Why Scientists Are Skeptical

He, who has learned to doubt and to ask questions where the
norms forbid it, can never stop the habit. As such, every creative
person is building bridges to those masses of people who are tied
up helplessly by the pressures of peers and society. His is a step
out and above the group. And however strong the creative person
is enchained by conventions, he has unshackled himself on his
way as a free and autonomous personality. As such, he may
have cleared a new path for his group, his society and
perhaps humankind in order to transform culture and
to create space for other free personalities who want to
set new goals.
--Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943)

Global Warming: A Technical Guide For The Layperson, By DocNavy

Global Warming: A Technical Guide For The Layperson, by DocNavy
Here is Doc's compilation of articles and information sources about global warming and climate change. In summary form this provides an excellent starting point for anyone wanting to learn more about the subject. Thanks Doc. Also, for anyone caring to get in on the debate over the causes of global warming and climate change, see here and here.
Peter

DocNavyMessage #1 - 09/20/07 02:17 PMGreetings! Here for your perusal are a number of articles, and websites that explain Global Warming. As it is a complex subject that is EASILY spun in many directions, I have tried to pull together a few resources that help explain it in easy terms. All of these sites contain referenced material, if you wish to go more in depth.If anyone has more information that they'd like to include, please post it. Please make sure that your posts contain active links, and the material can be understood by anyone.
Doc

*Disclaimer* A number of sites I list could be classified as "Skeptic", but even those sites endeavor to show accurate scientific data. The terms "AGW" and "GW" Stand for "Anthropogenic Global Warming", and ""Global Warming" respectively.

*NEW!* What does John Coleman, FOUNDER of The Weather Channel, think of AGW? HERE (Thanks GeoPete)

*NEW!* An interview with REID BRYSON, one of modern climatology's founding scientists about what he thinks of AGW, HERE.

*NEW!* Senator Inhofe's paper (Including speeches) on Global Warming. Previously ONLY AVAILABLE to policymakers, and Media Heads, HERE.

*Revised* A decent referenced primer that covers most everything related to AGW, HERE.

An easily read investigative article on the foundations and history of AGW, HERE.

*NEW!* Are CO2 Levels HIGHER than they have ever been? Is the Earth moving into an

UNPRECEDENTED high in Global Temperature? Find out, HERE.

A somewhat brash, though still good article on what might be causing GW, HERE.

An engaging academic DEBATE between Pro-AGW authorities and "Skeptics".

*UPDATED* A transcript of "An Inconvenient Truth" and a LINK to the Video, accompanied by a LINK (Pt.1), LINK (Pt.2) to Pacific Research Institute's documentary about AIT's presentation of scientific "Facts".

*NEW!* Lord Monckton's paper outlining 35 "Inconsistencies" of AIT, HERE.

LINK to "The great Global Warming Swindle" Documentary that is a response to "An Inconvenient Truth."An interesting article on the historical Climate Change Crises claims,

HERE.An interactive explanation of what "The Greenhouse Effect" is, HERE.

An explanation of what "Carbon Sequestering" or a "Carbon Sink" is, HERE.

The "Hockey Stick", a peer reviewed paper on exactly what it is, HERE.

A peer reviewed paper on the science of Climate Change, HERE.

*Revised* A referenced article explaining some of the more esoteric and confusing mathematical expressions often cited in IPCC TAR Report used to express actual warming, HERE.

Transcript of the Testimony of Richard S. Lindzen before the Senate Commerce Committee on 1 May 2001 on Global Warming and The Kyoto Protocol.

A peer reviewed paper explaining Climate Change, The Kyoto Protocol, it's results and how it effects the World, HERE.

A peer reviewed paper discussing the effect of a warmer, CO2 enhanced World on Human Health, HERE.

--==One of my personal FAVORITE reads!!==--*NEW!* A companion paper to the one above, submitted in the Journal of American Physicians & Surgeons. Now you know what the Doctors know. HERE. Dated FALL 2007.

*NEW!* An outstanding and easily understood article on Water Vapor and it's relationship to the Greenhouse Effect, HERE. (Thanks DietDew)

An article from the WASHINGTON POST about the "Fuzzy Math" used by mainstream media about Climate Change, HERE.

An excellent site explaining what thermal inversions, and Photochemical Smog are, HERE. (Thanks LtDan)

A DEVASTATING documentary on the attitudes and motivations behind the modern

Eco/Enviro movement, and the disparity between what is seen in the media and what is done in real life, HERE.

