Co2 Acquittal

pmaust · December 3, 2007

Thanks for the replies all. I can see how Dr. Glassman may have stirred way too much controversey with his broad brush criticisms of Climatologists which was a distraction from the technical points he was trying to make. So here is another perspective which seems more to the point without the name calling and such.

Infy, I did look at the IPCC data that you provided in the link. I guess where I am having a problem is with Co2 being the main culprit driving warming. I also looked at the link which suggest that the ocean sink may be saturated. Not having access to the entire article makes it difficult to read much out of it. I immediately thought of several questions regarding that. For example, we know from the paleo records that there have been times when the atmospheric Co2 concentrations were many times higher than now, yet the temperatures in some cases were nearly the same as now. Certainly under those conditions the oceans would have been more acidic than now, and I would expect that there might have been a saturation in the thermohaline circulation as well. Maybe the full article addressed these issues but I just can't tell from the brief write up.

A few years ago a gentleman by the name of Robert Essenhigh wrote this.

Viewpoint: Does CO2 really drive global warming?

Thanks

Paul

InfiniteNow · December 3, 2007

Infy, I did look at the IPCC data that you provided in the link. I guess where I am having a problem is with Co2 being the main culprit driving warming.

Does this graphic help?

It comes from here:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch02.pdf

I also looked at the link which suggest that the ocean sink may be saturated. Not having access to the entire article makes it difficult to read much out of it. I immediately thought of several questions regarding that. For example, we know from the paleo records that there have been times when the atmospheric Co2 concentrations were many times higher than now, yet the temperatures in some cases were nearly the same as now.

First, can you please be specific about which records show this so we can look at them and discuss?

Second, CO₂ is only ONE forcing factor, and despite relatively high CO₂ during a given epoch, there may be other factors causing the overall temperature trends to go down. Essentially, it's not improbable that while atmospheric CO₂ was up other forcing factors were "out weighing" that impact and driving overall temperature trends downward.

Basically, it's misleading to think along those lines... ("how is it that temperatures went down when CO₂ concentrations went up? how do you explain THAT mister smarty pants scientist person?")... because other factors contribute to temperature change. Just because the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ was high while temperatures decreased does not mean that CO₂ wasn't a forcing factor.

When viewing this data, and looking at the information, try to recall that temperature change is due to multiple contributions from several different sources. These sources influence the temperature both up and down, depending on the details of that force and it's intensity, all coupled with what else is happening during the time in question. It's the cumulative effect of all of the forces that dictates what temperature does.

(I apologize for this horrible analogy, but...)

Think of having a really really loud friend who yells all the time. You never struggle to hear him. Yet, one day, you're at a concert, and you cannot hear what he's trying to say due to all of the background noise. Just because you cannot hear your friend at the concert with all of the other noise does not necessarily mean that your friend is not the loudest person in town.

The size of the forcing and the size of the temperature change during a given time period will not, in general, align completely, and this is because of contributions from other factors.

pmaust · December 3, 2007

Infy, thanks for repling and the information. I'll look it over.

pmaust · December 18, 2007

Dr. Glassman responded on this blog. I will quote him here but you can also view them at the rocket science blog.

[RSJ: Hypography Science Forums commentary is welcome, and I am happy to pass on the link.

[in the commentary, you correctly observed,

[He welcomes comments to his work on his web site. I will bring up some of the issues that you folks have brought to the table and see how he replies. Perhaps some of you could chime in there as well. He seems to be inviting reasoned rebuttle or questions.

[Maintaining a single blog is tasking. Sometimes I run a month late researching and composing an answer, and I have been experimenting with quicker posts with promises to answer. In this blog I can respond more or less in a threaded, dialog style to minimize the burdensome restatements. More importantly, the objective of this initial topic in the Rocket Scientist's Journal is to build a self-contained, lasting resource of scientific criticism on the Anthropogenic Global Warming model. The policy is to post all civil comments and to reply, regardless of credentials. You post at the risk of minor edits and in extreme cases, ridicule.

