Regarding global warming, who's right? My scientists or your scientists?

Answer 1

My scientists are correct because I fund them. If I do not see the results I want, I fire them and hire scientists who will give me the results I want to see, accurate or not.

Answer 2

Specifically, the "consensus" about anthropogenic climate change entails the following:

the climate is undergoing a pronounced warming trend beyond the range of natural variability;
the major cause of most of the observed warming is rising levels of the greenhouse gas CO2;
the rise in CO2 is the result of burning fossil fuels;
if CO2 continues to rise over the next century, the warming will continue; and
a climate change of the projected magnitude over this time frame represents potential danger to human welfare and the environment.
While theories and viewpoints in conflict with the above do exist, their proponents constitute a very small minority. If we require unanimity before being confident, well, we can't be sure the earth isn't hollow either.

This consensus is represented in the IPCC Third Assessment Report, Working Group 1 (TAR WG1), the most comprehensive compilation and summary of current climate research ever attempted, and arguably the most thoroughly peer reviewed scientific document in history. While this review was sponsored by the UN, the research it compiled and reviewed was not, and the scientists involved were independent and came from all over the world.

Answer 3

Scientists have not had such a lofty perch since Gilligan's Island was showing in prime time.

You would think that by listening to some folk that scientists are infallible, altruistic absolutists.

When did we get to the point that scientist are either right or wrong? Scientific problems can be seen in black and white? Solutions, too?

On the negative side, since when did scientists believe that debate should be closed on scientific questions, that the urgency of a solution should preclude deeper investigation? When did they shift from empirical evidence to statistical computer models as definitive methodology? Correlation=causation? Consensus creates factuality? When did climatologists become economists, policy experts, engineers, sociologists, not to mention biologists, geologists, or even meteorologists?

Answer 4

I don't know. Who are your scientists? are you funding them? I don't have any scientist. I do have colleagues. And I am a scientist.

Hard to say who is right. What is the question? If you think global warming is related to one question, you obviously have no understanding about climate change science or the issues.

So, site some scientific journal articles that you wish to discuss and then we can have an intelligent debate.

Otherwise....my dad can beat up your dad....

Answer 5

Much to soon to tell. It is all theories at this point. There are many good scientists working on it and I am sure more knowledge will be gained in time.

For now, lets just reduce pollution and get off foreign oil as fast as we can without bankrupting ourselves for our countries security and we all know less pollution is best. We have little to lose, and if the CO2 theory turns out to be good, then we are ahead of the curve. Lets reduce population, get little cars and trucks, build small homes, etc., etc.

Answer 6

We will see in what 100 to 200 years. Maybe?

Look what has happen in the last 100 years. In 1907 the wright brothers have been flying for 4 years. Less than 10% of the people in the USA has a car and a good number will not even see a car for 10 years. Most of the wood in the USA has been cut why, to keep warm , make land for crops, and to make homes. Just as it is in england.

Answer 7

I'm going to side with the ones who have nothing to lose by saying that global warming is a bunch of rubbish.
To Wit:
Atmospheric scientist Reid Bryson said in a June, 2007 interview that "There is a lot of money to be made in this... If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can't get grants unless you say, 'Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.'"[13]

Accuracy in Media published a report in 2002 entitled "Science for Sale: the Global Warming Scam," in which they allege that "global warming is driven more by the search for funding than the search for scientific truth."[94] A similar claim is made by various scientists [95] : NASA's Roy Spencer says that climate scientists need for there to be problems to get more funding. Climatologist and IPCC contributor John Christy says of climate scientists, “We have a vested interest in creating panic because money will then flow to climate scientists.” University of London biogeographer Philip Stott says that “If the global warming virago collapses, there will be an awful lot of people out of jobs.”

Richard S. Lindzen, who is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, makes the specific claim that "[i]n the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost National Science Foundation funding for data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century." Lindzen also suggests four other scientists "apparently" lost their funding or positions after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming.[96] Lindzen himself has been the recipient of money from energy interests such as OPEC and the Western Fuels Association, including "$2,500 a day for his consulting services."[14]

French climatologist and author Marcel Leroux makes a claim similar to that of Lindzen's: "In the end, global warming is more and more taking on an aspect of manipulation, which really looks like a "scientific" deception, and of which the first victims are the climatologists who receive funding only when their work goes along with the IPCC." (translated from French) [97]

Answer 8

Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930's the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920's until the 1960's they warned of global warming. From the 1950's until the 1970's they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years.

The National Academy of Sciences report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warm Period from about 900 AD to 1300 AD and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity could have possibly impacted the Earth's climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland.

What the climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have continued to ignore is the fact that the Little Ice Age, which resulted in harsh winters which froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths, ended about 1850. So trying to prove man-made global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are warmer than during the Little Ice Age is akin to comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend.

Something that the media almost never addresses are the holes in the theory that C02 has been the driving force in global warming. Alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began warming at the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, long before man-made CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then about 1940, just as man-made CO2 emissions rose sharply, the temperatures began a decline that lasted until the 1970's, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age.

A letter sent to the Canadian Prime Minister on April 6, 2006 by 60 prominent scientists who question the basis for climate alarmism, clearly explains the current state of scientific knowledge on global warming. The 60 scientists wrote: "If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary." The letter also noted: "‘Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural ‘noise."

In 2006, the director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks Alaska, testified to Congress that highly publicized climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than "science fiction."

"Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again." That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895 edition of the New York Times.

A front page article in the October 7, 1912 New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor "Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age." The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the "Human race will have to fight for its existence against cold." An August 10, 1923 Washington Post article declared: "Ice Age Coming Here."

By the 1930's, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming: "America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-year Rise" stated an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933.

The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles. An August 9, 1923 front page article in the Chicago Tribune declared: "Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada." The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be "wiped out" and Switzerland would be "entirely obliterated."

A December 29, 1974 New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed "the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade." The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, "mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence" would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that "A major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable."

On February 19, 2006, CBS News's "60 Minutes" produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report, alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast, that he barely got off an ice-berg before it collapsed into the water. "60 Minutes" failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showing that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice and mass and that according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930's than today.

According to data released on July 14, 2006 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the January through June Alaska statewide average temperature was "0.55F (0.30C) cooler than the 1971-2000 average."

In August 2006, Khabibullo Abdusamatov, a scientist who heads the space research sector for the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the sun's output.

Answer 9

The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming exists - the question is the extent of the damage.

Answer 10

And how many times in history has "Science" changed it's stance? How many of you remember when eggs were the "worst food" you could eat. How many people remember the Ice Age predictions of the 70's?

Pluto is now no longer a planet, etc, etc, etc........

Scientists are playing with the convenience of the current warming trend......