posted 03-13-2004 11:49 PM               

If it remained merely a disagreement about science and research methods, there wouldn't be much of a story — or reason for concern. Unfortunately, it turned into a scientific lynching of Mr. Soon and Ms. Baliunas and anyone associated with them. For example, Chris de Freitas, the editor of Climate Research that published the paper, was criticized for having failed in his responsibilities of quality control, even though the paper passed an extensive peer-review process and the publisher defended Mr. de Freitas' handling of the paper. It was argued Mr. de Freitas should be removed from his position simply for having published it. Even Mr. Mann, in his Senate testimony, dismissed Mr. de Freitas' credentials solely because he "frequently publishes op-ed pieces in newspapers attacking IPCC and attacking [the] Kyoto [protocol]."

Legates doesn't reveal here that he's hardly a disinterested party--he was a co-author on Soon and Baliunas's May paper in Energy and Environment, which in large part was an near verbatim copy of the Climate Research paper. So any critiques that apply the the Climate Research paper apply to his paper as well.

But Legates writes that "the publisher defended Mr. de Freitas' handling of the paper." That's just not true, according to my reporting. I recently wrote to Otto Kinne, Climate Research's publisher, who on August 5th wrote that "...there was insufficient attention to the methodological basis of statements that touch on hotly debated controversies and involve pronounced political and economic interests. CR should have been more careful and insisted on solid evidence and cautious formulations before publication." I asked Dr. Kinne:
Given the three recent editorial resignations, and that earlier of Wolfgang Cramer, do you still have confidence in Chris de Freitas as an impartial editor?
In an August 13th email Kinne answered this question:

I do not expect him to ever make the same mistake again. He is "under observtion."
So Kinne does think that de Freitas made a mistake.

The other thing I learned was that authors who submit to Climate Research are allowed to choose who will edit their paper, and Soon and Baliunas explicitedly asked for de Freitas.

Finally, it needs to be noted Legates is a review editor at Climate Research, and that Legates receives funding from pro-business groups who receive money from conservative organizations. Legates is an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, who, according to MediaTransparency.org, receives money from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and many other similar conservative foundations.

Legates also refuses to reveal the funding souces for the Center for Climatic Research (of which he's director) at the University of Delaware. In May I asked him about the extragovernmental funding he receives, and he said "I don't have to answer that question."

Replies: 3 Comments

David, is there more to the quote, "I do not expect him to ever make the same mistake again." As quoted, its not clear what type of mistake he made. Does Kinne think he shouldn't have published the paper? Or does he think I want the controversay to go away, so don't worry he's under observation? Or something else? As quoted, it comes across as one of those mealy-mouth quotes that could be interpreted almost anyway you want.

********************************************

09/15/2003: "CHE on Soon and Baliunas"
In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Richard Monastersky has written about the Soon and Baliunas papers in Climate Research and Energy and Environment. It's available to subscribers here. Quoting from the meat of the article:

Given the high-level attention that the papers were drawing, 13 scientists took the unusual step of publishing in July an extended rebuttal in the American Geophysical Union's house journal, Eos. They first took issue with how Mr. Soon and Ms. Baliunas defined evidence for a Medieval Warm Period: as any 50-year period of warmth, wetness, or drought between the years 800 and 1300.

It is absurd to take wetness or dryness as proof of abnormal warmth, the critics argue. "A paper using that kind of methodology could not be published in any legitimate climate-research journal unless something was severely wrong or suspicious with the review process," says Virginia's Mr. Mann, lead author of the Eos paper, whose own studies on climate were heavily criticized by Mr. Soon's team in the Energy and Environment paper.

Mr. Mann and his colleagues also find fault with the Soon-Baliunas definition of a climatic event. Under their method, warmth in China in 850, drought in Africa in 1000, and wet conditions in England in 1200 all would qualify as part of the Medieval Warm Period, even though they happened centuries apart.

And the critics say that the Harvard-Smithsonian team set up a straw man in comparing conditions during the 20th century with those in earlier centuries. The greatest warming has happened during the past few decades, and so taking an average of the entire century, or even half of it, washes out the recent trend, says Mr. Mann. What's more, many of the climate records examined by the team do not include the most recent decades.

Mr. Soon and Ms. Baliunas improperly used data sets compiled by other researchers, says Mr. Mann. "Many people feel betrayed by the misrepresentation of their data."

Indeed, scientists contacted by The Chronicle complained about the way their work was cited by the Harvard-Smithsonian team. Peter deMenocal, an associate professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, used sediment records off the coast of Africa as a proxy for ocean-surface temperatures. He says Mr. Soon and his colleagues could not justify their conclusions that the African record showed the 20th century as being unexceptional.

"My record has no business being used to address that question," the Columbia scientist says. "It displays some ignorance putting it in there to address that question."

David E. Black, an assistant professor of geology at the University of Akron, says Mr. Soon's group did not use his data properly in concluding that the Middle Ages were warm and the 20th century ordinary. Mr. Black's record of plankton in ocean sediment collected off Venezuela provides a proxy record of the strength of trade winds from 1150 to 1989. But "winds don't meet their definition of warm, wet, or dry," he points out.

Contrary to what Mr. Soon's team claims about the Venezuelan data, Mr. Black says he found no 50-year period of medieval extremes in his record. "I think they stretched the data to fit what they wanted to see," he says.
The editor of Energy and Environment also reveals that political factors played a role in her decision to publish the paper (and she's shared similar sentiments with me):
The journal's editor, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, a reader in geography at the University of Hull, in England, says she sometimes publishes scientific papers challenging the view that global warming is a problem, because that position is often stifled in other outlets. "I'm following my political agenda -- a bit, anyway," she says. "But isn't that the right of the editor?"
The CHE article does, though, mistakenly propogate one falsehood:
The bulk of the support for their work came from government agencies, but the scientists also received $53,000 -- about 5 percent of their total research dollars -- from the American Petroleum Institute.
As I wrote earlier, the vast majority of the other money cited by Soon and Baliunas was for scientific studies unrelated to these papers. Indeed, as someone pointed out to me, if this 5% statistic was true this "literature review" would have cost over $1 million to perform!

********************************************

posted 03-14-2004 12:06 AM               

A claim of nonhuman-induced global warming sparks debate

By David Appell Scientific American
24th June 2003

In a contretemps indicative of the political struggle over global climate change, a recent study suggested that humans may not be warming the earth. Greenhouse skeptics, pro-industry groups and political conservatives have seized on the results, proclaiming that the science of climate change is inconclusive and that agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, which set limits on the output of industrial heat-trapping gases, are unnecessary. But mainstream climatologists, as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are perturbed that the report has received so much attention; they say the study's conclusions are scientifically dubious and colored by politics.

Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reviewed more than 200 studies that examined climate "proxy" records--data from such phenomena as the growth of tree rings or coral, which are sensitive to climatic conditions. They concluded in the January Climate Research that "across the world, many records reveal that the 20th century is probably not the warmest nor a uniquely extreme climate period of the last millennium." They said that two extreme climate periods--the Medieval Warming Period between 800 and 1300 and the Little Ice Age of 1300 to 1900--occurred worldwide, at a time before industrial emissions of greenhouse gases became abundant. (A longer version subsequently appeared in the May Energy and Environment.)

Scientists skeptical of human-induced warming applaud the work. "Soon et al. have done a service to the science community," remarks Gary Sharp of the Center for Climate/ Ocean Resources Study in Monterey Bay, Calif., "which is in serious threat of losing all credibility via the IPCC's media management and oversell of the dangers of global warming."

In contrast, the consensus view among paleoclimatologists is that the Medieval Warming Period was a regional phenomenon, that the worldwide nature of the Little Ice Age is open to question and that the late 20th century saw the most extreme global average temperatures. Many of these scientists argue that Soon and Baliunas produced deeply flawed work--and they have criticized it in unusually strident language. "The fact that it has received any attention at all is a result, again in my view, of its utility to those groups who want the global warming issue to just go away," comments Tim Barnett, a marine physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, whose work Soon and Baliunas refer to. Similar sentiments came from Malcolm Hughes of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona, whose work is also discussed: "The Soon et al. paper is so fundamentally misconceived and contains so many egregious errors that it would take weeks to list and explain them all."

Rather than seeing global anomalies, many paleoclimatologists subscribe to the conclusions of Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, Michael Mann of the University of Virginia and their colleagues, who began in 1998 to quantitatively splice together the proxy records. They have concluded that the global average temperature over the past 1,000 years has been relatively stable until the 20th century. "Nothing in the paper undermines in any way the conclusion of earlier studies that the average temperature of the late twentieth century in the Northern Hemisphere was anomalous against the background of the past millennium," wrote Mann and Princeton University's Michael Oppenheimer in a privately circulated statement.

