Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Help Al Gore

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On a side note, I hope Al’s testimony will be the beginning of his as yet unannounced campaign.  I’ve signed the draft Gore petition.  My comment to him was that I’ve talked to people of many different political persuasions, and almost all agree that they would vote for him because they trust his expertise to fix the problems.  Yes, there were a few ostriches who don’t believe global warming exists, but there were very few.  Who are you gonna trust — Rudy “9/11, 9/11, 9/11” Guiliani or Al? 

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  1. Just curious what the consensus opinion is here – is there no exaggeration in the book, or some but it is justified, or some /unjustified, or none but new facts have overturned some of the statements, or lots of exaggeration, etc.

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    Personally I think there is a good bit of exaggeration among other things presenting only worst case scenarios outcomes, and exaggerating the degree to which scientists agree that warming is man made (100% he claims) and especially the degree to which people agree what can be done about it.

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    Opinions?

    • I have run into a few ostriches. 

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      Demolisher –  Did you even bother watching an Inconvenient Truth?  What was the percentage of scientists who disagree with Gore’s claims?  Why would you want to minimize the problem and thus prevent action? 

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      Even the pResident had to finally use the dreaded words.

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      If you don’t believe, I highly recommend buying on the coast.  I, personally, bought in the mountains about as far from the coast as possible.  I’m not alone based upon where real estate is still selling.

      • I don’t know percentages but here are some links. 

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        The main argument of those disagreeing with Al Gore is that we are in a natural cycle caused by solar activity.  The largest piece of data backing this up is that Mars is also in a warming trend, and it’s polar ice cap is melting.  This was reported in National Geographic on-line.  The problem is not how many people disagree with Al Gore, but how many of those on the left, who otherwise would be skeptical take “An Inconvenient Truth” as gospel.  Apostates are treated with as much scorn as the heretics under Queen Isabella and King Ferdinands Inquisition.

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        [From an Austrailian Science Journal
        http://www.theaustra…]
        From Scientific American
        From Andrew Marshall

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        Oh screw it, just look at Google News like I did.

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        Or perhaps Google.

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        note to raj – I’m perfectly happy being somebody’s “Google Monkey”

        • I  believe we are in a warming cycle.  I am not narcissitic enough to believe it is caused by man however.

          • Perhaps your disorder is different from narcissism.

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            The point is that carbon dioxide has closely tracked global temperatures for a very long time. It is not how many scientists (or “scientists”) we can collect.

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            You can always find scientists who “doubt” the consensus, but the role of scientists is to doubt. They’re happy to overstate their doubts. However this area has really been muddied by Mobil-Exxon et al. throwing money into it. Might I direct your attention to the work of Rampton and Stauber? (Trust Us, We’re Experts! and Toxic Sludge is Good for You!) Paying for useful opinions has become widespread.

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            George Musser, to whom you link, is not a climate scientist, by the way:

            GEORGE MUSSER is an editor at Scientific American. He hopes one day to become chief of the magazine’s Mars bureau.

            Perhaps you could join him?

            • a climate scientist?  Are you even a scientist?  I am a Chemical Engineer with science training.

              • …I am a Chemical Engineer with science training.

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                If you really are a ChemE, then maybe you are familiar with the Arrhenius Equation, named after Svante Arrhenius.  He was one of the early people to note the fact that that CO2 was a greenhouse gas.

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                There are several known gases that reduce radiational cooling, CO2, methane CH4 and water vapor H20.  That has been known for, say, a century.

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                Regarding Arrhenius and CO2, take a look at http://en.wikipedia…. for starters.  For the Arrhenius equation (which I learned in high school AP chem class) take a look at http://en.wikipedia….

                • I don’t disagree that C02 is a greenhouse gas.  I just disagree that humanity is 100% responsible for global warming. 

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                  It is also interesting to note that there seems to be an 800 year lag on historical C02 levels to warming temperatures.  So what is the causality there.  Do perhaps warming trends release trapped C02 from the ice sheets increasing the C02 levels.  Perhaps there is not really a causality and a correllation based on C02 absorption and desorption by continental ice sheets. As solar activity increases perhaps warming begins, which releases C02 from Ice as it melts.

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                  These are questions that must be debated.  However running around like Chicken Little Gore is not what we need. 

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                  We need a vigorous debate, not a shouting down by the AOG(Acolytes of Gore).

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                  Thank you for bringing unbiased science into the debate raj.

                • wean ourselves off of fossil fuels, for two reasons. 

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                  1) They are a limited resource and will run out someday.

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                  2) The national security interests of the United States would benefit from the development of alternative energy sources.

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                  I believe that focusing on those will bring a reduction in C02 emissions.  I don’t believe in the Kyoto protocol with exemptions for “developing nations” all that will do is shift manufacturing to those nations.

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                  We should all regardless of where we fit on the political spectrum support alternative energy research, and implementation.  Go Cape Wind!

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                  There was an interesting article in the economist (subscription required) last week on alternative solutions to stop global warming whatever the cause…

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                  Aside from the solution above this one lines up with your theory on solving the problem.

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                  Of all the schemes proposed, the most ambitious (and expensive) idea would be to place a giant sunshade in space at the inner Lagrange point, the position on the line between the Earth and the sun where the combination of centripetal and gravitational forces allows an object to maintain a constant position between the two. If the object is big enough, it could block out enough of the sun’s rays to cool the Earth. Roger Angel, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, has suggested assembling a cloud of millions of small, reflecting spacecraft less than a metre across at this point, where together they would block out 1.8% of the sun’s rays.

                • I’m a technophile.  Love new ideas.  Thats what we should be focusing on instead of doom and gloom.

                • too bad we’re throwing all the much-needed research $$ down the iraq toilet, so your technophilia may just have to wait, oh a lifetime.

                • you’d like to have a conversation on the moral and national security justification for the Iraq war, we can do so.  This thread is not the place for that.

                • The threads are what we make of them.  But if you need a time out, you go right ahead.

            • It so freaking counter-productive. You just reduce the level of discourse around here. Please refrain or the next time you violate our rules I promise your comment will be deleted without warning.

              • But the poster discounted a persons views because that person was not a “climate scientist”.  I thought it was apt to ask what scientific training the commenter had.  It seemed germaine given the poster’s comment.  When I had then asked the question, I thought it was germaine to explain my scientific training, as I thought the poster’s next question would be, well what is yours.

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                If that violates rules.  I’m sorry, it was not my intent.

                • You asked a perfectly germane, polite question. The comment that violated the rules in my judgment was KBusch’s suggestion that a fellow commenter be sent to Mars. That doesn’t advance anything, its just juvenile, a personal attack, and is not what we’re about here at BMG. There are plenty of other blogs where that kind of talk is welcomed, even encouraged, but here we want discussion from a range of views and no personal attacks — respectful questions, fine; attacks, no.

                • love to go to Mars.  Unfortunately my rather enlarged frame won’t fit in a space suit.  Oh and I get sick on roller-coasters. 

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                  Thank you for the clarification.

                • I didn’t call him an idiot or say he was dense or that he was in denial. Further, if Mars is getting warmer, then it is more hospitable.

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                  The joke was fairly gentle — and aimed at someone who has accused me personally of having no sense of humor!

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                  On another thread 2 weeks ago, I was answered by “KBusch, Your hypocrisy becomes you”. It was a totally personal attack. This by the way was on a diary in which you expressed interest. Bob, where were you? You really seem to pick on me.

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                  I have been pushing EaBo to raise the level of discourse here. I’ve been practically begging him. Really, I’m not going to run around looking at random articles he has discovered and clearly not even read given the speed of his response. If he really thinks that Solar Cycles are at issue here and wants to convince us of that, I invite him to do so.

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                  The Spannish Inquisition comment, did it raise or lower the level?

                • Sorry if I can read fast.  If you don’t want to read the links, I can’t put the whole articles here because that would violate copyright law.  But I’ll give you a sample:

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                  Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: “The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

                  “The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently – in the last 100 to 150 years.”

                  Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of “greenhouse gases”, such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth’s temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

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                  That is a pretty concise argument of the point. Note I even put in the part about CO2.  Perhaps CO2 is having an affect, but so are solar cycles, which some, yours truly included, believe have a larger affect.

                • I guess I just never expect the Spanish Inquisition.

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                  Then bring out “The Comfy Chair!”

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                  :p

          • …but the trend depictedhere is rather disturbing.  It appears to me that the severe uptick black curve between 1800 and 2000 does not look to me to be a cyclical trend, and it corresponds perfectly to the increased burning of fossil fuels since the beginning of the industrial revolution.  I recognize that correlation does not equal causation, but the trend is disturbing.  And, give the feedback nature of greenhouse gases, there will be substantial problems. 

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            When I want to find out something about climatology and global warming, I go to sites such as realclimate.org

      • Including some apostates who no longer believe it is caused by CO2 but by other forces. 

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        • This video begins with so much crap it is unwatchable.

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          “There is no evidence that CO2 causes…” I am told by some unnamed person. An actor maybe? So a film to combat exaggeration begins with — what? — exaggeration?

            • Why don’t you come back when you’ve actually thought about this? Throwing up random links, goofing about us being the Inquisition, and saying it must be exaggeration because of what happened in Paleozoic Era is embarrassing. It makes it look as if you’ll say anything no matter what so long as it supports “your side”.

              • I agree with you that there is warming.

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                I disagree with you as to the cause.

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                I’ve been equated with a Holocaust Denier for my views.  So I’m not injecting Hyperbole here.  I’m not putting up random links.  Every link supports my hypothesis.  You may not agree with what is in the links, as I don’t agree with what is in “An Inconvenient Truth”.  I’ve not once gotten personal in this thread, well except for asking if you are a scientist, in response to your discounting of a non-scientist.  You on the other hand when challenged got personal. 

