l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 August 2, 2012 by David Robertson
Every now and then, someone will try to prevent a debate about global
warming by claiming that a consensus of earth scientists supports the
existence of anthropogenic global warming. Well, that so-called “consensus
” is imaginary.
In July of 2008, The Hindu newspaper (India’s national newspaper) published
an article titled “Challenging the basis of Kyoto Protocol”.
Here is an excerpt from that article:
As western nations step up pressure on India and China to curb the
emission of greenhouse gases, Russian scientists reject the very idea that
carbon dioxide may be responsible for global warming.
Russian critics of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for cuts in CO2
emissions, say that the theory underlying the pact lacks scientific basis.
Under the Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming, it is human-generated
greenhouse gases, and mainly CO2, that cause climate change. “The Kyoto
theorists have put the cart before the horse,” says renowned Russian
geographer Andrei Kapitsa. “It is global warming that triggers higher
levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way round.”
Russian researchers made this discovery while studying ice cores
recovered from the depth of 3.5 kilometres in Antarctica. Analysis of
ancient ice and air bubbles trapped inside revealed the composition of the
atmosphere and air temperature going back as far as 400,000 years.
“We found that the level of CO2 had fluctuated greatly over the period
but at any given time increases in air temperature preceded higher
concentrations of CO2,” says academician Kapitsa, who worked in Antarctica
for many years. Russian studies showed that throughout history, CO2 levels
in the air rose 500 to 600 years after the climate warmed up. Therefore,
higher concentrations of greenhouse gases registered today are the result,
not the cause, of global warming.
Critics of the CO2 role in climate change point out that water vapours
are a far more potent factor in creating the greenhouse effect as their
concentration in the atmosphere is five to 10 times higher than that of CO2.
“Even if all CO2 were removed from the earth atmosphere, global climate
would not become any cooler,” says solar physicist Vladimir Bashkirtsev.
The hypothesis of anthropogenic greenhouse gases was born out of
computer modelling of climate changes. Russian scientists say climate models
are inaccurate since scientific understanding of many natural climate
factors is still poor and cannot be properly modelled. Oleg Sorokhtin of the
Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Ocean Studies, and many other
Russian scientists maintain that global climate depends predominantly on
natural factors, such as solar activity, precession (wobbling) of the Earth
’s axis, changes in ocean currents, fluctuations in saltiness of ocean
surface water, and some other factors, whereas industrial emissions do not
play any significant role. Moreover, greater concentrations of CO2 are good
for life on Earth, Dr. Sorokhtin argues, as they make for higher crop yields
and faster regeneration of forests.
“There were periods in the history of the Earth when CO2 levels were a
million times higher than today, and life continued to evolve quite
successfully,” agrees Vladimir Arutyunov of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Institute of Chemical Physics.
In the July 2008 edition of the American Physical Society’s Forum on
Physics and Society, the forum’s editor states, “There is a considerable
presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the
IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely
to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since
the Industrial Revolution.” (Quote Source)
In March of 2008, Canada.com (owned by Postmedia Network Inc.) published an
article reporting the result of a poll taken by earth scientists in Alberta.
Here is an excerpt from that article:
Only about one in three Alberta earth scientists and engineers believe
the culprit behind climate change has been identified, a new poll reported
today.
The expert jury is divided, with 26 per cent attributing global warming
to human activity like burning fossil fuels and 27 per cent blaming other
causes such as volcanoes, sunspots, earth crust movements and natural
evolution of the planet.
A 99-per-cent majority believes the climate is changing. But 45 per cent
blame both human and natural influences, and 68 per cent disagree with the
popular statement that “the debate on the scientific causes of recent
climate change is settled.”
The divisions showed up in a canvass of more than 51,000 specialists
licensed to practice the highly educated occupations by the Association of
Professional Engineers, Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta.
“We’re not surprised at all,” APEGGA executive director Neil Windsor
said today. “There is no clear consensus of scientists that we know of.”
Then there is Australian rocket scientist David Evans, who used be onboard
the AGW bandwagon. The Australian newspaper published an opinion piece
written by Evans. Here is an excerpt from it:
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the
Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon
accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the
Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and
agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology
and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely
for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions
caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old
ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when
it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific
community were working together and lots of science research jobs were
created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big
budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It
was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon
emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was
pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main
cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When
the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming
and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most
basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and
measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where
in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an
increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere
over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using
radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the
temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot
spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the
cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a
significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse
signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest
IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde
thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had
gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so
statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde
thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a
theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to
estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we
cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you’d
believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause
significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global
warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise
temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no
observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant
cause of the recent global warming.
Evans had political and financial motivation to remain on the AGW bandwagon.
He was being paid to support the belief in anthropogenic global warming.
Yet, when he examined the scientific data, he discovered that the data did
not conform to AGW doctrine.
Also, notice that the scientists quoted above have not denied the
possibility of global warming. Skeptics of AGW have acknowledged the warming
that has occurred, but they dispute the belief that all such warming is
caused by human activity.
On 1 August 2012, Alabama state climatologist Dr. John Christy testified
before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works. Here is an
excerpt from his testimony:
The term “consensus science” will often be appealed to regarding
arguments about climate change to bolster an assertion. This is a form of “
argument from authority.” Consensus, however, is a political notion, not a
scientific notion. As I testified to the Inter-Academy Council in June 2010
, wrote in Nature that same year (Christy 2010), and documented in my
written House Testimony last year (House Space, Science and Technology, 31
Mar 2011) the IPCC and other similar Assessments do not represent for me a
consensus of much more than the consensus of those selected to agree with a
particular consensus.