The most significant criticism is that Soon and Baliunas do not present their data quantitatively--instead they merely categorize the work of others primarily into one of two sets: either supporting or not supporting their particular definitions of a Medieval Warming Period or Little Ice Age. "I was stating outright that I'm not able to give too many quantitative details, especially in terms of aggregating all the results," Soon says.

Specifically, they define a "climatic anomaly" as a period of 50 or more years of wetness or dryness or sustained warmth (or, for the Little Ice Age, coolness). The problem is that under this broad definition a wet or dry spell would indicate a climatic anomaly even if the temperature remained perfectly constant. Soon and Baliunas are "mindful" that the Medieval Warming Period and the Little Ice Age should be defined by temperature, but "we emphasize that great bias would result if those thermal anomalies were to be dissociated" from other climatic conditions. (Asked to define "wetness" and "dryness," Soon and Baliunas say only that they "referred to the standard usage in English.")

Moreover, their results were nonsynchronous: "Their analysis doesn't consider whether the warm/cold periods occurred at the same time," says Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the U.K.ís Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research in Bracknell. For example, if a proxy record indicated that a drier condition existed in one part of the world from 800 to 850, it would be counted as equal evidence for a Medieval Warming Period as a different proxy record that showed wetter conditions in another part of the world from 1250 to 1300. Regional conditions do not necessarily mirror the global average, Stott notes: "Iceland and Greenland had their warmest periods in the 1930s, whereas the warmest for the globe was the 1990s."

Soon and Baliunas also take issue with the IPCC by contending that the 20th century saw no unique patterns: they found few climatic anomalies in the proxy records. But they looked for 50-year-long anomalies; the last century's warming, the IPCC concludes, occurred in two periods of about 30 years each (with cooling in between). The warmest period occurred in the late 20th century--too short to meet Soon and Baliunasís selected requirement. The two researchers also discount thermometer readings and "give great weight to the paleo data for which the uncertainties are much greater," Stott says.

posted 03-14-2004 12:15 AM               

Not likely...but how very, VERY embarrassing.

http://www.agiweb.org/geotimes/sept03/NN_debate.html

Climate debate in the journals, on the Hill

On July 2, the World Meteorological Organization issued a statement saying that the number and intensity of weather extremes experienced around the world this year are evidence that global climate change is actually under way.

And while few people disagree that Earth’s surface has warmed over the past few decades, the arguments and accusations start flying when the discussion turns to whether or not the warming is an anomalous result of human activity or part of natural climate change.

The 2003 Iditarod Race ceremonially started in Anchorage as shown here, but the real start had to move farther north this past winter due to one of the warmest winters on record. Two recently published papers challenge the idea that the 20th century has seen unprecedented warmth. Photo by Jeff Schultz, Alaska Stock Images.

The most recent fray took place in the journals, with the publication of two articles in the January Climate Research and Energy & Environment by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues, followed soon after by a scathing rebuttal in Eos. Soon and Baliunas’ two very similar papers challenge the view that natural factors cannot explain recent climate changes, and conclude that the 20th century is neither the warmest century over the last 1,000 years, nor is it the most extreme.

Studying more than 240 research papers published over the past four decades, they wanted to provide a detailed look at climate changes in different regions around the world to help give climate models greater accuracy. “We felt it was time to pull together a large sample of recent studies and look for patterns of variability and change,” Soon said in a press release.

In the July 8 issue of Eos, Michael Mann of the University of Virginia and 12 colleagues in the United States and the United Kingdom refuted Soon and Baliunas’ claims, saying that several reconstructions of large-scale temperature changes over the past millennium show unprecedented warmth in the late 20th century.

“Such anomalous warmth cannot be fully explained by natural factors, but instead, require a significant anthropogenic forcing of climate that emerged during the 19th and 20th centuries,” Mann and co-authors wrote. “There is a compelling basis for concern over future climate change.”

Agreeing with Mann, Climate Research Editor-in-Chief Hans von Storch resigned from the publication in late July, saying that the Soon and Baliunas paper was flawed and should not have been published. Two other editors also resigned over the paper’s publication.

Nonetheless, over the past seven months, decision makers, including the Bush administration and some members of Congress, have used the Soon and Baliunas papers to bolster their arguments on climate change. On July 29, testifying in front of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, Soon said: “There is no convincing evidence from each of the individual climate proxies to suggest that higher temperatures occurred in the 20th century than in the Medieval Warm Period.” During that period, between about A.D. 800 and 1300, industry could not have been a factor.

On the other side of the debate was Mann, arguing that evidence from paleoclimate sources (including tree rings, ice cores, ocean sediments and corals) overwhelmingly supports the unprecedented warmth theory. “This is almost certainly a result of the dramatic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations due to human activity,” he testified.

Hydroclimatologist David Legates of the University of Delaware apologized to the committee for the presence of such heated scientific discussion in a Senate hearing room. “But hopefully a healthy scientific debate will not be compromised, and we can push on towards a better understanding of climate change,” he said.

On July 24, the Bush administration issued a strategic plan for its Climate Change Science Program. The plan pledges resources to assess natural climate variability and reduce uncertainty about the causes and effects of climate change. One specific goal is to seek further knowledge about climate and the role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

The plan has come under harsh criticism from some political leaders. “Too little, too late,” said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) following the plan’s release. “Instead of wasting more time by reopening this debate, the president should be taking action to stop global warming.”

Lieberman has sponsored the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, co-sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), to provide funding for a research program on abrupt climate change and to accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through a cap and trade program. The act was originally offered as an amendment to a major energy bill, but Lieberman and McCain decided to bring the act to a separate vote on the Senate floor at a “later date,” likely in September.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), a co-sponsor of the McCain/Lieberman bill, said in a statement that she is pleased that debate on this crucial issue will occur when the Senate returns in September. “I have said from the beginning, climate change must be part of the energy debate and we must enact a cap and trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions.”

posted 03-14-2004 12:26 AM               

The Disinformation Campaigns of Big Coal -- A Short History

Origins of Fossil Fuel Disinformation Campaigns

From the 1991 "Ice Campaign" run by the coal and utility industries to the Marshall Institute's bogus "Study" of 1998 (which was designed to resemble a National Academy of Sciences document) to the recent efforts of ExxonMobil and Peabody Energy to eviscerate efforts to address the climate crisis, in tandem with the Bush White House, the fossil fuel lobby and its ideological supporters have waged a relentless campaign of deception and disinformation to confuse people about the reality of warming-driven climate change.

In March, 2000, however, the campaign suffered a serious setback when the Global Climate Coalition, the main industry lobbying group, suffered major defections. More than a year after British Petroleum and Shell left the group, it was abandoned by Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, The Southern Company, and General Motors. While many of these companies said they still opposed the Kyoto Protocol, their defections nevertheless represented an enormous victory for environmental and religious activists.

The GCC announced it will re-constitute itself as an umbrella group for trade associations rather than individual companies. Since it includes such groups as The American Petroleum Institute, the Automobile Manufacturers' Association and Western Fuels, it is still possible that many auto, coal and oil companies might still support its efforts to prevent the U.S. from taking any meaningful steps to address the climate crisis.

The group has spent more than $63 million to combat any progress toward addressing the climate crisis -- including a $13 million ad campaign in 1997 to support a Senate resolution against ratification of the Kyoto Protocol.

The reason is obvious.

The stabilization of the global climate requires a 70 percent cut in our fossil fuel emissions. That magnitude of reduction threatens the survival, in its present form, of the fossil fuel industry -- one of the largest commercial enterprises in history.

Since 1991, the fossil fuel lobby has attacked mainstream climate science, primarily through its use of a tiny handful of "greenhouse skeptics." It has also misrepresented the economics. Most recently, it has attacked the diplomatic foundations of the international climate convention.

The Western Fuels Association -- a $400 million coal cooperative -- is one of the leaders in this campaign of disinformation. Western Fuels has been quite candid about its attack on mainstream science. In one annual report, it declared: "...[T]here has been a close to universal impulse in the [fossil fuel] trade association community in Washington to concede the scientific premise of global warming...while arguing over policy prescriptions that would be the least disruptive to our economy...We have disagreed, and do disagree, with this strategy." As a result, Western Fuels has waged an unceasing war against mainstream science for the last eight years.

The Global Climate Coalition -- a lobbying group that represents fossil fuel, automotive and heavy industry interests -- has also been very active in spreading misleading information about the climate crisis.

