Remember the letter from the 60 scientists denying that "climate change is real" meant anything? Now 90 scientists have written another letter stating:
- There is increasingly unambiguous evidence of changing climate in Canada and around the world.
- There will be increasing impacts of climate change on Canada's natural ecosystems and on our socio-economic activities.
- Advances in climate science since the 2001 IPCC Assessment have provided more evidence supporting the need for action and development of a strategy for adaptation to projected changes.
Coby Beck notes some ways the 90 are different from the 60:
- they are all from Canadian institutions
- they are all working in climate science fields
- they are unfamiliar names to me (i.e. busy doing their jobs rather than op-eds and Fox News interviews)
Let me add one more to his list. The 90 providing scientific evidence supporting their claims.
One surprising thing: there is one person who signed both letters. How come? He was misled:
Dr. Gordon E. Swaters, a Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Alberta says that he was told he was signing a petition asking that the federal government devote more energy to research on climate change. Instead, the letter - given prominent play last week in the National Post - suggested that climate change is unproved and that any effort to create policy to address the problem would be "irrational."
"I regret signing that damn petition," Dr. Swaters said Tuesday (April 18, 2006). the accomplished mathematician said he believes that "There are still a lot of mechanics and dynamics about climate change that we don't know about and a lot of subtleties that we need to unravel." But "signing this petition should not be seen as an attempt to indicate that climate change is not occurring."
Canada's Financial Post fought back, not with criticism of the evidence offered by the scientists, but an attack on the scientists: many of them have research funded by the government, so obviously they were just trying to get more money out of the government.
Interesting... thanks for sharing this.
I love logically parsing the reasoning of the my beloved Canada's right wing:
Translated, in context, what the FP is trying to argue is
"All research funded in any way by a government grant is biased, but all information provided by privately-funded interests isn't."
"Canada's Financial Post fought back, not with criticism of the evidence offered by the scientists, but an attack on the scientists: many of them have research funded by the government, so obviously they were just trying to get more money out of the government. "
Mow what a despiccable form of action, I am convinced you step up against this fallacy of poisoning the well in all cases, don't you Tim?
In other news, 93.5 scientists agree that feet odor is pleasant. Following the 93.5 report, 107.8 scientists refuted the claim. Research has been directed to managing the projected nuisance.
I'm glad to see scientists calling for adaptation strategies rather than economic clampdowns. A good step in a sensible direction, I believe.
Hans, I agree that such attacks on government-funded, peer reviewed research are uniformly despicable. A pity that this seems to be a standard fallback by some industry groups. Check out this link.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1758298,00.html
People who object to government funded research should be encourage to follow through on their beliefs.
First serious illness - bingo, they are gone.
This for Stephen Berg (courtesy of Mark Steyn)
Dr. Sue Blackmore looking on the bright side in Britain's Guardian:
"In all probability billions of people are going to die in the next few decades. Our poor, abused planet cannot take much more. . . . If we decide to put the planet first, then we ourselves are the pathogen. So we should let as many people die as possible, so that other species may live, and accept the destruction of civilization and of everything we have achieved.
"Finally, we might decide that civilization itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population -- weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example."
David Tiley, what are you implying in your post? That people should be able to opt out of paying tax for the services they do not use or benefit from??
NGS: I'm glad to see scientists calling for adaptation strategies rather than economic clampdowns. A good step in a sensible direction, I believe.
Virtually every scientist with any involvement in greenhosue issues agrees that significant wrmign is unavoidable and that adaptation strategies are essential.
If you actually read either scientific papers or government strategies you'd know that.
But why waste time with that when you can wallow in right-wing paranoid fantasies on the internet?
Tell you what, Tim, why don;t you find the original story and link to it?
Assuming it exists at all, it'll probably prove amusing to see how Berg and/or Steyn have distorted or misrepresented Blackmore.
Blackmore's piece is here -- it seems pretty alarmist.
Actualy Ian, Blackmore was a bit further than over the top, and since he has a comment on the site, Tim Curtin probably did look at the original http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sue_blackmore/2006/03/billions_are_…. However, for true amusement, one should look at the posting from Luis Enrique just below Tiny Tim's (whcih distinguishes him from Computer Tim).
