What global warming?

Rush Limbaugh

Is this going to be Bush's Kyoto legacy.  His sum total response to global warming?

Waaaaay too little....Waaaaay too late

Before all you Al Gore lemmings exterminate yourselves in a self-congratulatory frenzy, an endangered species list is not going to help the polar bear find dinner when the ice melts. There is some agreement - glacial and polar ice is melting rapidly in many places; the northern hemisphere is experiencing warming at a much greater rate than the southern hemisphere; if this continues unabated in the future, there will be dire consequences.

What some of us do not agree on is that the warming is caused by man (and in particular by burning fossil fuels); that the tipping point is imminent; and that something can be done about it in as little as ten or twenty years.

The real truth is that the earth has experienced cycles of warming and cooling for many thousands of years - long before man was burning fossil fuels. When the scientists of the world cite their studies you have to keep in mind that they are reporting their opinions and conclusions, not facts. Using the same data, collected in the same studies, the same scientists just a decade ago reported opinions and conclusions that the earth was cooling instead of warming.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina scientists at several well-respected gulf coast universities predicted a scourge of insect-borne illnesses; they said that the gulf coast fishing and shrimping industries were completely destroyed and would never recover; they predicted that thousands would be found dead in their attics in New Orleans as their homes were flooded above six feet; they assured us that the 2006 hurricane season would be the worst in recorded history.

The facts are that there were virtually no insect-borne illnesses following the hurricane (the insects all got blown away by the wind or something); gulf coast fishing and shrimping is now better than it has been in many years although there isn't a local market to sell the catch to; thousands were not found dead in attics - in fact, the death toll didn't reach 1400 across the entire gulf coast impact area; and the 2006 hurricane season was one of the least active in recorded history.

There was a rush to a concensus of opinion after Hurricane Katrina just as there was a rush to form a concensus on the global warming issue. The hurricane concensus was based on the facts as the experts saw them and they drew their opionions and conclusions based on their expertise. They were wrong.

OK the ice is melting, put the polar bears on the endangered species list - I hope there won't be dire consequences in the future but if thousands of years of earth history run true, don't blame me - I switched to compact flourescent bulbs years ago.

I'm with you on the polar bears.  Endangered status will likely just mean we watch them more closely as they go extinct outside of zoos.   Maybe we can re-introduce after we get a handle on the problem.  I'm also with you on the flourescents.  But I suspect there *IS* a great deal we can start doing today, tomorrow, and for the next 20 years.  The ozone-layer hole didn't simply mend itself, human intervention changed its course, at least slowing the problem in just those 20 years you mention.

Well, warming of the earth could be the result of a natural cycle, but isn't it just a little too coincidental that the increases in average global temperature and carbon dioxide levels just happen to take place at the exact time that we humans began to both add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere that otherwise wouldn't have been added and we had reduced the earth's ability to take carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere due to clearcutting of rainforests?

Isn't that just a little too coincidental?

Since there is the danger of dire consequences regardless of the cause, what do we have to lose by admitting that human industry likely had something to do with it?

Wouldn't it make sense to initiate whatever corrective actions are possible regardless of what the cause of the warming is?

See Random's remarks on human intervention.

It makes sense especially if it can be shown that taking such steps actually *BENEFITS* the economy, as I believe it does.  Things like increasing CAFE standards, pursuing alternative energy sources...

.

A recent study I saw reported that upper-atmosphere behavior is consistent with greenhouse gas action and not consistent with solar activity being the cause of warming...

Dusty, I readily admit I don't know the agendas of the oil companies - apparently you believe that you do - good for you. I have my suspicions that oil company senior executives are a dastardly greedy bunch of crooks - but I don't know that to be true - it's just an opinion that I have. I draw my personal conclusions from reports of obscene profits and pricing at the pump that cannot (in my opinion) be related to any legitimate cost analysis.

I don't know who funds the experts I quoted in my points - the scientists studying the hole in the ozone are not, as far as I can tell, funded by oil companies. Besides, the ozone hole point doesn't refute global warming - it supports it. The hurricane experts were, again as far as I know, hired by the media to provide their expertise on the effects of Katrina on insect-borne diseases, gulf fisheries and the eventual death toll due to flooding in the ninth ward.

Perhaps you should read the Wall Street Journal Op/Ed piece by Richard Lindzen - a Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT. (WSJ June 26, 2006 Page A14). The piece is entitled "There is no 'Consensus' on Global Warming". Now I don't know who funds professor Lindzen's department at MIT and I don't know his political leaning. I feel that he presents a fair argument that the consensus promoted by global warming advocates is indeed, no consensus at all.

A Sloan Professorship is a post that qualifies a person to me and warrants my attention, nothing more. Based on my experience, I trust the qualification and I choose to embrace the opinions he expressed as reasonable and well thought out. I'm not dismissing anyone else's expert and I'm telling you exactly who I'm quoting and why.

editortr, you might want to take a look at this: http://scienceblogs.com/del...

Judd Legum has already debunked Richard Lindzen's repetition of Benny Peiser's discredited study, but I want to add one point. Lindzen wrote:

More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

Note that he got her name wrong (it's Naomi), what she said she'd found (which was that 75% implicitly or explicitly accept the consensus) and what the corresponding claim by Peiser was (that only one third of the papers accepted the consensus). It seems likely that he never checked what Oreskes actually wrote and relied on a second or third hand account.

Thanks TomW but I've already read the debunking article you cite and was already aware that Benny Peiser's study was discredited by bloggers. What an egregious mistake for everyone to point out - he's a terrible researcher - he got her name wrong. It is also no surprise to me that the article was debunked in part because it appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The WSJ cannot be trusted because it is pro-business and therefore favors Republican values. What a crock.

The point again is that I was accused of dismissing the experts quoted by others and was told that the only experts who support a contrarian viewpoint are bought and paid for by the oil companies. Also a crock. How about someone proving to me that Lindzen was "bought and paid for" by the oil companies.

Lindzen is a Sloan Professor at MIT - which is a credential that I am personally familiar with and respect. His detractors Tim Lambert and Judd Legum are professionally qualified in what respect? One is a computer scientist (whatever that means - having been one myself, I'm not quite sure) at the University of New South Wales; and the other is an otherwise anonymous blogger. Those are not comparable qualifications no matter which side of the issue you're on.

I didn't choose my position on global warming from recent experience or watching an Al Gore docu-drama. I got my basics years ago from a grizzled old professor in an elective geography class who taught us a lot about the dynamic planet we live on. He made a couple of points that stuck with me - the earth is physically different today than it was yesterday and it will be physically different tomorrow than it is today. The earth has been through many cycles of change and will go through many more cycles of change in the future. The other point he made back then: there is nothing we can do about it.

Today's arguments about climate are based on a brief history, disreputable computer models and opinions and conclusions drawn on a tremendously complex set of data. The issues have become political instead of scientific. 75% of the population is said to distrust the current administration and 75% of the world's scientists are said to agree on global climate. Just coincidental or "Too Coincidental" as someone questioned earlier?

Read the article for yourself and check the references. Lindzen's article contains several points - the bloggers debunk one paragraph - and then chortle about a mistaken name - big deal. It's an opinion - it is in the opinion section of the newspaper. An opinion is never anything more than an opinion. All of the other papers cited are also opinions - and conclusions - there are no "facts" in this issue. A consensus does not make anything a fact - it never has and it never will.

By the way - Al Gore didn't invent the Internet. Even if he got a consensus of his peers to say he did - he didn't.

I hear the administration is going to start a 'Reading" program for the Polar Bears because it is their lack of education, not global warming, that is taking away their environment......