A third institution that has contributed significantly public confusion on the climate issue is the George C. Marshall Institute, an extreme, politically conservative institute which maintains that the climate crisis is basically a liberal plot to subvert the U.S. economy.

Taken together, the various campaigns of disinformation have been extraordinarily successful in maintaining a relentless drumbeat of doubt in the public mind about the reality of global climate change.

Most recently, the main purveyors of disinformation on the climate have been funded by ExxonMobil, which funds a number of skeptics and an array of policy institutes which continue either to deny the reality of climate change or to minimize its importance.

By keeping the discussion focused on whether or not there is a problem, the fossil fuel lobby has effectively prevented discussion in the U.S. about what to do about it.

*******************************************

You still owe 40 ! Nobel laureates who subscribe to your warming hoax hypothesis Ferreyra.

posted 03-14-2004 12:38 AM               

Climate Change

You may recall that recently the White House altered a report on Global Warming,
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release.cfm?newsID=267

replacing a statement that temperatures have risen significantly in the last decades with a reference to a paper by two astronomers, Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas. The Soon and Baliunas paper argues that

...These results offer strong evidence that the climate of the 20th century was not unusual, but fell within the range experienced during the past 1,000 years...The available scientific evidence does not support the claim that the climate of the 20th century was unusual when compared to the climate of the previous 900 years.

That paper, its methodology, and its conclusion have been widely criticized:

Leading Climate Scientists Reaffirm View that Late 20th Century Warming Was Unusual and Resulted From Human Activity
http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl0319.html

CLIMATE STUDY: EMBRACED BY WHITE HOUSE, BUT TRASHED BY EDITOR
http://www.aps.org/WN/WN03/wn080103.cfm

Now, in his weekly newsletter, physicist Bob Park gives us some important background on Soon and Baliunas:

To appreciate its [the S&B paper] significance, we need to go back to March of 1998. We [presumably, members of the American Physical Society] all got a petition card in the mail urging the government to reject the Kyoto accord (WN 13 Mar 98). The cover letter was signed by "Frederick Seitz, Past President, National Academy of Sciences." Enclosed was what seemed to be a reprint of a journal article, in the style and font of Proceedings of the NAS. But it had not been published in PNAS, or anywhere else. The reprint was a fake. Two of the four authors of this non- article were Soon and Baliunas...The article claimed that the environmental effects of increased CO2 are all beneficial...It was a dark episode in the annals of scientific discourse.
Read the first part of Park's newsletter for a little insight into how the current administration chooses among conflicting scientific--or purportedly scientific--reports.

posted 03-14-2004 10:55 AM               

“You still owe 40 ! Nobel laureates who subscribe to your warming hoax hypothesis Ferreyra.
Having trouble backing up your claims?

How could I have trouble backing up any claims on a subject I ignored completely? I was sleeping while Poor Throatie went banging frantically at his keyboard trying to make me look as desperate for not having examples of Nobel Laureates that opposes the warming hoax.

As shown by his desperate move into Phase II of posting political propaganda – because his flawed science has been totally debunked by me – Poor Throatie’s days in this discussion are reaching to an end.

posted 03-14-2004 11:47 AM            

BYE BYE.

posted 03-14-2004 12:00 PM               

In your dreams Ferreyra.

I'm just warming up.

And you and your kind are right in my sights.

You can run, but you can't hide.

*********************************************
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-edpweaver11031104mar11,1,2565222.story

Abrupt climate change
Cutting back on fossil fuels urgent for national security

By Lynn E. Weaver

A new element has been added to the debate over global warming, taking it far beyond the realm of just another environmental issue. Scientific experts and even specialists in the Pentagon are recognizing it as a major threat to our economy and even our national security.

It's clearly time for the government to recognize the urgency, to stop the delaying and rationalizing, and to set the country on a clear strategy of cutting back sharply on the amounts of fossil fuels that we burn.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Robert Gagosian, director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, said that policy-makers must begin considering the possibility that abrupt climate change could begin taking place within the next two decades. This could have massive implications for our society and our economy.

And now the Pentagon's strategic planners are apparently taking the threat seriously and recognizing the risk to our national security. Defense Department analysts are examining the potential impact of violent weather patterns and the economic, social and political upheavals that could result. Recent studies show warming's impact in the Arctic, where the sea ice is in retreat, and its potentially devastating effect on Alaska's fragile tundra. Climate researchers say that some regions of the world could be hit by megadroughts, while unpredictable monsoons in others could cause catastrophic flooding.

Beyond the economic destruction that could be visited on the United States, the damage to developing countries might make the problems between "have" and "have-not" nations far more severe, leading to increased world unrest.

Rather than recognize the urgency of this threat, politicians continue to see it as a pawn in their verbal battles. They use it to score points, usually without taking the implications seriously or proposing solutions that have any chance of actually working.

The problem is simple. The industrialized world, and particularly the United States, is burning vast quantities of fossil fuels -- oil, coal and natural gas -- which release carbon dioxide and heat up the environment. The challenge is to back off from fossil fuels and make greater use of energy sources that release little or no greenhouse gases.

Unfortunately, politicians who lean to the right largely ignore the problem and try to wish it away. If they pose any solutions, they are long-term -- nothing that would change our energy-use patterns today. They seem to want us to produce and burn more oil, gas and coal, not use less.

And just as unfortunately, politicians who lean to the left tend to grossly simplify the issue. They pretend that if we voluntarily cut back on our energy use, drive smaller cars and begin relying more on alternative-energy sources like wind and the sun, the problem will disappear. They don't want to acknowledge the obvious -- that solar and wind alone cannot meet the enormous energy needs of our cities or our transportation.

If we were taking the climate-change risk seriously, there would be a national energy strategy -- with adequate resources committed -- to meet it. Our government officials would be informing and motivating the public to support it. And it would be based not on one or two simplistic slogans, but on the full range of alternatives that will be necessary to meet this pressing problem.

The plan would provide greater incentives for all of us to use energy more efficiently and cut back further on waste. And it would encourage the use of solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable-energy sources everywhere they make technical and economic sense. Beyond that the strategy would speed up the development of hydrogen-fuel cells, especially as fuel for automobiles, and expand the use of nuclear power, which provides carbon-free energy.

The new advanced design of nuclear-power plants offer even greater benefits, in terms of cost, reliability, safety and security. And over the long term, they can produce the hydrogen that can help replace fossil fuels in automobiles.

Time is a key factor in the introduction of new energy sources, for it takes 15 to 20 years before they can have a major impact on our energy budget.

The country needs to act now to ensure social stability and national security.

Lynn E. Weaver is the president emeritus of the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. He wrote this commentary for the Orlando Sentinel.

posted 03-14-2004 12:45 PM            

Yes. And we should have started 30 years ago to lay the foundation for what is now going to be a very difficult process given current political and economic realities. It didn't have to be this way.

posted 03-14-2004 01:40 PM               

What we have today campers is more "Aviation-Induced High Cirrus Clouds producing Filtered Sunshine"

You gotta like that term, "Filtered Sunshine".

Interesting how commonplace that has become by our daily weather-readers.

posted 03-14-2004 02:56 PM            

Much the same way that certain former cat-callers from this forum accept cancer and disease as normal, as well as perpetual war.

posted 03-14-2004 03:54 PM            

Throatie: I was banned/censored by Mech. It makes you look as defeated, because I have not the chance to reply accordingly to your arguments. Too bad, as I mentioned to halva the use of Nazi-like techniques of censorship. It is a pity you didn’t dare to accept my challenge to discuss the "global warming/anthropogenic induced climatic instability" issue in Sciforums.com, a place where you wouldn’t have the backup of your chemtrails cohorts, where press releases don’t count, and where you would really have to provide scientific evidence of all your bragging. If you are man enough, go here and show how much your science is worth:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=534875#post534875

Poor Throatie provided this list of Nobel Laureates that supposedly support the "Catastrophic Global Warming hypothesis". I must point out that Philip W. Anderson, 1977 for Physics, is not a supporter of the hypothesis. He, and Dr. Leon Lederman, also in Throatie list, are signers of the Heidelberg Appeal in 1993, scientists rejecting the catastrophic views of the green eco-paranoids.

