences
Research Scientist
Byrd Polar Research Center
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH
Recipient, Tyler Prize, The World Prize for Environmental Achievement, 2005
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Donald J. Wuebbles
Department Head and Professor
Department of Atmospheric Sciences
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL
Chair, American Geophysical Union's Executive Board of Heads and Chairs

cc:
Honorable John D. Dingell, Ranking Member, Energy and Commerce Committee
Honorable Bart Stupak, Ranking Member, Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
Honorable Cliff Stearns
Honorable Charles Pickering, Jr
Honorable Charles Bass
Honorable Greg Walden
Honorable Michael A. Ferguson
Honorable Michael C. Burgess
Honorable Marsha Blackburn
Honorable Diana L. DeGette
Honorable Janice D. Schakowksy
Honorable Jay Inslee
Honorable Tammy Baldwin
Honorable Henry A. Waxman
Honorable Sherwood L. Boehlert, Chairman, House Science Committee
Honorable Bart Gordon, Ranking Member, House Science Committee

[Shitonafukkinhippie]

I can tell you that it's fun to destroy the planet just to prove that you can't!

[Mikey]

Allow me to translate:

dispute surrounding your studies bears directly on important questions about the federally funded work upon which climate studies rely.”

Nice try, though. Well...not really.

[Felix]

Soon to be posted by one of the resident ostrich's

Michael Bender
Professor
Department of Geosciences Hack
Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Robert W. Corell
Senior Fellow
AMS Policy Program
American Meteorological Society Hack
Washington, DC
Chair
Arctic Climate Impact Assessment

Christopher B. Field
Director
Department of Global Ecology
Carnegie Institution of Washington Hack
Stanford, CA
Member, National Academy of Sciences

James E. Hansen
Director
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Hack
Goddard Institute for Space Studies
Columbia University Earth Institute
New York City, NY
Member, National Academy of Sciences

John P. Holdren
Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy (that says it all)
Harvard University Harvard, (a known refuse for environmental wack jobs)
Cambridge, MA Hack
Director, Woods Hole Research Center
President-Elect American Association for the Advancement of Science
Member, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering,
and American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz
Associate Professor
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Hack
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, Georgia

Paul A. Mayewski
Professor
Department of Earth Sciences
Director
Climate Change Institute Hack
University of Maine
Orono, ME

James J. McCarthy
Agassiz Professor of Oceanography
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology
Harvard University we already know about those Harvand typesHack
Cambridge, MA

Michael B. McElroy
Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies
Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences Hack
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

Mario Molina
Professor
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Center for Atmospheric Sciences
Scripps Institution of Oceanography (yeah sure, that's a made up name)
Hack
University of California, San Diego
San Diego, CA
Member, National Academy of Sciences
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1995

Raymond T. Pierrehumbert
Professor
Department of Geophysical Sciences Hack
University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

Alan Robock
Distinguished Professor
Department of Environmental Science Hack
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, NJ
Fellow, American Meteorological Society

William H. Schlesinger
James B. Duke Professor of Biogeochemistry
Dean
The Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences
Duke University Hack
Durham, NC
Past President, Ecological Society of America, 2003-04
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Gavin Schmidt
Research Scientist
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Goddard Institute for Space Studies Hack
Columbia University Earth Institute
New York City, NY

Paul Shepson
Director
Purdue Climate Change Research Center Hack
Purdue University
West Lafayette, IN

Susan Solomon
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hack
Boulder, CO
Recipient, National Medal of Science, 1999
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Eric Steig
Associate Professor
Department of Earth and Space Sciences Hack
University of Washington
Seattle, WA

Pieter Tans
Chief Scientist
Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Hack
Boulder, CO
Fellow, American Geophysical Union

Lonnie G. Thompson (anybody named Lonnie simply can't be believed)
Distinguished Professor
Department of Geological Sciences
Research Scientist
Byrd Polar Research Center Hack
The Ohio State University
Columbus, OH
Recipient, Tyler Prize, The World Prize for Environmental Achievement, 2005
Member, National Academy of Sciences

Donald J. Wuebbles
Department Head and Professor
Department of Atmospheric Sciences Hack
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Urbana, IL
Chair, American Geophysical Union's Executive Board of Heads and Chairs

any others?

