[outmywindow]

Who knew that this topic could turn into a highly charged debate.

The original posting of the "web-link" was meant as a helpful guideline for future waterfront property purchase decisions in lieu of rising water levels.

http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=43.325....6015&z=13&m=7

[AMG]

Well, this topic is about the hottest everywhere today...

I am following it on some dedicated blogs and will not post my opinions here, but I can say that the more I learn, from the blogosphere and all of the IPCC reports, the less I know what to believe.

Here is a guy turning some stones; http://www.climateaudit.org/

[airship]

Fortunatley I live in a town which is 1250ft above sea level and was not affected, but where I live it's easy to find fossils of sea life. In fact when I was in Peru in the Andes, the mountain people up there collected salt. Why is salt there, because it's left from times when they were covered in the sea.

I stand to be corrected (by First Pericles) or others a little less ignorant than myself obviously, but I believe the reason you might find salt or those fossils up in the mountains mr_sunseeker, has more to do with plate tectonics than global warming (or cooling). Unless of course, that's even more propaganda by other political agencies whose funding depends upon perpetrating such claptrap.

[catmando]

Originally Posted by First Pericles

Airship,

What a mauldling screed you posted. You are no geographer, that's for sure. The so called acceleration you are carping on about is insignificant. The science speaks for itself, but you have an almost religious belief in the propaganda of the political agencies whose funding depends upon perpetrating such claptrap. You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.

The total concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is just 0.054%, a very minuscule amount. Humans contribute much less than 1% of that. Volcanoes produce significantly more CO2 per year than humans, whilst plants and animals produce 150 gigatons of CO2 each year. Dying leaves produce even more CO2, and that the oceans are "the biggest source of CO2 by far." Human activity produces a "mere" 6.5 gigatons of CO2 each year. Man-made CO2 emissions therefore cannot be causing global warming.

Too bad you are saddened my unsympathetic stance, but that's your burden, not mine. As for your last paragraph, I have absolutely no idea what you are mumbling on about. It's certain that you did not read any of the links I posted otherwise you would not have posted here. And now, back to boats.

First Pericles

If the science "speaks for itself", why are more than 95% of climate scientists convinced that human production of greenhouse gasses through the internal combustion engine and other sources contribute to global warming? Maybe you should be sending all that material to them rather than us. We can't do anything about it. They can.

[goplay]

Purchasing consumer carbon credits is like: beating someone up and giving to the hospital charity... it may absolve your conscience but the person you beat up is still... beat up.

Don't be a hyprocrite. If you believe in reducing carbon emissions, then start doing it. Anything else and you are fooling yourself.

[First Pericles]

Catmando,

If only the science were allowed to "speak for itself". Politics and money are at work here.

"Funding for promoters of the theory

Atmospheric scientist Reid Bryson said in a June, 2007 interview that "There is a lot of money to be made in this... If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'"[13]

Accuracy in Media published a report in 2002 entitled "Science for Sale: the Global Warming Scam," in which they allege that "global warming is driven more by the search for funding than the search for scientific truth."[110] A similar claim is made by various scientists [111] : NASA's Roy Spencer says that climate scientists need for there to be problems to get more funding. Climatologist and IPCC contributor John Christy says of climate scientists, “We have a vested interest in creating panic because money will then flow to climate scientists.” University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that “If the global warming farrago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of jobs.”

Richard S. Lindzen, who is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes the specific claim that "[i]n the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost National Science Foundation funding for data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century." Lindzen also suggests four other scientists "apparently" lost their funding or positions after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming.[112] Lindzen himself has been the recipient of money from energy interests such as OPEC and the Western Fuels Association, including "$2,500 a day for his consulting services."[14]

French climatologist and author Marcel Leroux makes a claim similar to that of Lindzen's: "In the end, global warming is more and more taking on an aspect of manipulation, which really looks like a "scientific" deception, and of which the first victims are the climatologists who receive funding only when their work goes along with the IPCC." (translated from French) [113]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

AMG, About Steve McIntyre.

Heavy!
http://www.climateaudit.org/pdf/mcintyre.grl.2005.pdf

Easier! http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/mai...climate116.xml

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/200...tter_gues.html

I love the last couple of paragraphs relating to incorrect data.