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                See we can’t have a discussion on this issue if you can’t get beyond your preconcieved notions as to what one data point says. 

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                Please explain to me why Mars’ temperatures are tracking Earth’s temperatures? 

                • EBC, I will say to you what I standardly say to global-warming deniers: I double-dog-dare to call up 100 climatologists at leading universities and ask 1. if they think global warming is real, and 2. if it’s caused by human activity. Don’t have time for 100? Try twenty.

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                  If 99 out of 100 doctors told you you had cancer and needed treatment, would you get treated?

                • and ask the same question Charley.  Of course they are just TV people right?  But they are atmospheric scientists every single one that uses the name Meteorologist, not the plain old TV weathermen like Al Roker, but people like Harvey Leonard and Mish Michaels.  A lot of them don’t believe the Global Warming hype. 

                • If 99 doctors said you had cancer and needed treatment and knew the treatment, then yes.

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                  If 99 said you had cancer, and 75 said you needed treatment and there were 60 different treatments, none of which guaranteed any calculable measure of success, which treatment would you pick, if any?

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                  I think the latter is where we are with respect to global warming.

                • If you were a smoker and 99 out of 100 doctors told you to quit smoking or die, you probably would.

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                  Now, you ask them how, and they give you 60 different methods — chew gum, the patch, 12 step program, pills, whatever.

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                  That’s a closer analogy, but even that’s flawed.  If the problem is too much CO_2 emissions, the trick is to reduce the emissions.  How?  Nobody is proposing a single way — do lots of ways.  In the analogy, load up on patches, pills, gum, etc.

                • What if it’s not CO2 causing the warming?  It’s not the most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

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                  BTW, any idea what the cost in GDP reduction is of eliminating emission of CO2 by 10%, 25% … ?

                • There are a number of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including water vapor.  CO_2 is far more prevalent than methane (but less “effective” as a GHG).

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                  The cost to GDP reduction in eliminating emissions of CO_2 by 10%?  Negative cost.  We can get 10% through efficiency.

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                  The cost to GDP reduction in eliminating emissions of CO_2 by 25%?  That’s tougher to measure.  Efficiency might not get us all the way there, but efficiency and investment in (a) mo’ better public transit and (b) renewable power generation would.  Solar power isn’t economically competitive, but wind, geothermal, and biomass is — and that’s now, in a market where we’re watching energy prices rise with time.

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                  The cost to GDP reduction in eliminating emissions of CO_2 by 50%?  Let’s get to 10% first, then 25%, and see how we’re doing.

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                  It doesn’t have to be solved overnight, and expensive, complicated, risky approaches don’t need to be taken first.  Let’s work at doing the easy stuff which can often be done with no extra cost when looking at a five year period.

                • …I’ve laid out the science issues, as well as the political issues.  If you have a question, post it.

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                  The science is clear.  The politics are not.

                • What really stung on the Holocaust part was that it came from a VERY GOOD friend, whom I often vacation with.  I laughed it off but it was kind of weird….. 😉

                • I tend to believe that humans have had something to do with global warming, although I wouldnt be bowled over to learn the opposite is true.  Increasing CO2 always accompanies warming periods, that gives you correlation – but not causality.

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                  Anyway, the thing that bothers me about all this is the absolutism of the pro-Gore crowd.  The book teaches us that everyone who doesn’t toe the line on warming is either an unscientific retard or in the pay of the oil companies.  “The science is settled!”  Now here are some really scary scenarios based on “settled” science.  You are not allowed to question them. 

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                  This is not reasonable.

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                  Also I think the book exaggerates.  And to whomever asked me before, no I will not see the movie but the book is arms length away from me right now.

                • Anytime I can inject what I believe to be the best piece of musical theatre of the last 50 years, “The Inquisition Song” into a debate.  I’m gonna take it.  Mel Brooks is a GENIOUS.

                • that the other 6 or 7 planets’ temperatures aren’t “tracking Earth” — they’re not sufficiently related.  It ain’t random, but it ain’t particularly correlated either.

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                  You tell us why they’re related.  Otherwise, you’re just throwing out coincidence as a reason why 1000s of scientists who have spent years (decades!) studying this must be wrong.

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                  You’re a trained ChemE.  You know better than to make it seem like a correlation undermines mountains of theory, data, and studies.

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                  You also know damn well that man has been releasing more and more CO_2 over the past few hundred years, growing at an exponential* rate.  So, you agree that the Earth is warming, you agree that CO_2 is a greenhouse gas, and you know that CO_2 is an output of fossil fuel combustion.

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                  Nobody is claiming that man is responsible for 100% of the warming — but it’s clearly statistically significantly more than zero.  So, why not work to reduce carbon emissions, since that will at least slow the warming.

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                  p>  * Really, the first half of an S-curve.  It can’t really be exponential — there isn’t an infinite supply of carbon nor oxygen.

            • Global Warming Doubters where Jews is used, and you got yourself a musical number for Modern times.

      • Demolisher –  Did you even bother watching an Inconvenient Truth?  What was the percentage of scientists who disagree with Gore’s claims?  Why would you want to minimize the problem and thus prevent action?

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        This is remarkable – but I see it all the time.  Something like:

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        “The movie proves that the stuff in the movie is undeniable.”

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        I challenge the movie.

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        “Obviously you didn’t see the movie or you would know from the points in the movie that your challenge cannot possibly be true”.

        • Did a memo go out to the party with something to the effect:

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          “Danger, danger, danger:  BMG is printing real stories.  Go attack them with all the lies and distortions you can come up with.  Do it now before more people start tuning in to reality”. 

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          If you really want fair and balanced, please go watch Fox.  They know everything, especially Bill Reilly.  I bet he has a blog — go ask him about global warming and get back to us.  You’ll like it there.

          • a movie went out and this one has a neat twist:  you can’t question it!

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            I saw it in Gore’s movie man, it must be true!  Anyone who disagrees is in the pay of the oil companies!  No dissent allowed!

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            I like this thought from today’s Philly Inquirer:

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            But when you compound the probabilities, the claims of environmentalists such as Gore begin to look less and less certain. In fact, in their unwillingness to brook dissent or countervailing theories, they seem less like scientists and more like the fundamentalists they otherwise scorn.

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            http://www.philly.co…

      • How do scientists account for the numerous climactic shifts in the past three million years?

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        How do scientists explain the sudden warming of the arctic
        and subsequent cooling circa 4th century?

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        How do scientists explain the earth’s pole reversals?

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        Mass extinctions related to global cooling?

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        These are in fact Inconvenient Truths!

        • Clear Channel savant.  I just finished watching Al Gore’s follow up to An Inconvenient Truth on HBO.  Go watch it.  It probably won’t work for you because it’s a follow up to the statistics presented over a year ago in the original analysis. 

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          I know someone who lives in Iceland.  He’s never seen anything like what is occuring there.  I also lived in Alaska.  The glacier about a quarter mile from where I lived almost doesn’t exist anymore.  Under the new rules of this site, I won’t tell you what I think of you or your inane questions.  You are beneath the contempt level that I have for people who stand in the way of fixing a global problem.  I really hope you buy some ocean front property. 

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          There’s no problem.  Go buy a freakin Hummer and an oil heated McMansion on the coast.  You deserve both.

    • The evidence about glaciers, carbon dioxide levels, and the polar ice caps is incontrovertible.

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      The trouble with climate change is that it affects more than just the thermometer. Global warming causes rainfall to become even less evenly distributed so coasts get soaked and desserts expand. The biosphere is quite sensitive to these sorts of changes. All sorts of predator-prey relationships get upset. (Think about migratory birds, hibernation, when flowers bloom, when beetles mature.) The statistics on invasive species are alarming all by themselves. There is no wall protecting the global food supply from that. Did you see the articles on how bees are dying off? Think about that happening with lots of species.

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      Further, the way ocean currents work is just not understood. If the earth’s temperature rises, they’re likely to re-route. How soon? No one knows, but it’s a risk we should avoid. Europeans, in particular, depend upon the Gulf Stream to keep them warm and their agriculture going.

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      Predictions about the ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica have occasionally underestimated the speed and danger as well.

      Suppose, for sake of argument, that Gore is exaggerating and the danger of climactic calamity is only 5%. Should we ignore it? Would you have sex under circumstances that “only” posed a 5% risk of your contracting HIV? No, you wouldn’t. Why would we be less careful of our common home?

      • If the warming is caused by solar activity.  There is nothing we can do about it.

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        The climate has changed since the earth was created eons ago.  There are examples of this all around us.  Ever see a big boulder kind of just sitting there around your house.  That boulder used to be part of the Appalachians and was deposited there by a glacier as it retreated.

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        Ever go to Acadia National Park?  Somes Sound was carved by a glacier.

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        Georges Bank used to be all land.

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        Parts of the Desert Southwest used to be the ocean sea floor.

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        After this rambling what is my point.  The Earth changes, always has, always will.  So intead of running around like Chicken Little why don’t we focus on what we are going to do about it when it does change.  How do we switch the means of agricultural production to take advantage of new farm land, How do we move people inland, etc…

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        It’s not like one day we are going to wake up and find Boston under 10 feet of water.  It would be a gradual change. 

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        Yours truly,

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        The Ostrich

        • The point is that carbon dioxide causes it. We are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There is very strong evidence for that.

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          There are treatments for paranoia, by the way. You do not have to see this as a liberal, elitist plot.

    • On some of the domestic U.S. political matters, and entirely too much about Gore’s personal biography, but the science/climate change part, which was the focus of the film, was very well argued.

