Scientists Respond to Gore on Global Warming

ArthurDent writes "For quite a while global warming has been presented in the public forum as a universally accepted scientific reality. However, in the light of Al Gore's new film An Inconvenient Truth many climate experts are stepping forward and pointing out that there is no conclusive evidence to support global warming as a phenomenon, much less any particular cause of it."

Comments

The debate will never end

[Solder Fumes]

As long as certain groups stand to profit, and as long as certain people might look like idiots if proven wrong, the debate on this topic will never end. I'm talking about people on either side of the issue. The tough part is that global warming is difficult to prove either positively or negatively, so it's a prime vehicle for unrelated agendas.

We'll know in a thousand years.

Re:Some bold statements from this article

[eln]

This really makes no sense: a lot of whom know (but feel unable to state publicly) that his propaganda crusade is mostly based on junk science

What? If they are scientists, and they "know" something, then surely they must have some very solid scientific evidence for their assertion, and thus should feel comfortable publishing it in a scientific journal. I'm always skeptical of claims that hundreds or thousands of supposedly respectable scientists hold a non-mainstream view but can't express it because some shadowy cabal is forcing them to stay quiet.

If they have solid scientific evidence to refute the solid scientific evidence in support of global warming, then they should publish it. If they don't, then as scientists they should know better than to spout off without any proof of their claims.

Re:Some bold statements from this article

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Those opposed to the idea of global warming have to responsiblity to do anything here.

Yes they do. They have to point to flaws and holes in the current theory, otherwise they're just gasbagging.

Re:Some bold statements from this article

[DragonWriter]

That's not how the scientific process works. You can't prove a negative.

Science is all about proving negatives. Indeed, the only thing ever proven in science is that a model is wrong. A scientific theory, even one that has been granted the vaunted title of a "law", is simply a hypothesis which explains the available evidence better than alternatives and which could conceivably be shown to be wrong, has been vigorously attempted to be proven wrong, and failed to be proven wrong.

The movie points this out

[sterno]

A telling statistic about this is in Gore's movie. They did a random sample of scientific peer reviewed papers on global warming. Of 932 samples, ZERO disagreed with the conclusion that global warming was happening and was man made. On the other hand 56% of the articles on the subject they randomly surveyed said the jury was still out.

This is the long standing problem in the media of false equivalency. They take any issue and assume that there are two sides and that both sides have similar standing. So if 932 peer reviewed scientific papers say that global warming is happening and humans are causing it, and there's 932 articles written by crackpots and industry lobbyists saying the opposite, the media treat this as being two equivlanet sides of an issue. It makes good copy, but it's incredibly desceptive.

Getting published isn't that difficult

[why-is-it]

From me: There's a lot of difference between publishing (which is what very many scientists do) in reputable journals, and stating things publicly.

So why not publish the dissenting findings in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal? If there are sufficient grounds to question the research that has been published thus far, I would expect that it would not be difficult to promote a dissenting work.

Heck, Phillipe Rushton still gets published from time-to-time, and his research has been widely discredited. This suggests that the relative popularity and/or merit of your findings does not appear to have much influence on whether (or not) you get published,

So, if the case for global warming is as weak as some of these folks claim, why have they not published rebuttals or counter-claims?

Note to Slashdot Editors

[npsimons]

Please change the title of this article from "Scientists Respond to Gore on Global Warming" to "Industry Shills Respond to Gore on Global Warming". Not that journalistic integrity has ever stopped you from running obviously wrong headlines before; I'm just trying to advise on how to maintain what little dignity you have left.

We need new clean energy sources regardless of GW

[Marrow]

1. We need to have an energy source that is not based on localized supplies in the middle east (or elsewhere)
2. The air around our population centers is polluted by fossil fuel consumption with serious health consequences
3. Fossil fuels cannot be used for deep space travel or colonization which is necessary for survival of our species (eventually)
4. Fossil fuels are poisonous to mine and refine and harm the workers in those industries and towns.
5. Centralized control of energy sources leads to higher prices and a permanent "tax" on economic development and expansion
6. Fossil fuels are poisonous to transport and have caused enormous damage to the marine ecology during spills
7. Systems used to convert fossil fuels to energy are complicated and wear out quickly. They are expensive to produce and maintain
8. Systems used to convert fossil fuels to energy create noise which causes problems in urban environments
9. Fossil fuel "control" implies a loss of personal and national liberty

Note that I am not saying that existing alternatives solve any of these problems.

I am saying that there are significant costs/problems to the current energy systems.
We have lived with these costs and written them off, but they are still there and still important.

Its worth significant effort to solve these problems. The research to solve
these problems will also likely benefit us in other areas.

It would be far better to solve the problems than to continue to live in an
unstable,poisonous,noisy world.

Re:Some bold statements from this article

[kfg]

. . .the only thing ever proven in science is that a model is wrong.

Disproving a positive is not the same thing as proving a negative.

Scientific theory is not based on proven negatives, it is based on positives which it has been impossible to refute.

You are mixing up your logical concepts. Mind your pees and ques.

KFG

This article is not challenging peer-reviewed

[Ogemaniac]

articles. Rather, it is challenging Gore's (and the political left's in general) interpretations.

I am a scientist, though not climatologist. I feel that the data is all but certain that the atmosphere has warmed about 1C in the last one hundred years. I think virtually all of my colleagues agree with this. As for the cause of global warming, things are far murkier. Since we don't have hundreds of earths where we can run nice reproducible tests in order to study what variables matter and what do not, we can NEVER provide conclusive evidence for cause. That being said, the data is still fairly solid that we are most of the problem. The current consensus from the ICC implies something like "there is a 90% chance that human activity is the primary cause of the observed global warming". I think this is fair, given the data. Certainly, a 90% chance of a problem is enough to justify the consideration of preventative action.

Some GW skeptics claim that since the earth's temperature has been all over the place in the past, some "natural" phenomena could have caused the warming. While this is possible, they should be able to point out what this "natural phenomena" is. So far, none of the logical possibilities have panned out. For example, there is slight evidence that solar radiation may have increased, but nowhere near enough to explain the observed warming. Changes in orbit, which have largely driven the ice ages, have not occured. If it is NOT CO2 and other greenhouse gases, it must be some other cause. If it is, we should be able to measure it. What is it? The skeptics fail to point out plausible alternatives. If the alternatives are not plausible, it is logical to conclude that it is the greenhouse effect. Hence the ICC's 90% odds.

The left, however, vastly exaggerates any data supporting the existence of GW or its dangers. Any talk of "tipping points" or blaming Katrina on GW, for example, are either entirely unsupported by the data or extremely premature. At worst, without GW Katrina would have been a weak Cat 4 instead of a strong one. GW did not "create" Katrina, though it is possible that it made her slightly worse.

Another problem with the left is that they ignore economics. When the economists crunch the numbers, they often find that even assuming GW is real, adaption is simply the cheaper option as compared to prevention. To put it simply, doing anything about GW that would actually make a difference could be far more expensive than it is worth. It may be easier to build some flood walls than buy a zillion solar panels, for example. I rarely find that the left is even willing to engage in this debate, probably because they are on very weak footing there.