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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
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 Sun Nov 23, 2003 3:53 pm
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Re: Fred Singer - he has been a paid consultant for ARCO, Exxon, Unocal, Sun Oil and Shell Oil and is on record for advising these companies to $tand up for their right$ or they will be "threatened" in the same way that CFC manufacturers were "threatened" when they were directed to phase out [stratospheric ozone damaging] CFC production on the basis of what he [Singer] called "insubstantial science", right?
Re: the semantics debate vis a vis the term "global warming" - I'm not going to get into that. I've expressed my opinion of the current situation which I, to repeat, think is best characterized by the descriptor "regional pollution-driven climatic instability."
If you wish only to debate the credibility of the term "global warming" I will have to decline as I think I've already answered your question.
Thank you. |
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Edufer
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 198
Location: Malagueno, Cordoba, Argentina |
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Sun Nov 23, 2003 5:38 pm
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Deborah, I knew you were going to come along with the old "industry-paid-liars" argument. Try another one. That one is obsolete. Professor Singer's scientific backgroung is beyond your comprehension. He is also way beyond your criticism.
To the Readers of This Forum
When I was invited to this forum (or defied) by David G. Stewart, to “stand up for my ecological convictions”, I was aware he would throw a pack of wolves against me. And I was prepared to receive strong attacks from them. To my surprise, two Chihuahuas started gnawing at my heels. One of those Chihuahuas has being doing so in an autistic, almost catatonic manner, focusing only on a presumed “hypocrisy” and “inconsistency”, while relentlessly trying to keep a sarcastic mood in his posts.
In scientific issues, sarcasm does not work. On the contrary, it reveals a lack of a solid argumentation, and poor factual evidence. His evidence is comprised only by links to news briefs, press releases, journalist’s interpretation of some scientists speaking about individual subjects, and referring to a presumed “consensus” among scientists, trying to show me as the “only one that opposes” this supposed general consensus. “How could all these scientists can be wrong?, said Chihuahua # 1.
Then, Chihuauhua # 1 has stubbornly refused to answer the questions I posed him, in order to check his scientific background – not with question at graduate level, but on science found at high school grade. He failed to do so. He showed he’s scared stiff to answer them because he knows doodle-squat (as Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. used to say) about meteorology and climatology.
Nonetheless, he keeps on presenting himself as a knowledgeable person, an expert on global warming and climate change. Though, I must reckon he is an expert on “copy and paste” techniques, but that does not make him an expert in climatology.
So, if the readers of this board really want to keep this discussion alive and try to find something that looks like the truth, then try to convince Sore Throat to answer just three of the questions I posted. In case he dodges the issue (and he is quite skilled at dodging difficult situations), then this discussion will reach an end and will be buried in infamy because Sore Throat refused to show his knowledge in meteorology and atmospheric physical phenomena.
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Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out.
------- Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1471-1530)
[Edited 2 times, lastly by Edufer on 11-23-2003] |
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
Posts: 731
Location: East Coast |
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Sun Nov 23, 2003 5:55 pm
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Senor F wrote:
.....Deborah, I knew you were going to come along with the old "industry-paid-liars" argument.....
You must be psychic. Or is it that you're entrenched in your own preconceived idea of who I am and what I think?
The above-posted comment re: Singer is a point of fact. I'm not pulling "arguments" out of a hat here. I like to know about my sources before I even read their information let alone disseminate it.
I think the problem here is more a matter of incompatible values than anything else. You have your values and I have mine.
So be it.
What is, is, and what will come of that will come. Truth's most valuable ally is Time.
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 12:22 am
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S. Fred (in full Siegfried Frederick) Singer (b. 1924) is President of The Science & Environmental Policy Project, a non-profit policy research group he founded in 1990.
Singer is also a director of The Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a group founded by the Unification Church in 1982, and an Adjunct Fellow of "Frontiers of Freedom"
(http://www.ff.org/about/staff.html).
_____________________________________
The Science & Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) was founded in Fairfax, Virginia in 1990 by S. Fred Singer. It presents arguments against the global warming theory, and argues that the media and other institutions have shown bias in reporting on the global warming controversy.
SEPP strongly rejects the claim that a "scientific consensus" exists regarding the global warming hypothesis. In a series of articles, Prof. Singer contends that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol vastly overstate the degree of scientific certainty on climate change. In particular, Singer claims that the United Nations panel on climate change (IPCC) has produced misleading summaries of the work of scientists whose results did not support the IPCC's preordained conclusions.
According to the Harvard University Center for the Environment, "The Science and Environmental Policy Project site is primarily an outlet for the views of S. Fred Singer, Distinguished Research Professor at George Mason University. It provides access to Singer's congressional testimony, articles, and reprints of related newspaper stories."
Grist magazine says that Professor Singer, SEPP's founder, "maintains a steady drumbeat of op-eds in the Washington Times and Wall Street Journal, among other publications, disputing the scientific consensus on issues such as ozone depletion and climate change."
SEPP's board of directors and advisers is, according to Grist, "made up primarily of retired scientists no longer active in the field, and many of whom are also on the board of the closely linked George C. Marshall Institute."
So who are you going to trust on such matters?
SEÑOR Eduardo Ferreyra and his mentor S. Fred Singer, supported by oil companies and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, or...
F. SHERWOOD ROWLAND, who won the 1995 Noble Prize in Chemistry for incontrovertibly demonstrating that human actions were damaging the Ozone layer.
http://www.nobel.se/chemistry/laureates/1995/press.html
For a further insight on how pseudoscientists and political commentators of the likes of Rush Limbaugh are attempting to sway public opinion on such critical issues, I encourage you to read the following:
TROUBLE IN THE OZONE
http://www.wmich.edu/environmental-studies/Writings/swords1.html
Here's a sample:
Here I owe a debt to Science magazine (the organ of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest mainstream science organization in the world). They were apparently just as boggled by all this, and did their own sleuthing around. Ray has read two "authorities" on the subject: Rogelio Maduro and S. Fred Singer. Now we are surely getting somewhere. Who are these folks and what do they know?
