Edward Duca, Pembroke
Debunking climate change sceptics
The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference has brought the topic under the media spotlight but has also brought with it the phenomenon of climate change sceptics.
Climate change deniers will use any shred of evidence to shed doubt to the fact that climate change is happening and is man-made. Joe Calleja's letter (The Sunday Times, December 27, 2009) entitled 'There is still no consensus on global warming' is a case in point.
Mr Calleja mentioned the Heidelberg appeal, which is commonly misquoted by climate change sceptics as a manifesto against climate change. I expected to find a text that clearly denounces climate change. Instead, I found an article that appeals to policymakers to base their strategies on sound "scientific criteria and not irrational preconceptions".
Mr Calleja is right in mentioning that the Heidelberg appeal was signed by 72 Nobel Laureates, and endorsed by over 4,000 scientists, not the 400 Mr Calleja states.
What he fails to mention is that 49 of those Nobel Laureates also signed the 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity' in 1992. This is a much clearer manifesto and explicitly states that humanity is colliding with the natural world, and that humans are causing global climate change, massive species extinction, pollution and other problems.
Mr Calleja erroneously states that just 52 scientists worked on the UN-IPCC 2007 report, but a quick search found that the core climate science report was written by 152 scientists from more than 30 countries and reviewed by more than 620 experts and 113 governments.
The 'Caught green-handed' paper Mr Calleja invites George Debono to read was written by Christopher Walter Monckton, a politician, not a scientist.
The lack of consensus in the scientific community that Mr Calleja refers to is on the extent of the increase in global temperature due to human activities and not that global warming does not exist.
Sadly, by 2010 the world still hasn't come to any form of legally binding document about what to do with humanity's biggest challenge: man-made climate change. Instead, we're wasting effort debunking the erroneous claims made by these sceptics. Will we be referred to in a 100 years' time as the fools who failed to act upon the evidence of man-made climate change?
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Alex Ellul
Jan 19th 2010, 08:29
@Craig Bertram: The link you provided belongs to a website specifically designed to try to discredit the scientific AGW skeptics. This paticular link tries to convince us that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a local phenomenon.However many scientists agree that it was global as were the four other global warmings during the past 5000 years. But the strongest point in the argument that the MWP was global is that this warming was warmer than the present one and lasted a staggering 1200 years and one cannot comprehend how such an elevated temperature for such a long time could not have effected the whole planet. This goes against the laws of thermodynamics at least besides logic.
The scientists at CRU of UK tried so uch to hide the MWP, with one e-mail, out of many, saying "we have to get rid of the MWP". The MWP is the sore point of the AGW theorists who cannot prove that the warming just experienced is man-made unless the MWP is removed from historical records, there fore they do everything in their power to try to convince us that the MWP did not happen. But then there are three other warming preceding it.
Craig Bertram
Jan 18th 2010, 18:22
@ Michael Walton This will probably answer your question. http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm
Alex Ellul
Jan 18th 2010, 15:37
No wonder AGW theory is foundering.
Report Title: NOAA is Fountainhead of Exaggerated Temperature Data
Quote:
"Recent analysis by computer expert E. Mike Smith and the certified consulting meteorologist Joseph D'Aleo has shown manipulations of the GHCN which have had the effect of greatly exaggerating the rise of temperatures in the late 20th Century, as well as in the first decade of the present century. The analysis was so blatantly designed for that purpose, that it is unavoidable to say that an agency of our government was knowingly lying to the American People and abusing the good name of the United States throughout the world. How was this perfidy performed? I have discussed a number of aspects of this huge effort to distort the temperature data to support a theory of sudden highly unusual temperature rise in the late 20th Century and a sustained high in the first decade of this century in a number of posts in November and December. " Read the complete report here:
http://objectivistindividualist.blogspot.com/2010/01/noaa-is-fountainhead-of-exaggerated.html
Alex Ellul
Jan 18th 2010, 14:42
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” asks geologist Dr. David Gee, the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress. A number of scientists who backed the CO2 based AGW theory are now suffering from buyer's remorse. According to atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh, “many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly, without having their professional careers ruined.”
Alex Ellul
Jan 18th 2010, 14:03
From the Times (UK): World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6991177.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1
This report shows how the IPCC is misleading the world. Is there anything else to debunk in the IPCC's "science"?
