Nature Features
When the music stops, will Live Earth matter?
By Andy Goldberg Jul 8, 2007, 13:15 GMT
British musician Sting, of the rock band The Police perform during one of the eight Live Earth concerts being held today around the world at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey on 07 July 2007. A total of 150 artists will be performing in nine cities, including Sydney, Tokyo, London and Washington, over 24 hours EPA/JUSTIN LANE
Washington - One of the many bands that passed through the Live Earth stages around the world Saturday put it best.
'It's not really important what goes on here tonight, but what happens in the future,' said Pete Wentz of the band Fall Out Boy, who appeared in the New York concert.
For many who participated - as performers or spectators at the massive global music event - it was an inspiring night, perhaps the biggest concert broadcast in history, all dedicated to confronting what organizer Al Gore has called 'the greatest threat mankind has ever faced.'
Saturday's musicians were committed to changing that dynamic, but entertainers as a group have a spotty track record in forcing the body politic into change. Just look at the results of recent US presidential elections, where the entertainment business came down firmly on the side of the centre-left Democrats in 2004, only for George Bush to win a majority.
But Live Earth could be different.
The campaign to raise awareness about the dangers and causes of global warming has already gathered significant momentum. Only the most committed ideologues still dispute scientific evidence pointing to human activity as the cause of the climate threat, and children the world over are as focused on the environment as their parents were on the space race.
The sights and sounds of well-known personalities lending their voices to the cause may embolden people to take the actions demanded by the seven-point pledge offered up from organizers for all participants to sign.
'I think it's cool that so many people are coming together to support this,' said Ellen Sanchez, 14, who watched the concerts at a big screen erected for the occasion in San Francisco. 'It definitely focuses attention on the problem. We can't ignore it any longer.'
Others already see the mega-gig as just the latest round of unwanted celebrity preaching.
That was certainly the attitude of critics who called Live Earth 'concerts for guilty stars.' They pointed out that many performances had flown to the shows in private jets, and asked how the massive productions with their huge carbon footprints could really benefit the cause.
Perhaps the answer was at Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach, where some 700,000 people attended a free concert where actress and kid's show host Xuxa framed the issue: 'We are all guilty. We waste paper, water, energy and many other things. ... It is not just for Americans. This is a concert for the whole world.'
Or maybe it was in the Netherlands, where thousands gathered by bicycle in an Amsterdam square to watch the shows being broadcast from other countries and hear ideas about how to save energy.
Africa, the underdeveloped continent with the least global-warming emissions but some of the worst potential effects, hosted a concert in Johannesburg. And the Shanghai concert carried great symbolism, as China continues to boom its way toward becoming one of the world's biggest polluters.
The concerts certainly raised environmental awareness to a new level. Seen by a projected 2 billion people, the concerts featured environmental messages flashing behind the stages. Commercial breaks were filled with infomercials about the cause.
But the greatest benefit could come from the seven-point pledge organizers asked people to sign to limit their own pollution. The pledge calls on governments to sign meaningful treaties to reduce carbon emissions by 90 per cent by the year 2050, and to enact strict limits on coal-burning power stations.
'I'm so proud to be a part of it today, because it's not about the problem. It's more about the solution,' said songstress Alicia Keys at the New York show. 'So I want you to make that pledge. I'm making the pledge, and I want you to make that pledge right now.'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-AgenturCOMMENT
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Jul 07 - Officials at Live Earth Johannesburg have blamed the effects of climate change for poor audience attendance at yesterday's South African event.
Organiser John Langford believes extremely cold weather in the region - it snowed last week for the first time in a quarter of a century - kept people away from the concert, which starred Joss Stone, UB40, Angelique Kidjo and Baaba Maal.
Speaking before the event, Langford said, 'We're expecting 10,000 here tonight. It's a bit chilly, and we've had a strange winter... is it climate change? We had snow in Jo'burg last week for the first time in 25 years.'
Amazing how people can try and spin facts to suit their imbedded point of view - several record high temperatures are dismissed as 'not being unusual, so doesn't prove Global Warming is happening',
yet a cold day which hasn't been matched for a quarter century is suddenly taken as evidence that the next ice age is on the way
...for the first time since 1918.
Solar activity 'not the cause of global warming'
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 11 July 2007
Claims that increased solar activity is the cause of global warming - rather than man-made greenhouse gases - have been comprehensively disproved by a detailed study of the Sun.