*NEW!* The OFFICIAL report from the US Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works about what is really happening to Alaskan Polar Bears, HERE.

*NEW!* IS THERE A SCIENTIFIC "CONSENSUS" on Global Warming?? The OFFICIAL report from the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works dated 20 DECEMBER 2007, HERE. (**Updated 22 FEB 08**)
**UPDATED!!** 07APR08

Climate Fearmongering And The Danger To Democracy

This comment clearly explains why we must seek and demand that the truth about the causes of global warming and climate change be found and related to everyone who cares.
Peter

THE BBC, CLIMATE HYSTERIA AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY
An email from John A [johna.sci@googlemail.com] of Climate Audit
Can it be any more apparent that the BBC is actively engaged in laundering environmental reports especially on climate to satisfy a few extremists? That what we read about climate history changes faster and more efficiently than even Winston Smith could have managed with his Speakwrite?

Witness the constant changing of historical temperature data by James Hansen now being dissected on Climate Audit. This is not simply a scandal, it is a crisis reaching to the foundations of our democracy - that news and information be disseminated by a Free Press without fear or favour to the Powers that be, nor to extremists and radicals seeking the overthrow of democracy by stealth through a crisis which bears all the hallmarks of being manufactured?

Just imagine, for a moment, what a global emissions trading scheme would look like: no Western democracy would have any control over the price of energy even in its local markets, its entire economy being subject to minute bureaucratic control of everything from the gas heater in the house to energy required to produce steel. Without any control of the cost of energy, food prices would inevitably rise and a black market in basic foodstuffs would appear (this is what happened during the fall of the Soviet Union) including a resurgent Mafia-style criminal underclass.

What then, would be the point of voting for any party? Or of democracy itself? What state could withstand the inevitable social turmoil when basic foodstuffs become more expensive than the poor can afford because the market has been rigged?It is axiomatic that any State, no matter how brutal, must eventually fall when it has lost control of the price of food - witness Zimbabwe right now, or the fall of the Soviet Union, or the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, or the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s.Make no mistake, and speaking as a classical liberal, we are looking at the most serious attempt to collectivize the world economy since the fall of Communism in the 20th Century and to render democracy moot in the Western World and beyond.

Who speaks for the farmers of Kenya whose exports into the EU and beyond are the only thing between themselves and starvation and whose products are now being labelled with airmiles by Western environmental extremists?Did any of us vote for the imposition of world energy cartel? I can't remember such a proposition being on any manifesto. But that's what it is.All of this makes the betrayal of the BBC even to its own charter that much more dangerous to all of us who hold liberal democracy so dear.

In the "Green Room" we see academics and activists talk blandly about population control (really? how?), the marginalization of democracy through a consensus of self-appointed "experts" and the need to somehow control the absolutely uncontrollable (the Earth's climate) via trying to moderate a single variable, carbon dioxide concentration, whose ability to control climate in any meaningful way is entirely absent from any paleoclimatic proxy?Yet the opinions given by academics on subjects well away from their areas of specialization are published as if those opinions are unquestionable truths. Comments are censored prior to publication to prevent serious criticisms being made, and a false impression of support for the ludicrous and dangerous propositions is thereby created.No right of reply is ever allowed except by that favourite abuse of propagandists - the "skeptic sandwich". Note that twice now, the BBC has announced that the work of Svensmark has been debunked, and twice Svensmark has replied showing that the studies are flawed and the BBC has refused to publish those replies.

The Real Effects of Carbon Dioxide

The following is an important article about the effects of carbon dioxide on life on planet Earth. Please read it and save it for future reference.
Peter

http://friendsofscience.org/assets/files/documents/robinson.pdf

New Book Explores The Truth Behind The Myth Of Man-Caused Global Warming

This is from a larger collection of articles, comments, and observations here... This sounds like a good book, and I'd like to hear more, read more.
Peter



A New Book On The Myth of Man-Caused Global Warming And How It Came To Be......
Here is an important new book, worth reading and incorporating into our growing body of knowledge about the myth of man-caused global warming and how it has come to be.Peter

Thursday, March 27, 2008
Must-Read Global-Warming Book [Sterling Burnett]
About a year ago, Canadian environmentalist and journalist Lawrence Solomon began a series of articles in the National Post examining the credentials of and arguments made by scientists and economists labeled “deniers” by various environmentalists, a number of mainstream environmental reporters, and some politicians. Solomon, true to the finest tenets of his profession, sought the truth concerning whether there was in fact a consensus on the headline-grabbing issue of global warming, or whether in fact any “real” scientists actually dissented from the Al Gore/UN line that global warming is happening, is largely caused by humans, and threatens all manner of catastrophies.

