An Inconvenient Truth

[Harlan Huckleby]

OK, fine: eliminate all federal taxes on cars that are low polluters.

(this effectively does the same thing as adding tax to high polluters, but if it is easier to accept, good.)

[MJZiggy]

I thought they already offered subsidies for people who purchased solar heating and water. And as to safety, if everyone drove smaller cars then it would be safer to drive smaller cars. A Yugo v. Hummer crash would be a lot ugler than Yugo v. Yugo.

[Scott Campbell]

I thought they already offered subsidies for people who purchased solar heating and water. And as to safety, if everyone drove smaller cars then it would be safer to drive smaller cars. A Yugo v. Hummer crash would be a lot ugler than Yugo v. Yugo.

I think you can compress the R&D time on alternative clean technologies by enhancing the profit motive for companies capable of develping solutions.

You now have GPS navigation, anti-lock brakes, air-bags, VSC, in seat air conditioning and countless other truly amazing technological advances in automobiles over the last 15 years. Yet most cars/trucks still get between 15 and 30 miles per gallon. Yes, they run somewhat cleaner. But the bottom line is we are still consuming way too much fuel and the core of the internal combustion engine is much the same as it was decades ago.

Until there is a greater profit motive for companies to unseat the internal combustion engine, then much of your environmental progress will be incremental - not revolutionary.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Science Panel Backs Study on Warming Climate

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: June 22, 2006

WASHINGTON, June 22 — A controversial paper asserting that recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere was probably unrivaled for 1,000 years was endorsed today, with a few reservations, by a panel convened by the nation's pre-eminent scientific body.
The panel said that a statistical method used in the 1999 study was not the best and that some uncertainties in the work "have been underestimated," and it particularly challenged the authors' conclusion that the decade of the 1990's was probably the warmest in a millennium.

But in a 155-page report, the 12-member panel convened by the National Academies said "an array of evidence" supported the main thrust of the paper. Disputes over details, it said, reflected the normal intellectual clash that takes place as science tests new approaches to old questions.

The study, led by Michael E. Mann, a climatologist now at Pennsylvania State University, was the first to estimate widespread climate trends by stitching together a grab bag of evidence, including variations in ancient tree rings and temperatures measured in deep holes in the earth.

It has been repeatedly attacked by Republican lawmakers and some business-financed groups as built on cherry-picked data meant to create an alarming view of recent warming and play down past natural warm periods.

At a news conference at the headquarters of the National Academies, several members of the panel reviewing the study said they saw no sign that its authors had intentionally chosen data sets or methods to get a desired result.

"I saw nothing that spoke to me of any manipulation," said one member, Peter Bloomfield, a statistics professor at North Carolina State University. He added that his impression was the study was "an honest attempt to construct a data analysis procedure."

More broadly, the panel examined other recent research comparing the pronounced warming trend over the last several decades with temperature shifts over the last 2,000 years. It expressed high confidence that warming over the last 25 years exceeded any peaks since 1600. And in a news conference here today, three panelists said the current warming was probably, but not certainly, beyond any peaks since the year 900.

The experts said there was no reliable way to make estimates for surface-temperature trends in the first millennium A.D.

In the report, the panel stressed that the significant remaining uncertainties about climate patterns over the last 2,000 years did not weaken the scientific case that the current warming trend was caused mainly by people, through the buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

"Surface temperature reconstructions for periods prior to the industrial era are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that climatic warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence," the report said.

The 1999 paper is part of a growing body of work trying to pull together widely disparate clues of climate conditions before the age of weather instruments.

The paper includes a graph of temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere that gained the nickname "hockey stick" because of its vivid depiction of a long period with little temperature variation for nearly 1,000 years, followed by a sharp upward hook in recent decades.

The hockey stick has become something of an environmentalist icon. It was prominently displayed in a pivotal 2001 United Nations report concluding that greenhouse gases from human activities had probably caused most of the warming measured since 1950. A version of it is in the Al Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

Senator James M. Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and Representative Joe Barton, Republican of Texas, have repeatedly criticized the Mann study, citing several peer-reviewed papers challenging its methods.

