Some reading for the “anti-warmalists” and “climate-change deniers”

[DazzaMc]

Dazza
I too would also like to see an end to wars.I would like to see a sharing of the worlds wealth.

But do I trust a One World Government that would control every aspect of my life= Shit No
If I wanted that kind of life I would move to China

A One World Government would be a totalitarianism regime

A totalitarian regime is a government which controls every aspect of the life of the people. People living under a totalitarian regime generally also support it, sometimes almost cultishly, thanks to extensive propaganda missions which are designed to promote a positive view of the government. Citizens are also usually afraid to criticize the government, so they may be outspoken supporters to avoid closer scrutiny.

To a point sexy I have to agree - there's always a risk factor.
However I think the picture you paint is a bit more bleaker than it would be in reality - local govt would likely remain fairly similar to what it is today.

One fact we must all accept thou is that as the world population continues to grow unchecked there will come moments were we all lose more and more freedoms, we can see this happening today. It stands to reason and is perfectly logical. I think that's one of the things I don't like about Auckland (or any city) to be honest - the freedoms are limited up here, and they are limited only because of the larger population. Everyone demands their human rights - yet what's a 'right' to some is a 'restriction' to others - and every 'right' has it's backside as we'll, much like in physics were every action has a reaction.

The only way to fight this 'freedom loss' is to stop having kids and apply population control.
Hardly something which could be blamed on any govt - the people just wont accept that. Yet.
They will in the future - they will have no choice, but just not yet. Maybe in 30-40 years time.

 

[DazzaMc]

Here you go guys - here's the "mother load" of lists you've being seeking...

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

 

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

When I talk about sharing the worlds wealth i am meaning to take back some of the estimated 400 trillion net worth of the Rothschild's banking dynasty and also take some of the wealth back from their filthy rich friends ,Its those kind of people they have taken the whole world ransom,destroyed nations for greed and power.
by charging huge interest on loans to governments around the world,they have done this unabated for over 250 years.
These sort of people have no interest in feeding the worlds starving,and have no cares for people who lack clean drinking water,These people believe the masses of the great unwashed should be culled like pests

The people who need water and food
All that would be needed for the thirsty nations water supply problems is huge engineered salt water distillation plants,with huge irrigation pipelines this would need big money.Also they would need to replant tree's in the earths Barron regions,and sustainable farming projects,These 3 things alone would be good for the planet and the people.

Dazza I still believe the GW carbon tax is propaganda and alarmist bullshit.    

I would like you to watch these 2 videos then tell me if what they say is right or wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sHg3ZztDAw&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs6ofn46xUY&feature=player_embedded

[DazzaMc]

I agree with some of the above - especially that around the mega rich and water management/sustainability...
If just 1/4 of the money spent killing up Iraqis was spent on projects like you mention above then things would be much better for many billions of people right around the world.

Carbon Tax is about the only fair way to force emissions down across the board - make things like fuel more expensive, then people will consider more wisely how they use it. I don't like it either - hell I wish it was free - but that's not reality. It will drive new advances in energy technologies, spur change in an industry which hasn't changed in principle since it's creation. That's a good thing in my books.

You show some concern about the people who need water/food now - their situation is now dire, it's those very same areas who are most suspectable.
Yet - they are also mostly the very same people who have contributed the least to creating the problem...



Will try to watch the above now...  if it's just dribble thou (and most are these days, paying no respect to observed changes or the science behind them), then I cant promise to sit though all of it. I will try though. But if they are science based and present new ideas, discoveries or theory's then they will certainly hold my attention.

 

[DazzaMc]

The lower one is rubbish - will watch the top one when I get a moment (it's almost an hour long...)

 

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

The lower one is rubbish - will watch the top one when I get a moment (it's almost an hour long...)

 

The top one is about the science.

I was thinking about some of those poor country's
Wouldn't mind betting lot of those dry places around the world were more than likely once covered in lush forests that were devastated and used up by past and long gone civilizations,maybe some was burnt to make room for farming,and some used for building and construction and heating,some exported to other country's and some used for weapons for war maybe thats why a lot of the rain forests are gone.History often has a bad habit of repeating itself.
     