[so, please post any comments or discussion to this site for a fair and honest, if slow, reply. Feel free to extract what you might from anywhere. Links are welcome, but please quote what is important so the reader can follow the argument on a single page. The IPCC routinely relies on citations to papers not freely available or not searchable. This is poor scientific writing, unnecessary, and excessively burdensome on the reader. Copyright material is subject to the fair use exclusion by which it may be freely quoted for the purposes of criticism, commentary, or reporting.

[With that said, here are a couple of comments on the postings in the Science Forum.

[some readers have not recognized that The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide paper analyzes one particular data record, the Vostok ice core data. It is a paleontological record, and so the reader should not expect that the resulting model would have any manmade component. The important new result is the extent to which solubility in water accounts for this ancient record. The analysis has implications for the modern era, of course, because nothing suggests that the science of climate processes changed since Fourier invented the greenhouse model or Keeling his Curve. A massive river of CO2 is flowing around the globe, but just not yet through the GCMs.

[The IPCC GCMs fail to account for the record. They fail to model the circulation of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean and return. They fail to model the Great Conveyor Belt (less accurately known as the thermohaline circulation (THC)) as the main engine of CO2.

[The IPCC GCMs fail, too, to account for the ice ages (not in the Vostok record) or the glacial epochs (some of which are in the Vostok record). A scientific model that doesn't account for all the data in its domain is doomed to be a conjecture. The GCMs either need to be restated in such a way as to objectively exclude the known record, or be revised to account for that record, even if the triggering events are unknown. That is to be valid, the GCMs need to produce ice ages and glacial epochs, even if the timing is off.

[Climatologists have put forth an accounting for the Little Ice Age, resulting in controversy and the disparaging Hockey Stick appellation. What the critics say, and this may have support in the IPCC reports, is that instead of having the models reproduce a Little Ice Age-like event, the climatologists calibrated away the whole event! In the same way, the self-proclaimed Consensus on Climate calibrated away the variations in the CO2 record to make it fit the preconceived notion that the Keeling Curve represents global CO2. See RSJ, "Gavin Schmidt's Response to the Acquittal of CO2 Should Sound the Death Knell for AGW", comment from Sunsettommy dated 11/26/07, and posted today.

[As to peer review, this is now the coward's refuge. The peer review process is broken, and nowhere so badly as in this field. Climate journals are under control of the Consensus on Climate, and they have a long record of failing to publish criticism. See RSJ, The Acquittal of Carbon Dioxide, response to Jeff Steward, dated 3/22/07. Furthermore, the peer review process is far too slow. DARPA founded the Internet on the need to improve technical communications. Let it be so. Posting a paper on the Internet is publication.

[The observation that the IPCC Reports are not peer reviewed stands as a counterpoint to the claim that its criticism must be peer reviewed. Peer review is never self-review, no matter how many authors might be named. The response that the IPCC Reports make extensive reference to published data and published, peer reviewed papers is to the IPCC's discredit because the organization fails to quote sufficiently from those papers, because the papers are only available for a fee (science for sale), and because the sources often prove unsupportive of the claims. Examples available on request. I look forward to the Freedom of Information Act next year forcing the IPCC to make every citation and data source freely available, on line, and at least Mac accessible. Let the UN pay for any copyright fees.

[Thank you for asking InfinteNow to justify some of his accusatory comments. You missed a few of his excesses. He first quotes from the Abstract, then claims that it "opens the entire presentation". Actually, Part I, Introduction does that. He again quotes from the Abstract to a paper critical of the IPCC results, and points to a link to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report to show that results of the paper are wrong. He accuses me of "classic denialist tactics", a term he freshly minted without example or definition. He objects to the Introduction stating that the climatologists have been unable to reproduce the ice ages and glacial periods, providing two entirely irrelevant links.

[The question of the presentation of data is not so much graphical as it is substituting eyeball correlation of snippets of smoothed data for numerical calculations (and presentation) of correlation. The problem is one of quantitative signals in noise. It's not a matter of "doesn't this look convincing held this way"?