Maduro is a popular science writer with a B.S. in geology, and not engaged in any of the relevant areas of research. He is the author of The Hole in the Ozone Scare, published by a magazine 21st Century Science and Technology for which he works. It is an organ of the Lyndon LaRouche political movement. The book is well written and, to some, persuasive. The value lies in the research it is based upon, of course. The leadership of the AAAS have analyzed this for us. AAAS president Sherwood Rowland says that Maduro has done "a good job of collecting all of the bad papers in one place" and has "systematically ignored all the massive research which debunks elements of their theory". Sad.
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Exxon Backs Groups That Question Global Warming
The New York Times, May 28, 2003
ExxonMobil has publicly softened its stance toward global warming over the last year, with a pledge of $10 million in annual donations for 10 years to Stanford University for climate research.
At the same time, the company, the world's largest oil and gas concern, has increased donations to Washington-based policy groups that, like Exxon itself, question the human role in global warming and argue that proposed government policies to limit carbon dioxide emissions associated with global warming are too heavy handed.
Exxon now gives more than $1 million a year to such organizations, which include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, the George C. Marshall Institute, the American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
The organizations are modest in size but have been outspoken in the global warming debate. Exxon has become the single-largest corporate donor to some of the groups, accounting for more than 10 percent of their annual budgets. While a few of the groups say they also receive some money from other oil companies, it is only a small fraction of what they receive from Exxon Mobil.
"We want to support organizations that are trying to broaden the debate on an issue that is so important to all of us," said Tom Cirigliano, a spokesman for Exxon. "There is this whole issue that no one should question the science of global climate change that is ludicrous. That's the kind of dark-ages thinking that gets you in a lot of trouble." He also noted, "These are not single-agenda groups."
The organizations emphasize that while their views align with Exxon's, the company's money does not influence their policy conclusions. Indeed, the organizations say they have been sought out in part because of their credibility.
"They've determined that we are effective at what we do," said George C. Landrith, president of Frontiers of Freedom, a conservative group that maintains that human activities are not responsible for global warming. He says Exxon essentially takes the attitude, "We like to make it possible to do more of that."
Frontiers of Freedom, which has about a $700,000 annual budget, received $230,000 from Exxon in 2002, up from $40,000 in 2001, according to Exxon documents. But Mr. Landrith said the growth was not as sharp as it appears because the money is actually spread over three years.
The increase corresponds with a rising level of public debate since the United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, some of the groups said. After President Bush rejected the protocol, a treaty requiring nations to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases, many corporations shifted their attention to Washington, where the debate has centered on proposals for domestic curbs on the emissions.
"Firefighters' budgets go up when fires go up," said Fred L. Smith, the head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Myron Ebell, an analyst from the institute, spoke at last year's Exxon shareholders' meeting, where he criticized a renewable energy resolution proposed by a group of shareholders.
Exxon's backing of third-party groups is a marked contrast to its more public role in the Global Climate Coalition, an industry group formed in 1989 to challenge the science around global warming. The group eventually disbanded when oil and auto companies started to withdraw. As companies were left to walk their own path, Exxon shifted money toward independent policy groups.
"Now it's come down to a few of these groups to be the good foot soldiers of the corporate community on climate change," said Kert Davies, a research director for Greenpeace, which has tried to organize an international boycott of Exxon.
Exxon's publicly disclosed documents reveal that donations to many of these organizations increased by more than 50 percent from 2000 to 2002. And money to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that works with state legislators, has almost tripled, as the policy debate has moved to the state level.
The gifts are minuscule compared with the $100 million, 10-year scientific grant to Stanford, which is establishing a research center that will focus on technologies that could provide energy without adding to greenhouse gases linked by scientists to global warming. Nevertheless, the donations in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars are significant for groups with budgets ranging from $700,000 to $4 million.
Critics say that Exxon and these groups continue to muddle the debate even as scientific consensus has emerged, and as much of the industry has taken a more conciliatory stance toward the reality of global warming. As Exxon has become isolated from its peers, it has faced increasing pressure from shareholders and environmentalists. BP, Shell and ChevronTexaco have developed strategies that incorporate renewable energy, carbon trading and emissions reductions.
Among the initiatives that Exxon's money has helped is the Center for Science and Public Policy. The two-month-old center is a one-man operation that brings scientists to Capitol Hill on two issues: global warming and the health effects of mercury.
"We don't lobby, we educate," said Bob Ferguson, head of the center, who spent 24 years working as a Republican Congressional staff member. "We try to be nonpolitical and nonpartisan and nonideological."
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EXXONMOBIL EMERGES AS MAJOR FUNDER OF "GREENHOUSE SKEPTICS"
ExxonMobil has become a major funder of the most visible "greenhouse skeptics", most of whom who have traditionally been funded by the coal industry -- including S. Fred Singer, Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and Sherwood Idso.
ExxonMobil is the world's third largest corporation with annual profits of about $17 billion. The company is using some of those profits to confuse the public discussion of global climate change. ExxonMobil is sabotaging the work of more than 2,000 scientists from 100 countries by funding the most visible "greenhouse skeptics" -- one of whom, S. Fred Singer, publicly denied receiving oil industry money as recently as February, 2001.
