Eskimos gettin' too hot!!

[ELKCHSR]

One thing I do remember, even though I definitely don't hold the age of a few of you, side walks so hot, you couldn't walk on them with bare feet, my mom and grandfather talking about it hot enough to fry eggs on rocks. I sure haven't seen any of that in these same regions they talked, or I have seen as a little farmer. I see the biggest reason of all that the cycle of life going on right in front of us isn't being pushed at all is the fact that all of our esteemed drum beaters don't get big government $$$ $$$ $$$ for telling every one that we are only in part of an ongoing cycle that the earth sees every so many thousands of years. That kind of stuff also doesn’t make dramatic press releases either. The way I see it, unless of course better proof is shown, you guy's "Theories" hold no more merit than mine, except mine can be proven looking at the long time line of the earth (If of course those putting on the documentaries on the learning stations are remotely correct in their programs) and not at the last 50 years of a planet that is some five billion years old...Do the math, do the odds, which one holds more water and more credence....

 

[Washington Hunter]

Elkchsr, Global warming is not my theory, or anybody else on this board...it's the theory of hundreds of scientists (probably thousands) who know a hell of a lot more about this than you or I ever will. Sorry but I think chances are better that they are right and you are wrong. I'm just going with the odds is all.

 

[pawclaws]

National Post, Tuesday, October 01, 2002

Anyone who wants to see what's wrong with the science behind the Kyoto accord should start with Vincent Gray's new book, The Greenhouse Delusion. One of the leading global warming skeptics, Mr. Gray has produced what amounts to a field guide to skepticism -- inexpensive, colourful and fact-filled. One does need to understand basic science to read it, but not all that much. The story is remarkably simple.

Mr. Gray's focus appears to be quite narrow, but it is not. He seems to be talking just about the science volume of the recent three-volume "Third Assessment Report" of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations. But it is this IPCC report that is meant when the press says that the science behind the Kyoto accord is "settled," or at least that there is a "consensus" that global warming is real and that humans are causing it by burning fossil fuels.

Mr. Gray's argument is that the science as a whole is full of holes, and he artfully uses IPCC quotes to make this point. In fact, he was an expert reviewer of the IPCC TAR, although his criticism was generally ignored. The IPCC is a community of devoted believers in human-induced global warming. The consensus is theirs, not science's. So despite Mr. Gray's seeming preoccupation with picking apart IPCC quotations, it is really the whole of climate change science that is at issue. There are plenty of footnotes to take the curious reader further into this contentious realm, for it is likely that global warming is the most science-intensive public policy issue in history.

What makes the global warming issue so difficult scientifically is that it is about something very small, and very hard to find, if it even exists. Looking at an ordinary household thermometer, one sees that a degree centigrade is a very small amount. Half a degree is a lot less; you can hardly see it, yet that is the tiny amount behind the huge uproar. Some scientists think that the entire earth has warmed by one half-degree over the last 100 years. Others, like Mr. Gray, do not. This is the heart of the global warming debate.

The problem is that the earth is very large and the temperature is always changing, everywhere, so how can we possibly tell if overall it is a mere half-degree warmer today than it was around 1902? The origin of the theory of global warming (for it is just a theory) lies in taking the thermometer readings we happen to have from the last 100 years and massaging them in various ways. Some places have clearly warmed, others have clearly cooled. Many have gone up and down but with little apparent trend. To get a global result requires a lot of statistical manipulation.

Taken as a whole, the statistically combined 100-year numbers are up a little -- one half-degree or so -- hence the theory of global warming. Given this small warming, why has it occurred? One possibility (among others) is the carbon dioxide increase believed to have occurred over the same period, some of which is probably from fossil fuel burning. If so, if the CO2 keeps going up it will probably get even warmer. Magnify this and we get the fear of really big warming, dangerous warming, and the Kyoto accord as a first step to stopping it and saving the earth.

This breathless chain of scientific speculation is firmly grounded in the statistical analysis of a 100-year hodgepodge of temperature records, so that is where Mr. Gray trains his guns. I won't spoil the story by revealing the details of his arguments. But if global warming were not a serious policy issue, this would be a very funny book.

Mr. Gray's basic points are these. First, the thermometers in question are not a representative sample of the earth's surface, much less of its atmosphere. They happen to be where people wanted to know the weather, mostly near population centres. There is virtually nothing from the oceans, poles, jungles, deserts, mountains, etc. In statistics this is called a "convenience sample," because one takes the data where it is easy to get. It is axiomatic in statistical theory that one cannot draw meaningful conclusions about the whole from a convenience sample. To do so is a logical fallacy.

Second, whenever one finds a trend in statistics one is supposed to look for extraneous causes, called confounders. Mr. Gray has looked for, and found, such a cause in human development itself. This is usually called the "urban heat island" effect, and Mr. Gray is the guru of UHI, although it does not take urbanization per se to heat up a thermometer. Paving a runway will do it. Most of the thermometers are near human population centres and almost all of these have grown in the last 100 years, to say the least. The infrastructure produced by such growth tends to trap heat. It is quite possible that what human development has done is not to warm the planet, but just to warm some of the thermometers.

Third, beginning in 1979 we actually obtained a way to measure the overall temperature of the earth's atmosphere: satellites. They do not show the warming that the thermometers show. So either the statistics based on the thermometers are wrong, which is likely, or somehow the surface is warming while the atmosphere is not. The latter is not impossible, but it is completely inconsistent with global warming due to CO2, because CO2 would trap the heat in the atmosphere, not at the surface.