[infiniteNow lifts single sentences out of The Acquittal to say they are unsupported. Then he lifts another to say, "It doesn't matter how many times he says the same thing. It's still unsupported and without basis in evidence." He never mentions the Vostok record or the data analysis, though. This is an exquisite example of out-of-context argumentation. It is snide.

[For more on the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, see RSJ, "On Why CO2 Is Known Not To Have Accumulated in the Atmosphere & What Is Happening With CO2 in the Modern Era". You might also be interested in the following recently posted by me in response to comments on another website.

[The IPCC conjectures that ACO2 is buffered more than is nCO2. The laws and theories of solubility have to change one of two ways for that to happen. The primary law, Henry's Law, says that the solubility of a gas in water is proportional to the partial pressure of the gas in the water, and the constant of proportionality, Henry's Coefficient, is inversely proportional to the temperature. This is the physics of the carbonated drink. The climatologists have modified this law legitimately, apparently, by making the coefficient also slightly sensitive to salinity (at least a hypothesis, perhaps a theory).

[The IPCC needs Henry's Coefficient to be different for ACO2 than it is for nCO2. Furthermore, it wants the coefficient to be dependent on the concentration of certain ions in the water so as to create a buffering effect. These could be so, but they are just more conjectures. As it stands, the IPCC model that any kind of CO2 is buffered by the ocean requires a change to pretty well-known physics.

[As a part of the IPCC version of ocean chemistry, it shows three models for processes called pumps or carbon pumps in Figure 7.10, Fourth Assessment Report, page 530. IPCC AR4 WG1 Final Figures, page 11. These three pumps, the "solution pump", the "organic carbon pump", and the "CaCO3 counter pump" are likely to be the quick, the medium, and the slow speed absorption models, respectively. The first has a time constant of one to a few years, and the latter takes 35,000 years to make rocks.

[One of these is not chemical. It is the Solubility Pump, which the IPCC calls the "solution pump". This is the mechanism by which CO2 enters the water to create a reservoir of molecular CO2. It circulates around the globe in the Great Conveyor Belt where CO2 is absorbed as the ocean cools and moves poleward, and CO2 is outgassed primarily in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific. This outgassing is about 16 times as great as ACO2 emissions, according to the IPCC. The Conveyor Belt and the pool of molecular CO2 are omitted from Figure 7.10.

[The IPCC calls the Conveyor Belt the thermohaline circulation (THC). The name Conveyor Belt doesn't sound so scientific, but it's probably a better name. The name THC emphasizes the flow of heat and salt, important but overlooking the crucial CO2 circulation. Many of the IPCC's Global Climate Models represent a vertical column of radiative forcing stuff and have no provisions for lateral flow, which is where almost all of the CO2 circulation occurs.

[The other two pumps, the Organic Carbon Pump and the CaCO3 Counter Pump, are chemical processes. A minor error in Figure 7.10 has the flow of carbon to the atmosphere connected backwards for the CaCO2 Counter Pump. Regardless, the chemical processes are quite unlikely to react with atmospheric, molecular CO2! Chemical pumps need to access ions. A better conjecture is that the models should be connected instead to a reservoir of molecular CO2 in the water, fed by the solubility pump, and the place where ionization first occurs. In this version, the conjectured pool of molecular CO2 is a buffer that supports the solubility pump and feeds the other two pumps so that all three pumps can operate without interfering with (buffering) one another. This model challenges the notion that ocean chemistry buffers against the dissolution of CO2 in water.]

I very much look forward to continuing this discussion. This is how I learn. I also found a fascinating paper written by: Robert H. Essenhigh

E.G. Bailey Professor of Energy Conversion; Department of Mechanical Engineering

201 West 19th. Avenue; The Ohio State University; Columbus, OH: 43210

Ph: 614-292-0403; Fax: 614-292-3163

More about him here ==> Mechanical Engineering Faculty - Robert Essenhigh

Does Co2 really drive global warming? ==> Viewpoint: Does CO2 really drive global warming?

