Global warming fiction or fact, read State of fear, too true?

Question

Global warming fiction or fact, read State of fear, too true?

Answer 1

FACT OR FICTION

FICTION

for many North Americans ,but they are used to fiction and feel more comfortable with fairytales instead of the truth,

Many blindly believe that our fate is in Gods hands ,and their focus is on the beautifull heaven that awaits ,they are not to concerned with the world their children will inherrit

whilst others wish to enjoy an Earthly paradise ,with out having to die first,they care what happens here and want to help the planet

there may come a time that for the sake of our survival the two views will be seperated in to Enemies and friends of the planet

World leaders are not concerned with the well being of the masses ,on the contrary .it was stated at a conference in Copenhagen,in 1998,by Kissinger, that the Agenda demanded a decrease in the world population of 60%,and you cannot achieve this if you start saving everybody.

scientists who work for politicians ,get paid by these politicians and they have downplayed the facts because solutions are expensive and means change and change effects many peoples incomes,and upsets profit margins,so most of the world is kept in the dark of the real things that are going on.for political and economic reasons

HOWEVER CLIMATE CHANGE IS FACT FOR MILLIONS

Global warming is a very complex collection of many effects

this text only covers some aspects of global warming mainly man made desertification

industrial contamination ,the contaminating effects of the cities ,is another story

there are natural cycles in the planets life

but mans existance has its effects,and this is increasing with overpopulation,putting strains on Natural resources and increasing contaminations as well as destructions of essential componants the ensure living conditions for all life forms

in North Africa,India,Mexico ,millions of people are effected by land loss and desertification and some have died as a result

in china, thousands of what used to be farmers are running for their lives from the dust storms that have burried their towns and turned their lands into dessert,

,the Sahara is growing by 7 kilometers a year

and all of the desserts we know are a results of mans actions ,and they are increasing ,not getting less ,in the dinosaurs days ,there were very few desserts.

collectively this planet is drying up because of bad farming practices like,over grazing and fertilizers,

each degree rise in temperature means 10%crop loss

and there is less and less water (because of deforestation),to irrigate this production ,

and there are less and less farmers to do it..

and there are 70 million more peole every year that have to eat and drink and wash

who are overpumping deep carbon aquifiers

who are plowing more and more unstable lands because they have lost so many million hectares to desertification ,

because of bad farming practises ,such as using fertilizers and heavy machinary or over grazing

RISING SEAS

The northpole is melting ,and we will know it without ice in our life times.

this does not affect the sea level because it is ice that is already in the water.but the melting ice from Green land and the south pole ,are another matter.

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/natur...

if forrest are being exchanged for ashalt,concrete and desserts

what is gonna keep this planet habitable for us

We as humanity can behave in a less stressful manner as far as the Environment is concerned ,but it will mean global co operation between all countries ,and taking into account human nature and the world politics ,it is unlikely that this will happen,

Answer 2

The following is from actual climate scientists at RealClimate.org. "State of Fear" is fiction pure and simple.

"Michael Crichton’s State of Confusion

— gavin @ 10:09 pm - ()

In a departure from normal practice on this site, this post is a commentary on a piece of out-and-out fiction (unlike most of the other posts which deal with a more subtle kind). Michael Crichton's new novel "State of Fear" is about a self-important NGO hyping the science of the global warming to further the ends of evil eco-terrorists. The inevitable conclusion of the book is that global warming is a non-problem. A lesson for our times maybe? Unfortunately, I think not.

Like the recent movie "The Day After Tomorrow", the novel addresses real scientific issues and controversies, but is similarly selective (and occasionally mistaken) about the basic science. I will discuss a selection of the global warming-related issues that are raised in between the car chases, shoot-outs, cannibalistic rites and assorted derring-do. The champion of Crichton's scientific view is a MIT academic-turned-undercover operative who clearly runs intellectual rings around other characters. The issues are raised as conversations and Q and A sessions between him (and other 'good guys') and two characters; an actor (not a very clever chap) and a lawyer (a previously duped innocent), neither of whom know much about the science.

