Re: [asa] AAAS update since IPCC 2007

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 1:10 AM, Randy Isaac <randyisaac@comcast.net> wrote:

> This morning I attended a symposium on "What is new and surprising since
> the IPCC fourth assessment?". ...
> *Chris Field*, Carnegie Institution for Science, Stanford, CA,
> "Carbon-Climate System and the Terrestrial Biosphere" ....
>

> With the current economic crisis one might think that GDP/P would drop a
> bit but that is likely to be offset by an even further increase in PgC/GDP
> as the economy entices the use of *cheaper fuel* which is more carbon
> intensive. The impact is that due to this effect alone, global carbon
> emissions need to be reduced by another 50 PgC beyond the IPCC estimate.
> ..... The IPCC based its *projections* on future sea level rise only on
> the influence of warming on thermal expansion but not on an increase in ice
> melt. This new data will force a significant increase in *projected* sea
> level rise. Net: things aren't getting better. - Randy
>

*<> *One "little" problem with the Reuters report [linked below]... . *Chris
Field is not a "top climate scientist." In fact, he isn't even a climate
scientist at all.* Just a wee bit of googling ... would have
revealed<http://cesp.stanford.edu/people/chrisfield.html>that
*Chris Field is a professor of biological sciences whose shtick is pushing
something called "global ecology."*
**
Field has no more expertise in predicting future climate patterns than, say,
a gynecologist does in analyzing CAT scans.

Here is the *Reuters*
report<http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE51D29E20090214?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true>about
Chris Field sounding the global warming alarm bells:

The climate is heating up far faster than scientists had predicted, spurred
by sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries
like China and India, *a top climate scientist* said on Saturday. .."
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/p-j-gladnick/2009/02/15/climate-scientist-ratchets-global-warming-alarmism-face-record-cold-we
2/10/09
*In the End, People Are Still the Problem

*The *New York Times*?s Andy
Revkin<http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/could-energy-success-backfire/?emc=eta1>wonders
if
*the worst thing we could do would be to give humans* *abundant, cheap,
clean energy* . . .

There is, of course, nothing new to this view:

If you ask me, *it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a
source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it.
* We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs,
but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we
could do mischief to the earth or to each other. -* Amory Lovins* in - The
Mother Earth Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec* 1977*, p. 22

*Giving society cheap, abundant energy . . . would be the equivalent of
giving an idiot child a machine gun*. -* Paul Ehrlich*, - An Ecologist's
Perspective on Nuclear Power,- May/June* **1978 issue of Federation of
American Scientists* Public Issue Report

http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/
<>

During his talk Saturday to (seriously) the American Academy for the
Advancement of Science, *Al Gore encouraged scientists: * "Keep your day
jobs, but *get involved in the debate."* That's right. *The very thing he's
been insisting doesn't exist, he needs them to jump into*. 02/14/09
http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/

<>

Feb 15, 2009
*Hansen Unhinged - Coal-Fired Plants are Agents of Death
*James Hansen in the UK Observer
http://www.icecap.us/

<>

*Dark Green Doomsayers
*By George F. Will
Sunday, February 15, 2009; B07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302514_pf.html

A corollary of Murphy's Law ("If something can go wrong, it will") is:
"Things are worse than they can possibly be." Energy Secretary *Steven Chu*,
an atomic physicist, seems to embrace that corollary but* ignores Gregg
Easterbrook's "Law of Doomsaying": Predict catastrophe no sooner than five
years hence but no later than 10 years away, soon enough to terrify but
distant enough that people will forget if you are wrong.

*Chu recently told the Los Angeles Times that global warming might melt 90
percent of California's snowpack, which stores much of the water needed for
agriculture. This, Chu said, would mean "no more agriculture in California,"
the nation's leading food producer. Chu added: "I don't actually see how
they can keep their cities going."

No more lettuce for Los Angeles? *Chu likes predictions, so here is another:
Nine decades hence, our great-great-grandchildren will add the disappearance
of California artichokes to the list of predicted planetary calamities that
did not happen. Global cooling recently joined that lengthening list.

*In the 1970s, "a major cooling of the planet" was "widely considered
inevitable" because it was "well established" that the Northern Hemisphere's
climate "has been getting cooler since about 1950" (New York Times,
May 21,1975).
Although some disputed that the "cooling trend" could result in "a return to
another ice age" (the Times, Sept. 14, 1975), others anticipated "a
full-blown 10,000-year ice age" involving "extensive Northern Hemisphere
glaciation" (Science News, March 1, 1975, and Science magazine, Dec. 10,
1976, respectively). The "continued rapid cooling of the Earth" (Global
Ecology, 1971) meant that "a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear
war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery" (International
Wildlife, July 1975). *"The world's climatologists are agreed" that we must
"prepare for the next ice age" (Science Digest, February 1973)*. Because of
"ominous signs" that "the Earth's climate seems to be cooling down,"
*meteorologists
were "almost unanimous"* that "the trend will reduce agricultural
productivity for the rest of the century," perhaps triggering catastrophic
famines (Newsweek cover story, "The Cooling World," April 28, 1975).
Armadillos were fleeing south from Nebraska, heat-seeking snails were
retreating from Central European forests, the North Atlantic was "cooling
down about as fast as an ocean can cool," glaciers had "begun to advance"
and "growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter"
(Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 27, 1974).

Speaking of experts, in 1980 *Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford scientist and
environmental Cassandra who predicted calamitous food shortages by 1990*,
accepted a bet with economist Julian Simon. When Ehrlich predicted the
imminent exhaustion of many nonrenewable natural resources, Simon challenged
him: Pick a "basket" of any five such commodities, and I will wager that in
a decade the price of the basket will decline, indicating decreased
scarcity.

Ehrlich picked five metals -- chrome, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten --
that he predicted would become more expensive. Not only did the price of the
basket decline, the price of *all five* declined.

*An expert Ehrlich consulted in picking the five was John Holdren, who today
is President Obama's science adviser*.

*Credentialed intellectuals, too -- actually, especially -- illustrate
**Montaigne's
axiom: "Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know."

*As global levels of sea ice declined last year, many experts said this was
evidence of man-made global warming.

Since September, however, the increase in sea ice has been the fastest
change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began.

According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research
Center,*global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.
*

An unstated premise of *eco-pessimism* is that environmental conditions are,
or recently were, optimal.

*The proclaimed faith of eco-pessimists is weirdly optimistic: *These
optimal conditions must and can be preserved or restored if government will
make us minimize our carbon footprints and if government will "remake" the
economy.

Because of today's economy, *another law -- call it the Law of Clarifying
Calamities -- is being (redundantly) confirmed.

*On graphs tracking public opinion, two lines are moving in tandem and
inversely: The sharply rising line charts public concern about the economy,
the plunging line follows concern about the environment. A recent Pew
Research Center
poll<http://people-press.org/report/485/economy-top-policy-priority>asked
which of 20 issues should be the government's top priorities. Climate
change ranked 20th.

*Real calamities take our minds off hypothetical ones.

*Besides, according to the U.N. World Meteorological Organization, there has
been no recorded global warming for more than a decade, or one-third of the
span since the global cooling scare.
*georgewill@washpost.com<georgewill@washpost.com>
*
**
- Lynn

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Received on Sun Feb 15 21:18:07 2009