[DazzaMc]

Giant 19km iceberg B17B heading for Western Australia

A GIANT iceberg bigger than Sydney harbour is drifting north from Antarctica towards Western Australia, scientists have revealed.

The iceberg, which is 19km long by 8km wide and known as B17B, was spotted by Australian Antarctic Division glaciologist Neal Young using satellite images taken by NASA and the European Space Agency.

Dr Young told The Courier-Mail the iceberg was about 1700km south-south-west of the West Australian coast and moving north with the ocean current and prevailing wind.

“B17B is a very significant one in that it has drifted so far north while still largely intact.

"It’s one of the biggest sighted at those latitudes, now 48.8º S and 107.5º E.

Dr Young said the iceberg was slowly breaking up, resulting in hundreds more smaller icebergs in the area.

B17B calved from the eastern end of the Ross Ice Shelf nearly 10 years ago.

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/giant-19km-iceberg-b17b-heading-for-western-australia/story-e6frfku0-1225808551351

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

Thats one big mother of an iceberg. why can't we cover it with a big thermal blanket.hook it up to a couple of big tug boats tow it and sell it ti the Arabs.

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

Any pictures
Does it have any polar bears on it 

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007

The trouble with science
Science has revolutionized life since at least the age of exploration, through the industrial revolution, and to an unprecedented degree in the 20th century. Science generally, and physics in particular, got a vast boost in credibility and in government funding following the ability of physicists to develop weapons of unprecedented power in the Manhattan Project. Scientists and their engineering brethren also developed modern electronics, sent men and machines into the cosmos, and much else that would have seemed like miracles and prophecy in prior centuries. Sciences such as psychology and evolutionary theories of behavior have at least potentially revolutionaized our understanding of ourselves. Now we have a large number of self-styled "social sciences" that attempt to understand social behavior and societies through scientific methods. Instead of priests prophecying and invoking miraculous thunderbolts through mumbo-jumbo, our modern scientific priesthood helps create real technology and tells us what to think about social systems and political options by what seems to most people (and even to most scientists outside the particular specialty in question) equally mystical mumbo-jumbo.

This scientific elite is supposed to be all quite different from the priesthoods of old because it is supposed to adhere to scientific methods rather than superstition and dogma. The scientific method developed from several sources, but one that is particularly interesting is the law of evidence in medieval and Renaissance Continental Europe. In English law, issues of fact were (and are) determined by a jury and the law of evidence is all about the general biases of juries and thus what lawyers are and are not allowed to present as evidence to them -- the basic rule to overcome juror bias being that the relevance and integrity of the information must outweigh its potential to prejudice the jurors. But in the neo-Roman law that dominated the Continent from the Late Middle Ages to this day, juries were rare and judges determined issues of fact as well as law. Thus there developed in Continental law elaborate doctrines about how judges were supposed to weigh factual evidence.

Many Renaissance and Baroque era scientists, such as Galileo, Liebniz, and Pascal, had legal training and this Continental law of evidence was reflected in their methods. Most other early scientists had been exposed to law-derived doctrines simply by attending universities many of whose doctrines derived from the original universities which were essentially law schools. Soon, however, the scientific community was independently evolving its own cultural norms from this starting point. The ideal was to seek the truth. Experiment became the sine quo non of scientific credibility, along with mathmetical rigor and important applications in navigation, engineering, and medicine. Scientific funding came from a variety of sources; when governments funded scientists they were expected to solve important problems such as those raised by navigation of the seas, not merely to theorize. After the Englightenment governments started to separate themselves from the social dogmas of their day -- religions -- by making secularizing government and allowing freedom of religion.

Today a wide variety of important political issues are dominated by ideas from scienitific communities (or at least communities that style themselves as scientific): economists, climate scientists, and many others. But there is no separation of science from government. Like the state-sponsored religions of yore, most modern scientists derive both their education and their ongoing livelihood from government funding of the theories with which they are taught and on which they work.

The old state-sponsored religions, and the resulting ideas about politics and society, were funded by governments. Not surprisingly, as such governments took over religion it became sacreligious to criticize the importance of government generally and often specific governmental institutions in particular. Under the nationalizers of dogma such as Henry VIII, who nationalized the lands and priests of the Catholic Church in England, "render under Caeasar" became more important than "render under God." Despite the advantages of better funding these state-sponsored sects have been in decline ever since governments stopped otherwise suppressing their competitors. The state sponsored churches mostly taught uncritical worship of authority whereas their private competitors added much more spiritual value to their adherent's lives.

