[NatureNS] Re: Birds face longer migrations due to climate

Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:11:37 -0300
From: Stephen Shaw <srshaw@DAL.CA>
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Dr Brian Pratt is a geology professor at Univ Saskatchewan, and one of ~100
signatories to a recent Cato Institute advertizement addressed to Obama, which
has ~4 lines synthesizing a few arguments presented against the idea of 
extreme
future global climate change.  The Cato Inst ad states briefly that that the
IPCC & Al Gore-type climate change predictions are not backed up by the
existing science -- in essence, they are wrong or unproven. See:
http://www.cato.org/special/climatechange/alternate_version.html
The ad says that `The computer models forecasting rapid temperature change
abjectly fail to explain recent climate behavior.`  This is reflected in Dr.
Pratt`s views bluntly expressed in his 2-page article, cited by Lois:
`temperature and regional variations in the last few decades do not 
track rising
CO2 concentration.`
For opinions that the `libertarian` Cato Inst is a mouthpiece for 
corporate aims
and is funded by major global corporations (e.g. tobacco companies) with
perhaps an axe to grind in resisting government regulation, see:
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/cato.html
or, better:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/apr/01/cato-institute/cato-institutes-claim-global-warming-disputed-most/

The opinion shared by Dr. Pratt and Cato that global temperature has not
increased in the last decade (as supposedly predicted by the doomsaying
modellers) is apparently approximately correct, but is misleading and rendered
pointless e.g. by the recent NCDC-NOAA (2008) Annual Report:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2008/ann/global.html

This shows that the actual average surface and troposphere temperatures have
fluctuated, with spikes and troughs in the data since 1958-2008 (see RATPAC
graph in NCDC report above), but the fitted trend is inexorably upwards at
0.12-0.15 degrees C per decade.  Another graph there gives 100 years of data,
and there`s a nicer graph showing steady temperature rise over a long period
also in:
http://www.meltfactor.org/blog/?p=41
which was excerpted from:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Only by dishonestly cherry-picking a selected decade from these data are you
able to state that the temperature has been stationary or gone down -- not the
point when you have 50 years of data that does NOT show this overall. See
politifact blog above.

Dr. Pratt self-describes himself as professionally competent to assess climate
data, so it is surprising that he would endorse the Cato `last-decade` ploy to
disguise the overall multi-decade data trend.  He also makes surprising
comments that CO2 absorbs hardly any `heat` (presumably meaning infrared
radiation, IR) -- but I thought the point was not that it absorbs IR but that
it reflects back IR that has got inside the atmosphere, trapping it so that it
stays here and warms up the ground and sea (the gas itself isn't what stores
the heat, having relatively little heat capacity compared to the mass of the
Earth).  There's other dubious stuff that I'll let someone else have a go at,
and Brian has already drawn attention to the strangely intemperate,
unprofessional tone of his article.
Steve
-------------------------------------

Quoting Lois Codling <loiscodling@hfx.eastlink.ca>:
A good article on global warming on page 10 of the Professional
> Engineers of Saskatchewan magazine.
>
> http://www.apegs.sk.ca/adx/aspx/adxGetMedia.aspx?DocID=2879,16,1054,1061,Documents&MediaID=4272&Filename=Edge119-final.pdf
>
> My husband suggested this one.
>
> Lois Codling


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