Re: Scientists doubt climate change

On 21 déc, 19:40, so...@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Scientists doubt climate change

http://washingtontimes.com
December 21, 2007

By S.A. Miller - More than 400 scientists challenge claims by former
Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations about the threat of
man-made global warming, a new Senate minority report says.

The scientists -- many of whom are current or former members of the U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shares the 2007
Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore for publicizing a climate crisis -- cast
doubt on the "scientific consensus" that man-made global warming
imperils the planet.

"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting -- a six-meter sea level
rise, 15 times the IPCC number -- entirely without merit," said Dutch
atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, one of the researchers quoted in
the report by Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public
Works Committee.

"I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home
heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the
dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached," Mr. Tennekes
said in the report.

Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the Environment
and Public Works Committee, said the report debunks Mr. Gore's claim
that the "debate is over."

"The endless claims of a 'consensus' about man-made global warming grow
less-and-less credible every day," he said.

After a quick review of the report, Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider said
25 or 30 of the scientists may have received funding from Exxon Mobil
Corp.

Exxon Mobil spokesman Gantt H. Walton dismissed the accusation, saying
the company is concerned about climate-change issues and does not pay
scientists to bash global-warming theories.

"Recycling of that kind of discredited conspiracy theory is nothing more
than a distraction from the real challenge facing society and the energy
industry," he said. "And that challenge is how are we going to provide
the energy needed to support economic and social development while
reducing greenhouse-gas emissions."

The Republican report comes on the heels of Saturday's United Nations
climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, where conferees adopted a plan to
negotiate a new pact to create verifiable measurements to fight global
warming in two years.

In the Senate report, environmental scientist David W. Schnare of the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said he was skeptical because
"conclusions about the cause of the apparent warming stand on the
shoulders of incredibly uncertain data and models. ... As a policy
matter, one has to be less willing to take extreme actions when data are
highly uncertain."

The hundreds of others in the report -- climatologists, oceanographers,
geologists, glaciologists, physicists and paleoclimatologists -- voice
varying degrees of criticism of the popular global-warming theory. Their
testimony challenges the idea that the climate-change debate is
"settled" and runs counter to the claim that the number of skeptical
scientists is dwindling.

The report's authors expect some of the scientists will recant their
remarks under intense pressure from the public and from within
professional circles to conform to the global-warming theory, a
committee staffer said.

Several scientists in the report said many colleagues share their
skepticism about man-made climate change but don't speak out publicly
for fear of retribution, according to the report.

"Many of my colleagues with whom I spoke share these views and report on
their inability to publish their skepticism in the scientific or public
media," atmospheric scientist Nathan Paldor, professor of Dynamical
Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, said in the report.

The IPCC has about 2,500 members.

HEATED DEBATE

The following are comments from some of the more than 400 scientists in
a Republican report on global warming:

*"Even if the concentration of 'greenhouse gases' double, man would not
perceive the temperature impact."

Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of
Sciences

*"I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting -- a six-meter sea
level rise, 15 times the [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change] number -- entirely without merit. ... I protest vigorously the
idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed
setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired
temperature will soon be reached."

Atmospheric scientist Hendrik Tennekes, former research director at the
Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute

*"The hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is
warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the
Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The
[greenhouse-gas] hypothesis does not do this. ... The public is not well
served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models
manipulated by advocates."

David Wojick, expert reviewer for U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change

*"The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global
warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts
that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of
the recent global warming."

Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather
Center in Sao Leopoldo-Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

*"There's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study [climate
change], but there's no need to be worried."

Anton Uriarte, a professor of physical geography at the University of
the Basque Country in Spain

Source: Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, ranking Republican on the
Environment and Public Works Committee

Note that the UN Climate Change Conference was held on the island of
Bali instead of the UN headquarters in New York City where the climate
change assholes wouldn't be troubled by pesky snowstorms.
.

Loading