The simplest science is physics. In some sense all other sciences are just a variety of complex models of what happens when various kinds of complex physical systems interact. Physics itself is the simple core of science. Thus physics has been hailed as the "hardest" of the "hard sciences" -- sciences where evidence trumps bias and the truth always outs sooner or later, usually sooner, despite the biases of the individuals or institutions involved. Hard scientists will often admit that the use of the scientific method in "soft sciences" such as economics and other intersubjective areas can be problematic and subject to great bias. If any science can rise above self-serving biases and efficiently search for the truth, it should be physics.

But the recent history of physics casts some rather disturbing shadows on the integrity of even this hardest of sciences. Lee Smolin in The Trouble with Physics lays out a picture of an unprecedented group of geniuses, the string theorists, who have wasted the last twenty years, largely at taxpayer's expense, basically producing nothing except a vast number of highly obscure but, in certain senses, quite elegant theories. The number of possible string theories is so vast that string theory can, like "intelligent design," explain anything -- it is unfalsifiable. It is "not even wrong," to take Wolfgang Pauli's phrase about an earlier unfalsifiable theory of his era. String theory's main rivals over the last two decades are not much better. Theoretical physics for the last twenty years has mostly not been science at all, but rather has been a large group of geniuses working on their own cabalistic variety of sudoku puzzles at taxpayer expense in the name of science.

If this is the state of physics -- if even the hardest of sciences can be taken over by a thousand-strong cabal of geniuses who produce nothing of value except wonderful-sounding untestable theories whose main success has been in garnering their community more of our tax dollars -- what hope do we have that government-funded climate scientists, economists, and others purporting to do science in areas far more complex or subjective than physics are actually producing relatively unbiased truths? If we took a poll of theoretical physicists, they might well have (up until quite recently) reached a remarkable degree of "consensus" on the truth of string theory -- just as global warming scientists have reached a "consensus" on global warming and (it is implied) on the various bits of the speculative nonsense surrounding global warming. Does such consensus mean us lay people should automatically believe this consensus of experts? Or should we demand more? Shouldn't we rather, when deciding on which theories or predictions of climate science or economics to believe, act like a Continental judge or a common-law jury and demand to actually see the evidence and weigh it for ourselves? Shouldn't we demand to hear from the defense as well as from the prosecution? Experiment, multiple points of view, and critical analysis are, after all, the real scientific method -- as opposed to the ancient religious method of uncritically trusting a single hierarchy of experts.

Today's ideas about politics and society -- "scientific theories" if you agree with them, "dogmas" if you don't -- are funded by the very governmental entities that stand to benefit from increased government power. Just as it was taboo under Henry VIII to "deny" the authority of either Christ or the King, it has now become taboo in many of these modern intellectual communities to "deny" a variety of scientific theories that are now supposed to be "beyond debate," not just things like the basic idea of global warming caused at least in part by anthropogenic carbon dioxide(which this author finds sound and quite probable, but nevertheless believes should remain like all true scientific theories open to further inquiry and debate) but also the variety of extreme speculations that have grown up around it (regarding the severity of storms, projections of droughts, floods, etc., most of which are pseudoscientific nonsense).

I'm hardly the only person who recognizes this problem with science. Indeed, the opinion expressed above is quite mild compared to an increasing number of conservatives who are coming to reject big chunks of good science along with the bad -- not just the many florid speculations surrounding global warming, but global warming itself, evolution, and other products of the expert priesthood that threaten long-established (and often, ironically, highly evolved) beliefs. Conservatives, and more than a few libertarians, feel that modern science is becoming increasingly dominated by government funding and thus becoming dominated by the interests of government in gaining more dominance over our lives. With opposing ideas increasingly unable to access to this research and education funding themselves, the easiest way for those opposed to increasing state power to effectuate their beliefs is to reject the theories of the scientific communities that promote this power.

