Climate "Consensus"
Please stop tell me that I have no right to question Al Gore when he wants to take over the world economy to his own ends. And please stop telling me that catastrophic man-made global warming is now beyond question:
One of the many disturbing aspects of global warming hysteria is the
way moonbats who use it to promote their ominous political agenda
insist on a consensus that simply does not exist. A recent survey
of more than 12,000 environmental scientists and practitioners by the
National Registry of Environmental Professionals shows that despite the
hysteria and considerable pressure to conform to the "correct" view,
many scientists are choosing skepticism over the safety of the herd.The survey found that:
- 34% disagree that global warming is a serious problem;
- 41% disagree that warming trends "can be, in large part, attributed to human activity";
- 71% disagree that human activity has significantly contributed to hurricanes;
- 33% disagree that the US government is not doing enough about global warming;
- 47% disagree that international agreements such as the preposterous
Kyoto Protocol provide a useful framework for addressing global climate
change.
There are good reasons to believe in some man-made global warming, but there are very good reasons to doubt it will be as catastrophic as portrayed in the media, and very, very good reasons not to hand over the throttle of the world economy to environmental groups in anticipation of such uncertain events. My position on the skeptical middle ground on climate change is here.
Ryan Cupples:
I did some digging. I wanted numbers that were not just randoms misrepresented in a paper.
http://www.nrep.org/globsurv.htm
This is what I found of the survey.
Survey responses were received from 793 environmental professionals in 47 states
including Puerto Rico and Guam. A small number of our professionals trained in U.S.
regulations, but practicing abroad, also responded from Canada, the Cayman Islands, England,
Bangladesh, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Japan. Respondents make up all sectors
of the workforce including federal, state, and local government employees, non-profit
organizations, as well as private industry. Company presidents, engineers, scientists, health &
safety officers and departmental managers, just to name a few, all took part in the survey.
The organization contains 12,000 members. Only 793 actually responded. Any statistican will tell you that is probably irrelevant, but they will either not comment, or comment negatively that the "experts" are not all scientists.
After reading the report, I'm hard-pressed to accept that the news article was written in good faith. It looks again like that all too obvious and real phenomenon of "the press using numbers to achieve an end". While I still agree that a skeptical middle ground is the best position to hold (and one that I hold as well), I'm rather irritated by the poor expression that position in the article you just quoted.
January 2, 2007, 4:16 amJim:
Geologist / paleoclimatologist Bob Carter had an interesting article, "There IS a problem with global warming... it stopped in 1998", in the September 4, 2006 issue of the Telegraph (http://tinyurl.com/fotvp).
Here's an excerpt:
The essence of the issue is this. Climate changes naturally all the time, partly in predictable cycles, and partly in unpredictable shorter rhythms and rapid episodic shifts, some of the causes of which remain unknown. We are fortunate that our modern societies have developed during the last 10,000 years of benignly warm, interglacial climate. But for more than 90 per cent of the last two million years, the climate has been colder, and generally much colder, than today. The reality of the climate record is that a sudden natural cooling is far more to be feared, and will do infinitely more social and economic damage, than the late 20th century phase of gentle warming.
The British Government urgently needs to recast the sources from which it draws its climate advice. The shrill alarmism of its public advisers, and the often eco-fundamentalist policy initiatives that bubble up from the depths of the Civil Service, have all long since been detached from science reality. Intern-ationally, the IPCC is a deeply flawed organisation, as acknowledged in a recent House of Lords report, and the Kyoto Protocol has proved a costly flop. Clearly, the wrong horses have been backed.
January 2, 2007, 12:48 pm