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The American Physical Society, an organization representing nearly 50,000 physicists, has reversed its stance on climate change and is now proclaiming that many of its members disbelieve in human-induced global warming.
And to try and stay relevant, “Gore challenges America to switch to renewable electrical energy by 2018“, yet the author fails to mention how he got to the speech. He did so by traveling to his speech in what almost certainly was an unnecessary entourage of three luxury gas-guzzling vehicles — two Lincoln Town Cars and a Surburban SUV — one of which was kept idling outside for twenty minutes, apparently to keep the interior cool for the driver, Mrs. Gore and the Gores’ adult daughter. Video online here
Gore’s plan would cost $3 trillion. It looks like that needs to be debated as well.
UPDATE: No smoking hot spot
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
There has not been a public debate about the causes of global warming and most of the public and our decision makers are not aware of the most basic salient facts:
1. The greenhouse signature is missing. We have been looking and measuring for years, and cannot find it.
Each possible cause of global warming has a different pattern of where in the planet the warming occurs first and the most. The signature of an increased greenhouse effect is a hot spot about 10km up in the atmosphere over the tropics. We have been measuring the atmosphere for decades using radiosondes: weather balloons with thermometers that radio back the temperature as the balloon ascends through the atmosphere. They show no hot spot. Whatsoever.
If there is no hot spot then an increased greenhouse effect is not the cause of global warming. So we know for sure that carbon emissions are not a significant cause of the global warming. If we had found the greenhouse signature then I would be an alarmist again.
When the signature was found to be missing in 2007 (after the latest IPCC report), alarmists objected that maybe the readings of the radiosonde thermometers might not be accurate and maybe the hot spot was there but had gone undetected. Yet hundreds of radiosondes have given the same answer, so statistically it is not possible that they missed the hot spot.
Recently the alarmists have suggested we ignore the radiosonde thermometers, but instead take the radiosonde wind measurements, apply a theory about wind shear, and run the results through their computers to estimate the temperatures. They then say that the results show that we cannot rule out the presence of a hot spot. If you believe that you’d believe anything.
2. There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming. None. There is plenty of evidence that global warming has occurred, and theory suggests that carbon emissions should raise temperatures (though by how much is hotly disputed) but there are no observations by anyone that implicate carbon emissions as a significant cause of the recent global warming.
3. The satellites that measure the world’s temperature all say that the warming trend ended in 2001, and that the temperature has dropped about 0.6C in the past year (to the temperature of 1980). Land-based temperature readings are corrupted by the “urban heat island” effect: urban areas encroaching on thermometer stations warm the micro-climate around the thermometer, due to vegetation changes, concrete, cars, houses. Satellite data is the only temperature data we can trust, but it only goes back to 1979. NASA reports only land-based data, and reports a modest warming trend and recent cooling. The other three global temperature records use a mix of satellite and land measurements, or satellite only, and they all show no warming since 2001 and a recent cooling.
4. The new ice cores show that in the past six global warmings over the past half a million years, the temperature rises occurred on average 800 years before the accompanying rise in atmospheric carbon. Which says something important about which was cause and which was effect.
None of these points are controversial. The alarmist scientists agree with them, though they would dispute their relevance.
The last point was known and past dispute by 2003, yet Al Gore made his movie in 2005 and presented the ice cores as the sole reason for believing that carbon emissions cause global warming. In any other political context our cynical and experienced press corps would surely have called this dishonest and widely questioned the politician’s assertion.
Until now the global warming debate has merely been an academic matter of little interest. Now that it matters, we should debate the causes of global warming.
So far that debate has just consisted of a simple sleight of hand: show evidence of global warming, and while the audience is stunned at the implications, simply assert that it is due to carbon emissions.
In the minds of the audience, the evidence that global warming has occurred becomes conflated with the alleged cause, and the audience hasn’t noticed that the cause was merely asserted, not proved.
