Sceptic arguments addressed by scientists 11 May 05

I’m sure someone from the other side (dark side to most on this site) will come up with a rebuttal to each of these points as well as expose those political scientists in the arena.

One rebuttal I found was on the vast consensus of the scientific community. I guess someone doesn’t agree and also refuted the study cited in this synopsis as bad research methodology.

http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/spsbpeis/Scienceletter.htm

I have also come across more than one site saying that the “premier” journals are refusing to publish studies which don’t agree with the predominant theoretical perspective. In other words if you don’t validate what we think is the correct view we won’t publish you. Kind of hard to combat research if it won’t get published….

The above apparent post link speaks to this point…

I read Monbiot’s Guardian piece just before Channel 4’s 7.00pm news yesterday so was delighted when Jon Snow announced both Monbiot and Bellamy were to be interviewed on the issue. But goodness Bellamy cut a sad figure indeed. He was halting and rather bewildered looking. His argument, such as it was, amounted to little more than asking Monbiot “to show him the evidence”. This Monbiot, who was calm, clear and very impressive, was easily able to do. Even Jon Snow, from the look on his face, seemed to be finding Bellamy’s performance more amusing than convincing.

Bellamy seems to have lost whatever ability he had to weigh up evidence. The interview left me wondering if he is ill.

He shouldn’t appear on television again and I think the New Scientist should ask themselves whether publishing his eccentric letter was advisable.

And Mark, thanks for the RS link. Contrarians won’t go away. We need a way to deal with them which does not consume large amounts of time and divert us from actually doing something about climate change.

Douglas Coker

Just catching up with the post this week, & I thought you made some excellent points in your New Statement article; and I am glad that Bellamy & Monbiot had that show down; and that RS piece looks very good. It makes me feel that we are making progress through rational debate.

It will be interesting to see if Bellamy makes any more comments about Global Warming – or whether he will change his mind.

But I do think we need our sceptics – and indeed everyone should be a sceptic. I believe that Monbiot is the most impressive environmentlist in the UK today (that I am aware of) – so I am especially keen to identify where I think he is wrong.

It is 50 years since the death of Albert Einstein. Many folk looked at him in his later years as a has-been who wasted years searching for a “Unified field theory”. It is sad that on the aniversary of his death the science community only discus has great works and not the man and his life.

I feel a little sad that poor old DB may well be going the same way. Courting popular support from Prince Phillip also seams a little strange. However, I do feel we should offer the man some tenderness. I like many of my co-workers rememeber him from our formative years showing us the joys of our natural world. I dare say that many folk who post on these boards original intrest in the natral world came from his early broadcasts.

The reason I mentioned the unified field theory is the key word unity. While we all keep thinking about the Death Star and Rebel Camp. It is very easy for the powers that been to continue to procrastinate. Some how, the fighting has to stop. Perhaps Einstein was right. If only in the words.

Laters Ian.

I guess since you said he was wrong it must be so. But, Science disagrees with your assessment of his letter.

“From: Etta Kavanagh [mailto:ekavanag@aaas.org]

Sent: 18 February 2005 18:17

To: Peiser, Benny

Subject: Your Letter to the Editor of SCIENCE

Dear Dr. Peiser,

A couple of weeks ago, you submitted Letter to the Editor on Naomi Oreskes’ Essay “The Scientific consensus on Climate Change. In its current form, it is too long for a Letter, but we would consider a shorter version if you are willing to edit it. It should be 500 words or less, not counting the references. A correction dealing with the mistake in the search terms (“global climate change” vs. “climate change”) was published in our Jan. 14 issue.

Best regards,

Etta Kavanagh Associate Letters Editor SCIENCE ekavanag@aaas.org”

He evidently edited it and was then told,

“From: Etta Kavanagh [mailto:ekavanag@aaas.org]

Sent: 13 April 2005 22:39

To: Peiser, Benny

Subject: Your letter to SCIENCE

Dear Dr. Peiser,

After realizing that the basic points of your letter have already been widely dispersed over the internet, we have reluctantly decided that we cannot publish your letter. We appreciate your taking the time to revise it.

Best regards,

Etta Kavanagh”

They won’t publish it because it was widely dispersed via internet???

As in the letter anyone can replicate the search features if they have access to the ISI database.

Poor Benny was audited on Lambert’s site. It wasn’t pretty.

Benny’s paper was weak and was rejected because it was weak.

Benny’s paper was weak and was not rejected because of editorial bias.

Benny’s paper was weak and was rejected because he did not replicate Oreskes’ paper.

