Gee Yet another non scientist telling us how all them know nothing climate scientist have got it wrong. So who is this new fountain of truth a journo, a profession one up from Polly’s and used car salesmen. Come you tell us why we should believe you, even better tell us why we should be dazzled by your obvious lack of knowledge on the subject or science in general. Last I looked Journo are supposed to report the news not fabricate it. I'd go through point by point where you wrong but a climate scientist would do a much better job and they have a number of great web sites. Written I might add by people who actually know what they are talking about. Google away.

save your breath kenny

most of us with more than two brain cells to rub together arent forgetting there is more to climate change than sea level rises. the real merchants of doom (those who say it will cost uss too much to do anything) will constantly cherry pick their arguments as to why there is no need to act, and focussing on the worst predictions of one aspect one of their saviours. one wonders whether this author has house insurance, because surely the chances of it being broken into or burnt down are non existent.

the fact that both established agriculture and isolated pockets of native biodiverse land cannot move as quickly as the changing weather patterns is of no concern to someone with a portfolio of beach front property.

Hang onto that beach shack (or McMansion)? Yep, "don't worry, be happy" has been a philosophy for a long time. Embedded in a culture of intellectual blindness, fostered in those parts of society disliking reality's view.
In 1954 goelogist Fred Whitehouse lectured on the absurdity of Gold Coast development upon fore-dunes built up during long periods of calm; to be swept away during ferocious surges generated from cyclones drifting down from the north. That was half a century ago. How lucky some people can be - only once has there been a panic: truckloads of rock avoided a disaster from an act of the sea-God.
In 1999 Geoscience Australia (AGSO) published a multi-hazard risk assessment for Cairns. Storm tide inundation for most of the city was shown to be almost unavoidable. Wetting of feet, mybe the nose and beyond, would be a sure thing at some time.
Assessments for other places came. South-east Queensland looks specially precarious. All this has been without factoring in a Global Warming scenario.
With "beach shack" mania extending along most of Australia's east coast, those two regions aren't alone. The NSW Lands Department have acknowledged the issue. They addressed it to some extent by denying requests to re-define seaward boundaries of land benefiting from accretion of stabilised sand. Accretion had been a gift to the landowner, paid for by public loss of beach access when seawalls were built along the new boundaries to block natural erosion during storms.
Even without global warming, the paradise of a beach condominium or shack might be short-lived. So-what for Global warming? - well, hold onto your hats as melt-water trickles down glacial crevasses in Greenalnd and Antarctica. During the last year we have found that such a trickle is rather a fast-moving phenomenon bent on lubricating the formidable ice mass. The ice giants are on the move, growling their way to the sea. They are big. When freed from the land to float, sea-level rise could accelerate somewhat.

The first two posts added nothing to the discussion. Nothing whatsoever.

About a week and a half ago, this excellent report was published by the Canadian newspaper National Post. It focuses on a number of highly distinguished scholars/experts who have made various strong disputes regarding the IPCC findings.

I will list them here with links to the respective parts of the report that discusses their disputes:

1. Edward Wegman, Ph.D. degree in mathematical statistics, University of Iowa. Has served as editor or associate editor of numerous prestigious journals and has published more than 160 papers and eight books.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=22003a0d-37cc-4399-8bcc-39cd20bed2f6&k=0

2. Christopher Landsea doctor in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. Leading hurricane expert whose conclusions were ignored by the IPCC.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=ae9b984d-4a1c-45c0-af24-031a1380121a&k=0

3. Duncan Wingham PhD. in Physics, Bath and Leeds. He is a director of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling and principal scientist of the European Space Agency CryoSat Satellite Mission.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=b228f4b0-a869-4f85-ba08-902b95c45dcf&k=0

4. Richard Lindzen PhD in applied mathematics, Harvard University. A professor of meteorology in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate. He is also a consultant to the Global Modeling and Simulation Group at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and a Distinguished Visiting Scientist at California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Prof. Lindzen is a recipient of the AMS's Meisinger, and Charney Awards, and AGU's Macelwane Medal. He is author or coauthor of over 200 scholarly papers and books.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=63ab844f-8c55-4059-9ad8-89de085af353&k=0

(Continued next post)

(cont'd)

5. Henrik Svensmark is director of the Centre for Sun-Climate Research at the Danish Space Research Institute (DSRI). Previously, Dr. Svensmark was head of the sunclimate group at DSRI. He has held post doctoral positions in physics at University California Berkeley, Nordic Institute of Theoretical Physics, and the Niels Bohr Institute. In 1997, Dr Svensmark received the Knud Hojgaard Anniversary Research Prize and in 2001 the Energy-E2 Research Prize.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=fee9a01f-3627-4b01-9222-bf60aa332f1f&k=0

6. Nigel Weiss, professor emeritus of mathematical astrophysics in the University of Cambridge. Recipient of a Royal Society Citation, he is a past President of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a past Chairman of Cambridge's School of Physical Sciences.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=17fad0e2-6f6b-41f3-bdd8-8e9eeb015777&k=0

7. Prof. Henk Tennekes
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=9bc9a7c6-2729-4d07-9629-807f1dee479f&k=0

8. Habibullo Abdussamatov,physicist and a mathematician, head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academies of Sciences' Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station's Astrometry project, a long-term joint scientific research project of the Russian and Ukranian space agencies.
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=edae9952-3c3e-47ba-913f-7359a5c7f723&k=0

9. Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shariv -
"Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=069cb5b2-7d81-4a8e-825d-56e0f112aeb5&k=0

Thanks for the links, Ev.