So for actors and lawyers everywhere, I will try and help out.

The issues Crichton raises are familiar to those of us in the field, and come up often in discussions. Some are real and well appreciated while some are red herrings and are used to confuse rather than enlighten.

The first set of comments relate to the attribution of the recent warming trend to increasing CO2. One character suggests that "if CO2 didn't cause the global cooling between 1940 and 1970, how can you be sure it is responsible for the recent warming?" (paraphrased from p86) . Northern Hemisphere mean temperatures do appear to have cooled over that period, and that contrasts with a continuing increase in CO2, which if all else had been equal, should have led to warming. But were all things equal? Actually no. In the real world, there is both internal variability and other factors that affect climate (i.e. other than CO2). Some of those other forcings (sulphate and nitrate aerosols, land use changes, solar irradiance, volcanic aerosols, for instance) can cause cooling. Matching up the real world with what we might expect to have happened depends on including ALL of the forcings (as best as we can). Even then any discrepancy might be due to internal variability (related principally to the ocean on multi-decadal time scales). Our current 'best guess' is that the global mean changes in temperature (including the 1940-1970 cooling) are actually quite closely related to the forcings. Regional patterns of change appear to be linked more closely to internal variability (particularly the 1930's warming in the North Atlantic). However, in no case has anyone managed to show that the recent warming can be matched without the increases in CO2 (and other GHGs like CH4).

Secondly, through the copious use of station weather data, a number of single station records with long term cooling trends are shown. In particular, the characters visit Punta Arenas (at the tip of South America), where (very pleasingly to my host institution) they have the GISTEMP station record posted on the wall which shows a long-term cooling trend (although slight warming since the 1970's). "There's your global warming" one of the good guys declares. I have to disagree. Global warming is defined by the global mean surface temperature. It does not imply that the whole globe is warming uniformly (which of course it isn't). (But that doesn't stop one character later on (p381) declaring that "..it's effect is presumably the same everywhere in the world. That's why it's called global warming"). Had the characters visited the nearby station of Santa Barbara Cruz Aeropuerto, the poster on the wall would have shown a positive trend. Would that have been proof of global warming? No. Only by amalgamating all of the records we have (after correcting for known problems, such as discussed below) can we have an idea what the regional, hemispheric or global means are doing. That is what is meant by global warming.

Crichton next raises the apparently unrecognised (by the lawyer character at least) fact that the interior of Antarctica is cooling (p196), an issue discussed in another post (Antarctica cooling, global warming?). This is more or less correct (given the obvious uncertainties in long term data from the continental interior), but analogously to the example above, local cooling does not contradict global warming.

Next, and slightly more troubling, we have some rather misleading and selective recollection regarding Jim Hansen's testimony to congress in 1988. "Dr. Hansen overestimated [global warming] by 300 percent" (p247). Hansen's testimony did indeed lead to a big increase in awareness of global warming as a issue, but not because he exaggerated the problem by 300%. In a paper published soon after that testimony, Hansen et al, 1988 presented three model simulations for different scenarios for the growth in trace gases and other forcings (see figure). Scenario A had exponentially increasing CO2, Scenario B had a more modest Business-as-usual assumption, and Scenario C had no further increases in CO2 after the year 2000. Both scenarios B and C assumed a large volcanic eruption in 1995. Rightly, the authors did not assume that they knew what path the carbon dioxide emissions would take, and so presented a spectrum of results. The scenario that ended up being closest to the real path of forcings growth was scenario B, with the difference that Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, not 1995. The temperature change for the decade under this scenario was very close to the actual 0.11 C/decade observed (as can be seen in the figure). So given a good estimate of the forcings, the model did a reasonable job. In fact in his testimony, Hansen ONLY showed results from scenario B, and stated clearly that it was the most probable scenario. The '300 percent' error claim comes from noted climate skeptic Patrick Michaels who in testimony in congress in 1998 deleted the bottom two curves in order to give the impression that the models were unreliable.