I have a copy of his revised manuscript February 2006 entitled

Prediction of the Standard Atmosphere Profiles of Temperature,
Pressure, and Density with Height for the Lower Atmosphere by
Solution of the (S-S) Integral Equations of Transfer and Evaluation
of the Potential for Profile Perturbation by Combustion Emissions

In this paper Dr. Essenhigh reaches this conclusion:

7. Conclusions
The agreement shown in Figures 1 and 2 between the
prediction-model equations and the Standard Atmosphere
experimental results supports the conclusion that the dominant
factor governing the temperature, pressure, and density profiles
in the atmosphere is radiative (quasi)-equilibration, governed
by the S-S integral radiative Equation of Transfer, even in the
approximate form needed for analytical solution. Convection
behavior, possibly influenced strongly by short-distance and lowlevel
absorption of the shorter wavelength bands, most likely
is important as a short term perturbing and mixing factor, but
does not appear to be dominant in setting the Standard
Atmosphere (quasi-)steady-state profiles.
The further critical conclusion is that the analytical solution
to the governing integral equation, with the stated approximations,
is also well-supported by the agreement between the
prediction forms and the experimental data. This conclusion
applies primarily to the structural/functional form of the
equations. The numerical values of the related coefficients may
be less certain, and these will most likely be modified by more
detailed numerical solution(s) of the related equations. However,
this does not invalidate or void the primary factor of support of
the functional form(s) of the solution equations.
The principal predictions and conclusions thus supported are
then
(1) the (approximately) linear variation of T4 with pressure,
P (eq 21, Figure 4);
(2) the (approximately) linear decline of T with altitude, h,
up to the tropopause (eq 23, Figure 1);
(3) the more complete, nonlinear solutions for the variation
of pressure, P, and density, F, with altitude, h, up to 20-30 km
(eqs 6, 20, and 23, Figure 2);
(4) the operational validity of the dependence of the group
pair (kp) on density (eq 7) with the value of n determined as
unity and constant; and
(5) that the equations show no evident potential for “forcing”
or bifurcation behavior that would result in any significant
change in the temperature profile because of “small” increments
in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide.
Using these results, identification of the governing absorbing
emitting gases and bands is still incomplete, but the balance of
evidence does at this time support the importance of the longer
wavelength bands of both water and CO2 and, also, the evident
dominance of the water bands, even with water at about the
same concentration as CO2 at the higher altitudes. The remaining
factor for evaluation is now seen to be the independent
prediction of the effective absorption coefficient (and corresponding
concentration) for the mixed gases, written at this time
in the combined form, (kp)0. A separate prediction of this
parameter, if in agreement with the values given here, would
then provide numerical closure on the calculations. It will also
provide the required basis for further exploration of the potential
impact on “climate change” of increases in carbon dioxide from
fossil-fuel combustion.

I have the complete paper in pdf form. As far as I know, it is not up on the web but if anyone is interested, I can email it to you.

I look forward to your reasoned responses to this very important topic.

Paul

InfiniteNow · December 18, 2007

He is using denialist tactics. I did not freshly mint it AND I supplied a link.

He is making broad accuasations with no detail. He is not specific in his claims of inaccuracy.

He also is arguing against the entire process of peer review, and this is a crackpot method of supporting one's own approach.

Pmaust - I've read the response you received. I've answered your questions openly AND specifically. I've given citation, and explanation of every point I've made, and in supporting my assertions never attacked his character (although, I admittedly did this on first read due to my extreme disgust, but it was never in support of my own position).

His response has offered nothing new.

His response did not counter anything I shared with specific examples. It simply painted with the broad brush of someone who is attempting to sew the seeds of doubt.

You can appraoch this however you want. Believe whatever you want. I'm not going to keep fighting you with the truth. Go find it for yourself, and stop listening to what other people tell you.

In short, his response to you does not warrant further evidence be offered by me. He has done nothing further to support his claims or counter mine. All he's done is try to spin the issue in such a way that you might perchance believe him if you're not paying close enough attention.

Go find your own truth. I will address specific questions, but not this non-specific and unsupported attack on the entire domain of scientific literature and research which he's focussed on the IPCC and global climate change research as a whole.

Turtle · December 18, 2007

Of course, many scientists have well-reasoned skeptical views on anthropogenic CO2. To whit:

The real deal?