According to the author bio, "Mark's original training was in science at Melbourne University from which, after reading material on almost every subject except those pertaining to his course."

Nice that he has a self-depricating sense of humour.

Michael says that climate change is about less rainfall. Err.. No, its about increasing temperatures, and higher temperatures tend to melt ice. So the advice given about "have a house by the beach then by all means keep it." is worthless advice.

Then I thought, if Mark is giving worthless advice, perhaps he is also misquoting from the reports linked in the article? So I had a look.

Marks article: “note that a 3mm a year increase sustained for a century works out to a total increase of 0.3 metres”, whereas a the National Tidal Centre speaks of up to a 0.5 metre change over 50 years. The NTC does not reject the scientific consensus on climate change and makes an important contribution to scientific research.

Mark’s link to Dr Carl Wunsch took me to Joe Barton, Republican Party Ranking Member, The Committee on Energy and Commerce Republicans (USA). The original work is http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/abrupt2006.pdf

Carl Wunsch is Professor of Physical Oceanography who makes a contribution to better understanding of past climatic events. According to his website “Carl Wunsch and his collaborators have focussed on estimating the time varying ocean circulation by combining global general circulation models and the recently available global data sets.” This is science at work, not a radical rejection anthropogenic global warming.

The Insurance Council provides a report about the lack of flood insurance. If someone can find any relevance to this topic, the report is here: http://www.insurancecouncil.com.au/ArticleDocuments/24/ICA%20COAG%20Submission.pdf.aspx

If you worry about your great, great grandkids, take the warnings on global climate change seriously.

For more information on OLO's series of unscientific articles on global warming, click here: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/trackdoc.asp?id=1630&pId=4761

Ev, not to disagree with you but the complaints about the exclusion of research from the ipcc report are not exclusivly from 'sceptics'. a recent new scientist article highlighted the process by which the phrasing of the report is formed, including a whole day spent on an arguement between on one side, government reps from the gulf states and china, and on the other gov reps from europe, canada and others, as to wether current global warming was 'likley' or 'highly likely' to be anthropogenic.

the process seems to have achieved something of a bell curve, with extremes from each end excluded. the problem i guess is that the more radical reports, from both ends may have been excluded, not because they were inaccurate but because they were unpalatable.

“Basically there is no evidence that this fast-track melting has ever occurred, despite much greater swings in temperature in Earth’s history. This suggestion amounts to speculation - until we see evidence of it happening.” Well, how’s this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6368843.stm

Ev I can counter your list of citations with an equal number of mine, but what’s the point? One scientist links global warming on earth with a corresponding change on Mars while another denies it is happening altogether, and yet a third reckons we’re all going to freeze. Talk about clouding the issue. Meanwhile the worlds' governments - even ours - have reached their own conclusion.

Doesn’t stop the melting, though.

Regarding the last post by Bennie - The BBC News link you mentions Kilimanjaro. From another source:

"There's a tendency for people to take this temperature increase and draw quick conclusions, which is a mistake," said Douglas R. Hardy, a climatologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who monitored Kilimanjaro's glaciers from mountaintop weather stations since 2000. "The real explanations are much more complex. Global warming plays a part, but a variety of factors are really involved."

According to Hardy, forest reduction in the areas surrounding Kilimanjaro, and not global warming, might be the strongest human influence on glacial recession. "Clearing for agriculture and forest fires—often caused by honey collectors trying to smoke bees out of their hives—have greatly reduced the surrounding forests," he says. The loss of foliage causes less moisture to be pumped into the atmosphere, leading to reduced cloud cover and precipitation and increased solar radiation and glacial evaporation.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/09/0923_030923_kilimanjaroglaciers_2.html

Bennie said, "Ev I can counter your list of citations with an equal number of mine, but what’s the point?"

The point is it would be great! I would love to read them, and it would help myself and other people to perhaps learn more.

When I hear people using words like 'denialist' and 'sceptic' it makes me very sad. The very foundation of science is scepticism. Asking questions ad finitum, not just going along with the herd.

A quote from one of the articles I linked earlier:
As Lindzen wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal, "there is a more sinister side to this feeding frenzy. Scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds disappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis."
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=63ab844f-8c55-4059-9ad8-89de085af353&k=0

We've been though all this before Ev.

For example, the National Geographic article you site says forest reduction melts the glaciers of Kilomanjaro. It also says dirty snow melts the glaciers. It says reduced cloud cover melts the glaciers. It certainly says that global warming melts the glaciers there.

Here is the quote from the article you somehow overlooked: "now, with global warming, the glaciers are disappearing eight times faster than before." Oops!

Don't post something, and expect nobody will check your sources and find out how you've distorted and cherry-picked the information.