"One more story to conclude. Non-compliant surface stations were reported in the formal academic literature by Pielke and Davey (2005) who described a number of non-compliant sites in eastern Colorado. In NOAA’s official response to this criticism, Vose et al (2005) said in effect -

it doesn’t matter. It’s only eastern Colorado. You haven’t proved that there are problems anywhere else in the United States.

In most businesses, the identification of glaring problems, even in a restricted region like eastern Colorado, would prompt an immediate evaluation to ensure that problems did not actually exist. However, that does not appear to have taken place and matters rested until Anthony Watts and the volunteers at surfacestations.org launched a concerted effort to evaluate stations in other parts of the country and determined that the problems were not only just as bad as eastern Colorado, but in some cases were much worse.

Now in response to problems with both station quality and adjustment software, Schmidt and Hansen say in effect, as NOAA did before them -

it doesn’t matter. It’s only the United States. You haven’t proved that there are problems anywhere else in the world."

First Pericles

[outmywindow]

FP your not being very convincing. The only conclusion summarized in you post is that scientists on both sided of the global warming dispute are fighting for a piece of the "funding pie".
Since you have tunnel vision on the subject, here is the "other" side of the debate you don't seem to recognise...
__________________________________________________ _____________
The Global Warming Denial Lobby
Harper: Canada is key to defeating Kyoto The people out to 'poison the debate on climate change.'
By Donald Gutstein
Published: May 2, 2006


TheTyee.ca
In early April, the Financial Post published a letter addressed to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and signed by 60 "accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines," as they describe themselves. They want Harper to begin a debate on the Kyoto Protocol.

Begin a debate? What do they think has been happening since 1988, when US National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist James Hansen testified before the US Congress that he was "99 percent certain that global warming was here." That statement has been subjected to extensive, prolonged and worldwide scrutiny ever since.

The point of their letter is to deny "alarmist forecasts" of global warming and to attack "the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups" whose goal is to capture "sensational headlines."

The letter is classic climate change denial and among the 60 signatories -- only 19 of whom are Canadian -- are the most prominent climate change sceptics, as they are frequently called.

The deniers' letter was followed two weeks later by one from 90 supporters of Kyoto. This group calls itself "climate science leaders from the academic, public and private sectors across Canada." No foreigners, no weasel phrases like "related scientific disciplines" (economics? agronomy?). Their point? The evidence is conclusive that warming has occurred and most of it is attributable to human activity.

These conclusions, they say, are supported by the vast majority of the world's climate scientists. Harper's assignment is to get on with developing an "effective national strategy" to deal with climate change.

More debate or action?

Financial Post editor Terence Corcoran seems to think that more debate is required. He did run the letter from the Kyoto supporters but accompanied it with an editorial attacking their credibility. Their crime is that some of them are federal government scientists and some have received peer-reviewed government grants. Therefore, what they have to say must be rubbish.

The problem with libertarians like Corcoran is that they can be so blinded by their ideology -- anything government does is bad -- that they don't see the problems a powerful corporate sector can cause. Call it a case of libertarian looneyism.

Funded by Exxon Mobil

The 60 deniers had no Corcoran editorial accompanying their letter. A question Corcoran might have asked is how many of the deniers are funded by Exxon Mobil and the coal industry?

It's a natural question to pose. The fossil fuel industry doesn't want mandatory limits on CO2 emissions because they would affect profits. It wants Canada and the rest of the world to do what George W. Bush did, establish voluntary standards and provide government subsidies to develop cleaner technologies.

To update his knowledge on this issue, Corcoran could read the works of Ross Gelbspan, who has been covering climate change for more than a decade as a reporter for the Boston Globe. Gelbspan discovered in 1995 that some of the leading skeptics were funded by the coal industry. He wrote a book in 1997, The Heat is On, and runs the companion web site, The Heat is Online. Gelbspan's recent book is Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists are Fueling the Climate Crisis -- and What We Can Do to Avoid Disaster.

Corcoran could also check out the May/June 2005 issue of Mother Jones, which tabulated the organizations that received funding from Exxon Mobil between 2000 and 2003 to fight CO2 emission controls.

And he could look at the SourceWatch site created by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton.

