April 30, 2008

Colorado State U. Moves to Cool a Hot Story About a Global-Warming Dispute

Amid news reports suggesting that Colorado State University was limiting its support of a hurricane researcher who has become a leading skeptic of global warming, the university issued a statement this week in which both the researcher and the dean of his college asserted that their relationship was unchanged.

The researcher, William M. Gray, an emeritus professor known as a pioneer in the science of seasonal hurricane forecasting, produces a widely noticed forecast of Atlantic hurricanes in conjuncton with a colleague, Philip J. Klotzbach. Reports in the Houston Chronicle and other news-media outlets this week have also widely publicized a memorandum Mr. Gray wrote to university officials last year when it seemed they were pulling the plug on the hurricane forecasts because of the distraction of having to deal with news-media inquiries. In the memo, he called the media-distraction explanation “a flimsy excuse” and a cover for an attempt to muzzle his criticism of the idea that global warming is caused by human activity.

But in the university statement issued on Tuesday, he stated: “There has been no change in my status at CSU. We’re still putting the forecast out. CSU continues to support me.”

And Sandra Wood, dean of the College of Engineering, which oversees atmospheric sciences, flatly denied that Mr. Gray was “being silenced or being forced out because of his views on global warming.” She added that the university would continue to support the hurricane forecast as long as he and Mr. Klotzbach want to issue it, but that if Mr. Klotzbach leaves the university, “he will most likely take the forecast with him.” Mr. Gray, who officially retired in 2004, “has been positioning Dr. Klotzbach to take over the forecast,” she said. “That’s nothing new.” —Charles Huckabee

Comments

1. It will be wonderful when the global warming hoax is finally completely exposed and laid to rest. The problem is of course, is that some propagandist will come up with a new flim-flam.

   As far as silencing a skeptic, what would be new about that? There is no more politicized area of American society that I am aware of than higher education. So, moving to silence a critic of the ideology currently in vogue should be no great surprise to anyone.

   — R2    May 1, 09:43 AM    #

2. If global warming is a hoax, then a lot of people seem to be participating.

   — Ba'al    May 1, 09:59 AM    #

3. R2 is absolutely right, if only people would look at the facts and not a minority report produced by a group of scientists with an agenda and touted as the truth by politicians to further their personal ambitions.

   — mk    May 1, 10:10 AM    #

4. Funny how a large percentage of the science critical and skeptical of global warming is funded by the oil industry.
   John

   — john    May 1, 10:21 AM    #

5. I’m wondering with what authority you naysayers (R2 and mk) speak? Are you climatologists deeply immersed in the science behind global climate change? Or are you just armchair quarterbacks hoping that by saying something is so, people will start believing it is so. What proof do you have — what hardcore scientific proof do you offer — that global warming is a lie?

   — Deborah    May 1, 10:22 AM    #

6. While I’m a skeptic regarding the greenhouse gas theory of global warming, I’m less skeptical of global warming itself. The real political/academic problem seems to be the refusal of global warming proponents to (a) consider the degree to which the data fail to support their best current theories and (b) insist on spending unbelievable sums of money to try to stop something that may be unstoppable, while ignoring the more sensible path of discussing how to adjust to the warming that is taking place. Money and politics may be dominating science – but it’s pretty clear that all the money that’s talking isn’t coming from the oil companies and their allies.

   — NTS    May 1, 10:29 AM    #

7. #2,
   which would again be nothing new. #5, are only those who have authority allowed to speak up? would you listen only to climatologists? how about those (W. Grey) who are skeptical about global warming?
   I am no climatologist in a position of authority but I am aware of the truth by convention.

   — Mark de Goz    May 1, 10:32 AM    #

8. Having grown up in a very rural area, I have always been in favor of conserving and protecting the environmnt. It frustrates me no end, though, that conservation and environmentalism has become politicized. It has become just another platform that can be used by some to gain political control over others. This is the sad truth of the global climate change discussion. The average person really doesn’t know who to believe, because so many non-scientists – politicians like Al Gore – have gotten involved, that many of us question the motivation behind the movement.

   I’m not a climatologist, but as an engineer I have friends who are, and my take on this is that the jury is still out on whether or not whatever climate change we are experiencing is caused by humans. It would be nice if we could allow the scientific community – the ENTIRE scientific community, not just those scientists who politically align with Al Gore, to openly discuss this issue without being “tarred and featherd” as supposed apologists for big oil.

   By the way, Mark, what is “truth by convention”? Does it mean that if enought people say something is true it must be? ‘Not sure I buy that concept.