Regarding the satellites, now that the year is ending the government will soon begin to tell us that 2002, like most recent years, was one of the hottest years on record. On the tainted, unrepresentative surface record that is. That it has not been hot according to the satellites will not be mentioned. This half-truth is so glaring that it is close to being a lie.

Along the way Mr. Gray takes time out to consider sea level rise and extreme weather events, the truly bad things that are predicted to come from global warming. He also looks briefly at the computer models that make these dire predictions. Here, too, it is simple measurement problems, not abstruse geophysics, that he flags.

In fact, the most interesting thing about this book is that the fundamental issues are so simple. This may account for the almost religious fervour of the debate. When you get to the fundamentals there is nothing clear-cut to go on. One either accepts, as a leap of faith, that the rickety 100-year temperature record is an accurate representation of the entire earth, up to the sky, or one does not. Everything follows from this decision.

Well, not quite everything, because even if the earth has warmed a little bit there is still the very real possibility that this warming is natural, that the models are no good, that warming is beneficial, etc. But that is not what Vince Gray's wonderful little book is about. He goes to the heart of the debate. As he puts it, when the Emperor has no clothes on, there is no point worrying where he gets his shirts done.

David E. Wojick is a journalist and policy analyst who resides in Virginia and Ontario. E-mail: dwojick@ climatechangedebate.org; The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of Climate Change 2001 by Vincent Gray, Multi-Science Publishing Co. http://www.multi-science.co.uk

© Copyright 2002 National Post


Related Items:

See Vincent Gray's Frontier Centre Policy Series Paper: The Causes of Global Warming" (20 pages) which discusses urban heat islands and their impacts on land-based temperature measurements.


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The Frontier Centre for Public Policy is an independent public policy think tank whose mission is "to broaden the debate on our future through public policy research and education and to explore positive changes within our public institutions that support economic growth and opportunity."





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Just a word or two about how "Global Warming Theory was developed and by who". Surprise; doesn't appear to belong to scientists at all!
I can not vouch for Gray because I am not familiar with his work; however, many of his concerns mirror mine. Apparently he, like I, believe that Global Warming Theorists are guilty of bad science and terrible research procedure.

 

[ELKCHSR]

That is a very good find Phil...Thanks. Very interesting read, but then again, there will be those out there that will still scream with this fact "DON'T CONFUSE ME WITH FACTS, MY MINDS MADE UP"....LOL....I hope you find other stuff....I haven't seen any of the sky is falling theories that are as well written as this peice of just get over the fact it isn't.
Thanks...

 

[Washington Hunter]

Well I didn't think it was that great of a find.

Is anybody aware that in addition to global warming we are about to enter another ice age? If I remember right, they're saying it's only a couple hundred years away. (just in case you guys need anything else to worry about)

 

[ELKCHSR]

Heres me worring

 

[pawclaws]

Look WH it ain't your world. And there ain't nothin' you can do about it anyway; so quit your worryin'. You are wasting a perfectly good worry!

 

[Washington Hunter]

pawclaws, I'm NOT worried...I figure I'll be dead before any climate change will have any real affect in my own little world. But that doesn't mean I can't argue about it. It's those government conspiracy theories that just drive me nuts. I just can't not say anything when that type of B.S. gets brought up. All I want is good hunting for the next 50 years or so. After that I'll be six feet under so it just won't matter anymore (to me.)

 

[ELKCHSR]

Besides, even if it were true, as the junk scientists say, what in the world could we do to fix it. It has been stated in the news that they have no ideas on how to fix the "alledged" problem any way. There are third world countries that produce way more pollution than the U.S. does any more. If it were a real issue, then that would be the place to deal with it, but then again, it is this country that has the best dollars and so it is the peoples in this country that the world looks to for the $$$ it takes to save the world...

 

[Washington Hunter]

It's a miracle! I agree with everything in your last post!


Elkchsr, all that could be done to help reverse the problem is to give free birth control pills to all those third world countries. That's the only solution I see anyway.

 

[ELKCHSR]

LOL in a way, I suppose we are back in the Middle East working on that right now...

 

[pawclaws]

Hey you know what; I think that if we, collectively the concerned citizens, really did know that there is a problem that we could solve it!

 

[Washington Hunter]

I doubt it. Doing anything would be too much of an economic hardship in most people's eyes. Most people won't give up anything unless it benefits them personally in the short term. I suppose the U.S. could try to force a limit on the number of children per family on the entire world, kind of like they do in China, but I doubt that would go over very well. And it would be tough to enforce.

 

[pawclaws]

I'm not up to date on population growth statistics; but, here are a couple of interesting things I have heard "and researched" in the past: At present, China has enough 18 year old kids to line them up four abreast and march them out of China FOREVER. China's rate of AIDS infection is such that by the year 2008 that number will be greater than the combined populations of North America. (Now that's a lot of people!)

 

[Washington Hunter]

Hard to imagine that many people isn't it? It seems their limit on the number of children would help, but I guess they're so far overpopulated that even with the limit of one child per family it will take a long time for the population to even level off.

 

[ELKCHSR]

I remember my dad reading an article in the newspaper that stated (early 70's) that the population was so great then that you could march Chineese off a cliff six abreast forever. Now the population has grown so large that it is four abreast of only one age group.