Dr Hansen is further quoted (a little out-of-context) saying: "The forcings that drive long term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate change". Given the discussion above it is clear that without good estimates of the actual forcings, the differences in the model projections can be large. It is widely accepted that exact prediction of what will happen to climate in 50 or 100 years is impossible. Much of the future is of course unknowable. A new energy source could replace fossil fuels, governments could control emissions, or maybe a series of huge volcanoes will erupt. Therefore it is much more sensible to ask, what would climate be like if you doubled CO2? or if this or that scenario occured. These are much better defined questions. Hansen's quote is often taken to imply that models are so unreliable they are useless in helping assess the issue. In fact it is the opposite - Hansen is actually claiming that the uncertainty in models (for instance, in the climate sensitivity) is now less than the uncertainty in the emissions scenarios (i.e. it is the uncertainty in the forcings, that drives the uncertainty in the projections).

Continuing to p315, it is claimed that "in the 1970's all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming" (and, as described on p563, the MIT academic apparently still thinks so). However, this is not an accurate statement and William Connolley's pages on the subject are an illuminating read for those wanting more details.

Another issue that often comes up in discussion about the surface temperature record is the impact of the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHIE), and here it appears on p370. It is undisputed that the centres of cities such as New York are significantly warmer than the surrounding countryside. This issue has been extensively studied and is corrected for in all analyses of the global temperature trends. To see whether there might still be a residual effect in the corrected data, a recent paper (Parker, Nature, 2004) looked at the differences in the trends if you looked separately at windy and not-so-windy conditions. Wind is known to diminish the impact of urban heating, and so the trends on windy days should be less than trends on still days if this was important. The trends actually end up almost exactly the same. Other validating data for the corrected surface temperature record comes from the oceans, which have also been warming in recent decades. Even Richard Lindzen , normally an arch-skeptic on these issues, stated that "ocean temperature increases present some support for the surface temperature record" Lindzen (2002). Another demonstration that the corrections are sufficient is that over the continental US, where many cities have a clear urban heating signal, the mean of the corrected data is actually rather flat (p88) - i.e. none of the strong urban biases in the US has made it into the regional or indeed global mean.

A central issue in the book concerns sea-level rise. Vanuatu is singled out for special attention since the islanders there are understandably concerned about their low-lying islands eventually being swamped. Sea level however is a surprisingly difficult thing to measure. Tide gauges are very noisy, and are usually located on the continental coast. Global trends in sea level from these gauges are between 1.7 to 2.4 mm/yr. Sea level though is not rising everywhere. In Scandinavia the continents are still rebounding from the ice age and local sea level is receding. Satellite data (TOPEX/POSEIDON and JASON) can give a global picture, and indicate that although the global mean rise over recent years (2.8 mm/yr) is significantly larger than the longer term trend estimated from tide gauges, sea level change is actually very dynamic. There are many patterns of behaviour particularly in the Pacific, associated with El Nino variability - possibly related to Vanuatu's lack of actual sea level rise over the last 40 years. Curiously, Crichton cites the higher satellite derived number to claim that the rate of sea level rise has not increased recently ("[Sea level is] rising faster, Satellites prove it","Actually they don't"), p424. There are clearly some problems in comparing tide gauge and satellite data, and of course, satellites can have their problems (cf. MSU data), but the quoted numbers don't support the actual statement at all - though it would be fairer to say that the satellites are consistent with a recent rise in the rate, rather than a proof that it is occuring.