According to 1998, ExxonMobil documents, the company directly funds:
S. Fred Singer's institute, The Science and Environmental Policy Project as well as another foundation that promotes Singer's activities; and,
Craig Idso, Keith E. Idso and Sherwood Idso's institute: The Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.
ExxonMobil grants have indirectly funded Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling.
In its own documents, ExxonMobil is quite clear about why it funds the tiny handful of dissenting "greenhouse skeptics": "ExxonMobil provides support to selected organizations that assess public policy alternatives on issues with direct bearing on the company's business operations and interests."
S. Fred Singer:
On Feb 12, 2001, Singer wrote a letter to The Washington Post in which he denied receiving any oil company money in the previous 20 years when he had consulted for the oil industry.
According to ExxonMobil documents, the company gave a 1998 grant of $10,000 to Singer's institute, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP). It gave another $65,000 to the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Fairfax, Virginia which promotes Singer's work.
In its web page, "Atlas invites other institutes to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the proximity of SEPP. The organization's founding president, Dr. S. Fred Singer, is a well-known physical scientist who has been an active contributor in the battle against the 'politicization' of science. Singer, along with a handful of other prominent scientists, have dared to challenge claims of environmental apocalypse from global warming Fortunately for those who believe that public policy should be based on sound science, Dr. Singer offers a wealth of information, credibility, and encouragement."
In his letter to The Washington Post, Singer wrote: "My connection to oil during the past decade is as a Wesson Fellow at the Hoover Institution; the Wesson money derives from salad oil."
In 1998, ExxonMobil gave $135,000 to the Hoover Institution -- the same year Singer published an article in the institution's publication, The Hoover Digest.
Singer's falsehood about industry funding in The Washington Post is the latest in a series of fabrications and untruths.
In 1997, Singer told the press that former IPCC Chairman Dr. Bert Bolin has changed his mind about climate change. According to Singer, Bolin had dismissed the connection between atmospheric warming and extreme weather events and was distressed that the Clinton Administration was taking measures to reduce emissions.
Bolin subsequently denied making the statements. Bolin said it was "scientifically accurate" to note that extreme weather effects "are consistent with the predicted effects of climate change.
Referring to Singer's attribution of bogus statements to Bolin, the Swedish physicist dismissed them as "inaccurate and misleading."
Singer followed that misrepresentation with an attack on the integrity of the entire IPCC process in an interview last January in The New American, the magazine of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society.
Singer is also on the staff of the ultra-conservative Frontiers of Freedom institute. According to its mission statement, Frontiers of Freedom "is the antithesis to the Sierra Club and Vice President Al Gore's Earth in the Balance. Frontiers works to advance States' rights, protect property rights, privatize Social Security, defend first amendment civil liberties, and among other efforts to reform the federal tax code, the Endangered Species Act, and the Food and Drug Administration."
...more from
http://www.heatisonline.org/main.cfm
Frontiers of Freedom is funded by ExxonMobil among others, according to the Wall Street Journal.
While Singer loudly touts himself as an accomplished scientist, he has been unable to publish his work in any peer- reviewed scientific journal for at least 15 years, except for one technical comment.
[Edited 12 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 11-23-2003] |
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Edufer
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 198
Location: Malagueno, Cordoba, Argentina |
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 1:41 am
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You quote F. Sherwood Rowland as a debunker of Rogelio Maduro. No wonder, he demolished Rowland's Ozone Theory. He cannot say nothing good about Maduro and Schauerhammer, the German co-author.
Dr. Haroun Tazieff was a multidisciplianry scientist, whose expertise was on volcanology. He was Minister of Natural Emergencies and the Environment of France. What he said about the 1995 Nobel Prize of Chemistry being awarded to Rowland, Molina and Crutzen was a tremendous shock to the scientific community that congratulated him - overwhelmingly.
You are still dogging those questions. No more replies from me until you answer them.
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 2:08 am
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Myth: Humans are not causing ozone depletion.
Fact: NASA has proved it beyond all reasonable doubt.
Summary
There is overwhelming scientific evidence that man-made chemicals are destroying the ozone layer -- Nobel prizes have already been awarded for the research. Rush Limbaugh argues that humans are safe, because volcanic chlorine has been working on the ozone layer longer than man-made chlorine, and yet we're still here. But this argument is false. Volcanic chlorine is water soluble, and rained harmlessly out of the atmosphere. Human CFCs are insoluble, and can therefore rise to the ozone layer where they can do their damage.
Argument
Do man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) destroy the ozone layer? There are no longer any skeptics left at NASA, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or the World Meteorological Organization. In fact, the three scientists who first sounded the alarm in the early 80s -- F. Sherwood Rowland, Paul Crutzen and Mario Molina -- received the 1995 Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work.
In 1991, NASA launched the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in an attempt to determine once and for all if humans were responsible for causing this serious damage to the atmosphere. The data relayed back to NASA clinched the matter beyond all reasonable doubt. "There is a very clear link between man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and destruction of the ozone layer," says Dr. Aidan Roche, the Lockheed scientist whose team analyzed the satellite data for years. (1)
In one paragraph, the process works this way. The ozone layer is a thin, protective layer of the stratosphere, which rises 12 to 15 miles high. It shields the earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays, which are deadly to most life forms. Unfortunately, ozone can be destroyed by chlorine radicals. The earth naturally produces chlorine radicals, especially from volcanic eruptions, but because they are water soluble they are safely rained out of the atmosphere. However, man-made CFCs are not water soluble. CFCs are free to rise all the way to the top of the stratosphere, where they break down, releasing their chlorine radicals. The reaction is complex, involving many different chemicals, but the result of these reactions is that the CFC is recreated, allowing it to continue wreaking havoc. Other processes are at work to remove CFCs from the ozone layer, so these reactions really can't continue indefinitely, but scientists expect the CFC's already present to remain there for the next century. In fact, recent measurements show that the level of CFCs is already declining, thanks to international treaties banning their production. (2)
The banning of CFCs is a triumph of both science and international diplomacy. In the early 80s, scientists working in the Antarctic noticed that there was a hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole. Preliminary research pointed to CFCs as the culprit. In October 1987, the world's nations signed the Montreal Protocol, pledging to cut CFC production in half over the next ten years. Subsequent scientific evidence suggested the threat was worse than realized, and the Protocol was strengthened twice - once in London in 1990, and again in Copenhagen in 1992. The Copenhagen agreement moved up the complete ban of CFCs to January 1996. Today, they are completely outlawed, although they can still be found on the black market.