Benny’s paper was rejected because poor Benny doesn’t know the difference between uncertainty and consensus.

HTH,

D

Jim,

I try to be objective. I even do my own calculations sometimes to aid my own understanding and share what I learned. I read what Norb has to say and even go to his links.

You are correct to keep an open mind Jim and I think you are doing a good job of it. It is sad we have all this controversy. I do not like confusion any more than you do. Politics has something to do with it.

However, our expert contrarian on this site, Mr. Norbert, has been avoiding answering my “hard” questions. I would like you to review my posts and Norb’s lack of response to those questions in particular to verify that I am speaking the truth. Norbert’s latest comments diverge away from the topic at hand making mostly irrelevant and useless comparisons in my opinion. I admit I am “hard” on him but the burden of proof is more on him and other contrarians than the established consensus.

I will say that my current understanding is that we have a serious problem we absolutely must address. I think that albedo has not been given enough focus while carbon overly dominates. I think the politics of Kyoto have contributed to that. I would love to see Kyoto redesigned based on the earth’s heat balance instead of just GHGs. Then, we could make a better plan including all factors which affect earth’s heat imbalance.

I support you Jim in your pursuit of the truth. I believe you will find it. My wish is that we all find it and know how to use it once we know it.

I do appreciate this blog which for me has become a community of sorts. Kind regards to all.

All the best,

Dan

that doesn’t detour me from turning off lights not it use. I started reduing my GHGs in 1990, 5 years before even one scientist had reached 95% certainty (which was reached only in 1995). In 1990, scientists were only saying the warming might possibly be caused by human GHG emission.

Look at it this way if scientists say that they are not quite 95% sure that a particular medicine is poisonous and will kill you, but it seems it might kill you, would you take it, if you could find some other completely safe medicine that was just as effective for your illness?

And now, well after 1990 & 1995, we have extremely good evidence rolling in that humans are causing the warming. I would suggest a better analysis of those published articles would be to see if the consensus were growing over the years, even though I do not need 95% certainly of even one scientific study, much less a consensus, much less a unanimous consensus to install compact fluorescent bulbs or get my power from wind (which is now about $1 a month cheaper!).

“Global Warming: Fact and Fiction,” for an anthropology conference next fall. My tact is a bit different. Aside from the science (needs 95% certainty) v. contrarian (needs 101% certainty – just joking) debate, I’m bringing in how GW is represented in the “factual” and “fictional” media, including the requirements of these media – to make money, etc., and the problem of making slow developing environmental problems dramatic, which then leads to media excesses (or undercoverage, because of sponsor objections, etc.). Ross Gelbspan it a great resource for the factual media problems.

As for the fictional media, I’m planning to discuss WATER WORLD, DAY AFTER TOMORROW, THE GALILEO SYNDROME (novel), and some fictional piece I’m working on. If you know of any other fictional pieces (movies, novels, etc.) about GW, please let me know.

There was another movie I saw on TV, but I don’t know the title. Can you help? I was about scientist detecting massive CO2 coming from a CO2 generator in Mexico. Aliens who could morph into human form had to leave their dying planet (which was a lot warmer than ours), and were warming up Earth to make it more habitable for them & to kill off humans.

If anyone knows the title of this, let me know.

My electric bill is the lowest it has ever been and one of my friends reported a reduced electric bill and when I used her numbers it was a 62 percent decrease over last year at this time. I bicycle more rather than drive. It all adds up.

In fact, I know of know better return on investment that installing compact fluorescent light bulbs. It is many times better than investing in savings bonds when you compare the interest earned to energy savings of these bulbs over the maturity-period of the bond.

Best,

Dan

It is called “The Arrival”, starring Charlie Sheen who plays radio astronmer Zane Zaminsky in the movie.

Good luck Lynn!

Dan

it was a letter to the editor. That was why they wanted it edited to 500 words. It was an op ed piece to address the faulty study. It wasn’t a full blown study from what I can tell…

And your example of them “ripping Peiser apart” was a diatribe of which journals the critical articles came from NOT whether they were critical or not. I call that differing opinion (subjective opinion). I’m expecting them to next start asking which college the researcher got his/her PhD from… pretentious. :(

http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/peiser.html

Peiser says on D’s blog link

“I make this point clear in my letter to Science, and even stress that I do not wish to question that the majority of papers support the theory of anthropogenic global warming. Even so, it is simply untrue to claim that no sceptical papers have been published in the peer-reviewed literature. There are far too many issues still wide open to debate, not least the whole literature on solar forcing, satellite measurements, and the crucial issue of interpreting paleo-environmental proxy data.