This, and not sheer cave-man irrationality, is why many conservatives are increasingly throwing out the baby with the bathwater and rejecting science generally. Both trends -- the increased government dominance over science and the increasing rejection of science generally by those who oppose increased government controls which scientists increasingly promote -- are disturbing and dangerous. Science, once a method of weighing evidence that called for the opinions of both prosecution and defense, is increangly being dominated by the prosecution.

We need a return to science with a diversity of funding and thus a diversity of biases. This is much more important to the health of science than the absolute level of funding of science. Reducing government funding of science would thus increase the quality of science -- by making the biases of scientific communities more balanced and thus more likely to cancel each other out, just as the biases of the defense generally cancel out the biases of the prosecution. Where government does fund science, it should demand strict compliance to the basic evidentiary principles of science, such as falsifiability. All government-funded theorists should be required to design experiments that can be conducted relatively inexpensively and in the near future, that would strongly tend to verify or falsify their proposed theories. More speculative theories -- such as those that rely on unobserved or worse, unobservable entities -- simply should not be funded by governments. There are a wide variety of private entities that are happy to fund such speculations; this variety of funding sources is more important to reducing bias the further one gets away from strictly controlled experiment. Any time government funds science we should ask, does the utility of the potential discoveries and the integrity of the scientific methods being used -- their ability to find the truth even in the face of high institutional bias -- outweigh the potential for the funding by one dominant source to prejudice the opinions of the fund recipients?

Science has benefited our lives in incalculable ways for many centuries. Increasingly we inform our political decisions with the discoveries and theories of science. As sciences ranging from climatology to economics play an increasing role modern politics, this task of building a wall of separation between government and science -- or at least not allowing states to sponsor particular scientific theories at the expense of others with comparable weights of evidence, and not allowing states to fund some biased speculations at the expense of others -- is one of our most important and urgent tasks. If we are to remain living in democracies we voters must learn once again to weigh some of the evidence for ourselves, even if this means we gain our understanding through the lossy communications of popularizers. It does not work to trust a theory, no matter how scientific it may sound, based on a "consensus" or "lack of debate" among experts who mostly derive their funding from a single biased source. We democratic jurors must demand to hear from the defense -- really from a variety of parties whose biases largely cancel each other out -- rather than from just the prosection. We must redesign our scientific institutions to minimize the biases that come from a single dominant source of funding if we are to achieve good solutions to our important problems -- solutions that are not dominated by the biases of that dominant entity.

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/03/trouble-with-science.html

[DazzaMc]

Aussies swelter through hottest six months on record

AUSTRALIA has recorded its hottest six months ever and is well on track to have the second hottest year since records began, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The World Meteorological Organisation's annual climate statement released at Copenhagen found temperatures in 2009 reached 0.44C above the 1961-1990 annual average.

"The decade 2000-2009 is very likely to be the warmest on record," WMO secretary general Michel Jarraud told reporters at the Copenhagen climate summit late yesterday, Australian time.

Australia was singled out for its wild weather in 2009.

"Australia had the third-warmest year on record with three exceptional heatwaves," Mr Jarraud said.

The WMO report said the heatwaves happened in January/February, when the hot weather contributed to the disastrous Victorian bushfires, in August and again in November.

The presence of El Nino conditions underway in the Pacific saw near-record rises in sea surface temperatures and most parts of Australia experienced an exceptionally mild winter.

Maximum temperatures were also well above the national average, with 3.2C above normal, the largest ever recorded in any month.

Dr David Jones, head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology's national climate centre, said one of the biggest impacts in the last year had been the absence of cold, with a massive decline in sea ice in the Arctic.

"The last six months have been the warmest six months on record for Australia," Dr Jones said.

"We expect 2009 will be either the second warmest year on record for Australia or the third warmest."

He said the results were not surprising.

"Every decade's been getting warmer for the last 70 years.

"Clearly climate change hasn't stopped, global warming hasn't stopped."

The outlook for the summer is consistent, Dr Jones said, with warm daytime conditions in northeast Australia forecast to continue.

http://www.news.com.au/national/aussies-swelter-through-hottest-six-months-on-record/story-e6frfkvr-1225808646463

[DazzaMc]

Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

http://www.realclimate.org/

[bennyboo]

I wouldn't worry too much about "science" sexy.

...you wouldn't worry about the science of your claims in what is solely a scientific matter?!
 

PMSL!!!!