[Mikey]

Allow me to translate:
Nice try, though. Well...not really.

It's pretty simple. Without continued claims of anthropogenic global warming no matter how ridiculous or poorly sourced, their funding dries up.

Care to back that up with anything more substantial than more hysterical luddite drivel?

[Felix]

It's pretty simple. Without continued claims of anthropogenic global warming no matter how ridiculous or poorly sourced, their funding dries up.

Interesting.

Exactly what do you think would happen to the research monies provided by oil companies if any of their "scientists" were to conclude that the increased global warming was a direct result of fossil fuel consumption?

[Mikey]

It's pretty simple. Without continued claims of anthropogenic global warming no matter how ridiculous or poorly sourced, their funding dries up.

Care to back that up with anything more substantial than more hysterical luddite drivel?

I might ask you the same.

The fact remains that there is not a single shred of observational data to support the conclusion that humans are responsible for climate change.

Get back to me when you can refer to something other than GIGO computer models, hysterical chest beating and outright fraud.

Thanks for proving the point of my previous post.
:roll:

[Felix]

I like the fact you're arguing for your right to spew pollution......

Nice bud.....

[DrDetroit]

Lot of climatologists on that list, Mikey.

We've had this discussion before...their models cannot even forecast current climate conditions without "tuning" it up.

How the fuck can you reasonable expect models that cannot even get current climate conditions accurately to project 50, 75, 100 years down the road?

You can't.

EOS.

[Felix]

CO2 isn't pollution, dumbfuck.

When there's too much of it, sure it is dumbfuck......

any other idiocies you'd care to grace us with?

Still waiting for that "snapperhead" definition BTW......

[Felix]

But on a good note, I see the oil companies are the big beneficiaries of another of Bush's hard hitting energy bills.....

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/07/28/ ... index.html

still no definition on that "snapperhead" thing eh????

[Felix]

And when is that? There have been ice ages with higher concentrations of atmospheric CO2.

That may be true, but during the ice age, they weren't producing all of the other nasties that we produce today.....

it's a bad combination......

but then I forget, you're an expert on climatology as well......

[Felix]

it's a bad combination......

Is it? What evidence do you have to support that conclusion?

What evidence do you have to refute it?

and something a little more objective than some research conducted under the auspices of oil company money would be appreciated

[Variable]

Until they have 1,000 years of global temps at a very minimum to compare and contrast, 90% of the blowhards on both sides of this issue are guessing, plain and simple. At this point I'd have to give the nod to the non-tree huggers, because at least they're wise enough to at least acknowledge that part of the issue.

[Felix]

It's your claim. You support it.

Something tells me they didn't have anything like this in the Ice Age......

[Mikey]

Until they have 1,000 years of global temps at a very minimum to compare and contrast, 90% of the blowhards on both sides of this issue are guessing, plain and simple. At this point I'd have to give the nod to the non-tree huggers, because at least they're wise enough to at least acknowledge that part of the issue.

You obviously haven't read much of the literature.

[DrDetroit]

Until they have 1,000 years of global temps at a very minimum to compare and contrast, 90% of the blowhards on both sides of this issue are guessing, plain and simple. At this point I'd have to give the nod to the non-tree huggers, because at least they're wise enough to at least acknowledge that part of the issue.

You obviously haven't read much of the literature.

Sorry, but the proxies just aren't getting the job done, dipshit.

But then to combine the proxy data with actual data....they still don't get the results they desire.

[At Large]

I have to ask, is developing new technology like fuel cell cars, hybrid cars, improved solar power, etc a huge waste of time or should we continue to rely on waste-causing energy with no regard to how the planet be in the future?

[DrDetroit]

I have to ask, is developing new technology like fuel cell cars, hybrid cars, improved solar power, etc a huge waste of time or should we continue to rely on waste-causing energy with no regard to how the planet be in the future?

