November 2009 issue
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Readers’ Forum
Contrarians’ Arguments Are ‘Not About the Science’
Perhaps someone should inform the climate change contrarians, whose letters appear continually in The PEGG, that the game is lost. With the Obama administration’s acceptance of the science of climate change, Canada has, of necessity, fallen into line with the introduction of a cap-and-trade system.
Alberta, too, will eventually fall in line, when its position becomes untenable.
As I have maintained in previous letters, the debate in The PEGG is not about science. The scientific debate involves the world’s leading scientists. It takes place in refereed journals and is communicated in the various peer-reviewed reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Contrarians scour websites or journals for arguments (sometimes taken out of context) that support their pre-conceived notions. Their arguments have been discredited by the larger scientific community.
Psychologists refer to this method-ology as “confirmation bias.”
This is the opposite of good science, which has hypotheses constantly tested by new data and modified or thrown out. The theory of climate change has withstood this rigorous testing and has emerged as the only way to explain the current warming.
The objective of the anti-global warming side is perhaps best expressed by a memorandum from Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation in 1969, during the campaign to discredit the scientifically established link between smoking and lung cancer: “Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.”
Criticism of the science of climate change is the result of a well-organized and well-funded campaign.
Scientific truth is not the objective of the campaign; doubt and confusion are.
By giving voice to this campaign, APEGGA furthers the cause by advancing the impression that there is more uncertainty amongst climate scientists than there is. The debate within the scientific community is about specific details, not whether anthropogenic forced climate change is happening.
The climate change debate exemplifies the famous quote by the physicist Max Plank: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
It is time to move on in this debate. I eagerly await the howls of derision.
J. Edward Mathison, P.Geol.
Calgary
Another Vote
For Continued
Climate Change Debate
Re: Let’s Not Stifle Debate, by Ron Ackroyd, P.Eng., Readers’ Forum, The PEGG, October 2009.
Congratulations to the writer for this well-written letter about the importance of keeping the global warming debate going in Readers’ Forum. I believe his views are held by many APEGGA members.
I too was somewhat taken aback by the letter from President Jim Beckett, P.Eng., in the September PEGG. In my opinion, Council has so far been correct in its decision to not have APEGGA as an organization take a position on either side of this important issue, while at the same time allowing our members to conduct a debate.
I sincerely hope that Council will continue to allow this debate, peer-reviewed or not.
Al King, P.Eng.
Life Member
Past Councillor & Executive
Committee Member
Calgary
Public Inquiry
Needed On
Climate Change
Re: Moore’s Points Don’t Stand Up, by Dr. Alex De Visscher, P.Eng., Readers’ Forum, The PEGG, September 2009.
Dr. De Visscher’s comments are greatly appreciated, since I have been frustrated when trying to obtain meaningful feedback on my opinions regarding this extremely important subject. This publication is only one of many where I discuss the subject of anthropogenic global warming, and since there is a considerable amount of taxpayer’s money involved, I believe a public inquiry involving all the interested parties is appropriate.
I and many others have requested an inquiry but unfortunately we have been stonewalled and strongly opposed by supporters of anthropogenic global warming, for reasons which remain obscure.
If the science is so solid, why are the supporters afraid to debate the issue in an unbiased forum?
Dr. De Visscher’s claim that Dr. John Nicol’s paper did not address the infrared spectral bands relating to carbon dioxide is wrong. Much of the paper is devoted to the generic theory applicable to all gases with resonant frequencies in the infrared range, and studies the transfer of the absorbed energy by collision and reradiation. This contradicts the claim by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that all the energy absorbed by CO2 is reradiated back to Earth.
I accept Dr. De Visscher’s conclusion that the 1970s hypothesis of an impending ice age was in the minority. I find it ironic that the error came from computer models, which is the criticism of the current global warming hypothesis — in that not a single general circulation model has produced predictions that have been subsequently observed.
It should be noted that when CO2 was in the thousands of parts per million, the global temperature was only four degrees higher than it is today, and the entire geography of the world was considerably different. The 70-metre reference in Dr. De Visscher’s letter is therefore meaningless.
The statement is absurd that satellite observations at University of Alabama in Huntsville are “highly contested.” When the satellite data is overlaid with other data, there is a very small discrepancy, and this is generally attributed to urban heating influencing land-based data. Early satellite data was influenced by orbit decay but this problem was identified and corrected.
The plateau and cooling trends that have occurred since 2002 are shown in all the temperature trends.
The sunspot cycle Dr. De Visscher refers to is not uniform. If a line joining the peaks of the sun spots is drawn on the record since 1600, it can be seen that there are longer duration cycles and peaks occurring at 1740, 1780, 1840, 1870, 1960 and 1990, the period from 1940 to 2000 being the highest on average since 1600.
Once again an overly simplistic general analysis does not stand up to detailed scrutiny.
It is interesting how supporters of anthropogenic global warming explain a 30-year cooling period from 1945 to 1975 and the cooling since 2002 in terms of energy being stored “in the pipeline.” Since the “greenhouse effect” is strictly radiation, how can it be stored without being detected, when solar radiation, which has long-term effects such as low-level cloud formation, is expected to react immediately?
B. A. Moore, P.Eng.
Calgary
Huntsville Data
Now Stand Up
The University of Alabama at Huntsville satellite record is no longer hotly contested. Its accuracy has been thoroughly proved by independent studies against radiosonde balloon data.
In 1997 the Hadley Centre ran a comparison with 400 radiosonde sites around the world. There was an extremely strong correspondence between the radiosonde data and the Huntsville dataset.
Additional studies have been undertaken by the National Research Council and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And a comparison was published in 2003 in the Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology. In every case the radiosonde data and the Huntsville satellite data show a high degree of correspondence.
For their work on the microwave global satellite data, Dr. Roy Spencer and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Medal for Outstanding Scientific Achievement in 1991. In 1996 they received a special award from the American Meteorological Society “for developing a global, precise record of Earth’s temperature from polar-orbiting satellites, fundamentally advancing our ability to monitor climate.”
What all this says is that the evidence of cooling cannot be ignored.
Since the late Pleistocene glaciation there have been no fewer than 15 climate oscillations from warm to cold. Furthermore, from historical archeological, geological, sedimentology, palynology, and studies of oxygen carbon and beryllium isotopes, we know that these warm cycles were as warm as or warmer than our present 20th century one.
But Neolithic man, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, did not produce significant CO2. Thus some other natural agency, namely the sun, was responsible for the climate variability, and indeed this is true for the last 500 million years of Phanerozoic climate. During the Phanerozoic, CO2 levels have always been considerably higher — up to 17 times current levels.
It is only in the last 100,000 years of the Quaternary period that CO2 levels have been as low as they are now.
We are the only society in history to demonize warming. History shows conclusively that people prosper in warm cycles as we do now.
Dr. A. Neil Hutton, P.Geol.
Calgary