Scientists have delivered the final blow to the theory that recent global warming can be explained by variations in the natural cycles of the Sun - a favourite refuge for climate sceptics who dismiss the influence of greenhouse-gas emissions.
An analysis of the records of all of the Sun's activities over the past few decades - such as sunspot cycles and magnetic fields - shows that since 1985 solar activity has decreased significantly, while global warming has continued to increase.
Mike Lockwood, of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, Oxfordshire, said: 'In 1985, the Sun did a U-turn in every respect. It no longer went in the right direction to contribute to global warming. We think it's almost completely conclusive proof that the Sun does not account for the recent increases in global warming.'
The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, shows there is no doubt that solar activity over the past 20 years has run in the opposite direction to global warming, and therefore cannot explain rises in average global temperatures.
Dr Lockwood and his colleague Claus Fröhlich, of the World Radiation Centre in Davos Dorf, Switzerland, have produced the most powerful counter argument to suggestions that current warming is part of the natural cycle of solar activities. 'There is considerable evidence for solar influence on Earth's pre-industrial climate, and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial change in the first half of the last century,' they write.
However, since about 1940 there has been no evidence to suggest that increases in global average temperatures were caused by solar activity. 'Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified,' the two scientists said.
The theory that past changes in solar activity may have explained some changes in the climate before the industrial revolution is not in dispute. In previous centuries, for instance, notably between about 1420 and 1570, when the Vikings had to abandon their Greenland settlements, solar minima corresponded with unusually cool weather, such as the 'little ice age' of the 17th century.
But climate sceptics have exploited this to dispute the idea that man-made emissions are responsible for global warming. In the recent Channel 4 programme The Great Global Warming Swindle, the rise in solar activity over the latter half of the 20th century was erroneously presented as perfectly matching the rise in global average temperatures.
Dr Lockwood said he was outraged when he saw the documentary, because of the way the programme-makers used graphs of temperature rises and sunspot cycles that were cut off in the 1980s, when the two trends went in the opposite direction.
'The trouble is that the theory of solar activity and climate was being misappropriated to apply to modern-day warming. The sceptics were taking perfectly good science and bringing it into disrespect,' Dr Lockwood said.
The Royal Society said yesterday: 'There is a small minority which is seeking to confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day.'
Another oil company spin, do your homework
Reality check - I have !
This is from the Independent Newspaper, owned by an Irish Media group with no oil company links.
The Royal Society is the premier UK scientific establishment founded in 1660 (when future americans were still chasing american indians around the prairies, and some time before oil companies existed, let alone had any influence)
You don't help your failing arguments by trying to introduce red herrings over the validity of data, but just make yourself look silly clutching desperately at straws as you slip below the rising tide
The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and claims to be the world’s oldest scientific organization. Its illustrious past presidents include Isaac Newton and Humphrey Davey.
The Royal Society gives as its primary objective the promotion of 'excellence in science'. It says it has three roles: as the UK's national academy of science, as a learned Society and as a funding agency. However, Moira Brown, a professor of neurovirology at Glasgow University, sums up the view of a number of critics when she describes it as 'a self-perpetuating elite'.
Set up as a product of royal patronage, the Society's funds have traditionally come from the public purse. More recently it has begun to receive substantial funds from transnational biotechnology corporations, such as Rhone Poulenc and Glaxo Wellcome, as well as from corporations in the oil, gas and nuclear industries (see, for example, The Royal Society Annual Review 1998-99, p.26).
Curiously, the Society justifies such donations by saying that it will ensure it can 'formulate balanced judgements about the use of science to solve national, social, economic and industrial problems... independent of vested interests'. But the biologist and social scientist Dr Tom Wakeford sees it somewhat differently, 'British citizens are paying taxes to fund an organisation that actively promotes the interests of multinational biotech corporations, under the guise of independent science.'
Fellows of the Royal Society often have extensive commercial interests of their own, or depend on corporate funding for their own research activities and successes. The Royal Society's former Vice President and Biological Secretary, Sir Peter Lachmann, for instance, has been:
a scientific advisor to SmithKline Beecham;
a non-executive director for Adprotech plc, a biotech company which he helped spin out from SmithKline Beecham; and
a consultant to Geron Biomed, which markets the cloning technology behind Dolly the sheep
The Society's former President (1995-2000), Sir Aaron Klug, joined the Scientific Advisory Board of GeneProt, which has a commercial relationship with Novartis, in June 2000, ie while still the Society's President.
