Re: [riskanal] Annual Global Warming Debate

[maury <maury@webtexas.com>]

Dear Fritz, et al



I was always taught that major objectives of scientific research were prediction and control You have again

demonstrated the inability of global climate science to meet either of these as yet.

I hope that the work continues, but without the sad attempts to impose Kyoto Accords on the world. Kyoyo has

much more to do, in my opinion, with politics and economics -- especially with cutting down the economic

strength of the US vs envious parties elsewhere.



The Global Climate Change dependence on models (which you have noted)  instead of observations is further

vitiated by the following information. This development, though a bit dated, seems to be widely ignored.



This is an amazing turnabout, and Jim Hansen was widely commended for having the integrity to publicly change

his

mind about climate change. One does not often see such phenomena among open-minded(?) scientists!



If I am unaware of some striking new developments in GCMs, I will appreciate being made aware of them.



Maury Siskel           maury@webtexas.com

_____________

In 1988, NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen told a U.S. Senate subcommittee: "It is time to stop waffling . . .

the

greenhouse effect is here....with 99% confidence it is affecting

our planet now." That statement, more than any other, lit

the "global warming fire." Climate change became front-page news. Billions of dollars in research money was

spent to

better understand the atmosphere. Most of the nations in the world met in Kyoto, Japan in 1997 to sign an

accord that

would limit emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2).



But in 1998 Hansen produced a technical paper that included

the statement "the forcings that drive long-term climate

change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to model

future climate." In other words, climate change is so complex

we cannot trust the climate models to give us reliable and accurate predictions. Most climate scientists

(including me)

support the use of computer models to understand and predict climate. But limitations in computer speed and

lack of good observations still hamper the models. Hansen's statement indicated that the models (the same

ones that showed

tremendous warming in the future) may not be reliable.



Last week he went even further. In an article for the

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (see

www.pnas.org, and look under "Early edition"), Hansen now admits that carbon dioxide from burning fossil

fuels was not

the main because [sic] of rapid warming of the Earth in recent decades. He is optimistic that global warming

can be prevented

"without any economically wrenching actions" because of the growing realization that too much emphasis has

been

placed on the effects of burning fossil fuels. Warming over the past century was NOT mostly driven by CO2,

but by other

gases, such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons, so it should

be "more practical to slow global warming than is sometimes assumed". The growth rate of these non-CO2

greenhouse

gases has declined significantly in the past decade, so "this

could lead to a decline in the rate of global warming, reducing the danger of drastic climate change."

-----------------------------



"Fritz A. Seiler" wrote:



> Hi All,

>         It is this time of the year again, and the old Global

> Warming debate rages on the RADSAFE and RISKANAL

> mailing lists.  Again, as every year!  I wonder why?

>         So, like every year at this time, I have to remind the

> list members that the Human-Caused-Global-Warming

> enthusiasts have again not accomplished anything of scientific

> importance, and for yet another year they have not been able

> to show that anything in the warming of the earth's climate

> since the "Little Ice Age" is man-made. Why that is so?  Well,

> it is so simply because their work does not meet the basic

> requirement of the Scientific Method: A successful comparison

> of their model calculations with the experimental data. Let us

> make another argument this year to demonstrate that failure!

>         Last week, there was an article in the Albuquerque

> Journal discussing the fact that the prediction for the weather

> next winter is highly uncertain because we have neither an El

> Nino nor a La Nina beginning to form, and so we don't know

> what to expect. What struck me as rather interesting about this

> article was that the writer expected the common reader of the

> Albuquerque Journal to know that there is a marked effect of

> either phenomenon not only on the winter weather in New

> Mexico but also in the rest of the United States.

>         What impresses me as a scientist is that the vaunted

> Global Circulation Models, those that supposedly show an

> emerging human influence on our climate and weather, are

> not able to reproduce the sizeable and well known effects

> of El Nino and La Nina on our weather!  This has been true

> for many years now, and again it has not improved during the

> last year (see p. 7 of S. F. Singer, "Hot Talk - Cold Science:

> Global Warming's Unfinished Debate." (The Independent

> Institute, Oakland, CA, 1997).

>         For me, as an aficionado of the Scientific Method, the

> failure of the multi-billion dollar Global Warming efforts to

> reproduce the well known effects on our winter weather is

> sufficient to reject the results of these efforts, especially the

> modeling assumptions!  It is the classical failure of a faulty

> theory to explain the relevant experimental data!   So:

>

>    Why should we believe anything based on calculations

>     with these discredited human-caused effect models?!

>

>         Thanks to President Bush's decision not to ratify the

> Kyoto Accord, we are not bound to rash actions based on

> the unproven notion that man is the cause of Global Warming.

> This is the kind of ill-advised action based on bad science that

> we simply cannot afford.  We need to make decisions based

> on good science, and if doing good science limits us to actions

> that minimize or prevent the worst consequences of Global

> Warming, instead of going after the root causes, then so be it!

> Whatever action we take on a global scale is going to be very

> expensive and therefore must lead to protective results with a

> high degree of certainty. Given our present state of knowledge,

> it is not likely that the actions required by the Kyoto Accord

> will achieve a high degree of certainty of anything positive.

>

> Have a nice week,

>

> Fritz

>

> *******************************************

> Fritz A. Seiler, Ph.D.

> Sigma Five Consulting:       Private:

> P.O. Box 1709                   P.O. Box 437

> Los Lunas, NM 87031         Tome', NM 87060

> Tel.:      505-866-5193         Tel. 505-866-6976

> Fax:      505-866-5197

> *******************************************



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