      • A commonly cited exaggeration, this take from CATO:

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        http://www.cato.org/…

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        The main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland’s 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100.

        Where’s the scientific support for this claim? Certainly not in the recent Policymaker’s Summary from the United Nations’ much anticipated compendium on climate change. Under the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s medium-range emission scenario for greenhouse gases, a rise in sea level of between 8 and 17 inches is predicted by 2100. Gore’s film exaggerates the rise by about 2,000 percent.

        Even 17 inches is likely to be high, because it assumes that the concentration of methane, an important greenhouse gas, is growing rapidly. Atmospheric methane concentration hasn’t changed appreciably for seven years, and Nobel Laureate Sherwood Rowland recently pronounced the IPCC’s methane emissions scenarios as “quite unlikely.”

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        A compedium of naysayers:

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        http://www.canada.co…

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        From NZ:

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        http://www.scoop.co….

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        Annyong NYT site:

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        http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13gore.html

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        I also understand that there is no support for the implication that hurricanes like Katrina have been caused by warming, CO2, or man. 

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        I get that he accuses Reagan, Bush I and Bush of ignoring the problem and omitting any mention of the intervening years, ok sure but the exaggerations, oh the exaggerations!  Coupled with the attempt to create an absolute unchallengable truth, its just too much!

        • Cato?  You do realize you’re being spoon fed propaganda — right?  From talibangelists — right?  Who are financed by ideologues who couldn’t care less about the environment or the people who will suffer as a result of this?  Right?  Seriously, you’re giving us Cato BS?  Ha, ha, ha, thud, ha ha, ha!!

            • are delusional if you don’t understand that right wing institutions are funded primarily by religious ideologues who ignore science for political gain.

              • a sectarian, libertarian think tank.  It is not conservative. I think there are people at Cato that actually don’t support the Iraq war.

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                It is not a bastion of talibangelism(isn’t it amazing that liberals who espouse diversity and tolerance hate religous people so much). 

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                With every post you prove my point that there can be no dissent, for what Al Gore has spoken is gospel.  Your acting as bad as the talibangelists that you so despise.  You may think it’s because you are of superior intellect and what you think must be right.  But isn’t that what the Catholic Church and the talibangelists think? 

                • …irrespective of that, these self-described “think tanks” are beholden to their corporate funders, and they churn out reams and reams of paper on their behalf.

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                  Then again, I may be in error.  Maybe you are correct.  Maybe they should be considered sectarian, since they are obviously nothing more than mouthpieces for their funders.

                • is the key.  I’m going to put another post together on where the money comes from.  How’s that?  Does that work for you?  Who is funding the anti-science crusade?  Who benefits the most from the drivel that comes out of these “institutes”?  Since it doesn’t seem that statistics, analysis or even science arguments make any difference to you, how about the money trail? 

                • 1 accountant in 1000 will disagree with whatever you present.  Guess which one the professional trolls will finds credible?

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                  NB It would be an interesting, but don’t sidetrack your time to do it if you have more important things to do.  These people thrive on wasting our time, taking it away from real work.  We waste time, they win.

                • http://www.cato.org/…

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                  How Cato Is Funded

                  In order to maintain its independence, the Cato Institute accepts no government funding. Cato receives approximately 75 percent of its funding from individuals, with lesser amounts coming from foundations, corporations, and the sale of publications. The Cato Institute is a nonprofit, tax-exempt educational foundation under Section 501(c) 3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Cato’s 2005 revenues were over $22.4 million, and it has approximately 95 full-time employees, 70 adjunct scholars, and 20 fellows, plus interns.
                  How to Label Cato

                  Today, those who subscribe to the principles of the American Revolution–individual liberty, limited government, the free market, and the rule of law–call themselves by a variety of terms, including conservative, libertarian, classical liberal, and liberal. We see problems with all of those terms. “Conservative” smacks of an unwillingness to change, of a desire to preserve the status quo. Only in America do people seem to refer to free-market capitalism–the most progressive, dynamic, and ever-changing system the world has ever known–as conservative. Additionally, many contemporary American conservatives favor state intervention in some areas, most notably in trade and into our private lives.

                  “Classical liberal” is a bit closer to the mark, but the word “classical” connotes a backward-looking philosophy.

                  Finally, “liberal” may well be the perfect word in most of the world–the liberals in societies from China to Iran to South Africa to Argentina are supporters of human rights and free markets–but its meaning has clearly been corrupted by contemporary American liberals.

                  The Jeffersonian philosophy that animates Cato’s work has increasingly come to be called “libertarianism” or “market liberalism.” It combines an appreciation for entrepreneurship, the market process, and lower taxes with strict respect for civil liberties and skepticism about the benefits of both the welfare state and foreign military adventurism.

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                  I don’t care if you are against CATO but you should understand that they are different than republicans by a good margin.

      • from Al Gore?  Should he not have included part of his biography in the film?  I think that was the best part — watching and imagining that the last six years of nightmares never happened and the man who was elected President had been in charge.  No 9/11.  No Iraq.  No torture.  No Guantanamo.  We wouldn’t be hated by virtually 90% of the world’s population.  Gore would have followed in Clinton’s footsteps and been greeted cordially throughout a good portion of the world.  If we needed to go to war (and I say needed), we would have had a real coalition and the backing of the UN.  The man was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for crying out loud.  Peace prize.  He can talk about his past all he wants, and I hope he continues when he announces that he will run. 

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        Did you know that Clear Channel Communications is actually hiring bloggers and attaching themselves to this medium?  Surprised?  If you can’t beat em, join em.  I really expect better of BMG than to sit back and watch it happen. 

        • Do you actually believe that 9/11 wouldn’t have happened with Al Gore as president.  A plot that was years in the making.  Oh I guess that’s right Al Qaeda NEVER attacked us or our interests when Bill Clinton was president. 

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          You have just about lost all credibility with that statement.  No seriously, you have.

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          Of course you won’t give Bush credit for the only attack by Al Qaeda on American Interests in his term came 9 months into his term. That there has not been an attack on the United States or our interests any where that we have not been engaged of our own volition.  That means nothing right.

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          Sorry to break it to you, 9/11 would have happened with an Al Gore Presidency. 

      • It is time to separate the messenger from the message.

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        Al Gore is a divisive political figure.
        It is nearly impossible for him to be the point man for anything and not have people fall in along political lines.

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        I have believed, since I was in school over thirty years ago, that man is fully capable of adversely affecting his habitat on a global scale.
        Because of those beliefs, I have tried to live a principally “green” lifestyle.

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        And I am in general agreement with many of the concerns of scientists as regards human contributions to atmospheric changes that may be affecting the global climate.

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        But as a conservative, I cringe at being lectured to by someone I find as loathsome as Al Gore.
        I regard him as a broken clock, who just happens to be somewhat right on this issue.
        And I will be as quick as anyone to point out his hypocrisies vis-a-vis his message versus his lifestyle.

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        My solution? Find a better messenger.
        One whom we can all rally around.
        If we can’t do that, global warming will continue to be a political issue, to everyone’s detriment.

            • It is not sarcastic at all.  Ed Begley, Jr. lives what he preaches. 

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              He would make a more credible spokesman than Al Gore.

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              I may not believe that global warming is totally caused by humanity, it doesn’t mean that I don’t try to be environmentally conscious.  The two are not exclusive.

    • The claims made in the movie are not exaggerated. The link between CO2 and global warming is undeniable. There is some uncertainty about how much other factors matter, but most of them are things we can’t control. Most of the current predictions are based on all the other factors staying the same. This is where this is some disagreement between scientists. Some people (not scientists) claim that all of the recent warming is from the sun. Most scientists recognize that some of the warming is from the sun, some of it is from CO2, and the rest is from other sources.

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      Most scientists are actually presenting the midline scenarios, because the worst-case scenarios are so bad that people don’t understand them.

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      There is little (if any) disagreement about how much people can affect global warming. Calculating planetary warming coefficients based on CO@ concentrations is fairly easy, so we know about how much changing the CO2 level will change temperatures. We don’t know how the sun’s output will change, but we can make reasonable guesses and run the models for high and low output. All scenarios show big problems if we don’t cut back on CO2 production.

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      Some of the effects are things we can’t properly model. This is mostly because we don’t really understand what drives the major ocean currents, so we don’t know how much it would take to change them. If the ocean currents change, it will drastically alter the climate all over the world.

  2. and have my own opinion which I will keep to myself at least in this forum. I will comment that this “global warming ” thing is ‘running out of steam” so to speak, at least with the “common man”. Most people live from day to day, month to month and can only see that they are freezing their proverbial rear ends off and when they read that an Artic circle expedition has been cancelled ( a few days ago) due to extroardinarily cold weather, they say “What the heck are these people talking about?” “What’s the big deal?” “I’m freezing and these people are talking about the earth melting?”  I don’t know a lot about the “science” but I do know that Al Gore has the personal “carbon footprint” ( a new term I learned that describes personal consumption) of a bronta saurus… I think the man is an incredible hipocrit. I have trouble stomaching someone who doesn’t “walk the talk” which this guy clearly doesn’t do.
    So the temperature of the earth has risen one degree Celsius over the past 100 years…. who cares? We’ll all be dead anyway long before anything happens… meanwhile, hand me the keys to my Al Gore model gas guzzling SUV.. all I want to do is live like AL…. everybody OK with that?

      • expressed what is probably a perfectly common opinion.  At a minimum, it is something you (presumably a Gore advocate in this) should understand and want to be able to counter.

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        Not everyone who sees things differently from you guys is a troll.

