Many critics of this Minority Report complain that some of the signatories are not scientists. But the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis is:
- Global warming is occurring and will become worse.
- It is caused by increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
- Man's use of fossil fuels is causing much of the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere.
- The consequences for man, animal-life, and crop production will be catastrophic.
The climate is a complex issue, which very much benefits from a multi-disciplinary analysis. For my money, many climatologists do not have a sufficiently long-term perspective on the Earth's history to fully appreciate and understand the many natural factors controlling climate. Despite this, most of them are not convinced by the AGW alarmists. Geologists are very good contributors to our understanding because they do have this perspective. The work of Ian Plimer in putting together the great book Heaven and Earth is an example of this. Then there is the important role of chemists, biologists, and materials scientists and engineers in understanding how CO2 is cycled between the atmosphere, oceans, and the Earth's crust. The role of physicists in understanding the cycles of the sun with its changing irradiance, the changing solar winds, and its changing electromagnetic fields and the interaction of that field with the cosmic ray flux from space is also critical. Their experience with cloud chambers and cosmic ray measurements is also critical. Biologists also play an important role in assessing the effects upon humans, plant, and animal life. They are all needed in the assessment of catastrophic AGW.
Finally, if the catastrophic AGW hypothesis were true and if man could do anything to prevent the worst consequences, then the very importance of the problem should engage a wide range of scientists, engineers, and economists. The actions to be taken would be drastic and have severe consequences for the lives of the entire world population. So, the thesis of AGW ought to be so sound that all of these scientists and economists will be convinced that a unified and determined human response to AGW is justified. Their many talents will likely be called upon to implement that response. So, the catastrophic AGW believers should be very excited to enlist the interest and the support of all these scientists, engineers, and economists. To do this, however, means that their critical assessment of the hypothesis must be welcomed and their judgment should be respected. It is up to the catastrophic AGWs to make a sound and compelling case for their hypothesis so they can enlist the support of the broad scientific, engineering, and economic expert communities.
In comparison to the Senate Minority Report on AGW, the UN IPCC report Summary, which is where the mass of the alarmist claims are made, has only 52 authors, many of whom are also not scientists and many of whom are simply politicians promoting government interests in expanding their power. While hundreds of scientists contributed their scientific findings to the scientific parts of the report, these main parts of the report are also full of caveats that it is not clear that catastrophic AGW is implied by their findings. They are clearly loathe to make the long-term predictions which are made in the Summary of the ICPP reports. Indeed, many scientists have been refusing to participate in the UN ICPP reports over time because they believe the Summaries are such a poor representation of the science in the main parts of the reports.
The catastrophic AGW hypothesis has clearly failed to be convincing to those scientists who have taken the time to evaluate its claims and generally to study the issue of the Earth's climate and the factors controlling it. It is time for the politicians and the public to understand the failure of the catastrophic global warming hypothesis to convince such knowledgeable and rational evaluators as those who have signed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Minority Report.
Inhofe's list is a fraud, as is just about everything on that page, as is easily shown by the many posts linked from here:
ReplyDeletehttp://greenfyre.wordpress.com/denier-vs-skeptic/denier-myths-debunked/not-sparta-inhofe-and-the-400/
Alright, let us examine some of the content from the link greenfyre has referred to as proving that Senator Inhofe's Minority Report is a fraud.
ReplyDeleteHere is the core of the claim for fraud on the Minority Report:
"CFI’s Office of Public Policy undertook an assessment of the 687 people listed as “dissenting scientists” in the January 2009 version of the ‘Inhofe list’. Their conclusions:
* Slightly fewer than 10 percent could be identified as climate scientists.
* Approximately 15 percent published in the recognizable refereed literature on subjects related to climate science.
* Approximately 80 percent clearly had no refereed publication record on climate science at all.
* Approximately 4 percent appeared to favor the current IPCC-2007 consensus and should not have been on the list.
Here (pdf) is a spreadsheet providing a first-order analysis of the 687 alledged “dissenting scientists” in the 2009 version."
