Any one who knows me knows that I have always been a Global Warming Denier. This has everything to do with finding so many Global Warming supporters woefully short on science. This would include many of the “scientists” who have been churning out all those papers containing questionable data and unreasonable assumptions.
As a grad student in Florida, I worked under one of the early experts in Climate Change. Rhodes Fairbridge has since passed away but his obituaries made a great point of his contrary views which tended to turn out correct after a passage of time.
I learned a great deal from Rhodes and although in 1984 I found his prediction of another Little Ice Age a bit hard to swallow, recent events have helped it slip right down!
31,1000+ scientists are now on record as debunking Anthropomorphic Global Warming. The science just does not support the conclusions reached by the likes of Al Gore and the authors of the Kyoto Accords. Humans are far from innocent when it comes to planetary devastation but we simply are not quite powerful enough to cool off our sun...yet....
We can certainly take credit for offing the Dodo, Passenger Pigeons, maybe the Ivory Billed Woodpecker (recent sightings to the contrary), almost assuredly the woolly mammoth, and all large Pleistocene mammals in general. But it takes a lot of hubris to claim credit for altering the climate of an entire planet! Not that humans have ever been short on hubris either.
The AGW theory has been kicking around since the '50s but really gathered steam in the '90s, thanks in no small part to the miracle of computer modeling and the interest of former Vice President Al Gore.
A word about computer modeling of complex systems. There are no simple systems in nature. Everything is connected, just ask Barry Commoner, and when everything is connected you delete items at your own risk. Computer models are very simple, computers, even huge Crays, can only handle so many variables. As soon as you start picking and choosing your variables your model becomes less and less accurate until it is nothing more than a giant “What If” scenario.
For two decades AGW has been fueled by these “What If” scenarios and in the meantime, ice core data, lake core data, and plain old fashioned historical data has been ignored as lacking a certain sexy appeal to those whose job it is to dispense grant money for research.
Throw in some good, old-fashioned American Puritanical guilt, and an ever-expanding media greedy for something, anything to fill 24 hours of air time daily, and you have the makings of a fine tempest in a tea pot, with something for everyone.
James Hanson is known to may proponents of AGW as the scientific father of their creed. Last week my new hero, John Theon, sent out a press release on Hanson's pronouncements.
“Washington DC: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA. Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.” Theon joins the growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears.”
“Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added. “
“Theon joins many current and former NASA scientists in dissenting from man-made climate fears. A small sampling includes: Aerospace engineer and physicist Dr. Michael Griffin, the former top administrator of NASA, Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and is formerly of NASA, Geophysicist Dr. Phil Chapman, an astronautical engineer and former NASA astronaut, Award-Winning NASA Astronaut/Geologist and Moonwalker Jack Schmitt, Chemist and Nuclear Engineer Robert DeFayette was formerly with NASA’s Plum Brook Reactor, Hungarian Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Ames Research Center, Climatologist Dr. John Christy, Climatologist Dr. Roy W. Spencer, Atmospheric Scientist Ross Hays of NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility “
Hey, better late than never! It is never too late to correct bad science. I rest my case.