    • leaves him open to the fairly obvious and common charge of liberal hypocrisy, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting him much among his fans.  I’ve heard some say that his home energy bill is justified because he is sending alot of faxes out from hoome or something.  Personally I couldn’t care less.

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      What really kills me though is the whole “Carbon Credits” thing.

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      Anyone heard of that one?

      • The carbon credit thing has been discussed here, multiple times, and it’s kosher.

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        A CO_2 molecule is a CO_2 molecule.  Al’s activities result in oodles of them being released in the atmosphere, and his other activities result in that many not being released that would have been released otherwise.

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        If I give you 100 $1 bills and you give me five $20s, we’re even.  That’s carbon credits, and it works.  You’ve read this before.  Enough with the baiting.

        • on Krauthammer’s piece from Time:

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          http://www.time.com/…

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          What is wrong with this scam? First, purchasing carbon credits is an incentive to burn even more fossil fuels, since now it is done under the illusion that it’s really cost-free to the atmosphere.

          Second, it is a way for the rich to export the real costs and sacrifices of pollution control to the poorer segments of humanity in the Third World. (Apparently, Hollywood’s plan is to make up for that by adopting every last one of their children.) For example, GreenSeat, a Dutch carbon-trading outfit, buys offsets from a foundation that plants trees in Uganda’s Mount Elgon National Park to soak up the carbon emissions of its rich Western patrons. Small problem: expanding the park encroaches on land traditionally used by local farmers. As a result, reports the New York Times, “villagers living along the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, and their livestock has been confiscated by armed park rangers.” All this so that swimming pools can be heated and Maseratis driven with a clear conscience in the fattest parts of the world.

          The other form of carbon trading is to get Third World companies to cut their emissions to offset Western pollution. The reason this doesn’t work–and why the carbon racket is a farce–is that you need a cap for cap-and-trade to work. Sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S. were capped, and the trading system succeeded in reducing acid rain by half. But even the Kyoto treaty doesn’t put any cap on greenhouse gases in China and India, where billions of these carbon credits are traded. Sure, you can pretend you’re offsetting Western greenhouse pollution by supposedly cleaning up a dirty coal plant in China. But China is adding a new coal plant every week. You could build a particularly dirty “uncapped” power plant, then sell hundreds of millions in carbon credits to reduce it to a normal rate of pollution. The result? The polluter gets very rich. The planet continues to cook. And the Gores of the world can feel virtuous as they burn up the local power grid.

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          I dont think its like changing a $20, exactly.

          • I’m not claiming that all carbon trading/carbon neutral programs are run well, fairly, or honestly.

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            But, plenty are.  For example, consider Native Energy.  You buy offsets from them, and they support Native American owned and operated wind farms (as well as dairy farm methane projects, solar arrays, etc.).

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            In this particular case, they’re cooperating with the land owners, funding some of the capital costs for renewable energy projects, helping establish alternative income streams for Americans in traditionally tough situations, and doing it all on American soil which helps create American jobs.

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            So, buying forest plantings in Uganda?  I don’t know if that’s a great plan.  Helping build green electricity generation in America?  Methinks that’s a great plan.

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            As with all other businesses and charities, implementation matters.  I can cherry pick a few congregations, charities, or companies and claim that religion, public service, and capitalism are all bad.  But I don’t — because that’s stupid.  Don’t make the same mistake with carbon trading.

              • is that tree planting with respect to global warming is sketchy.

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                You do sink some carbon with trees, and you get lots of other ecological benefits, but the sink only lasts as long as the forest.  Sure, forests do deposit small amounts of CO_2 into the soil, thereby removing them from the short term carbon cycle.  But, most carbon removed by trees is released when they burn or rot.  If other trees grow in the fallen tree’s place in the forest, you keep your initial tree-based sequestration.  However, as soon as the forest’s land area is reduced, you’re now giving back that carbon into the atmosphere.

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                I like forests, and I think that tUSA should support more forestry programs in tUSA and worldwide — particularly in places where man has cut/burned down forests in recent history.  But, I’m not hep to the forest-carbon-sequestration jive.

                The carbon credits I do think work are ones that build energy infrastructure.  These come in two kinds: (a) implement efficiency gains, and (b) create carbonless energy generation.  In both cases, there are some fundamental ideas that help make this work.
                1.  Renewable energy is almost always cheaper to produce than carbon-based energy.  I’m not referring about the fixed costs of building the generational capacity; I’m referring to the variable costs of operation.  The sun doesn’t charge for its rays, its wind, or its river flow.  Woodchips (biomass) are very cheap, and municipal and animal waste is otherwise a cost, not a revenue stream.  So, since the fuel for renewable energy is cheap/free, once the generational facilities are built they will work to replace the more expensive methods all of which just so happen to be coal, oil, and natural gas based.
                2.  The system loses energy.  Line losses, transformer losses, etc.  This means that consuming 1 kWh less of electricity is like generating 1.075 kWh less.  Therefore, given the choice between creating 1 kW more of carbon-less generation or reducing consumption by 1 kW, the reduction is better at reducing carbon emissions.
                3.  There is very little energy storage at a grand scale.  Chemical batteries are a non starter.  The only large scale way to store energy is to pump water up hill, and then use a hydro dam to recapture that electricity later.  This is important because all electricity used now is generated now — and people use far more electricity M-F than Sat and Sun, far more 8am-6pm than over night, and far more in Jan&Feb, July&Aug than other months.  This is why solar is so attractive — it generates electricity when its needed most.  It’s also why a mix of renewable energy sources are so important: wind (intermittent, 24/7/365), solar (semi-intermittent, daytime only), biomass (can fine tune control time and quantity), hydro (fine tune control time and quantity), geothermal (base load constant).  A mix of all of them allows for the engineers to match current production capabilities with current demand.
                4.  Electrons don’t have color.  There aren’t really green ones and brown/black ones — they’re all identical.  We sometimes use “green electron” to indicate “the amount of electricity in the system created by green generational methods.”  If I create renewable energy, it doesn’t matter if it powers my vacuum cleaner or your television.  If a black one was going to be used and now a green one is used instead, that means that some carbon emission was avoided.  It doesn’t matter where the green electron was used, but simply that it was used.

                So, having written all that, (a) and (b) are so important because both actions result in a system using fewer black electrons — and therefore releasing less CO_2 (and NOx, etc) in the atmosphere.

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                Efficiency programs (a) are often overstated.  By that I mean this: if my efficiency program results in you putting CF bulbs in your house, I add up the energy savings (say 1500 kWh a year) and multiply it by the bulbs lifetimes (say 8 years) and argue that I just saved 12,000 kWh.  I’m right if and only if your habits of light usage and bulb type weren’t ever going to change in the next 8 years.  It assumes that you weren’t going to migrate to CF bulbs on your own, and that’s not a so-great assumption.  That doesn’t mean that efficiency programs are bad: on the contrary, they’re fabulous both because it expands the market of efficiency devices (helping drive down cost per unit) and because a kWh saved is a 1.075 kWh earned.  But, these programs have the potential to overstate their accomplishments.

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                Green energy programs (b) are hard to overstate.  There’s a meter that measures how many kWh have been produced.  You can’t lie about it because they get audited by all sorts of agencies.  I wrote above about how the variable cost for renewable energy is almost always lower because the fuel is cheap/free.  However, the fixed costs are typically higher, which means that these plants will only be built if the long term return on investment (ROI) is higher than a coal/gas/oil plant.  This is true if either the initial costs of green energy generator construction is brought down, or of the price for green energy is higher than dirty energy so that profit per kWh goes up.  This is where carbon credits come in.  If an agency sets up a long term contract where they’ll pay a wind turbine owner $0.01 per kWh generated in addition to the market price of electricity for the next 5/10/15/20 years, then the ROI numbers change in such a way that an investment in a wind turbine has a higher ROI than an equal investment in a fossil fuel plant.  As a result, the number of renewable electricity generators increases instead of the number of fossil fuel electricity generators.  Had the investors not gotten that extra penny per kWh, they’d have built a fossil fuel plant, and more CO_2 would be released into the atmosphere.  In this case, the “carbon credit” money really did reduce the amount of CO_2 emissions.  With enough people buying carbon credits, the growth in renewable energy generation could outpace the growth in electricity demand, resulting in the turning off of currently existing fossil fuel fired generators.

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                What the carbon reduction charities are doing is taking all of these one-time, annual, and per-kWh donations and bundling them.  They then negotiate with energy suppliers, using these charitable buyers to change the ROI on different types of generation, so that for-profit companies have no choice but to build renewable energy generators (higher ROI!).  It would be nice if they just built them on their own, and some (Florida P&L) do a better job than others (Dominion).  Still, these carbon credits are a free-market way to induce more renewable energy generation than would exist otherwise, and therefore less CO_2 in the atmosphere than would exist otherwise.  Remember, because the variable cost of renewable generation plants is lower, once they get built it is a near certainty that they will continue to operate for many years.

                I believe carbon credits work, but some can be overstated.  I think forest programs are most likely to overstate their reductions, followed by efficiency programs.  Green generation programs simply can’t overstate their effectiveness because electrical meters don’t (can’t!) lie.  That doesn’t mean that forest programs aren’t helping reduce CO_2 (they are!), but maybe not as effectively as efficiency programs, which may not reduce as much CO_2 per dollar spent as green generation programs.  I believe that all three types of programs are net-positive in terms of environmental change, and that all three should be encouraged.  But, as I wrote above, implementation matters, which is why I offset 100% of my electricity consumption with Vermont based Native Energy.

        • I can improve – or Mark Steyn can, anyway:

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          http://www.suntimes….