But here is what all Poor Throatie’s Nobel laureates did for getting their Nobel Prize, activities not related at all with climatology, and this alone, makes their opinion as good as your next door neighbor, or as mine, or as Throatie’s. I will listen carefully to what they have to say in their field of expertise, but their opinion on climate change or global warming is at the level of their opinions on who’s best: the San Antonio Spurs, or Los Angeles Lakers:

Philip W. Anderson 1977, Physics, “for their fundamental theoretical investigations of the electronic structure of magnetic and disordered systems"
Jerome Friedman, 1990, Physics: “for their pioneering investigations concerning deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons and bound neutrons, which have been of essential importance for the development of the quark model in particle physics"
Leon Lederman, 1988, Physics for "for the neutrino beam method and the demonstration of the doublet structure of the leptons through the discovery of the muon neutrino"
J. Robert Schrieffer, 1972, Physics, for "for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory"
Mario Molina, 1995, chemistry, for "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone"
F. Sherwood Rowland, 1995, Chemistry for: "for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone"
David Baltimore, 1975, Medicine, “for their discoveries concerning the interaction between tumour viruses and the genetic material of the cell.
Paul Berg, 1980, Chemistry, "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA"
Walter Kohn, 1998, Chemistry, for “for his development of the density-functional theory"
Richard Smalley, 1996, Chemistry, for "for their discovery of fullerenes"
Harold E. Varmus, Physiology or Medicine 1989. "for their discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes".
Kenneth Arrow, 1972, in Economics
Gerard Debreu 1983 in Economics
John Harsanyi, 1994, Economics.
Lawrence Klein, 1980, Economics.
Wassily Leontief, 1973, Economics
Franco Modigliani, 1985, Economics
Robert Solow, 1987, Economics
James Tobin, 1981, Economics

Too bad, Poor Thoatie has chosen people that know about global warming what’s written in your famous press releases. He is doing a very lousy job in his promotion of the catastrophic climate change agenda.

But Poor Throatie asked for 40 Nobel Laureates. Here they are. They have signed the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992, and the Petition Project, that Petition Sore Throat hates so much, because it states that the catastrophic warming theory is lacking any scientific basis.

Please note that, in this alphabetic list, the number 40 is just at the letter “M”. If you restore my posting privileges, I will provide another 32 more – just for starting a longer list.

posted 03-14-2004 04:28 PM               

None.

Let's dig a little deeper into the "realities" of the co-called Heidelberg Appeal:
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Heidelberg%20Appeal

The Heidelberg Appeal, authored by Michel Salomon and signed by a number of leading scientists, is a statement decrying "an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress, and impedes economic and social development." Issued to coincide with the opening of the United Nations-sponsored "Earth Summit" in Rio de Janiero in 1992, the Appeal stated that its signers "share the objectives of the 'Earth Summit'" but advised "the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data. ... The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology and Industry."

A version of the Heidelberg Appeal was published in the June 1, 1992 Wall Street Journal over the signatures of 46 prominent scientists and other intellectuals. It has subsequently been endorsed by some 4,000 scientists, including 72 Nobel Prize winners. It has also been enthusiastically embraced by critics of the environmental movement such as S. Fred Singer 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. [b]Conservative think tanks frequently cite the Heidelberg Appeal as proof that scientists reject the theory of global warming as well as a host of other environmental health risks associated with modern science and industry. Its name has subsequently been adopted by the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland Foundation, which was founded in 1993 and disputes health risks related to nitrates in foods and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. However, the Heidelberg Appeal itself makes no mention whatsoever of global warming, or for that matter of pesticides or antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It is simply a statement supporting rationality and science.

Parts of the Heidelberg Appeal in fact appear to endorse environmental concerns, such as a sentence that states, "We fully subscribe to the objectives of a scientific ecology for a universe whose resources must be taken stock of, monitored and preserved." Its 72 Nobel laureates include 49 who also signed the "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity," which was circulated that same year by the liberal Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and attracted the majority of the world's living Nobel laureates in science along with some 1,700 other leading scientists. In contrast with the vagueness of the Heidelberg Appeal, the "World Scientists' Warning" is a very explicit environmental manifesto, stating that "human beings and the natural world are on a collision course" and citing ozone depletion, global climate change, air pollution, groundwater depletion, deforestation, overfishing, and species extinction among the trends that threaten to "so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in the manner that we know." More recently, 110 Nobel Prize-winning scientists signed another UCS petition, the 1997 "Call to Action," which called specifically on world leaders to sign an effective global warming treaty at Kyoto.

One notable signer of the Heidelberg Appeal was the late Linus Pauling, the world's only recipient of two Nobel Prizes (for chemistry and for peace). At the time the Appeal was circulated, Pauling had become associated with a controversial nutritional theory that advocated massive daily consumption of vitamin C. Although his earlier work is widely praised, his theories regarding vitamin C have been almost universally dismissed as pseudoscience. It appears, therefore, that (1) even Nobel laureates sometimes practice pseudoscience, and (2) even the practitioners of pseudoscience believe they are against it.

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the Heidelberg Appeal itself makes no mention whatsoever of global warming, or for that matter of pesticides or antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It is simply a statement supporting rationality and science

Exposed again Ferreyra.

And for the record, you defeat yourself through your blatant distortion of fact.

And it is so easy to prove.

********************************************

"But Poor Throatie asked for 40 Nobel Laureates. Here they are. They have signed the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992, and the Petition Project, that Petition Sore Throat hates so much, because it states that the catastrophic warming theory is lacking any scientific basis."

For those interested, here is a copy of the
The Heidelberg Appeal. Note that nothing is said ragarding global warming. This is just the latest example of gross distortion of fact by Eduardo Ferreyra.

To Heads of States and Governments

We want to make our full contribution to the preservation of our common heritage, the Earth.

We are however worried, at the dawn of the 21st century, at the emergency of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development.

We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by movements with a tendency to look toward the past, does not exist and has probably never existed since man's first appearance in the biosphere, insofar as humanity has always progressed by increasingly harnessing Nature to its needs and not the reverse.

We fully subscribe to the objectives of a scientific ecology for a universe whose resources must be taken stock of, monitored, and preserved. But we herewith demand that this stocktaking, monitoring, and preservation be founded on scientific criteria and not on irrational preconceptions.

We stress that many essential human activities are carried out either by manipulating hazardous substances or in their proximity, and that progress and development have always involved increasing control over hostile forces, to the benefit of mankind.

We therefore consider that scientific ecology is no more than an extension of this continual progress toward the improved life of future generations.

We intend to assert science's responsibility and duties toward society as a whole.

We do however; forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet's destiny against decisions, which are supported by pseudoscientific arguments or false and non-relevant data.

We draw everybody's attention to the absolute necessity of helping poor countries attain a level of sustainable development which matches that of the rest of the planet, protecting them from troubles and dangers stemming from developed nations, and avoiding their entanglement in a web of unrealistic obligations which would compromise both their independence and their dignity.

The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are ignorance and oppression, and not Science, Technology, and Industry whose instruments, when adequately managed, are indispensable tools of a future shaped by humanity, by itself and for itself, overcoming major problems like overpopulation, starvation and worldwide diseases.

posted 03-14-2004 04:42 PM               

Monterey, Calif., scientists fertilize ocean with iron

Aim of experiments is to increase plankton

By QUINN EASTMAN
Monterey (Calif.) Herald

In experiments that could help counteract global warming, oceanographers from Monterey County have been dribbling dissolved iron into the Pacific Ocean as fertilizer to promote the growth of plankton.

While some scientists say the proposed geoengineering plan could have disastrous side effects, researchers have agreed that the iron-fertilization experiments will continue on a small scale because of their value in teaching scientists about ocean ecology and chemistry.

Ken Johnson of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute organized a discussion of iron fertilization at last week's American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Seattle. He led a three-ship research cruise to the Pacific Ocean south of New Zealand in 2002 along with Kenneth Coale, director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and Ken Buessler from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

Coale described the results of their 2002 iron fertilization experiment, the latest of about eight that have been conducted around the world since 1993.

They spread iron in two 15 kilometer by 15 kilometer squares and monitored the growth of plankton and the chemistry of the water. In Seattle, Coale showed pictures of the ships, which appeared small next to nearby icebergs, and vats of iron sulfate solution on the decks. He said the experiment was the first to measure plankton growth in parts of the ocean where the amounts of nutrients besides iron varied.

"This allows us to extrapolate how iron fertilization would affect larger expanses of the ocean," Coale said.

A remaining issue that previous iron fertilization experiments have not been able to pin down, he said, is exactly how much carbon sinks down to the bottom of the ocean long-term. He said oceanographers expect a German expedition to the Southern Pacific this year to begin to answer those questions.

John Martin at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories proposed the basic idea of iron fertilization, but he died in 1993 before getting a chance to physically test it. He had found that the main nutrient limiting the growth of plankton in 40 percent of the world's oceans was iron.

By adding iron, scientists could make plankton grow and soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. If enough plankton sank deep into the ocean without being eaten by other life, planetary engineers could offset the gases humans make with their cars and electricity plants. Carbon dioxide in car exhaust is a major greenhouse gas.