Using these sources, Corcoran could put together some interesting profiles of the skeptics. Sallie Baliunas is a non-Canadian signatory to the deniers letter. She is a Harvard-Smithsonian Institute astrophysicist who has been giving global warming deniers scientific cover since the mid-1990s. She is a senior scientist at the George C. Marshall Institute (received $310,000 from Exxon Mobil). She co-wrote (with colleague Willie Soon, who did not sign the skeptics letter) the Fraser Institute pamphlet "Global warming: a guide to the science." (The Fraser Institute receives $60,000 a year from Exxon Mobil.) Baliunas is "enviro-sci" host of TechCentralStation.com (received $95,000 from Exxon Mobil) and is on science advisory boards of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000) and the Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy ($427,500). She has given speeches before the American Enterprise Institute ($960,000) and the Heritage Foundation ($340,000). The Heartland Institute ($312,000) publishes her op-ed pieces.
Why is Exxon Mobil so taken with Baliunas? With her colleague Willie Soon, she first claimed that solar effects could account for the earth's warming. When that theory was debunked, they next wrote a paper, partially funded by the American Petroleum Institute says Mother Jones, that claims the twentieth century hasn't been all that warm. The paper quickly became a mini-bible for deniers. But the editor of the journal where the paper was published resigned, saying it never should have been published because of a deficient peer-review process.
Exxon Mobil has been astonishingly successful in delaying action on global warming for more than a decade. During that time, oil revenues soared, Exxon took over Mobil for US $82 billion and in 2005, the combined company earned the largest profit in human history at $36 billion.

That was the year Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond retired. As thanks for his work on behalf of shareholders -- the stock price soared over 500 percent over the decade -- he received a retirement package valued at nearly $400 million.

Sceptic in demand

Closer to home, one of the 19 Canadian signatories to the skeptics letter is Tim Ball, a retired professor of climatology from the University of Winnipeg, now living in Victoria. As a global-warming sceptic, he is in high demand by the front groups sponsored by the fossil fuel industry.

Ball's particular niche is the argument that since 1940, the world's climate has actually been cooling. The conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reached by over 2,000 climate scientists, that the world is heating up is wrong, he says, because it used "distorted records."

Undistorted records in hand, Ball is promoted by the National Center for Public Policy Research ($225,000 from Exxon Mobil), and Tech Central Station (which also receives support from General Motors). He's a hot topic on the Coalblog web site, sponsored by the coal companies. In the past year, he's given policy briefings to the Fraser Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg.
You could have found him and Baliunas at a conference in Ottawa in November 2002, just days before parliament ratified the Kyoto Protocol. That conference, urging the government not to proceed with ratification, was paid for by Imperial Oil (Exxon Mobil's Canadian subsidiary) and Talisman Energy and put together by public relations firm APCO Worldwide.

APCO's assignment for Imperial Oil was to bring together a roster of climate change skeptics to reveal Kyoto's "science and technology fatal flaws."

An APCO specialty is supporting rogue scientists who are financed by industry and purport to challenge established scientific thinking. APCO organized The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, which was originally funded by the Philip Morris Company, to attack epidemiological studies which implicated environmental tobacco smoke in slightly increased rates of lung cancer in non-smokers. Such studies could not be allowed to stand, given the tobacco industry's claim that harm from smoking was regrettable but due to individual choice, not second-hand smoke. This work was essential in Philip Morris' efforts to limit the impact of passive smoking regulations. APCO then widened the financial catchment to include other companies with poisoning or polluting problems. The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition was so successful that it was assigned a lead role in opposing Kyoto.

Vancouver PR whistleblower

And that makes Jim Hoggan mad. Hoggan runs one of the largest PR firms in Western Canada. PR practitioners rarely criticize the work of their colleagues, but Hoggan pulls no punches in his scathing denunciation of the global warming deniers and their public relations advisors.

In December 2005, he set up his blog, which he calls deSmogBlog. In his personal manifesto, "Slamming the Climate Skeptic Scam," he writes "it is infuriating -- as a public relations professional -- to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change."

It's powerful reading.

Hoggan recently broke the story that one of the 19 Canadian deniers had recanted, saying he was misled about the letter's content when he signed on.

And Hoggan has a large pro bono practice in which he represents clients like the David Suzuki Foundation, one of the most consistent targets of the deniers. He's also creating a market niche around the issue of sustainability.