That my friends - that one sentence alone sums up the skeptics perfectly.

HULLLOOOOOO - are you ignorant or just plain stupid?  In light of the FIASCO thats surfaced re East Anglia (and others), IT'S THE "SCIENCE" THATS BLOODY WELL BEING QUESTIONED!!!  Its all very well posting this and that but dont lose sight of the fact that the spotlight is on bogus and illegal!


And Sexy - you are right that humans have been affected by climate and earth changes over history - port cities have become relegated where the sea has retreated a mile or more (Brugge is a good example of this), ancient cave art in areas that are now inhospitable parts of the planet are more evidence... I dont think humans will die out - more likely is a scenario where areas of the planet will not be able to support human life in increasing numbers.  People rave about droughts and water shortages in Australia when Australia is and has been a semi arid place for millions of years - and has had to support tens of millions of people only in VERY recent history. 

The contradiction I find in your posts that suggest an agenda of world population reduction is that end is unlikely to occur as quickly under a rich nation wealth redistribution program (under the guise of climate taxes or whatever) - or perhaps the wealth redistribution program is only intended to benefit a few while many will die off through lack of access to water, food etc?  The distribution of power in places like Asia and Africa has to be closely looked into - no way do I want any funding to go to despotic miscreants to load up on arms and munition to crush the citizens, to set up Swiss bank accounts and the like either to serve themselves or a select few in the West!  Thats what dazza needs to realize too.

[DazzaMc]

HULLLOOOOOO - are you ignorant or just plain stupid?  In light of the FIASCO thats surfaced re East Anglia (and others), IT'S THE "SCIENCE" THATS BLOODY WELL BEING QUESTIONED!!!  Its all very well posting this and that but dont lose sight of the fact that the spotlight is on bogus and illegal!

Jezz - not you as well Benny...

You've been sucked into a ploy - the fact is (and it's easy to see if you bother looking) - they found nothing in any of the 10 years worth of private correspondence so they resorted to pulling words right out of context - hardly any sort of proof of some conspiracy is it? 

 

[DazzaMc]

People rave about droughts and water shortages in Australia when Australia is and has been a semi arid place for millions of years - and has had to support tens of millions of people only in VERY recent history. 

I don't Aussie has being mentioned once in this whole thread - until now...

 

[Im2Sexy4MyPants]

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sHg3ZztDAw&feature=player_embedded

[bennyboo]

People rave about droughts and water shortages in Australia when Australia is and has been a semi arid place for millions of years - and has had to support tens of millions of people only in VERY recent history. 

I don't Aussie has being mentioned once in this whole thread - until now...

 

Post #135 - "Aussies swelter through hottest six months on record" - YOU POSTED IT. 

[DazzaMc]

Climate Change: The Role of Flawed Science
An analysis by Peter Laut – November 2009

“My findings do not by any means rule out the existence of important links between solar activity and
terrestrial climate. Such links have over the years been demonstrated by many authors. The sole
objective of the present analysis is to draw attention to the fact that some of the widely publicized,
apparent correlations do not properly reflect the underlying physical data.” - From my article in Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics 2003 (see link given below)

At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 the nations of the world will discuss possible ways to slow down global climate change. The main goal will be to organize a coordinated reduction of man-made greenhouse gas emissions. With all nations contributing according to their ability.
But: Is global warming perhaps caused by the sun?

An important question concerns the physical cause of global warming. Is it primarily caused by changes in solar activity or by man-made greenhouse gasses? The answer has enormous consequences for the way mankind should react. If the dominant cause for global warming is solar activity, then there is no reason for mankind to waste resources in trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And no reason to have the climate conference in Copenhagen. If, however, the dominant cause is man-made greenhouse gasses, then a reduction of emissions may be absolutely necessary in order to prevent a global climate catastrophe.

The overwhelming majority of scientists, represented by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has for many years collected and analyzed observational data and carried out model simulations in order to resolve this question and has arrived at the conclusion that the results overwhelmingly point at the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as the cause. There are practically no observations which render it probable that solar influences play more than a minor role.
Now, in spite of the almost unanimous message from the world’s scientific community, there is a small group of scientists who try to promote the solar theory. They are supported by a massive network of journalists, film makers, TV producers, authors, politicians and grass roots. This group is centered around two Copenhagen climatologists, Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen.