In Ken Johnson's presentation, he noted that drilling through ice in Antarctica and examining the bubbles in the ice have allowed scientists to plot the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. The amount goes down in ice ages and up in warm periods. The current concentration, Johnson said, was above the maximum seen for the last half-million years.

Iron levels, as measured by the amounts of soil and dust in the Antarctic ice, also swung up and down through Earth's recent history. Iron levels moved the opposite direction as carbon dioxide with each swing. What scientists need to learn more about, Johnson said, is how powerful a motor iron is in driving climate change. He said that current models are inaccurate, failing to take into account the upwelling of nutrients near coastlines or how plankton secrete chemicals that help iron dissolve.

Regardless of the uncertainty, scientists know enough about the expected side effects of iron fertilization to say it's a bad idea, said Sallie Chisholm, an oceanographer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"It's not the answer," she said. "And there's no going back." Although she said it's a valuable research tool, she predicted that iron fertilization of the southern oceans on a large scale would ruin fish production elsewhere. It also might increase the production of other greenhouse gases, she said.

Mike Landry from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego countered with the suggestion that iron fertilization might be used in a limited way to mitigate the effects of global warming. He mentioned the Northern Pacific near Alaska as a place where the effects of global warming will begin to disrupt local marine life. He urged closer attention be paid to larger animals like fish and whales in future iron fertilization experiments.

posted 03-14-2004 05:11 PM               

What about the 19,000 scientists who claim we should not worry about global warming?
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/page.cfm?pageID=498

Fiction: There is no scientific consensus on climate change. Just look at the 19,000 scientists who signed on to the Global Warming Petition Project.

Fact: In the spring of 1998, mailboxes of US scientists flooded with packet from the "Global Warming Petition Project," including a reprint of a Wall Street Journal op-ed "Science has spoken: Global Warming Is a Myth," a copy of a faux scientific article claiming that "increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have no deleterious effects upon global climate," a short letter signed by past-president National Academy of Sciences, Frederick Seitz, and a short petition calling for the rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on the grounds that a reduction in carbon dioxide "would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind."

The sponsor, little-known Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, tried to beguile unsuspecting scientists into believing that this packet had originated from the National Academy of the Sciences, both by referencing Seitz's past involvement with the NAS and with an article formatted to look as if it was a published article in the Academy's Proceedings, which it was not. The NAS quickly distanced itself from the petition project, issuing a statement saying, "the petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."

The petition project was a deliberate attempt to mislead scientists and to rally them in an attempt to undermine support for the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was not based on a review of the science of global climate change, nor were its signers experts in the field of climate science. In fact, the only criterion for signing the petition was a bachelor's degree in science. The petition resurfaced in early 2001 in an renewed attempt to undermine international climate treaty negotiations.

********************************************
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environment/global_warming/page.cfm?pageID=499

Responding to Global Warming Skeptics
-- Prominent Skeptics Organizations

Global Climate Coalition
[ http://www.globalclimate.org/index.htm ]

Founded in 1989 by 46 corporations and trade associations representing all major elements of US industry, the GCC presents itself as a "voice for business in the global warming debate." The group funded several flawed studies on the economics of the cost of mitigating climate change, which formed the basis of their 1997/1998 multi-million dollar advertising campaign against the Kyoto Protocol. The GCC began to unravel in 1997 when British Petroleum withdrew its membership. Since then many other corporations have followed BP s lead and left the coalition. This exodus reached a fevered pitch in the early months of 2000 when DaimlerChrysler, Texaco and General Motors all announced their exodus from the GCC. Since these desertions, the GCC restructured and remains a powerful and well-funded force focused on obstructing meaningful efforts to mitigate climate change.

Spin: Global Warming is real, but it is too expensive to do anything about. The Kyoto Protocol is fundamentally flawed.

Funding: Corporate members (industries, trade associations etc.)

George Marshall Institute [ http://www.marshall.org ]

This conservative think tank shifted its focus from Star Wars to climate change in the late 1980s. In 1989, the Marshall Institute released a report claiming that "cyclical variations in the intensity of the sun would offset any climate change associated with elevated greenhouse gases." Though refuted by the IPCC, the report was very influential in influencing the Bush Sr. Administration s climate change policy. The Marshall Institute has since published numerous reports downplaying the severity of global climate change.

Spin: Blame the Sun. The Kyoto Protocol is fatally flawed.

Affiliated Individuals: Sallie Baliunas, an astrophysicist from Harvard; and Frederick Seitz.

Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine

The Marshall Institute co-sponsored with the OISM a deceptive campaign -- known as the Petition Project -- to undermine and discredit the scientific authority of the IPCC and to oppose the Kyoto Protocol. Early in the spring of 1998, thousands of scientists around the country received a mass mailing urging them to sign a petition calling on the government to reject the Kyoto Protocol. The petition was accompanied by other pieces including an article formatted to mimic the journal of the National Academy of Sciences. Subsequent research revealed that the article had not been peer-reviewed, nor published, nor even accepted for publication in that journal and the Academy released a strong statement disclaiming any connection to this effort and reaffirming the reality of climate change. The Petition resurfaced in 2001.

Spin: There is no scientific basis for claims about global warming. IPCC is a hoax. Kyoto is flawed.

Funding: Petition was funded by private sources.

Affiliated Individuals: Arthur B. Robinson, Sallie L. Baliunas, Frederick Seitz

Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP) [ http://www.sepp.org ]

Founded in 1990 by widely publicized climate skeptic S. Fred Singer, SEPP s stated purpose is to "document the relationship between scientific data and the development of federal environmental policy." SEPP has mounted a sizeable media campaign -- publishing articles, letters to the editor, and a large number of press releases -- to discredit the issues of global warming, ozone depletion, and acid rain.

Spin: Moreover, climate change won t be bad for us anyway. Action on climate change is not warranted because of shaky science and flawed policy approaches.

Funding: Conservative foundations including Bradley, Smith Richardson, and Forbes. SEPP has also been directly tied to ultra right-wing mogul Reverend Sung Myung Moon s Unification Church, including receipt of a year s free office space from a Moon-funded group and the participation of SEPP s director in church-sponsored conferences and on the board of a Moon-funded magazine.

Affiliated Individuals:S. Fred Singer,Frederick Seitz

Greening Earth Society [ http://greeningearthsociety.org ]

The Greening Earth Society (GES) was founded on Earth Day 1998 by the Western Fuels Association to promote the view that increasing levels of atmospheric CO2 are good for humanity. GES and Western Fuels are essentially the same organization. Both used to be located at the same office suite in Arlington, VA. Until December 2000, Fred Palmer chaired both institutions. The GES is now chaired by Bob Norrgard, another long-term Western Fuels associate. The Western Fuels Assocation (WFA) is a cooperative of coal-dependent utilities in the western states that works in part to discredit climate change science and to prevent regulations that might damage coal-related industries.

Spin: CO2 emissions are good for the planet; coal is the best energy source we have.

Affiliated Individuals: Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling, David Wojick, Sallie Baliunas, Sylvan Wittwer, John Daley, Sherwood Idso

Funding: The Greening Earth Society receives its funding from the Western Fuels Association, which in turn receives its funding from its coal and utility company members.

Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide & Global Change [http://www.CO2science.org]

The Center claims to "disseminate factual reports and sound commentary on new developments in the world-wide scientific quest to determine the climactic and biological consequences of the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content." The Center is led by two brothers, Craig and Keith Idso. Their father, Sherwood Idso, is affiliated with the Greening Earth Society; the Center also shares a board member (Sylvan Wittwer) with GES. Both Idso brothers have been on the Western Fuels payroll at one time or another.

Spin: Increased levels of CO2 will help plants, and that's good.

Funding: The Center is extremely secretive of its funding sources, stating that it is their policy not to divulge it funders. There is evidence for a strong connection to the Greening Earth Society (ergo Western Fuels Association).

Affiliated Individuals: Craig Idso, Keith Idso, Sylvan Wittwer

posted 03-14-2004 06:23 PM            

quote:

---

It appears, therefore, that (1) even Nobel laureates sometimes practice pseudoscience, and (2) even the practitioners of pseudoscience believe they are against it.

---

But what do you care? You had me banned from the forum so you could still post your garbage unmolested by scientific facts that disprove your bragging. Go and face me at Scieforums.com and let us see what happens. Chicken!