As many people — policy wonks and fellow travelers — on this blog are well aware, dissenting scientists are not in fact rare: There are serious scholars whose views should, but too often do not, inform the debate.Solomon’s columns were important because they brought this message to a wider audience. As Solomon’s knowledge grew, he found that the genre limits of newspaper writing precluded an adequately in-depth exploration of these skeptical scientists’ important observations. Accordingly, selecting some of the scientists discussed in his columns, Solomon has written a book: The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**and those who are too fearful to do so.

As a jacket blurb puts it, “What he found shocked him. Solomon discovered that on every “headline” global warming issue, not only were there serious scientists who dissented, consistently the dissenters were by far the more accomplished and eminent scientists.”

This book does not attempt to settle the science, or show that humans are or are not responsible for the present warming trend, or settle what we can expect the future harms/benefits of continued warming (or cooling) might be. Rather, the genius of the book is that it shows in a manner accessible to a lay audience that uncertainties concerning each important facet of the “consensus” view on warming abound, and that the dissenting views are at least as plausible (and often more compelling) than the IPCC/Gore camps.

The Deniers, examines what should be the active debates concerning the plausibility of the argument that human CO2 emissions (or CO2 per se) is a driver for climate change, what role the sun may play in warming, what role the present warming trend (and human activities) play in hurricane and tropical/parasitic disease patterns, and the reliability of the climate models, among other issues.

In addition, Solomon notes the harsh treatment that many scientists have endured simply because they followed the scientific method, the evidence from their research, and their own consciences, all of which led them to the conclusion that this or that facet of the global-warming consensus view was woefully incomplete or flat-out wrong.

This treatment has had the effect intended by global warming scaremongers — to shut down promising areas of research and to silence credible critics. As I put it in an earlier column: The term skeptic has historically been a badge of honor proudly worn by scientists as indicating their commitment to the idea that in the pursuit of truth, nothing is beyond question, every bit of knowledge is open to improvement and/or refutation as new evidence or better theories emerge.

However, in the topsy-turvy field of climate science, “skeptic” is a term of opprobrium and to be labeled a skeptic is to be dismissed as a hack. Being a skeptic concerning global warming today is akin to being a heretic in the Middle Ages — you may not be literally burned at the stake, but your reputation will be put to flames. In response, many scientists whose research calls into question one or more of the fundamental tenets of global warming orthodoxy, have learned to couch their conclusions carefully. They argue, for instance, that while their research does not match up with this or that point in global warming theory, or would seem to undermine this or that conclusion, they are not denying that humans are causing global warming and they cannot account for the discrepancy between their work and the theory’s predictions.

These scientists have learned the hard lesson that when reality and the theory conflict, for professional reasons, they’d better cling to the theory: shades of Galileo recanting his theory that the earth revolves around the sun under pressure from the Inquisition. Though there are many good books on global warming, The Deniers is among the most effective in showing how science is being fundamentally undermined in the current politicized atmosphere of climate research. In addition, like no other book or paper I know, it provides a concise but thorough overview of the myriad weaknesses of the consensus view, the quality and substance of the criticisms of that view, and the stellar qualifications of those scientists labeled derisively as “deniers.”

This book should be read by anyone who seriously wants to understand where and why substantive debate remains concerning climate change and why there is so much vitriol surrounding what until recently was a relatively quiet, unheralded, or unnoticed (except by its practitioners) field of science. If a person could read only one book this year on climate change, this is the one I’d pick.

