fayfreethinkers.com

The only one I've read is "The Politically Incorrect Guide to US History." That one is very good and quite accurate.

Here's another book debunking environmental wackos:

Eco-Freaks

Savonarola wrote: Here's a fun blog entry of fake PIG covers

DAR
Hiliarious!

I regret that my bringing up PIG credibility so completely derailed the thread.

Further discussion of the credibility of the PIG series books can be found in this thread. This thread is for discussion of climate change. Please continue all discussion in the appropriate thread.

--Sav, Science Moderator

Here's an excellent debunking of global warming alarmism, complete with graphs showing the experimental evidence:

Global Energy Rationing

DAR
Positively hilarious. And this, from the same asshole that gave the world the Oregon Petition. My favorite line:

"Global taxation, global energy rationing, global technology reduction, and human genocide are their goals and, given their record of success so far, these merchants of fear and death may be very close to succeeding.

Their weakness is in science. Their claims of warming due to human production of carbon dioxide are entirely without scientific merit. So, they refuse to debate the science, falsely claiming that a consensus of scientists – which does not exist – agrees with them."

Charts are very funny too! Enjoy the insanity!

I do believe that the level of gullibility necessary to read something on Lew Rockwell's site, and actually believe it is true, would be along the lines of watching an episode of Gilligan's Island and actually believing there are people stranded on an island.

D.

Ignoring the silly ad hom of "Guest," perhaps the main controversial part of the article is the following graph and commentary:

The article wrote:The average temperature of the Earth fluctuates within a relatively narrow range of about 4 degrees Centigrade as shown in Figure 2. This is a graph of the fossil surface temperature record of a large section of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Sargasso Sea. Other experimental records and also the historical record show essentially the same temperature fluctuations as seen in Figure 2, especially the periods known as the Medieval Climate Optimum and the Little Ice Age. Notice that the temperature is now a little below the 3,000-year average. The temperature reached a maximum during the Middle Ages 1,000 years ago and a minimum at about the time of the American Revolutionary War.

The main competing theory is Mann's "hockey stick," which is shown in the article with the following commentary:

The article wrote:Figure 3 is not, however, a graph of temperature. It is a graph of the rate of growth of long-lived pine trees as derived from tree-ring data in two regions – a and b – of the United States. Carbon dioxide fertilization of plants is causing a marked increase in the growth rate, amount, and diversity of virtually all plant species and of the animal species that depend upon plants for food. This increased richness of the biosphere is the primary environmental effect of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide. 
A few years ago, a paper was published in which the authors attempted to derive a temperature curve from tree-ring growth data. Failure to properly correct for carbon dioxide fertilization and some other very substantial errors caused their temperature curve to look like Figure 3. Regardless of these errors, the United Nations adopted the new graph, which conforms to its claims.

This, it seems to me, is an apt and concise summary of the alarmist's hockey-stick theory. IMO, by including amazingly dubious bristlecone pine data, they "fix" the result to something that they can alarm the gullible with, and satisfy certain political agendas. Crisis-mongering, historically done by rumors of war or financial panic, here is done by crying "the sky is falling" - environmental apocalypse. End-timers these days are not religious fanatics, but environmental wackos!

The graphs were taken from a 1998 paper called Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, And Zachary W. Robinson.

Some questions to discuss:

1) Which is more accurate, the Sargasso Sea graph or the Hockey Stick (Bristlecone pine) graph?

2) What would the Mann Hockey Stick graph look like if it threw out entirely the data based on vegetation?

Of course, primitive ad hominem, disparaging Mann, Robinson, Baliunas, Soon, or Robinson doesn't hack it in answering these questions. Only rational arguments, please.

DAR
Rather than some piece of junk put out by the George C. Marshall Institute the more pressing question is, when is someone go and help those poor people on Gilligan's Island?

D.

