Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

It's 'stumped' when I haven't had time to get around to answering you yet, in less then a day? I shall remember this.

It's obvious that there are factors which will be beyond our control, Okie. We can't stop earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes, let alone volcanoes. It has nothing to do with controlling those things that we can. You are creating a false equivalence.

Cycloptichorn

"Professor" Monckton, Fox? He's a politician, his degrees are in Classics and Journalism, clearly the perfect foundation for talking about global warming, Sophocles has just an incredibly large amount of relevant information to teach us on the subject, not to mention Euripides and Aeschylus. He's a hack journalist, and a past hard-right advisor to Maggie Thatcher. He comes from the extreme right, who seem to take it as a matter of faith that there's no such thing as global warming. He seems to fit your invented category of religionist perfectly, like all those rightists who immediately pontificate with little knowledge of ALL the science, which overwhelmingly supports anthropogenic global warming. (It really does, you know; have you ever read any of the IPCC reports? Or the NAS reports? Or NASA or NOAA material?)

I've read them all Username, and probably more carefully than most who post on this thread. I have tried to inform myself of ALL the informed opinion out there including the arguments for AGW and the rebuttals challenging the science that is being used for national and international policy. I have never taken a side on this issue, if you cared to look back at my posts over all these many months. I have advocated an open mind and agreed that research and study should continue on all fronts and should the preponderance of the evidence show that AGW is a reality and/or is causing a serious problem to humankind, then I will quite willingly get onto that bandwagon.

Right now, in my opinion, the preponderance of credible information out there favors the position of the skeptics or the very few like Monckton who are unashamed deniers. Is he a religionist? I don't know since I don't know how much he examines the work of those who disagree with him.

Some or many of the AGW religionists on this thread refuse to even consider the work of the skeptics or deniers but rather attack them or try to use any means possible to discredit them personally. Or they focus on insulting those members who post such information. I don't find that useful to arrive at truth or to increase accuracy. That sort of thing is probably entertaining for folks who enjoy being schoolyard bullies and brats.

My personal interest in this subject is that I am an admitted and committed advocate for clean water, soil, air and preservation of a beautiful Earth and the wonderful living things on it. I am not, however, willing to agree to loss of freedoms and a reduced quality of life to accommodate flawed science that will not produce many if any positive benefits and/or could be detrimental to the welfare of humankind in many respects.

I want us to get it right. Kneejerk emotionalism won't get us there.

Considering that there is a huge amount of research, literally thousands of papers, that confirm what the IPCC says,that in fact are what the IPCC bases its conclusions on (since the IPCC doesn't do the research itself, but draws conclusions from them) and thousands of papers that rebut the deniers' points., point-by-point, I find it hard to believe that you have in fact read them with any sort of an open or informed mind, Fox.

For example, when the CEO of BP, who has a vested interest in fossil fuels, gives a speech at my alma mater in which he says that isotopic analysis confirms that the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is anthropogenic, a point which I had made here before his speech, it tends to confirm in my mind that, yes, the consensus view is right.

And unfortunately if you reject any science that doesn't give you positive benefits, your mind is closed. Science tells you what IS, and sometimes that's going to not be positive. Sometimes it's going to be expensive to rectify. Sometimes it show us where we've been screwing up for generations. Sometimes it shows us that the positive benefits we've been experiencing have negative side effects that are just now catching up to us, and which we ignore at our peril. That's the reality of life. But it's usually cheaper and simpler when you know a problem is coming to deal with it now rather than wait a couple decades, when it gets worse, and much MUCH harder and more expensive to deal with.

There are many advocates for AGW yes. But there are many skeptics too. Ican has been systematically posting verifiable statements from what I presume will be at least 400 of those. All are people with at least as impressive credentials as those supporting the IPCC positions. At least several were once signatories to the IPCC position and have since recanted that advocacy and are now skeptics and they give very specific reasons for why they think much of the science and data used by the IPCC is flawed.

Among those bonafide climate scientists and opinions of meteorologists I have read, the majority of these are skeptics with very specific reasons for why they have problems with the science being touted as authentic by AGW proponents. A couple of those live locally here in Albuquerque and they strongly disagree with your BP speaker.

There is a valid debate here and it is an important debate to have. I have advocated that EVERYBODY maintain an open mind.

