Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Emperor of global warming's new clothes

It seems that the mainstream media is finally catching up to what many bloggers have said for some time now, Al Gore's global warming crusade is fatally flawed due to factual errors and his own hypocrisy.
“The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist.”
There is also some interesting news about a new theory that explains the correlation between the sun's magnetic fields and climate change, especially the El Nino/La Nina tango in the Southern hemisphere.
“Dr Baker's model puts a more scientific and transparent theory to the concepts first developed by long-range weather forecasters Lennox Walker and Inigo Jones.

It also suggests there may be a longer 500-year solar cycle, which may help explain climate variability over the past centuries, including periods of unexplained climate variability such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age.”

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:58 pm

    This is worthless drivel which shows that you have not researched the issue.

    Wiki on Martin Durkin

    Director of the Anti-Global Warming Film "The Great Global Warming Swindle "

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Durkin_(television_director)

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  2. Anonymous5:27 pm

    Why not let the kids decide whether global warming is man-made says a Dallas science teacher.

    As a science fair project, the class made a model, a sealed terrarium with vapor for the greenhouse effect. Over time, CO2 was continually added to see it the temperature could be increased.

    The class finally gave up at 20 times the normal atmosphere content.

    This simple experiment satisfied the question in the student's minds. Next spring, students all across America are going to be asked to perform this same test for themselves. This is the way to end all this nonsense.

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  3. anonymous,

    An ad hominem attack upon a person not even talked about in this post seems weirdly off-topic .. however, let us agree that the main person behind both films was full of it. The fact remains that Al Gore's movie received uncritical acclaim and support from business leaders and media outlets - until now - when finally we can see some of the ridiculous claims he made do not stand up to examination.

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  4. educator,

    If there is one thing I am convinced of, it is that the science behind climate change is neither simple, nor readily summarised for non-scientists.

    I applaud the attempt to have school children use the scientific method to critically examine what they are told, but I doubt that the experiment's results are a valid critique of the theories that ascribe the majority of global warming to human activity.

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  5. Anonymous11:05 pm

    I would imagine that in a totally controlled environment ( classroom, weather, no volcanoes, no sun) a room where co2 was released and heat added, would get hotter. doesn't take a scientific method to figure that one out. The fact is that global warming is no longer based on fact and knowledge. The basis of the theory states that the atmosphere will heat first and then radiate the heat back on the earths surface. This is not occurring. Actually the opposite is. Secondly in global warming, the poles are suppose to heat before the equator. again not happening. The poles have been cooling for the past 50 years. There are too many variables to consider instead of just worrying about co2 and aerosols. Al is just using this false information and expecting people just to listen instead of investigating it themselves. Don't be a sheep. Think!

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  6. Thanks for your comment Troy. I think that climate change is best classified as a wicked problem. As such there is no "silver bullet", yet reducing carbon emissions is being sold as such - that alone makes me doubt the wisdom of it.

    Interestingly the scientific evidence for CO2's impact on the atmosphere is often likened to CFCs impact on the ozone layer which was similarly doubted when first raised. However, that is a relatively simple chemical reaction at work, CO2's effect on climate is physical, acting as a greenhouse gas, and a relatively minor one compared to water vapor.

    Our main problem is that when dealing with systems of this scale (i.e. the earth + the sun) there is no easy way to test theories in time increments that are sensible for policy decisions. Taking the point of view that we should slow down the rate of change in human activity in order to allow time to test theories is a valid position, but given the immediate economic and human harm the more popular strategies would inflict a more cautious response is required.

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