Thanks to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, not many people doubt that human beings are responsible for Global Warming. As Stephen Colbert noted, that movie made money so the market has spoken and it must be true! It seems everyone, even George W. Bush is behind the idea now. But there are people out there, scientists included, who are skeptical of the newest scientific dogma.

Take Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov, of St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. He says we're on a warming trend but that humans have little to do with it, the agent being a longtime change in the sun's heat. He predicts solar irradiance will fall within the next few years mainly based on the well documented sunspot cycle, and therefore we may well face the beginning of an ice age very shortly, as early as 2012. The Russian scientific establishment is giving him a green light to use the nation's space station to measure global cooling.

Anybody out there old enough to remember the '70s will recall the environmental scare back then was that a new Ice Age was-a-comin. But within a few decades the scientific community switched the nature of the global threat the opposite direction: now the world is gonna warm up like a big greenhouse and kill us all. Science has a tendency to modify itself over time, it's the nature of the business. Flat Earth became Round Earth, Newtonian Physics gave way to Quantum Theory, and the story of Genesis gave way to the theory of Evolution (at least outside the Bible Belt.)

So why exactly has the mainstream political and scientific community so widely embraced the Anthropocentric explanation of why the planet is heating up? Most say its a result of hard science (mainly computer modeling and ice-core samples.) But some skeptics invoke one of the most ironclad rules of all time: Follow the money.

There's money to be made, and so, as Talleyrand said, "Enrich yourselves!" I just bought two roundtrip British Airways ticket to Spain from Seattle and a BA online passenger advisory promptly instructed me that the CO2 "offset" cost would be $7.90 on each ticket, which I might care to contribute to Climate Care. It won't be long before utility bills will carry similar, albeit mandatory and much larger charges.

A growing list of scientists are signing on to the skeptic's side (try plugging "global warming skeptics" into Wikepedia). While some would argue that such skeptics could easily have been paid for their contrary views on what has become a new orthodoxy, let's face it the real money is on the side of Inconvenient Truth crowd. The Earth has been warming up and cooling down for billions of years, the world's glaciers have melted and returned many times. Why is it now that everyone is so sure this particular phase of global warming is primarily caused by humans? There are other factors, most notably the Sun and the Earth's oceans. Could all this talk of human's effects on climate be some kind of mass-ego trip where the whole Planet revolves around the lives of its human inhabitants?

geo35

Minneapolis, MN

January 2003

JUN 12, 2007 06:19 AM

Greenhouse effect is real. Whether or not the sun's output is varying (which of course it always is) or whether or not a whole lot of other elements come into play (which of course they always do), greenhouse effect remains real, and the impact of human industrial activity on it seems to be well established. So I don't think it would hurt us much to keep looking for ways to minimize our impact.

But yeah, don't be surprised if some players look for ways to make money off this whole thing.

Darke

Trego, WI

June 2005

JUN 12, 2007 06:22 AM

shouldn't this be a science (specifically bad science; since an astronomer is trying to make his job more relevant by doing some amateur climatology) topic, as opposed to a politics topic?

thingy

Toronto, ON

December 2004

JUN 12, 2007 06:23 AM

And now for an encore, here's a list of skeptics about evolution:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/

Wow, these lists of scientists sure prove a lot, don't they?

And if you think the money available for things like "carbon offsets" outweighs the bucketfuls of money the entrenched interests (oil, automobiles, power, republicans) are willing to dish out, you're out of your mind.

Certainly, there is a problem of groupthink, and getting a definitive opinion on something as complicated and controversial. But the consensus of of people far more qualified than us to determine such things shouldn't be ignored just because someone comes up with a list of names.

Motega

Virginia Beach, VA

October 2006

JUN 12, 2007 06:42 AM

The Earth has always had a heating and cooling system its whole existence (as far as we know) that we have not affected b/c lets face it, we (humans) haven't been on the planet its whole existence. BUT there are way more humans on Earth now than there has ever been and we use up alot of natural resources (now more than ever) that it took millions of years to for the Earth to "make". I'm no scientist or anything but maybe Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov has a point...half a point. I do think that we have had a hand in the Global Warming...but since we can assume that the Earth has always had a heating and cooling system we could be in the "heating" phase (since we have hit the highest temps ever in some areas of the Earth) and if the Earth shifts and we go into the "cooling" phase, we could reach temps that are the coldest we have ever had...but enough for an ice age? As soon as 2012?? I dunno.
But again, I'm no scientist...

Uncognitive

Brooklyn, NY

May 2003

JUN 12, 2007 06:57 AM

evanharos said:
Anybody out there old enough to remember the '70s will recall the environmental scare back then was that a new Ice Age was-a-comin. But within a few decades the scientific community switched the nature of the global threat the opposite direction: now the world is gonna warm up like a big greenhouse and kill us all. Science has a tendency to modify itself over time, it's the nature of the business. Flat Earth became Round Earth, Newtonian Physics gave way to Quantum Theory, and the story of Genesis gave way to the theory of Evolution (at least outside the Bible Belt.)

The most important thing to keep in mind when this "Those darn scientists predicted an Ice Age in the 70's, so what's up with this global warming malarkey" line of thought is that the scientific research at the time considered anthropogenic CO2 emissions to be a factor in increasing global temperature.

However, and the global cooling trend from roughly the mid-40's to the mid-70's bears this out, other anthropogenic emissions such as black carbon, sulfur dioxide and other forms of air pollution counteract the greenhouse effect of CO2 and drive temperatures down. Oddly enough, when emissions of those pollutants decreased dramatically in the 70's and 80's (thanks in part to tighter regulation of industrial pollution), the global cooling trend reversed itself. This is the same reason that volcanic activity has a major impact on global temperature.