I am not willing to agree to drastically alter my lifestyle, which is pretty darn eco friendly, or give up personal choices, personal freedoms, opportunities, and/or quality of life, and/or possibly adopt policies that will be even more detrimental to the environment, and/or assign more generations of crushing poverty to poor people around the world based on what very well may be junk science. I have lived for far too long and seen scientific opinion reversed too many times to believe that a bunch of scientists and/or politicians, many with personal interests at stake, have this all figured out when there are so many honorable and credible experts out there assuring us that it is NOT all figured out.

An open mind is the only way to go with this.

And, I might add, looking at the ocean life you see around an oil platform is a little bit like looking at all the raccoons and pigeons in the city and saying, see, cities are great places for all wildlife. They're not, only a few species can use them, usually not the ones we use. Some species, which can draw nutrients from the oil waste and the human waste dumped overboard may prosper. Others, including many in the food chains we eat, won't. There are toxic and suffocatory effects on many species from the waste the oil platforms produce (including chemicals and chemicals in the water involved in the drilling process, which usually just go over the side). The sea bottom sediments up to 10km from platforms contain increasing quantities of residue, which can become toxic to bottom feeders as they accumulate, and probably have effects before the acute toxicity level. Since most of the fish we consume are pretty high up the food chain--they tend to be predators, who feed on fish who feed on fish..who feed on bottom feeders, they concentrate harmful effects. Which is why pregnant women are advised not to eat many species of fish very often, or at all--because they do concentrate things like mercury (no, I'm not saying mercury comes from oil wells, but the principle is the same).

The effects of oil spills can linger for decades, even when you don't see them immediately. Prince William Sound still shows profound effects twenty years later. The spill record may have improved overall, but there's still still significant quantities in the water. There're still accidents. There will always be human error. There's still people who lose a couple barrels full for one reason or another and just don't care. And there will always be storms that wreck a couple platforms, or more, or pipelines ruptured by anchors dragging, and whatever's in the line leaking.

To do all that in the middle of, I repeat, probably the largest, richest fishing ground in the world (though we've overfished the hell out of it, which is another problem you should be worried about if you are as you say, environmentally concerned) is madness.

The wildlife and plants congregating around those oil platforms have infinite ocean to set up shop in and did before the platforms existed. The fact that ocean life gravitated TO the platforms suggests that the platforms were an advantage for, not detriment to the wildlife.

Overfishing and other unsound management practices are an entirely different subject and should be discussed separately. A number of harmful practices have been mentioned here and elsewhere, but the realists do not attach those to unrelated AGW or energy use/production.

We have already demonstrated that the technology minimizes the chance and severity of oil spills and those platforms are surviving major hurricanes without ecological disasters happening.

Pigeons and raccoons could go to the country too. Why do you suppose they do not?

Reasonable risk exists in all things. It is not a reason to avoid or block necessary progress in anything.

THE DISSENTS OF THE SCIENTIFIC DISSENTERS

Calling them 400 "Scientists" is kind of resume inflation. Something like 48 of them are TV weathermen, to whom perfect hair and teeth are much greater career-enhancers than a deep understanding of climate. Around 20 are economists--not particularly noted for climate science expertise. Ernest-George Beck who the list calls something like a "noted research scientist" is a German high-school biology teacher whose "research" consists of a literature search of articles dating back to early in the 19th century of measurements at a single location, when their instrumentation was incapable of accurately measuring CO2, let alone getting a global measurement, and accepting their wild variance completely uncritically. One loon on the list maintains there is no green house effect at all (which puts him totally at odds with the entire scientific community) because greenhouses stop heat loss by stopping convective heat transfer, and CO2 doesn't. A position which, I might add, ican also espoused, until he was repeatedly shot down. They're right about that. HOWEVER NO ONE HAS EVER SAID THAT'S THE PRINCIPLE BY WHICH THE GREENHOUSE EFFECT WORKS. IT'S NOT. NO ONE HAS EVER SAID IT WAS. "Greenhouse effect" is a metaphor used because the end result is similar, but the operating principle is not. He never bothered to find out how CO2 actually does reflect infrared back to earth. And he's suposedly some sort of atmospheric expert. Yet he's on the list as if what he was saying actually made sense.

A lot of them have said something like , "I'm sure it will be shown that X will happen", or "I suspect that some process will occur..."--that offer in essence no evidence that something will happen but only hope that somehow it will.

I can't wait until ican gets to the guy who maintains global warming can't be happening because god wouldn't do that to us, it's against his plan for us.

