Noted Scientist rips Gore and gw theory

William Gray has a somewhat interesting take on scientific proof.

Andrew Dessler wrote about Gray:

 

I know very little about the science behind climate change, but doesn't it make sense that we should err on the side of caution if there is uncertainty over the causes?

He has his own theories on what's causing climate change, but I don't think he's published them or done any sort of extensive experimentation. Here's one rebuttal of his proposed theory.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/gray-on-agw/

 

isnt it true that human activity only accounts for a small percentage of carbon emissions and the rest is natural? furthermore, most the the human activity is not individuals, but commercial stuff like factories and power plants?

im more concerned about stuff like the military dumping tons of chemical weapons in the ocean. has al gore ever talked about that?

 

You're quite right. There really isn't much uncertainty, though.

 

Nothing particularly interesting about rhad's quote ... only seems to reinforce the notion that he is being marginalized for espousing an unpopular scientific position. I guess time will eventually tell. What I do find laughable is that a "peace prize" is being awarded for global warming activism.

 

I can tell you right now that if you try to argue that humans aren't causing global warming, then you're just going to end up looking bad.

And I don't really understand your point about about "commercial stuff like factories and power plants". First of all, the pollution that comes from these sources is created because of individuals' demand for electricity, manufactured goods, etc. So consumers' choices can actually have an impact on that. Secondly, I don't see where Gore or anyone else has failed to recognize the impact of these sources of CO2 on global warming. I think everyone is aware that reducing the emissions of power plants and factories would be an important part of any campaign to reduce warming.

There's always going to be some idiotic "scientist" out there with his fingers in his ears who wants attention for his baseless views. Do we always have to give it to him?

 

Well, yes - because his position is not tenable by scientific standards.

 

he is noted for all the wrong reasons.

 

What's really laughable is that some people can't understand how reducing global warming would have profound consequences for peace.


ha ha ha ha. I laugh at those people.

 

i didnt say "humans arent causing global warming". please read what i asked again, which is whether or not it is true that humans only account for a small percentage of carbon emissions. from what i have read, humans carbon footprint activity is small compared to stuff like volcanic activity, animals, the ocean and plant-life.

b/c most of the human activity that causes global warming is not individuals driving around in their cars or electrifying their houses, but large-scale commercial activity. yet the solution proposed by people like gore is a "carbon tax" on individual citizens.

your post seems to be more based in a defensive emotional response than any scientific basis. i asked a question and you say i "look bad" for asking it, you call people w/ opposing views from yours "idiotic" and their views "baseless".

i would hardly call his positions "baseless views". something like 20,000 scientists including physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers and environmental scientists have signed this statement...

"There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth."

http://www.oism.org/pproject/

actually, there is.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2007/global-warming020507.htm
Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.

What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?

Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.

No sensible person seeks conflict, especially with governments, but if we don't pursue the truth, we are lost as individuals and as a society. That is why I insist on saying that there is no evidence that we are, or could ever cause global climate change. And, recently, Yuri A. Izrael, Vice President of the United Nations sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) confirmed this statement. So how has the world come to believe that something is wrong?

Maybe for the same reason we believed, 30 years ago, that global cooling was the biggest threat: a matter of faith. "It is a cold fact: the Global Cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species," wrote Lowell Ponte in 1976.

I was as opposed to the threats of impending doom global cooling engendered as I am to the threats made about Global Warming. Let me stress I am not denying the phenomenon has occurred. The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA) that has generally continued to the present. These climate changes are well within natural variability and explained quite easily by changes in the sun. But there is nothing unusual going on.

Since I obtained my doctorate in climatology from the University of London, Queen Mary College, England my career has spanned two climate cycles. Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact. By the 1990's temperatures appeared to have reversed and Global Warming became the consensus. It appears I'll witness another cycle before retiring, as the major mechanisms and the global temperature trends now indicate a cooling.

No doubt passive acceptance yields less stress, fewer personal attacks and makes career progress easier. What I have experienced in my personal life during the last years makes me understand why most people choose not to speak out; job security and fear of reprisals. Even in University, where free speech and challenge to prevailing wisdoms are supposedly encouraged, academics remain silent.

I once received a three page letter that my lawyer defined as libellous, from an academic colleague, saying I had no right to say what I was saying, especially in public lectures. Sadly, my experience is that universities are the most dogmatic and oppressive places in our society. This becomes progressively worse as they receive more and more funding from governments that demand a particular viewpoint.

