Re: [xbbn] Re: Worth Seeing: A Rebuttal to An Inconvenient Truth (Not)

[Seth Itzkan]

Thanks John,

There's a line in Al Gore's movie that I think brilliantly sums up the cultural and political elements of this discussion, and when it comes out on DVD, I'm going to buy it just so I can properly cite the quote - as all the science is readily available from numerous sources.

Basically, he says that history will judge our society by how we chose to respond to scientific reasoning.  I pretty much cheered when I heard that, because how true it is, and how pathetically and purposely ignorant is our cultural dialog on this topic.

The good news is, as I have determined for myself in my trips overseas, and as were we informed in our Climate Science and Policy class taught jointly by professors from Tufts and Harvard last spring, is that the supposed "debate" on this topic exits only in American mass media.  The rest of the world which is far more scientifically literate has long since moved on and is well into the "solutions" phase of behavior, creating economic opportunities for themselves in the process.

The fact that the shameless naysayers have to resort to terms like "swindle" and "hoax" in the face of avalanches of evidence and consensus that has been building for decades, just shows how comically hopeless and defeated they are. 

As Carl Sagan said, the best solution to bad science is more good science.

If people want to be informed about climate change science, there are plenty of reputable sources, including the ones you cite, and staring with any college or even high school textbook on Earth Science. 

Specifically addressing the questions and comments raised here:

• Regarding Wex's question / comment below about the speed of the glacial retreat, that sounds about right.  It was "rapid", and this realization, that nature can produce "rapid and traumatic climate change", has scientists concerned.  Positive feedback loops can make things swing suddenly in one direction or another.  The expression that something progresses at "glacial speed" has a new twist in this context.  That of course used to mean "slow", but in a geological context it really isn't slow at all.

• Regarding the CO2 following the Temperature curve - yes, that is correct, but like all things, it's only part of the picture.  The ice ages are caused by variations in the Earth's orbit.  During interglacial periods the Earth is indeed warmed by the sun first, at which point CO2 follows, however, the CO2 then also has a "forcing" effect on the temperature - it is a positive feedback, and thus it gets warmer still, which helps release more CO2 etc.  So the graph of the CO2 following temperature is correct, but only half the story.  The naysayers don't tell you the other half, about the forcing effect that CO2 also has on temperature - a fact that every student of high school Earth Science knows.  If CO2 did not have that effect then the temperatures would not increase as fast nor get as high.  The curve would be quite different.  And of course CO2 has a forcing effect on temperature - if not for it the Earth would be a frozen lifeless rock.

• The troubling point now, which the naysayers also exclude, is that based on purely orbital cycles, we *should* be going into an ice age.  It should be getting cooler.  CO2 levels should be dropping.  We should be well on our way toward glaciation.  The winters should be getting longer - summers shorter.  According to a recent Scientific America cover story, humans have actually been offsetting a natural cooling period for about 8000 years, ever since the start of agriculture when we began clear cutting forests for irrigation and animal husbandry.  The article shows that atmospheric CO2 and Methane started increasing just when these activities began and that the small, but non-trivial change in concentrations has been enough over the millennial to keep the climate steady.  The rapid post industrial human introduction of the atmosphere CO2 is the only "forcing factor" that could explain the rapid increase in temperature in the last century. The earth is not only warming, but human forcing is the cause.  According to the IPCC, they have a 90% confidence in that conclusion.  We can read the fine print to see how they determine it to be 90% confidence, but presumably it's the same methodology that any scientist uses when comparing modeled behavior with observed behavior.

Movies like the one cited below are worth seeing only as footnotes to the intentional dumbing of America, the obfuscating of logical reasoning, and most sadly, as evidence of impetuous negligence in the face of imminent disaster.

The great "swindle" of our time is how an entire generation was robbed of a proper scientific education.  Maybe, hopefully, climate change is the force to correct that.

- s

On 3/12/07, John S. Quarterman <jsq...@quarterman.com> wrote:

> "The Great Global Warming Swindle".

My favorite is the guy who says at least twice that CO2 can't be driving
climate change, "because it never has!"

Besides, CO2 only forms a very small part of the atmosphere, so it
can't be important, they imply!

Also the graph shown just before the discussion of the Little Ice Age;
the graph has a big label NOW on the right side, but no year is visible.
This lets them show a graph that shows the temperature before the LIA
as being higher than now, which it wasn't.

Ditto with the graph about cosmic rays and climate: it doesn't show
recent data.

They repeatedly claim that most of the recent global warming occured
before 1940, yet they show no data and cite no papers to support it.

They claim C02 increases follow temperature rises, yet their illustration
is a temperature line being drawn followed by a CO2 line being drawn.
Hokey.

Ah, the old global cooling canard from the 1970s.  As usual, with
no scientific papers cited, because there weren't any; it was a news
phenomenon, not a scientific one.

The movie includes numerous unsubstantiated claims of fraud, such as
that the 2500 scientists named in the recent U.N. report include many
who disagreed.  If that's so, why doesn't the movie name any?

Maybe they're the ones who appeared in this movie.  So that would
be what, a dozen or two vs. 2500?

Not very impressive.

For some real discussion about nuances, try this:
http://www.realclimate.org/

Regarding the canard about environmentalists wanting to go back to the
middle ages, try this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/02/AR2007030202043.html

or this:
http://www.viridiandesign.org/2007_01_01_archive.html

-jsq

--
Seth J. Itzkan