Articles Tagged &quot;Reply To Letter&quot;

BOB CARTER VINCENT COURTILLOT BENNY PEISER REPLY TO LETTER

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Colin P. Summerhayes: Robert Carter: Vincent Courtillot: The Geological Perspective of Global Warming: The Debate Continues

Tuesday, March 5th 2013, 6:57 AM EST

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Editor’s Note: The following letter by Dr Colin Summerhayes and the response by Professors Bob Carter and Vincent Courtillot are a continuation of their debate on The Geological Perspective of Global Warming which the GWPF published on 14 February. Dr Summerhayes’ letters have also been published by the Geological Society. We welcome this scientific exchange and hope that readers will find it both enlightening and encouraging.

Dr Colin P. Summerhayes, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge

Dear Dr Peiser,

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the critique by Drs Carter and Courtillot of my note of 14/2/13 on “The Geological Perspective of Global Warming”. I initially wrote to you to draw attention to Geological Society of London’s statement on this topic, because the geological perspective is usually overlooked in discussions about climate change, and it should not be. But, because Drs Carter and Courtillot moved the debate out of just the geological arena, I am responding in my own capacity, not as a representative of the GSL.

Drs Carter and Courtillot took exception to my use of the phrase “The cooling [of the past 50 million years] was directly associated with a decline in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere”, saying that correlation was not causation. True. What I should have said was “The cooling of the past 50 million years was driven by a decline in CO2 in the atmosphere.” Prior to the Ice Age of the last 2.6 million years the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere resulted from the interplay between the emission of CO2 by volcanoes and its absorption by the weathering of rocks, especially in mountainous areas, as well as by sequestration in sediments. Methods to determine the likely concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in the geological past have improved in recent years. They include the numbers of pores (stomata) on leaves, the abundance of the mineral nahcolite (stable above concentrations of 1000 ppm CO2), and the carbon isotopic composition of alkenones from marine plankton. Methods for determining global temperature through time have also improved. We now know that the Eocene was a time of greater volcanic output of CO2, and that the rise of major mountain chains after that time pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere. Geochemical models of the carbon cycle simulate the decline in CO2 after the middle Eocene. Convergence between the CO2 data and the output from those models provide confidence that we understand the process. There is no geologically plausible alternative. We are not talking about a loose association where there is uncertainty about cause as Drs Carter and Courtillot imply. Indeed, even Drs Carter and Courtillot accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and that accumulation of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere warms it. Likewise, its loss will cool the atmosphere.

Source Link: thegwpf.org

BENNY PEISER BOB CARTER REPLY TO LETTER

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The Geological Perspective On Global Warming: A Debate

Thursday, February 14th 2013, 7:00 AM EST

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Dr Colin P. Summerhayes, Vice-President of the Geological Society of London

Dear Dr Peiser,

In the interest of contributing to the evidence-based debate on climate change I thought it would be constructive to draw to your attention the geological evidence regarding climate change, and what it means for the future. This evidence was published in November 2010 by the Geological Society of London in a document entitled “Climate Change: Evidence from the Geological Record”, which can be found on the Society’s web page.

A variety of techniques is now available to document past levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, past global temperatures, past sea levels, and past levels of acidity in the ocean. What the record shows is this. The Earth’s climate has been cooling for the past 50 million years from 6-7°C above today’s global average temperatures to what we see now. That cooling led to the formation of ice caps on Antarctica 34 million years ago and in the northern hemisphere around 2.6 million years ago. The cooling was directly associated with a decline in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. In effect we moved from a warm “greenhouse climate” when CO2, temperature and sea level were high, and there were no ice caps, to an “icehouse climate” in which CO2, temperature and sea level are low, and there are ice caps. The driver of that change is the balance between the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere from volcanoes, and the mopping up of CO2 from the atmosphere by the weathering of rocks, especially in mountains. There was more volcanic activity in the past and there are more mountains now.