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          So in the Reverend Al’s case it doesn’t matter that he’s lit up like Times Square on V-E Day. Because he’s paid for his extravagant emissions. He has a carbon-offset trader in an environmentally friendly carbon-credits office suite who buys “carbon offsets” for Al from, say, a terrorist mastermind in a cave in the Pakistani tribal lands who’s dramatically reduced his energy usage mainly because every time he powers up his cell phone or laptop a light goes on in Washington and an unmanned drone starts heading his way. So, aside from a basic cable subscription to cheer himself up watching U.S. senators talking about “exit strategies” on CNN 24/7, the terrorist mastermind doesn’t deplete a lot of resources. Which means Tipper can watch Al give a speech on a widescreen plasma TV, where Al looks almost as wide as in life, and she doesn’t have to feel guilty because it all comes out . . . carbon-neutral!

          And, in fact, in the Reverend Al’s case it’s even better than that. Al buys his carbon offsets from Generation Investment Management LLP, which is “an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and with offices in London and Washington, D.C.,” that, for a fee, will invest your money in “high-quality companies at attractive prices that will deliver superior long-term investment returns.” Generation is a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3. And who’s the chairman and founding partner? Al Gore.

          So Al can buy his carbon offsets from himself. Better yet, he can buy them with the money he gets from his long-time relationship with Occidental Petroleum. See how easy it is to be carbon-neutral? All you have do is own a gazillion stocks in Big Oil, start an eco-stockbroking firm to make eco-friendly investments, use a small portion of your oil company’s profits to buy some tax-deductible carbon offsets from your own investment firm, and you too can save the planet while making money and leaving a carbon footprint roughly the size of Godzilla’s at the start of the movie when they’re all standing around in the little toe wondering what the strange depression in the landscape is.

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          you gotta love Mark Steyn…

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      • …if you’re referring to Gore’s house in Tennessee, it’s highly likely that the electricity comes from the Tennessee Valley Authority, most of whose power is–you know–hydroelectric, maybe supplemented by some nuclear.

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        Some of us aren’t completely unaware of what’s going on.

        • <

          blockquote>There is a finite amount of energy on the grid at any one time.  This energy comes from a variety of sources.  Some of them are renewable.  The Tennessee Valley Authority’s Green Power Switch which Gore belongs to outlines the amount of green power available on the TVA system.

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          The power that actually comes into your home is not from the exact source you may be “buying” your power from.  The fact that you don’t buy your power from a “green source” does not mean that you are not using a renewable source of energy.  For us here in New England we get a lot of our power from Hydro-Quebec for instance and their massive hydro-electric plants in the Canadian Shield.

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          Using the facts outlined above one can begin to see that since Al Gore is using a tremendous amount of energy, even though he is buying green energy he is depriving others in the TVA grid from using that green energy.  In effect through his disproportionate use of green energy he is forcing his neighbors onto traditionally produced electricty from fossil fuel burning power plants.

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          With a finite energy pool the feel good methods Gore is using are just a hollow shell game.  They do not have the effect Gore believes they do.  Bush fundamentally understands this, as the design of his home shows.

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          What could Gore have done differently in the design of his home, to really make a difference.  He could install a passive solar heating system, or use geothermal heat like Bush.  Given his wealth he could also do things that someone in the middle class may not be able to afford, adding solar panels to the house.  There are solar panels today that blend into the architecture of a home. They are called Solar Save roofing tiles and have the look of normal roofing. 

          <

          blockquote>

    • How can you be so sure?  We Americans are so used to being very well fed that we just assume famine can’t happen here.  But these small changes in global temperature have really big effects on weather patterns, and the effect is felt within one growing season.  See the comment below from VT, for example. 

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      I just read an article in Science mag where Australian rainfall patterns have been majorly changed by aerosols (tiny particles) spewed out from Asian factories because the aerosols change air temperatures and therefore the direction the air masses (and the rain moisture they carry) flow.  That isn’t an example of global warming, but shows how quickly and directly people’s actions can affect weather and therefore food availability in a very short amount of time.

  3. and its ramifications:
    1) for the last 2 years we have not have a killing frost in October which means no beautiful red leaves, no foliaghe season and the accompanying tourists and money. I am pretty sure all of NE has had the same problem. When the frost came in Nov., the leaves were already yellow – the trees shut down as the days grew shorter – they didn’t wait for frost.
    The lack of cold and the rain ( see below) meant crops like winter squash, pumpkins, garlic, fall crops, rotted in the fields.
    2)no snow until last month, which has also done a number on our economy.
    3) rain and then more rain all last year which meant a)crops had to be replanted and then didn’t have enough time to grow properly in the right kind of temperature – peas, tomatoes, lots of ordinary food – b) haying was very difficult – dairy farmers couldn’t catch the hay at its peak ( best nutrition), but had to cut it when they could get into the fields, and then it didn’t dry because it rained again so it was moldy, unfit for use. Same scenario for corn.
    4) loggers couldn’t get into the woods because the ground didn’t freeze – the equipment gets bogged down in mud – so the lumber yards shut down, skilled men went off to be janitors because they needed steady jobs .
    5) if the warm January weather caused apples to bud and then die back because of the cold in Feb and March, the new buds may be too weak to make decent apples, and that crop will be lost for the year. What if the same thing happens next year?

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    You may not like squash, peas, apples. You may not drink milk. Or you think we can just get food from someplace else. But you do eat. The bee problem is therefore much more serious. Without bees to pollinate our plants we will run out of food. I have heard that it could take as little as 4 years for us to have famine.

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    I know this is at the end of a very long list of comments, but I needed to write it anyway, especially as I am listening to ‘Faust’ live from the MET.

      • …Weather is not climate.  Temperature patterns and their affect on the climate change from year to year.  You, being a science-trained person, should surely understand that.  That is why scientists do filtering.  Year to year filtering of the data is what is reflected in climate change.  If I were a climatologist (I’m not) I’d run my data through a sliding window (you know what that refers to) of at least five years to determine if there is a trend.

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        I’d also separate my data between daytime high temps and nightime low temps, since it is likely that the variation in the nightime low temps is more indicative of radiational cooling (read “greenhouse gas effects”) than daytime high temps–although they are probably related.

  4. when blondes are becoming extinct!!!!

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    BTW – I tend to believe that global warming is being caused mostly by humans. However, check out Michael Crichton on Charlie Rose  for a different and I have to admit interesting take on Global Warming.

      • I’ll first apologize since I’m not a scientist. I’m a skeptic. I also firmly believe most people will lie about just about anything to further an agenda.

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        I would like someone to respond to something that I saw re globalwarming /cooling.

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        A goup of Israeli scientists, as well as other nations, have been studying the formation of ice crystals in the earth’s atmosphere, primarily caused by high flying aircraft and other earth phenomena. These scientists state that presently the earth’s surface is receiving 20% less
        sunlight since circa 1950. This has had a dramtaic effect on flora and fauna. The validity of their calculations was allegedly affirmed by the grounding of most of the earths air traffic post 9/11 and the consequent incremental return of some of the sunlight. Their hypothesis is that the earth is being subject to a double problem, an incremental rise in earths temperature which will be followed by a cataclysmic fall in the earth’s temperature and another ice age pursuant to increased cloud formation and the ice crystals in our upper atmosphere which are reflecting back into space increasing amounts of sunlight.

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        Point being—there may be larger fish to fry. Earth is going to be in deep do do related to a mass of humanity it cannot support, the resultant gases that are emiited into the atmosphere from the direct and indirect existence of approximately two or three billion people (that the earth does not need) and the atmospheric discharge of water vapor into the atmosphere by aircraft.

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        The bottom line is that earth has a population of humanity it cannot support. The solution is quite simple. Mother earth has remedied her problems in the past and will likely do so again.

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        In science one and one equals two. It’s founded on a mathematical certainty. I want to see facts suported by calculations that are repeatable and verifiable. Until I see that, I will save all speculation on the cause and effect of global warming. I wouldn’t believe one word that came out of Al Gore’s mouth. Einstien, Oppenheimer, Teller, yes. Gore? Whos Al Gore? He’s a has been political hack.

        • In science one and one equals two. It’s founded on a mathematical certainty

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          Um, sorry, it’s obvious that you know nothing about science.  You’ve never done experimental work.  I have.

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          In mathematics, one plus one equals two.  But that’s because of the definition of one, the definition of two, and the definition of the “plus” operator.

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          In science, in an experiment, approximately-one plus approximately-one equals approximately two plus-or-minus a measure of experimental error.

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          Please don’t shower us with horse manure over things about which you know nothing.

          • As someone who had to go through hours and hours of lab work in college, I know exactly what raj is saying.

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            For example in our fluid dynamics lab, we finally figured out why our data kept getting screwed up at the same time every week.  All the classes got out at that time, and everybody was flushing the toilets.  Causing our input pressure to drop dramatically.

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            Sometimes some weird stuff happens when looking into science.  What makes science, science is the ability to argue about the unknown clearly and concisely to get others to agree with your findings, and to welcome dissent so you can further refine your hypothesis.

            • …that I would have to get up at 3AM to fill my Dewar flask with liquid nitrogen for my research on coupling between nuclei of solid hydrogen.  I’ve done experimental work.

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              I’m a lawyer by trade but a physicist by inclination.

  5. As an earth scientist, I find it very depressing that the meme that climate change might be a myth is still out there, even on such a progressive blog as this (based on the thread of the science in An Inconvienent Truth).  And to be clear, my use of the word “depressing” is simply because this is such an important issue for humanity, and that the conservative myth that scientists are still debating the issue of climate change continues to propagate. 

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    Here’s a few excerpts of information for readers of Bluemassgroup from the original sources and a little bit of context.

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    First this is an excerpt from the article in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) journal Science entitled “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” by Naomi Oreskes.  This is the study Gore cites.

