Friday, June 02, 2006

I am just one American citizen using search engines to promote my own viewpoint;
the below paragraphs are from GlobalWarming.org, a site whose views I share.

Is global warming occurring?
According to Accu-Weather, the world’s leading commercial forecaster, "Global air temperatures as measured by land-based weather stations show an increase of about 0.45 degrees Celsius over the past century. This may be no more than normal climatic variation...[and] several biases in the data may be responsible for some of this increase."

Satellite data indicate a slight cooling in the climate in the last 18 years. These satellites use advanced technology and are not subject to the "heat island" effect around major cities that alters ground-based thermometers.

Projections of future climate changes are uncertain. Although some computer models predict warming in the next century, these models are very limited. The effects of cloud formations, precipitation, the role of the oceans, or the sun, are still not well known and often inadequately represented in the climate models --- although all play a major role in determining our climate. Scientists who work on these models are quick to point out that they are far from perfect representations of reality, and are probably not advanced enough for direct use in policy implementation. Interestingly, as the computer climate models have become more sophisticated in recent years, the predicted increase in temperature has been lowered.

Are humans causing the climate to change?
98% of total global greenhouse gas emissions are natural (mostly water vapor); only 2% are from man-made sources.

By most accounts, man-made emissions have had no more than a minuscule impact on the climate. Although the climate has warmed slightly in the last 100 years, 70% percent of that warming occurred prior to 1940, before the upsurge in greenhouse gas emissions from industrial processes. (Dr. Robert C. Balling, Arizona State University)

A Gallup survey indicated that only 17% of the members of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society thought the warming of the 20th century was the result of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

If global warming occurs, will it be harmful?
The idea that global warming would melt the ice caps and flood coastal cities seems to be mere science fiction. A slight increase in temperature -- whether natural or mankind induced -- is not likely to lead to a massive melting of the earth ice caps, as sometimes claimed in the media. Also, sea-level rises over the centuries relate more to warmer and thus expanding oceans, not to melting ice caps.

Contrary to some groups' fear mongering about the threat of diseases, temperature changes are likely to have little effect on the spread of diseases. Experts say that deterioration in public health practices such as rapid urbanization without adequate infrastructure, forced large scale resettlement of people, increased drug resistance, higher mobility through air travel, and lack of insect-control programs have the greatest impact on the spread of vector-borne diseases.

Larger quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere and warmer climates would likely lead to an increase in vegetation. During warm periods in history vegetation flourished, at one point allowing the Vikings to farm in now frozen Greenland.

4 Comments:

Blogger searchquant said...

Will, thanks for visiting my blog, but calling yourself a scientist on one hand and resorting to emotion to prove your point on the other hand is, I find, quite ironic.

Don't get me wrong, I AGREE global warming is happening; I merely find that the science today is not *at all* conclusive in proving

a)that it's due to human activity;
b)that there's anything we could do to reverse it if we wanted to

Let's not talk about extermination,
Will. There are 6.5B people on the planet and rising.

Also, show some respect for your fellow man and stop labelling those who don't share your viewpoint, Will, for that is what you have - a viewpoint. You have not received the word of God (or have you?).

You seem to be pessimistic about the human condition, but I for one think we are right now living in the best period in all of human history as measured by caloric intake, % dead from warfare or starvation, rights of man, etc. And rather than apply self-loathing to science in order to yield anthropogenic global warming, I suggest the scientific community actually *serve* the community that pays its salaries by focusing on the one aspect of research that could be fruitful - understanding how we can live within a warming climate.

3:00 PM  
Blogger searchquant said...

Chris Collard - allow me to shed
some light on your dark mind:

The period for which we have data on human CO2 emissions goes from ~1880-2006 (126 years). During 20 of those years (15.9%) the relationship between CO2 emissions and global warming *inverted*. Shadows follow people 100% of the time, not 84.1%. That the scientific community refuses to acknowledge this fact is perhaps the best proof of the staggering move to the political left that the Western world's academic institutions have made in the last 50-60 years.

Thanks to you and Will for your posts, though, it confirmed my thesis that many 'looking' for information on global warming have already made up their minds because of a pre-existing belief system, most likely one picked up while being brainwashed in college like I nearly was.

3:09 PM  
Blogger Rhianna said...

Global warming is happening currently -- that's obvious.

Something needs to be done -- that's obvious too.