As for the Union of Concerned Scientists (just 1% of them are scientists!) they have, as usual, distorted the facts to suit their own agenda. As Sore Throat does. Cut by the same scissors…

The letter sent by Frederick Seitz is posted below. It was sent by Dr. Seitz, it was clear that the National Academy of Sciences did not take part of the Petition, and all scientists that signed the petition, knew this, were well aware of the issue, and had read the study by ARTHUR B. ROBINSON, SALLIE L. BALIUNAS, WILLIE SOON, and ZACHARY W. ROBINSON. That is available for you to read – if you are interested in analyzing the sound of a different bell. (I don’t think you are interested in becoming heretics in your religion).

The Abstract is this:

ABSTRACT

A review of the research literature concerning the environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the 20th Century have produced no deleterious effects upon global weather, climate, or temperature. Increased carbon dioxide has, however, markedly increased plant growth rates. Predictions of harmful climatic effects due to future increases in minor greenhouse gases like CO2 are in error and do not conform to current experimental knowledge.

And the link is: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

The Petition Project said this:

And the links to the scientists signing the Petition, here are the first two links. When you get there you’ll see the rest of the alphabet.

Letter A: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p333.htm
Letter B: http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p334.htm

posted 03-14-2004 07:49 PM            

The CO2 Capture Project
http://www.co2captureproject.org/overview/overview.htm

OVERVIEW

The prospect of global climate change is a matter of genuine public concern. The concentration of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing since the start of industrialization in the 19th century, and more rapidly during the second half of the 20th century. Despite uncertainty about the relationship between increased CO2 concentration and rising global temperatures, a consensus view is forming that mankind is having a discernible effect on the climate..... [continued]

And the participating companies:
http://www.co2captureproject.org/contacts/contacts.htm

TAKE-HOME MESSAGE:

The escalating atmospheric concentration of man-made CO2 will be acknowledged as a genuine concern IF the energy companies can continue to profit. In this case the Bush administration's favored solution to the problem of excess atmospheric CO2 is to stuff it into every available orifice on this planet. If you want more information on CO2 burial at sea and underground all you need to do is type

carbon sequestration

into a search engine and take it from there. There are plenty of references on this matter.

Is this the kind of solution people want?
http://pub8.ezboard.com/fchemtrailschemtrails.showMessage?topicID=7385.topic

posted 03-15-2004 12:04 PM               

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ! !! ! ! !

Coal and oil company idiots forcing their glttonous greed to drive the enviroment to ruin.

posted 03-15-2004 01:45 PM            

Cataloging these people is one thing, but do we really have to remember them?

And what the heck is Stu Allsop/Edufer/ Jackboot doing back? More spitting and hissing from the bleachers?

Here's is a definition of them:

posted 03-15-2004 02:14 PM               

Just another example of an "Unanticipated Consequence".

What a surprise...the skeptics didn't really have all the bases covered.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3499500.stm

Amazon carbon sink effect 'slows'

Scientists have sounded the alarm after spotting changes in the environment in Brazil's tropical rain forests.

They say they have found worrying signs that the forests may become less able to absorb the carbon dioxide emissions blamed for global warming.

Their long-term study in supposedly pristine areas reveals trees have been growing and dying faster than before.

The trends could have consequences for other plant and animal species, the authors warn in the journal Nature.

The Amazon accounts for more than half of the world's remaining rainforests.

They are thought to limit the greenhouse effect of global warming by storing carbon and hence reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

'Not random'

Scientists from Brazil and the US detected the changes while engaged on a 20-year study of the effects of rain forest clearance by humans.

They marked out plots in the central Amazon region, tagged almost 14,000 trees with a girth of more than 10 centimetres (four inches) and monitored their growth.

But it was in "control" areas, where there was no human activity such as logging or burning, that they discovered that bigger, quicker-growing species were flourishing at the expense of the smaller ones living below the forest canopy.

"It is clear that this is not random variation. Rainforest dynamics are changing," said William Laurance, of the Smithsonian Tropical Institute, who led the study.

Plant growth requires carbon dioxide, and the researchers speculate that the Amazon trees are getting an extra boost from the rising levels of the gas caused by vehicle exhausts, factory emissions and other industrial processes.

Call for more research

"Undisturbed Amazonian forests appear to be functioning as an important carbon sink, helping to slow global warming, but pervasive changes in tree communities could modify this effect," the study says.

"In particular, increases in forest carbon storage may be slowed by the tendency of canopy and emergent trees to produce wood of reduced density as their size and growth rate increases, and by the decline of densely wooded sub-canopy trees."

The changing composition of supposedly "untouched" rain forest would also have an effect on other inhabitants.

"Tropical rainforests are renowned for having lots of highly specialised species. If you change the tree communities then other species - especially the animals that feed on and pollinate the trees - will undoubtedly change as well," Mr Laurance was quoted as saying.

The scientists say their findings could have global consequences and that more research is urgently needed in other tropical forests.

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/3499500.stm

posted 03-15-2004 06:27 PM               

Damage from Warming Becoming 'Irreversible,' Says New Report

Jim Lobe, OneWorld US

WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 15 (OneWorld) -- Ten years after the ratification of a United Nations (news - web sites) treaty on climate change, greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming are still on the rise, signaling a "collective failure" of the industrialized world, according to the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI), a leading environmental think-tank.

"We are quickly moving to the point where the damage will be irreversible," warned Dr. Jonathan Pershing, director of WRI's Climate, Energy and Pollution Program. "In fact, the latest scientific reports indicate that global warming is worsening. Unless we act now, the world will be locked into temperatures that would cause irreversible harm."

WRI researchers estimate that greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide rose 11 percent over the last decade, and will grow another 50 percent worldwide by 2020. Under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (news - web sites), the international agreement that sets out specific targets to follow up on the treaty, 38 industrialized countries were supposed to reduce their emissions by an average of seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

The administration of former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) signed the Kyoto Protocol, but President Bush (news - web sites) withdrew the U.S., which currently emits about 25 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, from negotiations over Kyoto's implementation.

Russia, which indicated initially that it intended to ratify the Protocol, remains undecided. As a result the Protocol--which must be ratified by countries whose greenhouse emissions totaled more than 55 percent of global emissions in 1990 in order to take effect--remains in limbo.

WRI decided to make a relatively rare public statement now, both because the tenth anniversary of the UNFCCC's ratification will take place next weekend and because of the growing pessimism surrounding the international community's ability and will to deal with the problem.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which called for voluntary reductions in greenhouse emissions, was signed by, among others, then-President George H.W. Bush, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and took formal effect March 21, 1994. Today, 188 countries are signatories.

The Kyoto Protocol grew out of the UNFCCC when it became clear that plans for voluntary reductions would not meet the initial targets, and as climate and atmospheric scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have become increasingly convinced that the rise in global temperatures of about one degree Fahrenheit over the last century is due primarily to artificial emissions, notably the combustion of fossil fuels, including coal, oil, and gas.

Studies over the past decade have shown that the warming trend continues. "The five warmest years in recorded weather history have taken place over the last six years," noted WRI's president, Jonathan Lash.

"The ten warmest years in recorded weather history have taken place since 1987. Whether it's the retreat of glaciers, the melting of the permafrost in Alaska, or the increase in severe weather events, the world is experiencing what the global warming models predict," he said.

Europe, the main champion of the Kyoto Protocol, suffered its hottest year on record last year. Some 15,000 people in France alone died due to heat stress in combination with pollution, while European agriculture suffered an estimated $12.5 billion in losses.

Britain's most influential scientist, Sir David King, recently excoriated the Bush administration for withdrawing from the Protocol and ignoring the threat posed by climate change. "In my view, climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today," he wrote in Science magazine, "more serious even than the threat of terrorism."

Even the Pentagon (news - web sites) recently issued a warning that global warming, if it takes place abruptly, could result in a catastrophic breakdown in international security. Based on growing evidence that climate shifts in the past have taken place with breathtaking speed, based on the freshening of sea water due to accelerated melting of glaciers and the polar ice caps.

Given enough freshening, the Gulf Stream that currently warms the North Atlantic would be shut off, triggering an abrupt decline in temperatures that would bring about a new "Ice Age" in Europe, eastern Canada, and the northeastern United States and similar disastrous changes in world weather patterns elsewhere--all in a period as short as two to three years.

Wars over access to food, water, and energy would be likely to break out between states, according to the report. "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life," according to the report. "Once again, warfare would define human life."

Even if climate change is more gradual, recent studies have argued that as many as one million plant and animal species could be rendered extinct due to the effects of global warming by 2050. A recent report by the world's largest reinsurance company, Swiss Re, predicted that in 10 years the economic cost of disasters like floods, frosts, and famines caused by global warming could reach $150 billion annually.