For 300 years a key principle of the Society was not meddling in public controversies. Its journal Philosophical Transactions carried a notice in every issue stating, 'It is an established rule of the Royal Society... never to give their opinion, as a Body, upon any subject.' But by the 1960s the notice had quietly been dropped, and by the late 1990's the Society's then President, Sir Aaron Klug, was boasting, 'We have contributed early and proactively to public debate about genetically modified plants.' (President's Address, The Royal Society Annual Review 1998-99).
In September 1998 the Royal Society issued its first report on GM crops, entitled ‘Genetically Modified Plants for Food Use’. Its expert group broadly concluded that the use of GM plants had the potential to offer benefits in agricultural practice, food quality, nutrition and health.
Almost every member of the group was a known supporter of GM foods. The chairman was Peter Lachmann - later accused of threatening the editor of The Lancet in an effort to prevent the publication of Dr Arpad Pusztai’s research showing adverse effects on rats from GM potatoes.
Other contributors holding positions within the Society were Aaron Klug (President), Brian Heap (Foreign Secretary) and Rebecca Bowden (Secretary). Others involved in drawing up the report included Ed Dart of Adprotech - the biotech company which Lachmann helped found - and also a former R&D Director of Zeneca Seeds, Neville Craddock of Nestlé, Phil Dale and Mike Gale plus two other colleagues from the John Innes Centre, Derek Burke, Chris Leaver, Alan Malcolm, and Noreen Murray.
A year later the Royal Society was a key contributor to the 'white paper', Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture, issued jointly by seven national academies of science. The paper emphasized the potential of GM crops to relieve hunger and poverty. The team which represented the Royal Society on this occasion was constituted by Aaron Klug, Brian Heap, Mike Gale and Michael Lipton, with Rebecca Bowden once again as Secretary. Gale, Heap and Lipton were also part of the team that produced the pro-GM Nuffield Council report that included an appendix highly critical of Dr Pusztai.
The Royal Society and its leading Fellows were key players in the attacks on Dr Pusztai from the time he went public with doubts about the safety of GM foods. In February 1999, for instance, nineteen Fellows of the Royal Society condemned Pusztai, in all but name, in a letter published in the national press. Among the signatories was Peter Lachmann.
Three months later in May 1999 the Royal Society published a partial 'peer review' of Pusztai's then unpublished research. This review was based not on a properly prepared paper, like that Pusztai and his collaborator Ewen later had peer-reviewed and published, but on a far-from-complete internal report intended for use by Pusztai's research team at the Rowett Institute.
Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, described the Royal Society review as 'a gesture of breathtaking impertinence to the Rowett Institute scientists who should be judged only on the full and final publication of their work.' Peter Lachmann responded with a letter to The Lancet, attacking both The Lancet and the British Medical Association for ‘aligning’ themselves ‘with the tabloid press in opposition to the Royal Society and Nuffield Council on BioEthics’.
The Royal Society's review was organised by members of a working group appointed by the Society in coordination with the Society's officers. The Royal Society claimed that anyone who had already commented on the Pusztai affair had been excluded from this decision making process in order to avoid bias. However, William Hill, Patrick Bateson, Brian Heap and Eric Ash, who were all involved, were all among the co-signatories of the letter condemning Pusztai that had been published in The Daily Telegraph back in February.
In addition, four key people involved, including the Chair of the working group, Noreen Murray, as well as Brian Heap, Rebecca Bowden and Sir Aaron Klug, were all part of the earlier working group that had issued the Royal Society's 1998 report supporting GM foods.There were other issues of bias. For instance, William Hill, the chair of the Pusztai working group, was also the deputy chair of the Roslin Institute, famous for genetically modifying animals and for cloning Dolly the sheep. Roslin in turn had links to Geron Biomed for whom Lachmann consulted. Similarly, Noreen Murray was the wife of the co-founder of Europe's first biotechnology company, Biogen.
Undaunted by the Royal Society's attack on their unpublished work, Pusztai and his co-researcher, Prof Stanley Ewen, submitted their final paper on their experiments to The Lancet. It was sent to six reviewers, double the normal number, and a clear majority were in favour of its publication.
However, prior to publication the Lancet's editor Richard Horton received a phone call from Peter Lachmann, the former Vice-President of the Royal Society. According to Horton, Lachmann called him ‘immoral’ for publishing something he knew to be ‘untrue’. Towards the end of the conversation Horton says Lachmann also told him that if he published Pusztai's paper, this would ‘have implications for his personal position’ as editor.
