i don't care whether co2 is a pollutant, a greenhouse gas or your farts, we are putting more into the air than we should, nor do i care for your endless quoting of meaningless lies, damn lies and statistics – it changes nothing

your rhetoric sounds to me, exactly like the misinformation of big oil/nuclear or the bush government

lead, follow or get out of the way

Well, the poster didn't say the IPCC person is a scientist, and obviously he/she isn't. Outliers are what science is all about – the exceptions that test the rule. If you can't explain apparent data anomalies, something's wrong with your theory. Here's an example from global warming:

Between 1990 and 1998, US temperature took a strange dip (according to the National Climate Data Center (NCDC); their ranks were as follows: 105, 95, 84, 15, 88, 47, 75, 113. Mostly quite warm years – except for 1993. 15? Clearly an outlier – how to explain it?

The answer, of course, is the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991, which threw an enormous quantity of dust and sulfate aerosol into the stratosphere, which slowly spread around the world. This result of major volcanic eruptions is well known from history; 1816, following the eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, was known as "The Year Without a Summer." It's a perfectly reasonable explanation, and the cold year of 1993 "proves" nothing about global warming.

On the other hand, Newton's Laws of Motion were accepted for 200 years; they were even used to predict the existence and position of unseen planets based on perturbations of visible planets. There was just one small "outlier" – the orbit of Mercury was just a little off in its timing. In 1905, an obscure patent clerk named Einstein offered an explanation, based on curvature of space (and time) by the mass of the Sun; in 1922, observation of Mercury confirmed Einstein's prediction. All of a sudden, Newton's marvelous laws went from The Truth to Pretty Close but Not Quite Right. That's what an outlier can do, if you can't come up with an explanation. Science is not about proving a theory is "right" (and it's probably impossible to do so); science is about proving a theory is WRONG.

BTW, The Teaching Company offers a course called "Science Wars: what scientists know and how they know it" by Steven Goldman. The concept just cited – that science is about falsifying theories – is generally accepted in science, and well discussed by Professor Goldman.

That's one of several reasons the IPCC "science" isn't science. These people have one theory – CO2 causes terrible global warming – and their endeavor is to prove it "right." That's not science, that's propaganda. The real scientists are outside the IPCC "consensus", trying to prove it false, which is what scientists are supposed to do. For that, we are called "Flat Earthers" and "Deniers" (with an echo of "Holocaust Deniers") by Mr. Gore. Having recently returned from working in Israel, I'm not flattered to be associated with the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinijad and other anti-Semites.

So now you know why "outliers" like the quite cold worldwide temperature of May 2008 are important. Perhaps mfrancis and her friends would also wish to learn that, according to the National Climate Data Center

(http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html)

Spring 2008 (March, April, May) in the United States (48 contiguous states) was 0.5 F below the 20th Century average, at 51.39 F. It ranks as #37 in the 114 years of temperature climatology. And no, there weren't any major volcanic eruptions in the last two or three years to explain this "outlier." Just more evidence that manmade greenhouse warming is unimportant.

By way of more well-deserved discouragement for people who think the late Boxer-Warner-Lieberman Bill will help anyone (other than lobbyists), the Copenhagen Consensus Center (including 5 Nobel Laureates in Economics) agreed last week that the least useful investment in improving life for the developing world is global warming mitigation. That crackpot idea came in #30 in a list of 30 proposals to help the world’s poor. Too bad Mary Francis – who cares so much about her grandchildren and those of her friends – has no such concern for children who are starving and dying of disease now in the Third World.

Indeed, the unrealistic Ms. Francis opposes the use of nuclear power as well as fossil fuels. I thought the general topic – however unscientific – of this blog was stopping global warming. Other than mining the uranium fuel and transporting it, nuclear power has no effect on warming. Ms. Francis seems determined to stop all industrial use of energy. That’s not a world in which anyone’s grandchildren will thrive; it’s the world of hunter-gatherers and a 40 year lifespan.

luckyleif

Thank you.

To Tony, Becky, Scriptmonkey, billsamuel:

One of the members of the IPCC is a personal acquaintance to whom I have spoken several times. The projections of the IPCC (as scary as they were) have already been shown by the observed data of the last two years to be far too conservative. The 4th coldest May is simply one month (an outlier) while the climate warming trend over the last two centuries is still moving up. You can't look at one tree and call it a forest. We are well into this problem and will not be able to turn it around unless we start now and act forcefully.

I repeat: Once those corporations get a Nuclear Subsidy or a Free Permit, it will be like pulling hen's teeth to cancel. If the nuclear industry gets their way, the problem will only get worse.