The point is, that list was compiled by Marc Morano, Sen. James Inhofe's p.r. flack, who apparently did a literature search, and included anyone who'd disagreed in any respect with the IPCC report. So we've got the guy whose disagreement was that climate models hadn't predicted the recent methane slowdown (which seems to have started up again last year)--that's it. We've got the people who agree with the IPCC that global warming is real and anthropogenic and serious, but think that current environmental problems are where we should concentrate our efforts til we get farther into the future. We've got people who feel their position was twisted by the quote mining Morano did and have asked to be removed from the list.

The list is a grab bag, with no quality control, with people who, if they were put together in one room would likely try to kill each other, their positions so contradict each other, with people whose qualifications are tenuous at best and some so inflated if you could tether them to them they'd float away.

You might want to go to scepticalscience.com, which has a series of short articles, each of which cites a few of the research results, of the dozens or hundreds that show the same thing, which refute each of the anti-global-warming myths. Every time ican posts another of them, there's probably an already-existant rebuttal, because you can see by the dates of the source that Morano got them from that they're not new. The IPCC and real climate scientists have heard them for years. They were known before the IPCC's last report. They have been considered and rebutted or discounted. The evidence doesn't support most of them.

I do hope Username and others who put all their faith in the IPCC will at least read that last one, Ican.

He's still trying to discredit the skeptics and kill the messengers based on nothing more than he desperately wants the religionists to be right that we are in crisis and the skeptics to be wrong that there is no evidence that we are re global warming.

Dr. Khandekar is a bit behind on his reading. The people that found ocean temperatures declining withdrew their paper because there were instrumental errors in the data sets. The corrected data show no decline. Already covered here months ago.

Hmmm. Dr. Khandehar's credentials:
(and presumably drafted as an expert by the IPCC.)

Username's credentials to critique Dr. Khandehar's opinion at the time it was expressed to the U.S. Senate . . .?????

And if you actually look at NOAA surface temperature maps you find that most of the time temperatures are above the twentieth century mean (which actually now that we are out of the twentieth century has been adjusted to include the entire century, so that the last thirty years of the century, when temps rose more steeply are included in the mean, and temps this century are still above that mean), except in the transient la Nina periods like the one we're coming out of now, when temps were closer to the mean, but for the most part still above it.

When I suggest we kill the messenger, Fox, I indicate why the message is absurd and why therefore he deserves death. If the messenger brings a message that corresponds with the reality he lives, bad as the message may be.

It wasn't his research he based his conclusions on. It was other people's. They owned up to the fact that they were wrong. When he bases his conclusions on wrong data, his conclusions are invalid. That's not his "fault", to the extent there is fault, but it is invalidity.

I'm leaving now to listen to some music. Feel free to continue posting. Don't read anything into my non-answering, like any suggestion that I think your position is valid.

Username has not analyzed the scientific backgrounds of the members of the UN IPCC who are alleged to represent a scientific consensus. Is that because less than half of them are scientists or technically trained people of any kind?

And from everybody's favorite oilman, T Boone Pickens:

(He was sort of goaded into it, but I really REALLY didn't want him to say that he would approve Al Gore as Obama's energy czar.)

ON AIR
Q&A: T. Boone Pickens
Oil Tycoon Sounds Off On Energy IndependenceFri. Jul 18, 2008




Tammy Haddad spoke with Texas oil magnate T. Boone Pickens for the July 18 edition of "National Journal On Air." This is a transcript of their conversation.

Q: I'm Tammy Haddad. This is "National Journal On Air," and we have the man of the hour with us, T. Boone Pickens. Welcome. Mr. Pickens.

Pickens: Thank you, Tammy.
Q: You know, you have really changed the world with your conversation about wind energy. [PickensPlan.com] is really an incredible Web site -- these videos, the ads, what you're doing. For those who haven't seen it, which means they don't live here in the United States -- but why don't you just give us a quick one minute on how you think you have the answer to the energy issue?

Pickens: OK. The problem first: We are paying now $700 billion a year for foreign oil. We're going to break the country, is what's going to happen. If we go 10 years at this, and we've been doing it for 40 -- not at that level, but we have... our imports have gone up from 24 percent in 1970 to now -- we're almost 70 percent, and by 10 years from now, in 2018, we'll be up to 80 percent. It's crazy, we're insane to do what we're doing.
OK. That's where I'm approaching the problem. Now, when I look at the solutions -- we only have one natural resource in America that can replace foreign oil, and that is natural gas. Natural gas is a better transportation fuel than gasoline, so if that's the case, it's cheaper, it's cleaner and it's a domestic resource. So we have to go to natural gas; we don't have any choice if we're going to reduce the $700 billion. And I think within less than 10 years we could reduce that by 30 to 40 percent -- the import of foreign oil.
So you know, when I see it, I see only winners here. And then I fold in a wind project to help it all, but you'll get into that on some questions here.
Q: Absolutely. In fact, let me ask you about that. Let's start with wind, because your own state of Texas yesterday agreed to a $4.9 billion plan -- now it's new transmission lines. Can you explain the transmission lines and how it works with the wind power?

