My friend James Kitler, trained as an engineer sent me a website article that debunks Al Gore’s “The Inconvenient Truth”.
Here is an excerpt to convey the flavor.
“"Scientists have an independent obligation to respect and present the truth as they see it," Al Gore sensibly asserts in his film "An Inconvenient Truth", showing at Cumberland 4 Cinemas in Toronto since Jun 2. With that outlook in mind, what do world climate experts actually think about the science of his movie? "
“Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."”
It goes on from there.
Stanford University has a Solar Center that has lots of good stuff on global warming. There is an interesting chart on the first page that suggests that climate is by far most correlated with solar activity. Looking at it makes you a skeptic with respect to Al Gore, although one chart is not a proof. On the other hand, having listened to Al Gore before, I have got to wonder how he could track down the truth even if he wanted to.
Looking down the links on Stanford University’s site, I found one quoting some researchers. Here are a couple of quotes.
“But the Earth is warming up, you say. Well, the evidence for that is very skimpy and not supported by an overwhelming quantity and quality of facts, as well as by the poor quality of surface temperature recordings.”
“Aside from the design- and human errors that may and do creep in when setting up instrumentation and taking readings, the readings are affected by the heat island effect generated in urban areas. The heat-island effect is substantial, measurable in communities of 250 or more residents, increasing over time as energy consumption and population density increase, and cannot be ignored. Determining accurate correction factors for individual areas in which temperature readings are taken in uncharacteristic hot-spots becomes difficult and even impossible if no corresponding records of readings exist for the surrounding rural areas, and as more and more weather stations in rural areas are being taken out of service.”
“However, for a number of years now, temperature measurements have been made via balloons and, in an even more thorough and comprehensive fashion, via satellites. The records established by those means show no or at worst only almost imperceptible global warming. Of course, those records are unbiased by human error and undistorted by the fact that temperature readings taken in urban areas are affected by the heat-island effects of the cities in which many are taken and that taint the results of global averaging of global temperature records.”
“What do they tell us about the highly-advertised claims of the world's climate alarmists relative to warming-induced droughts and floods?....”
“Climate alarmists claim that global warming will bring extremes of both floods and droughts to the world, and that the earth is now warmer than it has been in the entire past millennium. If these two claims were correct, we should clearly be seeing wet and dry periods that exceed the worst of the past half-millennium or more. In this extensive and well-calibrated record from the United States, however, we don't. Ergo, something is rotten in more than Denmark.”
“Curiously, and the Kyoto-hype advocates must surely be interested in that (or are they?), the record for the Sargasso Sea shows that the current sea-surface temperature is about half a degree Celsius below the average for the last 3000 years. Moreover, although the sea-surface temperature has recently increased somewhat but not quite reached the 3000-year average, it is rising in perfect synchronicity with the record of solar activity. It has done so before and will do so again.”
“Just as there were times in the past where it was much colder than it is now, so there were times when our globe was much warmer. The last period of a considerably warmer climate was during the Medieval Optimum, just before the Little Ice Age set in out of which we are climbing just now.”
“Superstitions, in spite of many voices of reason, brought about the witch hunts as the climate turned colder during the Little Ice Age. (See the paper by historian Wolfgang Behringer: Climatic Change and Witch-Hunting: The Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities) Superstitions, in spite of many voices of reason, bring us now the witch hunts promoted by the proponents of the Kyoto accord. Such is the power of propaganda.”
There are lots more interesting links.
I am not a climate expert. But, being a Bayesian, I note that alarmists have seldom been right in the past and exhibit a characteristic behavior that does not instill confidence in me. So, my bet is that disaster is not imminent.
Even if global warming is an imminent problem, my preferred solution is fewer people. Smaller families, anyone?
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