Articles Tagged "Reply To Article"

Martin Rees, president of The Royal Society, and Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, penned a letter last week to the Financial Post in which they regurgitated many of the favorite bromides of the global warming movement, blaming mankind for rising global temperatures and warning of a coming climate catastrophe unless there is a radical reduction in human CO2 emissions.

Most of their assertions are either unproven or demonstrably false. Neither author was inventive enough to concoct any new anthropogenic global warming (AGW) fictions for public consumption. Everything was straight from the man-is-destroying the planet AGW template.

Let’s analyze several of the myths rehashed by these heavyweights of science.

Sir, The letter from Martin Rees and Ralph J. Cicerone (April 9) contains one reason for serious scepticism about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions of future climate changes.

Prof Rees and Dr Cicerone write that “straightforward physics tells us that this rise [in CO 2 concentrations] is warming the planet. Calculations demonstrate that this effect is very likely responsible for the gradual warming observed over the past 30 years and that global temperatures will continue to rise – superimposing a warming on all the other effects that make climate fluctuate. Uncertainties in the future rate of this rise, stemming largely from the ‘feedback’ effects on water vapour and clouds, are topics of current research”.

The basic physics is correct, but the uncertainties referred to are largely unreported in newspapers. Using the same physics the 19 major climate models produce very different answers, the more extreme of which are usually used to drive the climate debate.

Updated below with comments by Alan Siddons

Article link Equilibrium Prevents Humans from Heating the Atmosphere by Gary Novak

It's refreshing to see Gary Novak challenging climatology's cherished assumptions (as usual), but I believe that more scrutiny should be cast on that minus 19° temperature in the first place. The premise of this widely-accepted estimate is flawed because, due to the 4th power relationship between irradiance and temperature, the average of one cannot agree with the average of the other. Consider, for instance, merely two spots on earth exposed to two different solar irradiances.

Article link: British campaigner urges UN to accept 'ecocide' as international crime by Juliette Jowit, The Guardian

Dear All

First in the dock should be the promoters of the so-called saver bulb; each one contains between 3 and 7 milligram of a mercury compound powder. Most of these bulbs end up in landfill sites and in a decade from now there will be an estimated 100 million of these bulbs in the dumps, adding some 300 kilogram of irrecoverable mercury compound to the ground water all around the world. In further decades ahead, this will cause mental diseases for which there is no cure, as all ground water will be contaminated already.

Second should be the promoters of windfarms. Besides destroying rural countryside by digging cable trenches, laying roads and creating noise pollution, these towers have been proven to kill large birds by the thousands. It has also been extensively proven that not one single fossil fuel powerplant has been closed as a result of the intermittent and unreliable supply of electricity off these towers. In the final balance, windfarms add carbon footprint.

Third should be the promoters of so-called bio-fuel. It has been extensively proven that the total energy requirements to produce bio-fuel is greater than the resultant "carbon savings" made by not burning fossil fuels. It has also been extensively proven that bio-fuels do not give as much power per unit of mass as fossil fuels and cause corrosion to engine parts. In the final balance, bio-fuels add carbon footprint.

To all:

I just couldn't let this article in the latest New Yorker article Up in the Air by Elizabeth Kolbert go by without comment.

Marty

Dear Editor:

Kindly forward this e-mail to Elizabeth Kolbert. Obviously, the attachments to this e-mail are to voluminous for a letter to the Editor, but I sincerely hope that she will read and learn from them.

Here is my letter:

Elizabeth Kolbert, in her "Up In the Air" comment of April 12, 2010, has made an heroic effort to revive the dying theory that human emission of CO2 is causing global warming/climate change. But those of us who know it well and its "living will" to decline heroic measures, feel that the wisest course of action is to let it pass peacefully in the hospice of dying theories.

There is a simple way to tell the difference between scientists and propagandists. If scientists have a theory they carefully search for data that might actually contradict their theory so they can test it further or refine it. The propagandists, on the other hand, select only the data that might agree with their theory and dutifully ignore any data that disagrees with it. How else to explain Ms. Kolbert's argument that "despite what it might have felt like in the Northeast these past few months, globally it was one of the warmest winters on record"? Actually, the global data summarized in www.climate4you.com show significant world-wide cooling for the past decade. The data also show nothing beyond the normal range of variability in either the polar ice area coverage or in the rate of rise of sea level for the last 20 years.

AccuWeather's Senior Long Range Meteorologist. Bastardi is responding to this New Yorker article (Up in the Air by Elizabeth Kolbert) on him and other skeptics.

We finally have an objective way of measuring temps, and they are obviously afraid that their answer is wrong.

