next message in archive
next message in thread
previous message in archive
previous message in thread
Index of Subjects
Index of Subjects
Steve Shaw wrote:
> [sent this early but didn't go through, + the URL quoted was wrong,
> now changed]
> Quoting David & Alison Webster <dwebster@glinx.com>:
>
>> Hi Jim & All, Nov 21, 2006
>> I watched that 5th Estate segment & came away with the belief that
>> the global warming story is just another case of activists shooting
>> themselves in the foot while bringing down harm on everyone else. If
>> the case for global warming is so sound then why was so much time
>> spent in attempts to discredit those who question it ? I may have
>> blinked at the wrong time but I don't recall any evidence that the
>> current warming trend is man-made as opposed to being a natural
>> fluctuation.
>
>
> Hi Dave: I didn't see the programme, but I this sounds perversely
> backwards.
> Before any scientific study gets published in a credible journal it
> has to pass
> by 2-3 reviewers who act variably, but some of whom would be only too
> happy to
> be nasty or find something wrong with it -- if you can't be original
> at least
> you can be critical. By contrast, the folks in the White House who
> "edited"
> the climate
> report by scientists (if you saw that recent program too) didn't have
> to answer
> to anyone outside the Bush back room when they altered a foreboding
> prediction
> "will happen" to read only "may possibly happen". A report some
> months ago I
> think from Britain which doesn't seem to have been challenged
> seriously in
> stuff I've seen, concluded that (from memory) the arctic sea ice will
> have
> completely melted in summer in this century, the only uncertainty
> being whether
> it will take 45 or take ~60 years to get there (approx range, from
> memory). Of
> course since it is not 2060 yet, it would be possible to render this
> entirely
> conjectural by amending it to say "possibly may be melted, given certain
> debatable assumptions".
Hi Steve & All, Nov 26, 2006
To rephrase my original comment somewhat differently-- the 5th
Estate segment came after some 30 years of being told in effect "...
trust us, global warming is a real and present danger..." and never
being told why we should accept that conclusion. Learning from 5th
Estate that commercial interests employ the services of spin doctors was
about as informative as learning that dogs often pant in warm weather or
that the Pope is Catholic.
I disagree with almost everything that comes out of the whitewash
house but, in common with many people, I don't want anyone, not even
David Suzuki, to do my thinking for me. My reaction to the segment, and
perhaps the reaction of others who had kept an open mind about global
warming, was "Well, perhaps it is just a ball of hot air". And no, I am
not an agent for the oil or the tobacco industry.
<snip>
>>
>> It is informative to look back a few years and observe the
>> concerns of climatologists in 1975 (H. Lansford, Climate outlook:
>> variable and possibly cooler Smithsonian 6(8): 140- 151). In the best
>> traditions of Laputa, the future in 1975 also looked bleak but then
>> the prospect was cooling of the Northern Hemisphere. "Most
>> climatologists agree on one documented fact-- the Northern Hemisphere
>> has been cooling off for the last quarter-century or so, especially
>> in higher latitudes....This cooling, which began in the 1940s and
>> became more pronounced after 1960, followed a warming trend that had
>> begun in the 1880s....We feel that the downturn of temperature since
>> 1950...represents a trend..." and "...cooler average temperatures in
>> the Northern Hemisphere will continue for 20 or 30 years..."
>> Based on a chart of global temperature over the last 860,000 years
>> included in this 1975 article, on which there are about 10 peak
>> temperatures and 11 glacial advances, we are due for a glacial
>> advance within the next 20,000 years or so.
>> Since this 1975 article was written (I think) these or similar
>> fluctuations in temperature have been explained to a major extent by
>> periodic astronomical fluctuations (orbital distance, axis tilt and
>> (?) sun output). Does anyone know how temperature fluctuations of the
>> last several centuries compare with fluctuations that would be
>> expected on the basis of this astronomical model ? Is the current
>> positive residual exceptional as compared with residuals over the
>> last 15,000 years ? Was this astronomical model constructed from
>> independently established astronomical constants or were the
>> astronomical fluctuations derived by being fitted to the temperature
>> curves ?
>
> You have at least identified a real problem these days in knowing
> what to
> believe and how to validate anything personally. Complex problems like
> this are
> nowadays usually simulated using computer models, the results from
> which cannot
> be guessed by simple intuition. Most of us don't either have the
> programs,
> computing power, input data, expertise, time or money to check the
> findings, so
> have to rely (or not) on people who have, or on indirect reports of
> their work.
> So who would you choose to believe, someone who does this
> professionally using
> government funds that are awarded independent of the result, in a
> competitive
> field, or the major critics who are paid by the oil industry (in at
> least one
> case in the criticism of the hockey stick model of global warming)?
> [Would you
> believe in the word of the tobacco industry execs given on TV ("not
> addictive")
> or that of medical analysts not paid by the tobacco industry ("more
> addictive
> than heroin")? -- there are other examples].
> I don't think a 1975 article can cut it in this context.
The Smithsonian, for a magazine that covers the field from aardvark
to zymosis, does a surprisingly good job of informed and unbiased
reporting. Their take of the day, variable and possibly cooling, is
quite restrained compared to comments attributed to a prominent
climatologist at about this time; copied and pasted from text at
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm#M_52_
these comments, shown within quotation marks, being--
Since the Milankovitch cycles could be computed directly from celestial
mechanics, one could project them forward in time, as Emiliani had done
in 1966. In 1972, presenting more Caribbean cores, he again advised that
"the present episode of amiable climate is coming to an end." Thus "we
may soon be confronted with... a runaway glaciation