Of course, Mr. Smith, who ridicules all and sundry, especially people with scientific degrees, will come up and declare the UK Times as a rag.
Don Simpson
Jan 18th 2010, 11:03
It is difficult to debunk climate change skeptics when they have all the logic, reason and evidence on their side. Arctic ice to melt by 2013, himalayan glaciers to disapear by 2035. etc..etc..
It is easy to see that all global warming claims have been exagerated for political objectives. The real evidence points to the fact that global warming is a nominal issue rating about as high as hangnails.
The real scientists have been muzzled and after cliamtegate it looks like we are starting to hear from them again instead of a few political actors at the IPCC.
Joseph Schembri
Jan 17th 2010, 17:11
Brian: The WEATHER in Europe right now has nothing to do with 'CLIMATE change'.
Most people without a basic understanding of Climatology confuse the two terms.
That climate change is happening is now an established fact. It took us almost half a century of meticulous examination of records to be able to say this with this degree of certainty.
Joseph Schembri
Jan 17th 2010, 17:07
Michael Walton : There are a multitude of factors affecting climate - some of them random and some periodic. Some changes in climate can be explained by the so called Milankovitch cycles. However there are very clear links between carbon dioxide concentrations and average temperature of the earth. The evidence is so clear that it is almost impossible to dismiss as a coincidence. What we know now is that since the start of the industrial revolution, 200 yaers or so ago, carbon dioxide levels have risen considerably. This we know was and is being caused by our massive and sudden burning of fossil fuels. At the same time the Earth's average temperature has started rising too.
Such links have happened a dozen or so times because we happen to have records of CO2 (eg. from ice core samples) levels and temperature (eg. from calcium carbonate concentrations in ocean sediment) dating back millions of years.
So all the evidence tells us that Climate change is happening and that it is man made.
Paul Smith
Jan 17th 2010, 16:49
The two effects brought on by the extreme negative mode of the AO thus could cancel each other out. But it is also possible that one or other of them will win through, with a significant effect on this year’s summer ice. To some people, including, almost certainly, those who write the headlines in the Daily Express, the fact that the same phenomenon might explain either record low sea ice or continued recovery of sea ice will be seen as inconsistency, poor science, or something more suspect. To people actually interested in how the climate works, however, seeing what happens in a very strong negative AO may prove a boon, by allowing the roles of different processes in ice loss to be further disentangled. Weather and climate are not the same, but there are links between them in both directions—links which can usefully be understood.
Brain, you dont have a science degree as well do you?
Paul Smith
Jan 17th 2010, 16:47
This pole-centred roundel of warm-in-cold is symptomatic of what climatologists call the negative phase of the Arctic oscillation (AO). It is a mode of atmospheric circulation in which the stratosphere is unusually warm and westerly winds, which normally bring warmth from the oceans to northern Europe, are unusually weak. The warmth in the Arctic that this arrangement has brought may diminish the regeneration of sea ice over the course of this winter, meaning that next summer’s sun can push back the boundaries further.
The atmosphere is not just about temperature, though. Wind patterns matter too. And here the negative phase of the AO may be on the side of the ice. As Alun Anderson explains in his fascinating book “After the Ice: Life, Death and Politics in the New Arctic”, two wind-driven currents are crucial to understanding Arctic ice: the Beaufort gyre, which circulates north of Canada, and the transpolar drift, which sweeps through the waters north of Siberia towards Greenland. A positive AO weakens the Beaufort gyre with respect to the drift, allowing ice that would otherwise circulate for years to be flushed out into the North Atlantic.
Paul Smith
Jan 17th 2010, 16:45
One possible implication is a change in the prospects of the current poster child for climate change—Arctic sea ice. The extent of summer ice in the Arctic Ocean has been decreasing at a rate of about 8% per decade. In 2007, as the result of prior losses, peculiar sunniness in some areas and a particular disposition of winds, the ice levels fell spectacularly. That particular alignment of circumstances did not hold sway over the following years, which accordingly saw the ice bounce back somewhat. The current cold in mid latitudes might, counterintuitively, reverse that trend and reduce the ice cover further. The atmosphere cannot make heat, or even hold that much of it. There is more heat stored in the top four metres of the oceans than in all the Earth’s atmosphere. So when the atmosphere cools down one part of the globe, it is a good rule of thumb that it is warming some other part. In the case of the current mid-latitude chill, it is the high latitudes that are seeing the warming. In Greenland and the Arctic Ocean, December was comparatively balmy. The air above Baffin Bay and the Davis Strait was 7ºC warmer than usual.