Who is developing it? If the private sector...I don't care. And if I choose to I can invest in that development. If the government...certainly not.

And you're not honestly approaching this topic, either.

[Mikey]

I have to ask, is developing new technology like fuel cell cars, hybrid cars, improved solar power, etc a huge waste of time or should we continue to rely on waste-causing energy with no regard to how the planet be in the future?

Who is developing it? If the private sector...I don't care. And if I choose to I can invest in that development. If the government...certainly not.

And you're not honestly approaching this topic, either.

So, what do you think of the government investing in oil exploration?

BTW, fuel cell cars are a waste of time and money IMHO.

[DrDetroit]

So, what do you think of the government investing in oil exploration?

I try not to. Is the government doing so?

BTW, fuel cell cars are a waste of time and money IMHO.

RACK!!!

[At Large]

Well, I can certainly agree that temperature readings over the past millennium have been spotty until the 1900s, which is why this is so hard to predict. I can also agree that scientists exaggerate to get their funding, but I can also agree that scientists can toggle data to show whatever they want to show.

You guys seem to advocate using the planet as an outhouse. Nevermind the consequences, lets keep shitting where we lie with no regard to overflowing the outhouse with waste. Do we want to keep shitting in the outhouse until is so overflowing that no one wants to go in there anymore or do we treat it like a rest room, which gets maintained to keep it clean so future generations can keep using it?

My view is that if we can create cars that run on water vapor and leave less polution, why not try it? The market can dictate if people want it. I'm sure years ago recycling was considered a waste of time, but now it's a semi-thriving business with boxes, paper, cans, etc made from recycled material.

[Mikey]

Energy bill doles out project funding
Coal, oil, natural gas, utility companies in line to benefit
By Stephanie I. Cohen, MarketWatch
Last Update: 7:26 PM ET July 28, 2005


WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - The broad energy bill getting the finishing touches on Capitol Hill Thursday will result in billions of dollars in government support for dozens of energy companies, including $14.6 billion in industry tax credits.

...

Oil and natural gas

Oil and natural gas interests along with refineries would split $2.6 billion in credits, according to a Congressional analysis of the bill.

The bill includes a $1.55 billion program for companies that engage in ultra-deepwater drilling of which $550 million would come from direct federal spending.

Producers would receive royalty incentives to boost natural gas production from shallow and deep wells in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the American Gas Association. Companies would also be able to amortize certain "geological and geophysical costs" associated with production over two years.

Additionally, new natural gas distribution pipelines placed into operation over the next five years would be able depreciate over 15-years, rather than the current 20 years, at a cost of roughly $1 billion to the Treasury.

Nuclear jumpstart, cleaner coal

The bill lays the groundwork for the revival of the nuclear power sector. The last time federal regulators granted a license to build a nuclear power station was in 1973.

A production tax credit in the bill worth 1.8 cents a kilowatt hour available for the first 6,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity developed. Companies could receive up to $125 million per plant up to 1,000 megawatts. Each plant is eligible to receive the credit for eight years.

Lawmakers also added $2 billion in "risk insurance" for new nuclear plants for up to six new power plants in the event the projects are delayed. The first two power plants built will be able to receive up to $500 million in insurance each, and the remaining four will be eligible for $250 million each, according to Tezak.

Nuclear developers would also be eligible to receive loan guarantees for up to 80% of the cost of power plants, under a provision meant to encourage the development of low emissions energy projects.

These provisions could benefit two groups of U.S. companies working to secure permits to build advanced nuclear reactors in the U.S. including Dominion Resources (D: news, chart, profile) , General Electric Co. (GE: news, chart, profile) , NuStart Energy, Constellation Generation Group (CEG: news, chart, profile) , and Exelon Generation (EXC: news, chart, profile) .

The bill would pour billions of new dollars into so-called clean-coal power plants that use technologies to reduce the release of harmful emissions. The tax portion of the bill includes three new investment tax credits for clean-coal facilities that range from 15% to 20% of the cost of the facility and federally-backed loans for certain projects at a combined cost of $1.6 billion.

