I am just posting the few articles I had saved over the last year. Merely brain food. I am not going to argue the validity of "global warming", just wanted to post these up here for you to read and comment.
Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe
"The Inconvenient Truth" is indeed inconvenient to alarmists
By Tom Harris
Monday, June 12, 2006
"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie?
Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."
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.
Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. "While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball. "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."
This is highly valuable knowledge, but doesn't make them climate change cause experts, only climate impact experts.
So we have a smaller fraction.
But it becomes smaller still. Among experts who actually examine the causes of change on a global scale, many concentrate their research on designing and enhancing computer models of hypothetical futures. "These models have been consistently wrong in all their scenarios," asserts Ball. "Since modelers concede computer outputs are not "predictions" but are in fact merely scenarios, they are negligent in letting policy-makers and the public think they are actually making forecasts."
We should listen most to scientists who use real data to try to understand what nature is actually telling us about the causes and extent of global climate change. In this relatively small community, there is no consensus, despite what Gore and others would suggest.
Here is a small sample of the side of the debate we almost never hear:
Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"
Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.
Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."
Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."
But Karlén clarifies that the 'mass balance' of Antarctica is positive - more snow is accumulating than melting off. As a result, Ball explains, there is an increase in the 'calving' of icebergs as the ice dome of Antarctica is growing and flowing to the oceans. When Greenland and Antarctica are assessed together, "their mass balance is considered to possibly increase the sea level by 0.03 mm/year - not much of an effect," Karlén concludes.
The Antarctica has survived warm and cold events over millions of years. A meltdown is simply not a realistic scenario in the foreseeable future.
Gore tells us in the film, "Starting in 1970, there was a precipitous drop-off in the amount and extent and thickness of the Arctic ice cap." This is misleading, according to Ball: "The survey that Gore cites was a single transect across one part of the Arctic basin in the month of October during the 1960s when we were in the middle of the cooling period. The 1990 runs were done in the warmer month of September, using a wholly different technology."
Karlén explains that a paper published in 2003 by University of Alaska professor Igor Polyakov shows that, the region of the Arctic where rising temperature is supposedly endangering polar bears showed fluctuations since 1940 but no overall temperature rise. "For several published records it is a decrease for the last 50 years," says Karlén
Dr. Dick Morgan, former advisor to the World Meteorological Organization and climatology researcher at University of Exeter, U.K. gives the details, "There has been some decrease in ice thickness in the Canadian Arctic over the past 30 years but no melt down. The Canadian Ice Service records show that from 1971-1981 there was average, to above average, ice thickness. From 1981-1982 there was a sharp decrease of 15% but there was a quick recovery to average, to slightly above average, values from 1983-1995. A sharp drop of 30% occurred again 1996-1998 and since then there has been a steady increase to reach near normal conditions since 2001."
Concerning Gore's beliefs about worldwide warming, Morgan points out that, in addition to the cooling in the NW Atlantic, massive areas of cooling are found in the North and South Pacific Ocean; the whole of the Amazon Valley; the north coast of South America and the Caribbean; the eastern Mediterranean, Black Sea, Caucasus and Red Sea; New Zealand and even the Ganges Valley in India. Morgan explains, "Had the IPCC used the standard parameter for climate change (the 30 year average) and used an equal area projection, instead of the Mercator (which doubled the area of warming in Alaska, Siberia and the Antarctic Ocean) warming and cooling would have been almost in balance."
Gore's point that 200 cities and towns in the American West set all time high temperature records is also misleading according to Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. "It is not unusual for some locations, out of the thousands of cities and towns in the U.S., to set all-time records," he says. "The actual data shows that overall, recent temperatures in the U.S. were not unusual."
Carter does not pull his punches about Gore's activism, "The man is an embarrassment to US science and its many fine practitioners, a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science."
In April sixty of the world's leading experts in the field asked Prime Minister Harper to order a thorough public review of the science of climate change, something that has never happened in Canada. Considering what's at stake - either the end of civilization, if you believe Gore, or a waste of billions of dollars, if you believe his opponents - it seems like a reasonable request.
Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company. He can be reached at
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm
Mars Ski Report: Snow is Hard, Dense and Disappearing
By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
posted: 02:00 pm ET
06 December 2001
Mars would make a lousy host for the Winter Olympics. Yes, there's the lack of air to consider. But more important, Martian snow turns out to be rock hard. Worse, it is melting away at an alarming rate.
In fact, Mars may be in the midst of a period of profound climate change, according to a new study that shows dramatic year-to-year losses of snow at the south pole.
It is not yet clear, though, if the evidence of a single year's change represents a trend. But the study provides a surprising new view of the nature of the southern ice cap, said Michael Caplinger of Malin Space Science Systems.
"It's saying that the permanent cap isn't quite so permanent as we thought," Caplinger said in a telephone interview.
A second study of both poles finds that Red Planet snow is more dense and hard than the euphemistic "packed powder" advertised by Eastern ski resorts, and nothing like the soft flakes expected in Utah for the 2002 Olympics. Instead, it's hard as ice.
Though unrelated, the two studies were based on observations made by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and both will be published in the Dec. 7 issue of the journal Science.
The combined observations represent an exciting new way to look at Mars' atmosphere and how it interacts over time with the polar caps and even soil at mid-latitudes, said David A. Paige, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"The new data are showing what's going on on Mars seasonally as well as on interannual time scales in much more detail than we had with previous observations," Paige told SPACE.com.