"Worstall, I've started examining the question of which people will be needed in a drastically reduced population, and that sort of attitude made putting a cross against your name relatively painless (I feel a sense of sorrowful nobility, but I must be strong, the planet needs me). These decisions aren't easy, but I'm taking the low hanging fruit first. By the time I get down to freelance writers with an interest in memes and parapsychology, I think I'll just have to start flipping a coin."
It will be interesting to see what this Candian minority government will do. Their instincts will be to abandon Kyoto (after all, this is something that calls for a government putting conditions on industry, which they don't want to be), but they are a minority with unanimous opposition on this point from the other parties. The omens are not good, however. A scientist was requested not to speak at the launch party for his novel on global warming, as it might be misconstrued.
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2006/04/24/scientist-book060424…
It's clear that the Canadian Conservative party are trying to follow the American lead in confusing fiction and reality.
In contrast, the former prime minister from the previous incarnation of the conservative party was recently identified as the greenest prime minister of the country. http://www.cbc.ca/ottawa/story/ot-mulroney20060421.html
Conservatives can act like there could be a future.
While I don't want to highjack the thread, I was somewhat surprised by Mulroney being named the "green-PM". While he was far better than his american counterpart of the the time (Reagan) I would have thought that Trudeau was the best (and that is saying something from someone who used to tell the joke - Why did Trudeau resign on February 29? SO we could only celebrate once every 4 years).
John
An excellent article denouncing the "skeptic" PR machine:
"The Global Warming Denial Lobby
The people out to 'poison the debate on climate change.'"
http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2006/05/02/PaidtoDenyGlobalWarming/print.h…
Stephen Berg: an even better article for you and Jeff Harvey to check out is The Economist of 6th May: "A heated debate", which reports the NAAS paper by Wright Keeling and Gillman. They show (shock, horror) that the greater warmth and sunlight in the tropics with their concomitant higher rates of photo-synthesis (using CO2, more shock and horror) than at the poles is what explains the vastly greater living matter at the former, along with the tropics' apportionment of that matter to myriad more species than are at the poles. They show that the rate at which nucleotides change in species in the tropics is twice that in the temperate zones, and that this is because the higher temperatures in the tropics cause faster chemical reactions and metabolic rates. These in turn generate more oxygen-rich molecules that are potent producers of mutations (and ergo bio-diversity). Thus the upcoming truly horrendous 3C rise in global temperatures can only enlarge the area where all this frantic speciation and evolution occur.
Sorry, timbo but there are both maximum and minimum temperature levels for biodiversity.
We know this, in part, by looking at the fossil record for periods in the past when the planet warmed to higher temperatures than currently with the result beign a dramatic reduction in biodiversity.
Re: "They show (shock, horror) that the greater warmth and sunlight in the tropics with their concomitant higher rates of photo-synthesis (using CO2, more shock and horror) than at the poles is what explains the vastly greater living matter at the former, along with the tropics' apportionment of that matter to myriad more species than are at the poles."
The increased usage of CO2 in this process must be offset and then some by the reduction in CO2 absorption by the warming oceans. As warmer water has a lower capacity for CO2, it seeks equilibrium by not sequestring CO2 in as high quantities, leaving an accelerating rate of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere, and therefore more warming.
Stephen Berg said: "The increased usage of CO2 in this process must be offset and then some by the reduction in CO2 absorption by the warming oceans."
Why? If the quantum of CO2 was fixed, perhaps, but I thought AGW was all about increasing atmospheric CO2. How do you know that is not all ultimately absorbed by the process I described in such a way that there are no warming oceans?
Re: "How do you know that is not all ultimately absorbed by the process I described in such a way that there are no warming oceans?"
Simply because the current warming is contributing to desertification, which reduces the plant population, which in turn reduces the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed through photosynthesis.
As a result, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere increase, resulting in atmospheric warming. This atmospheric warming must then warm the oceans (at a slower rate, mind you, but still a warming) which results in either a reduction of CO2 absorption in the oceans or eventually a net emission of CO2 from the oceans.
