Physicists reconsider opinion - many within APS doubt original studies
July 19, 2008 · Written by Steve M · Print This Post
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Conservatives will be fighting the global warming myths - now rebranded as climate change - for years. No one is disputing that the temperature of the world has increased a little bit. This change in temperature results in changes around the world. Might have less ice at the poles, water temperatures may be a bit warmer and yes, the sea level may rise a little bit.
But to imply that human activity is causing these changes is the ultimate in vanity. The only thing that is worse is implying that we can reverse the changes that are occurring. So, what is the correct temperature for the world anyway? Who gets to determine that number?
News posted on DalyTech.com on July 16 provides us news from the American Physical Society (APS), a group of more than 50,000 physicists. Granted, the number seems impressive, but I don’t really care how many members that they have.
The DailyTech article promotes the spin that the APS has reversed their opinion; they have not. But they have re-opened the debate - AlGore announced the debate was over a couple of years ago - and the sub-group has completed a peer reviewed study that puts the original conclusions from 2001 and 2007 in serious doubt.
I’ll be honest that I can’t read this, but here is the science. It’s not as sexy as AlGore, Obama or - God forbid - McCain giving a speech on the subject; or as touching as a bunch of third graders crying about polar bears. Needless to say, the main stream media is not going to cover this report.
I did make it through the discussion and conclusion sections. My emphasis added.
… We have set out and then critically examined a detailed account of the IPCC’ method of evaluating climate sensitivity. We have made explicit the identities, interrelations, and values of the key variables, many of which the IPCC does not explicitly describe or quantify. The IPCC’s method does not provide a secure basis for policy-relevant conclusions. …
Even if temperature had risen above natural variability, the recent solar Grand Maximum may have been chiefly responsible. Even if the sun were not chiefly to blame for the past half-century’s warming, the IPCC has not demonstrated that, since CO2 occupies only one-ten-thousandth part more of the atmosphere that it did in 1750, it has contributed more than a small fraction of the warming. Even if carbon dioxide were chiefly responsible for the warming that ceased in 1998 and may not resume until 2015, the distinctive, projected fingerprint of anthropogenic “greenhouse-gas” warming is entirely absent from the observed record. Even if the fingerprint were present, computer models are long proven to be inherently incapable of providing projections of the future state of the climate that are sound enough for policymaking. Even if per impossibilethe models could ever become reliable, the present paper demonstrates that it is not at all likely that the world will warm as much as the IPCC imagines. Even if the world were to warm that much, the overwhelming majority of the scientific, peer-reviewed literature does not predict that catastrophe would ensue. Even if catastrophe might ensue, even the most drastic proposals to mitigate future climate change by reducing emissions of carbon dioxide would make very little difference to the climate. Even if mitigation were likely to be effective, it would do more harm than good: already millions face starvation as the dash for biofuels takes agricultural land out of essential food production: a warning that taking precautions, “just in case”, can do untold harm unless there is a sound, scientific basis for them. Finally, even if mitigation might do more good than harm, adaptation as (and if) necessary would be far more cost-effective and less likely to be harmful.
In short, we must get the science right, or we shall get the policy wrong. If the concluding equation in this analysis (Eqn. 30) is correct, the IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity must have been very much exaggerated. There may, therefore, be a good reason why, contrary to the projections of the models on which the IPCC relies, temperatures have not risen for a decade and have been falling since the phase-transition in global temperature trends that occurred in late 2001. Perhaps real-world climate sensitivity is very much below the IPCC’s estimates. Perhaps, therefore, there is no “climate crisis” at all. At present, then, in policy terms there is no case for doing anything. The correct policy approach to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing.
I think the most important article you can read this weekend is No Smoking Hot Spot from the Australian. David Evans writes:
I DEVOTED six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian Greenhouse Office. I am the rocket scientist who wrote the carbon accounting model (FullCAM) that measures Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol, in the land use change and forestry sector.
FullCAM models carbon flows in plants, mulch, debris, soils and agricultural products, using inputs such as climate data, plant physiology and satellite data. I’ve been following the global warming debate closely for years.
When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty good: CO2 is a greenhouse gas, the old ice core data, no other suspects.
The evidence was not conclusive, but why wait until we were certain when it appeared we needed to act quickly? Soon government and the scientific community were working together and lots of science research jobs were created. We scientists had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet.
But since 1999 new evidence has seriously weakened the case that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming, and by 2007 the evidence was pretty conclusive that carbon played only a minor role and was not the main cause of the recent global warming. As Lord Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”
Please do read Evans’ full article. Flopping Aces, HotAir and Malkin all have more. Why don’t you sit back and read for an hour or so?
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It’s a total power grab to destroy capitalism, the motivation for a FREE people and to install a Leftist Socialistic government and New World Order. I can’t believe how many people are willing to drink the Kool aid on this. They are being deceived and loving it. What to Do????
Global Warming. The Bible Has The Answer.
http://www.theignorantfishermen.com/2008/04/global-warming-bible-has-answer.html