I, Charles R. Anderson, examined every name on the list in the spreadsheet and my name was missing. I most definitely sent in my dissenting statement and it is still in the Minority Report. Clearly there are more dissenters than the 687 listed by the Center for Inquiry.
The CFI apparently decided that someone listed was not really a dissenter unless they found some other source confirming the person's opposition to catastrophic AGW. This is strange. Why is a lack of further public opposition a confirmation of acceptance of the UN IPCC reports? So what does the 4% number of believers fraudulently listed as skeptics claimed by CFI mean? There is a claim in a tri-fold brochure of CFI that there is some contradictory statement by some of the signers that indicated they believed in AGW. This is not surprising since the more many have looked into the claims of AGW, some have changed their minds.
As far as the claims that many are not climate scientists, I already addressed that issue in my original blog entry above. Did you actually read my entry? Of course, I do understand the reluctance of catastrophic AGWs and socialists in general to read before they react. We are seeing this repeatedly in their failure to read the Congressional bills their side favors!
The link goes on to claim that:
"Dr. Ronald Lindsay, CFI’s CEO, points out that Inhofe’s office had misleadingly claimed in a press release that the number of dissenting scientists outnumbered by more than 13 times the number of U.N. scientists (52) who authored the 2007 IPCC. “But those 52 U.N. scientists were in fact summarizing for policymakers the work of over 2,000 active research scientists, all with substantially similar views on global warming and its causes."
The so-called 52 scientists who prepared the UN IPCC Summary are also not mostly scientists, let alone climate scientists, as I noted in my original blog entry above. In addition, the 2000 count of active research scientists from the bulk of the UN report is highly inflated. First, there are not 2000 authors, but fewer. Second, some of the authors appear in multiple sections of the report, but are then counted multiple times. Finally, many of the authors are not scientists and many are not climate scientists either. If the AGWs want to impose rules, they should be uniform for all.
The CFI is described by Wikipedia as:
"The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a non-profit educational organization with headquarters in the United States whose primary mission is to encourage evidence-based inquiry into paranormal and fringe science claims, alternative medicine and mental health practices, religion, secular ethics, and society. CFI is dedicated to promoting and defending science, reason, and free inquiry in all aspects of human interest."
Now this is fine, but they are not perhaps especially qualified either to decide the catastrophic AGW debate. Most CFI people are associated with the liberal political end of the spectrum, with their known biases on AGW.
Nice cherry pick ... I reference all of the material, not just the one.
ReplyDeleteAnd btw, 52 scientists for the IPCC? Here's a list of all 619 IPCC AR4 wg 1 contributing authors with links to their work
http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~prall/climate/AR4wg1_authors_table_by_clim.html
and here is a table of 2700+ climate scientists with links to their work ... enjoy
greenfyre,
ReplyDeleteI followed your link and passed the links you gave on that page to earlier versions of the Senate Minority Report to those listed under the most recent version of the report. I clicked on the first listed link and examined it and responded to it. The second and third links have different descriptors, but they go to the same page at the CFI website and the arguments offered are the same as those I addressed with some speaker presentations added. I did no cherry picking. I simply went as far with looking at your material as its quality justified.
I looked at the list of most cited climate scientists. We are all aware that many billions of dollars are being shoveled by governments to scientists who are making climate models which cannot produce the climate of the Earth's past beyond about 1975 or 1950 and cannot predict its present climate. We are aware that those who believe in catastrophic AGW get many citations. The question is: Is the science they purport to be doing of good quality?
Matthew Collins is the most cited scientist according to your list. He is a climate modeler. Phillip D. Jones is the second on the list. He is the guy who will not make the raw data and the details of the data manipulations he and his group have performed on the surface temperature data available to other researchers and now says that data is lost. See my entry of 19 August 2009, Global Surface Temperature Data Lost. The third guy on your list of most cited is another climate modeler. Because of the catastrophic AGW craze, these types of guys get huge numbers of citations, but it does not make them good scientists.
Once again, many scientists who have contributed to the science sections of the UN IPCC reports are not convinced catastrophic AGW believers. Listing all of them as such is hugely dishonest.
greenfyre, I use my real name and I stand up for my principles firmly under that name. Why do you not use your name?