"They show (shock, horror) that the greater warmth and sunlight in the tropics with their concomitant higher rates of photo-synthesis (using CO2, more shock and horror) than at the poles is what explains the vastly greater living matter at the former, along with the tropics' apportionment of that matter to myriad more species than are at the poles. "
This will be a great relief to the people living in the Sahara, who might otherwise lose their obvious affection for the countries with more energy-intensive living styles.
Is Tim Curtin really someone's rhetorical punching bag? That is: has someone made him up to demonstrate the inept arguments the denialists make?
I mean, really - I don't think it's humanly possible to get so many concepts so utterly wrong.
Tim Curtin cannot, therefore, be real.
Best,
D
Tim's a real, intelligent person who thinks "common sense" in the service of a pre-ordained economic and (anti-)environmental agenda is a substitute for all that silly book-learning involved in actually getting a degree in economics or environmental studies.
Was it Tim who, on John Quiggin's blog, found a single ancient reference to an anomalous measurement of the heat absorption spectrum of carbon dioxide and argued that this invalidated about a hundred years of scientific research? (Tim. I've incorrectly attributed things to you in the past. If I'm doing so again here, I apologise in advance.)
Sorry Ian, I was just showing how logical conclusions can arise like the false premises Tim Curtin uses.
Didn't mean to put you on the spot there. I see that my addled brain isn't consulting my editor again...
Best,
D
Ian, seems to me you have a bit of an oxymoron there. Anyone who behaves like TC is not intelligent.
Hi Stephen, Z, Dano and Ian
Funny how all you true believers are carefully anonymous whereas I am freely available via internet and web (www.timcurtin.com). BTW Ian how many degrees do you have in economics and/or the environment?
But that's not surprising when you all believe in the hoary desertification myth, as much a gravy train as Kyoto until the satellites images showed no sign of it; I myself spent 8 years in Egypt (massive tree planting in all directions) and Nigeria, in the latter on a fruitless search bumping though the well wooded Sahel bush looking for it along its northern frontiers from Sokoto to Maiduguri in between attending UN conferences about it and organising an EU project to combat it whose main problem was finding room for its trees as the northern Nigerians have been planting trees for 1,000 years (those cities put London and Chicago to shame in respect of tree-lined thoroughfares and large plantations in their green belts).
As for the paper I cited showing how beneficial global warming is for not merely biodiversity but bio explosion, why not shoot the authors' message and not me? But that would disqualify you from this site with its specialty of killing messengers of the truth. Leave your armchairs and visit Dubai where vegetation and animal life are showing explosive growth despite annual mean temperatures 10-40 degrees higher than almost anywhere else on earth. If Dubai's max went from 50C to 53C it would not even be noticed!
Re: "BTW Ian how many degrees do you have in economics and/or the environment?"
Tim, how many degrees do you have which specialise in climatology?
"Leave your armchairs and visit Dubai where vegetation and animal life are showing explosive growth despite annual mean temperatures 10-40 degrees higher than almost anywhere else on earth. If Dubai's max went from 50C to 53C it would not even be noticed!"
Maybe that's in some artificially created bio-dome. Otherwise, a huge waste of water is likely occurring, since most of it would be evaporating.
Did you, TC, realise that certain areas are not supposed to be plentiful of vegetation? Did you also realise that many areas which are supposed to be full of plant life are being subject to significant plant loss due to global warming?
Why are you so focused on the tropics when primary grain-producing areas, such as the Great Plains of the United States and the Canadian Prairies, are facing massive drought and the reduction of crop yields? If you actually care about people (which you claim us "AGW-believers" do not), you be concerned about the depletion of the world's food supply. A cactus and termite "explosion" in certain areas of the tropics will not solve this looming catastrophe.
"BTW Ian how many degrees do you have in economics and/or the environment?"
I have a Bacelor's degree in Economcis backed up by about a decade working in the Evnironmental Economics Unit of the Queensland EPA.
"Leave your armchairs and visit Dubai where vegetation and animal life are showing explosive growth despite annual mean temperatures 10-40 degrees higher than almost anywhere else on earth."