The Guardian broke the news of Horton being threatened in November 1999 in a front-page story. It quoted Horton saying that the Royal Society had acted like a Star Chamber over the Pusztai affair. ‘The Royal Society has absolutely no remit to conduct that sort of inquiry.' Lachmann denied threatening Horton although he admitted making the phone call in order to discuss the pending publication.
The Guardian also talked of a GM ‘rebuttal unit’ operating from within the Royal Society. According to the journalist Andy Rowell, who helped research The Guardian article, Rebecca Bowden, who had coordinated the Pusztai peer-review and who had worked for the Government’s Biotechnology Unit before joining The Royal Society in 1998, admitted to the paper, ‘We have an organization that filters the news out there. It’s really an information exchange to keep an eye on what’s happening and to know what the government is having problems about … its just so that I know who to put up.’
The attacks on The Lancet editor and his decision to publish Pusztai's paper continued. Sir Aaron Klug, vigorously opposed the publication of Pusztai's research, saying it was fatally flawed in design because the protein content of the diets which control groups of rats were fed on was not the same as that of the other diets. Pusztai commented: 'In fact, the paper clearly states that ALL diets had the same protein content and were iso-energetic. I cannot assume that Sir Aaron is not sufficiently intelligent to read a simple statement as that, so the only conclusion I can come to is that he deliberately briefed the reporters with something that was untrue.'
Richard Horton remained unbowed. ‘Stanley Ewen and Arpad Pusztai’s research letter,' he wrote, 'was published on grounds of scientific merit, as well as public interest’. What Sir Aaron Klug from the Royal Society cannot ‘defend is the reckless decision of the Royal Society to abandon the principles of due process in passing judgement on their work. To review and then publish criticism of these researchers’ findings without publishing either their original data or their response was, at best, unfair and ill-judged’.
The attacks continue unabated. Peter Lachmann's successor as Biological Secretary of the Royal Society, Patrick Bateson, told readers of the British Association's journal Science and Public Affairs that The Lancet had only published Pusztai’s research 'in the face of objections by its statistically-competent referees' (June 2002, Mavericks are not always right). Bateson, presumably deliberately, inverts the fact that Pusztai’s Lancet paper successfully came through a peer review process that was far more stringent than that applying to most published papers.
In an article in The Independent, giving the Royal Society's views on why the public no longer trusts experts like themselves - 'Scientists blame media and fraud for fall in public trust' -Pusztai's work is categorised as 'fraud'. Pusztai's peer reviewers, we are told in the article, 'refused it for publication, citing numerous flaws in its methods - notably that the rats in the experiment had not been fed GM potatoes, but normal ones spiked with a toxin that GM potatoes might have made.' Almost every word of this is straight fabrication. There was no fraud. Rats were fed GM potatoes. The publication of Pusztai's Lancet paper was supported by a clear majority of its peer reviewers, etc. etc. It is particularly ironic that such a travesty should have been published in an article reporting the Royal Society's concerns about the reporting of science in the media.
In February 2002 a new Royal Society report on GM crops was published as an update to the Society's September 1998 report. The expert group which produced it was much more broadly based than in '98 and the report took a noticeably more cautious line. 'British Scientists Turn on GM Foods’, ran The Guardian's headline on a report which included an admission ‘that GM technology could lead to... unpredicted harmful changes in the nutritional status of foods’.
The expert group was chaired by Jim Smith, who had sat on the Society's Pusztai working group, and tucked away inside the report was a paragraph on Pusztai. Once again, it was designed to mislead.
The first part of the paragraph read: ‘In June 1999, the Royal Society published a report, review of data on possible toxicity of GM potatoes, in response to claims made by Dr Pusztai (Ewen and Pusztai, 1999). The report found that Dr Pusztai had produced no convincing evidence of adverse effects from GM potatoes on the growth of rats or their immune function.’
The Royal Society report references the phrase 'claims made by Dr Pusztai' - claims it said it had reviewed - to the article published by Pusztai and Ewen in The Lancet in 1999. In fact, however, the Royal Society’s partial review of Pusztai's research was published months before The Lancet article appeared. The Royal Society thus conceals the fact that it had only ever reviewed part of Pusztai’s data, condemning him ahead of publication of his actual paper.