Flawed science
I have followed the scientific work of these two researchers over many years. In the 1990’s I was scientific advisor to the Danish Energy Agency. It was my task to scrutinize the steady flux of climate related scientific literature and keep the Agency informed about developments which should be taken into account in shaping Danish energy and climate policies.

In 1991 Eigil Friis-Christensen together with Knud Lassen, another Danish researcher, published an article in the scientific journal Science which attracted worldwide attention. It seemed to document a close agreement between data representing solar activity (solar cycle lengths), and terrestrial temperatures. The agreement was displayed on a graph which showed a solar and a terrestrial curve closely intertwined. What made the graph a sensation, was the fact, that the steep rise in temperature from about 1970, the ‘global warming’, was closely matched by a corresponding steep rise of the solar curve. This was seen by many as proof that global warming was caused by the sun. The graph has been reproduced extensively all over the word, both in the mass media and in scientific literature, and has helped to create a large community of believers, who claim that the sun is causing the global warming.

Regrettably, it took some years before a careful analysis of the article revealed that the conspicuous steep rise of the solar curve actually had nothing to do with the behavior of the sun, but had been created (accidentally?) by a change of the mathematical procedure used to calculate the points creating the steep rise. I published this finding in 2003 in The Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, but had already presented my critique in the year 2000 at a conference on “The Solar Cycle and Terrestrial Climate”, arranged by the European Space Agency.
In the late 1990’s a series of articles seemed to provide additional credibility to the ‘solar theory’. In 1996 Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen presented observations which apparently lent support to the solar theory. At a conference in Birmingham they showed that some solar related data (this time the intensity of galactic cosmic rays) correlated strongly with some terrestrial data (total cloud cover). The agreement was striking for the years 1984-90, which was the period for which data were available. However, as every scientist knows, an agreement only extending over a short time span, here seven years, can be misleading. So, to test a possible causal relationship, the authors in their later publications, two articles published in 1997 and 1998 respectively, added some more recent data, which they claimed demonstrated that the close agreement extended beyond the seven years. However, close inspection of their work revealed two fatal flaws: 1) Most of the added data were totally irrelevant in the context of the article, but created the false impression that the close agreement with the solar curve did extend beyond the original seven years (see my paper for details). Actually, the authors’ procedure is like adding bananas to a statistic on apples and then claiming the statistic to be on apples alone. 2) However, the authors had also added relevant data. These were all displayed in the 1997-article, but some of them were removed again in the 1998-article. Strangely enough, the removed data were precisely those data which indicated a beginning disagreement with the solar theory, a disagreement that would become dramatic when more observational data became available in the following years (See my 2003-article for details).

Svensmark has never tried to defend himself properly, i.e., by a peer reviewed reply article, against these serious charges. Friis-Christensen once tried to defend himself against the criticism of the 1991-Science article. However, the apparent rebuttal in his reply-article was only achieved by introducing two simple arithmetic errors, which were well hidden in the article and quite difficult to spot. The two arithmetic errors artificially created an agreement of the new observational data with the values of the 1991-article. Applying correct arithmetic the support of the solar theory totally vanishes (See my 2003-article for details).

The strong human appeal of solar theory
The solar theory apparently has a strong emotional appeal to an important segment of the public. And, opposition to it can lead to political reprisal with severe consequences for the funding of individual researchers and research institutes.

Several books and many TV ‘documentaries’ have appeared, promoting the solar theory. To mention a few: The TV documentary ‘The Great Global Swindle’ by Martin Durkin was shown on UK’s Channel 4 in March 2007. And a whole series of films by Lars Mortensen: “The Climate Conflict” from 2001, broadcast in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Portugal . “Doomsday Called off” from 2004, broadcast in Denmark, Belgium, Finland, Canada, Norway, Middle East and Asia. And “The Cloud Mystery” from 2008, broadcast in Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, France, Belgium, Australia, Poland, Greece, Italy, Israel and France. Some readers may find this list long and boring. Others may find it scary. It can be seen as a threat to the authority of sound science, originating from a mixture of popular wishful thinking, populist deception and industrial interests. Many of these films are created with great artistic talent, and have – apparently – convinced millions of ordinary people and many political decision makers all over the world that global warming is caused by solar activity and not by human made greenhouse gasses. How can the world’s politicians make responsible decisions, when their voters are seduced to believe in fairytales?

