[ RadSafe ] The hot and cold of history

[howard long]

Howard Maccabee PhD MD is an LLNL physicist turned radiation oncologist and founder of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. I have seen him exposed to dozens of presentations on global warming by Harvard astrophysicist Sallee Balliunas, Willy Soon, Springer, Moore, Balling and many others. I was his guest at an SF presentation featuring Michael Crichton MD, who started out supporting the movement but found data showed the opposite of what the carbon tax collectors claim, thus "The State of Fear" on my waiting room table.
  Howard Long
   
  CONVENIENT LIES IN “AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH”
  I saw Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” in June and was impressed by the slickness of the propaganda, not the scientific content.  He showed numerous graphs and trendlines; none was labeled as to units, methods of data acquisition, references, or estimates of error in the data.  You may remember that Gore’s college education was in journalism, not any branch of science.  The movie is pseudoscience in manipulative cinematic wrapping.
   
                  The most spectacular visual in the film is an extrapolation of temperature prediction so that the trendline goes nearly vertically to the ceiling of the studio with Gore being elevated with a “cherry-picker” along with the trendline.  Given the multiple heat sinks (such as the oceans) that exchange heat with the atmosphere, this is impossible, and Gore’s stunt is scientifically absurd.
   
                  Following are several more items of scientific incredibility presented in the film:
  1.        Perhaps the worst is the bald-faced lie by which he claims that 983 articles in peer-reviewed journals favor the global warming (GW) hypothesis and there are no critical articles.  This is a perfect example of Goebbels’ idea that a BIG LIE is more easily accepted than a fib.  I have many  such critical articles in my files.  Perhaps the most readable refutation available is the book “State of Fear” by Michael Crichton (Harper Collins, 2004). It contains myriad graphs of scientific data that contradict the GW hypothesis, all of which are properly labeled with units, and sources.  Guess where the sources are from:  US Government data, such as NASA, NOAA, and the US Historical Climatology Network.  Evidently, Crichton learned more about how to explain science at Harvard Medical School than Gore did in journalism school.  If the first major claim in the film (that of no contradictory publication) is a big lie, how can we trust the rest of Gore’s claims?
   
  2.        Gore states that the US is the world’s largest producer of CO2 .  He ignores the very relevant fact that the US is also a very great absorber of CO2, because of our gigantic store of  “biomass” i.e. trees, agricultural plants, etc.  Some studies show that the US is a net “sink” for CO2.  This was one of the reasons why the Kyoto protocol would have been economically unfair to the US.  We were to be penalized for our CO2  production and not rewarded for our CO2 absorption.
   
  3.        Gore’s film somehow omitted the details that nations such as China and India are exempted from the Kyoto protocols.  These nations have the largest populations, and the fastest growing populations.  Notably, China has the fastest growing industrial production and the fastest growth of CO2 production.
   
  I quote from the NY Times article “Pollutions from Chinese Coal Casts Shadow around the Globe,” p.1, 6/11/06:
   
  “Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar at home and abroad.  (The increase in global-warming gases from China’s coal use will probably exceed that for all (other) industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.”)
   
  This in itself gives the lie to Gore’s implication that adhering to Kyoto would  be effective in preventing global climate change.
   
  4.        He makes a big production of showing the temperature correlation with CO2  levels for thousands of years, but does not superimpose the data.  This obscures the fact that for much of the past, accurate superposition shows that the temperature trend leads the CO2 instead of CO2 leading warming.  It exposes the idea that warming of the oceans may cause CO2  to increase in some periods, instead of the GW hypothesis that increased CO2  causes warming.    There is a significant mechanism by which warming of the ocean causes dissolved CO2 to be driven into the atmosphere.  (Try warming up a bottle of soda.)
   
  5.        He shows Roger Revelle, a great scientist and teacher at UC San Diego, releasing balloons to measure atmospheric temperature and CO2 levels.  There is no disagreement that CO2  has been increasing for the last 100 years.  Gore implies that Revelle agreed with the GW hypothesis, which is not true.  In fact, balloon measurements of atmospheric temperatures, along with more recent satellite data, do not agree with warming data from surface measurements.
   