The main critiques were done by Stephen McIntyre, a statistician and part-time consultant in Toronto to minerals industries, and Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph in Ontario.

They contended that Dr. Mann and his colleagues selected particular statistical methods and sets of data, like a record of rings in bristlecone pine trees, that were most apt to produce a picture of unusual recent warming. They also complained that Dr. Mann refused to share his data and techniques.

In an interview, Dr. Mann expressed muted satisfaction with the panel's findings. He said it clearly showed that the 1999 analysis has held up over time.

But he complained that the committee seemed to forget about the many caveats that were in the original paper. "Even the title of the paper on which all this has been based is as much about the caveats and uncertainties as it is about the findings," he said.

Raymond S. Bradley, a University of Massachusetts geoscientist and one of Dr. Mann's co-authors, said that the caveats were dropped mainly as the graph was widely reproduced by others. (The other author of the 1999 paper was Malcolm K Hughes of the University of Arizona.)

The report was done at the request of Representative Sherwood Boehlert, the New York Republican who is chairman of the House Science Committee, who called last November for a review of the 1999 study and related research to clear the air.

In a statement, Mr. Boehlert, who is retiring at the end of the year, expressed satisfaction with the results, saying, "There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change — which doesn't rest primarily on these temperature issues, in any event — or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was legitimate scientific work."

[Harlan Huckleby]

Earth hottest it's been in 2,000 years

By JOHN HEILPRIN
Associated Press Writer
Jun 22, 7:06 PM EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."

Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities.

The academy had been asked to report to Congress on how researchers drew conclusions about the Earth's climate going back thousands of years, before data was available from modern scientific instruments. The academy convened a panel of 12 climate experts, chaired by Gerald North, a geosciences professor at Texas A&M University, to look at the "proxy" evidence before then, such as tree rings, corals, marine and lake sediments, ice cores, boreholes and glaciers.

Combining that information gave the panel "a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years," the panel wrote. It said the "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia," though it was relatively warm around the year 1000 followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850.

Their conclusions were meant to address, and they lent credibility to, a well-known graphic among climate researchers - a "hockey-stick" chart that climate scientists Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes created in the late 1990s to show the Northern Hemisphere was the warmest it has been in 2,000 years.

It had compared the sharp curve of the hockey blade to the recent uptick in temperatures - a 1 degree rise in global average surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere during the 20th century - and the stick's long shaft to centuries of previous climate stability.

That research is "likely" true and is supported by more recent data, said John "Mike" Wallace, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Washington and a panel member.

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Science Committee, had asked the academy for the report last year after the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, launched an investigation of the three climate scientists.

The Bush administration has maintained that the threat from global warming is not severe enough to warrant new pollution controls that the White House says would have cost 5 million Americans their jobs.

"This report shows the value of Congress handling scientific disputes by asking scientists to give us guidance," Boehlert said Thursday. "There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change."

The academy panel said it had less confidence in the evidence of temperatures before 1600.

But it considered the evidence reliable enough to conclude there were sharp spikes in carbon dioxide and methane, the two major "greenhouse" gases blamed for trapping heat in the atmosphere, beginning in the 20th century, after remaining fairly level for 12,000 years.

Between 1 A.D. and 1850, volcanic eruptions and solar fluctuations had the biggest effects on climate. But those temperature changes "were much less pronounced than the warming due to greenhouse gas" levels by pollution since the mid-19th century, the panel said.

The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization chartered by Congress to advise the government of scientific matters.

[SkinBasket]

The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are "additional supporting evidence ... that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming."

Good christ Harlan, I know you can do better than this. "reconstructed global average surface temperatures?" That sounds like a very solid and established line of science to me.

The words "much" and "recent" also don't really do much to improve my feelings toward this article. Is this science or a guessing game?