Pickens: Yes, they're going to build -- that's a [unintelligible] system, that's our transmission in Texas -- and they're going to build these lines and extend it into the wind area -- which is up in the panhandle of Texas -- which will be very helpful for us.
Q: But how? I mean, if it's such an effective way, why wasn't it done before?

Pickens: Listen, that is a question you can ask about the problems with energy in America. I mean, why wasn't it done before? For 40 years, Tammy, 40 years, we have had no leadership on energy in this country. Can you imagine that we drifted, drifted, drifted like we have, and we're so dependent on foreign oil? You know, it's the same thing; government moves very slow, as you know, and they are reactive instead of proactive. Government is not like business and industry is.
Q: So business right now has to push and prod governments to get into this?

Pickens: What we've got to do, is we've got to come up with some leadership in Washington that recognizes the problem and you know, then has a plan, and they tell us this is what we're going to do, because the American people are fed up with this.
From the polling we've done and the response we've had to our PickensPlan.com -- we've had over 2 million people come in on that. We didn't have any idea that there was that much unrest in the country. And we've had over 100,000 people come in on our PushPickensPlan.com. So you know, those are foot soldiers, I mean, they'll march with me, and so I'm going to get to know all those people before this is over with. But we've got to have leadership come in some place and say, this is what is going to happen, otherwise we're going to give the country away.
Q: So have you talked to Senator McCain -- or candidate McCain, I should ask?

Pickens: No, I haven't talked to the senator. I haven't talked to Senator [Barack] Obama, either. I said I'd be glad to sit down with both of them, because this is a total nonpartisan issue as far as I'm concerned.
Q: How about the president? I mean, are you trying to get these big people? I mean, the thing that you've done that's extraordinary is that you were able -- from the power and the work that you've done over the years and the money that you have -- to draw all this attention to it. But my question is -- I mean, it's not going to be the Energy Department that fixes it -- you've got to get the candidates or this president together with you to make these changes now.

Pickens: Well, the Energy Department, they did a great study that came out in April of '07 that the wind corridor -- they evaluated it very well -- they said that we could do 20 percent of our power generation off wind. That was a good plan, but they now say they don't think you could do it within 10 years. I'm telling you it's got to be done within 10 years, and so that's -- again, the Energy Department doesn't move very fast.
Q: Well, funny you should say 10 years, because another prominent citizen, former Vice President Al Gore, yesterday made a speech talking about climate change and energy -- some of these issues. And he said the same thing -- we've got to deal with this now -- although he has a different plan. Do you want to give us a critique of his plan? Do you think he's talking about the right direction?

Pickens: I know it. I know Al's plan. I talked to him last week, and we talked for over an hour about energy, and I think both of us have the same concerns about the country.
Q: What did he say about your plan, by the way?

Pickens: Al is not big on natural gas. He wants to go to the electric car, and I think you have to bridge to the electric car, and natural gas is ready to go now. We have an abundance of natural gas -- it's cheap, it's clean -- so you could put it into the transportation fuel very fast.
Q: Then why is he against it?

Pickens: Well he doesn't like hydrocarbons, and I know where he comes from; it's global warming that he's focused on, and I'm more focused on the $700 billion figure. So he thinks that, you know, our problem is that global warming is going to get us before anything else, and I think the $700 billion's going to -- you know what I mean. But we're in agreement on renewables and everything else; I just don't think he's quite there on the natural gas.
Q: So, how about, though, Mr. Pickens, if you and Vice President Gore go on the road, even though you have different paths. If you go on the road together -- by the way, the road could be ABC, NBC, CBS; I'm not saying, you know, to go through Oklahoma, California and all the cities -- but if you combined for this message, do you think that you could have an even greater impact? Why not go on the road together?

Pickens: I think it'd be confusing, because what will happen is Al and I would be on the first question and they would say, "What do you think the transportation fuel should be?" And Al would say, "I think it'd be electricity." And I would say, "I think we're ten years away from that," and I would say, "natural gas" and then we would talk. I think if we're separate and saying 90 percent the same thing, I think it's two campaigns instead of one combined.
Q: Well, do you think that there should be an energy czar? I mean a true energy czar; I don't mean something within the government, a commission.