In another instance, I was accused by Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki of being paid by oil companies. That is a lie. Apparently he thinks if the fossil fuel companies pay you have an agenda. So if Greenpeace, Sierra Club or governments pay there is no agenda and only truth and enlightenment?

Personal attacks are difficult and shouldn't occur in a debate in a civilized society. I can only consider them from what they imply. They usually indicate a person or group is losing the debate. In this case, they also indicate how political the entire Global Warming debate has become. Both underline the lack of or even contradictory nature of the evidence.

I am not alone in this journey against the prevalent myth. Several well-known names have also raised their voices. Michael Crichton, the scientist, writer and filmmaker is one of them. In his latest book, "State of Fear" he takes time to explain, often in surprising detail, the flawed science behind Global Warming and other imagined environmental crises.

Another cry in the wildenerness is Richard Lindzen's. He is an atmospheric physicist and a professor of meteorology at MIT, renowned for his research in dynamic meteorology - especially atmospheric waves. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held positions at the University of Chicago, Harvard University and MIT. Linzen frequently speaks out against the notion that significant Global Warming is caused by humans. Yet nobody seems to listen.

I think it may be because most people don't understand the scientific method which Thomas Kuhn so skilfully and briefly set out in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." A scientist makes certain assumptions and then produces a theory which is only as valid as the assumptions. The theory of Global Warming assumes that CO2 is an atmospheric greenhouse gas and as it increases temperatures rise. It was then theorized that since humans were producing more CO2 than before, the temperature would inevitably rise. The theory was accepted before testing had started, and effectively became a law.

As Lindzen said many years ago: "the consensus was reached before the research had even begun." Now, any scientist who dares to question the prevailing wisdom is marginalized and called a sceptic, when in fact they are simply being good scientists. This has reached frightening levels with these scientists now being called climate change denier with all the holocaust connotations of that word. The normal scientific method is effectively being thwarted.

Meanwhile, politicians are being listened to, even though most of them have no knowledge or understanding of science, especially the science of climate and climate change. Hence, they are in no position to question a policy on climate change when it threatens the entire planet. Moreover, using fear and creating hysteria makes it very difficult to make calm rational decisions about issues needing attention.

Until you have challenged the prevailing wisdom you have no idea how nasty people can be. Until you have re-examined any issue in an attempt to find out all the information, you cannot know how much misinformation exists in the supposed age of information.

I was greatly influenced several years ago by Aaron Wildavsky's book "Yes, but is it true?" The author taught political science at a New York University and realized how science was being influenced by and apparently misused by politics. He gave his graduate students an assignment to pursue the science behind a policy generated by a highly publicised environmental concern. To his and their surprise they found there was little scientific evidence, consensus and justification for the policy. You only realize the extent to which Wildavsky's findings occur when you ask the question he posed. Wildavsky's students did it in the safety of academia and with the excuse that it was an assignment. I have learned it is a difficult question to ask in the real world, however I firmly believe it is the most important question to ask if we are to advance in the right direction.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/18/ixnewstop.html
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.

"The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years."

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

Average global temperatures have increased by about 0.2 deg Celsius over the past 20 years and are widely believed to be responsible for new extremes in weather patterns. After pressure from environmentalists, politicians agreed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, promising to limit greenhouse gas emissions between 2008 and 2012. Britain ratified the protocol in 2002 and said it would cut emissions by 12.5 per cent from 1990 levels.

Globally, 1997, 1998 and 2002 were the hottest years since worldwide weather records were first collated in 1860.

Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have contributed to the warming of the planet in the past few decades but have questioned whether a brighter Sun is also responsible for rising temperatures.

To determine the Sun's role in global warming, Dr Solanki's research team measured magnetic zones on the Sun's surface known as sunspots, which are believed to intensify the Sun's energy output.

The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years - but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth's climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth's atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.

Dr Solanki does not know what is causing the Sun to burn brighter now or how long this cycle would last.

He says that the increased solar brightness over the past 20 years has not been enough to cause the observed climate changes but believes that the impact of more intense sunshine on the ozone layer and on cloud cover could be affecting the climate more than the sunlight itself.

Dr Bill Burrows, a climatologist and a member of the Royal Meteorological Society, welcomed Dr Solanki's research. "While the established view remains that the sun cannot be responsible for all the climate changes we have seen in the past 50 years or so, this study is certainly significant," he said.