If there really was any evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming, don’t you think we would have heard all about it ad nauseam by now?
The world has spent $50 billion on global warming since 1990, and we have not found any actual evidence that carbon emissions cause global warming. Evidence consists of observations made by someone at some time that supports the idea that carbon emissions cause global warming. Computer models and theoretical calculations are not evidence, they are just theory.
What is going to happen over the next decade as global temperatures continue not to rise? The Labor Government is about to deliberately wreck the economy in order to reduce carbon emissions. If the reasons later turn out to be bogus, the electorate is not going to re-elect a Labor government for a long time. When it comes to light that the carbon scare was known to be bogus in 2008, the ALP is going to be regarded as criminally negligent or ideologically stupid for not having seen through it. And if the Liberals support the general thrust of their actions, they will be seen likewise.
The onus should be on those who want to change things to provide evidence for why the changes are necessary. The Australian public is eventually going to have to be told the evidence anyway, so it might as well be told before wrecking the economy.
Dr David Evans was a consultant to the Australian Greenhouse Office from 1999 to 2005.
July 18, 2008 - 08:16 AM on July 18th, 2008
Very funny video. I’m not usually a fan of these.It would have been a huge thing for him to show up with his security detail on bikes.
In listening to his speech, I thought it was notable that he put Nuclear energy in the same area as wind and solar… much as it should be.
NY-David
July 18, 2008 - 10:33 AM on July 18th, 2008
B…b…but Gore said the debate was over, the science was in! How could this be possible? We were told by the Gorebots the scientific consensus was over! Shame on Bush and the Republicans for not adopting Kyoto so the Eurosocialists would approve of us once again! I am now so very confused! Gore got the Nobel Peace Prize! What is happening here?
Many of us here on Right Voices said years ago, even during the peak of the Gore-induced Global Warming hysteria, that it was 100% FRAUD. We stuck to our position even in the face of a determined propaganda effort. Well we were right after all, weren’t we!
What I’d like to see now is admissions from the Church of Global Warming zealots that they were suckered by Gore, they bought into a load of crap, and they now repent and recant.
SFL, how you doin’ on this?
July 18, 2008 - 12:32 PM on July 18th, 2008
Someone had to say what Al Gore is saying; someone has to be intellectually honest and willing to speak out loudly and clearly as Al Gore is doing.
Emergent and convergent global challenges, ominously looming before the family of humanity on the far horizon, threaten the future of human civilizations, life as know it and the efficacy of Earth as a fit place for human habitation:
the human overpopulation of Earth;
the pending loss of adequate fossil fuel reserves and other vital energy sources due to unrestrained international plundering;
the dissipation of limited resources due to reckless per-capita overconsumption;
the problems of global warming in particular and climate change more generally; and
the insufficiently bridled pollution of air, land and water as well as precipitating irreversible degradation of the planet’s frangible ecosystems services due to relentless industrialization and unregulated economic globalization.
Who knows, perhaps necessary change is in the offing.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
July 18, 2008 - 12:56 PM on July 18th, 2008
Hey Steven,
Are you officially part of the Church of Global Warming, or are you just an admirer and follower?
FYI, Al Gore has not been been honest since the days of his initial foray into the hoax business, the ozone hole fraud. That turned out to be nonsense; it was definitely a glimpse into the future of the Al Gore fraud and hoax racket.
Say did you ever hear about the Zinc mine on the Gore property in Tennessee? Google it. Yeah, for years Gore was getting royalties while runoff water from the mine polluted the nearby stream that flowed into the Cumberland River. Despite complaints, the US EPA did nothing about it while Gore was VP. Perhaps they were too busy going after other businesses, you know, the ones that didn’t have any financial interest with the Clinton administration or Gore perhaps?
I better stop now because I don’t want to confuse you with too much fact. Too much reality can be threatening to a confused, addled mind.
