HA! There's your Global Warming for ya!

Jason, you don't know the half of it.

Most of the people who follow global warming have no reason to believe anything different, because they lack the ability (or gumption) to actually read the raw evidence for themselves.

You have people like the guy at deSMOGblog who is so convinced he is right that he won't even take constructive criticism about his arguments. (I'll let you google him -- I don't want to give him the satisfaction of an inbound link.)

Pop me an e-mail, and I'll send you a link to a specific post and my rebuttal. The rebuttal would have been on his blog, but he deleted it. (And I really did carry a civil tone throughout.)

This guy really is a piece of work. Let me know what you think of my answer -- I sent it to a liberal (but fair-minded) blogger I know in DC, and he's vetting it to make sure that I was not being a troll.

Oh yeah... and all of that happened *before* I read "State of Fear".

Good enough! But not ENOUGH since you do such a great job. Your post reminds me of one I put up many moons ago (the earth firsties love it...not)
here

And in case I wasn't clear... TERRIFIC post, you done good!!!

hmm, html stripped out... let's try
http://www.gmroper.com/archives/2005/10/global_warming_2.htm

Wow, you really do have all the answers. Agri-business and "responsible" clear-cutting, - the answers to global-warming. Why didn't I think of that!?! Not, just maybe, slow down the culture of immediate gratification and indulgent over consumption. Oh my gosh, no. We can't let the Chinese or India surpass us in that area!

And while you are laughing at up your sleeve at me with all the usual "kool aid" and "moonbat" asides, how about some sharp words from one of your own:

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Flawed logic. You can't take one year's data and prove anything about global warming, no matter whether you believe it is happening or not. Short term trends are statistically meaningless. Last summer was the hottest on record in terms of global averages. That doesn't prove anything either.

The shrinking of the polar ice cap, the movement of tree lines and alpine vegetation to higher and higher elevations - these are more significant long term trends.

Read more science and less polemic.

Yes, I point out more than once that the statistics that people are using to try and point to global warming are in fact "Short term" statistics and trends.

Further that these statistics and trends for years were taken in the heatsinks make up pockets of civilization where people might record such things. Setting up remote weather stations for periodic measurement and recording is a relatively modern phenomenon.

You claim a shrinking polar ice cap, what about thickening in the Northern Ice. Maybe you should read this blog a bit more and find that I pay more attention to the poles (particularly the south one) than most.

The Global Warming Crowd is basing their blather on Junk Scince, and flawed data.

Read the post next time and you'll see that "short term" measurments are my primary reason for rejecting the chicken littles.

-JC

In the same article that you gleefully site abut Greenland's ice sheet, there are several contradictory observations. I still insist that you are far more interested in making political points than really dealng with the science. I don't know what your qualifications in science are but I do know what Donald Kennedy's, EIC of SCIENCE, are. Despite the unfortunate incident of the Korean stem cell fraud, SCIENCE doesn't make a habit of indulging in "junk" science, which you so broadly declaim as the province of those on the other side of the political fence. Here are two quotes from recent editorials of his:

"The consequences of the past century’s temperature increase are becoming dramatically apparent in the increased frequency of
extreme weather events, the de-icing of the Arctic, and the geographic redistribution of plants and animals. There is now a broad scientific consensus with regard to the cause.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHGs), largely produced as a result of human enterprises, are responsible for the increase of about 0.7°C in the past century. Models, now running at climate centers in several nations, agree that if we continue business as usual, we may
expect a 2° to 5°C increase in the next century. With that, there may be a concomitant rise in sea level and an increase in the weather-related
damage that has become a contemporary fact of life." -- Jan 6 issue.

"As Katrina and two other hurricanes crossed the warm Gulf of Mexico, we watched them gain dramatically in strength. Papers by Kerry Emanuel in Nature and by Peter Webster in this journal during the past year have shown that the average intensity of hurricanes has increased during
the past 30 years as the oceans have gained heat from global warming. Emanuel’s Web site at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (http://wind.mit.edu/~emanuel/holem/holem.html) explains the thermodynamic aspects of the relationship. The winds around the low-pressure center (the eye of the hurricane) travel across the warm surface water in a circular pattern, picking up energy. As water molecules
evaporate from the surface, they contribute their energy to the storm column as they condense to
form droplets, becoming sensible heat. About a third of that energy powers the hurricane’s wind engine. We know with confidence what has made the Gulf and other oceans warmer than they had been
before: the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from human industrial activity, to which the United States has been a major contributor. That’s a worldwide event, affecting all oceans." - Jan. 20th issue.

