The random political thoughts thread (Part Deux)

[sleepyjeff]

A federally sponsored inquiry into the effects of possible climate changes caused by heavy supersonic traffic in the stratosphere has concluded that even a slight cooling could cost the world from $200 billion to 500 times that much in damage done to agriculture, public health and other effects.
~Walter Sullivan NYT; 1975.

Walter Sullivan(yes, THE Walter Sullivan of the Walter Sulilvan Award for Scientific Journalism which was won this year by Time Magazine and its "musing" about global warming) is concerned here that the planet is cooling.

Scientists Ask Why World Climate Is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead; Scientists Ponder Why World's Climate Is Changing; a Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.
~Walter Sullivan NYT; May 21, 1975.

More concern.

"Surely we cannot let ecological qualms halt dreams of fertilizing the Sahara or warming up Antarctica with nuclear power, thus rendering habitable millions of new acres."
~Oppenhiemer NYT; 1972

Another writer at the NYT thinks that maybe we humans can slow "global cooling".......kinda glad now we didn't "panic" back then?

Warming Arctic Climate Melting Glaciers Faster, Raising Ocean Level, Scientist Says.
~NYT; 1947

Of course those who were in the "cooling" crowd back in the 70s had people doubting them pointing to experts from the 40s saying the planet was warming up...........kinda see a 30 year cycle here?

findings indicate that global warming is melting polar ice ... findings indicate that global warming is melting polar ice ... reported indicators of warming have led researchers to devise .
~Walter Sullivan NYT; August 14, 1990.

Now Walter Sullivan is no longer concerned about global cooling....quite the opposite now........maybe he was bored?

[Gemini Cricket]

From the play I'm in 'You Can't Take It With You'

"I used to worry about the world, too. Got all worked up about whether Cleveland or Blaine was going to be elected President- seemed awfully important at the time. But who cares now? What I'm trying to say, Mr. Kirby, is that I've had 75 years that nobody can take away from me, no matter what they do to the world." ~ Grandpa Sycamore

(Or something to that effect. I'm paraphrasing...)

[Not Afraid]

Here are links to the last most recent IPCC Evaluations.

And an interesting article that is a couple years old but still relevent in it's overall information.

Both are nice assessments of information from a variety of sources.

[scaeagles]

Like I said, we can play the exchange of links game all day. You may not respect my viewpoint on this, which is fine, but I'm not going to fell badly about agreeing with an MIT atmospheric scientist.

[Not Afraid]

MIT vs Harvard?

That's why I posted the information that is a gathering of data with some general conscientious attached.

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

My sources are reputable as well.

Depends on your definition of "reputable", I suppose. A little checking on google reveals that Bob Carter, the author of your first cite has received almost 100K in funding from Exxon. Richard Lindzen, the author of your second cite has received funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal, and ARCO and at one point was charging the oil and coal industry $2,500 a day for his consulting services.

Perhaps you could find a researcher that supports your opinion that hasn't been paid off by the oil industry.

[sleepyjeff]

Originally Posted by Motorboat Cruiser

Perhaps you could find a researcher that supports your opinion that hasn't been paid off by the oil industry.

This one is paid by the State of Oregon: Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor.


http://www.ospirg.org/OR.asp?id2=18806

[wendybeth]

Originally Posted by sleepyjeff

This one is paid by the State of Oregon: Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor.


http://www.ospirg.org/OR.asp?id2=18806

Lol- is this supposed to help your cause?

""There is a valued and much-needed role for skeptics to question the prevailing view," says Philip Mote, Taylor's counterpart in Washington state and a professor at the University of Washington. "Once in a while, the skeptics are right. But there is no debate in the scientific community over whether human-caused global warming is possible or observed. The only way one could come up with that opinion is not being familiar with the scientific literature."
Taylor becomes especially dangerous when policy-makers accept his views, says Jeremiah Baumann of the environmental group OSPIRG. "You've got George Taylor fiddling while Rome burns, and the problem is that the Legislature is listening to the concert instead of doing something about the fire."


And there's more!:
"Taylor's position as the leading climate expert in Oregon, a state with a national environmental reputation, has given ammo to those who are hostile to the idea that the earth is warming up. On Jan. 4 of this year, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a Senate floor speech, "As Oregon State University climatologist George Taylor has shown, Arctic temperatures are actually slightly cooler today than they were in the 1930s. As Dr. Taylor has explained, it's all relative."
Inhofe was wrong on two counts. First, Taylor is not a doctor; he has no Ph.D. (he received his master's in meteorology at the University of Utah in 1975). And second, Taylor is flat-out mistaken. Temperatures in the Arctic have, in fact, reached unprecedented levels, according to an exhaustive study by two international Arctic science organizations published last November that confirmed previous, similar results.
Mote, whose Ph.D. is from the University of Washington, surmises that Taylor is guilty of looking only at data that support his views, while discarding the rest. "You can only come to that conclusion if you handpick the climate records," Mote says.
"You can say whatever you want about a subject, but to defy expert opinion-it's just hard for me to understand approaching a complex subject like this and say, 'I know better than the experts,'" Mote says."


Thanks for the laugh, Jeff. They said it better than I ever could.

[sleepyjeff]

^The article was written by a critic of Taylors...I thought it would be better accepted here for that reason. I can, of course link directly to his website at Oregon State if you want a biassed link((so you can say it is a biassed link)

Since we are ripping each others sources:

The IPCC is losing some of its top scientist since they disagree with the way they(IPCC) are starting with a conclusion and filling in data to support said conclusions; and data that supports anything other than the decided conclusion is silenced((((that's how science by majority works you know)))
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/a...s/landsea.html

[scaeagles]

Originally Posted by Motorboat Cruiser

Depends on your definition of "reputable", I suppose. A little checking on google reveals that Bob Carter, the author of your first cite has received almost 100K in funding from Exxon. Richard Lindzen, the author of your second cite has received funding from Exxon, Shell, Unocal, and ARCO and at one point was charging the oil and coal industry $2,500 a day for his consulting services.

Perhaps you could find a researcher that supports your opinion that hasn't been paid off by the oil industry.

I'm sure that all the scientists spouting hysteria over impossible scenarios have nothing to do with the Sierra Club or Al Gore, and that intimidation of those with data that suggests other than panic scenarios really aren't pressured to withhold data.