INCONVIENENT TRUTH - GORE'S EXAGERATION

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

Expertise and Research Interests
Bob Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia). He is a palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine geologist of more than thirty years professional experience, and holds degrees from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Cambridge (England). He has held tenured academic staff positions at the University of Otago and James Cook University (Townsville), where he was Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. Bob has wide experience in management and research administration, including service as Chair of the Earth Sciences Discipline Panel of the Australian Research Council, Chair of the national Marine Science and Technologies Committee, Director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program, and Co-Chief Scientist on ODP Leg 181 (Southwest Pacific Gateways).


Other Expertise
Bob Carter contributes regularly to public education and debate on scientific issues, which are related to his areas of knowledge. He also offers lecture or workshop presentations by arrangement. His public commentaries draw on his knowledge of the scientific literature and a personal publication record of more than 100 papers in international science journals on topics which include taxonomic palaeontology, palaeoecology, the growth and form of the molluscan shell, New Zealand and Pacific geology, stratigraphic classification, sequence stratigraphy, sedimentology, the Great Barrier Reef, Quaternary geology, and sea-level and climate change.

So wioyo, did you enjoy the film?

dyslexia wrote:

So wioyo, did you enjoy the film?

Yes, saw it last week. Good Sci-Fi IMO.

How about you? Did you see it?

woiyo wrote:

But surely Carter is merely part of what most people regard as a tiny cadre of "climate change skeptics" who disagree with the "vast majority of scientists" Gore cites?

No; Carter is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change. "Climate experts" is the operative term here. Why? Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

From Professor Robert B. Carter's official profile:

Quote:

Expertise and Research Interests
Bob Carter is a Research Professor at James Cook University (Queensland) and the University of Adelaide (South Australia). He is a palaeontologist, stratigrapher and marine geologist of more than thirty years professional experience, and holds degrees from the University of Otago (New Zealand) and the University of Cambridge (England). He has held tenured academic staff positions at the University of Otago and James Cook University (Townsville), where he was Professor and Head of School of Earth Sciences between 1981 and 1999. Bob has wide experience in management and research administration, including service as Chair of the Earth Sciences Discipline Panel of the Australian Research Council, Chair of the national Marine Science and Technologies Committee, Director of the Australian Office of the Ocean Drilling Program, and Co-Chief Scientist on ODP Leg 181 (Southwest Pacific Gateways).


Other Expertise
Bob Carter contributes regularly to public education and debate on scientific issues, which are related to his areas of knowledge. He also offers lecture or workshop presentations by arrangement. His public commentaries draw on his knowledge of the scientific literature and a personal publication record of more than 100 papers in international science journals on topics which include taxonomic palaeontology, palaeoecology, the growth and form of the molluscan shell, New Zealand and Pacific geology, stratigraphic classification, sequence stratigraphy, sedimentology, the Great Barrier Reef, Quaternary geology, and sea-level and climate change.

Science 16 January 2004:
Vol. 303. no. 5656, p. 307
DOI: 10.1126/science.303.5656.307
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News Focus
AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION MEETING:
Vicissitudes of Ancient Climate
Richard A. Kerr
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA--A record 10,000 earth, ocean, atmospheric, and planetary scientists gathered here last month for the union's fall meeting. Researchers reported that contrary to an analysis published last year, past CO2 levels are indeed closely correlated with long-term climate variations.

Earth has often swung between chills and fever. Paleoclimatologists generally seek an explanation in swings in the abundance of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (see p. 306), because C[O.sub.2] levels have seemed to rise as the world warmed and to fall as it cooled into the great ice ages. But conventional thinking invites challenges, and last year it took a hit when a pair of researchers published an analysis indicating that past C[O.sub.2] levels are not closely correlated with long-term climate variations. Now comes the response. At the meeting, paleoclimatologist Dana Royer of Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and geochemical modeler Robert Berner of Yale University reported that an updated record of C[O.sub.2] variations during the past 500 million years does indeed produce a good fit between C[O.sub.2] levels and both model predictions and one record of major climate swings. "It's a restatement of the importance of C[O.sub.2]," says Royer. Many, but not all, researchers find it persuasive.

Carbon dioxide was in need of a boost after geochemists Nir Shaviv of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Jan Veizer of the University of Ottawa, Canada, published a paper in last July's GSA Today in which they found a poor correlation between C[O.sub.2] and Veizer's temperature record derived from the oxygen isotope composition of carbonates deposited on the ocean floor. But his isotopic climate record did fit well with the expected variations in the flux of cosmic rays during the past 500 million years. Cosmic rays, they suggested, might have modulated climate by affecting cloud brightness.

Royer and Berner weren't convinced. First they updated the record of atmospheric C[O.sub.2] levels. This 450-million-year record is based on measurements of atmospheric C[O.sub.2] preserved in the geologic record, including the carbon isotopic composition of fossil soil carbonates and the abundance of gas-exchange pores on fossil leaves. The merged record of four such measures shows a double-hump curve of C[O.sub.2] concentrations. High values more than 400 million years ago fall through 2000 parts per million to a few hundred ppm by about 300 million years ago, peak again about 200 million years ago, and fall once more toward the present's several hundred ppm. "I was surprised with how a consistent pattern has emerged," says Royer.

Not only are different C[O.sub.2] measurements consistent with each other, says Royer, but the composite curve bears a strong resemblance to what many researchers expected. Computer models that simulate the processes controlling the abundance of C[O.sub.2], such as rock weathering and the burial of organic matter on the sea floor, produce much the same double-hump pattern as the proxies do. And the great ages of glacial ice--the past 30 million years or so and the 60 million years around 300 million years ago--fell in the deep dips in C[O.sub.2], whereas only a few, brief glacial intervals came during periods of higher C[O.sub.2] levels, Royer and Berner noted.

Royer and Berner also adjusted Veizer's isotopic curve for the effects of changing sea-water pH, a factor only recently recognized as important. That brought some periods more in line with other temperature indicators, says Royer, and much reduced the prominence of coolings that Shaviv and Veizer attribute to the cosmic ray effect.

Veizer and Shaviv, in turn, are not convinced that the two-hump pattern of C[O.sub.2] and climate is better than their plot of cosmic rays and climate, which has four peaks rather than two. They find the pH correction "an interesting modification," but they believe Royer overdoes it, making the oceans at times unrealistically acidic.

A more reasonable correction, they say, leaves the four-peak climate pattern intact. And that pattern of isotopic temperature is reasonably consistent with other climate indicators and the inferred flux of cosmic rays, they say.

Many researchers are sticking with conventional thinking. "You can't say C[O.sub.2] explains everything," says paleoclimatologist Thomas Crowley of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, but "it does explain a heck of a lot," at least in the broadbrush picture of climate. No doubt, more details need to be painted in before everyone sees the same picture.