President Bush gets a lot of criticism for not submitting the Kyoto Protocol for ratification, *but* why is China (one of the countries with a large contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions causing the problem) exempted from the Kyoto Protocol? President Bush may have a good point in terms of exposing a flaw in the treaty (my acknowledgment of this does not necessarily mean that I endorse Bush's other policies/actions -- I don't but I give credit where credit is due).

10:34 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Sorry, but the Gallop poll you cite is disinformation, and therefore you should never trust globalwarming.org

First of all, there's not even such a thing as the "American Geophysical Society," which is the first tip-off the data is dubious. It's actually called the "American Geophysical UNION."

The second tip-off is that there's no year given when the poll was done, and no link or reference to any supporting evidence.

Years ago, someone forwarded this same blurb about the 17% Gallop poll number, and I researched it out to find the source of the information.

It was hard to track it down, as those who started this rumor saw to it that the facts would always get scrambled up a bit to make it very hard to do any fact-checking. For example, they
would sometimes quote the poll being from 1990, and sometimes say it was from 1992 (the real poll was in 1991). The quotes don't even always say 17%, but will sometimes say it was 19% and 20% of scientists (the real number was 66%!) And, as we've seen, they screw up the names of the organizations -- all to make it harder to Google your way to the truth. If they throw out the wrong year here and a slightly wrong percentage number there, and say "Society" instead of "Union," it makes it much harder to search out the actual Gallop poll, thus harder to catch their LIE. It's very deliberately used to keep people confused and misinformed. Very calculated.

So wherever you get your information, such as gloablwarming.org, I suggest you take a very hard look at what else they tell you because this 17% poll thing is pure lie/propaganda. These are NOT people you should be trusting, no matter WHAT they tell you.

Of course, lots of people like you are innocently quoting the bogus poll data, believing it's true -- and being totally taken advantage of.

The 17% number has been floating around for almost two decades now, seemingly gaining credibility simply by virtue of being repeated so many times, by folks like Limbaugh and Easterbrook. But it all dates back to a totally baldfaced lie made by George Will in his 9/3/1992 column.

In that column, he refers to an actual Gallop poll, and writes that the poll showed only 17% of climate scientists thinking humans are causing global warming. BUT THE ACTUAL FINDING WAS NOT 17% OF THEM BELIEVING THAT. IT WAS 66%!! Unless you can convince me that George Will is THAT stupid or absent-minded to honestly mistake 66% for 17%, then this was a DELIBERATE LIE.

And now, George Will was just recently caught again creating a bogus climate factoid when he wrote that some major University has concluded the polar ice caps are just as big as they were in 1979 -- another totally made-up lie. This guy needs to be kicked off the airwaves and stripped of his column.

But that 17% poll quote is still even CIRCULATING after all these years is a wonder of modern propaganda! It also really makes one wonder how confident the climate change deniers are with whatever ACTUAL facts they might have on their side that they would have to resort to FAKE poll results from ALMOST 20 YEARS AGO.

The plain fact is that both the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union (the climate science organizations whose membership Gallop polled in 1991) have official statements on climate change, statements that their members have endorsed and that you can easily find on their websites, that clearly state that they, the expert climate scientists, believe that human-induced global climate change is real, and that if we don't change our energy habits very quickly, the future will likely be very very unpleasant. THE SCIENTISTS ARE ON RECORD. THEY ARE ON AL GORE'S SIDE. JUST ACCEPT THE FACTS AND LET'S GET BUSY DEALING WITH OUR RIDICULOUS PETROLEUM ADDICTION ONCE AND FOR ALL!

Of course, if you don't believe any of what I've said here, feel free to track it all down yourself. But below are some source materials to help you confirm what I've said.

SOURCE MATERIAL:
* AMS CLIMATE STATEMENT: http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
* AGU CLIMATE STATEMENT:
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positions/climate_change2008.shtml
* INFO ON BOGUS GALLOP POLL NUMBER:
--USA TODAY article (1/6/99): "Global warming debate generates much heat" http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/wclis28c.htm
--Page 4 of http://www.edf.org/documents/2246_AMomentofTruth_PartOne.pdf
-- http://www.bestofmaui.com/rush.html
-- The original Gallop poll may be hard to get hold of, but here's how I've seen it cited:
The Gallup Organization, A Gallup Study of Scientists' Opinions and Understanding of Global Climate Change, November 1991, pp. 5, 8. Available from the Center for Science, Technology and Media, 6900 Wisconsin Ave., Suite 700, Chevy Chase, MD 20815

6:28 PM  

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