There are only a few out-and-out errors, but to be generous, they probably just slipped through the editing process. For instance, on p187 "higher temperature means more water vapor in the air and therefore fewer clouds" - Presumably, he meant that if the temperature is higher, the relatively humidity could be lower (and so there might be less clouds). On p368. "Croplands are warmer than forested lands". This is probably a confusion with the urban heating issue, but the actual impact is the opposite - croplands have a higher albedo than forests, reflect more solar radiation, and are thus cooler. In fact, while this is not yet fully quantified, it appears to have been a significant cooling term in the global budget over the last 150 years. On p461 "...Greenland shows that, in the last hundred thousand years, there have been four abrupt climate change events" More like 40. And that is probably an undercount given that Greenland may not record events in the tropics.

At the end of the book, Crichton gives us an author's message. In it, he re-iterates the main points of his thesis, that there are some who go too far to drum up support (and I have some sympathy with this), and that because we don't know everything, we actually know nothing (here, I beg to differ). He also gives us his estimate, ~0.8 C for the global warming that will occur over the next century and claims that, since models differ by 400% in their estimates, his guess is as good as theirs. This is not true. The current batch of models have a mean climate sensitivity of about 3 C to doubled CO2 (and range between 2.5 and 4.0 degrees) (Paris meeting of IPCC, July 2004) , i.e an uncertainty of about 30%. As discussed above, the biggest uncertainties about the future are the economics, technology and rate of development going forward. The main cause of the spread in the widely quoted 1.5 to 5.8 C range of temperature projections for 2100 in IPCC is actually the different scenarios used. For lack of better information, if we (incorrectly) assume all the scenarios are equally probable, the error around the mean of 3.6 degrees is about 60%, not 400%. Crichton also suggests that most of his 0.8 C warming will be due to land use changes. That is actually extremely unlikely since land use change globally is a cooling effect (as discussed above). Physically-based simulations are actually better than just guessing.

Finally, in an appendix, Crichton uses a rather curious train of logic to compare global warming to the 19th Century eugenics movement. He argues, that since eugenics was studied in prestigious universities and supported by charitable foundations, and now, so is global warming, they must somehow be related. Presumably, the author doesn't actually believe that foundation-supported academic research ipso facto is evil and mis-guided, but that is an impression that is left.

In summary, I am a little disappointed, not least because while researching this book, Crichton actually visited our lab and discussed some of these issues with me and a few of my colleagues. I guess we didn't do a very good job. Judging from his reading list, the rather dry prose of the IPCC reports did not match up to the some of the racier contrarian texts. Had RealClimate been up and running a few years back, maybe it would've all worked out differently...

Update: Due to popular demand here is an updated version of the figure that was originally made in 1998. Apologies for my lack of photoshop skills.

Update 02/16/05: Chris Mooney also does a good job at checking some of the footnotes in Crichton's book.

Answer 3

State of fear was the first time I realized their was an opposition to global warming, after that I took a critical look at the data for and against global warming and decided this:

The theory of man-made global warming is false.  Anyone who believes otherwise has not investigated the evidence or is purposely remaining ignorant to the legitimate opposition to global warming.  I have given up an one and a half hours to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” so I ask you to do the same and watch the movie detailing the opposition.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=...  

And another video for those of you short on time: http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.ph...

Some more general resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...

http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.ph...

http://www.john-daly.com/

CO2 is not causing the globe to warm the opposite is true, the warming is increasing the atmospheric CO2.  When the world heats it gradually increases the temperature of the oceans which serve as the largest CO2 sink.  As the oceans heat up they release CO2 which is stored in them.  The information comes from the same data Al Gore uses, the temperature always goes up before the concentration of CO2 goes up.

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/artic...

CO2 makes up only .03% of our atmosphere.  Water vapor, another greenhouse gas, makes up 1-4% of our atmosphere, this gas is acknowledged to be the main greenhouse gas.  All human activities combined contribute only 6 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year.  Animals, through respiration, decomposition, etc contribute 150 Gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere.  So humans contribute only a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere which is already in very small concentrations in the atmosphere.

http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/science.html This is where my data came from, it is an interesting site, it displays the same graphics as Al Gore in his movie but it tells how low the human contribution is.  So Al Gore is using the same data but coming to a different conclusion, who do you want to believe a politician with no scientific training or the NASA CO2 laboratory, a group of scientists who spend their entire careers studying CO2.

