32,000 scientists agree...

[BVS]

Originally Posted by A_Wanderer

How is a geophysicist and astronaut being published in a major Australian paper not legitimate? I would give more credit than Al Gore, and a lost less than a peer reviewed article, or a series of rebuttal's to an article.

Your stock standard assumption is presumably that he is some liberty university hack, that really doesn't seem to be the case.

Philip K. Chapman

An observance of one year doesn't dismiss something that a whole community of scientist have been talking about for decades. I love how so many believe Al Gore somehow invented it. The article was pretty weak, and to use it as a "source" to deny global warming; even weaker.

[melon]

Originally Posted by tim722

I'm not one of the 32,000 scientists but al gore should give back his nobel peace prize. Thanks al for alarming all the liberals into believing that global warming is real. Actually...
Sorry to ruin the fun, but an ice age cometh | The Australian the planet is cooling. check it out

I think what bothers me here about your train of thought is that you--and many others--are quick to exchange one set of "dogma," so to say, for another, with absolutely no forethought. Talk about the epitome of intellectual laziness!

I've heard of the sunspot cycles that Philip Chapman mentioned, and, frankly, it has crossed my mind a few times over the last decade or so on questions of global warming. What sets off my alarm(ist) siren right away, though, is his blanket assumption that we're heading into an ice age, based on a single sunspot reading. How does he know which sunspot cycle we're even in? Are we in the standard 11 year cycle (meaning we're due for a standard sunspot minimum right about now)? Are we heading for a minimum in a larger 360 year cycle? Or an even larger 8000-10000 year cycle?

The current evidence doesn't indicate that we're in anything, but a typical 11 year cycle currently, even by NASA's research:



In other words, we're approaching a standard 11 year minimum, and, by 2012, it's predicted that we'll be heading for a potentially even busier maximum than even in the previous 11 year maximum. The low sunspot count that Chapman is fearful of was also noted, according to the graph, in the last cycle minimum in 1996-1997. In fact, it appears that, in late 1996, it was recorded that there was a brief period with no sunspots at all. Our ice age certainly didn't arrive after that, so, while Chapman mentions an interesting, scientifically notable theory regarding global climate and sunspots, it is still not scientifically responsible to start abandoning global warming solutions. The evidence, frankly, is just not there.

[big-mad-drongo]

Phil Chapman isn't a climate scientist. This guy, however, is, and he wrote an article debunking Chapman.

Warming trend has not been reversed | The Australian

I'm not seeing anything on the SoHO website trumpeting a connection between the Sun and the climate, Phil Chapman's claims notwithstanding:

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Homepage

[big-mad-drongo]

I asked a member of the SoHO science team to respond to the Chapman article. Response as follows:

The Chapman article is full of misstatements, omissions, and errors. He says that SoHO not seeing sunspots is the harbinger of an ice age. This is nonsense.

SoHO is not used to determine the sunspot number because it doesn't have sufficient resolution; ground-based observatories do that.

The sunspot cycle has been shorter than normal for the last three cycles (10.4 years for each cycle) so it seems to be returning to a normal pattern of just over 11 years. The Dalton Minimum was several years longer, not several months.

He claims that the "Earth has cooled by 0.7C in 2007" - odd then, isn't it, that 2007 was reported to be the 5th warmest year on record. In fact we have had 9 of the 10 warmest years in the last decade. It only dropped that amount in January; it recovered for the rest of the year.

What he is actually referring to is that January was an AVERAGELY warm month, being ranked 64th of the last 128 Januaries; this has been way below the average for the last few years where most months have been in the top 20. What he fails to mention is that February, March, and April all were back up in the top 20.

You can find similar errors and misstatements in every single paragraph of the article. Sorry to ruin Chapman's fun. But it's interesting that contrarians have to use these tactics to make their points - probably their only alternative since the actual data don't support their case.

[A_Wanderer]

Easy now, people are trying to affirm biases and don't need pesky facts getting in the way.

[deep]

This article supports my earlier post that even the Bush Admin. is on board with man-made climate change.

White House report backs climate change warnings

After a court order and four years late, Bush administration scientists issue an assessment.

By Margot Roosevelt and Kenneth R. Weiss
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

May 30, 2008

President Bush's top science advisors issued a comprehensive report Thursday that for the first time endorses what most scientific experts have long asserted: that greenhouse gases from fossil fuel combustion "are very likely the single largest cause" of Earth's warming.

The 271-page report could undercut opposition to the more aggressive provisions of climate legislation, which is to be debated in the Senate next week.

The Bush administration had long resisted a congressional mandate, the 1990 Global Change Research Act, requiring the White House to report every four years on the science and impact of global warming and other environmental forces.

A U.S. District Court in August ordered Bush to comply with a 2004 deadline for an updated report, after the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity and other environmental groups filed suit. FOR THE RECORD:
In this article, Sharon Hays, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, is misquoted. Her statement that a series of reports showed "that climate change is primarily caused by human activity of the last 50 years" should have read: "that climate change of the past 50 years is primarily caused by human activity."
Sharon Hays, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the report did not represent a changed assessment but "a rolling up of a whole bunch of reports on the science, showing that climate change is primarily caused by human activity of the last 50 years."

The administration had earlier issued reports on the effect of climate change on transportation, agriculture and human health.

But environmentalists celebrated what they saw as a long-overdue admission from an administration that has been reluctant to join global efforts to curb greenhouse gases, such as the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

"This report represents a stark shift in what the administration has been saying since 2001," said Philip Clapp, deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group.

"For the first time, it has had to admit that global warming is already having clear impacts in the United States, and the impacts are going to get worse even with the most aggressive action to cut emissions," he said.

The report by the National Science and Technology Council and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program asserts that natural causes alone cannot explain recent extremes of heat and cold, warming seas and an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes.

It also shows that regions of North America could warm faster over the next few decades than the global average. In Los Angeles, heat-related deaths, which averaged 165 a year in the 1990s, could jump to between 319 and 1,182 by the 2080s, the report says.

The warming climate also will accelerate the spread of diseases carried by water, food and insects. Among the most vulnerable people are the young, elderly, frail and poor, the administration's scientists concluded.

The few positive effects of climate shifts are outweighed by negatives. For example, warming and higher levels of carbon dioxide are expected to speed up growth of forests and certain crops, but will also increase insect outbreaks and lead to more wildfires, which are likely to take a larger toll on crops, forests and property, the report predicts.

Warmer, less-snowy winters will decrease winter road maintenance costs, but increased coastal and river-related flooding and landslides will cause more serious problems. Heat spells, the report says, "could cause railroad tracks to buckle or kink and could affect roads through softening and traffic-related rutting."

The cost of heating is likely to fall, but the increased demand for air conditioning "would require the building of additional electricity production facilities (and probably transmission facilities) at an estimated cost of many billions of dollars."

Industry representatives greeted the report with a shrug.

"It's well known that autos represent about 20% of the total in the U.S. of man-made [greenhouse gas] emissions," said Charles Territo, spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers.

Jim Owen, spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, said the power industry "abandoned the science debate years ago. It's universally recognized in our industry that climate change is very real."

Nonetheless, said Kassie Siegel, climate program director for the Center for Biological Diversity, the report underscores "the reality and urgency of the climate crisis."

"Administration officials have spent nearly eight years trying to deny and downplay the science," she said. "They just cannot do it anymore. They are boxed in by court order."