No consensus on IPCC's level of ignorance

BBC News, Tuesday, 13 November 2007 - VIEWPOINT By John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama (Hat tip: John D.)

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) puts the finishing touches to its final report of the year, two of its senior scientists look at what the panel is and how well it works. Here, a view from a leading researcher into temperature change.

The IPCC is a framework around which hundreds of scientists and other participants are organised to mine the panoply of climate change literature to produce a synthesis of the most important and relevant findings.

These findings are published every few years to help policymakers keep tabs on where the participants chosen for the IPCC believe the Earth's climate has been, where it is going, and what might be done to adapt to and/or even adjust the predicted outcome.

While most participants are scientists and bring the aura of objectivity, there are two things to note:
- this is a political process to some extent (anytime governments are involved it ends up that way)
-scientists are mere mortals casting their gaze on a system so complex we cannot precisely predict its future state even five days ahead

The political process begins with the selection of the Lead Authors because they are nominated by their own governments. Thus at the outset, the political apparatus of the member nations has a role in pre-selecting the main participants.
But, it may go further. Continued at BBC News...

John R Christy is Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, US He has contributed to all four major IPCC assessments, including acting as a Lead Author in 2001 and a Contributing Author in 2007
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“Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural?”

Imprimis, August 2007 by S. Fred Singer, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia
(Hat tip: Jeff Merten)

The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on the Hillsdale College campus on June 30, 2007, during a seminar entitled “Economics and the Environment,” sponsored by the Charles R. and Kathleen K. Hoogland Center for Teacher Excellence.

IN THE PAST few years there has been increasing concern about global climate change on the part of the media, politicians, and the public. It has been stimulated by the idea that human activities may influence global climate adversely and that therefore corrective action is required on the part of governments. Recent evidence suggests that this concern is misplaced. Human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way. Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, regardless of human action. I would also argue that — should it occur — a modest warming would be on the whole beneficial.

This is not to say that we don’t face a serious problem. But the problem is political. Because of the mistaken idea that governments can and must do something about climate, pressures are building that have the potential of distorting energy policies in a way that will severely damage national economies, decrease standards of living, and increase poverty. This misdirection of resources will adversely affect human health and welfare in industrialized nations, and even more in developing nations. Thus it could well lead to increased social tensions within nations and conflict between them. Continued...,

Copyright © 2007 Hillsdale College. Partial reprint by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. Read More......

Freedom, not climate, is at risk

Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, argues in the Financial Times that ambitious environmentalism is the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity.

Mr Klaus writes that “global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem” and the issue “is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.” Read his argument here .

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Global Warming

Skeptics of manmade global warming have found further support in research linking solar output with the planet Neptune’s brightness and temperatures on Earth.

The findings appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters. The authors of the article, H.B. Hammel and G.W. Lockwood from the Space Science Institute in Colorado and the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, note that measurements of visible light from Neptune have been taken at the Observatory since 1950.

Those measurements indicate that Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980. And infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that Neptune has been warming steadily as well.

The researchers plotted on a graph the changes in visible light from Neptune over the past half-century, changes in temperatures on Earth during that period, and changes in total solar irradiance.

The results: The correlation between solar irradiance and Neptune’s brightness was nearly perfect; so was the correlation between changes on Earth and solar output, according to a report on the research appearing on World Climate Report, a climate change blog.

“When the sun is more energetic and putting out more energy, the Earth tends to warm up, and when the sun cools down, so does the Earth,” World Climate Report notes. “The Hammel and Lockwood article reveals that the same is true out at Neptune — when the sun’s energy increases, Neptune seems to warm up and get brighter . .

“How is it possible that the Earth’s temperature is so highly correlated with brightness variations from Neptune? The news from Neptune comes to us just weeks after an article was published showing that Mars has warmed recently as well.

“If nothing else, we have certainly learned recently that planets undergo changes in their mean temperature, and while we can easily blame human activity here on the Earth, blaming humans for the recent warming on Mars and Neptune would be an astronomical stretch, to say the least.” See Abstract (h/t: John B.)

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How the Left Intimidates the Media

AIM Special Report March 19, 2007, By Cliff Kincaid -- Environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was recently paid $20,000 by Virginia Tech to tell the students that there aren't two sides to the global warming debate and that the problem with the media today is that we don't have a fairness doctrine. Those positions, which sound contradictory, betray the modern liberal agenda. They want to bring back the fairness doctrine not to ensure true fairness and balance in journalism but to intimidate and censor those expressing a view contrary to their own. Continued at AIM...

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