I’ll be gone a few days Ev but thought I’d leave here a link for your perusal, as suggested. For those of you swayed by miscellaneous blogs and sincere but misguided theories, this may be enlightening.

http://batesmotel.8m.com/

Mark, a sensible article.

Ev - apparently from Canada - I was recently in touch with a BC environmentalist named Evie (though not using my nom-de-net). I wonder ...?

I'm alright Jack, I don't live on the coast.

Faustino: I'm not from Canada - Oz.

Bennie: Rather than reading about claims that the moon landing was a fake, you may be interested in what's going on now at NASA, where future moon-landings and other such ventures have been given priority over climate studies, at a time when we need to learn so much more. This article outlines the problem:

"Other canceled missions would study water vapor in the atmosphere, monitor deforestation, examine ocean currents, and figure out how much solar heat is reflected back into space by tiny aerosol particles in the atmosphere. These decisions come on the heels of NASA's deep-sixing of a project to place an Earth climate observatory at one of the Lagrange points, the positions in space where the gravity of the Earth and moon are equalized. This recent National Academy of Sciences report excoriates NASA for paying too little attention to Earth observation and for doing relatively little to study the sun, on which, after all, Earth life depends.

You might assume that NASA is canceling Earth study missions because the Bush administration does not want environmental data. Yet the projects in question would not yield substantive results until after President George W. Bush leaves office. What's really going on is that NASA holds the taxpayers in contempt. Space agency top management has long clung to an attitude of "We are experts, no one dares question us." And NASA entertains a silly Sci Fi Channel fantasy that its core task lies in deep space, because humanity is already on the verge of discovering the origin of the universe. Earth is low-prestige—too local. As Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., noted in 2005, NASA "describes Earth science research as being significant to the extent that it informs our knowledge of, and our capability, to explore other planets. This is precisely backwards. The planet that has to matter most to us is the one we live on."

Full article - http://www.slate.com/id/2138943/

David Latimer: Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else? "Don't post something, and expect nobody will check your sources.." - Pretty rude.

Response to Ev 20 February 2007 5:19:00 AM:

"Perhaps you have mistaken me for someone else? ... Pretty rude."

Are you allowing someone else to use your account? Try searching for: "Posted by Ev, Sunday, 18 February 2007 9:54:19 AM" and let us know if that's you.

Whoever that unscrupulous person is, they have given us a link to URL to National Geographic. Under your name, they cherry-picked the quotes from an article from National Geographic to give a misleading impression.

But here I am to clear things up. The article says "now, with global warming, the glaciers are disappearing eight times faster than before."

David Latimer: And now you've called me 'unscrupulous' and said that I'm trying to give a misleading impression. Exactly what misleading impression do you think I'm trying to give? The article relates the opinions of two different scientists studying the topic. You have quoted one (Hastenrath), I have quoted the other (Hardy).

In the quote from Hardy that I posted previously, he says: "The real explanations are much more complex. Global warming plays a part, but a variety of factors are really involved."
And the article continues with: "According to Hardy, forest reduction in the areas surrounding Kilimanjaro, and not global warming, might be the strongest human influence on glacial recession."

So I don't understand what you're getting so up-tight about.

thanks Ev. I'm a big fan of NASA, regardless of how politics shapes its programs.

My link is to illustrate where you're going to end up in 10-15 years.

Just to be clear to everyone else. Ev is trying to paint me as uptight and saying that I called her unscrupulous. But this is just the same obvious attempt to generate dispute, when none exists.

Ev's contribution is about cherry-picking information and inventing and generating dispute. This is tried and tested PR, but has proven a failure. It has not split the scientific community, it has not discredited the scientific method and it has not swayed the general public.

Look at the National Geographic article and none of the scientists say that Global Warming does not melt glaciers. End of story. No amount of cherry-picking the discussion of other factors involved (eg dirty snow, deforestation) can alter this.

The National Post has deliberately sort "deniers" and discussing Edward Wegman. Lets remember that his involvement was through a Republican-dominated committee of US politicians. He was the "original program director of the basic research program in Ultra High Speed Computing at the Strategic Defense Initiative's Innovative Science and Technology Office (Star Wars Program)." http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/faculty/wegman.html

The calibre and colour of Wegman’s biography suggests he was the right person for the job asked of him by the Committee. But the problem is when all efforts to critique climate change were exhausted, the conclusions of global warming remain standing, and as far as can be humanly ascertained, we are living in the warmest period for 1000 years, and getting warmer.

David Latimer, there were clearly two opinions expressed by two qualified people on the role of climate change on Killimanjaro. And it may come as a surprise to you but the mere fact that one of them agreed with you does not constitute validation of your opinion. In fact, from my recollection the pro-climate change argument was full of sophistry.

And your links above to the Royal society are nothing but a set of straw men set up for the society to knock over. All this stuff was dealt with in relation to Al Gores bollocks but you and the Tim Lamberts of this world keep returning to your vomit.

Response to Perseus:

You are explaining that a scientist speaking about the effect deforrestaion has on a particular glacier is contradicting the scientist who says global warming speeds up the melting eightfold.

Are you seriourly trying to convince people that deforrestation nullifies the effect of global warming?

Wow!