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    Policy-makers and the media, particularly in the United States, frequently assert that climate science is highly uncertain. Some have used this as an argument against adopting strong measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, while discussing a major U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on the risks of climate change, then-EPA administrator Christine Whitman argued, “As [the report] went through review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change” (1). Some corporations whose revenues might be adversely affected by controls on carbon dioxide emissions have also alleged major uncertainties in the science (2). Such statements suggest that there might be substantive disagreement in the scientific community about the reality of anthropogenic climate change. This is not the case.

    The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC’s purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature (3). In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities: “Human activities … are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents … that absorb or scatter radiant energy. … [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations” [p. 21 in (4)].

    IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members’ expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions, begins: “Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise” [p. 1 in (5)]. The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: “The IPCC’s conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue” [p. 3 in (5)].

    Others agree. The American Meteorological Society (6), the American Geophysical Union (7), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling (8).

    The drafting of such reports and statements involves many opportunities for comment, criticism, and revision, and it is not likely that they would diverge greatly from the opinions of the societies’ members. Nevertheless, they might downplay legitimate dissenting opinions. That hypothesis was tested by analyzing 928 abstracts, published in refereed scientific journals between 1993 and 2003, and listed in the ISI database with the keywords “climate change” (9).

    The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

    Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

    This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect.

    The scientific consensus might, of course, be wrong. If the history of science teaches anything, it is humility, and no one can be faulted for failing to act on what is not known. But our grandchildren will surely blame us if they find that we understood the reality of anthropogenic climate change and failed to do anything about it.

    Many details about climate interactions are not well understood, and there are ample grounds for continued research to provide a better basis for understanding climate dynamics. The question of what to do about climate change is also still open. But there is a scientific consensus on the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Climate scientists have repeatedly tried to make this clear. It is time for the rest of us to listen.

    References and Notes

      1. A. C. Revkin, K. Q. Seelye, New York Times, 19 June 2003, A1.  2. S. van den Hove, M. Le Menestrel, H.-C. de Bettignies, Climate Policy 2 (1), 3 (2003).  3. See http://www.ipcc.ch/about/about.htm.&nbsp; 4. J. J. McCarthy et al., Eds., Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 2001).  5. National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).  6. American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).  7. American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).  8. See http://www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.&nbsp; 9. The first year for which the database consistently published abstracts was 1993. Some abstracts were deleted from our analysis because, although the authors had put “climate change” in their key words, the paper was not about climate change.  10. This essay is excerpted from the 2004 George Sarton Memorial Lecture, “Consensus in science: How do we know we’re not wrong,” presented at the AAAS meeting on 13 February 2004. I am grateful to AAAS and the History of Science Society for their support of this lectureship; to my research assistants S. Luis and G. Law; and to D. C. Agnew, K. Belitz, J. R. Fleming, M. T. Greene, H. Leifert, and R. C. J. Somerville for helpful discussions.

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    p>
    Second, the notion about there being climate fluctations in the past, and that this could be another natural cycle is badly misrepresented by non-scientists (e.g. Michael Crichton etc).  Yes, there were climate fluctations in the past due to changes in the orbit of the Earth, but in the past several tens to thousands of hundreds of years ago (which importantly is the relevant time period for comparison, before that, the planet had a completely different ecosystem with major groupings of organisms having not evolved yet, in particular marine algal known as diatoms) there has been nothing like the increase in carbon dioxide that is occuring now (go look at the link, it’s critical to the argument, from wikipedia which has plotted data nicely from ice core data in the science literature).  The scale of what humans are doing now is much larger than anything that occurred during those ice ages.  The numbers to remember, and they’re easy to memorize, is that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now ~381 ppm (parts per million), it was ~280ppm in the 1800’s.  Based on our current usage, we’re easily on track for 500ppm within this century.  Compare those numbers to that figure again,, during the glacial-interglacial cycles the CO2 never exceeds 300, and oscillates between ~200 and ~300.  These are very fast changes in the composition of the atmosphere, caused by human fossil fuel consumption, and significantly exceeding anything the Earth has seen over the past several hundred thousand years.  All of those statements in the previous sentence are facts that are not debated within the scientific community.  Next time you hear someone question the science of global warming, use these arguments to squash the myth.

    • …Michael Crichton is a writer of fiction. 

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      I would pay as much attention to his opinion about much of anything as I would have paid to William Shockley’s (Nobel Prize winner in physics–transistor effect) opinion about racism. 

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      NB: Shockley, who I actually met when I was a child, in his later addle-pated years, was a noted racist. 

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      Point: People get into trouble when they get outside of their areas of expertise.

  6. Rather than go into right-side indent hell, I’ll post a single consolidated comment here

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    EaBo wrote

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    I don’t disagree that C02 is a greenhouse gas.  I just disagree that humanity is 100% responsible for global warming.

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    Fair enough.  But I’m not sure that anyone is claiming that humans are 100% responsible for global climate change–just that they are substantially contributing to it through burning of fossil fuels.  There are cycles in the orbit of the earth around the sun (so-called Milankovich cycles) that can result in an increase and a decrease in the the insolation of the earth, but they operate on the order of tens of thousands of years, not a century or two, as shown in the graph whose link I posted earlier.

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    However, based on what is reported here, here (you have to read the time-line on the “x” axis carefully–the left side of the graph is recent times, the right side 400K years ago), and here, it seems to me that a not-insubstantial amount of the increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere is anthropogenic (human caused) based on the increase in burning of fossil fuels*.  The increase in that greenhouse gas can have two effects.  One, it can result in a decrease in radiational cooling (because of an overall increase in night-time temperatures), in turn, resulting in an increase in the average temperature.  Two, an increase in the average temperature can result in an increase in the amount of water vapor–H20–in the atmosphere, because the atmosphere at higher temperature can uptake more water vapor from the oceans than the atmosphere at a lower temperature.  Water vapor is, of course, another greenhouse gas, and increases in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere will also reduce radiational cooling. 

    <

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    Of course, as the temperature rises and the arctic tundras melt, there will be increasing amounts of methane CH4 generated.  Methane is another greenhouse gas.

    <

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    That is what I refer to as the “feedback effect”  of increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

    <

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    It is also interesting to note that there seems to be an 800 year lag on historical C02 levels to warming temperatures.

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    I’m not sure where you got that from.  Look at the graph (linked to above) here and the graph I linked to earlier graph (the time-lines are reversed).  I don’t see anything like an 800 year time lag.

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    Regarding your quotation

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    Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: “The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

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    I’m not sure what Solanki meant by that, but it should be recognized that what he may have been referring to is the insolation of the earth, not the strength of sunlight from the sun.  There is a difference. 

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    It has been recognized that the insolation of the earth (the amount of light allowed by the atmosphere to come to the surface) has changed over the last 60 years.  If you look again at this graph you will see that there was a period around 1945-1975 during which the global warming appeared to hesitate (more detailed graphs are available).  It has been theorized that that was due to increases in emissions of sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere during that time period.  Sulfate aerosols tend to reflect sunlight, and so increases in sulfate aerosols would reduce the effect of increases in concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.  That’s exactly what happened.

    <

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    The problem is that sulfate aerosols, when combined with water vapor, form sulfuric acid–yes, you guessed it acid rain.  When that negative effect was noted, and efforts made in the 1970s to scale back the levels of sulfate aerosol emissions, their reflective effects were diminished and the temperatures resumed their increase, as indicated on the cited graph.

    <

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    EaBo, I’m going to tell you.  I believe that anthrogenic climate change (global warming) is real, but I sincerely don’t know what can be done about it.  The issue isn’t so much scientific as it is political.  The science is fairly clear cut, but the ways in which the political issues should be resolved are not.  We are getting a hodge-podge of proposals from the politicians, none of which either individually or in combination make a whole lot of sense.  A few points:

    <

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    (i) Americans seem to believe that Gore’s slide show is a suggestion that Americans alone should bear the brunt of carbon emissions from fossile fuels.  And I believe that that is not an irrational response.  But, as I’ve mentioned here recently, Americans cannot do it alone, and neither can the Europeans.  Whatever Americans and Europeans do to cut back fossil fuel emissions, they will be swamped by the people in emerging economies in China and India (and not others).

    <

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    (ii) Ethanol is not a panacea, despite what we have been told by…the politicians.  Current technology regarding ethanol production requires almost as much fossil fuel usage as…fossil fuels themselves.  It may be that someday ethanol production will prove useful, but not now.  (See a recent issue of Scientific American).  The only reasonable explanation for the touting of ethanol is as a subsidy to farmers.  It is a heavily tax-advantaged industry, and is very damaging to the environment due to the amount of water required to grow the corn (acquifer degredation) and the amount of fertilizer required (the Gulf of Mexico is already polluted by fertilizer run-off).

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    The one benefit of ethanol is that, if ethanol could be created without use of fossil fuels (it currently can’t be), it would mean that there would be no net increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The issue regarding burning of fossil fuels is that it increases the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.  Fossil fuels representing a “sequestering” of carbon from the atmosphere–CO2 sequestering has been proposed, but, it isn’t there yet.

    <

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    (iii) Coal liquefaction–the US has lots of coal.  My 80+ year old father was a ChemE, and he did his bachelor’s thesis work on coal liquefaction while at Virginia Tech.  Just last week we were talking about ethanol (see above) and coal liquefaction, and I asked him pointedly whether that was a promising technology.  He pointedly said no.  The amount of oil-equivalent that they could get from coal was next to nothing, and required more energy than the oil-equivalent.  Count that out as an oil substitute.