Some of the funding would be directed toward power plants that use "integrated gasification combined cycle" technology, a low-pollution coal combustion process that is just becoming commercially viable. American Electric Power Co. and Cinergy Corp. have said they're moving in partnership with GE to build such a plant. Such projects would also be able to receive federally backed loans.

[Bizzarofelice]

Energy bill doles out project funding
Coal, oil, natural gas, utility companies in line to benefit

Will Dubya admit that the energy bills are written by lobbyists, or does he no longer believe in the ownership society?

[Mikey]

My view is that if we can create cars that run on water vapor and leave less polution, why not try it? The market can dictate if people want it. I'm sure years ago recycling was considered a waste of time, but now it's a semi-thriving business with boxes, paper, cans, etc made from recycled material.

I assmume that you're refering to fuel cell cars here, but they don't "run on water vapor". :roll:

They run on hydrogen. They produce water vapor. The problem is that the only way now to economically produce hydrogen is to reform the methane in natural gas. Even though the cars themselves produce no pollution, the reformation process does. It also uses some of the energy content of the fuel. It's more efficient to burn the natural gas directly in an internal combustion engine than it is to reform the fuel and use it in a technology that's still rife with obstacles to overcome before it ever becomes usable on a large scale.

[Hapday]

You guys seem to advocate using the planet as an outhouse. Nevermind the consequences, lets keep shitting where we lie with no regard to overflowing the outhouse with waste.

I don't think anyone here thinks we shouldn't stop polluting the earth, just that we should find solutions instead of running around like a chicken with its head off everytime science comes up the latest 'doomsday' trend.

[Bizzarofelice]

My view is that if we can create cars that run on water vapor

Water vapor is BY FAR the leading greenhouse gas. Why do you insist on using the planet like an outhouse? Don't you care about the environment?

Maybe you are amusing someone.

[At Large]

Yes, I meant fuel cell cars that produce water vapor as its lone waste product.

I'm by no means an environmentalist. I have three styrofoam cups on my desk right now, for example. I just think that alternative fuels and cleaner technologies need to be researched. If the entertainment industry took this same approach we'd all still be waiting five minutes for our TV tubes to warm up before we could watch our black and white TVs.

[DrDetroit]

Well, I can certainly agree that temperature readings over the past millennium have been spotty until the 1900s, which is why this is so hard to predict. I can also agree that scientists exaggerate to get their funding, but I can also agree that scientists can toggle data to show whatever they want to show.

a) Um, the only reliable global temperature data we have dates only back to the 1970s, the rest is merely local.

b) So you acknowledge that these are predictions and not actual events. About time someone acknowledged this.

You guys seem to advocate using the planet as an outhouse. Nevermind the consequences, lets keep shitting where we lie with no regard to overflowing the outhouse with waste. Do we want to keep shitting in the outhouse until is so overflowing that no one wants to go in there anymore or do we treat it like a rest room, which gets maintained to keep it clean so future generations can keep using it?

WTF are you talking about? Going Sudden Sam on us with ad hominem attacks and straw man arguments?

I don't see global warming happening. I don't see global climate change coming. I am disagreeing with the conclusions derived from scientists who are relying on poorly-designed computer models. How does that translate into an attitude of wanting to treat the planet as an outhouse?

It doesn't, of course.

My view is that if we can create cars that run on water vapor and leave less polution, why not try it? The market can dictate if people want it. I'm sure years ago recycling was considered a waste of time, but now it's a semi-thriving business with boxes, paper, cans, etc made from recycled material.

You're right...let the market determine the direction.

But that is not the debate. The debate is whether or not government's should limit their energy consumption in order to deal with the global climate change that is predicted by computer models that cannot even forecast current climate conditions using actual data rather than proxy data...

Care to enlighten us with your insight re: this?

[Mikey]

Yes, I meant fuel cell cars that produce water vapor as its lone waste product.

So you propose to swap one greehouse gas for another, even more potent, greenhouse gas.

What is it you expect to accomplish by doing that?

Are you really this stupid?