Source Link: thegwpf.org

LORD TURNBULL REPLY TO LETTER

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Reply to letter: Andrew Turnbull: Evidence Counts Against Climate Change Alarmists

Thursday, January 31st 2013, 8:05 AM EST

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Financial Times, 31 January: Sir, Edward Luce “Obama must make up for his carbon omissions”, January 21) writes that “the reality of global warming is starker than four years ago – in most respects alarmingly so”. The evidence points in the opposite direction. Since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produced its last report in 2007, global temperatures, as measured by the HadCRUT3 series, have not increased but have moved sideways, extending the standstill in temperature to more than a decade.

Since carbon dioxide concentrations, seen as the driving force of global warming, have continued unabated, it suggests that something else is at play: the link between CO2 and temperature may not be as strong as assumed in the IPCC model, or other factors such as the sun, oceans or clouds are having a greater influence. Either way, it must call into question the confident assertions based on the prevailing assumptions. As for Arctic ice, its coverage is now back almost exactly to where it was in January 2007.

All this suggests that our climate continues to warm gradually, as it has done since early in the 19th century (which is long before CO2 concentrations started to rise). It may be more plausible to conclude that global warming is around 1°C per century with periods of faster and slower growth fluctuating around the trend, rather than the 3°C predicted by the IPCC. If so what is happening is interesting but it hardly justifies the epithet alarming.

Andrew Turnbull, House of Lords, UK

Source Link: thegwpf.org/

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REPLY TO LETTER

Two letters on Climate Science at OragonLive.com

Wednesday, January 30th 2013, 5:59 AM EST

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Regarding Andreas Schmittner's Jan. 23 letter to the editor: I am a climate scientist who also actively works and publishes in this field. In addition, I study the very topics that Schmittner discusses. Schmittner is wrong when he says that the statement "global temperatures have not risen during the past 15 years" is not true. Most climate scientists agree that that the earth has not warmed during the past 15 years.

Schmittner cites measurements available at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Oceanographic Data Center website as supporting his position. All you will find at this website are graphs and data. There are no statements about earth warming. Inferences about the data come from analysis. My colleagues and I have actually analyzed and published papers using this data. We find no evidence of the earth warming.

In regard to Richard Muller, he is a well-known scientist, but not in this field. The study that he initiated considers data only from land temperatures. One cannot make conclusions about the whole earth without including the oceans.

DAVID DOUGLASS Rochester, N.Y. Douglass is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester.

Source Link: blog.oregonlive.com

MARTIN HERTZBERG REPLY TO LETTER

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Reply to letter: Martin Hertzberg: What Doesn’t Add Up

Saturday, September 15th 2012, 7:14 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Dear all

Shown below is my letter to the editor of the Stanford Alumni Magazine. It appeared only in the on-line edition.

(www.stanfordmag.org). You can probably guess why it was not published in the print edition:

Letter to the Editor: What Doesn’t Add Up

Ted Arbuckle’s letter (“Research Flaws,” July/August) correctly points out that “climate science,” which promotes the fear of anthropogenic global warming, has ignored the scientific method because of the money to be made in perpetuating the theory, in the same way that drug and biomedical research is often biased to produce the desired outcomes given the large sums of money involved. As a result, he points out that those of us who disagree with that fabricated “consensus” have our scientific credentials challenged and are denigrated as “deniers.” Their claim that the science is settled provides them with an excuse for refusing to discuss the science involved.

Arbuckle calls for someone to investigate climate change science because “something doesn’t add up.” So let me try.

I became a graduate student at Stanford after serving as a forecasting and research meteorologist in the U.S. Navy. I had learned what climatologists and meteorologists had known for about a century and what most who call themselves climate scientists apparently never learned. Weather and climate are controlled by natural laws on an enormous scale that dwarfs human activity. Those laws engender forces and motions in our atmosphere and oceans that are beyond human control.

REPLY TO LETTER TOM HARRIS

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Reply to letter: Tom Harris: Suzuki misleads readers, yet again

Sunday, May 13th 2012, 4:33 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Re - "Climate change denial isn’t about science or skepticism", March 13

To the editor:

David Suzuki misleads readers when he writes:

"the revelation that Ottawa’s Carleton University hired Tom Harris, a PR man for a number of “astroturf” groups with a mechanical engineering background, to teach a course on climate change."