And speaking of markets, one might presume that the chemical industry fought the ban tooth and nail. Actually, the industry's response was mixed. When the evidence was still preliminary and debatable, the chemicals companies furiously resisted any notion of a ban. But as the scientific evidence grew stronger, the industry reasonably concluded that it could not be seen defending profits from a product that threatened to destroy all life on the planet. In fact, Dupont proposed a global ban of CFCs before the governments of Europe and the United States did. (3) There was a self-interested motive in this, however; a global ban of CFC's would create a global need for a replacement, and Dupont was the best positioned to develop and market the first one. Even so, many find industry's rapid agreement to the ban heartening, although some watchdog groups, like Ralph Nader's Public Citizen, have chronicled many cases of industrial foot-dragging.
Interestingly, the greatest opposition to the scientific evidence came not from industry, but from the party of industry: the Republicans. During the 1992 presidential campaign, President George Bush contemptuously referred to Al Gore as "ozone man." Vice-president Dan Quayle called Al Gore's environmental bestseller, Earth in the Balance, a "strange manifesto." But perhaps no one has carried the ideological war to the atmospheric scientists quite like Rush Limbaugh. His is probably the most infamous factoid of the ozone debate: the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
In The Way Things Ought to Be, Limbaugh wrote:
Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines spewed forth more than a thousand times the amount of ozone-depleting chemicals in one eruption than all the fluorocarbons manufactured by wicked, diabolical, and insensitive corporations in history. So much so that respected scientists now say that a 4 percent to 6 percent ozone loss could -- could, but may not -- occur over the Northern Hemisphere in the next two or three years... volcanoes have been doing this for 4 billion years. And guess what? We still have a healthy ozone layer! (4)
Of course, anyone familiar with the CFC process described above knows the flaw in this argument -- the chlorine spewed from volcanic eruptions is water soluble, and washed harmlessly out of the atmosphere. No scientist worth his salt would have made such a mistake, and no national news network with even a rudimentary system of scientific review would have allowed this fractured fact to be aired.
But Rush is -- all legal smoke and mirrors aside -- an employee of ABC, and in its efforts to promote him, ABC arranged for Rush to appear on Ted Koppel's Nightline to debate then-senator Al Gore on the environment. Rush scored a clear victory in the debate with the following unfactual surprise: "If you listen to what Senator Gore said, it is man-made products which are causing the ozone depletion, yet Mount Pinatubo has put 570 times the amount of chlorine into the atmosphere in one eruption than all of man-made chlorofluorocarbons in one year." Notice that Rush couldn't even keep his story straight; 1,000 is not 570, and "ever in history" is not one year. Researchers checking up on his confused story found that neither version was correct.
A look into Rush's sources quickly revealed a series of sloppy reporting and fabricated evidence. (5) One of Rush's sources turned out to be a magazine published by the followers of Lyndon LaRouche, the eccentric cult-leader who often runs for president of the United States, and who believes the Queen of England is masterminding a genocidal plot under the guise of environmentalism.
The "570" figure apparently comes from Dixy Lee Ray's book, Trashing the Planet, an anti-environmental diatribe which Rush calls "the most footnoted, documented book I have ever read." (Rush may be impressed by multiple footnotes, but professional scientists find them unremarkable, even routine). At any rate, Dr. Stephen Schneider, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, states that Ray's book "was wrong on nearly everything." (6)
But when it came to using Ray's arguments, Rush misquoted her. Ray did not say it was Mount Pinatubo that poured 570 times the chlorine into the air, but Mount Augustine, a volcano that erupted in Alaska in 1976! Furthermore, a check into Ray's sources revealed that she, too, had misquoted her source. Her source was apparently a 1980 Science magazine article, but that piece talked about an unimaginably powerful eruption that had occurred in California 700,000 years ago. Clearly, Rush didn't have the foggiest clue what mountain he was talking about.
The NASA satellite experiments permanently laid to rest any idea that the chlorine ravaging the ozone layer was volcanic in origin. NASA scientist Mark Schoeberl announced at a press conference: "The detection of stratospheric fluorine gases, which are not natural, eliminates the possibility that chlorine from volcanic eruptions or some other natural source is responsible for the ozone hole." (7)
Return to Overview
Endnotes:
1. Don Bane, "Lockheed Scientist Sees 'Clear Link' Between CFCs And Ozone Destruction," September 23, 1993, Press Release, Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratories.
2. Ibid. See also description in Lester R. Brown et al. (eds.) Vital Signs 1994 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994), p. 64; also Steven Rendell, Jim Naureckas and Jeff Cohen, The Way Things Aren't: Rush Limbaugh's Reign of Error, (New York: The New Press, 1995), p. 12.
3. Richard Benedick, Ozone Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1991.
4. Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 155-6.