In a recent post, Hoggan discusses a column by Globe and Mail columnist John Ibbitson, who complains that here's a letter from 90 scientists urging action; there's a letter from 60 scientists urging Harper to ignore calls to action. "What's a layman to do?" Ibbitson whines.

His solution? Forget about global warming and instead work with the US to improve air quality. "After all," he writes, "a continental agreement on air quality would do far more to improve the lives of both Americans and Canadians than any actions specifically targeted at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."

It's called bait and switch. We're alarmed about the health of the planet our grandchildren will inherit. But (thanks to the lies and deceptions of the deniers) nobody can agree on what's happening, let alone what should be done. So let's do something that we can all agree on instead.

Ibbitson's column makes clear the political purpose of the deniers' letter -- to help Harper out of a tight corner. His goal of capturing a majority government depends on winning seats in Ontario and Quebec, the provinces where support for Kyoto is strongest. He could court their support by giving them Kyoto, but this would infuriate his oil industry masters.

These are people like Gwyn Morgan, retired CEO of EnCana Corp., long-time Fraser institute trustee and generous Conservative Party funder who Harper placed in charge of vetting all senior government appointments.

So obfuscate, confuse and divert attention to clean air is the order of the day.

Why Canada is key

Why would 41 foreign deniers be concerned about what happens in Canada? Because what happens in Canada will shift the momentum towards or away from Kyoto.

There's a larger issue, too. In 2007, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to warn governments that global warming could drive the Earth's temperature far higher than previously forecast.

The UK's Royal Society, in a confidential internal memo leaked to The Guardian last month, predicts that the lobbyists will try to undermine the IPCC's report. "There are already signs these groups will be targeting European countries and Canada to seek to provoke opposition to the Kyoto protocol."

And thanks to deniers for hire and newspapers like the National Post that spread their baloney, their task will be made that much easier.

Donald Gutstein, a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, writes a regular media column for The Tyee.

[First Pericles]

Outofmywindow,

Your first two sentences are incorrect.

FP your not being very convincing. The only conclusion summarized in you post is that scientists on both sided of the global warming dispute are fighting for a piece of the "funding pie".

First sentence should read "FP you are not being very convincing. If you wish to use an abbreviated Colloquialism the the word is "you're". As for being convincing to you, as you are fervently (religiously) committed to the falsehood that global warming is mostly due to human activity, then rational argument will not change your mind on this point.

I looked back at my posts to see in which post I am supposed to have summarized that scientists on both sided of the global warming dispute are fighting for a piece of the "funding pie". None as far as I can see.

You are probably misinterpreting this paragraph. The last sentence is the correct conclusion. "University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that “If the global warming farrago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of jobs.” See the rest below.

Accuracy in Media published a report in 2002 entitled "Science for Sale: the Global Warming Scam," in which they allege that "global warming is driven more by the search for funding than the search for scientific truth."[110] A similar claim is made by various scientists [111] : NASA's Roy Spencer says that climate scientists need for there to be problems to get more funding. Climatologist and IPCC contributor John Christy says of climate scientists, “We have a vested interest in creating panic because money will then flow to climate scientists.” University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that “If the global warming farrago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of jobs.”

As for the rest of your post? It's just an op-ed and James Hansen is right now embroiled in controversy over his refusals to provide the source code for his temperature calculations.

Weather data collection sites are supposed to be place where they are not affected by local conditions, so for example, in the car park at Tuscon campus with all its concrete and buildings would not be considered suitable, yet there is one! False data leads to false conclusions i.e. the planet is heating up.

Read this. It's hard going, I know, but stick at it. http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1952#more-1952

First Pericles

[airship]

Does anyone else find this debate a little weird, or is it just me?

It's just that 99% of the content of the posts by some protagonists appear to be verbatim et litteratim ("copy and pastes" to you and me) of the text in the links posted. Links that we're commanded to consult in their entirety "at pain of remaining ignorant for the rest of our existences"...

Do the contributors here have anything to say that they can express in their own words, in a way that we can all comprehend (making allowances for the intelligently-challenged amongst us like myself obviously), if not always agree with?

Otherwise, I can easily see this thread degenerating into just a series of links to arguments as opposed to a real discussion.