   — FB    May 1, 11:11 AM    #

9. Global warming is a bureaucrat’s dream come true- to control carbon, the fourth most common element in the universe and the base element of all known life; it’s the ultimate power grab.

   — Tracy Schumer    May 1, 11:34 AM    #

10. Funny how all the GW believers are funded by the “green” industry. Oh, sorry, we’re not supposed to say that.

    By the way, seen any sunspots lately? Me neither. The last time this was occurring was the Little Ice Age.

    — Bob    May 1, 11:44 AM    #

11. #7: I would hope that we would listen skeptically to all scientists, and try to determine (and discount those with) agendas. But I’m not at all interested in hearing from nonscientists about causes of global warming. Of course scientists can be biased (I’d argue all of us are), but I also choose to believe in the critical reviews of science before publication. That is, I believe that the peer-review process behind publication is our best route to finding the truth — not ideal; of course editors and reviewers are biased, but a compelling, data-based argument can override those biases, if not at one journal, then at another. So when the skeptics produce peer-reviewed publications to support their skepticism, then I’ll buy in. Otherwise, it’s just arguments, and blah, blah, blah.

    — Ray    May 1, 11:48 AM    #

12. Global warming is the eschatology for secularists. Cloaked in scientific liturgy, upon close examination it is ultimately as irrational as Christian and Muslim endtimes prophecy. Ecce homo.

    — first marci    May 1, 11:57 AM    #

13. The tactic of “making the scientists appear divided” is the weapon routinely used to confuse the citizen. It is used against evolution. It is still used to claim tobacco smoking is harmless. Global warming is being measured and carbon dioxide build-up is being measured. Both are indisputable by reasonable people. Is the human use of fossil fuels causing the carbon dioxide build-up and is the carbon dioxide build-up causing the global warming? Where do you find the answers to those? From peer-reviewed scientific journals which show that the almost all climate scientists feel the evidence is very strong that this is the explanation.

    — Marvin    May 1, 12:14 PM    #

14. Turn on your car in your garage for about half an hour and tell me that having millions of automobiles pumping exhaust into the atmosphere 24/7/365 year after year isn’t going to have any impact on the atmosphere. Visit LA — you can get a first-hand look at what the burning of fossil fuels does to the environment — now think of this more globally. Global warming is merely common sense — burning fossil fuels due to our greed and laziness will indeed have severe long-term consequences.

    — Stop Being Naive    May 1, 12:15 PM    #

15. As someone who has attended lectures by physicists, geologists, paleoclimatologists, and other scientists with the educational background to speak on this subject there is no legitimate debate in the science community about AGW. In fact, there is worldwide consensus among legitimate science academies that humans with their emissions of GHG’s are the cause of the currently unprecedented warming which may very well lead to the downfall of human societies worldwide.
    Before the above posters continue to display their ignorance to the world I suggest they first actually read the IPCC reports located here:
    http://www.ipcc.ch
    Then spend several weeks reading the background material provided by working climatologists here:
    http://www.realclimate.org
    Finally, to see just how large the true consensus is look here:
    http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensusD1.htm

    — Mark Schaffer    May 1, 12:23 PM    #

16. Gray is a very good scientist who happens to be wrong about global warming. His skepticism is understandable though misguided. But are there no chemists amongst you commentators? The global climate is indeed complex, but if you put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere faster than nature can deal with it, the overall result will warm the Earth up. The earliest popular reference to I’ve found so far dates from the 1950’s. So some people have known this fact for a very long time. Oh, well. Creationists have been deluded for far longer than the global warming deniers.

    — Chris    May 1, 12:26 PM    #

17. FB,
    Here is an example of the truth by convention —the theorem that “AIDS is caused by HIV”. This theorem has never been proven by a publication in a refereed journal where it would have been shown to satisfy Koch’s postulates universally accepted in medical science. Instead it was postulated in a press release of NIH, something never done before and shortly accepted as the truth by convention. Those who try to attract attention to this historical fact and call for more research on the cause of AIDS (like NAS member Peter Duesberg or Nobel prize winner Walter Gilbert) are silenced, laughed at, deprived of funding, rejected by refereed journals.