5. The following section on Mount Pinatubo is based on The Way Things Aren't, pp. 12-13.
6. Quoted in The Way Things Aren't, p. 14-15.
7. Robert Jackson, "Ozone Hole: NASA Puts It Squarely on Us; Satellite Data Cites Synthetic Chlorine," San Jose Mercury News, December 20, 1994, p. 9A.
[Edited 3 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 11-23-2003] |
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Edufer
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 198
Location: Malagueno, Cordoba, Argentina |
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 2:52 am
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Statement given by Dr. Haroum Tazieff on a press conference after the award of 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Rowland, Molina and Crutzen. Which is a small proof that I am not alone in the skeptic and debunking battlefield. Bold text and colors are mine.
French Scientist: This Nobel is a “Scandal”
Haroum Tazieff, one of France's best known scientists, issued the following commentary on this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
“The awarding of the Nobel prize has often surprised competent people; this has been true of many Nobel prizes in Literature, Peace and Economics, fields that do not belong to the exact sciences. But there has never, in my knowledge, such amazement as the stupefaction that has touched the world of chemists.
The three awards given for what is known today as the theory of the “ozone hole” are, in fact, a tremendous scientific scandal. The aim is to intimidate honest scientists who have tried to resist the catastrophism and the lies that have reigned for some 20-odd years on the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect.
I am speaking here in my own name, as a volcanologist for half a century, a former director of the French National Center for Scientific Research, and a former Secretary of State for Major Natural and Technological Risks, who led four successive missions to the Erebus volcano in Antarctica. The arguments of Sherwood Rowland, Mario Molina and Paul Crutzen are scientifically nonexistent, when confronted with what is observed in Antarctica. The models they have elaborated, especially, have been constantly refuted by satellite and ground based observations.
As for one of my fields of competence, volcanology, in which I have more than ordinary experience and, in particular, concerning the Erebus volcano, which from a height of 3000 meters dominates the U.S. station at McMurdo Sound, where measurements have been made of its plume, Rowland et al., as well as their french colleague Gérard Mégie, have deliberately ignored the tremendous quantities of chlorine emitted 365 day a year by this crater which is in constant activity.
Instead they point to the minute quantities of chlorine contained in CFCs to accuse them of a so-called major crime: destroying the ozone layer in the stratosphere. Rowland et al., also omit to mention, deliberately, that those variations in the ozone content in Antarctica were discovered, not in 1985, as they would have us to believe, but in 1956 by the first scientist to study the upper atmosphere there, Gordon Dobson.
They are thus committing the major scientific crime, which is dissimulation of facts and ignoring earlier publications on the same subject.
What is going on in the world today corresponds, with modern propaganda means, to the catastrophist prophecies of the year 1000. For the year 2000, today's technologies are used by the international financiers to terrorize world opinion with lies alleged to be science, promoted by finance-corrupted “scientists”.
I do not hesitate to compare this big brainwashing enterprise and deliberate lying, to that of the Comintern between 1920 and 1952, which induced tens of millions of left intellectuals to transform themselves into as many militants willfully made stupid.
What? Is Dr. Tazieff speaking about Sore and Deb? Our watermelons in the forum? GREEN in the outside, RED in the inside?
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 3:06 am
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Senor F wrote:
.....What? Is Dr. Tazieff speaking about Sore and Deb? Our watermelons in the forum? GREEN in the outside, RED in the inside?.....
Oh, Christ - this is too much!
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Edufer
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 198
Location: Malagueno, Cordoba, Argentina |
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 6:08 am
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Madame Deborah wrote:
"Oh, Christ - this is too much!"
I find quite disturbing – and extremely revealing - that a person, supposedly concerned about ethics and scientific responsibility, is shocked by being exposed as a watermelon, and not about the public statement by a world renown and respected personality as Dr. Tazieff calling the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry a scandal, and categorizing the ozone theory as a scientific fraud.
As usual, both of my contenders in this forum miss the core of the subject, skip around it, and come with outlandish remarks.
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Deborah
Joined: 30 Jul 2000
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 7:59 am
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Why should I be "shocked" by Dr. Tazieff's pronouncement? I have no reaction whatever, actually. He represents a particular orientation to the stratospheric ozone issue and that's about all there is to it. |
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Edufer
Joined: 14 Nov 2003
Posts: 198
Location: Malagueno, Cordoba, Argentina |
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Mon Nov 24, 2003 5:58 pm
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Of course, you will not be shocked by Tazieff’s pronouncement. There is no reason in your baggage of reasons, that would make you consider Tazieff’s words as nothing to be considered. I understand that. I guess you consider Lester Brown and his World Watch Institute, or Paul Ehrlich, or the Union of Concerned Scientists, or even Greenpeace are more trustable sources. Of course, it is your choice.
Haroum Tazieff died on February 2001, so he is no longer with us to continue his longtime fight against ecological catastrophism back in the 80s, when he wrote his book called (free translation) “Will the Earth Stop Spinning?”. He was one of the most respected scientists in the field of volcanology, but also in other fields related to the environment, and was joined by Brice Lalonde (nothing less!) in his defense of nuclear power in France, that brought France to its outstanding position as the biggest electricity producer in Europe (sells its surplus electricity to England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Holland, all the small banking states, Denmark, etc).
I have to admire you consistency and coherence of your beliefs, though. That is why I am not surprised to find out you were not shocked at all by his harsh denounce of the Chemistry Nobel Award in 1995, but it is distressing to find that people having a fairly high level of intellectual power, choose to ignore what undisputed scientists (this time not tied to industry interests) say about the ozone theory and global warming, without analyzing their arguments and the science behind them, and contrasting them against basic physics and chemistry laws.