I am growing weary of stating the obvious.. in a fight that is a side issue to me. My agenda is nailing the weather, not saving the planet. I believe what I believe based on research to get to the correct forecast on anywhere from a day to a multi-decadal trend. That the IPCC is busting on lower trop temps, upper trop temps, the stratosphere, the positive feedback, and the death to the ice cap people have now also been beaten back , at least for the time being, should make any person of good will understand there is room for a debate here. Which is what I advocate in the spirit of what has made this nation great, the exchange without fear of ideas in the open forum. Its not a debate I want to be in, but one I want to watch to make sure I have all the ideas in front of me. What could possibly be wrong with this cry for sanity in this matter.

A nation that has homeless and uninsured should not be dumping money into chasing something that may not be there, when we have problems that are there. I am sorry that my old New England John Kennedy roots come out with that statement, actual concern for what I know to be rather than a ghost that may not be there. A nation that has built itself, in spite of its faults, on the freedom to confront the truth will not survive if those freedoms are discouraged and hard realities are not confronted.

Sirs the Positive Weather Solutions Forecast mentioned below is utter nonsense and has no basis in science, track record or fact and the Telegraph of all should not engage in activity which has no basis.

Camping bookings soar amid forecasts of hot summer - Telegraph

Please have a look at


NEW Videos April & Summer Forecasts + Where next on ClimateChange & ClimateGate LINKS WeatherAction videos 26 March: March, April & Summer Forecast Notes Climate Gate/Change Report on Parliament meet 24 March & What next

And What About this summer in Britain & Ireland?

Piers Corbyn points out only WeatherAction long range forecast have proven skill and puts onus on Govt to let the people know.

A couple of days ago we received a Physorg.com article via Alan Siddons, Even soil feels the heat: Soils release more carbon dioxide as globe warms, [LINK], this was a summary article for a report that appeared in Nature (Bond-Lamberty and Thomson, 2010. Temperature-associated increases in the global soil respiration record, Nature March 25, 2009).

Alan included the following comments.

More evidence that a climbing CO2 rate is the result of warming, not the cause. There are two other ramifications as I see it.

1. Results like this mean that the anthropogenic fraction must be readjusted. Is man's annual contribution 4%? 3%? Less?

2. This latest natural emission estimate shows that previous source/sink models have been inadequate, as usual. - AS

The following then appeared in the comments section of CR by Ben Bond-Lamberty and Allison Thompson, the authors of the said article.

Updated below from Western Institute for Study of the Environment Commentary

In response to Ray Grigg's article "A Message for Climate Skeptics", I felt some feedback from a self described climate skeptic might be in order.

Ray, you correctly point out that the IPCC is finally admitting mistakes in their 2007 report. But for you to state that the Himalaya glaciers could melt a mere 100 years later than predicted is not very scientific since there is no basis for any rate of melting that can be considered reliable at this point. That's why the IPCC has set up an independent inquiry to find out how such poor science made it into the peer reviewed literature. There were other mistakes. Articles from Green Peace and the World Wildlife Fund also were referenced in the report, perhaps this could explain the advocacy that the IPCC became known for? These are not impartial organizations and do not produce credible scientific papers. Mistakes as obvious as how much of the Netherlands is below sea level also found their way into the "peer reviewed" report. The report stated 55 per cent is below sea level, in fact the correct number is less than half at 25 per cent.

You incorrectly claim that skeptics say that there has been no climate change. That is not a credible position even among skeptics. What we object to is the certainty that humans are somehow in control of changes in the climate and that any climate change that we cause will be negative or rapid. Changes we are seeing are not rapid and if record snowfall across the northern hemisphere for this winter doesn't count as climate, then neither should record heat waves in 2005 or an unusually low arctic sea ice extent in 2007. Climate changes. It always changes. Nothing will change that.

Although USA TODAY's article "Is the global warming movement cooling?" recognizes some of the growing evidence against man-made global warming, it overlooks a central point (Cover story, News, March 11).

Every proposal to regulate and reduce greenhouse emissions would destroy jobs and weaken national wealth formation. Before "Climategate," we were told that it was necessary to make these sacrifices to avert even greater loss.

Now, not only have the methods and objectivity of the global-warming careerists been seriously questioned, but also the predictions used to justify the expense of climate mitigation actions have largely fallen by the wayside. The original proponents of the claims now admit that there is no scientific evidence that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035. But this is not a minor, isolated error. What should also be noted is that there is no scientific proof that the seas are rising due to warming, or that African agriculture will collapse by 2020, or that the Amazon rainforest will soon be destroyed — all predictions that have formed the central narrative for climate action. Furthermore, professor Phil Jones, the man at the heart of the scandal, admits that there has been no statistically significant warming for 15 years.

Any official or organization arguing that the science underlying the claims of man-made global warming should not be seriously and comprehensively reassessed before imposing regulations with such enormous consequences for the standard of living of every American is acting irresponsibly.