DAR
Oh oh, this is rich. Looking for a quote about peer review, I was skiming through some old debates I had with Hogeye on GW almost 2 years ago (sheesh, he's still peddling the same old crap), and I came across this bit about Arthur Robinson, the same fellow who wrote the article above on the insane Lew Rockwell site. Hey Doug, guess who he co-wrote a book with? (hint, Robinson is a survivalist)

Fighting Chance: Ten Feet to Survival

Gary North.

The nutbar does not fall far from the tree!

Oh, and he also helped found the quacky Linus Pauling vitamin C institute. Interesting. That ended badly and he ended up suing Pauling, who said Robinson did shoddy work. Robinson, besides being a nut, is actually a biochemist. So there is no reason to think he knows anything about climatology. But he does know about Jesus! His Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine:

"...offers educational links to a creationist website and an online discussion group called RobinsonUsers4Christ, "for Bible & Trinity-believing, God-fearing, 'Jesus-Plus-Nothing-Else' Christian families who use the Robinson [home schooling] Curriculum to share ideas and to get and give support."

Oh my, it gets better. The bizarre and out dated graphs above in Hogeyes post are, as he says:

"The graphs were taken from a 1998 paper called Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Willie Soon, And Zachary W. Robinson."

This is the crap they sent around with the Oregon Petition pretending it was peer reviewed and dishonestly implying it was connected with the National Academy of Sciences! Amazing!

Here's the scoop:

"...neither Robinson's paper nor OISM's petition drive had anything to do with the National Academy of Sciences, which first heard about the petition when its members began calling to ask if the NAS had taken a stand against the Kyoto treaty. Robinson was not even a climate scientist. He was a biochemist with no published research in the field of climatology, and his paper had never been subjected to peer review by anyone with training in the field. In fact, the paper had never been accepted for publication anywhere, let alone in the NAS Proceedings. It was self-published by Robinson, who did the typesetting himself on his own computer. (It was subsequently published as a "review" in Climate Research, which contributed to an editorial scandal at that publication.)

None of the coauthors of "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide" had any more standing than Robinson himself as a climate change researcher. They included Robinson's 22-year-old son, Zachary, along with astrophysicists Sallie L. Baliunas and Willie Soon. Both Baliunas and Soon worked with Frederick Seitz at the George C. Marshall Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank where Seitz served as executive director. Funded by a number of right-wing foundations, including Scaife and Bradley, the George C. Marshall Institute does not conduct any original research. It is a conservative think tank that was initially founded during the years of the Reagan administration to advocate funding for Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative--the "Star Wars" weapons program."

ibid

Darrel wrote:Hey Doug, guess who he co-wrote a book with? (hint, Robinson is a survivalist)

Fighting Chance: Ten Feet to Survival

Gary North.

The nutbar does not fall far from the tree!

DOUG
Oh my. North is the Christian fundamentalist who cashed in with the Y2K thing, stating that 6 months before Y2K the American banking system would collapse. And after Y2K there would be utter chaos, including a Mad Max kind of society. North had a bunker built on his property. He lives somewhere near Fayetteville, I heard.

I tried to arrange a debate with North. He at first agreed to it, but later backed out. He had to finish his bunker.

Hmmm. Instead of addressing climate change issues, Darrel tries to poison the well by noting the author once co-wrote an article with someone Darrel doesn't like. Just as I anticipated, Darrel ducked the issues and simply put down the authors of the study "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide." LOL!

Doug is giving a talk on critical thinking soon - no doubt he'll inform us about argumentum ad hominem, a common fallacy of relevance. Very common on this site.

Hogeye wrote:Hmmm. Instead of addressing climate change issues,...

DAR
No one needs to consider "climate change" issues put forward by the creator of the very dishonest, completely discredited and simply laughable Oregon Petition. As I demonstrated, he has no training or crediblity on the issue and the product you misleadingly call "a paper" is an unpublished piece of junk he hacked out on his typerwriter. It's terrible crap. Of course you duck dealing with this most important issue, that of credibility. I would like to be able to say that this material from you is "same shit, different pile" but I can't say that because it's actually "same shit, same pile." You don't even bother to make new piles. You don't learn.

