http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm
"A High Court judge who ruled on whether climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, could be shown in schools said it contains nine scientific 'errors'.
"Mr Justice Burton said the government could still send the film to schools - if accompanied by guidance giving the other side of the argument."
The nine errors, summarized:
1. The melting of Greenland or Antarctica, causing a 20-foot rise in sea levels, will not happen "in the near future" as claimed by Al Gore, but in millennia.
2. The receding snow on Mt. Kilimanjaro cannot be scientifically attributed to human factors, as suggested by the movie.
3. The movie claimed polar bears drowned swimming trying to find ice, presumably melted by human-caused global warming. The only study produced as evidence in court detailed four polar bears drowning as a result of a storm.
4. The film suggests that over the past 650,000 years rising CO2 has caused rising temperature. Over that time frame, the evidence is that temperature increases preceded rising CO2 levels by about 800-2000 years. Effect does not precede cause.
5. The movie suggests hurrican Katrina was the result of global warming. Experts admit that solitary events cannot be linked to global warming.
6. The film suggests the drying up of Lake Chad was caused by global warming. Experts could not show this to be the case in a court of law.
[to be continued...]
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
Polar bears will have to find another scapegoat
The warming of the Arctic is partly due to natural causes, claims a new study in the journal Nature.
It is difficult for the true believers to give up the paradigm that human-caused global warming plays a role in turning the Arctic into slushpile. However, since average global temperatures have not increased for ten years (see previous entry of this blog), the warming in the Arctic must be matched by cooling elsewhere on the globe. By definition, it is not global warming, since the globe is not warming, on average.
In this context, the warming of the Arctic must be a local condition, caused by natural factors, as cited in the new study.
If polar bears are suffering, we are not to blame. Mother Nature is.
It is difficult for the true believers to give up the paradigm that human-caused global warming plays a role in turning the Arctic into slushpile. However, since average global temperatures have not increased for ten years (see previous entry of this blog), the warming in the Arctic must be matched by cooling elsewhere on the globe. By definition, it is not global warming, since the globe is not warming, on average.
In this context, the warming of the Arctic must be a local condition, caused by natural factors, as cited in the new study.
If polar bears are suffering, we are not to blame. Mother Nature is.
Global warming takes a vacation - no warming for past ten years
Where did global warming go?
The Boston Globe reports:
THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold...
Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.
The mainstream media is beginning to get skeptical of doomsday pronouncements by the likes of Al Gore as the scientific evidence begins to accumulate and pile on the most vociferous proponents of the view that blames man for the lion's share of climate change.
The Boston Globe reports:
THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. "2007 to be 'warmest on record,' " BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government's Meteorological Office, the story announced that "the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007," surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold...
Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.
The mainstream media is beginning to get skeptical of doomsday pronouncements by the likes of Al Gore as the scientific evidence begins to accumulate and pile on the most vociferous proponents of the view that blames man for the lion's share of climate change.
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