But I am confident that you will write Dr. Kennedy off as a tree hugging liberal and go about your business as usual. I will say this for you Jason, you don't come off as demented as do many of the right wing bloggers I visit now and again. Consider that a lefthanded complement.

Great post.

A recommended link is http://www.junkscience.com/

But I'll bet you've already been there.

From Reuters:

ST. LOUIS (Feb. 17) - Greenland's glaciers are dumping twice as much ice into the Atlantic Ocean now as five years ago because glaciers are moving and melting more quickly, researchers said on Thursday.

This could mean oceans will rise even faster than forecast, and rising surface air temperatures appear to be to blame, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"This change, combined with increased melting, suggests that existing estimates of future sea level rise are too low," Julian Dowdeswell of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Britain's Cambridge University wrote in a commentary.

"At 1.7 million square km [656,000 square miles], up to 3 km [nearly two miles] thick and a little smaller than Mexico, the Greenland Ice Sheet would raise global sea level by about 7 meters [22 feet] if it melted completely."

The study did not explore what is causing the rising air temperatures in Greenland, but most scientists agree that human activity, notably the burning of fossil fuels, is playing an important role in global warming.

Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology and Pannir Kanagaratnam of the University of Kansas used satellite data to track the movement of Greenland's glaciers, which slide slowly down to the sea and deposit ice.

They calculated that Greenland contributes about 0.02 inch to the annual 0.1 inch rise in global sea levels.

Since 1996, southeast Greenland's outlet glaciers have been flowing more quickly and since 2000 glaciers farther north have also sped up.

Rignot and Kanagaratnam found that ice loss due to glacier flow has increased from 12 cubic miles of ice loss per year in 1996 to 36 cubic miles of ice loss per year in 2005.

"It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet, but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes," Rignot said in a statement.

He said the models now used to predict how much ice Greenland will lose, and what effect that will have on sea levels, may underestimate the outcome.

Rising air temperatures are clearly a factor, the researchers told a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science.

Over the last 20 years, the air temperature in southeast Greenland has risen by 5.4 degrees F.

Warmer air lubricates the bottoms of glaciers, helping them slide faster.

"Climate warming can work in different ways, but generally speaking, if you warm up the ice sheet, the glacier will flow faster," said Rignot.

And it may melt even more quickly in years to come, he added.

"The southern half of Greenland is reacting to what we think is climate warming. The northern half is waiting, but I don't think it's going to take long," Rignot said.

From the February 17, 2006 issue of SCIENCE:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are among the most popular and scientifically sophisticated agencies in the U.S. government. Not only do they do good science, they do dramatic, risky, and even romantic things—capturing comet dust, sending surveyors to Mars, flying airplanes into hurricanes, and providing images of impending weather events. They are full of productive, respected scientists.

We have published papers from groups at both agencies and have been proud to do so. But these days, we’re trying to figure out what is happening to serious science at NOAA and NASA. In this space a month ago, I described some of the research that supports a relationship between hurricane intensity and increased water temperatures. Two empirical studies, one published in Science and one in Nature, show that hurricane intensity has increased with oceanic surface temperatures over the past 30 years. The physics of hurricane intensity growth, worked out by Kerry Emanuel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has clarified and explained the thermodynamic basis for these observations.

Yet a NOAA Web site denies any relationship between global climate change and hurricane strength. It attributes the latter instead to “tropical multidecadal signals” affecting climate variability. Emanuel has tested this relationship and presented convincing evidence against it in recent seminars. As for the many NOAA scientists who may agree with Emanuel, the U.S. Department of Commerce (the executive agency that NOAA is part of) has ordered them not to speak to reporters or present papers at meetings without departmental review and approval.

That’s bad enough, but it turns out that things are even worse at NASA, where a striking front-page story by Andy Revkin in the New York Times (28 January 2006) details the agency’s efforts to put a gag on James Hansen, director of the agency’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, after a talk he gave at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December 2005. His sin was that he pointed out that the climate change signal is now so strong, 2005 having been the warmest year in the past century, that the voluntary measures proposed by the administration are likely to be inadequate.