The Minor "Greenhouse Gases" CO2 and CH4 Not The Cause Of Global Warming

This study clearly shows that the "greenhouse gases" carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) do not cause significant global warming or climate change. They did not do so in the past and can not reasonably be considered to be doing so now.
Peter


Preprint in press for Physical Geography (July 4, 2007)
Quantitative implications of the secondary role of carbon dioxide climate forcing in the past glacial-interglacial cycles for the likely future climatic impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcings
Willie Soon (wsoon@cfa.harvard.edu)
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
Abstract: A review of the recent refereed literature fails to confirm quantitatively that
carbon dioxide (CO2) radiative forcing was the prime mover in the changes in
temperature, ice-sheet volume, and related climatic variables in the glacial and
interglacial periods of the past 650,000 years, even under the “fast response” framework
where the convenient if artificial distinction between forcing and feedback is assumed.
Atmospheric CO2 variations generally follow changes in temperature and other climatic
variables rather than preceding them. Likewise, there is no confirmation of the often posited
significant supporting role of methane (CH4) forcing, which – despite its faster
atmospheric response time – is simply too small, amounting to less than 0.2 W/m2 from a
change of 400 ppb. We cannot quantitatively validate the numerous qualitative
suggestions that the CO2 and CH4 forcings that occurred in response to the Milankovich
orbital cycles accounted for more than half of the amplitude of the changes in the
glacial/interglacial cycles of global temperature, sea level, and ice volume.

Consequently, we infer that natural climatic variability – notably the persistence of insolation forcing at key seasons and geographical locations, taken with closely-related thermal, hydrological, and cryospheric changes (such as the water vapor, cloud, and ice-albedo feedbacks) –suffices in se to explain the proxy-derived, global and regional, climatic and
environmental phase-transitions in the paleoclimate. If so, it may be appropriate to place
anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions in context by separating their medium-term
climatic impacts from those of a host of natural forcings and feedbacks that may, as in
paleoclimatological times, prove just as significant.

1. A rare but incomplete consensus on the relationship between CO2 concentration, temperature, and ice-sheet volume
One of the most notable, but somewhat surprising, consensus conclusions from ice-core
drilling projects and researches at both poles (see e.g., Fischer et al. 2006; Masson-
Delmotte et al. 2006) is the fact that the deduced isotopic temperatures lead other climatic responses, including especially the atmospheric levels of minor greenhouse gases like CO2 and CH4. Fischer et al. (1999) first reported that atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by 80 to 100 ppm 600± 400 years after the warming of the last three deglaciations (or glacial terminations) in Antarctica and that relatively high CO2 levels
can be sustained for thousand of years during glacial inception scenarios when the
Antarctic temperature has dropped significantly. Later, Monnin et al. (2001) and Caillon
et al. (2003) offered clear evidence that temperature change drove atmospheric CO2
responses during more-accurately dated periods near glacial terminations I (at about 18
kyr before present, BP) and III (at about 240 kyr BP), respectively.

(Continued here:)

Global Warming, Population Growth And Temperature Data.....No Correlation

Global warming: What does the data tell us?
Authors: E. X. Alban, B. Hoeneisen
(Submitted on 23 Oct 2002)
Abstract: We analyze global surface temperature data obtained at 13472 weather stations from the year 1702 to 1990. The mean annual temperature of a station fluctuates from year to year by typically +-0.6oC (one standard deviation). Superimposed on this fluctuation is a linear increase of the temperature by typically 0.40oC per century ever since reliable data is available, i.e. since 1702. The world population has doubled from 1952 to 1990, yet we see no statistically significant acceleration of global warming in this period. We conclude that the effect of humankind on global warming up to 1990 is 0.0 +- 0.1oC.
Comments:
9 pages, 12 figures
Subjects:
Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics (physics.ao-ph)
Report number:
USFQ-30-2002
Cite as:
arXiv:physics/0210095v1 [physics.ao-ph]



Global warming: What does the data tell us?
E. X. Alb´an and B. Hoeneisen
Universidad San Francisco de Quito
19 February 2002
Abstract
We analyze global surface temperature data obtained at 13472 weather
stations from the year 1702 to 1990. The mean annual temperature of
a station fluctuates from year to year by typically  ±0.6oC (one standard
deviation). Superimposed on this fluctuation is a linear increase
of the temperature by typically  0.40±0.01oC per century ever since
reliable data is available, i.e. since 1702 (errors are statistical only,
one standard deviation). The world population has doubled from 1952
to 1990, yet we see no statistically significant acceleration of global
warming in this period. We conclude that the effect of humankind
on global warming up to 1990 is 0.0 ± 0.1oC. Therefore, contrary to
popular belief, the data support the view that human activity has had
no significant effect on global warming up to the year 1990 covered by
this study.