...noting the author once co-wrote an article...

DAR
Actually a book. You have a big problem with details don't you? This is why almost everything you report needs to be checked (a service I provide, as time allows).
Gary North is a classic world class loon, as opposed to lower level run of the mill loons. I mentioned him because the Fayetteville Freethinkers have had first hand experience with him and I knew it would give Doug a chuckle. Now that you have learned about him, you may want to look up his books and read them. You may find them "quite good and very accurate."

Darrel... simply put down the authors of the study "Environmental Effects of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide."

DAR
Smacked down, bigtime, with the Truth Stick of No Mercy. Any good freethinker would want to check the crediblity of a source speaking on a complex issue like climatology. You don't ask a philosopher how to tune a piano, and you don't ask a piano tuner to explain Kant to you. Not if you want to get reliable answers. Some topics require some expertise and climatology is certainly one of them.

Try making a NEW pile next time.

D.

Antarctic Melting May Be Speeding Up - Scientists
By Michael Byrnes
Reuters

Friday 23 March 2007

Hobart - Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centres already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyse latest satellite data.

A United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February projected sea level gains of 18-59 centimetres (7-23 inches) this century from temperature rises of 1.8-4.0 Celsius (3.2-7.8 Farenheit).

"Observations are in the very upper edge of the projections," leading Australian marine scientist John Church told Reuters.

"I feel that we're getting uncomfortably close to threshhold," said Church, of Australia's CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research said.

Past this level, parts of the Antarctic and Greenland would approach a virtually irreversible melting that would produce sea level rises of metres, he said.

There has been no repeat in the Antarctic of the 2002 break-up of part of the Larsen ice shelf that created a 500 billion tonne iceberg as big as Luxembourg.

But the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and glaciers are in massive retreat.

the rest

Coastal Mega-Cities In for a Bumpy Ride
By Srabani Roy
Inter Press Service

Wednesday 28 March 2007

New York - About 643 million people, or one-tenth of the world's population, who live in low lying coastal areas are at great risk of oceans-related impacts of climate change, according to a global research study to be released next month.

The study, by researchers at Columbia University's Centre for International Earth Sciences Information Network and the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development, is the first of its kind. The researchers identified populations, particularly urban populations, at greatest risk from rising sea levels and more intense storms due to climate change.

"Of the more than 180 countries with populations in the low-elevation coastal zone, 130 of them - about 70 percent - have their largest urban area extending into that zone," said Bridget Andersen, a research associate at CIESIN, in a statement.

"Furthermore, the world's largest cities - those with more than five million residents - have on average one-fifth of their population and one-sixth of their land area within this coastal zone."

The study, which will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Environment and Urbanisation, assesses the risks to populations and urban settlements along coastal areas that are less than 10 metres above sea level, referred to as the low-elevation coastal zone, or LECZ. Although globally this zone accounts for only two percent of the world's land area, it contains 10 percent of the world's population and 13 percent of the world's urban population, the study found.

the rest...

I guess even freethinkers have their endtimers.

Geez, is anybody else bored with the never-ending debate on global warming between Darrel and Hogeye? Hello! Haven't you guys figured out that you're on complete opposite ends of this argument and will never agree. Give it a rest already...besides, I can find much better ways to help Darrel fill his time more productively than this ridiculous merry-go-round. Like, perhaps staring at a blank wall. That would be more useful.

Tamara wrote:you're on complete opposite ends of this argument and will never agree.

DAR
But you know posted horse-poo should be roasted. But since no new or original GW denier arguments have been posted in quite some time (just the same crap from amateurs and quacks) there is no reason to respond to much of anything except the most blatant howlers, as a public service.

I started this thread is for the purpose of posting the latest information regarding "What's Coming on Climate Change." Here's what is coming (and is already here). Excerpts:

***
Is Earth Near Its "Tipping Points" From Global Warming?
By Dan Vergano and Patrick O'Driscoll
USA Today

Wednesday 04 April 2007

Earth is spinning toward many points of no return from the damage of global warming, after which disease, desolation and famine are inevitable, say scientists involved in an international report due Friday on the effects of climate change.