Where the snow is
Both of Mars' polar regions are covered in permanent caps of ice. Scientists have known since the 1970s that some of the ice in the north is water ice. There may be water ice in the south, too, but there is no firm evidence. Both poles are covered in a veneer of carbon dioxide ice, popularly called "dry ice" here on Earth.
Each cap grows during its winter and recedes in summer.
The research into snow density, lead by David E. Smith of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, confirm that much of the Martian snow is in fact composed of carbon dioxide.
The study involved more than 400 million elevation measurements spanning more than one Martian year, from February 1999 through May of 2001.
The orbiting spacecraft bounced a beam of laser light to the surface and back, recording the round-trip time to determine elevations within 4 inches (10 centimeters). To determine snow density, this data was compared with measurements of tiny variations in the gravity field caused when there is more or less snow at given locations.
Smith and his colleagues also measured for the first time how the elevation of Mars' surface changes during the seasons, as ice builds up in winter and returns to the atmosphere in summer.
As expected, each polar ice cap is highest in the dead of its winter, when it is in total darkness. Also no surprise was the finding that the biggest changes in snow depth -- more than 6 feet (2 meters) occurred close to the poles.
But the overall bulk of snow accumulation seems to take place at in thinner but vast sheets at lower latitudes, the study found.
Strange snows
As with Earth, the weather on Mars can be strange.
Smith's study also found odd off-season snowfalls on Mars. Because carbon dioxide does not like to be a liquid, it freezes directly out of the atmosphere into surface dry ice. It's possible shadowed areas could accumulate this "snow" regardless of the season, said Maria T. Zuber, an MIT geophysicist who also worked on the study.
In one case, patches of snow disappeared during autumn in the northern hemisphere -- a time when cooler temperatures should have generated accumulations. A huge dust storm that raged in recent months and for a time covered the entire planet may have been responsible, temporarily raising global temperatures.
But Zuber said the deviations are not yet understood.
Global warming on Mars?
In the other study, led by Michael C. Malin, features at the south pole were observed to retreat by up to 10 feet (3 meters) from one Martian year to the next.
The odd shapes -- circular pits, ridges and mounds -- were first photographed in 1999. Since then, the features have eroded away by up to 50 percent.
The pits are growing, the ridges between them shrinking.
Caplinger and Malin caution that a year's worth of data does not reveal when this erosion began or how long it will continue. Yet they speculate that the features could have been created in a Mars' decade and may erode away completely within one to two decades.
"We know that the pits we see at the surface today are not very old, and that they will not last very long," Malin said.
Water or not?
The rate of erosion suggests the features are made of moderately dense but solid carbon dioxide, rather than water ice, the scientists conclude. But that does not preclude the possibility of water ice at the south pole.
"We don't know what's underneath," Caplinger said. "You could certainly have water ice under carbon dioxide."
He said the only way to find out is to go there and drill down.
The newly observed melting, if it is part of a trend, could pump enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mars to increase its mass by 1 percent per decade, the scientists said. Already, the atmosphere of Mars is roughly 95 percent carbon dioxide.
Caplinger said no one knows for sure what effect the extra carbon dioxide might have on the climate. "Not much," he figures.
But he said many scientists assume that Mars undergoes climate change. Photos of the surface suggest water may once have flowed on Mars, implying that it would have been warmer. And Earth's ice ages offer the lesson that change is inherent in a climate.
New era of study
Despite more than three decades of Red Planet exploration, scientists are still relatively clueless about the climate of Mars, said Paige, the UCLA researcher. Continuous or recurring observations have typically been confined to short time periods.
The two new studies herald a change, Paige said. And expect more.
Mars Global Surveyor is not done studying Mars, and the recently arrived Odyssey orbiter will begin science observations early next year. Other satellites and surface probes are planned every couple of years over the next decade.
"We're moving toward a situation where we'll have a permanent spacecraft presence on Mars," Paige said.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/mars_snow_011206-1.html
There is alot more out there for those who want to search for it.
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Tom Harris
Submitted by Neubauten on January 23, 2007 - 11:51am.
Tom Harris, the author of the first aforementioned article, is (or was until September 2006) employed by the High Park Group. This is a public-relations and lobby firm. Their clients hire them to find scientists who will support their business case against emissions standards. He is, in short, a spin doctor for heavy industry. Not a scientist, not a scholar. His background is in marketing.
But hey, if global warming were an actual trend, we'd have real concrete evidence, right? Like increased hurricane activity over the last decade or so? I guess we'll see how 2007 shapes up. 2004, 05, and 06 certainly were mild hurricane years, right? No cause for any concern there.
Or we'd have a measurable, verifyable increase in Co2 levels.
Or some kind of definitive temperature increase.
But if the marketers at high park group say that the data collected by NOAA is wrong, well, then we have to believe them. Right?
As to the results of data collected for climate change on the planet Mars...well...you've got me there. I presume you know, though, that it's a different planet, right? I mean, if you're suggesting that perhaps our planet would be better off with more Co2 in the atmosphere (Mars has an atmosphere comprised primarily of Co2, roughly 92%) I would have to disagree. Mars lacks the complex diversity of life we enjoy here.
In any of these discussions about "destroying the planet", BTW, it's important to remember that the planet will be fine. It's the people, plants, and animals that will die.
Look, nobody is arguing that there is no buildup of Greenhouse gasses in the upper atmosphere except a few uninformed GOP lobbyists. Even Exxon announced last month that it is going to meet Kyoto standards, which means that the money is running out for Mr. Harris & friends. Much like the tobbaco lobbyists in the 80's that sought to prove that cancer studies were inconclusive, this one's busted.
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