Unlike some perhaps, I'm not paid to contribute here or post links that benefit the propaganda of any political or commercial interests whose funding depends upon perpetrating claptrap, if that is what it is.

Troll springs to mind too...

[Loren Schweizer]

Um, nice day if it don't (colloquialism intended) rain, eh?

[Rene GER]

airship, I'm right there with you!

The one party says this and the other party says that. From that what I can read (you know english is not my mother language) here are two arguments:
Humans are guilty and humans are guiltless about the global warming. Hmmm...this is difficult o.O

[DocRon]

John Lenon once wrote " All we are saying, is give PEACE a chance!" I wonder what he would say about this global warming issue...possibly " All we are saying, is give the WORLD a chance"

I once read about a women that said each time she goes to the beach she tries to remove one additional piece of litter than what she arrived there with. Her motivation was that at least she left the beach in a cleaner state than when she arrived, even though she did not clean up the whole beach. What an amazing attitude she has toward life and our planet.

Maybe we can all become like her and each do our bit to lessen our human impact towards global warming. If every person made a small effort to prevent this crisis from getting worse, then our planet would be better. So switch to more efficient power sources, walk or cycle to work instead of driving those fuel guzzling vehicles, recycle waste, vote for politicians who are pro peace and pro environment....or if there are none around, run for office in your area....

Remember,we attract into our live what we focus on.

YOU can make a difference!!! Start today.

[First Pericles]

Good enough. Let's agree to differ.

First Pericles

[airship]

René, human-beings cannot be guiltless (unless perhaps, they are Bushmen who communicate mainly in "clicks" or similar and have negligible impact on their environments). Also, I'd just like to remind you that Jesus died for all our sins. But I'm unsure that He would so willingly "take the rap" for global warming today...?!

I love the optimism shown in DocRon's post!

I believe that human activities over the past couple of centuries have been a major impetus in global climate change. Whether the end-result will be an eventual cooling in some areas (say, if the Gulf-stream no longer goes up as far north as it does today) instead of the continued general global warming we've been seeing recently, well, my mind's open...

There's little doubt that people in the 1st world and most developing countries will probably be able to adapt reasonably painlessly (ie. they are rich enough to be able to take adequate counter-measures). But what about the rest of humanity that basically live on a "day to day" basis (not forgetting the increasing nimbers of 1st world citizens who are in fact also living on a "day to day" basis...)? And what about the wildlife? When I've read about some annual water-courses that have "dried out" recently hereabouts, I've asked myself the question: "How does the wildlife cope with that?". Not that there's much wildlife left in Europe. And you only have to read about the attempted reintroduction of bears into the Pyrenee region of France to understand that there is no future for wildlife that "likes to eat mutton". (A great encouragement to the African and Asian countries that can still boast a true wildlife, and how to conserve it in the face of pressures from farmers and animal herders...?!)

When the next tsunami strikes, it may be interesting to note that: those who live off the sea cannot any longer afford to live by the sea. Those spaces have been bought up by second-home owners, or occupied by hotels and other tourist resorts. I think that must be something developed by Wall St. - the packaged redistribution of risks or summat...?!

[DocRon]

Airship, you have brought up a good point... our animals. We should moniter their activities more closely as they somehow can sense things before we humans can. In the Tsunami in Malaysia in Dec 2004, apparantly all the animals headed for high ground before thr Tsunami actually hit the islands.

Also migration patterns of various species have changed over the last decades. Some scientists attribute these changes to the warming of our oceans and changes in pH of the water. Certain fish species can only live within a very narrow range of pH and temp. Also changes are atributed to extinction of certain species and that disrupts the whole food chain as animals go in search of food.

Has anyone seen the footage of polar bears drifting on small blocks of ice hundreds of miles away from the Arctic due to huge break ups of our glaciers. Eventually the bears drowned as they cannot swim back.... how sad is that!!!!

And as far as our weather patterns are concerned.... UK has experinced the worst flooding in a century, Ohio is experincing severe flooding, Huricanes are becoming more violent (Dean reached Cat 5), Millions of acres of land is burning as you read this due to runaway fires, devastating earthquakes in Peru,.... the list goes on....I do not remember when our world experienced such diverse and severe weather patterns which are occuring much more frequently.

As I mentioned on my previous post, we can all help a little by changing our habits today. Every small contribution adds to the whole!!