The 2002 report continued: ‘It concluded that the only way to clarify Dr Pusztai’s claims would be to refine his experimental design and carry out further studies to test clearly defined hypotheses focused on the specific effects reported by him. Such studies, on the results of feeding GM sweet peppers and GM tomatoes to rats,and GM soya to mice and rats, have now been completed and no adverse effects have been found (Gasson and Burke, 2001).’
But the Gasson and Burke paper, to which these further feeding studies are referenced by the Society, was not a piece of primary research but an ‘opinion’ piece written by two pro-GM scientists, Mike Gasson and Derek Burke. Worse, one of t he two further studies mentioned had not even been published, except by way of summary, ie it had never been fully peer-reviewed. In other words, the Royal Society uses an unpublished and un-peer-reviewed study to attack Pusztai, two years after it had condemned him for speaking to the media without first publishing peer-reviewed work.
In response to criticism, the Royal Society admitted that the work in question remained unpublished but said this was not a problem because, ‘it had been discussed at international scientific conferences’. By this definition, however, Pusztai's research would have been equally validated before the Society ever launched its partial review as it had been presented at an international conference prior to the Society's review. Curiously, the Royal Society has also described the opinion piece by Gasson and Burke as ‘primary research,’ even though it is a literature review involving no lab work.
Andy Rowell, author of a book that deals extensively with the Royal Society's role in the Pusztai affair, writes, 'the fundamental flaw in the scientific establishment’s response is not that they try and damn Pusztai with unpublished data, nor is it that they have overlooked published studies [supporting Pusztai's concerns], but that in 1999, everyone agreed that more work was needed. Three years later, that work remains to be undertaken... [A] scientific body, like The Royal Society, that allocates millions in research funds every year, could have funded a repeat of Pusztai’s experiments.'
The Royal Society's support for GM has involved more than issuing reports and condemning Pusztai. The Society has also sought to assert control over how the media reports scientific controversies. In 1999 it issued its Guidance for editors, which begins by quoting the Press Complaints Commission Code that, 'newspapers and periodicals must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted material', and warns, 'Editors must be able to demonstrate that the necessary steps have been taken'.
'Journalists', the guidelines state, 'must make every effort to establish the credibility of scientists and their work'. To assist them in this, the Royal Society said it would publish a directory that provided a list of suitable scientists to advise journalists on their stories. The implication is that the nominated expert in the field would be able to comment both on the scientific issues and the validity of the views of the scientist in question, giving a sense of their orthodoxy and legitimacy.
When the Royal Society's directory was made available online, it was criticised in The Times: 'At best, it can be seen as undemocratic nannying tendency. At worst, sinister news manipulation by scientific spin-doctors who cannot even agree among themselves on many issues or who may, in order to conceal incompetence or hidden agendas, try to play down a serious threat to public health and safety.'
Stephen Cox, for the Royal Society, told The Times, 'There is no censorship involved, but the scientific community feels under siege from hostile press coverage of such issues as GM foods and cloning'. Among the experts the Royal Society listed for issues to do with GM foods and genetic manipulation were Mike Gale and Anthony Trewavas.
The idea of a directory of approved experts for journalists was eventually taken over by the industry-funded Science Media Centre (SMC), housed within the Royal Institution (RI). The Royal Society's Guidance for editors was similarly replaced by Guidelines on science and health communication prepared by the Social Issues Research Centre (SIRC) in partnership with the Royal Society and the Royal Institution. The British Medical Journal is amongst those who have noted the SIRC's intimate links to the food and drinks industry.
In addition, to the SIRC and the SMC, the Royal Society has also worked closely with another lobby group, Sense About Science (SAS) - the directors of both the SMC and the SAS are part of the Living Marxism network.
Both the Royal Society and Sense About Science have set up working groups on the issue of the reporting of science and peer review. The Sense About Science working party is chaired by the Royal Society's former Vice President, Sir Brian Heap. Pat Bateson, the Society’s Biological Secretary has been assigned to liaise with the SAS working party as has Bob Ward, its senior manager for press and public relations. Peter Lachmann is also on the SAS working party which meets at the Royal Society.
Simultaneously the Royal Society has established its own working party on peer review. It was this that prompted The Independent article about how the Royal Society was battling scientific fraud and innacurate reporting in the media. A Fellow of the Royal Society and member of its working party, Prof Harvey, was quoted a The Scotsman article on the working party, saying Pusztai had been reported as 'right' when he was 'wrong'. Harvey also referred to Pusztai's 'spurious results'. Andy Rowell commented in The Guardian, 'already this investigation looks like it will be used to attack those who have published science critical of commercially sensitive areas'.