Pickens: Well you know, I think I was the one that came up with that idea -- that you should have a czar -- and I told President Bush two months ago. I said there should be an energy czar, and I said the czar should report to the president one time a year. I said the rest of the time they give him the tools to get the job done and tell him to go do it.
Q: And what did he say?

Pickens: He listened, he asked some questions, and he said, who do you think would be a person for that? And I said that I think George Patton would be good. Of course George Patton's been dead years.
(laughter)

Q: I was going to say, General Patton?

Pickens: Yeah, but you need somebody like General Patton; you give him the tools and you say, there's the hill, General, take it -- take the hill.
Q: Well, if Senator Obama wins, should it be Al Gore?

Pickens: He should what?
Q: If Obama wins the election, should Al Gore go in and be the energy czar?

Pickens: Well, you know, you asked me a question, I don't know. I would certainly not... In that case, I think I would be for Al Gore for energy czar.
Q: Well, if Senator McCain wins, would you want to be energy czar?

Pickens: No, I've already said numerous times I'm too old for that job. I wouldn't want that at all. I'd be glad to help in any way. I don't always have to be the chairman of something. I'm a good foot soldier, you know; I'd be glad to work with somebody on it or for somebody.
But listen, this thing, I'm dead serious on what I'm talking about. This country is -- we are in pitiful shape as far as energy is concerned. And the thing about it, where we're getting our energy, we're in bad shape. We have plenty of energy right here. What we need is to get organized and to get a leader that will take us into the fight and win the war.
Q: Do you have an opinion on the offshore drilling that's being talked about in Congress?

Pickens: I've got an opinion on everything. Sure, you ought to do OCS [Outer Continental Shelf], you ought to do renewables, you ought to do biofuels, you ought to do ethanol -- all of them. Those are ours, and we've got to get off the dependency on the foreign oil.
Q: Well, but wait a minute, though, because part of the food crisis is being blamed on the fact that so much of corn is going towards ethanol.

Pickens: OK, don't do it then. I'd rather eat than drive my car.
(laughter)

Q: That's a good line. What about the war in Iraq? I mean, do you think that this country has been distracted by the war and foreign policy and other issues? Is that how we got so far out of line?

Pickens: No, that doesn't have anything to do with energy. I mean the energy started back in -- the problem is when we first started importing, and the reason we've got into the problem on energy, very simply on the oil, was that it was cheap. It was the cheapest way.
I mean, look at this, Tammy -- on natural gas -- there are 8 million vehicles in the world on natural gas. I mean, this is a technology that is well-known. The biggest fleet of buses in the world is Beijing on natural gas -- over 4,000 buses. I visited Beijing Transit last year; I was in China and spent several hours over at Beijing Transit. I mean, the technology -- everybody knows the technology. And out of the 8 million vehicles in the United States, we only have 142,000. Why? Why? I can tell you why, because oil was so cheap. And we sat here and said send us the oil, never mind the price. And then one day it went vertical, and when it did everybody said, whoa, that isn't what I signed up for. And so then everybody started looking.
Now, from our polling and everything else, the American people know something is wrong. They are now saying drill in the OCS -- I saw over 70 percent said you should drill in the OCS; we've got to do something about this foreign oil. That is true, you've got to do something about it, and it's a crash program that has to take place like today, not tomorrow.
Q: So Mr. Pickens, you've now got these foot soldiers -- which by the way is feeling like another Texan I used to know, Ross Perot -- what are you going to do with all these foot soldiers?

Pickens: Oh, we're in communication and we're going to work together; we're in lockstep. You watch what happens, because you know, we approved a $58 million budget for this project, and that is going to take us till the first of the year. And then we'll look and see if we want to budget for next year. But you're going to get one wave of this and then another wave; we've got another wave coming up next week.
Q: Well, we'll be looking forward to it. T. Boone Pickens, always a pleasure to talk to you.

Pickens: Thank you, Tammy
NATIONAL JOURNAL LINK

I've said all along: there's plenty of money to be made in renewable energy, it can't be outsourced to another country, and investors like Pickens know it.

Cycloptichorn

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/ipcc-faq/ipcc-who-is-who-en.pdf

WHO IS WHO IN HE IPCC?

One of many sources on IPCC membership.

I wonder if the lists still include those scientists who finally had to sue to get their names removed from the lists because they could no longer support the IPCC's conclusions?