    — Mark de Goz    May 1, 12:32 PM    #

18. Bubba says.. Global Warming is a plan of GOD through the action of the sun and volcanoe activity..

    — Bubba    May 1, 01:38 PM    #

19. And then there are the embarrassing Pine Bark Beetles.

    — Joseph F Foster    May 1, 02:20 PM    #

20. The consensus among the scientific community is that the earth is about 4,500 million years old. Statistically, any “trend” that has occurred in the past 100 years could easily be accounted for by chance; and even where weather data goes back 300 years, it barely long enough to even register. Four hundred years ago, Europe experienced a mini ice age. Two thousand years ago, Britain was warm enough to produce a great deal more wine for grapes than it does today. Although there is evidence that we are experiencing a warmer period, it cannot be demonstrated conclusively that it is due to the habits of earth’s inhabitants. It might be, but we simply have not had enough time to evaluate the evidence we have. It behooves us all to remain objective in the face of the facts we have, recognizing that we probably know much less about this topic than we think we do.

    — Bruce Hoag, PhD    May 1, 02:44 PM    #

21. What evidence does Bruce Hoag present to show his view is correct? None. Readers will want to look at my earlier post and read the actual IPCC documents to show how little Bruce Hoag knows about the science.

    — Mark Schaffer    May 1, 03:27 PM    #

22. Sigh … The pattern of warming actually observed doesn’t match the predictions of the theory well at all. Ice core data that were thought to implicate greenhouse gases with consequent rises in temperature have now been discredited. The vaunted UN report systematically excludes mention of studies that don’t support the hypothesis – or has it now become a doctrine? – of greenhouse gas-driven warming. History shows that temperatures have risen and fallen many times before. Yet Mark Schaffer knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the current majority theory is right. Sigh.

    I confess that I was too young in thd 1960s to have been impacted by the scare over global cooling. I wonder if its proponents were as certain of their position as are the proponents of one particular theory of global warming today.

    — NTS    May 1, 04:13 PM    #

23. Mark Schaffer,

    As an outspoken advocate of silencing those who do not know anything about science, you are surely aware that OBSERVATIONS do not yet constitute science. Nor does the ability to EXPLAIN facts. The last crucial element is PREDICTION which means ability to make a verifiable statement about nature and check it. And so far the “science” of global warming has a very short list of verified/falsified prediction. It thus falls short of being a science in a true accepted meaning of this term.

    — Mark de Goz    May 1, 04:28 PM    #

24. Go get some real hard fact data, it’s been getting colder for 10 years, both in the atmosphere and the oceans(Argo units that have been traveling the oceans taking temperature for the last 5 years and say the oceans are cooling http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=8c21e2dd-1945-43be-b04d-217c415f5a6b ), the sun has been inactive and has been for a few years, thus explaining the last few years of cooling. Human made heating from CO2 is a lie, we don’t live in a greenhouse, we live in a open solar system and the gases and heat are expelled into space. A natural cycle of our sun and earth and it’s about time you realized this before you sell our kids and grand kids futures by paying large amounts of money to carbon offsets from millionaire stock brokers to sell to millionaire jet setters and give up our freedoms to outside country governing interests over a farce that CO2 is a killer gas that we’re killing the planet with, it’s a flimflam and lie.

    What is the proper level for CO2 or temperature on earth? The earth is not sick, it’s natural and we should not interfere. We should plan for the natural climate change and stop deforestation, this may help. But that is still inconclusive, like human made global warming. “

    How can a natural process be acquainted to being sick? CO2 levels AND temperature of today are compared with Middle Carboniferous period Average global temperatures in the Early Carboniferous Period were hot- approximately 20° C (68° F). However, cooling during the Middle Carboniferous reduced average global temperatures to about 12° C (54° F). (as show on the link below), this is comparable to the average global temperature on Earth today!

    http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

    Similarly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Early Carboniferous Period were approximately 1500 ppm (parts per million), but by the Middle Carboniferous had declined to about 350 ppm — comparable to average CO2 concentrations today! Earth’s atmosphere today contains about 380 ppm CO2 (0.038%). Compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! That’s why it’s called the CARBONiferous, things died from lack of heat and CO2 and then lack of oxygen stopped decay of the layers of vegetation rotting becoming the coal we use today. The last 600 million years of Earth’s history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm. This is know fact with real data.

    And here we are today with failing crops and food shortages, the arctic ice has built beyond know records and the Antarctica just keeps adding ice, the two coldest years have erased all the rises in a 100 years. Not 50, not 20 , but a 100 years!

    This is the REAL temperatures we are getting on earth without sun activity. I’m not predicting another die off(or a ice age) like the middle Carboniferous, but you have to look at the similarities. Genetically engineer plants to handle a colder climate might be the answer to feed us all, nuclear energy is clean and used almost every where in the world, their building and decommissioning them while I type this, America/Canada has fossil fuel reserves beyond that in the middle east but we legislated that we can not drill or add nuclear energy, the most abundant modern energy that we have thousands of years of .

