Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Not very convenient

I love this article. Here is science’s response to crazy Gore’s movie:

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."

Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."

Al Gore says: "Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it."

Well, I think they just did.

2 comments:

Dan Trabue said...

Okay, let's play pretend, here. Suppose we have 100 top climatologists in the world. 90 of them think we have reason to act conservatively in policymaking in regards to human impact on the environment. 10 disagree.

Are you advocating making policy based on the opinion of the small minority? What possible reason would we have for doing so? Is it merely because we have a hunch they're right? Or because their opinion causes us less discomfort?

Again, I'll remind you of the conservative notion of prudence: We are flawed in our genius and it therefore behooves us to act prudently/cautiously in our decision-making.

John Washburn said...

I'd like to see the research data that shows that 90% of CLIMATE EXPERTS overwhelmingly agree that human activity causes global warming.