Skinbasket declares that a lot of things have happened that might have made things different around here lately, and he has lots of data extrapolated from biased goal-oriented studies based on estimates, conjecture, and really really strong feelings to back it up. (*edit: I forgot hockey sticks that are "likely" true models of climate change - according to the the poelpe who made the hockey stick model.)

This is the kind of crap that works against people trying to demonstrate that people are the main reason for a climate change and that that climate change will bring doom and gloom. Personaly, I don't give a fuck if we survive a global catastophy that may or may not happen as a result of climate changes that may or may not be directly attibutable to man-made pollution as the main source. The earth will survive even if we don't, so what's all the fuss about?

Have you seen the Miracle Planet show on Discovery dealing with their fireball and snowball "events?" They claim this shit has happened before (asteroid hitting earth and covering surface in gaseous flame, climate change that covers surface in 10,000 feet of show and ice) and will happen again. Microscopic organisms buried deep underground (the ocean will be evaporated after all) save the earth and lead to a renewal. With the snowball event, orgamisms can last billions of years frozen, then reanimate, so when the volcanoes (yes volcanoes) produce enough greenhouse gases to melt all that fucking snow, the earth is renewed. Yipee!

[Harlan Huckleby]

I have seen some really ridiculous TV documentaries on environmental threats, especially the PBS one narrated by Alanis Morrisette. I know there is a TON of crap propoganda.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Until there is a greater profit motive for companies to unseat the internal combustion engine, then much of your environmental progress will be incremental - not revolutionary.

Sure, if everything is left strictly to market forces.

China has a justified reputation for producing a pollution nightmare. But guess what - they are now embarked on a MASSIVE undertaking to develop and convert to green technologies. My bro is a manufacturing big shit, goes to manufacturing trade shows in China, sez everything is GREEN GREEN GREEN. If your manufacturing material/tool isn't GREEN, they aren't buying.

Converting to environmentally sound society is not a burden, it is a business opportunity! It means developing products for future. If U.S. capitalists don't take the lead, through government incentives where necessary, China gonna KICK OUR ASS. Green is good business.

There is no reason why conservatives and the republican party shouldn't be equal partners in promoting cleaner environment. The Environmental Protection Agency was a creation of Richard Nixon. The majority of Republicans see what is at stake. Rush Limbaugh and the Tree Hugger talk is old school.

[No Mo Moss]

Before Tobacco was totally accepted as a cancer causing agent, the tobacco companies did there own fake science to show that smoking is safe. It seems that the big oil companies would have "slightly" more to gain then environmentalists by lying.

[Harlan Huckleby]

I just saw the movie.

The scientific information presented was convincing. It is extremely unlikely that global warming is some sort of natural or cyclical phenomena.

The movie was far too much Al Gore. I think he is noble and sincere, but a film about how noble and sincere Al Gore is will only play to the converted.

[SkinBasket]

I just saw the movie.

The scientific information presented was convincing. It is extremely unlikely that global warming is some sort of natural or cyclical phenomena.

The movie was far too much Al Gore. I think he is noble and sincere, but a film about how noble and sincere Al Gore is will only play to the converted.

Al Gore... "Noble and sincere?" Playing to the "converted?" Goddamn HH, give up the "I'm an independant" facade already. Calling Gore noble is like calling Boy George a saint.

[Patler]

Didn't Gore invent the internet??

[Harlan Huckleby]

I tend to beleive people are sincere in their causes. I think Bush beleives tax cuts will improve life for all. I beleive the NeoCons are motivated primarily by spreading democracy. Nader & Gore have spent their lives on environmental issues, I have no reason to doubt their sincerity.

[Scott Campbell]

Didn't Gore invent the internet??

Yes, I believe he did. And notice how environmentally friendly the internet is. No green house gasses in here.

[Harlan Huckleby]

Al Gore is fake. Global Warming is fake. All politics.

In 50 years we'll have plastic domes over gated communities, so no need to sweat environmental crap. You can't save the world, best to look out for your self.