SNIP

Concerning the USA, the report will reference numerous scientific studies on the effects of spring arriving weeks earlier, says University of Montana ecologist Steve Running, an author of the chapter on North America. The "big climate signal and impacts" will be in the West, he says. Earlier melting of mountain snow, on which much of the region depends for water, would mean more severe dry spells and droughts that would trigger worse wildfire seasons. Lower stream flows also would threaten fish and wildlife.

Research also has predicted more frequent heat waves, increased rainfall and flooding in northern states, and more severe tropical storms on the Gulf and East coasts.

In its first report in February, the panel, backed by the World Meteorological Organization and conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Environmental Programme, concluded that "unequivocal" evidence shows industrial releases of greenhouse gases have warmed the Earth an average of about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century. That makes it "very likely" that temperatures will rise 3 to 7 degrees this century, depending on future emissions.

SNIP

Irreversible effects on plants, animals, farming and weather already are apparent, says biologist Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas in Austin, one of the scientists assigned to review the report. Studies weighed in the report show that warming has eliminated about 70 animal species and affects 59% of wild species surveyed.

"We are seeing plenty of potentially dangerous outcomes where the hotter it gets, the worse it gets," Stanford's Schneider says.

Moss says the roughly 5-degree rise in global average temperatures envisioned in the February report will cause damage that cannot be recovered. He echoes a warning by NASA scientist James Hansen in 2004 that the window for action is only 10 years. The Stern Review, a high-profile report last year by the United Kingdom's chief economist, Nicholas Stern, warns of serious financial threats to agriculture and commerce.

SNIP

Rahmstorf has suggested sea levels could rise as much as 4.6 feet worldwide by 2100. Schneider says a simple cost-benefit analysis ignores the reality that poor people in Bangladesh and other low-lying lands would have to bear the brunt of climate change.

In Brussels this week, about 60 lead authors are working with representatives of more than 100 nations to distill, clarify and approve the panel's findings in a short summary for policymakers. The summary is out Friday; the scientific chapters arrive Tuesday.

Environmental and energy analyst Anthony Patt of Boston University, a report co-author, says the report will divide the possible effects of temperature increases this century into three grades: a 3.6-degree rise with warmer winters but few human catastrophes; an up to 7.2-degree rise that wealthy nations could handle but would prove calamitous to poor nations and many species; and an even higher rise, which "would prove difficult for any society to adapt to."

What Are the Yardsticks?

In grades of scientific certainty, physical effects such as temperature, sea level rise and concentrations of greenhouse gases are most certain, Schneider says. Next come biological ones, such as species extinctions. And the hardest to estimate are human effects, such as disease and hunger.

SNIP

Worldwide, thresholds were outlined last year in "Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change," a summary of tipping points for which British Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote the foreword. They include:

* At a 3.6-degree rise, all Indian Ocean coral reefs go extinct, and 97% of the rest around the globe are "bleached" or severely damaged. All Arctic ice disappears.

* At a 5.4-degree increase, half of all nature reserves become unable to conserve native species. The Amazon rainforest disappears.

* At 7.2 degrees or higher, coastal flooding is seven times worse than in 1990. Malaria threatens 330 million more people a year, and hunger jeopardizes 600 million. Australia no longer can grow food.

All of this leaves aside the most extreme risks that Schneider calls the "dark edge of the bell curve": melting of the vast Antarctic ice sheets; shutdown of Atlantic Ocean circulation, which brings warm weather to the United Kingdom; and the release of more greenhouse gases frozen in the Arctic tundra.

Some scientists, such as Penn State's Michael Mann, worry that the panel's reports lag behind the latest science because of a six-month research cutoff before their release, a lifetime in climate study.

Last month, for instance, a report in Geophysical Research Letters found that ocean acidification from increased carbon dioxide is likely to wreak "havoc" for shellfish and coral and disrupt food chains.