I noticed the debate on your website. No matter how you wish to interpret the sceptical abstracts, there can be no doubt that most of them question that all uncertainties about anthropogenic forcing of recent global warming have been removed.“

A majority may agree on GW but the cause is still much in debate… I read some stuff about it being linked to sun spot activity. All I know is there are vast amounts of variables to account for Pesier’s list is in italics…

Tracking the earth global temperature back 75-100 years and calculating it to within 1 degree celsius? I’m sorry but I think all the data is NOT in yet!

Thanks Mark! Although we have discussed these issues thoroughly on this blog, I did learn a few things I did not know before and have a few additional comments to make as always from reading your reference.

I now know that the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age were more regional than global events as compared to today climate changes are more global in nature.

I now know that the loss of snow covered forest has increased albedo cooling the planet.

A direct quote from the Royal Society’s report with regard to land changes (i.e. albedo, heat islands, etc) which for me is important:

”... the level of understanding of the overall effect of land changes was lower than other factors affecting global temperatures”

Comment: This supports my focus that maybe we should think about albedo aspects more as we think about solutions. We just plain need something more than GHG reductions to enable more progress in my opinion.

Another quote from the Royal Society’s report supports my view about our Climate Stewardship Act (which we never passed anyway):

”...emissions by the United States will remain at the 2002 value until 2012”

Comment: Lynn and I have discussed this issue before. Since the emission rate of the base year 2000 is less than the emission rate of 2002 (I know because I looked at the inventories on our EPA website), this Act would have no effect until after 2012 and then it may be marginal at best.

Lynn would like to see something on the books as being a positive step in the right direction while I wonder if passing this bill will only be symbolic at best and may mislead others into thinking we are doing more than we are. Either way, we are not addressing GW/CC issues in any significant way even with proposed legislation.

Finally and most important for me are the comments on flooding in the UK and higher precipitation levels in general.

Comment: With all the confusion and controversy, I am blessed by the fact I am an engineer and taught physics. This background enables me to do a few of my own calculations and when Mark posted his 0.85 W/m2 number, I was further enabled to use that number to help myself have more clarity.

My own calculations on how this heat imbalance would affect ocean water really helped me to see that evaporation would have to increase or the ocean surface temperature would just be increasing too fast.

I am assuming of course that the conduction and convention of ocean currents would not significantly dominate over the evaporation process but since the interface of heat transfer is at the actual surface of the ocean itself, I cannot imagine that this heat imbalance would indeed evaporate large amounts of ocean water.

So, for all my friends in the UK, I think your own personal experience of flooding is not only a probable cause of GW/CC but a probable proof of it as well.

For those interested, I refer you back to some of my simple calculations if you did not get a chance to read them. I only mention them again because I am much more certain of GW/CC from doing that exercise and it is important that we have clarity on these issues.

And finally, concerning evaporation. Mr. Norbertzangox made comments about the increased accumulation of snow over Antarctica as evidence to not worry about melting ice there. The Royal Society report acknowledges this anyway. But what is more significant is that the earth’s heat imbalance would create water vapor over Antarctica, so this fact only supports the idea that GW/CC is occurring.

So, more water vapor and more global precipitation would be evidence of increased GW/CC and these increases can in part indicate the earth’s heat imbalance itself in the collective measure of global rainfall increases over the planet. This would be another proxy measure of sorts? Maybe I am getting out of my boundaries here! Others on here may know more about that!

But I wonder if there is a correlation. What if temperature graphs or heat balance graphs are plotted side by side with world precipitation graphs? Do we not have records of rainfall all over the world? But then again, land is only 30 percent of the surface. But still, I wonder what the graphs would show!

Again, my calculations on heating ocean water from the heat imbalance of 0.85 W/m2 below for those who didn’t get a chance to read it.

http://www.marklynas.org/wind/message/1332.html

All the very best,

Dan

Sigh…

1. Benny said he found examples of papers that said there was no consensus.

Benny confused uncertainty with consensus. Benny doesn’t know how to read abstracts. I’m sure it was a chore to read 1200 abstracts, but he didn’t have anyone check his work, either.

2. Benny did not replicate Oreskes’ study. He added stuff.

Anyway, it is quite obvious that poor Peiser didn’t do a bang-up job. This is a dead horse. I’m sorry you don’t recognize it as such. In six months when someone tries to recycle this argument again, I’ll point out their ignorance of the subject but for now this is a dead horse.

D