Thus, it does not surprises me to find you believe in Chemtrails and Deep Shield. Although I cannot dismiss the theory completely, for lack of evidence, the evidences shown by the Chemtrail followers are still not convincing as scientific evidence. From the zillion posts made in many Chemtrail forum and many, many pages related to the subject, I have not found any serious piece of evidence. Not one. Just “perceived things”, “gossips”, “a friend of mine told me”, “an undisclosed insider said” , etc. etc.
I was brought into this forum, because one of the contentions of the Chemtrail theory says it is being performed to “save the ozone layer” and to “stop or remediate global warming” . As I expressed to “Halva-Bruce Holmstead-Bruce Broccoli-Wayne Hall” in my email interchange with him, people at high levels (those in charge of the project) know very well there is no such thing as “human induced warming” and no “ozone layer depletion” , so they are not going to spend billions in that project – just for those causes.
In the remote case the Chemtrail operation is being carried, however, it must have quite different motivations, and “warming and ozone” are just excuses for gullible people scared stiff by the “ozone scare and catastrophic warming” campaigns pushed by the same people supposedly behind Chemtrails. It is as simple as that.
If there really exists such spraying going on, it must have political reasons for doing it, as I have read, “for population control” , for example, and curiously enough, is being preformed on a country (the US) that has not such a problem. People in the Club of Rome, one the many members of the green community, is worried by the “excess population” in Third World or “underdeveloping” countries – but I have found no traces of such “contrails” over those countries. In my province we see just two high altitude contrails from the planes by Aerolineas Argentinas and LAN Chile making the flight Buenos Aires-Santiago. They pass right above my house, following the path given by the radio beacon at our local airport.
Our own satellite photos taken at the nearby satellite station we have at Falda del Carmen station (10 miles to the west of my house), owned by our CONAE (National Commission on Space Activities, maker of the Hugo-1 weather satellite), show the tiniest cloud in the sky, and the contrails of those specific flights. Nothing else. I have free access to the station facilities there (my good friend Ing. Marcelo Martínez is in charge – we have weekly barbecues at my home or his), so I can assure you that no Chemtrail program is being performed on South America.
Pictures are taken by the Hugo-1 satellite in every pass over South America, covering the entire territory, on an hourly basis. It provides information, not only on weather, but on many subjects as ultraviolet and infrared data for agricultural and forestry uses, mineralogy, radar altimetry for the Rio de la Plata levels (and its nearby Atlantic ocean), etc, etc. We are not just “Indians buying mirrors and plastic beads” down here. We have sold China the technology for producing “cold protons” for their new research nuclear reactor. We won the contract over the Germans, French and Canadians, as we also beat them with a contract to Australia’s newest reactor. The US is out of those contracts because the pressure of the green movement has brought the US nuclear industry on its knees. Lucky we!
The “cold protons” technology is the latest in nuclear research, and the company that has developed it (INVAP) - guess what? – belongs to the Argentinean state and is not in private hands. Neo-liberalism? Free trade? Open markets? Not here, any more, thanks you. We still have to get rid of the multinationals that have looted the country from 1991, (Oil, communications, and energy are mostly on the hands of multinationals as Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon, Halliburton, etc, Telecom France, Telefónica Española, EdeSur and EdeNorte (electricity owned by Chilean-British companies) , EcoGas (gas pipelines, an US company), Aerolíneas Argentinas (belongs to Iberia Airlines), etc. It will take time, but we can do it.
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Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out.
------- Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1471-1530)
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Edufer on 11-24-2003] |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
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Thu Nov 27, 2003 1:59 am
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How interesting that SEÑOR Ferreyra finds it necessary to resort to CUT & PASTE, which he so frequently derides, to post an opinion by Haroum Tazieff.
So much for consistency...and hypocrisy.
As far as the myths he promotes about the irrelevance of man-made CFC's impact on ozone depletion, consider the following from the US Environmental Protection Agency. We can only imagine that SEÑOR Ferreyra will claim that they are only taking this position in order to garner additional funding from the Bush junta. (This is why, while at the same time tragic in potential consequence, SEÑOR Ferreyra's postings are so amusing.)
http://www.epa.gov/docs/ozone/science/myths.html
Myth: CFCs Are Heavier Than Air, So They Can't Reach the Ozone Layer
Source: World Meteorological Organization, Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 1998, WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project - Report No. 44, Geneva, 1998.
CFCs and other ozone depleting substances (ODS) are heavier than air. In a still room, they will pool on the floor. However, the atmosphere is anything but still. Numerous measurements have confirmed that these molecules are mixed nearly uniformly worldwide. In the same way that vinegar and oil normally separate when still, but mix when shaken, ozone depleting substances and air are thoroughly stirred together by winds in the troposphere.
Winds are also why the location of CFC and other ODS emissions is essentially irrelevant. CFCs released from a car in the U.S. are as likely to find their way to the stratosphere over India as are molecules released from much closer countries like China. Once they mix through the troposphere, CFC molecules eventually move into the stratosphere. Thousands of measurements over several decades have firmly proven the existence of these heavier-than-air molecules in the ozone layer.
As the graph above shows, the concentration of CFC-11 is essentially constant at altitudes up to 10 km. The UV radiation needed to break CFC-11 apart is shielded by the ozone layer. Because no natural processes destroy CFCs, it survives to be uniformly distributed, both vertically and horizontally. Concentrations drop off rapidly, however, in the stratosphere. As the molecules rise into and above the ozone layer, they are exposed to strong UV, break down, and release chlorine. These measurements are one link between CFCs, increased levels of chlorine in the stratosphere, and ozone depletion.
