I once read a response to Alex Cockburn, who is a global warming and peak oil denier (the better to drive one's 69 chevy into the ground. It was intelligently written and as sarcastic as Alex. The Guardian or New Statesman, I believe.
-----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Gassler Robert Sent: Thu 2/28/2008 10:46 PM To: Progressive Economics; [email protected] Subject: re:[Pen-l] Global Warming enquirey I have inserted the following into the syllabi for several of my classes: I will give a free A to any student who can find three articles attacking the idea of global warming. They have to meet the following criteria: 1. They have to have been published in respectable scientific journals. I'll go as far as Scientific American or maybe Science et Vie, but not Fox News or the Journal of Intelligent Design, if there is one. 2. They have to have been published in the last five years. 3. They have to attack either the fact of global warming, or the fact that it humans are causing it, or that it is urgent. Now I do not mean an article that says for example that the crisis will occur in forty years rather than thirty or that Jane Doe's figures are off by a decimal point. I mean someone who says that global warming is a myth and that the scientific evidence does not support the idea that it is happening. So far no student has come up with anything. The court ruling in the UK, by the way, is no exception. It specifically supported item 3 above. >I received this from a friend who is, as a result, a climate change >skeptic. I don't have the scientific knowledge to refute the claims and >have relied on the IPCC for my information. Does anyone know where such >a refutation of this specific attack can be found or is anyone >knowledgeable enough to compose a reply? > >Paul Phillips > >Dishonest political tampering with the science on global warming >Bali - December 05, 2007 > >Christopher Monckton, Denpasar, Bali > >Ed note: another view of green house gas > >As a contributor to the IPCC's 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace >Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of >Lords - through our hereditary element the most >independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental >scientific grounds with >both the IPCC and my co-laureate's alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, >which won this year's Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror. > >Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the >IPCC has deliberately, >persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of >greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences >of warmer weather. > >My contribution to the 2007 report illustrates the scientific problem. >The report's first table of figures - inserted by the IPCC's bureaucrats >after the scientists had finalized the draft, and without their consent >- listed four contributions to sea-level rise. > >The bureaucrats had multiplied the effect of melting ice from the >Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets by 10. > >The result of this dishonest political tampering with the science was >that the sum of the four items in the offending table was more than >twice the IPCC's published total. Until I wrote to point out the error, >no one had noticed. The IPCC, on receiving my letter, quietly corrected, >moved and relabeled the erroneous table, posting the new version on the >internet and earning me my Nobel prize. > >The shore-dwellers of Bali need not fear for their homes. The IPCC now >says the combined >contribution of the two great ice-sheets to sea-level rise will be less >than seven centimeters after 100 years, not seven meters imminently, and >that the Greenland ice sheet (which thickened by 50 cm between 1995 and >2005) might only melt after several millennia, probably by natural >causes, just as it last did 850,000 years ago. Gore, mendaciously >assisted by the IPCC bureaucracy, had exaggerated a hundredfold. > >Recently a High Court judge in the UK listed nine of the 35 major >scientific errors in Gore's movie, saying they must be corrected before >innocent schoolchildren can be exposed to the movie. Gore's exaggeration >of sea-level rise was one. > >Others being peddled at the Bali conference are that man-made "global >warming" threatens polar bears and coral reefs, caused Hurricane >Katrina, shrank Lake Chad, expanded the actually-shrinking Sahara, etc. > >At the very heart of the IPCC's calculations lurks an error more serious >than any of these. The IPCC says: "The CO2 radiative forcing increased >by 20 percent during the last 10 years (1995-2005)." > >Radiative forcing quantifies increases in radiant energy in the >atmosphere, and hence in temperature. The atmospheric concentration of >CO2 in 1995 was 360 parts per million. In 2005 it was just 5percent >higher, at 378 ppm. But each additional molecule of CO2 in the air >causes a smaller radiant-energy increase than its predecessor. So the >true increase in radiative forcing was 1 percent, not 20 percent. The >IPCC has exaggerated the CO2 effect 20-fold. > >Why so large and crucial an exaggeration? Answer: the IPCC has repealed >the fundamental physical the Stefan-Boltzmann equation - that converts >radiant energy to temperature. Without this equation, no meaningful >calculation of the effect of radiance on temperature can be done. Yet >the 1,600 pages of the IPCC's 2007 report do not mention it once. > >The IPCC knows of the equation, of course. But it is inconvenient. It >imposes a strict (and very low) limit on how much greenhouse gases can >increase temperature. At the Earth's surface, you can add as much >greenhouse gas as you like (the "surface forcing"), and the temperature >will scarcely respond. > >That is why all of the IPCC's computer models predict that 10km above >Bali, in the tropical upper >troposphere, temperature should be rising two or three times as fast as >it does at the surface. Without that tropical upper-troposphere >"hot-spot", the Stefan-Boltzmann law ensures that surface temperature >cannot change much. > >For half a century we have been measuring the temperature in the upper >atmosphere - and it has >been changing no faster than at the surface. The IPCC knows this, too. >So it merely declares that its computer predictions are right and the >real-world measurements are wrong. Next time you hear some >scientifically-illiterate bureaucrat say, "The science is settled", >remember this vital failure of real-world observations to confirm the >IPCC's computer predictions. The IPCC's entire case is built on a guess >that the absent hot-spot might exist. > >Even if the Gore/IPCC exaggerations were true, which they are not, the >economic cost of trying to mitigate climate change by trying to cut our >emissions through carbon trading and other costly >market interferences would far outweigh any possible climatic benefit. > >The international community has galloped lemming-like over the cliff >twice before. Twenty >years ago the UN decided not to regard AIDS as a fatal infection. >Carriers of the disease were not >identified and isolated. Result: 25 million deaths in poor countries. > >Thirty-five years ago the world decided to ban DDT, the only effective >agent against malaria. Result: 40 million deaths in poor countries. The >World Health Organization lifted the DDT ban on >Sept. 15 last year. It now recommends the use of DDT to control malaria. >Dr. Arata Kochi of the >WHO said that politics could no longer be allowed to stand in the way of >the science and the data. >Amen to that. > >If we take the heroically stupid decisions now on the table at Bali, it >will once again be the world's >poorest people who will die unheeded in their tens of millions, this >time for lack of the heat and light and power and medical attention >which we in the West have long been fortunate enough to take for granted. > >If we deny them the fossil-fuelled growth we have enjoyed, they will >remain poor and, paradoxically, their populations will continue to >increase, making the world's carbon footprint very much larger in the >long run. > >As they die, and as global temperature continues to fail to rise in >accordance with the IPCC's laughably exaggerated predictions, the >self-congratulatory rhetoric that is the hallmark of the now-useless, >costly, corrupt UN will again be near-unanimously parroted by lazy, >unthinking politicians and journalists who ought to have done their duty >by the poor but are now - for the third time in three decades - failing >to speak up for those who are about to die. > >My fellow-participants, there is no climate crisis. The correct policy >response to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing. Take >courage! Do nothing, and save the world's poor from yet another >careless, UN-driven slaughter. > >The writer is an international business consultant specializing in the >investigation of scientific frauds. He is a former adviser to UK prime >minister Margaret Thatcher and is presenter of >the 90-minute climate movie Apocalypse? NO! He can be reached at >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >-- >Paul Phillips Professor Emertus, Economics University of Manitoba Home >and Office: 3806 - 36A st., Vernon BC, Canada. ViT 6E9 tel: 1 (250) >558-0830 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >_______________________________________________ >pen-l mailing list >[email protected] >https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
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