The myth – describing a small group of ingenious scientists, who have arrived at the ultimate truth about climate, who have identified the sun as the mighty culprit, and who are shunned by a stubborn, envious establishment of old, narrow-minded professors – has a strong appeal to many. It is good stuff for an artistic film maker. It can be molded into a moving story – mixing images of lonely heroes, brave, fighting underdogs, with beautiful pictures of the sun and clouds. And it turns out that neither the filmmaker nor the audience can be influenced by being told that the solemnly presented graphs on the screen are rigged.

Who is to blame?
Who is to blame for the development of this irrational cult of a postulated solar influence upon the Earth’s climate?
The IPCC is not without responsibility for providing the free ride for solar crusaders. Because the IPCC has never made it clear, that the problem with the widely circulated, infamous figures of 1991 and 1998 -which probably have been the most important persuaders -is not a question of scientific uncertainty and differing opinion, but a case of manipulated data that have nothing to do with reality. Instead of merely describing Svensmark’s contributions as ‘controversial’, some stronger words from the IPCC would have been appropriate. In a language that could be understood by ordinary citizens.

There are many other examples of the failure of the scientific community to prevent misinformation.
On the website of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), you can still find the original proposal for the so-called CLOUD project from 2000, an experiment designed to investigate a possible link between cosmic rays and clouds. An excellent scientific project. The front page of this proposal displays the names of 56 scientists -many of them well-known and well-regarded -from 9 countries. However, in the chapter describing the scientific motivation – which should contain the scientific essence of the proposal -the false conclusions of the manipulated articles from 1991 and 1998 are described in detail, illustrated by the misleading graphs. Without any cautioning of the unsuspicious reader! Did any of these scientists actually read the chapter on the scientific motivation for this multimillion Euro project? But, no matter what the scientists knew or did not know when this proposal was posted, for the ordinary visitor in year 2009 this inclusion must appear as a guarantee that the articles represent good science.

Another example of a certain irresponsibility of the scientific community: The Danish Meteorological Institute for many years proudly displayed the misleading 1991-graph on its website, as an example of its pioneering achievements in climate research. The motivation for this misinformation may have been a belief that the solar credentials would generate political goodwill and attract funding.

A question of trust
So, it must be recognized that not all research institutions have accepted proper responsibility to maintain the trust which the general public traditionally places in them. In the modern world, many scientific results are extremely difficult to verify independently. They may be produced by a group of several researchers working for months or even years with vast amounts of data, which have to be calibrated employing especially tailored computer programs. Often it is practically impossible for an outsider to verify the conclusions. That applies also to the referees, who have to decide on the publication of the work. So, trust is in the short run often all we have to judge the authenticity of claimed new developments. Trust in fellow scientists and trust in research institutions. And, at the Copenhagen conference on global climate the decision makers of the world, must be able to trust the scientific basis which is presented to them. They must be able to rely on it when building a strategy to fend off catastrophic climate developments. So, the scientific community should be careful not to squander this trust.
A few weeks ago, in Swedish Public Television, two of the world’s leading climatologists were asked about Svensmark and his solar theory. Now, scientific dispute has a long tradition for expressing disagreement in polite and neutral terms. Only in rare cases blunt words surface, as when Jon Egill Kristjánsson, professor at The University of Oslo concluded : “It should not be taken seriously – to put it plain and simple.” And Mike Lockwood of The Royal Society of London, who to begin with – years ago -supported the theory, said “.. the change in the magnetic field since 1985 – it’s moved in the wrong direction”, which means that according to Svensmark’s ideas we should have experienced a global cooling since then. And he added: “I would love it to be right! I would absolutely love it to be right! Unfortunately, wanting something doesn’t change the scientific reality. One can’t use spin or rhetoric or anything to change the scientific reality.”