We know the greenhouse effect is real it is a necessary effect to keep our planet at a habitable temperature.  However if our current warming is due to greenhouse gasses it would cause warming in the troposphere , but the troposphere is actually getting cooler.

http://wwwghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/temperature... That points to other explanations to our current warming.

So what is causing our current warming, it is the sun.

http://web.dmi.dk/solar-terrestrial/spac...

http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/s...

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/06...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/...

http://www.globalwarming.org/article.php...

The fact that only the earth’s surface is warming points to direct heating from the sun rather than heating due to greenhouse gasses.  Also other planets in our solar system are warming pointing to a common cause of warming, that common cause being the sun.

http://www.livescience.com/environment/0...

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sola...

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/sola...

The global warming crowd says our glaciers are melting and animals will suffer this is another false claim.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2Sci...

http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA235.htm...

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

The global warming crowd also insists our seas are rising due to global warming, however this is not entirely correct.  Seas in certain areas are rising, there is no global sea rise.  The seas have been rising ever since the last ice age: http://globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:H...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Post-...

These two sources show that sea level increase now has actually leveled off from a very steep rise for the past 20 thousand years.  For proof of this look here:

http://www.climateark.org/articles/1999/...

A mark left by Sir James Clark Ross, an Antarctic explorer, in 1841 is still visible.  Not only that but the mark was placed in 1841 to show how high the sea was, not only is the mark visible it is 30cm above current sea levels.  Now it is possible that the mark was placed at high tide and the picture taken at low, but even then the mark would still be above current sea levels.  The seas have risen dramatically over the past thousand years not due in any part to us.  If you want proof of that take a look at one of the dozens of ancient underwater cities that spot the globe.  When these cities were built they were on land now they are deep underwater: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/20...

This shows a dramatic increase in sea level during human time but long before the world became industrialized.

The global warming crowd also claims a scientific consensus on the issue, this is wrong in two ways.  One, there is no consensus, this is a false claim to make you believe in global warming by suppressing the opposition.  http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

Second, even if there was a consensus it would mean nothing, science is not politics, you don’t vote on theories to determine their legitimacy.

Here’s 21 pages of websites that disagree with global warming.

http://www.climatechangedebate.org/docum...

The thought that the only scientists who disagree with global warming are paid by oil companies is simply a stupid statement with no reality.  This is the most illogical argument by people in support of global warming.  Aside from being completely false it begs another question: Who pays global warming supporters?  The answer is big environmental agencies that make millions off of global warming each year by teaching, publishing books, and selling environmentally clean products.  

The IPCC is the main supporter of global warming, their statements are defended blindly by people who don’t want to admit that global warming is not real.  People will claim that they took into account natural sources of CO2, they didn’t.  Take a look for yourself:

http://www.ipcc.ch/activity/srccs/index....  That is the latest IPCC report, read the entire report, do a search of the documents, there is absolutely no mention of natural sources of CO2.  The natural sources have been completely ignored.  Also people will claim that the IPCC took the sun into account in their report, this is not entirely correct, while the sun is mentioned the report it’s effects have not been accurately represented.

http://www.john-daly.com/forcing/moderr....  The IPCC did not take into account the Svensmark factor.  This would greatly reduce the effect of solar radiation on the earth.  Look back up to the solar resources to see the effect of the sun correctly represented.

Also allegations have been by IPCC scientists who disagreed with the IPCC statements.  They say that their research was censored or taken out of the IPCC report.  This is not the first time the IPCC has lied, they forged the famous “hockey stick” graph, which later resulted in a reissuing of the IPCC report.

Here’s another source that disagrees with the IPCC: http://rpc.senate.gov/_files/Sept1004Glo...