"Accelerated development of a portfolio of technologies could stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, enhance global energy security, and eradicate energy poverty," noted David Jhirad, WRI's vice president for research. "We urgently need the political will and international cooperation to make this happen."

posted 03-15-2004 06:32 PM               

CLIMATE CHANGE:
All Downhill From Here?

Kevin Krajick*

Biologists say climate change may already be affecting high-mountain ecosystems around the world, where plants and animals adapted to cold, barren conditions now face higher temperatures and a surge of predators and competitors

Pikas are the essence of cuteness: The miniature, pink-eared cousins of rabbits nibble on flowers, greet visitors with high-pitched squeaks, and scamper like curious chipmunks. They are also some of the world's toughest mammals, dwelling beneath boulder piles on high, treeless peaks where winter winds howl most of the year and the herbage of brief summer is too scant to attract lowland competitors.
Pikas thrive where it's cold and bare. So it's no surprise to some biologists that, as global temperatures rise, the pikas' numbers are nose-diving in far-flung mountain ranges.

Alpine ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to climate change, and recent studies suggest that mountain dwellers--from delicate flowers in the Swiss Alps to pygmy possums in Australia--are in trouble. Although it can be difficult to tease out other factors, including fire suppression and livestock grazing, a growing number of researchers fear that if the heat keeps rising, many alpine plants and animals will face quick declines or extinction.

"People always thought the whole world could go to hell, and pikas would be fine. Actually, they may be canaries in the coal mine," says wildlife biologist Andrew Smith of Arizona State University in Tempe.

Initial findings have prompted a surge of studies of the alpine--the high windswept regions above the timberline--and researchers are beginning to coordinate their efforts. They are finding that creatures everywhere are responding to warming, but mountain biota, like cold-loving polar species, have fewer options for coping (Science, 19 January 2001, p. 424).

Global average temperatures have increased by 0.6ºC in the past 100 years, and they could go up another 1.4º to 5.8º in the next 100. In an apparent bid to adjust, many creatures have shifted flowering, breeding, or migration dates; mobile ones such as butterflies and birds have moved ranges poleward an average of 6.1 kilometers per decade since the 1960s, according to an analysis of 1700-some species published last year in Nature (2 January 2003, p. 37).

High-mountain biota are trapped, however, and those living in the alpine are in the tightest corner of all. Comprising just 3% of the vegetated terrestrial surface, these islands of tundra are Noah's ark refuges where whole ecosystems, often left over from glacial times, are now stranded amid uncrossable seas of warm lowlands.

These islands are shrinking. The lowest elevation at which freezing occurs in mid-latitude mountains has climbed 150 meters since 1970. (On average, each rise of 100 meters in altitude corresponds to a 0.5ºC drop in mean temperature.) This appears to be hastening local extinctions that have been proceeding slowly since the last glacial age. Fossils show that pikas, for example, once ranged widely over North America but have contracted to a dwindling number of high peaks during warm periods of the last 12,000 years, says U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) ecologist Erik Beever.

Alpine creatures are poor dispersers, anyway. With slowed life cycles, many plants reproduce by cloning, not by seed, and the tiny pikas rarely roam more than a kilometer to find new homes. Many species have been isolated on the same mountains for so long that they have become new species. Mountains are rich in endemics as well as total biodiversity, because they contain many slopes, aspects, and elevations that compress abundant microclimates and specialized habitats into small areas. "A lot of populations are just little frostings on peaks," says James Brown, a population ecologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque who studies alpine mammals.
These small populations can be pushed out by any number of temperature-driven forces: invasions of trees, lower-elevation plants, or predators; frequent extreme weather events; and, perhaps in the case of creatures such as pikas, simple overheating. "Take a mountain and warm it up, and maybe [alpine ecosystems] shift upward--but only until they reach the top," says Brown.

Headed to heaven
The first danger signs have come from plants. About 80 to 100 years ago, European botanists inventoried plants on many summits in the Alps. In 1994, researchers from the University of Vienna showed that on more than two-thirds of the sites resurveyed, grassland species from lower slopes had crept up as much as 4 meters per decade--an apparent response to a 0.7ºC regional warming. If the ascent continues, says study leader Georg Grabherr, cold-loving plants at the highest elevations will be pushed upslope and in the end "go to heaven."

These plants include rarities such as Arenaria tetraquetra, which clusters near summer snow patches that provide dribbles of meltwater. "They're fantastic," says Grabherr, describing the plant as "a round cushion with little white flowers on the margin, exactly like a halo--so they are ready for paradise."

Grabherr says that based purely on rising temperatures, invaders should be climbing slopes twice as fast as they are. But, he adds, "alpine plants take a long breath before doing anything," so it could take 40 or 50 years for more dramatic responses. His results are bolstered by colleagues who include Martin Camenisch, a botanical consultant in Chur, Switzerland. He says that in the past 80 years, common newcomers have invaded one 2800-meter mountaintop from the lower slopes, nearly tripling species richness--and occupying up to 20% of the space formerly held only by high-alpine species.

To track projected changes, Grabherr has organized 40-some scientists into the Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA, at www.gloria.ac.at). With identical inventory plots and protocols, collaborators have agreed to return for surveys every 5 to 10 years and feed results into a central database. Seeded by money from the European Union, scientists launched GLORIA in 2001 on 71 summits from Spain to Russia, and they have since added sites in Australia, the United States, and South America.

The most vulnerable places are ones where mountains are low and climate is temperate, so there is little alpine to begin with. These include Greece's Mount Olympus and Spain's Sierra Nevada range, where only 200 to 400 meters separate timberlines from summits. In Australia, only 11,500 square kilometers of mountain terrain even get winter snow, and just a fraction of that is true treeless alpine. Crammed here are mountain pygmy possums, specialized reptiles (including two that have just been described), and countless undescribed invertebrates. A 30% decline in snow cover over the past 40 years has allowed feral cats, rabbits, and foxes to move in, says ecologist Ken Green of the Australian National Parks and Wildlife Service; native species are plummeting. "There is no opportunity for altitudinal shift-- everything is already at the limit," he adds.

In neighboring New Zealand, a paper last year in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research predicts that a 3ºC temperature rise over the next century--moderate as estimates go--will wipe out 80% of alpine islands and extinguish a third to a half of 613 known alpine plants. Co-author Alan Mark, a botanist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, says that even if temperatures stop rising now, 40 to 70 species will be at risk in coming decades, as ecological shifts catch up with already-milder conditions. "There is no question of if--just when," he says.

Trees on the move
Since the alpine is by definition treeless, rising timberlines themselves could trigger much change, and that is apparently already under way in some places. Christian Körner, a botanist at the University of Basel in Switzerland, argues in an upcoming paper in the Journal of Biogeography that tree lines everywhere are controlled by a surprisingly narrow range of root-zone temperatures; trees stop where the mean drops to about 6.5ºC. Indeed, Russian researchers writing in Ecological Studies last year reported that in the Ural Mountains, temperatures have gone up as much as 4ºC during the 20th century and trees have moved 20 to 80 meters upslope, reducing alpine zones by 10% to 30%.

Tree rings reveal similar upward marches in the Alps, says Jean-Paul Theurillat, a phytogeographer at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. At around 1800 meters, trees average 140 years, but they are younger higher up, until at 2700 meters they average only 16 years. Infilling since the mid-19th century is visible from British Columbia to Montana. Near Banff National Park in Canada, alpine firs and Engelmann spruces have moved 50 or 60 meters upslope just since 1990, report researchers from the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

However, Körner and others say that timberline movements are not as straightforward as meets the eye, and tying them unequivocally to a single factor such as global warming is misleading. For one, trees grew higher up before the Little Ice Age, a cold period lasting into the early 1800s; some trees may just now be readvancing rather than responding to more recent warming. Fire suppression may also be allowing some forests to advance to higher elevations. At Montana's Glacier National Park, ecologist Dan Fagre of USGS points out that much new growth is not actual elevational advance; rather, he says, it is infilling of meadows between outlying fingers of conifers, as well as new vigor in small stems once twisted like shrubs and now straightening up. This may presage a real advance, but Fagre contends that increased moisture, not temperature, may be the primary driver.
Temperature and moisture have complex relations in mountains, says Lori Daniels, a dendrochronologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In a paper in press at Ecology, she shows that high-altitude deciduous trees in Patagonia have advanced since a round of warming starting in the 1970s--but in the hottest years, growth has declined, because it is too dry. "We thought we understood how temperature works, but once you add in other factors it gets more complex," says Daniels.

