Re: [asa] Global Warming Stats

On 5/25/08, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I was "discussing" global warming with someone and he threw a couple of
> stats at me I hadn't heard:
>
> 1. The majority of climate scientists in major universities in the U.S.
> reject anthropogenic warming;
> 2. 40,000 scientists (or maybe it was 20,000, i forget) signed a document
> denying anthropogenic warming.
>
> Does anyone know the source of these claims, and what the reality is?
>

The correct number of scientist (does not include engineers) is found in
this piece from last Monday:
*Cooler Heads*
Monday, May 19, 2008 4:20 PM PT

*Climate Change:* Nearly 32,000 scientists sign a petition that says they
reject the claim that humanity is causing global warming. .."
*http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=296089724469132*
**
Here's more you may find of interest:

The New York Review of Books
*Volume 55, Number 10 ? June 12, 2008
*http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494

Two books reviewed:

1.) A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies
by William Nordhaus Yale University Press, 234 pp., $28.00 2.) Global
Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto
edited by Ernesto Zedillo Yale Center for the Study of
Globalization/Brookings Institution Press, 237 pp., $26.95 (paper)

Excerpts:

"..There is a famous graph showing the fraction of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere as it varies month by month and year by year (see the graph on
page 44). It gives us our firmest and most accurate evidence of effects of
human activities on our global environment. The graph is generally known as
the Keeling graph because it summarizes the lifework of Charles David
Keeling, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla,
California. ...

"..Keeling was a meticulous observer. The accuracy of his measurements has
never been challenged, and many other observers have confirmed his results.
..

"..When we put together the evidence from the wiggles and the distribution
of vegetation over the earth, it turns out that about 8 percent of the
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is absorbed by vegetation and returned to
the atmosphere every year. *This means that the average lifetime of a
molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, before it is captured by
vegetation and afterward released, is about twelve years. This fact, that
the exchange of carbon between atmosphere and vegetation is rapid, is of
fundamental importance to the long-range future of global warming, as will
become clear in what follows. ..*

"..At this point I return to the Keeling graph, which demonstrates the
strong coupling between atmosphere and plants. The wiggles in the graph show
us that every carbon dioxide molecule in the atmosphere is incorporated in a
plant within a time of the order of twelve years. Therefore, if we can
control what the plants do with the carbon, the fate of the carbon in the
atmosphere is in our hands. That is what Nordhaus meant when he mentioned
"genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" as a low-cost backstop to
global warming. The science and technology of genetic engineering are not
yet ripe for large-scale use. We do not understand the language of the
genome well enough to read and write it fluently. But the science is
advancing rapidly, and the technology of reading and writing genomes is
advancing even more rapidly. I consider it likely that we shall have
"genetically engineered carbon-eating trees" within twenty years, and almost
certainly within fifty years.

Carbon-eating trees could convert most of the carbon that they absorb from
the atmosphere into some chemically stable form and bury it underground. Or
they could convert the carbon into liquid fuels and other useful chemicals.
Biotechnology is enormously powerful, capable of burying or transforming any
molecule of carbon dioxide that comes into its grasp. Keeling's wiggles
prove that a big fraction of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes
within the grasp of biotechnology every decade. If one quarter of the
world's forests were replanted with carbon-eating varieties of the same
species, the forests would be preserved as ecological resources and as
habitats for wildlife, and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be
reduced by half in about fifty years.

It is likely that biotechnology will dominate our lives and our economic
activities during the second half of the twenty-first century, just as
computer technology dominated our lives and our economy during the second
half of the twentieth. Biotechnology could be a great equalizer, spreading
wealth over the world wherever there is land and air and water and sunlight.
This has nothing to do with the misguided efforts that are now being made to
reduce carbon emissions by growing corn and converting it into ethanol fuel.
The ethanol program fails to reduce emissions and incidentally hurts poor
people all over the world by raising the price of food. After we have
mastered biotechnology, the rules of the climate game will be radically
changed. In a world economy based on biotechnology, some low-cost and
environmentally benign backstop to carbon emissions is likely to become a
reality. ..

"..In the history of science it has often happened that the majority was
wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right.
It may?or may not?be that the present is such a time. The great virtue of
Nordhaus's economic analysis is that it remains valid whether the majority
view is right or wrong. Nordhaus's optimum policy takes both possibilities
into account. ..

"..The last five chapters of the Zedillo book are by writers from five of
the countries most concerned with the politics of global warming: Russia,
Britain, Canada, India, and China. Each of the five authors has been
responsible for giving technical advice to a government, and each of them
gives us a statement of that government's policy. Howard Dalton, spokesman
for the British government, is the most dogmatic. His final paragraph
begins:
 It is the firm view of the United Kingdom that climate change constitutes a
major threat to the environment and human society, that urgent action is
needed now across the world to avert that threat, and that the developed
world needs to show leadership in tackling climate change.

The United Kingdom has made up its mind and takes the view that any
individuals who disagree with government policy should be ignored. This
dogmatic tone is also adopted by the Royal Society, the British equivalent
of the US National Academy of Sciences. The Royal Society recently published
a pamphlet addressed to the general public with the title "Climate Change
Controversies: A Simple Guide." The pamphlet says:
 This is not intended to provide exhaustive answers to every contentious
argument that has been put forward by those who seek to distort and
undermine the science of climate change and deny the seriousness of the
potential consequences of global warming.

In other words, if you disagree with the majority opinion about global
warming, you are an enemy of science. The authors of the pamphlet appear to
have forgotten the ancient motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in Verba,
which means, "Nobody's word is final." ...

Lynn

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Received on Sun May 25 14:10:06 2008