As details of Britain's official ‘public debate’ on GM were finalised in autumn 2002, Lord May, who succeeded Aaron Klug as President of the Royal Society, spoke out about the danger of its being 'hijacked' by 'lobby groups'. Part of the official process was a science review. Most of the meetings set up to assist the science review panelists in their work took place at the Royal Society or the Royal Institution.
Dr Les Levidow was among a number of scientists who complained about partisan chairing and other problems of bias at the meetings held at the Royal Society: Dr Levidov complained that far from an open debate on the science, what occurred at the Royal Society 'policed the scientific debate through assumptions and emphases favourable to GM crops'. He concluded, 'If there is to be an open debate on scientific unknowns and difficult issues in risk research, then it will need to be organized elsewhere.'
All very interesting, but the result of the research (that the sun is not responsible for recent warming) is the exact opposite of the conclusion that oil companies would want to promote, so why would they sponsor it ?
.
'Sorry your [sic] wrong again, more spin' appears to have a fixation about GM crops and similar matters, but this has no connection with the subject under discussion. The Royal Society only came into the discussion because they published the findings of the research into the waning effect of the sun upon global warming
Looks as if it is someone from another pressure group of loonies trying to promote their views. Perhaps the Royal Society's own words sum it up best -
The Royal Society said yesterday: 'There is a small minority which is seeking to confuse the public .... They are often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day.'
The spin about global warming is very powerfull in the USA where corporate biznes either ows or controls the media trhough advertising .One network stands out particularly in twisting and denying facts
youtube.com/watch?v=gnt3FWToSWs&feature=dir
Oh you mean Msnbc?....Stick with Iranian television Tonni...
Climate’s always been changing and it’s been changing rapidly at various times, and so something was making it change in the past,' he told us in an interview this past winter. 'Before there were enough people to make any difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the climate, yet the climate was changing, okay?'
'All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,'Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.''
Little Ice Age? That’s what chased the Vikings out of Greenland after they’d farmed there for a few hundred years during the Mediaeval Warm Period, an earlier run of a few centuries when the planet was very likely warmer than it is now, without any help from industrial activity in making it that way. Today, old Viking farmsteads are covered by glaciers.
the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. 'What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?'
'A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went,' he says. 'There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.'
What is normal? Maybe continuous change is the only thing that qualifies. There’s been warming over the past 150 years and even though it’s less than one degree, Celsius, something had to cause it. The usual suspect is the 'greenhouse effect,' various atmospheric gases trapping solar energy, preventing it being reflected back into space.
Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor……
And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.
You sound like one of the refusniks who say that there is global warming on Mars, but no industry, so the greenhouse effect and CO2 two aren't linked, conveniently overlooking the fact that the Martian ice-caps are made of CO2 and as they melt, extra CO2 goes into the atmosphere.
Climate myths: We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age
17:00 16 May 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Some climate sceptics argue that the warming we are now experiencing is simply due to the planet recovering from the Little Ice Age, a period of regionally cold conditions between roughly AD 1350 and 1850. But the key question is why it was colder during the Little Ice Age. And why didn't the climate remain that way, or even get colder still?
The Earth does not have some natural temperature to which it always returns. If it cools, then it must be receiving less heat from the Sun or radiating more into space, or both. If it warms, it must be receiving more heat or retaining more heat.
The term 'Little Ice Age' is somewhat questionable, because there was no single, well-defined period of prolonged cold around the entire planet. After 1600, there are records of average winter temperatures in Europe and North America that were as much as 2°C lower than present (although the third coldest winter in England since 1659 was in 1963).
Comparisons of temperature indicators such as tree-ring records from around the northern hemisphere suggest there were several widespread cold intervals between 1580 and 1850.
Yet while there is some evidence of cold intervals in parts of the southern hemisphere during this time, they do not appear to coincide with those in the northern hemisphere. Such findings suggest the Little Ice Age may have been more of a regional phenomenon than a global one.
Heat transport
Solar radiation was probably lower at times during this period, especially during a dip in solar activity called the Maunder minimum around 1700, but models and temperature reconstructions suggest this would have reduced average global temperatures by 0.4ºC at most.
The larger falls in temperature in Europe and North American may have been due to changes in atmospheric circulation over the North Atlantic, or in the Gulf Stream, or both, reducing heat transport from the tropics (see Climate change sceptics lose vital argument).