In any case, where trees do appear, they change everything. For instance, alpine butterflies feed on alpine plants, and once they are crowded out, both disappear. Now it is becoming clear that even a few trees can dangerously fragment habitat, says ecologist Stephen Matter of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. That's because alpine butterflies need constant sun to warm flight muscles, and shade from even modest fingers of trees dissecting their territory literally knocks them out of the air. In a paper in press at Ecological Applications, Matter shows that in some Canadian study sites, more than 90% of migrating Parnassius smintheus butterflies en route to nearby meadows die when they hit intervening trees, a mortality rate that could cause domino-effect local extinctions. P. smintheus is not yet rare, but close relatives in Europe are already on threatened lists.

Groundhoglike marmots need treeless terrain for a quite different reason--to see predators coming--and they also are disappearing. The endemic Vancouver Island marmot, declining for decades (or maybe centuries) with the apparent advance of trees into high meadows, is now one of the most endangered mammals in the world, with 21 known wild individuals left. Andrew Bryant, chief scientist at the Marmot Recovery Foundation in Nanaimo, British Columbia, blames wolves and cougars that travel up new logging roads cut at lower elevations, then sneak up on marmots using saplings as cover.

A similar decline may be taking place among the endemic Olympic Peninsula marmots of Washington state, where trees, followed by coyotes, are proliferating. However, wildlife biologist Suzanne Griffin of the University of Montana in Missoula cautions that studies there are just starting, so it's too soon to be sure of the culprit.

The case may be clearer for pikas, which are directly, exquisitely sensitive to temperature. Hyped-up body heat helps them survive cold, but apparently they cannot turn it down. In the 1970s, Arizona State's Smith gave a graphic demonstration of this by removing pikas from the cool talus interstices where they hide between daytime foraging expeditions and caging them outside. They died after just a morning in ambient shade temperatures as low as 25.5ºC. "They don't have much flexibility," says Smith, who admits he would not do such an experiment now, given heightened awareness of animal rights, never mind declines in pikas.

USGS's Beever, who published a study in the Journal of Mammalogy last year, says American pikas have recently winked out at nine of 25 historically known localities, and he points to rising temperatures as the prime suspect. He says heat could kill directly, change the composition of plants the animals eat, or--most likely, in his view--force pikas inside so that they cannot get enough to eat.

Some of the American pika's cousins elsewhere also appear to be in decline. For example, in 1986, a biologist at the Xinjiang Academy of Environmental Protection named Li Wei-Dong described a new species, the Ili pika, in the Tian Shan mountains of northwest China. But when he went back in 2002 and 2003, he saw not a single specimen in 250 kilometers of foot-and-horseback trekking. In a paper submitted to the journal Oryx, he blames ongoing warming, possibly compounded by herders and their dogs as they range higher now that glaciers are retreating and lofty pastures are greening up.

In the Yukon, University of Alberta wildlife biologist David Hik documented a 90% decline in collared pikas during the winters of 1999 and 2000, when decades of warming culminated in bizarre midwinter snowmelts, rain, and refreezing. Because pikas stay active all winter under snow, this series of events may have removed insulation even they require, then iced over forage. Alpine ground squirrels collapsed too, their burrows flooded. "Consistent with climate-change models, extreme events like this will happen more and more," says Hik, who has a paper in review at the Canadian Journal of Zoology. "These animals are made for extreme conditions, but there are thresholds. Then it starts to look pretty serious for them."
All the same, it's hard to completely rule out other causes for the vanishing pikas. Montana sites that still have pika-friendly weather have also seen extinctions, reports biologist Christine Ray of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who suspects disease. "It's still a mystery," she says.

Alpine aquatic systems are showing changes, too, although not yet declines. Aquatic ecologist David Schindler of the University of Alberta says that in the lower Canadian Rockies, warming summers have so far simply speeded plankton life cycles and made alpine fish grow bigger. "Most people probably think it's good to have bigger fish," says Schindler, but experiments show that cold-water trout die off once temperatures pass a threshold. The same goes for specialized invertebrates such as caddis flies that live in icy glacial melt streams.

Fagre of USGS points out that glacial retreat is by far the most visible result of mountain warming: Two-thirds of the glaciers present in Glacier National Park in 1850 are already gone, and the rest could disappear by 2030. This means, he says, that alpine stream temperatures could soon shoot up and summer flows might cease altogether, wiping out much invertebrate habitat.

A less visible effect is that fast-wasting glaciers are releasing pulses of contaminants such as polychlorinated biphenyls and insecticides. Such contaminants evaporate from soils and waters in industrial lowlands and drift off--until they hit mountains, where they condense in rain or snow and fall back down, says Jules Blais, a geochemist at the University of Ottawa. This long-distance conveyor is harming polar bears and poisoning human breast milk in the Arctic, and it also appears to be working in alpine environments just below glaciers, notes biologist John Elliott of the Canadian Wildlife Service. Sediments in glacially fed high lakes are being found with up to 1000 times more pollutants than those at lower elevations, and fish have developed levels that could threaten bald eagles and other avian predators.

In the short term, not all changes may be bad--at least not in the highest mountains, where there's still room to go up. There, new frontiers are opening in the barren spaces left by the retreat of still-vast glaciers. During the past 5 years, an interdisciplinary team has been following the quick advance of alpine life into newly ice-free zones in the Peruvian Andes near the huge Quelccaya ice cap. At 5250 meters, the team members have counted 54 alpine plant species and 23 species of lichens--"a definite increase" for a place that was near a towering ice front just a century ago, says Anton Seimon, a geographer at Columbia University's Earth Institute.

In newly melted ponds at 5372 meters, the team members have found tadpoles (the world's highest known amphibians) and, on newly exposed ridges, upwardly mobile herds of vicuña, rare cousins of the llama. Indigenous people are close behind, planting crops at ever-loftier elevations. "There's a shortage of arable land. Here, this might be a good thing," says Seimon. Beyond the newly settled biotic zones, craggy glaciated peaks and the vast Quelccaya still roll to the horizons, unconquered by life, except perhaps for microbes beneath the ice. At least for the moment, it is hard to imagine that someday all this could melt away, and the pioneers, like the ice itself, might go to heaven.

posted 03-15-2004 06:36 PM               

Aviation Policy 'Will Have Huge Global Warming Impact'

By Amanda Brown, Environment Correspondent, PA News

Government aviation policy will have a “massive” impact on global warming over the next 30 years, an all party group of MPs warns today.

The powerful Environmental Audit Committee says the Department for Transport is failing to recognise the problem adequately.

MPs accuse the department of not accepting the disparity between its air travel policy and pledges by the Government to reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions.

Carbon dioxide is the chief global warming gas that is overheating the atmosphere and leading to extreme weather events worldwide such as flooding, drought and storms, according to environment scientists.

They warn that industrialised countries must curb fossil fuel burning and exhaust fumes from transport – most notably from aircraft and road vehicles.

But the Environmental Audit Committee’s report says that the recent aviation White Paper actively promotes a huge growth in air travel over the next 30 years.

“The environmental impact of this – in particular in terms of emissions and the contribution to global warming – will be massive,” the MPs warn.

“The Department for Transport (DfT) has failed to recognise this adequately or to accept the disparity between its policy on aviation and the major commitments the Government has given to reduce carbon emissions and develop a sustainable consumption strategy.

“The DfT has implicitly adopted a ‘predict and provide’ approach which is based on assuming a substantial real increase in the price of air travel.

“We are emphatically not arguing for a hairshirt approach or ‘pricing people off planes’.

“But we do feel that the DfT, in conjunction with the Treasury, could have used economic instruments more to moderate the forecast increase in growth and to send out a long term signal to the aviation industry.”

The committee says that, given the Government’s expressed desire to incorporate aviation in the EU Emissions Trading System from 2008, “we are astonished that the department appears to have done no research on some of the key issues which need to be resolved, or to model the impact of including aviation in a cross-sectoral emissions trading system.

“Such research is essential even before any draft proposals can be contemplated. Given the timescales involved, we think it might soon be too late to achieve the target date of 2008.”

The MPs say that if aircraft emissions increase on the scale predicted by the DfT, the UK’s 60% carbon emission reduction target, which the Government set last year, will become “meaningless and unachievable”.

The report adds: “The most we could hope to attain would be about 35%.

“The DfT admitted that the target would need to be looked at should international emissions be allocated to national inventories – and this can only mean with a view to watering it down.”

The Government is urged to recognise the difficulties it faces in meeting its year 2050 carbon target.

“If it did so, it would be forced to take more action now and develop an adequate policy response.

“It should not continue to hope that the solution lies in technological advances as the weight of evidence suggests that the scope for these is limited,” the MPs say.