  6.        Gore also claims that the GW hypothesis also predicts increase in the number of large storms, hurricanes, etc. such as Katrina.  Peer-reviewed scientific papers show no systematic increase in large storms in the recent time period.  See for example the NOAA data on US Hurricane Strikes by decade (1900-2004) as shown on p.425 of “State of  Fear.”  The peak since 1900 was in 1940-49, and the trend has been downward since, contradicting the GW prediction.
   
  7.        Along with most popular media, Gore pictorially emphasizes the decrease in the Arctic ice-pack.  This may be deliberate, to take attention from the fact that the quantity of ice in the Antarctic, which is not only many times larger than the Arctic, but is also increasing, much more than the decrease in the Arctic.
   
  Gore and his allies conveniently forget that the global climate models that they worship predict comparable warming at both poles.  How can we trust models that get it wrong for the whole Antarctic continent?
   
  8.        Most outrageously, Gore features New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin as a prophetic hero.  Has Al forgotten that Nagin, in his “prophetic wisdom,” refused to use the hundreds of buses at his disposal to evacuate the people who suffered the most from the floods succeeding Katrina?
   
  CONCLUSION
   
   
  Don’t waste your time or money on this disingenuous film.  It is much more about political propaganda to get Al Gore back into the presidential race than about scientific truth.
   
  You are better off spending your time (and the cost of 2 or 3 movie tickets) on a copy of Crichton’s “State of Fear.”
   
  AFTERWORD
   
                  Al Gore even lies when he’s off camera.  In an interview with Moira Macdonald (Seattle Times, approx. June 2, 2006), Gore states:  “I was elected (to Congress) in 1976.  The following year, I started to stir up interest in Congress in global warming.”
   
                  Sorry, Al, there was no global warming hypothesis in 1976 or 1977.  The buzz then was about “global cooling.”  In fact, Dr. Stephen Schneider of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, endorsed a book called “the Cooling” by Lowell Ponte (Prentice-Hall, 1976).  Remember that Dr. Schneider changed his mind, and is credited with being one of the ”fathers” of the GW hypothesis in the following decades.
   
                  Maybe I’ve got it wrong, Al.  Maybe you invented the global warming idea yourself, in 1977.  And the internet, too.
   
                                                                                  HOWARD MACCABEE, PhD, MD 
                                                                                                                  July 2006
     
  ll <wwebber2004 at comcast.net> wrote:

  > From the article: Another lengthy warm period from 750 to 1215 called 
> the Little Climatic Optimum (or Medieval Warming Period).
According to the graph on page 65 of "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore 
the temperature increase during the period 750-1215 was less than the 
temperature increases that we have experienced during the last fifty 
years. The graph on page 67 shows a significant correlation of 
temperature and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere for the last 600,000 
years. The current CO2 concentration is about 50% higher than at any 
time in the last 600,000 years.

Given these two facts, it is difficult to extrapolate the effects seen 
during the "Little Climatic Optimum" to our current situation.

You might want to look at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period for more information 
on this subject.

Question: Is there less CO2 released to the atmosphere from electrical 
generation with the nuclear fuel cycle than from the clean (capture of 
CO2) coal cycle?

Maury Siskel wrote:
>
> I sincerely believe all who are interested or concerned with the 
> possible human role in GW will not only enjoy this article, but will 
> also find its perspective quite intriguing.
>
> A friend referred me to it and I was really surprised by this 
> comprehensive view of history.
>
> Best,
> Maury&Dog (maurysis at peoplepc.com)
>
>
> http://reactor-core.org/summers-lease.html
> _______________________________________________
> You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list
>
> Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and 
> understood the RadSafe rules. These can be found at: 
> http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html
>
> For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings 
> visit: http://radlab.nl/radsafe/
>


_______________________________________________
You are currently subscribed to the RadSafe mailing list

Before posting a message to RadSafe be sure to have read and understood the RadSafe rules. These can be found at: http://radlab.nl/radsafe/radsaferules.html

For information on how to subscribe or unsubscribe and other settings visit: http://radlab.nl/radsafe/