See Tim this is the sort of sloppy thinking (as opposed ot my own sloppy typing) which leads people to dismiss you despite your qualifications (which I will admit I was unaware of prior to visiting your site).
So maximum annual temperatures in Dubai are a minimum of 10degrees higher than "almost anywhere else on Earth"
http://www.wordtravels.com/Cities/United+Arab+Emirates/Dubai/Climate
Monthly average maxmimum temperatures for Dubai vary between 23 and 39 degrees.
I guess according to Tim there are very few places on Earth that have average maximum summer temperatures above 29 degrees celsius.
"visit Dubai where vegetation and animal life are showing explosive growth"
Is this watered by desalinated seawater produced by burning large quantities of fossil fuel that releases consequent amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere? If so then this is a really wonderful outcome.
"Thus the upcoming truly horrendous 3C rise in global temperatures can only enlarge the area where all this frantic speciation and evolution occur."
So I wonder how long it will take for this "frantic speciation and evolution" to replace the 60% of species that are likely to be wiped out in the transition to this frantic world. There might be more species one day (as long as humans allow it) but in the mean time it's not so nice.
Ian: name them.
Chris: the desalinated water is produced by the gas that would otherwise be flared, so it saves that waste; the CO2 is not released in Dubai but by you and your 4WD or similar wherever you live your miserable existence.
Stephen: Dubai's greenery is not under some dome; it's golf course lakes have attracted wild fowl etc from all over; the watering of the verdant highways' median verges is having a spillover effect on the surrounding desert which is starting to bloom with acacias etc. Saudi Arabia is now a wheat exporter. My garden is 3C hotter than normal for May today, in 30 minutes I heard a dozen different birdcalls and saw no corpses. Kindly document the loss of species you claim due to warmth rather than cold; try the article I cited for counter-evidence.
Stephen Berg said: "Did you, TC, realise that certain areas are not supposed to be plentiful of vegetation? Did you also realise that many areas which are supposed to be full of plant life are being subject to significant plant loss due to global warming?"
I say: 1. I am not a determinist (unlike the Kyoto mob). Things change, what were once forests became deserts and are now becoming forests again (eg Northern Egypt, China west of beijing). 2. Kindly name "the areas subject to plant loss to global warming". Forgive my ignorance, I know of none.
3. To help you in your research on the impact of CO2 changes on plant and animals etc I have compiled the following summary of some of the contributions to James R. Ehleringer, Thure E. Cerling, M. Denise Dearing (eds). A History of Atmospheric CO2 and its effects on Plants, Animals, and Ecosystems. Springer, 2005.
Part I.
1. R.A. Berner. How trees changed Palaeozoic atmospheric CO2, climate, and geology.
"The effect on atmospheric CO2 of the spread of large vascular plants beginning in the Devonian ...led to a large drop in atmospheric CO2, massive long term glaciation, and the formation of vast coal deposits" (p. 6).
2. Prosenjit Ghosh et al. Atmospheric CO2 during the late Palaeozoic Mesozoic.
Previous levels of CO2 were about 1170 ppmv during the middle Triassic (245 million years ago) and 2240 ppmv during the Jurassic (abt 175 million years ago) (p.30) [today 380 ppmv].
4. T Blunier et al. Atmospheric CO2 data from ice cores.
"The timing of the CO2 variations is such that the CO2 decrease lags Antarctic temperature decreases by a few millennia.... The CO2 increase PRECEDES by several millennia the northern glacial-interglacial temperature increase, which dominates over large portions of the world. [But] we are certain that the Antarctic CO2 record represents the atmospheric CO2 signal..." !!! (p.78).
5. C.D. Keeling et al. Atmospheric CO2 and CO2 exchange.
"Our principal finding from this analysis of atmospheric CO2 data is that inter-annual fluctuations in net exchanges of atmospheric CO2 are of the order of several Pg C yr-1 and correlate with strong El Nino events. The fluctuations clearly involve the terrestrial biosphere and probably (sic) the oceans, but their separate amplitudes and phasing cannot yet be precisely (sic) determined". (pp.110-111).