    <

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    (iv) Nuclear.  Well, maybe, but there is nuclear waste, which contains large amounts of plutonium–the bomb material.  I suspect, but cannot prove, that it was from the sequestered spent fuel rods that NKorea got the plutonium for its nuclear bomb.  Nuclear is useful, but it isn’t a panacea.

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    I don’t know what the answer is.  And, quite frankly, I don’t have any particular truck in the matter.  We don’t have descendents who will be affected by global climate change. 

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    My only reason for weighing in on this issue is as follows.  I despise the fact that people are using this issue to bash scientists.  Much as I despise the fact that people use the creationism vs. evolution controversy (there really is no controversy) to bash scientists.  The science in both cases is clear.  The political implications of the science are not.  And, there is a difference between the two.

    <

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    Regarding global climate change, I’d be very content if our property in a suburb of Munich (500 meters above mean sea level) is seafront property within my lifetime.

    <

    p>
    ~~End of comment to EaBo (for the moment) and I appreciate his very literate and civil discussion on the issue.~~

    • There is no doubt that the earth’s climate is changing. I believe everything in nature is in a state of flux. How quickly the changes occur and why seems to have many folks in a dither.

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      The bottome line is that change is ocurring and will likely continue at the present rate. As I stated earlier, the earth is overpopulated. Natural resource is being depleted, potable water and water for agriculture is becoming a declining resource, humankind is razing the rainforests (which has a dramatic impact on climatology)
      fossil fuels are being used to produce heat and electricity and provide transportation amongst many things. The earths resources are being consumed at exponential rates to provide for exponential increases in earths population. The problem isn’t that we are using the resources, the problem is the amount and why. Again–the planet is overpopulated. There is not a single poster here that can deny the fact that if two thirds of the earths current population ceased to exist next week that the
      current issue would likely become moot.

      <

      p>
      The real problem is mankind. Our current poltical systems, and religious belief systems render us unable and unwilling to deal with this issue. 

    • …along the lines of “you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

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      Scientists should get out of the habit of opining in the political sphere.  Do the work, publish the results, suggest corrective measures–if corrective measures are deemed needed, and then get out of the way.

      <

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      It is in the political sphere that policy will be determined.  And frankly, it is by politicians–Gore is one–by which policy will be suggested.

      <

      p>
      So, most definitely, Gore’s actions in this regard–Gore is a politician–are useful.  The problem that Gore has is that he hasn’t really suggested a corrective measure.  He has popularized the issue, but he has not really popularized a solution.

      <

      p>
      That stated, the rhetorical bashing of the scientists who have recognized the issue is very disturbing.  It is reflective of an anti-science attitude that has become very prevalent in the US.  A “shoot the messenger” attitude.  As I’ve noted elsewhere, science is going increasingly abroad in part because of that attitude.

      • This is an interesting attitude and one that I’ve thought long and hard about.  I’ve decided it is simply wrong. The premise here is that scientists should stick to their objective scientific research and that they should not discuss science outside of the ivory tower (academic papers).  I think is actually a tactic to muzzle scientists from speaking out on their knowledge, because that knowledge (e.g. on climate change) doesn’t suit the chosen agenda (e.g. discrediting climate change), using the premise of lack of objectivity.  One could just as easily make a counter-argument this way: why are lawyers making decisions on scientific issues that they don’t understand well and/or aren’t qualified to discuss?  Aren’t they representing interests that make them not objective? Why aren’t there more scientists in public office?  My favorite bumper sticker along these lines is Rush Holt astrophysicist and congressman from Princeton New Jersey, which reads “My congressman is a rocket scientist”.  And moreover, the US taxpayers have spent good money training some of the best scientists in the world.  Why wouldn’t we want them to speak out using their expertise?  Especially if it is directly related to the public good?  In fact everytime I write a proposal for federal funds, I have to fill out a section called “Broader Outreach” where I talk about what I am doing to convey scientific information to the public. And finally, scientists are also citizens.  The notion that there is a conflict of interest in scientists doing science, and scientists having opinions is nonsense.  Science is anonymously peer-reviewed, good science makes it into the scientific literature, and if there are errors future articles will point them out.  (It’s actually kind of brutal, I think I get anonymously reviewed >25 times a year.  Imagine if your competitors could write about you under an anonymous shield >25 times a year.)

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        Gore is unusual because he is actually an articulate spokesperson for science (climate change science especially as of late), knows the science very well, is an excellent communicator of that science, and is a politican.  I walked out of An Inconvienent Truth and realized how few champions of science there are out there and how we could use a whole lot more.

        • What I meant to write is along the lines of the following.

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          Climate scientists can do yeomans’ work at gathering data, theorizing (yes, I really, really know what that means) as to the implication of the data, and so forth.  They can, and should, suggest policy initiatives that might temper climate change. 

          <

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          But it isn’t up to the climate scientists to try to force the policy initiatives that they have suggested to be implemented.  (That is what I meant by “get out of the way.”)  That last is what the public seems to perceive the climate scientists as doing.  I certainly concede the facts that (i) climate change is real, (ii) that it has a rather significant correlation to certain human activities (fossil fuel combustion), as I believe I’ve made clear above.  The policy decisions that are undertaken will be made by the body politic–which includes, but is certainly not limited to, climate scientists. 

          <

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          And, to repeat my “horse to water” reference, the climate scientists can only bring the body politic (the horse) to water, but they can’t make them drink.  That is climate scientists may be able to inform the body politic as to the potential issues, but they cannot require the body politic to follow their suggestions.  That is what is up to the body politic to determine–the entire body politic, not just the climate scientists.

          <

          p>
          I recognize your issues regarding peer review of scientific journals.  I haven’t done peer review myself, but I have known peer reviewers, and, from what I could tell, most of them took the task very seriously, although many of them viewed the task very differently.  Some took the task as being merely reference checking–suggesting additional references to be cited.  Others took the task as being checking the data and the calculations.  And others took the task as being opining as to whether the paper was so off-the–wall that the thesis of the paper was so bad that it was “not even wrong”  I’m sure you know what that refers to*.

          <

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          Regarding peer review by “competitors,” an intelligent peer reviewer would probably recognize that someday his papers will be reviewed by his peers, and would take that into account when doing his–or her–peer reviews.  Anonymous peer review is either a self-correcting mechanism or a communal destroying one.

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          *For those that don’t know what I’m referring to, it is a famous quotation by the noted physicist Wolfgang Pauli (he of the Pauli exclusion principle in quantum mechanics) about a paper that he was refereeing,

          <

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          However, this was not his most severe criticism, which he reserved for theories or theses so unclearly presented as to be untestable or unevaluatable, and thus not properly belonging within the realm of science, even though posing as such. They were worse than wrong because they could not be proven wrong. Famously, he once said of such an unclear paper: “It is not even wrong.”

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          http://en.wikipedia….

          • a year later…  Nice quote by Pauli, thanks.  

            <

            p>It’s true, an intelligent peer reviewer would one day know he would be reviewed by his peers. BUT, he’s anonymous, so how will I be sure that it was scientist X that torpedoed me last time.  The torpedos don’t come around too often, usually they’re jealous funding ones.  I’ve thought about actually posting them on a blog, they’re so preposterous that showing them to the light of day might cause them to shrivel up and die (if the reviewer were to ever see his immature review made public, anonymously still).  That would be an interesting experiment.

            <

            p>-mak

  7. this info was in my inbox this morning.  use it, or not, as you wish:
    —————————————-
    Climate Rescue Day – Saturday, March 24

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    Walk, Bike, Worship, and Rally to Stop Global Warming

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    80% Reduction in Global Warming Pollution by 2050: Starting Now!  The Interfaith Walk for Climate Rescue, which began in Northampton Friday, March 16, will arrive in Cambridge Friday, March 23. We invite you to join us on Climate Rescue Day, Saturday, March 24:

    <

    p>  * 10:00 am – Assemble at Christ Church, Zero Garden St., Cambridge  * 11:30 am – Walk from Cambridge to Copley Square, Boston  * 1:30 pm – Welcome the walkers as they arrive at Copley Square  * 2:00 pm – Attend the Interfaith Service for Climate Rescue at Old South Church, 645 Boylston Street, Boston  * 3-4:30 pm – Rally for Climate Rescue, Copley Square

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    To aid planning, we encourage registration for all events. But whether or not you register, please join us!

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    Information and registration at http://www.climatewalk.org

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    Interfaith Walk Endorsers Include

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    Andover Newton Theological School, Ecology Ministry
    Center for Ecological Technology
    Clean Water Action of Massachusetts
    Climate Crisis Coalition
    Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life
    Co-op Power
    Earth Ministry
    EarthSpirit Community
    Environmental League of Massachusetts
    Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts
    HealthLink
    International Association for Religious Freedom, US Chapter
    Massachusetts Climate Action Network
    Massachusetts Climate Coalition
    Massachusetts Conference, United Church of Christ
    Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light
    Mass Energy Consumers Alliance
    MassPIRG
    Sierra Student Coalition
    Step It Up 2007
    Union of Concerned Scientists
    Unitarian Universalist Mass Action Network

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    For information, contact:
    Brian Thurber
    Clean Water Action
    617-338-8131
    bthurber@cleanwater.org

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    Denise Frizzell
    Religious Witness for the Earth
    508-397-4056
    walk@religiouswitness.org

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    ——————————————————-
    Marc Breslow, Ph.D.
    Exec. Director, Mass. Climate Action Network
    marc@mbreslow.org
    http://www.massclimateaction.org
    Arlington, MA 02474

  8. Drudge is reporting that Al Gore will be facing some tough questions tomorrow on Capitol Hill.  It seems as though global warming skeptic and Democrat John Dingell may let it rip on Gore.