[Edited 6 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 11-26-2003] |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
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Thu Nov 27, 2003 2:04 am
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Myth: Volcanoes and the Oceans are Causing Ozone Depletion
Source: World Meteorological Organization, Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 1998, WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project - Report No. 44, Geneva, 1998.
Volcanic eruptions are powerful events, and they are capable of injecting hydrogen chloride (HCl) high into the atmosphere. Similarly, oceans produce large volumes of sea salt, which contains chlorine, on a daily basis. If these compounds accumulated in large quantities in the stratosphere, they might produce ozone depletion. However, for several reasons, we know that CFCs and other substances used in human activities are the primary sources of chlorine in the stratosphere.
First, the vast majority of volcanic eruptions are too weak to reach the stratosphere, around 10 km above the surface. Thus, any HCl emitted in the eruption begins in the troposphere. Sea salt from the oceans is also released very low in the atmosphere. These compounds would have to remain airborne for 2-5 years to be carried to the stratosphere. However, both sea salt and HCl are extremely soluble in water, as opposed to CFCs which do not dissolve in water. Rain effectively scrubs the troposphere, removing both of these forms of chlorine. Steam in volcanic plumes can act the same way, removing HCl long before it reaches the ozone layer. Measurements have shown that concentrations of these substances vanish very rapidly as altitude increases. Neither sea salt from the oceans nor tropospheric-level volcanic eruptions (like Mt. Erebus in Antarctica) contribute significantly to stratospheric chlorine levels. Some sea life does produce methyl chloride, a more stable form of chlorine than sea salt, but its contribution is small, as explained below.
Source: World Meteorological Organization, Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 1998, WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project - Report No. 44, Geneva, 1998.
CFCs, on the other hand, do not dissolve in rain. In addition, no chemical processes have been found that aggressively remove them from the troposphere. In fact, one of the advantages of the CFCs was their stability. However, it is this very stability that poses a threat to the ozone layer.
Second, there is no historical record that shows significant increases in stratospheric chlorine following even the most major volcanic eruptions. Although El Chichon, in 1982, did increase concentrations of HCl in the stratosphere by 10%, that extra chlorine disappeared in about a year. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, measurements found no increase in stratospheric chlorine. The dramatic increase in chlorine concentrations simply cannot be explained by a concurrent increase in volcanic activity.
Imagine that your birthday arrives, but you have no money in your savings account. You receive several gifts, but you can't quite remember whether your professor gave you a check. A call to the bank reveals that you have a balance of $100. One friend confirms she gave you $20, your mother reminds you that she sent $50, and your brother chipped in $30. By knowing the total and the amounts sent by everyone else, you conclude that your professor couldn't have sent you any money. Scientists performed exactly the same calculation. They could account for all of the sources of chlorine in the stratosphere, and only 3% was from HCl, probably from volcanoes. Another 15% of the chlorine entering the stratosphere derived from methyl chloride. However, fully 82% of stratospheric chlorine came from ODS, with 51% being carried there by CFC-11 and CFC-12.
Finally, Mt. Pinatubo did have an indirect effect because it emitted a large amount of aerosols, but it was short-lived. (Note that volcanic aerosols are tiny particles, not related in any way to consumer products called aerosols that have not used CFCs since the 1970s.) The aerosols essentially improved the efficiency of chlorine from CFCs, but they have already disappeared from the stratosphere. Thus, this temporary effect is not the root cause of ozone depletion.
The relationship between volcanic eruptions and ozone depletion is one of the most misunderstood in the realm of ozone science. Scientists seriously considered the impacts these awesome natural events might have on the ozone layer. They concluded, however, that ODS like CFCs are the real source of stratospheric chlorine, and thus ozone depletion.
See also: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/
[Edited 2 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 11-26-2003] |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
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Thu Nov 27, 2003 2:06 am
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Myth: Ozone Depletion Occurs Only In Antarctica
Source: World Meteorological Organization, Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 1998, WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project - Report No. 44, Geneva, 1998.
News about the ozone hole that forms over Antarctica each October has spread around the world. First formed in the early 1980s, the ozone hole can be as big as the U.S. and as deep as a 66% loss of ozone. However, less-well-known is that ozone depletion has been measured everywhere outside the tropics, and that it is, in fact, getting worse.
In March, 1999, over 260 of the world's top atmospheric researchers released their latest findings in a volume titled Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2002. Ozone levels vary by season and latitude. The report concluded that in the middle latitudes (most of the populated world), ozone levels have fallen about 10% during the winter and 8% in the summer. Since 1979, they have fallen about 4% per decade when averaged over the entire year. Depletion is generally worse at higher latitudes, i.e. further from the Equator. The Executive Summary to the Assessment is available from the WMO.
Ozone levels at Arosa, Switzerland clearly show a sharp drop beginning in the early 1970s. The graph to the left shows long-term ozone levels over Arosa, Switzerland. Although ozone levels rise and fall in natural cycles, the average level remained constant from 1926 until 1973. Beginning in 1973, however, and continuing through 2001, ozone levels have dropped at a rate of 2.3 percent / decade. Both the 11-year sunspot cycle and volcanic eruptions such as Mount Pinatubo in 1991 can affect total ozone levels temporarily. However, it is clear that at Arosa, neither had a long-term impact. The sharp decline beginning in 1973 demonstrates that the world is not experiencing a natural cycle in ozone levels. In fact, this decline matches the high rate of growth in the use of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances.
Ozone depletion is not constant through the year. More detailed monthly data from the Swiss Institute for Atmospheric Science show that most of the depletion occurs in winter and spring.