My 2003-article can be downloaded from the link: http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Laut2003.pdf

Peter Laut Professor (emeritus) of physics at The Technical University of Denmark Former scientific advisor on climate change for The Danish Energy Agency Storskovvej 10, 8721 Daugaard, Denmark. Phone: +45 7589 6750. E-mail: peter@laut.dk

[bennyboo]

Peer-Reviewed Study: Global Warming is Natural, Shows No Human Influence

December 10, 2007

Climate scientists at the University of Rochester, the University of Alabama, and the University of Virginia report that observed patterns of temperature changes (�fingerprints�) over the last thirty years are not in accord with what greenhouse models predict and can better be explained by natural factors, such as solar variability. Therefore, climate change is �unstoppable� and More.. cannot be affected or modified by controlling the emission of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, as is proposed in current legislation.

These results are in conflict with the conclusions of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and also with some recent research publications based on essentially the same data. However, they are supported by the results of the US-sponsored Climate Change Science Program (CCSP).

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]. The authors are Prof. David H. Douglass (Univ. of Rochester), Prof. John R. Christy (Univ. of Alabama), Benjamin D. Pearson (graduate student), and Prof. S. Fred Singer (Univ. of Virginia).

The fundamental question is whether the observed warming is natural or anthropogenic (human-caused). Lead author David Douglass said: �The observed pattern of warming, comparing surface and atmospheric temperature trends, does not show the characteristic fingerprint associated with greenhouse warming. The inescapable conclusion is that the human contribution is not significant and that observed increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases make only a negligible contribution to climate warming.�

Co-author John Christy said: �Satellite data and independent balloon data agree that atmospheric warming trends do not exceed those of the surface. Greenhouse models, on the other hand, demand that atmospheric trend values be 2-3 times greater. We have good reason, therefore, to believe that current climate models greatly overestimate the effects of greenhouse gases. Satellite observations suggest that GH models ignore negative feedbacks, produced by clouds and by water vapor, that diminish the warming effects of carbon dioxide.�

Co-author S. Fred Singer said: �The current warming trend is simply part of a natural cycle of climate warming and cooling that has been seen in ice cores, deep-sea sediments, stalagmites, etc., and published in hundreds of papers in peer-reviewed journals. The mechanism for producing such cyclical climate changes is still under discussion; but they are most likely caused by variations in the solar wind and associated magnetic fields that affect the flux of cosmic rays incident on the earth�s atmosphere. In turn, such cosmic rays are believed to influence cloudiness and thereby control the amount of sunlight reaching the earth�s surface and thus the climate.� Our research demonstrates that the ongoing rise of atmospheric CO2 has only a minor influence on climate change.

We must conclude, therefore, that attempts to control CO2 emissions are ineffective and pointless. � but very costly.

[DazzaMc]

Link?

[bennyboo]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a8c_1197385712

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651].

Thats for my previous post.



Any links to your oil baron computer hacker come to hand?

[DazzaMc]

Cheers.
:-)

Re the oil dude - nar - I couldn't be assed hunting for it. I cant even remember which thread it was in.

 

[DazzaMc]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a8c_1197385712

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651].

Thats for my previous post.

Why is everything related to that 'story' on that site related to other stories about Tax?
And what's up with all the hard core porn videos?

You don't seriously buy into sources like that do you?

[DazzaMc]

Got it...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/

Talk about talking SHIT... gods.


First of all - the man who hacked this database is a known skeptic AND (more importantly) has known strong connections to the oil industry. He was for many years a CEO of one such company.

McIntyre worked for 30 years in the mineral business,[1] the last part of these in the hard-rock mineral exploration as an officer or director of several public mineral exploration companies.[2] He has also been a policy analyst at both the governments of Ontario and of Canada.[3] He was the president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. When Northwest Explorations Inc. was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources Inc. to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc., McIntyre ceased being a director. McIntyre was a strategic advisor for CGX in 2000 through 2003.[4]
Prior to 2003 he was an officer or director of several small public mineral exploration companies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McIntyre

The guy is a self vested pig who (like many others) only has his own interests at heart.

 

[bennyboo]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a8c_1197385712

The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651].

Thats for my previous post.

Why is everything related to that 'story' on that site related to other stories about Tax?
And what's up with all the hard core porn videos?

You don't seriously buy into sources like that do you?

I think that "The report is published in the December 2007 issue of the International Journal of Climatology of the Royal Meteorological Society [DOI: 10.1002/joc.1651]" is credible enough.