The warming after the so-called Little Ice Age may reflect both an increase in solar activity and a redistribution of heat around the planet. In particular, the increase in global temperature in the first half of the 20th century may have been largely due to an increase in solar activity. The continued warming in recent decades, however, cannot be explained by increases in solar radiation alone (see Climate myths: Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans).
Climate myths: CO2 isn't the most important greenhouse gas
17:00 16 May 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Is water a far more important a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, as some claim? It is not surprising that there is a lot of confusion about this – the answer is far from simple.
Firstly, there is the greenhouse effect, and then there is global warming. The greenhouse effect is caused by certain gases (and clouds) absorbing and re-emitting the infrared radiating from Earth's surface. It currently keeps our planet 20°C to 30°C warmer than it would be otherwise. Global warming is the rise in temperatures caused by an increase in the levels of greenhouse gases due to human activity.
Water vapour is by far the most important contributor to the greenhouse effect. Pinning down its precise contribution is tricky, not least because the absorption spectra of different greenhouse gases overlap.
At some of these overlaps, the atmosphere already absorbs 100% of radiation, meaning that adding more greenhouse gases cannot increase absorption at these specific frequencies. For other frequencies, only a small proportion is currently absorbed, so higher levels of greenhouse gases do make a difference.
This means that when it comes to the greenhouse effect, two plus two does not equal four. If it were possible to leave the clouds but remove all other water vapour from the atmosphere, only about 40% less infrared of all frequencies would be absorbed. Take away the clouds and all other greenhouses gases, however, and the water vapour alone would still absorb about 60% of the infrared now absorbed.
By contrast, if CO2 alone was removed from the atmosphere, only 15% less infrared would be absorbed. If CO2 was the only greenhouse gas, it would absorb 26% of the infrared currently absorbed by the atmosphere.
A simplified summary is that about 50% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour, 25% due to clouds, 20% to CO2, with other gases accounting for the remainder.
Water cycle
So why aren't climate scientists a lot more worried about water vapour than about CO2? The answer has to do with how long greenhouse gases persist in the atmosphere. For water, the average is just a few days.
This rapid turnover means that even if human activity was directly adding or removing significant amounts of water vapour (it isn't), there would be no slow build-up of water vapour as is happening with CO2 (see Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are tiny compared with natural sources).
The level of water vapour in the atmosphere is determined mainly by temperature, and any excess is rapidly lost. The level of CO2 is determined by the balance between sources and sinks, and it would take hundreds of years for it to return to pre-industrials levels even if all emissions ceased tomorrow. Put another way, there is no limit to how much rain can fall, but there is a limit to how much extra CO2 the oceans and other sinks can soak up.
Of course, CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas emitted by humans. And many, such as methane, are far more powerful greenhouse gases in terms of infrared absorption per molecule.
While methane persists for only about a decade before breaking down, other gases, such as the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), can persist in the atmosphere for hundreds or even tens of thousands years. Per molecule, their warming effect is thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide. (Production of CFCs in now banned in most of the world, but because of their ozone destroying properties, not greenhouse properties.)
Double up
But the overall quantities of these other gases are tiny. Even allowing for the relative strength of the effects, CO2 is still responsible for two-thirds of the additional warming caused by all the greenhouse gases emitted as a result of human activity.
Water vapour will play a huge role in the centuries to come, though. Climate models, backed by satellite measurements, suggest that the amount of water vapour in the upper troposphere (about 5 to 10 kilometres up) will double by the end of this century as temperatures rise.
This will result in roughly twice as much warming than if water vapour remained constant. Changes in clouds could lead to even greater amplification of the warming or reduce it – there is great uncertainty about this. What is certain is that, in the jargon of climate science, water vapour is a feedback, but not a forcing.
You need some medication, this was already on here awhile ago.
Yes, its a common reliable source used by many sensible people. How do you manage to relate medication to this ? Own experience perhaps ?
tonny from belgiumJul 12th, 2007 - 12:52:32
The spin about global warming is very powerfull in the USA where corporate biznes either ows or controls the media trhough advertising .One network stands out particularly in twisting and denying facts
youtube.com/watch?v=gnt3FWToSWs&feature=dir
What are these words Tonny??? biznes ows trhough
This is a short typical rant from the idiot know as Tonny from Belgium.
The example here is not as bad as most, but as you can see he can’t spell anything for shit, and his punctuation is always weird.