Hansen was told that there would be “dire consequences” if such statements continued. The Times story identifies two NASA public affairs officials, Dean Acosta and George Deutsch, as responsible for delivering this news and insisting that Hansen’s “supervisors” would have to stand in for him at public appearances. Those will presumably take place in approvable venues and certainly not on National Public Radio (NPR). Deutsch is reported to have rejected a Hansen interview requested by NPR on the grounds that it was “the most liberal news outlet in the country.”

For at least two reasons, this event may establish a new high-water mark for bureaucratic stupidity. First, Hansen’s views on this general subject have long been widely available; he thinks climate change is due to anthropogenic sources, and he’s discouraged that we’re not doing more about it. For NASA to lock the stable door when this horse has been out on the range for years is just silly. Second, Hansen’s history shows that he just won’t be intimidated, and he has predictably told the Times that he will ignore the restrictions. The efforts by Acosta and Deutsch are reminiscent of the slapstick antics of Curley and Moe: a couple of guys stumbling off to gag someone who the audience knows will rip the gag right off.

These two incidents are part of a troublesome pattern to which the Bush administration has become addicted: Ignore evidence if it doesn’t favor the preferred policy outcome. Above all, don’t let the public get an idea that scientists inside government disagree with the party line. The new gag rules support the new Bush mantra, an interesting inversion of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield’s view on war: “You don’t make policy with the science you have. You make policy with the science you WANT.” But the late-breaking good news is that NASA Administrator Griffin has said that there will be no more of this nonsense, and Deutsch, the 24-year-old Bush appointee sent to muzzle Hansen, has left the agency abruptly after his résumé turned out to be falsified. A change of heart? Stay tuned.
-- Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-chief, SCIENCE

Ah Ed, here's what I think you're looking for.

The reason I refer to it as "junk science" is because there's not enough data to make an objective scientific assessment. For every 30 years study you throw up as evidence of the impending doom global warming brings, there's another 30 year study showing that global cooling is taking place.

If you look at 100 years of observations in the cities (heat sinks) but fail to look at 100 years in the hinterlands, you can't judge.

There's simply not enough real data to make judgements of fact. Global Warming is still Pop Science at best and Junk Science at it's worse.

My contention is that there's simply not enough unbiased empirical data to make the claims the global warming crowd is alluding too.

You accuse me of trying to make political points, when that's EXACTLY what the global warming crowd is all about, take Kyoto as the prime example. Here's North America being blamed for all this Global Warming hoopla, when it turns out we're actually a net absorber of the very gasses they accuse us of ruining the world with.

Further, for this crowd it's more about US (being the U.S. ironically) giving up what we have (even though as a society we actually absorb greenhouse gasses) so that other countries can pollute and actually sell the rights to pollute. It's insane.

If you're worried about Global Warming and you're honest about it, then work toward fixing what you perceive to be the problem, but don't force your junk science upon the rest of us.

Does your house have solar panels? Why Not? Do you drive a hybrid? Why not? Do you have passive solar heat for your home and hot water? Why not.

You can bemoan my carbon footprint all you want, but there's nothing in your science that will convince me that you're right until YOU take the politics out of it. When the Kennedy's (Robert and Donald) and the other GW cultists stop merely screaming at the U.S. alone, while also crying NIMBY, and address things like scorched-earth in South America, unrestricted pollution in China and dumping in Africa by the European nations, then maybe I'll listen a little more.

For now though, easily debunked junk science and editors bemoaning that the scientific establishment isn't listening to them enough isn't going to sway my opinion.

Why isn't NOAA and NASA taking Science Magazine seriously??? I'll tell you why, it's because NOAA and NASA are actually DOING THE SCIENCE instead of "selling" the science. Posting an article from an editor whining that he isn't being listened to has about as much resonance with me as the Newsweeks Koran flushing story, CBS's RatherGate memos and the New York Times telling me that the Plame leak is an "important national security issue" but the NSA International Surveillance leak isn't.

The media aren't the policy makers and the magazine editors aren't out there doing the hard science, they're selling it. I for one am not buying. I am happy to take NOAA and NASA and the University of Alabama and Louisiana State's word because I know they aren't out there selling their opinions, their opinions come first and their profits may or may not come later.

But you go right ahead and dupe yourself all you want and believe that 30 years of biased science will give you a complete and total understanding of global climate and allow you to predict the future.

--Jason