We also learned about the precession of the earth as it spins, top-like, on its axis, and how the angle of its tilt shifts slightly over the millennia--stimulating, it is argued, the changes in surface temperature on the planet. For more on that mouthful, click here.
The next installment in the series is:
Monday, October 25, 7pm
Hubbard Room, Russell Library
William Trousdale, Wesleyan Professor Emeritus of Physics, and Marvin Farbman, former Director of CT Legal Services, leads this seminar series. The first session on October 18th focused on global warming and a profile of energy use. The second meeting will be on Monday, October 25, and will consider the history and future use of nuclear energy. The last session on Monday, November 8 will examine the pros and cons of solar power along with other energy choices.
Come and learn about the Nuclear Option! And much else besides.
I have read that most Republicans do not believe that Climate Change is a fact. I hope that is not true!
ReplyDeleteFor every expert who can prove climate change is real there is an expert who can prove it is a hoax.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is the findings of the latter never see the light of day in the press or news services.
Much depends on who counts as an "expert". The majority of scientists agree that anthropogenic climate change is not only occurring but is a real danger to the planet. That doesn't mean the majority is correct, of course. See the thoughtful essay in the New York Review of Books, June 12, 2008, by the physicist Freeman Dyson, entitled "The Question of Global Warming".
ReplyDeleteBeing a skeptic does not necessarily mean that one doubts the reality of anthropogenic global warming, though such a position would appear to be one that Gordon adheres to. What many and perhaps most skeptics are skeptical of is the claim that anthropogenic climate change is a real and pressing danger to the planet.
Many and perhaps most skeptics feel that the obsession with global warming distracts from more pressing problems, like air pollution, environmental racism, wasteful consumerism, etc. As Dyson notes, that is a legitimate position.
Willful ignorance, however, is indefensible.
Correction: majority...agrees
ReplyDeletemajority does not make it fact though. Warmer climate may be more attributed to the Sun and not greenhouse gases. As stated in this article.
ReplyDelete"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11650-climate-myths-global-warming-is-down-to-the-sun-not-humans.html"
Curious about mars warming during the same time as the Earth was going though global warming.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
Thanks for the links, "Man of the Town". The last paragraphs of the first article you link to are particularly pertinent (from the section entitled "Recent Rises"):
ReplyDelete"...But even if solar forcing in the past was more important than this estimate suggests, as some scientists think, there is no correlation between solar activity and the strong warming during the past 40 years. Claims that this is the case have not stood up to scrutiny.
Direct measurements of solar output since 1978 show a steady rise and fall over the 11-year sunspot cycle, but no upwards or downward trend .
Similarly, there is no trend in direct measurements of the Sun's ultraviolet output and in cosmic rays. So for the period for which we have direct, reliable records, the Earth has warmed dramatically even though there has been no corresponding rise in any kind of solar activity."
Vijay-so what you are implying is that "experts" are those who agree with climate change, and "skeptics" are those who disagree? Those who agree with climate change determine who is considered an "expert?" Whose majority? Who polled the scientists? How many were polled? A petition was presented to the Obama administration with over 900 signatures of scientists who oppose the climate change myth. They don't count? Why wasn't it on the front page of ther New York Times?
ReplyDeleteThank you for proving my point.
Gordon, you need to re-read my comment. I implied no such thing.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I'm having a hard time finding a 900-signatory petition concerning climate change presented to the Obama administration online, anywhere. Presumably the vast left-wing conspiracy has been successful in blocking any news of it. There was something called the "Oregon Petition" that began circulating in the late 1990s which has been repeatedly and often hilariously debunked. By 2009 or so it purported to have over 30,000 co-signing "scientists", over 9,000 of whom had Ph.D.s (several of whom were fictional characters or risen from the dead). (Fewer documents are more pleasurably googled than the "Oregon Petition". I highly recommend for a rainy day. Especially enjoyable are the sourcewatch.org site, and the comments on scienceblog.com. The Huffington Post also published a thorough scuttling.)
Thanks to scienceblog, I came across this clever Scientific American sidebar on the "Oregon Petition" (note that the number of co-signers by 2006, when SA ran the story, was significantly lower, suggesting [to me anyway] that the election of Obama gave the petition new life online):
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SKEPTICISM ABOUT SKEPTICS
Many conservatives regard the "scientific consensus" about global warming as a media concoction. After all, didn't 17,100 skeptical scientists sign a petition circulated in 1998 by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine? (See www.oism.org/pproject and www.prwatch.org/improp/oism.html on the World Wide Web.)
Scientific American took a random sample of 30 of the 1,400 signatories claiming to hold a Ph.D. in a climate-related science. Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition—one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Crudely extrapolating, the petition supporters include a core of about 200 climate researchers--a respectable number, though rather a small fraction of the climatological community.
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As for who polled the scientists, well, I'm not sure how anyone could. But you might check out the position papers of the following organizations, which all support the consensus view (see Jeff Masters link below):
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Astronomical Society
American Chemical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Meteorological Society
American Physical Society
Australian Coral Reef Society
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
British Antarctic Survey
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
European Physical Society
Federation of American Scientists
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Geological Society of America
Geological Society of Australia
International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA)
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
National Center for Atmospheric Research
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Royal Meteorological Society
Royal Society of the UK
For a handy set of links to the position papers by these groups, go to the 29 March 2010 weather underground post by Jeff Masters, at http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1454