6. D.J. Beerling Evolutionary Responses of Land Plants to Atmospheric CO2.
".. a strong message to emerge from this review is that identifying evolutionary innovation driven by CO2 changes depends on our [absent] understanding of how contemporary plants respond to CO2" (p.129).
7. J. C. McElwaine et al. CO2 decline and the radiation and diversification of Angiosperms.
"Determining how a projected doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration by the end of this century will influence species composition and biodiversity REMAINS A MAJOR SCIENTIFIC AND POLITICAL CHALLENGE (Loreau et al 2001)" 133
"Our results indicate that CO2 fluctuations may have played an important role in both the relative diversity and abundance of angiosperms, gymnosperms, and pteridophytes...[there are] significant inverse correlations between atmospheric CO2 and angiosperm species richness and abundance [in North America] and significant POSITIVE correlations between North American pteridophyte species richness and gymnosperm species abundance and atmospheric CO2 " (142). [Therefore] the predicted (sic) future doubling of CO2...may significantly alter the percentage composition of angiosperms, gymnosperms, and pteridophytes in the world's biomes.
Further work [is needed] to define the critical threshold CO2 level at which significant changes in vegetation composition occur, as current models LACK THE PRECISION to address this critical issue". (159)
8. J. R. Waldbauer and C.P. Chamberlain. Influence of uplift, weathering, and base cation supply.
"At present atmospheric CO2 levels, carbon dioxide is often a limiting nutrient for the synthesis of biomass in C3 plants. Throughout the Phanerozoic, however, atmospheric CO2 has repeatedly reached concentrations 10 or more times present levels.." (p.179). "Tectonic uplift, through its control of chemical weathering rates - and therefore control of base cation supply rates to forests - exerts a powerful influence on atmospheric CO2...[hence] the major role played by tectonic uplift and rock weathering in the dynamics of atmospheric CO2 on a global scale" (pp.180-181)
http://www.maquilaportal.com/mapas/averageannualtemperature2.htm
Well Tim, according to the very first google hit I get for "acerage annual temperature" about 50% of Mexico has average annual temperatures in excess of 22 degrees.
The average annual maximum temperature for dubai - based on the unweighed average motnhly maximums from the site I linked to above, is 31.5 degrees.
Do I really need to pointo ut to you that the average maximum temperature will be above the average temperature?
Or that Mexico is a lot cooler than many other parts of the planet?
http://www.fao.org/WAICENT/FAOINFO/SUSTDEV/EIdirect/CLIMATE/EIsp0002.htm
If peopel bother to click on the maps avaialble from thi page they'll see that Dubai is cooler than quite a lot of the planet whether measured in terms of the maximum monthly average; average annual temperature range or number of months exceeding 10 degrees celsius.
So it would appear that while getting out from one's armchair and looking at the real world has its uses when one returns to one's armchair its advisable to pause, think and check ones facts before venturing an opinion.
RE: "Dubai's greenery is not under some dome; it's golf course lakes have attracted wild fowl etc from all over; the watering of the verdant highways' median verges is having a spillover effect on the surrounding desert which is starting to bloom with acacias etc."
So, it is just a result of human interference and not of natural activity.
Also, golf courses are not supposed to be in a desert area. The Las Vegas area has about 60 golf courses and they are having major water shortage problems. GEE! I WONDER WHY???
"Saudi Arabia is now a wheat exporter."
Are they a net exporter? If that is the case, it is complete idiocy by the nation's government, as it is not exactly a First World nation. Sure, the nation is rolling in the dough from the oilfields (a contributor to climate change), but I wonder if those in the lower classes are getting enough of the necessities of life.
"the desalinated water is produced by the gas that would otherwise be flared,"
Oh, well that makes it OK then doesn't it? And so what if they use desalinated water to irrigate Dubai? How does that prove that everything's wonderful in a warmer climate?
"the CO2 is not released in Dubai"
If you say so.
"I've managed to save up roughly $10851 in my bank account"
2 random facts from (unrelated) news stories last week:
The average lifetime cost of a cat or dog is between $10,000 and $11,000 (I can't remember any more precisely).
The average costs of an extramarital affair (for a man) are between $10,000 and $11,000. (US $)