SNIP

A University of Minnesota team reported that Lake Superior has warmed an average of 4.5 degrees since 1979, about twice the local atmospheric warming.

Because the panel's reports trail such research, they are "always by design ... a little conservative," Mann says.

SNIP

The biggest tipping point already may have happened, says John Drexhage of Canada's International Institute for Sustainable Development: Talk of global warming has become routine and accepted for all politicians, not just Al Gore.

LINK

DAR
Well none of this sounds very catastrophic to me.

Well, Darrel, you've poisoned wells and warned us how the sky is falling. The questions remain:

1) Which is more accurate, the Sargasso Sea graph or the Hockey Stick (Bristlecone pine) graph?

2) What would the Mann Hockey Stick graph look like if it threw out entirely the data based on vegetation?

The First Refugees of Global Warming

Bangladesh, which has 140 million people packed into an area a little
smaller than Illinois, is one of the most vulnerable places as climate
changes. As the sea level slowly rises, this nation, which is little
more than a series of low-lying delta islands amid some of Asia's
mightiest rivers, is seeing saltwater creep into its coastal soils and drinking
water. Scientists say that in many ways it represents climate change's
"perfect storm" of challenges because the country is extremely poor,
extremely populated and extremely susceptible.

LINK

An island made by global warming
By Michael McCarthy, Environmental Editor
Published: 24 April 2007

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.

Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland's remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea.

Shaped like a three-fingered hand some 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it has been discovered by a veteran American explorer and Greenland expert, Dennis Schmitt, who has named it Warming Island (Or Uunartoq Qeqertoq in Inuit, the Eskimo language, that he speaks fluently).

The US Geological Survey has confirmed its existence with satellite photos, that show it as an integral part of the Greenland coast in 1985, but linked by only a small ice bridge in 2002, and completely separate by the summer of 2005. It is now a striking island of high peaks and rugged rocky slopes plunging steeply to a sea dotted with icebergs.

As the satellite pictures and the main photo which we publish today make clear, Warming Island has been created by a quite undeniable, rapid and enormous physical transformation and is likely to be seen around the world as a potent symbol of the coming effects of climate change.

But it is only one more example of the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, that scientists have begun to realise, only very recently, is proceeding far more rapidly than anyone thought.

The Rest

Ten-year Warming Window Closing
By David Adam
The Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday 12 May 2007

Climate change may have passed a key tipping point that could mean temperatures rising more quickly than predicted and it being harder to tackle global warming, research suggests.

Scientists at Bristol University say a previously unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent years is due to more greenhouse gas escaping from trees, plants and soils. Global warming was making vegetation less able to absorb the carbon pollution pumped out by human activity.

Such a shift would worsen the gloomy predictions of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warned last week that there is less than a decade to tackle rising emissions to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

The prediction came as an equally stark warning was issued that global warming was contributing to increased conflict over dwindling resources.

At the moment about half of human carbon emissions are re-absorbed into the environment, but the fear among scientists is that increased temperatures will reduce this effect. Wolfgang Knorr, a climate researcher at Bristol, said: "We could be seeing the carbon cycle feedback kicking in, which is good news for scientists because it shows our models are correct. But it's bad news for everybody else." Measurements of carbon dioxide in samples of air show a sharp increase since the turn of the century, with unusually high levels in four of the past five years. The spike does not seem to match the pattern of increased emissions from fossil-fuel burning, and can only be partly explained by natural events such as fires and weather phenomena including El Nino.

Dr Knorr's team compared the high carbon dioxide measurements in the atmosphere for 2002-03 with simulations of how soils and plants, including trees, behave under different conditions. They found the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be accounted for by plants taking up less carbon because of unusually dry and hot conditions.

Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, they say: "We find that the remarkable feature of the 2002-03 anomaly seems to be that climate fluctuations - not only related to El Nino and occurring across all latitudes - acted together to create an unusually strong out-gassing of CO2 of the terrestrial biosphere. Further research will be required to investigate if this fluctuation carries features of projected future climate change."