    Just hope/prey we get some active sunspots to come back to the sun soon or we will have real weather to deal with, cold weather that kills.

    I used to put links, but I’ve found it’s a waste of time when the Looney warmers won’t read it or even consider reading it, quite sad really.

    So put that in your failed computer models and analyze it. ;)

    — Lance    May 1, 05:48 PM    #

25. NTS,
    All written sighing aside, what specific peer reviewed studies contradict the reality of AGW?
    Your canard regarding global cooling is completely debunked here:
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/03/the-global-cooling-mole/

    — Mark Schaffer    May 1, 06:13 PM    #

26. Mark de Goz wrote that I am trying to silence . . . someone. No, I would just like to see any hard data in peer review by people with the actual credentials and knowledge that better explains the current rapid warming and destabilization being seen around the world. The sun is a canard as shown here:
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/how-not-to-attribute-climate-change/

    — Mark Schaffer    May 1, 06:26 PM    #

27. Lance takes his argument from Monte Hieb, sometime West Virginia Office of Coal Miner’s Safety chief engineer, not a climate scientist. Google Hieb and you’ll see the problem with all of these claims like Lance’s. None are based on peer reviewed studies by real climate scientists.

    — Marvin    May 1, 06:29 PM    #

28. Lance,

    You wouldn’t be the same poster I have killfiled over at Deltoid would you? In any case, the people who actually measure temperature seem to have a different take than your fantasy of temperature trends in the last ten years:
    http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

    — Mark Schaffer    May 1, 06:33 PM    #

29. Mark Schaffer, peer review is not what makes science, why do you keep bringing it up? Science is obervation -> explanation -> prediction -> verification. Can you tell me a single acomplishment along these lines by AGW?

    — Mark de Goz    May 1, 06:33 PM    #

30. Thank you, NTS.

    As I said in my post (#8), the jury is still out on this. The politics surrounding this issue has caused many to jump to a conclusion that I’m not yet sure is warranted.

    — FB    May 1, 06:38 PM    #

31. Mark de Goz,

    If you are unable to present any actual data just say so. There are many links to the original research from my linked sites of my original post here. You just have to do the actual work of reading them. That you either have not or do not want to is not my problem.

    — Mark Schaffer    May 1, 06:42 PM    #

32. FB,
    What jury is still out on this? What evidence have you looked at? Why should anyone listen to you?

    — Mark Schaffer    May 1, 06:44 PM    #

33. Mark Schaffer,
    That’s right, I am unable to present any data on climate change, this is not my field. I am a taxpayer who wants to know if the science of global warming is a science or a set of conventions. Is it too much to ask before parting with my money?

    — Mark de Goz    May 1, 07:57 PM    #

34. Mark Schaffer-

    No more than a century ago most reputable scientists believed that a substance called “luminiferous ether” had to exist in what we now call outer space, since light is a wave, and waves must have a medium in which to travel. Einstien came along with the theory of relativity, which debunked the concept of “luminiferous ether” – and the rest is now history.

    I say that the evidence for human induced global climate change is not yet convincing – at least to me.

    If you don’t think you have any reason to listen to me that’s fine by me. I’m just telling you what I think. I would hope that’s OK with you.

    — FB    May 1, 11:03 PM    #

35. FB – “I’m just telling you what I think. I would hope that’s OK with you.”

    No, FB, it won’t be okay with Mark or any other worshipper at the altar of GW/Climate Change. To question climate change is no different than drawing cartoons of Mohammed. He will point to his IPCC Bible as the word of all “legitimate” scientists – his god. He has attended services with sermons by physicists, etc, and they have the great truth. There can be no legitimate debate and if you have doubts, then you must be a “denier” and, if they had the power, would undoubtedly have you before a Global Warming Inquisition.

    I’ve mentioned it before. There’s more of political science to climate change than there is climate science. It’s trying to move socialism/anti-capitalism in through a different door. Rather than Khrushchev banging his shoe at the UN shouting “We will bury you,” they now bang their IPCC report and say there can be no debate. Ever notice that the only solution can be through sacrificing world economies? By regulating everything to death?

    I know there is climate change – has been for 4 billion years. I find it hard to believe, however, that the substance every human breaths out and that is needed by plants to breath in is a “pollutant.” And to be honest with you, no one has explained to me why the “climate” we have now is the one, true, perfect climate. Warm it up a few degrees, I say, and let’s plan on how to live with less need to heat homes, longer growing seasons, and fewer people freezing to death! (I know. . .I’m a denier who shall be damnned by the almighty concensus of legitimate scientists to eco-hell!!)

    — Bill    May 2, 12:01 PM    #

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