The content of these climate reports is actually under the control of a
relatively small number of individuals – I often refer to them as the “
climate establishment” – who through the years, in my opinion, came to act
as gatekeepers of scientific opinion and information, rather than brokers.
The voices of those of us who object to various statements and emphases in
these assessments are by-in-large dismissed rather than acknowledged.
This establishment includes the same individuals who become the “
experts” called on to promote IPCC claims in trickle-down fashion to
government reports such as the endangerment finding by the Environmental
Protection Agency. As outlined in my House Testimony, these “experts”
become the authors and evaluators of their own research relative to research
which challenges their work. But with the luxury of having the “last word
” as “expert” authors of the reports, alternative views vanish.
I’ve often stated that climate science is a “murky” science. We do
not have laboratory methods of testing our hypotheses as many other sciences
do. As a result what passes for science includes, opinion, arguments from
authority, dramatic press releases, and fuzzy notions of consensus generated
by a preselected group. This is not science.
So, earth scientists continue debating issues pertaining to global warming.
I don’t know which earth scientists will win those debates. I only know
that global warming has occurred in the past. The Medieval Warm Period is an
example of previous global warming.
I find it odd that someone would deny that periods of global warming took
place prior to the Industrial Revolution. During his testimony before the U.
S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, geophysicist David Deming
stated the following:
I am a geologist and geophysicist. I have a bachelor’s degree in
geology from Indiana University, and a Ph.D in geophysics from the
University of Utah. My field of specialization in geophysics is temperature
and heat flow.
In recent years, I have turned my studies to the history and philosophy
of science. In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal
Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a
warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to
150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for
National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state
that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he
hung up on me.
I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science
was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in
the area of climate change. He said, “We have to get rid of the Medieval
Warm Period.”
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that
began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the “
Little Ice Age” took hold in the 14th century. Warmer climate brought a
remarkable flowering of prosperity, knowledge, and art to Europe during the
High Middle Ages.
The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific
literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those
maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be
“gotten rid of.”
In 1769, Joseph Priestley warned that scientists overly attached to a
favorite hypothesis would not hesitate to “warp the whole course of nature.
” In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of
past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate
became known as the “hockey stick,” because of the shape of the
temperature graph.
Normally in science, when you have a novel result that appears to
overturn previous work, you have to demonstrate why the earlier work was
wrong. But the work of Mann and his colleagues was initially accepted
uncritically, even though it contradicted the results of more than 100
previous studies. Other researchers have since reaffirmed that the Medieval
Warm Period was both warm and global in its extent.
There is an overwhelming bias today in the media regarding the issue of
global warming. In the past two years, this bias has bloomed into an
irrational hysteria. Every natural disaster that occurs is now linked with
global warming, no matter how tenuous or impossible the connection. As a
result, the public has become vastly misinformed on this and other
environmental issues.
Earth’s climate system is complex and poorly understood. But we do know
that throughout human history, warmer temperatures have been associated
with more stable climates and increased human health and prosperity. Colder
temperatures have been correlated with climatic instability, famine, and
increased human mortality.
The amount of climatic warming that has taken place in the past 150
years is poorly constrained, and its cause–human or natural–is unknown.
There is no sound scientific basis for predicting future climate change with
any degree of certainty. If the climate does warm, it is likely to be
beneficial to humanity rather than harmful. In my opinion, it would be
foolish to establish national energy policy on the basis of misinformation
and irrational hysteria.*
[*Statement of Dr. David Deming, U.S. Senate Committee on Environment &
Public Works, Hearing Statements, 12/06/2006.]
That the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon was affirmed in a
press release by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It states
the following:
A review of more than 200 climate studies led by researchers at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has determined that the 20th
century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme
weather of the past 1000 years. The review also confirmed that the Medieval
Warm Period of 800 to 1300 A.D. and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900 A.D.
were worldwide phenomena not limited to the European and North American
continents. While 20th century temperatures are much higher than in the
Little Ice Age period, many parts of the world show the medieval warmth to
be greater than that of the 20th century.
An April 2012 report in Earth and Planetary Science Letters states the
following:
Calcium carbonate can crystallize in a hydrated form as ikaite at low
temperatures. The hydration water in ikaite grown in laboratory experiments
records the δ18O of ambient water, a feature potentially useful for
reconstructing δ18O of local seawater. We report the first downcore δ18O
record of natural ikaite hydration waters and crystals collected from the
Antarctic Peninsula (AP), a region sensitive to climate fluctuations. We are
able to establish the zone of ikaite formation within shallow sediments,
based on porewater chemical and isotopic data. Having constrained the depth
of ikaite formation and δ18O of ikaite crystals and hydration waters, we
are able to infer local changes in fjord δ18O versus time during the late
Holocene. This ikaite record qualitatively supports that both the Medieval
Warm Period and Little Ice Age extended to the Antarctic Peninsula.
So, who is in denial about global warming?
Is it the one who acknowledges the lack of consensus among earth scientists,
or is it the one who denies the lack of consensus, despite statements by
earth scientists that they disagree with AGW doctrine?
Is it the one who acknowledges that the Medieval Warm Period was a global
phenomenon, or is it the one who denies that the Medieval Warm Period was a
global phenomenon, despite scientific evidence that it was a global
phenomenon?
What motivates these deniers? Is it their support of global wealth re-
distribution? Do they own stock in (or work for) a company that sells carbon
credits? Do they own stock in (or work for) a company involved in
renewable energy sources such as wind power and solar power? Do they
directly or indirectly benefit from government grants given for the purpose
of AGW research? Enquiring minds want to know! |
|