This from the guy that post on every subject and pretends to be an expert on everything.
From reading him for several months it is painfully clear that he does not have the spelling, writing, or deductive ability of most US kids in 10th grade. Ignore him
A typical anti-warming moron with his head buried in the sand. Unable to formulate cogent arguments he falls back on attacking the messenger. So Tonny gets a few words wrong - still pretty good for someone who's native language clearly isn't English. Perhaps the cretin above would care to express his views in another language and see how correct he is (and I don't mean american English as opposed to International English spoken by the rest of the World)
You and Tonni are in the same boat, attack the messenger, change names, fake USA hate, Denial of Terrorism threat, No facts ever just same its old, oil spin, etc...Find another board you've lost the debate here...
I don't think the 'hate america' needs to be faked - just as Rome became too powerful and self interested, so the World now views america - and we all know what happened to the Roman Empire
Time to debunk the debunkers.
The sun: The warming is all in the lower atmosphere, while the upper atmosphere is cooler. If the sun were behind the warming, the upper atmosphere would be showing a good deal of warming. Which it's not. Also, if the sun were responsible, it'd be more than a handful of planets and moons showing it. Jupiter alone has over 50 moons. How many of those are showing warming?
1998: A spike year. Because, as any scientist will say, there are natural cycles. Let me repeat that: THERE ARE NATURAL CYCLES. WE KNOW. Saying they exist doesn't prove human activity hasn't had an impact on them. If you want to debate that, fine. But stop saying 'natural cycles' as though it proves a damned thing, because it doesn't.
Back to 1998: It was a spike year. It happens. But when you take 1998 off the graph, what have you got? A relatively consistent upward trend. Yes, 1998 was hotter than any other year on record, but 2007 was hotter than 2006, which was hotter than 2005, which was hotter than 2004, which was hotter. . . . You see where this is going? Again, 1998 was a spike, an unusually hot year, an extreme, something that happens once in a while when you're talking about both weather and climate (different topics).
Urban heat island: It's my understanding that the readings are done at various locations, including many rural areas, in order to minimize the effect the urban heat island has on the readings. Climate scientists aren't stupid. They know it's a lot hotter in a big city than out on a farm in the middle of nowhere. So they make their readings at the farm in the middle of nowhere.
Gore: He flies commercial whenever he can, and his home uses 100% reneweable energy, specifically to minimize his impact on the environment. If you're going to demonize someone, learn the facts, first.
The age of the Earth: But, I thought the Earth was only 6000 years old! But seriously, we use other methods to figure out the temperature of the Earth at previous points. (A lot of people are skeptical about the accuracy of those readings. A lot of those people also use those readings to say they prove the Earth was warmer during other periods. Don't you love double-standards? Either they're inaccurate, in which case you can't use them for your own arguments, or they are accurate, in which case you can't deny the findings you don't like. But I digress.)
Politics: Yeah, and the sceptics have no political agenda. Riiiiiight. Nope, no agenda there. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell to you. So how about we leave political agendas out of this, and simply debate the science, shall we? Just for the sake of argument, let's assume most scientists - on both sides of the debate - have the truth as their main agenda. That way, we can actually get somewhere, instead of just accusing each other of being gullible liberals or greedy conservatives. That debate gets old REAL fast.
The cause: There's not one cause. Read about the science, then come back. Suggesting that there's only one cause is just plain stupid.
Climate changes of the past: I already said that while natural cycles exist, scientists are concerned that human activities have been affecting the natural cycle. No one's saying humans are entirely responsible for the warming, only that humans have caused the normal cycle to be unusually quick and intense.
Global cooling: It was at the end of a normal, relatively brief cooling cycle. For a few decades before that, and ever since then, the trend has been towards warming.
1999-2006: As a matter of fact, it did keep getting warmer every year after 1999. 1999 was actually a little cooler than I think even 1995, but ever since, it's been getting hotter and hotter, and it won't be long before the 1998 record is broken.
Who to go with: The top climate scientists, of course, a clear majority of whom believe human activity is impacting climate change. That was easy, wasn't it?
I find it funny that people actually deny that there is a warming trend. There's virtually no scientists left who deny that there is warming. And there's a shrinking number who deny that humans are effecting it. The debate now revolves around how much humans are effecting it, and how bad it's going to get.
OLd News, There have been at least 4 reported Global Cooling periods since 1895.
And how do they have any relevance in the current rapid change out of previous trends ?
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