July 18, 2008 - 02:21 PM on July 18th, 2008
Read:
APS has posted a note on it’s web site saying that this paper has not gone through peer review and their position on global warming being a real issue has not changed.
I agree that real scientific debate should be open, but what’s with the hatred.
July 18, 2008 - 05:16 PM on July 18th, 2008
You are absolutely right Steven. The world is overpopulated. You and all of your followers should take the lead and blow your brains out to show us all how committed you are to saving the planet from overpopulation. In poker the phrase is “Call or fold?” Now you either need to put up (round up your followers and blow your own brains out) or fold (shut up and slink back into the dark dank hole you and your ilk crawled out of.) I love how you twits are oh so glib about overpopulation and resource depletion until it’s time for you to put up or shut. It’s okay for your little idiotic plans to screw with other people’s lives as long as you get rich or it at least doesn’t impact yours. Perhaps you’d change your tune if it was you and your kids who were deemed excess population and jettisoned into the ocean from 5000 ft for shark bait.
Sorry about the vitriol folks, well sort of sorry anyway. I have a splitting headache and hearing idiotic crap like this from the same people who insist on allowing the illegal aliens to come here and breed anchor babies like flies, whine about the Genocide in Darfur, and complain about any single case of collateral damage in a war zone has really gotten on my last nerve.
July 19, 2008 - 06:13 AM on July 19th, 2008
FAO, you are so right. These esthettes want others to die so they can live opulantly.
July 19, 2008 - 09:03 PM on July 19th, 2008
SFL is speechless or clueless - more like clueless. The boy must have gone underground - not liking the posts, he retreats for a while. SFL can’t win for losing.
Check out the solarworld car contest in Australia so good-bye to Iran and Iraq on needing the oil, well well, too bad. What will they do??? Rot in Hell!
July 20, 2008 - 04:44 PM on July 20th, 2008
So of course now that the APS has posted an official stance on the paper you will edit or update this post with the truth? Thought not. I will post a link so your readers can remain in the know.
http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_1.cfm
Read it and weep Pam.
July 20, 2008 - 06:50 PM on July 20th, 2008
Hey Scott,
No, I won’t weep for your ignorance. The date on that paper is November 2007!
I won’t edit your comment, you seem so proud of your ignorance
July 20, 2008 - 08:55 PM on July 20th, 2008
I almost feel sorry for the fools duped by Al Gore and his Church of Global Warming. They bought into it hook, line, and sinker and now there’s really no place for them to go. There is no face-saving way out, no graceful denouement.
Common sense and the ability to think and research on their own would have given them enough doubt to keep them from becoming militant in their assertions. But apparently they possess neither.
July 20, 2008 - 11:09 PM on July 20th, 2008
Hey Robert, take a look at the update. I seem to recall you making some of those very points!
July 21, 2008 - 09:50 AM on July 21st, 2008
Pam thanks for posting the link to that article. That article is excellent, and it is very significant that it comes from someone who believed GW was caused by CO2 yet has enough intellectual and scientific honesty to acknowledge the evidence and keep an open mind.
I like this part:
“But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming.”
I have been saying this for 3 years. I am not a Climatologist, a guru, or an expert on the subject. But I was able to do a little research on the Internet and found very easily what the so called greenhouse gases are, what their effectiveness as a gg is, and what their percentage is in the atmosphere. And I could see right away that CO2 was a very, very minor player in the GG scheme of things. COMMON SENSE told me that even if the greenhouse effect was causing GW, CO2 WAS NOT a substantial culprit and all this babble and idiocy from Al Gore and his Church of Global Warming zealots was nonsense.
Now if I can figure this out so quickly, why can’t other educated people do the same?
SFL, got anything to say now? Don’t worry, we’ll let you off the hook easy. We won’t beat you up. But admission is the first step to recovery…
July 21, 2008 - 12:32 PM on July 21st, 2008
Robert,
I thought the article would be of interest to you. I’m glad you liked it.