The Canary Project

Sorry David, but the causes of the past century’s warming are a matter of debate in the climate science community, it is not sure that human activity has anything to do with it. The whole Tokyo protocol stuff has much more to do, in my opinion, with political correctness and a kind of "righteousness" (if you do not adhere, you must be a bad, bad person, right?) than to solid scientific evidence. There is a kind of auto-conforting, snowball effect (pun not intended) in this avalanche of concording opinions on the matter: global warming has now become a de facto "common wisdom".
Bernard

The viewpoint that there is somehow a lack of scientific consensus on the role of human activity on climate change is bizarre and troubling. See statements by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (an organization founded by the UN and the World Meteorological Society. For example: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/044.htm

See also statements by every single relevant scientific body in the U.S. such as:

. National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Science of Climate Change, Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001).
. American Meteorological Society, Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 84, 508 (2003).
. American Geophysical Union, Eos 84 (51), 574 (2003).
. See http://www.ourplanet.com/aaas/pages/atmos02.html.

(These citations are taken from an article by Naomi Oreskes, Department of History and Science Studies Program, University of California at San Diego)

What do you cite by way of dissent?

Bernard, i worked for 10 years as a polar glaciologist, a "climate scientist" before such a thing existed, in today's sense. One of my early tasks was to interpret radar echo sounding survey data of the Larsen Ice Shelf, a huge body of floating freshwater ice to the East of the Antarctic Peninsula.

That was in 1985.

The Larsen Ice Shelf, to all intents and purposes, no longer exists. And it's not the only one.

I don't really know of any serious dissenting voice: the accelerating trend in global warming is highly correlated with the build up of greenhouse gasses, itself highly correlated with the industrial age. This was first established beyond reasonable doubt around 1991, by the IPCC, as far as I recall.

I don't deny the warming, I'm just not persuaded about the causal relationship with human activity. This being said, I'm no climatologist: I'm just being extremely cautious when moral reasons are mixed with scientific arguments.

Is the site below serious?
http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=4

Oh God....

"Friends of Scientology", more like. It would be interesting to see who is paying for the collected wisdom of this bunch of deadbeats. I haven't really got time to waste on this, but I suppose it is in a good cause. First, note that they do not cite any evidence at all for their statements. Anybody can write anything on the internet, and anybody can through together a persuasive little site. I'm sure there are conclusive proofs that the Earth is flat somewhere out there, and the Adolf Hitler is alive and well and living in Atlantis. Anyway...

"There has been no catastrophic warming recorded"

Evidently. We're still here. Although false actually. As they state themselves, there are plenty of past cases of warming (and cooling) with what could be described as catastropic results.

"For instance, the Medieval Warm Period, from around 1000 to1200 AD (when the Vikings farmed on Greenland".

So what ? Actually, this Greenland argument is trotted out time & again. The Vikings had a bare, subsistence econonmy in the southernmost tip of Greenland. It was not sustainable. But anyway, there is no dispute at all that global and regional climate varies.

"The "hockey stick", a poster boy of both the UN's IPCC and Canada's Environment Department, ignores historical recorded climatic swings, and has now also been proven to be flawed and statistically unreliable as well. It is a computer construct and a faulty one at that."


No it doesn't. Proven by home ? How can it be "statistically unreliable" ? The data analysis was extremely rigourous, and does not hide the fact that the correlation is not 100%. It is implied that the IPCC report was some sort of plot. Actually, the results came as a great shock, and it was a good 7-8 years before it was even discussed outside of scientific circles.


Sorry, I can't be bothered with this pseudo-science bullshit any more. It is so simplistic that it appears to believe that rising temperature is the only indicator. It is the widespread, increasing disruption to a relatively stable climate system wwhich is actually the indicator. That climate is changing, and changing fast, is totally indisputable.

The question of human culpability can be put aside. It makes no difference to the problem, although it might to the solution.

If we don't find a solution, then the climate will sort itself out anyway, in due course. Entropy will see to that. It doesn't care about us though.

>>> "Friends of Scientology", more like.
Ouch. If they have anything at all to do with scientology, this is effectively rubbish, and a dangerous one.

>>> I haven't really got time to waste on this, but I suppose it is in a good cause
Yes it is. Although I am a scientist by formation (PhD in immunogenetics), I am no expert in climatology, and have never actually read much about it. My reaction was purely an instinctive one against the "political correctness" which I feel is all around us in the news. But my attitude might well be wrong here, I admit.

Thanks for taking the time for discussing this. I guess I have to read some more... You have convinced me that the subject is serious and that there is rigorous science behind all this, not only politics or "public opinion".

This debate was very inspiring to read. Thanks for your final post, Bernard.

I am no tree hugger and no liberal. I work in the corporate world for top-hundred law firms and investment banks. My newspaper of choice is the Wall Street Journal and I charge more than $300 an hour for my services.

Global warming is not a political issue anymore. It is a fact that we need to face with the force of our considerable ingenuity.