...Dr. Shariv's digging led him to the surprising discovery that there is no concrete evidence -- only speculation -- that man-made greenhouse gases cause global warming. Even research from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- the United Nations agency that heads the worldwide effort to combat global warming -- is bereft of anything here inspiring confidence. In fact, according to the IPCC's own findings, man's role is so uncertain that there is a strong possibility that we have been cooling, not warming, the Earth. Unfortunately, our tools are too crude to reveal what man's effect has been in the past, let alone predict how much warming or cooling we might cause in the future. ...

PS Has anyone tabbed up how much CO2 and other combustion pollutants are gettin' spewed traveling to these remote pristine areas and the conferences? If we ain't growin' it, we're blowin' it. :camera: :)

InfiniteNow · December 18, 2007

Of course, many scientists have well-reasoned skeptical views on anthropogenic CO2. To whit:

The real deal?

Where have Nir Shariv's studies been published? I find ZERO studies of his online. Seems like more handwaving, smoke, and mirrors.

Prove me wrong. Please.

EDIT: Looks like the article to which Turt linked us misspelled his name throughout. A quick search with proper spelling (Nir Shaviv) turned up the following:

:: SCRIPPS OCEANOGRAPHY NEWS : : Cosmic Rays are Not the Cause of Climate Change, Scientists Say ::

In July 2003, astrophysicist Nir Shaviv and geologist Jan Veizer wrote in GSA Today that they had established a correlation between cosmic rays and temperature evolution over hundreds of millions of years. They also claimed that current global warming is not primarily caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide. Their findings have been widely reported in international news media.

According to Rahmstorf, Shaviv and Veizer's analyses-and especially their conclusions-are scientifically ill-founded. The data on cosmic rays and temperature so far in the past are extremely uncertain, he says. Further, their reconstruction of ancient cosmic rays is based on only 50 meteorites, and most other experts interpret their significance in a very different way, he says. He adds that two curves presented in the article show an apparent statistical correlation only because the authors adjusted the data, in one case by 40 million years. In short, say the authors of the Eos article, Shaviv and Veizer have not shown that there is any correlation between cosmic rays and climate.

As for the influence of carbon dioxide in climate change, many climatologists were surprised by Shaviv and Veizer's claim that their results disproved that current global warming was caused by human emissions, Rahmstorf says.

Even if their analysis were methodologically correct, their work applied to time scales of several million years.

The current climate warming has, however, occurred during just the past one hundred years, for which completely different mechanisms are relevant, he says. For example, over millions of years, the shifting of continents influences climate, while over hundreds of thousands of years, small changes in Earth's orbit can initiate or terminate ice ages. But for time periods of years, decades, or centuries, these processes are irrelevant.

EDIT2: A more full rebuttal (conclusion only below, please click the link to see the details. It matters):

Cosmic Rays, Carbon Dioxide and Climate: Rebuttal of Shaviv and Veizer

Two main conclusions result from our analysis of [shaviv and Veizer, 2003]. The first is that the correlation of cosmic ray flux (CRF) and climate over the past 520 m.y. appears to not hold up under scrutiny. Even if we accept the questionable assumption that meteorite clusters give information on CRF variations, we find that the evidence for a link between CRF and climate amounts to little more than a similarity in the average periods of the CRF variations and a heavily smoothed temperature reconstruction. Phase agreement is poor. The authors applied several adjustments to the data to artificially enhance the correlation. We thus find that the existence of a correlation has not been convincingly demonstrated.

Our second conclusion is independent of the first. Whether there is a link of CRF and temperature or not, the authors’ estimate of the effect of a CO2-doubling on climate is highly questionable. It is based on a simple and incomplete regression analysis which implicitly assumes that climate variations on time scales of millions of years, for different configurations of continents and ocean currents, for much higher CO2 levels than at present, and with unaccounted causes and contributing factors, can give direct quantitative information about the effect of rapid CO2 doubling from pre-industrial climate. The complexity and non-linearity of the climate system does not allow such a simple statistical derivation of climate sensitivity without a physical understanding of the key processes and feedbacks. We thus conclude that [shaviv and Veizer, 2003] provide no cause for revising current estimates of climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

EDIT3: Nir Shaviv is also debunked here:

RealClimate » Fun with correlations!