Call the Senate 1-800-927-6464 and ask for the Senator of your
choice. Talk to as many as you can. They are listed at:
http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Thanks. My grandchildren and yours will thank you, also.
Mary Francis

Thank you for your response; I agree in part, but only in part. Like you, I object to the emission of "gaseous and particulate pollutants." Carbon dioxide (CO2), however, isn't a pollutant. Bear in mind that all life on this planet is carbon-based – plants, animals, and, of course, humans. Plants get their carbon out of the air, in the form of carbon dioxide. If, somehow, all CO2 were removed from the atmosphere, we'd all die from starvation. But I agree with your basic premise that harmful pollutants (ozone, nitrous oxides, mercury, sulfur) in our atmosphere should be minimized. That's why we (already) have a Clean Air Act. BTW, next time you're at the garden center, take a deep breath – the air inside the plant nursery is enhanced with triple CO2. I promise it won't hurt you.

Additionally, I fear you confuse statistics with physics. The physical relationship between the return radiation from man-made CO2 in the atmosphere and the heating it causes (1.6 watts per square meter and a warming of 0.3 F) is one of cause and effect. The Lieberman-Warner bill proposes to reduce the CO2 cause – at outrageous expense – for an undetectable reduction of effect.

So, a cause-effect relationship, documented by the IPCC, is not irrelevant. It's essential in a cost-benefit analysis: how much benefit do we realize from the cost of implementing the Climate Protection Act? Answer: no benefit, but billions of dollars of cost. Not a good tradeoff. Resources that could be better used – much better used – for real problems like poverty and disease and reduced dependence on hostile governments would be wasted instead on a power grab by politicians.

I oppose the Climate Protection Act not because I love Big Oil, but because I detest junk science. The "global warming crisis" is the biggest piece of junk science I've seen yet. The campaign to reduce atmospheric CO2 is riddled with junk science.

Incidentally, here's another statistic you won't like (but is still relevant). World atmospheric temperature in May, measured by the Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) on NOAA satellites, was colder than average, the fourth coldest May since satellite records began in 1979. That's part of a trend observed in surface data as well. The warming the EDF warns us against isn't happening.

luckyleif

I don't like seeing EDF becoming the Polluters Defense Fund.

Want numbers? Working Group 1 Report of the IPCC, FAQ: the radiative forcing due to ALL anthropogenic greenhouse gasses is 1.6 watts/square meter. That causes a warming of 0.16 C, or 0.3 F. Far too small to actually observe, of course. Further warming due to additional CO2 is logarithmically smaller.

Remember [[abusive name calling removed]] the warmest year in American history is 1934. Ask Jim Hansen at NASA/GISS. He finally (August 2007) got it right.

Hell will freeze over – and most of Earth as well – before this nonsense becomes law.

And why should we allow free emissions permits? ALL permits must be Auctioned and the proceeds should benefit public programs and promote investment in clean energy technologies.

The Union of Concerned Scientists calls on activists to step up their efforts by urging senators to help strengthen the bill and oppose any weakening amendments. Specifically, they ask senators to:

* Require science-based emission reductions of at least 80 percent by 2050 and ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency adjusts this target if the National Academy of Sciences finds that we are not on track to avoid dangerous warming.
* Eliminate or significantly reduce free emission allowances for polluters. Proceeds from auctioned allowances and any free allowances should benefit public programs and promote investment in clean energy technologies.
* Oppose attempts to provide additional subsidies for coal or nuclear power, which already receive substantial benefits under this bill.
****************************************
Letter From Mary Francis to about 200 friends —
Subject: Compromised global warming bill (Climate Security Act)
Environmentalist Friends,
Drat these spineless Dems! Working Assets is right! (See below.) We can call these critters at night (free cell calls) and leave a voice message.

******Isn't this worth an hour of an environmentalist's time?*******

I called 25 congress members in just under one hour. A list containing 28 swing votes in the senate is attached.

Mary Francis

P.S. Tell the fiscal conservatives:

"Columbia University economist Geoff Heal found that the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of addressing climate change. The costs of cutting emissions to safe levels would be between 1 and 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), he said, while the costs of allowing climate change to proceed unabated would be on the order of 10 to 20 percent of GDP."
(This is on the UCS website.)

As a longtime member of the Environmental Defense Fund, I urge you to spend more energy on improving the bill. Once those corporations get a Nuclear Subsidy or a Free Permit, it will be like pulling hen's teeth to cancel.

Mary Francis

You will be more convincing when you lay out this argument.