And so I say to the students and faculty members of Gallaudet University, I hope the some of you will take responsibility on ensuring that the "other side" will be heard in the next Earth Day at Gallaudet University. Or if the movie "Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore is to be shown in a classroom I hope that some of the students in class will have the courage and common sense to approach the professor that an alternative view must be presented as well.
I was fortunate enough to have an email discussion with one of the professors at Gallaudet University who helped with the global warming presentation. After a few emails exchanges I finally wrote down probably my last response to the professor today even though it was agreed that an alternative view should have been presented during Earth Day at Gallaudet.
Here is what I wrote:
The issue isn't whether we are warming up globally. The issue is the claim that the warming trend is the direct results of humans activity on Earth by casting blame on us all as the source of the warming "problem." I made that explicitly clear in my last email to you.
Secondly, you refer to "little dissent among scientists worldwide" when it was quite interesting and readily apparent that the IPCC report did not address the time lag between change in temperature and with change in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Also, "consensus" doesn't mean anything in science when we are dealing with theories. Only in politics do we "agree" but not when it comes to scientific theories. However, you are incorrect on the very little "dissent" when there are thousands and thousands of scientists who disagree with the IPCC report (i.e. global warming as caused by people) and such. More than 4,000 scientists from 106 countries, including 72 Nobel prize winners, signed the Heidelberg Appeal (1992), calling for a rational scientific approach to environmental problems. Many senior scientists have also supported The Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming (1992), The Leipzig Declaration (1997) and finally the Oregon Petition (1998) which received the signatures of over 19,000 scientists who believe there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses are causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. This was in response to the Kyoto Protocol. The petition resurfaced in 2001 to re-address the global warming nonsense.
It is also interesting if you look at the names in the IPCC report, many of them are not even scientists themselves but lent their names to the IPCC reference in the attempt to give it a bit more legitimacy. IPCC took measure to try and censor any "dissenting" scientists while keeping their names as participants in the IPCC report. Some of these dissenting scientists threatened with legal action to have their names removed from the report. Scientists who were invited to participate in the IPCC report expose the fundamental flaws contained throughout the document. Also, the names listed in the IPCC report are mostly reviewers rather than the participating scientists who helped with the study. And they review only portions of any one study rather than the whole report itself. Yet, were they asked for permission to have the names on the report as if they agreed with the report in its entirety when perhaps it wasn't the case? The report isn't peer-reviewed in the first place.
People need to be careful about this "consensus" thing and that there were "little dissent among scientists worldwide" when you have one analysis of peer-reviewed literature that was done very recently that showed just the opposite of what you're saying.
A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."
The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.
"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted."
"Two thousand years of published human histories say that the warm periods were good for people," says Avery. "It was the harsh, unstable Dark Ages and Little Ice Age that brought bigger storms, untimely frost, widespread famine and plagues of disease." "There may have been a consensus of guesses among climate model-builders," says Singer. "However, the models only reflect the warming, not its cause." He noted that about 70 percent of the earth's post-1850 warming came before 1940, and thus was probably not caused by human-emitted greenhouse gases. The net post-1940 warming totals only a tiny 0.2 degrees C.
The historic evidence of the natural cycle includes the 5000-year record of Nile floods, 1st-century Roman wine production in Britain, and thousands of museum paintings that portrayed sunnier skies during the Medieval Warming and more cloudiness during the Little Ice Age. The physical evidence comes from oxygen isotopes, beryllium ions, tiny sea and pollen fossils, and ancient tree rings. The evidence recovered from ice cores, sea and lake sediments, cave stalagmites and glaciers has been analyzed by electron microscopes, satellites, and computers. Temperatures during the Medieval Warming Period on California's Whitewing Mountain must have been 3.2 degrees warmer than today, says Constance Millar of the U.S. Forest Service, based on her study of seven species of relict trees that grew above today's tree line.
Also the IPCC habitually writes that in some cases (e.g., when comparing Antarctic CO2 to temperature data) it is hard to say anything definitive since the data sets come from different cores. That's a red flag right there.
There are many examples of studies finding lags, a few examples include:
* Indermühle et al. (GRL, vol. 27, p. 735, 2000), who find that CO2 lags behind the temperature by 1200±700 years, using Antarctic ice-cores between 60 and 20 kyr before present.
* Fischer et al. (Science, vol 283, p. 1712, 1999) reported a time lag 600±400 yr during early de-glacial changes in the last 3 glacial–interglacial transitions.
* Siegenthaler et al. (Science, vol. 310, p. 1313, 2005) find a best lag of 1900 years in the Antarctic data.
* Monnin et al. (Science vol 291, 112, 2001) find that the start of the CO2 increase in the beginning of the last interglacial lagged the start of the temperature increase by 800 years.