Shall I continue? :)

InfiniteNow · December 18, 2007

Pmaust -

What I hope you will notice is how specific the rebuttals and debunking of such claims are. You should note how unspecific and vague the rebuttals against the IPCC are.

Within 5 minutes, I could find a counter to every claim made by these denialists. There's good reason it's not so easy to do this with the work done by the IPCC.

Read it for yourself. Study, learn, ask... don't be led like a sheep by spinsters. Also, don't just stick with the executive summaries. Drill down into the parts that interest you. If you question something, look at the reference and explore that. It's a lot of work, yes, but it's worth it to find your own truth. :)

IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Working Group I Report "The Physical Science Basis"

Turtle · December 18, 2007

The rebuttal has all the catch phrases they criticize. Not surprising.

Read the sunspots

The mud at the bottom of B.C. fjords reveals that solar output drives climate change - and that we should prepare now for dangerous global cooling

R. TIMOTHY PATTERSON, Financial Post
Published: Wednesday, June 20, 2007

...
Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists. ...

Try and paint me whatever shade of black you care, but I'll match my carbon footprint against anyones'. If you're not a recluse in a cold house on a restricted caloric intake, growing some of your own food, no need to apply. :camera: :)

InfiniteNow · December 18, 2007

The rebuttal has all the catch phrases they criticize. Not surprising.

Read the sunspots

This study was published July of this year in the Procedings of the Royal Society:

The Royal Society - Article

There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection-attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the twentieth century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.

Btw, I've shown this to you before, Turtle.

Also, if you look at post #19 of this very thread, you will see the following which shows the impact of solar forcing relative to other factors:

It comes from here:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch02.pdf

If you are genuinely curious about solar irradiance, then the below graphic should be of interest to you:

...and this story in Nature:

Variations in solar luminosity and their effect on the Earth's climate : Abstract : Nature

Variations in the Sun's total energy output (luminosity) are caused by changing dark (sunspot) and bright structures on the solar disk during the 11-year sunspot cycle. The variations measured from spacecraft since 1978 are too small to have contributed appreciably to accelerated global warming over the past 30 years. In this Review, we show that detailed analysis of these small output variations has greatly advanced our understanding of solar luminosity change, and this new understanding indicates that brightening of the Sun is unlikely to have had a significant influence on global warming since the seventeenth century.

Here's yet another:

RealClimate » The lure of solar forcing

This is not to say that there is no solar influence on climate change, only that establishing such a link is more difficult then many assume. What is generally required is a consistent signal over a number of cycles (either the 11 year sunspot cycle or more long term variations), similar effects if the timeseries are split, and sufficient true degrees of freedom that the connection is significant and that it explains a non-negligible fraction of the variance. These are actually quite stiff hurdles and so the number of links that survive this filter are quite small. In some rough order of certainty we can consider that the 11 year solar cycle impacts on the following are well accepted: stratospheric ozone, cosmogenic isotope production, upper atmospheric geopotential heights, stratospheric temperatures and (slightly less certain and with small magnitudes ~0.1 deg C) tropospheric and ocean temperatures. More marginal are impacts on wintertime tropospheric circulation (like the NAO). It is also clear that if there really was a big signal in the data, it would have been found by now. The very fact that we are still arguing about statisitical significance implies that whatever signal there is, is small.

It has been extremely well documented now that solar changes since about 1950 have a very minimal forcing, and maybe even negative.

Here's some more food for thought:

Solar influence on climate during the past millennium: Results from transient simulations with the NCAR Climate System Model -- Ammann et al. 104 (10): 3713 -- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Changes in Solar Brightness Too Weak to Explain Global Warming - News Release

http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf

Max Planck Society - Press Release

Final Report of Synthesis and Assessment Product 1.1

ATMOSPHERE: Global Change in the Upper Atmosphere -- Laštovička et al. 314 (5803): 1253 -- Science

Finally, from here:

Global Warming -- Research Issues

... an easy to understand pretty picture for those who don't read as much.