It is old news, not a “revelation”, that I taught a climate course at Carleton for the past three years. I was hired because of my teaching and science background as well as my decade of working with the course originator and primary author, Professor Tim Patterson, a leading academic and climate researcher at Carleton.

I am not a "PR man." Like Suzuki, I engage in public education. I have solid training and experience in thermodynamics, heat transfer and fluid mechanics, all relevant to understanding the causes of climate change. How does David Suzuki’s biology background equip him to comment so loudly on the immensely complex atmospheric/oceanic climate system?

Source Link: owensoundsuntimes.com

OPPOSING VIEWS NASA REPLY TO LETTER

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Opposing Views: Reply to letter: Attacks on climate science by former NASA staff shouldn't be taken seriously by Dana Nuccitelli, The Guardian

Thursday, April 12th 2012, 11:18 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

A letter from former administrators, astronauts, and engineers at NASA expressing climate change scepticism does not deserve parity with the agency's peer-reviewed climate scientists

Almost exactly two years ago, John Cook wrote about the 5 characteristics of science denialism. The second point on the list involved fake experts.

"These are individuals purporting to be experts but whose views are inconsistent with established knowledge. Fake experts have been used extensively by the tobacco industry who developed a strategy to recruit scientists who would counteract the growing evidence on the harmful effects of second-hand smoke."

Click source to read FULL report from Dana Nuccitelli at the "Unreliable" (re WUWT classification) SkepticalScience.com site who quotes John Cook and not much else

Source Link: guardian.co.uk/environment

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REPLY TO LETTER

Reply to letter: Global warming? Try global 'cooling' instead by F. E. Slojkowski

Friday, April 6th 2012, 5:57 AM EDT

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

Letter writer Marilyn Chapman fears that we have only five years to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions else “global warming will spiral out of control” (“Global warming threat is real and urgent”, April 3). Perhaps I can help calm Marilyn’s fears by offering her a few facts.

According to the UK Met Office, one of the major repositories of global temperature records, the global temperature database shows that there has been no global warming for the past 15 years in spite of increasing atmospheric CO2. Recently, the Norwegian Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, an agency that monitors Arctic ice conditions, has reported that Arctic ice extent was above normal for this time of year.

Ms. Chapman specifically mentions the need for a “stable climate” to ensure the annual success of food crops. Yes, this past winter was indeed abnormally mild. But, at the same time, Europe suffered under brutal cold and snow. Every study of the cause of recent extreme weather events have found no connection whatsoever to CO2 emissions. For example, a recent peer-reviewed paper reported that the 2010 Russian heat wave was solely due to natural causes. Both tornado activity and hurricane activity are at their lowest levels in decades.

Source Link: dailyrecord.com

WILLIAM ODDIE OPEN LETTER/FAX REPLY TO LETTER OPPOSING VIEWS

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Rely to letter: William Oddie: Is the ‘anthropogenic global warming’ consensus on the point of collapse? If so, this is just the right time for Chris Huhne to leave the Government by

Monday, February 6th 2012, 6:05 PM EST

Co2sceptic (Site Admin)

At the very least, let’s hear no more about this theory being ‘incontrovertible’

As the snow began falling on Saturday, I said to my wife “what do you want to bet that someone will cook up an explanation that all this is caused by global warming”? It was a joke: but when I looked at that morning’s Independent newspaper, there it was already, under the headline “Science behind the big freeze: is climate change bringing the Arctic to Europe?”

The bitterly cold weather sweeping Britain and the rest of Europe has been linked by scientists with the ice-free seas of the Arctic, where global warming is exerting its greatest influence.

A dramatic loss of sea ice covering the Barents and Kara Seas above northern Russia could explain why a chill Arctic wind has engulfed much of Europe and killed 221 people over the past week…

A growing number of experts believe complex wind patterns are being changed because melting Arctic sea ice has exposed huge swaths of normally frozen ocean to the atmosphere above.

Source Link: catholicherald.co.uk