Re: [asa] Religious Groups Differ on Climate Change

2009/4/24 William Hamilton <willeugenehamilton@gmail.com>

>
> For my part I wouldn't call myself an AGW skeptic, but before we adopt
> government-mandated solutions that require massive adjustments and may
> lead to extreme poverty in many parts of the world, we'd better know
> what we're talking about. One series of papers that makes me wonder if
> IPCC has considered all the evidence may be found in the work of
> Nicola Scafetta and his colleagues.
> http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/.

This shares some of my concern.

To be clear on my position, it seems hard to understand how anyone could
think that dumping enormous amounts of crud into the air is completely
harmless. The Old Testament prohibitions on "fish without scales"
and shellfish probably originates from the habit of people to do their
business near the river and the "artifacts" tend to float downstream.
Examples of hepatitis A getting into shell fish (oysters) in China and then
being exported to Japan where an outbreak occurred was a good example I came
across a number of years ago. In the same way, although not so directed or
dangerous, dumping enormous amounts of waste daily into the atmosphere
should not be presumed to be without at least some remote consequences.

Still, the flip side of this is that we cannot shut down the world's
economies. The eventual resulting wars are likely to cause far more damage
than doing nothing and carrying on without a care. Conservatives often are
blessed with owning many of the industries that would be affected by rash
decisions. So there could also be good reasons why conservatives
would resist policies that may be misguided (or seem to be). They may also
be suspicious of any people who propose to supposedly "help" them; and maybe
rightly so.

However, arguing that it doesn't exist is rather strange to me. A more
intelligent place to argue is on severity, proper policy and the level of
priority. These are valid areas that should be considered before rushing to
a solution that is likely to affect many people and averse ways and is has
many uncertainties about its effects.

> The IPCC's arguments seem to be
> based primarily on the increase of atmospheric CO2 in the past
> century. They discount the solar irradiance as a factor because it
> varies by only 0.1 percent. However, Scafetta et. al. analyze the
> sun/earth heat propagation using stochastic resonance theory and find
> that there is indeed a resonance-like phenomenon that makes the solar
> contribution much greater than 0.1 percent. This does not negate
> global warming, but may establish that considerably more of it is due
> to solar irradiance than IPCC believes. Scafetta et. al.'s papers are
> not easy reading. However I have written a review that provides a
> road map through them, a first draft of which I will be glad to email
> to anyone interested. (I'll put it on my blog as soon as I can get
> around to editing some of the HTML I need)
>

That is a bit odd that IPCC has only considered the last 100 years, if
true. The Vikings did grow grapes in Newfoundland and the northern parts of
the New World. They probably left when the grapes wouldn't grow anymore.
So the climate has changed drastically before. But I recall I have come
across a few articles in Science that show that peak in the CO2 around the
time of the Vikings. Of course, we do not know the percentage increase in
solar flares, only the effects on the climate. If they were the same as
now, this could be the same issue.

It could still prove problematical for places like Amsterdam, Maldives, and
some coastal areas. Regionally, some planning is almost surely necessary.

by Grace we proceed,
Wayne

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Received on Wed Apr 29 09:05:32 2009