Paul Smith
Jan 17th 2010, 16:45
To try to make a climatic point either way out of a patch of unusual weather, though, is normally to be on a hiding to nothing, and so it is this winter. No one with any claim on the public’s respect has ever said that all of the natural ups and downs of climate will be ironed out onto a smooth upwards trend by greenhouse gases; their effects are expected to show up not so much in particular events, but in statistics. The reverse of the same coin is that there will still be cold snaps in a warming world. But that is not to say that the current cold might not have implications beyond the spring, or that it might not help explain more about how the climate actually work
Paul Smith
Jan 17th 2010, 16:42
Brian Farrugia
Britain’s cold snap is explained by the Arctic oscillation
IT IS an ill wind that blows no good, as people have been remarking to each other since at least the 16th century. In the case of the bitter easterlies that have brought Britain colder, snowier weather than has been seen for a couple of decades, the proverbial benefit has been felt by the more foolish and facile of those who doubt the reality or likelihood of man-made climate change. “Snow Chaos: And still they claim it’s global warming” read the front page headline of Britain’s Daily Express on January 6th. The foolishness is not one sided. With less public prominence, those convinced of climatic doom mutter of “extreme events” being more likely in a more man-made climate, with the implication that this might in some way explain the current cold.
cont:
Brian Farrugia
Jan 17th 2010, 16:26
Was this letter written in jest?
Global warming aka climate change because of freezing conditions in Northern Europe,what will you call it next?
With all the fraudulent data revealed in the British press whatever you want to call it is dead in the water.
Martin Frendo
Jan 17th 2010, 13:45
words wisely said. as the story goes a voice in the desert that only a few took heed.( and there is an interpretation to that voice also - but that is another story) it is sad to invest in such a future for our Children's children. and yet the show must go on. of course unless the mega olygarchs are investing their hoards into space lving quarters ..who knows? maybe those who really got the message are fending for themselves elsewhere?
Paul Smith
Jan 17th 2010, 13:43
Whilst any dramatic swings in climate may be 2 or 3 decades away, we face a more urgent crisis, one that is only seen in the rear view mirror:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2009/11/rare_earth_the_new_great_game.html
President Barack Obama has now, reportedly, accepted there will be a global resource crunch within a decade, led by peak oil.
All these arguments about climate change from all the so called Maltese Non experts are missing the point. My country has enjoyed energy independence for over 3 decades - the party has now finished. Today we import 2 million barrels of oil a year, other oil producers now do the same, we are all chasing less and less resources. Less resources means less money, more expensive food and less and less food. If you are under 60 years, you will witness in the next few decades, a race to the bottom for civilization. There are no techno fixes. Cheap energy gave us all the toys we play with.
Robert Callus
Jan 17th 2010, 12:11
@Edward Duca
I completely agree with your letter. However I believe this problem is so urgent that one cannot waste time dealing with fringe groups, which any policy maker of integrity automatically discards.
For every thing that happens, even small things you will find such fringe groups that gather bits and pieces from the internet or disgruntled scientist and patch things up in a simplistic and irrelevant manner. We find groups that deny everything, from the Holocaust and the death of Michael Jackson.
Michael Walton
Jan 17th 2010, 11:19
If climate change is man made can Mr Duca explain how average temperatures in Europe were higher in the middle ages than they are now? Also how did the earth warm up after the last ice age without man made CO2 emmisions?
Charles Sammut
Jan 17th 2010, 11:01
Assuming global warming to be real, what is being done to address the root of the problem? Overpopulation.
It is now clear that our planet cannot support 6.7 billion humans and afford them a good standard of living without an adverse impact on the environment.
Alex Ellul
Jan 17th 2010, 10:09
Mr. Duca, please give us one scientific proof that CO2=global warming. Time has debunked this theory. Emerging science is proving it wrong. Go to the CERN website and search for CLOUD project.