Now, if Earth was suffering under an accelerated greenhouse effect caused by human produced addition of CO2, the troposphere should heat up faster than the surface of the planet, but data collected from satellites and weather balloons doesn't support this fundamental presumption even though we are seeing higher CO2." We ought to see near lockstep temperature increments along with higher CO2 concentration over time,especially over the last several years. But we're not. And this goes to show that it is the temperature that heats up first then follows the increase in CO2 concentrations some many, many years later. And this makes sense owing to the fact that it is the sun's energy that fluctuates increasing or decreasing the amount of solar watt per area on earth's surface every year.
From 1985 - 2001 saw an increase in the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface is ~3 Wm-2 (watt per meter squared). People have constantly overlooked the fact that this natural forcing is an order of magnitude greater than the CO2 greenhouse forcing over the same period.
From the Science and Public Policy Institute (August 2007):
"...the documented change in global surface solar radiation is about 3 W/m2, while the parallel contribution by the anthropogenic CO2 forcing is estimated to be only about 0.3 W/m2 over the 1983-2001 interval. Therefore it is premature to conclude firmly that anthropogenic CO2 greenhouse forcing is dominant."
We do not know enough to make any kind of definitive conclusion that global warming is the direct result of human activities. All evidences point to that we play very little role on affecting global warming. Sure, we're responsible for pollution on different scales but not so much for global warming per se. The climate system is an extremely complex system to begin with. Research continues to show that human added CO2 influence is very small compared to the rest of the variables (e.g. cloud cover, water vapor, cosmic rays, other green house gases, etc) knowing that 98% of the green house gases are in the form of water vapor. It isn't enough to upset the CO2 input-output balance.
And then there are problems with the on the ground temperature data stations that questions the validity of the many collected temperature data simply because of the location such as right next to an air conditioning vent or on top of a building's hot roof. Examples of incorrect placing of temperature data loggers are rampant as seen here along with pictures from various states.
And lastly we have this that came out recently.
"The decision by the government to distribute Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth has been the subject of a legal action by New Party member Stewart Dimmock. The Court found that the film was misleading in nine respects and that the Guidance Notes drafted by the Education Secretary’s advisors served only to exacerbate the political propaganda in the film.
In order for the film to be shown, the Government must first amend their Guidance Notes to Teachers to make clear that 1.) The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument. 2.) If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination. 3.) Nine inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children."
The inaccuracies are:
1. The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
(My note to you - this has to do with the deforestation around the base of the mountain where trees contribute humidity and moisture).
2. The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.
3. The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.
4. The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.
(My note for you - Chad's average and natural depth is like 5 or 6 feet deep. More like a swamp than anything else and people living nearby are sucking it up dry).
5. The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.
6. The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
(More emotive scare for the audience).
7. The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
(My note to you -a deadly 8.0 Richter scale earthquake that forced the whole Solomon Islands upward 10 feet exposing miles and miles of coral reef to the air with no sea water killing them all. The earthquake exposed 200 to 230 feet of new beach shoreline covered mostly with dead and dying coral reef. The island is 20 miles long and 5 miles wide, so that makes about 45 to 50 miles shoreline worth of coral reefs totally destroyed).
8. The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m (22 feet) causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm (1.3 feet) over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
9. The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.
(My note to you - The only evacuation on any islands or land base was because of an immediate 10 to 50 feet sea rise during the tsunami disaster we had in December 2004 killing hundreds of thousand of people. People should fear more about tsunami than that of a sea rise of only 1 to 2 feet in about a hundred years from now. See links here and here.
Dr. xxxxxxxxxxxxxx, if you are truly concerned on presenting alternative views I would hope you will speak up the next time when Gallaudet has this "Global Warming" fair or that if a class is to present Al Gore's movie, there should also be an alternative movie available that presents a different scientific view than that of Gore's movie. It's all about students making an informed decision when it comes to these things. Not doing so only shows an agenda which, in my view, is nothing more than a political one. Al Gore and the IPCC are quite translucent on showing that what they are doing is purely a political agenda.
All in all it'd be better to be good stewards of the Earth using common sense approach rather than use unfounded scare tactics just to push a political agenda. These things need to be approached rationally. We all want clean air. We all want clean water. We all want to see healthy and productive lands. Independency is on everybody's mind. No one is denying that. People would rather see environmental conservation efforts at the local and regional scale because people are personally and immediately affected by it. I am in the professional business of environmental modeling, air, fire, water and watersheds for more than 10 years. And in my personal (and professional) opinion about global warming as caused by human activities is simply without credibility.
Sincerely,
Mike McConnell