So the "global cooling" research from the 60's and 70's actually supports claims that human activity can impact the climate.

evanharos said:
So why exactly has the mainstream political and scientific community so widely embraced the Anthropocentric explanation of why the planet is heating up? Most say its a result of hard science (mainly computer modeling and ice-core samples.) But some skeptics invoke one of the most ironclad rules of all time: Follow the money.

Yeah, global warming skeptics claiming that money has influenced scientific research. In case anyone wanted a dictionary definition of "irony", there you go.

evanharos
While some would argue that such skeptics could easily have been paid for their contrary views on what has become a new orthodoxy, let's face it the real money is on the side of Inconvenient Truth crowd.

How is "the real money" on the side of scientists who support the current consensus view of global climate change?

evanharos
The Earth has been warming up and cooling down for billions of years, the world's glaciers have melted and returned many times. Why is it now that everyone is so sure this particular phase of global warming is primarily caused by humans? There are other factors, most notably the Sun and the Earth's oceans. Could all this talk of human's effects on climate be some kind of mass-ego trip where the whole Planet revolves around the lives of its human inhabitants?

Hey, remember when during the 70's and 80's there was all this hype about how CFC emissions, primarily from human activity, was causing depletion of the ozone layer? And how now, after a decade or so of CFC emissions being regulated in most countries that said depletion has slowed dramatically? Was that some "mass ego-trip"?

Oh, and the scientific consensus on global climate change doesn't postulate that global climate change isn't cyclical, or that there aren't other factors at work, or even that human activity is the "primary" cause of global climate change, but I'm sure your red herring shop is now well stocked.

Current scientific consensus is that human activity is a factor in global climate change, and one that is causing an increase in global temperature beyond what would be expected due to other factors.

TheFuckOffKid

NEWSWIRE

Australia

JUN 12, 2007 06:57 AM

Are you fucking shitting me? One more "it's all a hoax" article, and you think it deserves newswire exposure?

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2007/06/alexander_cockburn_goes_quote.php

MarkH has made a case study of Alexander Cockburn's crankish nonsense on global warming, but there is a bit left over for me to comment on. Cockburn's main scientific authority is some guy he met on a cruise who worked as a meteorologist for a whole three years, but he does quote on other person on the science. Look:

As Richard Kerr, Science magazine's man on global warming remarked, "Climate modelers have been 'cheating' for so long it's become almost respectable."

It takes a few seconds to find the source of the quote. You need a subscription to read the whole article, but the bit you get for free is enough to tell you that one doing the cheating is Cockburn:

Climate Change: Model Gets It Right--Without Fudge Factors Science 16 May 1997: 1041

To keep their computer models from drifting off into climates quite unlike today's, climate modelers have gotten in the habit of fiddling with fudge factors, arbitrary "flux adjustments." But now researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, have developed a model that gets it right without flux adjustments. The first results from this model imply that future greenhouse warming may be milder than some other models have suggested--and may take decades to reveal itself.

So Kerr's article tells you that ten years ago modelers stopped 'cheating', but Cockburn rips a quote out of context to make it look as if they were still doing it.

Here's the quote in context:

Climate modelers have been "cheating" for so long it's almost become respectable. The problem has been that no computer model could reliably simulate the present climate. Even the best simulations of the behavior of the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land surface drift off into a climate quite unlike today's as they run for centuries. So climate modelers have gotten in the habit of fiddling with fudge factors, so-called "flux adjustments," until the model gets it right.

No one liked this practice (Science, 9 September 1994, p. 1528). "If you can't simulate the present without arbitrary adjustments, you have to worry," says meteorologist and modeler David Randall of Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins. But now there's a promising alternative. Thirty researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, have developed the first complete model that can simulate the present climate as well as other models do, but without flux adjustments. The new NCAR model, says Randall, "is an important step toward removing some of the uneasiness people have about trusting these models to make predictions of future climate" (see main text).

The NCAR modelers built a host of refinements into their new Climate System Model (CSM). But the key development, says CSM co-chair Byron Boville, was finding a better way to incorporate the effects of ocean eddies, swirling pools of water up to a couple of hundred kilometers across that spin off strong currents. Climate researchers have long known that the eddies, like atmospheric storms, help shape climate by moving heat around the planet. But modelers have had a tough time incorporating them into their simulations because they are too small to show up on the current models' coarse geographic grid. The CSM doesn't have a finer mesh, but it does include a new "parameterization" that passes the effects of these unseen eddies onto larger model scales, using a more realistic means of mixing heat through the ocean than any earlier model did, says Boville.

Even when run for 300 model "years," the CSM doesn't drift away from a reasonably realistic climate, says NCAR's Climate and Global Dynamics director Maurice Blackmon. "Being able to do this without flux corrections gives you more credibility," he says. "For better or worse, we're not biasing the results as was necessary before."

Got any other hack stories you want to recycle into "news"?

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Baletempest

United Kingdom

February 2005

JUN 12, 2007 06:59 AM

Oh please.

Anybody out there old enough to remember the '70s will recall the environmental scare back then was that a new Ice Age was-a-comin.

There is not one peer reviewed scientific artical that makes this claim. Oddly your whole artical reads like the episode of Pen and teller's Bullshit where they "disprove" the carbon arguement... in fact it's pretty much a carbon copy.