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    Some of the questions that will be asked tomorrow were leaked to Drudge.

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    Mr. Gore: You have said several times that we have 10 years to act to stave off global warming. Was that 10 years from the first time you said that or 10 years from now? We just wanted to get a firm date from you that we can hold you to.

    Mr. Gore: How can you continue to claim that global warming on Earth is primarily caused by mankind when other planets (Mars, Jupiter and Pluto) with no confirmed life forms and certainly no man-made industrial greenhouse gas emissions also show signs of global warming? Wouldn’t it make more sense that the sun is responsible for warming since it is the common denominator?

    Mr. Gore: Joseph Romm, the executive director for the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, has said we must build 700 large nuclear plants to stave off climate change. Where do you stand on the need for nuclear energy?

    Mr. Gore: Do you think the earth is significantly overpopulated and that is a major contributor to your view of climate change. (If yes, what do you think is a sustainable population for the planet?)

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    The questions seem like the ones being discussed in this thread. 

    • And it’s worth noting that the John Dingell is from Michigan — a major back scratcher of the Big 3 Auto Companies.  Having said that, the questions suck.  I’ll pretend I’m a less articulate Al Gore.

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      1.  We’ve made some progress at preventing this potential catastrophe thanks to the success of An Inconvenient Truth and millions of participants who have taken concrete steps to reduce their carbon footprint.  We intend to continue to work hard, educating American citizens and Congressmen about the very real danger, in an attempt to help even Congressmen from Michigan see how they can reduce their carbon footprint.  As our successes grow, we’ll be pushing the date back.  I look forward to you coming to me in 10 years saying “Ha!  You were wrong.”  It will mean I was effective in helping people take tangible steps in delaying or avoiding completely the kinds of environmental disasters that the entire peer group of climate scientists warn us will come if we don’t change our approach to energy.

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      2.  It’s true: all nine planets are warmed by the sun.  In fact, Venus is twice as hot as Mercury, even though it is twice as far from the sun.  Why?  It turns out that Venus’ atmosphere is just chock full of CO_2, and therefore has a surface temperature of 750 degrees Fahrenheit.

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      The reality is this: CO_2 is a greenhouse gas.  Greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere and the surface of a planet.  The increase of CO_2 in the atmosphere over the last 1000 years is positively correlated with the amount of fossil fuels man has been burning over that period.  Fossil fuels, when burned, release CO_2 into the atmosphere.

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      Without the sun, there’d be no global warming.  Without man burning fossil fuels, we also wouldn’t be undergoing global warming right now.

      <

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      3.  We may need to build nuclear plants — but we don’t need to build them yet.  Let’s focus on improving energy efficiency to reduce the amount of electricity and petroleum needed.  Let’s build more generators powered by wind, photovoltaics, biomass, landfill gas, animal waste, and the ocean’s tides.  Let’s convert more of our transportation from gasoline and diesel to ethanol, biodiesel, compressed natural gas, electricity, and even human power in the form of communities that encourage walking and cycling.  Let’s work really hard on those three things, and see how far we can go.  Maybe, just maybe, American leadership, ingenuity, and hard work can result in changing our energy infrastructure so that we don’t need fossil fuel or nuclear power.  I think we should go for it.

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      4.  The Earth is not overpopulated.  We have enough technology, enough wealth, and enough resources to provide for all 6 billion brothers and sisters.  What we don’t have is enough leadership from governments the world over to help all six billion people be safe, have education and job opportunities, and guaranteed freedoms to ensure that their basic human rights are protected.  We’ve seen tremendous population growth in India and China, and it’s reasonable to be concerned about the increase in greenhouse gases released from those nations.  But, I remind you that the average American releases 8 times more global warming inducing gases than the average man in China; it takes 18 men and women in India to release as much greenhouse gas as a single American.  The problem isn’t the number of people on the planet.  The problem is the number of homes and workplaces that waste heat and electricity due to inefficient appliances and insufficient insulation; the problem is cars getting less than 30 miles per gallon; the problem is the number of coal fired power plants.

      <

      p>

      <

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      All four are slam dunks.

      • Fossil fuels, when burned, release CO_2 into the atmosphere.

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        Fossil fuels, when burned, release CO2 into the atmosphere generated from carbon that was previously sequestered in the ground.  That would not be the case with fuels derived from biomass–eg, ethanol–since that would be a mere recycling of unsequestered carbon.  The problem is that technology to efficiently generate fuels from biomass doesn’t exist yet.

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        It has been proposed to develop technology to sequester CO2 that is currently in the atmosphere, but, as far as I can tell, the technology isn’t there yet.

        <

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        I was a bit dubious about wind power–believing that there was a substantially elevated risk to wildlife, but a recent study that I’ve seen reports of (I haven’t seen the study itself) suggests that my fears were substantially over-rated.  There is potentially a substantial environmental problem with hydro-power of course, since it is necessary to build a substantial water pressure head to power the generators.

        • Fossil fuels, when burned…

          yup.

          It has been proposed…

          yup.

          I was a bit dubious about wind power–believing that there was a substantially elevated risk to wildlife, but a recent study that I’ve seen reports of (I haven’t seen the study itself) suggests that my fears were substantially over-rated.  There is potentially a substantial environmental problem with hydro-power of course, since it is necessary to build a substantial water pressure head to power the generators.

          As far as wind power, there were some problems with bird kill.  Three problems in particular, both of which have been solved.  (1) If you put turbines in migratory paths, you chop up lots of birds.  Solution: don’t put them there.  (2) If you make the structure holding up the turbine a set of criss-crossing metal beams, then birds sit on them, and then when flying away get chopped up.  Solution: monopole.  (3) If you use small lightweight turbines, they spin really fast, resulting in fast paced chopping.  Solution: heavier, bigger blades which spin more slowly but generate the same amount of electricity (Mass*Velocity), so birds can dodge the slowly moving blades mid-flight.

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          As for hydro, there are a few ways to mitigate environmental catastrophe, including (1) reducing but not eliminating the river by daming only part of it, or (2) do what the Austrians do and take snow melt from up in the Alps and just run it down pipes to the bottom of the mountain (with man made holding lakes to regulate flow).  Tremendous water pressure, shot out of tiny nozzles onto hi-tech waterwheels.  This pdf file shows the water wheel on page 4.  I’ve seen ’em in person — they’re actually not as massive as I had imagined when I first read about them.

  9. I’m a grad student at MIT in the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Studies department.  Regardless of basic thermodynamical arguments or broad qualitative statements, the main reason there is a concensus on global warming is based on the results of recent climate models.  This fact is put forth most eloquently by my adviser, Professor Kerry Emanuel, in a recent general audience article: http://bostonreview….

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    I’ve had hands on experience with the output from some of the most important models used for the last 2 IPCC reports. I can say that once you get to a certain level in the field you realize the shortcomings from these models. You also, however, realize that when speaking of such broad changes as global temperature, there is no debate that we will be getting even warmer soon and that it is human activity that is responsible.  We are able to show this conclusively from climate models because climate modeling is a boundary value problem unlike the problem of short term deterministic forecasting.  Remember though that the field of advanced modeling is basically only a couple decades old (due to the lag in available computing power) so referencing any seemingly contradictory work from the 1970s or before is largely irrelevant.

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    Reading these types of threads I see the same points brought up over and over.  I get together once a week with grad students from the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT and we often talk about how information could better be disseminated to the general public.  One thing they do is accept and answer emails on the subject.  They know their stuff and have experience answering any question a person outside of the field will come up with, so I implore everyone to ask questions on this site:  http://web.mit.edu/g…
    If you do pose a particularly thought-provoking question, chances are your message will be forwarded to someone at the top of the field and you will get your answer.

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    Even if you believe in anthropogenic global warming already, it makes a big difference (in terms of spreading the word) to take the time to educate yourself.  Convincing a skeptic is much easier done with a knowledge of the subject as opposed to saying “because scientists say so” or “because Al Gore says so.”  With that said I certainly support Al Gore and his work because no one in his high profile position has ever taken the time like he has to try to understand and get across the dangers that we’re bringing upon ourselves.

    • Just to hit on a couple specific things briefly:

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      Re: Increase in solar irradiance is causing current global warming.
      There has been no overall trend in solar output in the last several decades.  Over that time the solar constant has varied slightly regularly with the current sunspot cycle pattern.  Raw data can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia….
      It is likely that lack of sunspots was a contributing factor to the “Little Ice Age Period” and increased solar output was a big factor in the “Medieval Warm Period”, but there has been no change recently to suggest it is a forcing factor for our current global warming.  Any change that occurs along with the sunspot cycle is quantified in climate models, and included under “natural variability”.  Natural variability cannot account for what is being seen recently, at least in the modeling.  Here also is a short article on how “global warming” on Mars has sometimes been misrepresented: http://www.realclima…

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      Re: CO2 isn’t the most important greenhouse gas
      This really depends on how you define most important. If you define in terms of total forcing, then water vapor is the most “important”, because it is a strong greenhouse gas and there’s an enormous amount of it in the atmosphere.  If “important” is defined in terms of warming per mol, then Methane is the most important, since adding an equal amount of Methane to the atmosphere will result in more warming than water vapor or carbon dioxide.  Other gases of lower concentration are also stronger per mol than CO2.  The reason people talk about CO2 so much is because it’s the one whose concentration is going up the fastest, it is having the largest total anthropogenic effect currently, and it also has the longest residence time in the atmosphere.  Statements in a vacuum can be accurate which say other gases are “more important”, or “stronger”, or “there’s more of this other one”, but in order to slow down climate change right now, CO2 is the most relevant one to be controlled.  In today’s situation it is dangerously misleading to say otherwise.

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