In addition, satellite measurements of ozone depletion over North America demonstrate ozone depletion occuring since 1979. Note that in the graph to the left, column ozone over the Seattle area was 391 Dobson units (DU). In 1994, however, ozone levels had dropped to 360 DU. Los Angeles saw a similar drop, from 368 DU to 330 DU. Finally, the Miami area ozone levels fell from 303 DU to 296 DU.
In general, ozone depletion is greater at higher latitudes. Thus, the decrease near Seattle will be greater than near Los Angeles, while Miami will see the smallest depletion of the three cities. However, southern cities also have much higher incidence of UVB light; even with less depletion, the net increase in UVB can be greater. While exact calculations cannot be made from this graph, it demonstrates that the ozone layer is being damaged over much of the globe, not just over Antarctica.
Finally, measurements over various cities in Canada show ozone depletion. These measurements confirm that ozone depletion is not limited to Antarctica.
Myth: No Link Exists Between Ozone Depletion and Higher UV Levels
http://www.epa.gov/docs/ozone/science/FIG-FAQ09.JPG
Source: World Meteorological Organization, Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 1998, WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project - Report No. 44,
Geneva, 1998.
The primary concern related to ozone depletion is the expectation that as the ozone layer deteriorates, higher levels of UVB will reach the ground. Studies done in Antarctica show a clear connection between reduced ozone levels and higher levels of UVB. During the annual ozone hole, UV intensitities more than doubled compared to what would normally be found given the angle of the sun in the sky. A study in Toronto demonstrated the relationship between days of lower ozone and higher UV levels, and other researchers also showed this connection over Germany, Iceland, and Greece. Finally, laboratory experiments confirm that ozone absorbs UVB.
The connection between ozone levels and UV levels is also demonstrated by measurements of incident UV at different parts of the Earth's atmosphere. The sun's rays contain a wide variety of wavelengths. Some of this energy is visible light (400-700 nm), but a wide variety of the electromagnetic spectrum is represented, including various UV bands: UVA (320-400 nm), UVB (290-320 nm), and UVC (shorter than 280 nm). Measurements taken above the ozone layer show that none of the bands have been strongly absorbed. However, lower in the ozone layer, it becomes clear that the ozone molecules are strongly absorbing the UVB and UVC bands. UVC is so completely absorbed by normal oxygen that only nearly complete destruction of the ozone layer will increase its levels on the ground. However, UVB is only absorbed by ozone. For each 1% drop in ozone levels (i.e. 1% increase in ozone depletion), scientists estimate about 1% more UVB will reach the Earth's surface.
J. B. Kerr and C. T. McElroy, "Evidence for Large Upward Trends of Ultraviolet-B Radiation Linked to Ozone Depletion", Science,262, 1032, 1993.
Seckmeyer, G., B. Mayer, R. Erb, and G. Bernhard, "UV-B in Germany higher in 1993 than in 1992", Geophys. Res. Lett., 21, 577-580, 1994.
Zerefos, C. S., A. F. Bais, C. Meleti, and I. C. Ziomas, "A note on the recent increase of solar UV-B radiation over northern middle latitudes", Geophys. Res. Lett., 22, 1245-1247, 1995.
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Additional ozone myths:
http://info-pollution.com/common.htm
http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/ozone-depletion/.html
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As Mark Twain said, a lie can go halfway around the world before the truth
can even put on its shoes.
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 11-26-2003] |
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Sore Throat
Joined: 01 Sep 2000
Posts: 1802
Location: x |
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Thu Nov 27, 2003 6:11 am
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http://www.the-scientist.com/yr1996/apr/let1_960429.html
The Scientist 10[9]:, Apr. 29, 1996
Letter
Ozone Chemistry
By Patrick Hassett
The recent Opinion essay by S. Fred Singer on the awarding of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for research on chlorofluorocarbon-ozone chemistry [The Scientist, March 4, 1996, page 9] is a continuation of a well-orchestrated political campaign, using a small group of self-appointed "skeptics," that is aimed at undermining research into environmental problems. The implication that it is the Nobel Prize committee that is politicizing the basic science issues of CFC-ozone chemistry is disingenuous at best. Time and again the mode of attack is to assert that the basic science being conducted is contaminated by the political ends desired. The CFC-ozone and climate change research programs are the current favored targets of these "skeptics"; as species and habitat protection threatens unrestricted property use, I would guess that biodiversity and sustainability research will soon be targeted as well.
The debate is not being waged in the scientific literature or at scientific meetings, but in the mass media through "sound-bite science," and in front of accommodating congressional committees, with funding provided by corporate interests that see themselves threatened by the research. Scientists actually doing the research on ozone depletion or climate change are portrayed as proceeding with blinders, ignoring even the most obvious problems with assumptions or data, in their single-minded zeal to arrive at a preordained conclusion.
Anyone who followed the long history of these debates would realize the hollowness of the charges. I attended an American Association for the Advancement of Science session on climate change nearly a decade ago where climate modelers were challenging each other's assumptions and stressing the areas of uncertainty that needed to be addressed. There were no blinders evident then, nor has there been in the literature since. I would suggest, rather, that it is this group of "skeptics" who are proceeding with blinders, in their obsessive desire to undermine research in these areas.
The defense might be that these "skeptics" are simply balancing the views of other scientists that are publicized by environmental activist organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund or Sierra Club, but if so these "skeptics" should make clear their perspective, and their connections with and financial and logistical support from such organizations as the Western Fuels Association, the American Petroleum Institute, OPEC, and the Heritage Foundation. It may be inevitable that when basic research intersects with public-policy issues, the research itself will become a political target, but if that is the case, then the politics should not be hidden behind a veil of scientific "balance."
Patrick Hassett
Department of Biological Sciences
Irvine Hall
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701
[Edited 1 times, lastly by Sore Throat on 11-27-2003] |
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