"It shows that there is enough happening on the solar front to merit further research. Perhaps we are devoting too many resources to correcting human effects on the climate without being sure that we are the major contributor."

Dr David Viner, the senior research scientist at the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, said the research showed that the sun did have an effect on global warming.

He added, however, that the study also showed that over the past 20 years the number of sunspots had remained roughly constant, while the Earth's temperature had continued to increase.

This suggested that over the past 20 years, human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation had begun to dominate "the natural factors involved in climate change", he said.

Dr Gareth Jones, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said that Dr Solanki's findings were inconclusive because the study had not incorporated other potential climate change factors.

"The Sun's radiance may well have an impact on climate change but it needs to be looked at in conjunction with other factors such as greenhouse gases, sulphate aerosols and volcano activity," he said. The research adds weight to the views of David Bellamy, the conservationist. "Global warming - at least the modern nightmare version - is a myth," he said. "I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy-makers are not.

"Instead, they have an unshakeable faith in what has, unfortunately, become one of the central credos of the environmental movement: humans burn fossil fuels, which release increased levels of carbon dioxide - the principal so-called greenhouse gas - into the atmosphere, causing the atmosphere to heat up. They say this is global warming: I say this is poppycock."

 

What makes this scientist the idiot and Al Gore the Nobel Peace Price laureate? The fact that one made a movie, or the fact that one has more scientific understanding of the problem than the other?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Global_warming_skeptics

 

I think its the fact that one's views is backed up by the vast majority of scientists, while the other's is not.

 

Not really.

Interesting reference there. I find it curious that other articles of interest linked on the same page include:

US being hoodwinked into draconian climate policies

and

Climate Extremism: the Real Threat to Civilization

No agenda with that news source, eh?

You also failed to mention the author of the piece, Dr. Tim Ball, who said this in the op-ed...

Bell's PhD is in Geography. The University of Winnipeg has no Climatology Department. The University has requested he stop using the term "Emeritus" to describe himself. He has an extensive background in climatology like I have an extensive background in basketball... I played through 10th grade and continued in intramural competition during college. I also read about basketball a lot.

Also, this clue at the end of his piece should tell you everything you need to know...

Dr. Tim Ball, Chairman of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project, is a Victoria-based environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

An environmental consultant you say? Gee, I wonder who consults him? Maybe we can find out by looking at the Natural Resources Stewardship Project...

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Natural_Resources_Stewardship_Project

Finally, here's this little blurb...

I should also note that Ball and Gray have collaborated on trying to get the Royal Society to fund "research" of climate change skeptics... as if Exxon didn't have enough cash.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/green/isanewsletter.pdf

For more on Gray, see here...

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/gray-on-agw/

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Almost every climate change denying scientist has some pretty glaring issues with regard to conflicts of interest or scientific basis.

Jo Mama, you should know better - we've exposed Dr. Ball in this forum repeatedly.

 

Ok, so you agree that man is almost certainly causing global warming, and that it's way past time to act? Good. Kind of makes me wonder why you posted that in the first place, but I'm glad we're all on the same side here.

I take it you've missed all of the headlines lately about the debate over CO2 -producing power plants, etc?

What words should one use when someone suggests inaction, despite the overwhelming evidence that climate change is man-made and will cause an enormous ecological, economic, political, and humanitarian crisis?

If you want a scientific a scientific basis for my position, you might check with the scientific community. You know, the real one:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

 

the thing that bothers me the most is Al Gore doing all of this. I dont have anything against Gore, I just feel if scientists feel global warming is a huge concern and needs attention, they should be the ones to give speeches and promote the awareness. Al Gore isnt a scientist, I dont want him creating movies and telling me about global warming, he isnt credible in that area.

It seems to me Gore is going around saying "look at me!, i'm going to save the planet!" its great he wants to help the cause, but do it in other ways...dont go on jay leno, dave letterman etc and promote a movie about it.

I dont know if global warming is real or not...i've heard arguments for both sides, i'm at a wait and see stage right now, as time goes by there could be a huge breakthrough going either way on global warming in regards if its that big of a problem or not.

I just think Gore is being selfish and making it more about him than anything else.

just my two cents.

 

Isn't this the same scientist most global warming opponents name drop to back up their view? There are so few of them they are bound to have their names brought up repeatedly. I say this because I seem to recall that he was from some university in Colorado.