List of Scientists who Dissent from Global Warming View

For some reason, my GW believer buddies seem perpetually skeptical that there are substantial numbers of reputable scientists who are dubious about anthropogenic warming. It's clear however there are many scientists who are skeptical of the anthropogenic warming claim (i.e., human-caused Global Warming, which I often abbreviate as "Global Warming" or just "GW" on this blog, separate from "global warming" (no caps), which is the claim that the Earth is warming, without specifying a cause).

I found 700 skeptical scientists in the U.S. Senate EPW report here. Wikipedia has a (much smaller, but still significant) list here.

An excerpt from the Senate report:

"
Highlights of the Updated 2008/2009 Senate Minority Report featuring over 700 international scientists dissenting from man-made climate fears:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical...The main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology, and formerly of NASA, who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.


“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists.” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
"

Well, if the Children are Gonna Die, I'll Reconsider

The Puzzling Warming Graph

My Global Warming Rant (or, why there's something rotten in Copenhagen)

This is actually adapted from an email to one of my GW believer friends, but it should be clear enough:


I'm not some right-wing wacko that has knee jerk reactions about Global Warming because of suspicions that it's a device for redistribution from the Left. I'm suspicious of it because the claim is that we can predict the future state of a complex system, and I've spent at least a decade coming to understand how this is a chimera. GW models are actually a species of time sequence prediction, which I've studied (I've studied sequential learning more, of course). I know a little about this general inductive procedure, and it's very vulnerable to the local minima or maxima problem (where are you on the decision surface?). So we really don't know whether the Earth will start cooling in a few years, with the warming period a local maxima.

Add to this, it doesn't add up! The warming of the last century was more pronounced prior to the heavy industrialization of the 1940s on. And then there's the point that C02 is something like .054% of the gasses in the Earth's atmosphere, and of this miniscule amount, only a sliver is human caused (most is from the oceans), and of this sliver, we can only change a sliver of the sliver without ruining our economies. So, fine, I'll put in green bulbs to light my house, but am I really affecting the global climate? Would building windmills or nuclear power plants in place of coal burning plants really lower the mean global temperature? It seems really dubious that any of the proposals would make any difference, even if we've got the core science right, which is in dispute among climatologists, in spite of the "debate's closed now, go home" attitude of the IPCC crowd.

So, the whole thing just seems to scream for a rational discussion, but somehow we never get one. It's the ultimate will-o-the-wisp: question the claim that "GW is anthropogenic", and GW believers throw out facts and figures for a while. The GW skeptic throws out counter facts and figures, say, that while Africa is hottest on record, North America is actually cooling, not to mention Antarctica. The believer then says "look, you idiot, it's not that every place will get warmer, it's that the climate will change." To which the unsuspecting skeptic (idiot) says, but you just used the fact that Africa is hottest on record as evidence for the theory!

This goes on for a while, until eventually the skeptic is frustrated once again, because the believer has now shifted the debate from the original claim (that we can predict the behavior of the Earth's weather), to the costs of not acting. The argument goes something like this: look, we can't prove GW, but we're certain that there's climate change (the most vacuous statement ever, by the way), and we better at least try. Sure, the skeptic agrees, let's try. The debate should now be:

Given the uncertainty with predicting the future states of complex systems, how much economic change makes sense?

This gets the believer into trouble (because the honest answer, alongside other dangers like global economic instability, terrorist acts, geopolitical upheaval, etc., is "not that much"). So the believer performs the final sleight of hand, which is to shift the entire debate away from murky scientific predictions about the future of the planet, into a kind of political shame-you game: "look, idiot skeptic, don't you want cleaner air? Don't you like streams and oceans and national parks?". To which the skeptic (at least my kind of skeptic) can jolly well say "yes"! And this makes the skeptic's whole point--why don't we just ask simple questions about how we can reduce dependence on foreign oil, and reduce industrial pollution, and live better lives? Why hitch the project on this Nostradamus illusion that we know what the global mean temp of planet Earth will be in the next hundred years? Not enough CATASTROPHE! to get the masses moving? (Sorry, folks, but even us idiot skeptics prefer to be treated as rational adults.)

Final point. The IPCC touts its "list" of scientists who accept the anthropogenic claim (there's debate about whether the number is inflated, but leave that aside for now). There's also a list of very distinguished scientists who think that the anthropogenic claim is dubious. Proponents of GW often resort to the argument that the list of believers is longer than the list of skeptics. Are we really at the point where "science" is established by counting the "aye"s and the "nay"s? This is simply unbelievable as a serious scientific proposition. The existence of serious dissent from qualified scientists tells us instantly that the issue is NOT settled, in spite of the Orwellian attempt to shut everyone up who raises doubts or concerns.

Sorry, GW believers, the irony here is that you, not the skeptic, are on the wrong side of history.

Global Warming Dissent Continues

From APS on the need to slow down the climate change discussion, so that we can have an actual scientific debate. Many of these folks are mainstream scientists. Of course, I'd expect that the politicized Global Warming! crowd will find a way to suggest that their mamas are whores. Excuse my language.

Don't Try This at Home

It's part of the new logic in Washington. To stimulate business, create more bureaucracy. What the hell, it's just 200 billion. Not like we have a deficit problem. Oops.

Unpacking Mike's Trick (Thanks, Mike!)

Here's some (it would appear to be) interesting info on "Mike's Nature Trick", in case readers of this blog want some dirt for possible future self-serving uses (for instance, "Loch Ness Tricks", to show clear evidence of the Loch Ness Monster, for those receiving funds to study Loch Ness sightings, and so on). I'm all about making it easier to bilk the unsuspecting masses. As I get more "tricks", I'll pass them along.