I must say, Turtle, you never struck me as a person to make an argument using denialist tactics... someone to sew the seeds of doubt instead of supporting your position. I mean this with all due respect, but you can do better.

Turtle · December 18, 2007

The problem is that there is always "yet another article" trying to prove a point one way or another. The political aspect of this whole thing is unfortunate. Science shouldn't be political in my view but it is. ...Thanks

Paul

THAT, is really the issue. Here's more fuel for the carbon fueled fire. :phones: >>

Global Warming, climate change facts

Monday, February 5, 2007

Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

...

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

InfiniteNow · December 18, 2007

THAT, is really the issue. Here's more fuel for the carbon fueled fire. :phones: >>

Global Warming, climate change facts

You should also check your sources:

Tim Ball - SourceWatch

Dr. Timothy Ball is Chairman and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP). Two of the three directors of the NRSP - Timothy Egan and Julio Lagos - are executives with the PR and lobbying company, the High Park Group (HPG). Both HPG and Egan and Lagos work for energy industry clients and companies on energy policy.

Ball is a Canadian climate change skeptic and was previously a "scientific advisor" to the oil industry-backed organization, Friends of Science. Ball is a member of the Board of Research Advisors of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, a Canadian free-market think tank which is predominantly funded by foundations and corporations.

<...>

The website of Friends of Science quotes Ball stating that "the Kyoto Protocol is a political solution to a non-existent problem without scientific justification." Ball has has even argued that climate change and global warming would be good for us. "A warmer Canada would improve our lives in these and other ways too numerous to list. Global warming? Let's hope so," he wrote in June 2006.

In January 2007 in a column on the Canadian website, Straight.com, Mitchell Anderson wrote of Ball that "Over the past five years, he has published no less than 39 opinion pieces and 32 letters to the editor in 24 Canadian newspapers. Fifty of these pieces ran in papers owned by CanWest MediaWorks. These efforts totalled an incredible 44,500 words."

Among his unorthodox views, published as recently as last month in the Calgary Sun:

Global temperatures have declined since 1998 in direct contradiction to computer models on which the Kyoto Accord is based.
Ice-core records show that temperature rises before CO2 rises, not because of it.
Evidence is mounting that pre-industrial levels of CO2 may have been much higher than the 280 parts per million assumed by environmentalists to have existed at that time.
New research shows that changes in the energy output of the sun account for most of the recent warming and cooling of our planet.
The primary evidence of human influence on climate, the famous 'hockey stick' temperature-trends graph of climatologist Michael Mann, has been debunked as manipulated and wrong."

This work directly rebuts the claims of Tim Ball:

RealClimate » The lag between temperature and CO2. (Gore’s got it right.)

...as does this:

Limits on climate sensitivity derived from recent satellite and surface observations

... but, I like this one the best:

Tim Ball Rewrites the "Truth" Once More | DeSmogBlog

Ball says that the whole theory of climate change - a theory endorsed by everyone from the Royal Society and the American Academies of Science to ExxonMobil - is part of a left-wing plot to de-industrialize society. Well, it's interesting to see Alcoa Inc. (AA), BP America Inc. (BP), DuPont Co. (DD), Caterpillar Inc. (CAT), General Electric Co. (GE), and Duke Energy Corp. joining the "socialist plot" by calling for mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions .

It is difficult to address the nature of Ball's arguments without straying into something that looks like an ad hominem attack. But when someone says things that are bizarre (the anti-industrial plot), misleading (the temperature decline) or demonstrably false (the normality of current weather or the details of Ball's own academic credentials), it seems that someone should rise to shout him off the stage.

There's always someone who is going to say what you want to hear. It's a good idea to check their data before cowering to it.

Andrew Kantor's Place:* Timothy Ball: Opinion without evidence

Buffy · December 18, 2007

Keep it clean fellows: you've each lost one content-free post.

Thank you for your cooperation....

Buffy

Turtle · December 18, 2007

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