And another: http://www.sepp.org/Archive/NewSEPP/ipcc...

And another: http://www.john-daly.com/guests/un_ipcc....

Quotes form politicians, CEO’s, and others are not proof of global warming, they issue these statements to get votes and customers.  Scientists are able to get published and get time on the media by supporting global warming.  The IPCC continually lies and misrepresents data so they keep their jobs.  

In regards to the precautionary principle that says we can only help if we switch over to alternative energy, this idea is not correct.  While this may seem legitimate it only helps the first world, third world countries can not afford to switch to the more expensive energy options.  Also the US currently spends 4 billion dollars a year on global warming research which could be better spent on research for disease or to fight poverty.  For an excellent example of how the precautionary principle is harmful you do not need to look further than DDT.  This pesticide was cheap and incredibly effective but it was banned because of it harmful effects on egg shells.  Now thousands of people die every year in third world countries because of malaria, a disease that could be easily controlled with DDT.

I hope anyone who believes in global warming they will take a look at the resources I provided.  These resources should convince you that global warming is not man-made, it is caused by cycles in the earths climate.  If you are not convinced I hope you at least take a new look at global warming as an unproven idea.  Remember that global warming is big business for anyone who aligns themselves with it.

I could not go this entire post without mentioning global cooling.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cool...

http://www.michaelkubacki.com/cooling.ht...

In the 1970’s it was claimed that there was a consensus on the fact that the world was headed into an ice age.  We have seen once before how damaging a false claim about our climate change can be to our world.  Most of the global warming crowd does not want you to know about this scare because it is so similar to the scare today.  Government panels were formed and claimed the world was headed to an ice age, evidence poured in supporting the claim, a consensus was claimed, then the whole issue just faded away.  That is what will happen with the false scare of global warming.

Answer 4

Global warming fact.  State of Fear science fiction.  This is a long post, but conservatives should not miss the end, below the line.

99+% of scientists around the world believe global warming is real and mostly caused by us.  And any number of very distinguished people, too.

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)

Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

Here are two summaries of the mountain of data that convinced Admiral Truly, short and long.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics.  Global warming is almost a no-brainer at this point,You really can't find intelligent, quantitative arguments to make it go away."

Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good websites for more info:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

The "hockeystick" was criticized for minor statistical problems, it has since been duplicated many times, in peer reviewed articles:

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Ima...

CO2 works two ways.  It causes warming and is released when oceans warm.  Historically CO2 lagged naturally caused warmings.  This time it is not lagging, another proof that this warming is not natural:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=1...

Man's CO2 is small.  But it is the factor causing CO2 to rise.  Proof.

There is a natural "carbon cycle" that recycles CO2.  But it's a delicate balance and we're messing it up.

Look at this graph.

http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gall...

The little squiggles are nature doing its' thing. CO2 falls a bit during summer when plants are active, and rises during the winter. The huge increase is us, burning fossil fuels (in addition to the shape of the graph, the increase numerically matches the increase in fossil fuel use). The scientists can actually show that the increased CO2 in the air comes from burning fossil fuels by using "isotopic ratios" to identify that CO2.  The natural carbon cycle buried carbon in fossil fuels over a very long time, little bit by little bit. We dig them up and burn them, real fast.  That's a problem.

"Global cooling" was never a scientific consensus.  There were a few guys with theories, little data, and no support from the community as a whole.  They were much like the skeptics of today.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=9...

______________________________________...

And now, military leaders say it's real:

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0407/041...

Dennis Hastert (!).

"I agree with you (Gore) that the debate over climate change is over."

Rep. Dennis Hastert, Republican, Illinois

Even Newt Gingrich, not exactly noted for either environmentalism or liberalism.  His own words, from his own website:

"Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich challenged fellow conservatives Tuesday to stop resisting scientific evidence of global warming "

http://www.newt.org/backpage.asp?art=433...

Global warming is now fact.  The data is in, and even hard core conservatives accept it.