Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize

[youbet]

Originally Posted by Rustic23

Question: How many on this board are really hypocrites when it comes to global warming?

Hmmmm..........

Christians say that Jesus died on the cross to save them from their sins. Didn't Big Al write his book to save us from this hypocracy? We can model our lives after Big AL, making huge footprints but talking like conservationists, and still be saved from being hypocrits by Big Al.

GORE BLESS

[ERD50]

Earlier, Cantaur took a stab at my challenge to show that 'good science' is common in the book. I asked to open to a random page, and show me examples of good science. She returned with the coral reef example, not really random as she said it opened to that page because that was the page they had studied and the book probably took a 'set' in that position.

So, any more? How about we go to our old friend π to help pick pages? Just go in order for any page combo that applies (300 some pages?):

= 3.1415926535898

So, pages: 3, 31, 314. Then move right; p 1, 14, 141; p4, 41; p15, 159; p5, 59; p9, 92; p2, 26, 265; p6, 65; p53; p3, 35, 358; p58; ; p8, 89; p98.

Some pages will be N/A, but see if that gives us a reasonable sample. Turn π around and go backwards if we need more samples, or use your favorite cosmic constant .

I had to return the copy I had lent from the Library, so anyone care to check? There seem to be some big fans of the book (or are they just Al Gore fans?), so it should be easy to show how much 'good science' there is in there.

Take your time.

-ERD50

[Wags]

ERD50, we have our differences on Al Gore (I have come around on some things)

But would you even consider that your choice for W.H Press Sec., the beautiful news reporter, Melissa Theuriau, might be a good alternate as a spokesperson for the Global Warming movement?

If not, like you said on the "Another reason our President is out of touch" post - at least we still have the video (forgive me if I misquoted you).

GOD BLESS

[eridanus]

Originally Posted by ERD50

I had to return the copy I had lent from the Library, so anyone care to check? There seem to be some big fans of the book (or are they just Al Gore fans?), so it should be easy to show how much 'good science' there is in there.

Take your time.

-ERD50

I don't have a copy of it either, so I went to Amazon and picked "surprise me." It came to the infamous hockey stick page; that is, the hockey stick graph shows a correlation between CO2 and temperature for the last 1000 years.

How is this bad science? Did he make it up?

[Rustic23]

Has anyone read Michael Chriten's 'Fear'. Needless to say he is not convinced the current global warming stats are as frighting as Al.

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by eridanus

I don't have a copy of it either, so I went to Amazon and picked "surprise me." It came to the infamous hockey stick page; that is, the hockey stick graph shows a correlation between CO2 and temperature for the last 1000 years.

How is this bad science? Did he make it up?

Well, my point was not to say that a lot of facts, figures and quotes are wrong, but to say that there is way too much 'bad science' and distortion in how he attempts to draw conclusions and make inferences from the data he presents.

But I have wondered about that specific graph - I spent time reviewing it and I don't get it, maybe you can explain. I'm going by memory here, but the zero point for the Y axis is some baseline temperature (the average of the last 50 years? something like that), and to the far left is ~ 1000 years ago. When temperatures are below the baseline, the area under the curve is filled in with BLUE to indicate COLD, and the medieval warming period is a short blip above the baseline, and it is filled in with (surprise!) RED for HOT. OK. Now, as we approach the last 50 years, I remember seeing some fairly large areas that were BOTH RED AND BLUE.

How can an average temperature be both ABOVE a baseline and BELOW a baseline at the same time? I thought maybe the temperature was swinging hi-low at that time, but that would show some blank spaces in the RED and BLUE, it cannot be both. Bad Science maybe?

I searched for an explanation at the time I had the book, and could not find one.

Ahhh, some people discuss it here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=2328

They even point out that the scale is reversed on the DVD release. Global cooling anyone?

Actually, you can see both here, the RED is approaching NEGATIVE 0.5 degrees from the baseline, and there are RED and BLUE areas at the same time:



Makes no sense to me. I may be missing something, but I have a technical background and can't remember seeing a graph presented that way, at least not w/o some explanatory information, such as error banding or something.

So at the very least, questionable science - even when just trying to present temperature - which is the number one focus of the book/DVD. If he was so sloppy to reverse the axis, or not explain what the axis really mean, well....

Now, I've also heard it stated that when you expand that CO2/temperature graph, that the CO2 changes lag the temperature, which sure messes with his conclusions. To be fair, I have not researched that, so maybe it is the counter-claim that is false - I'd love it if someone had a good link.

Thanks - ERD50

[eridanus]

Originally Posted by ERD50

But I have wondered about that specific graph - I spent time reviewing it and I don't get it, maybe you can explain. I'm going by memory here

Well, I've now lost that page on Amazon, but it looked like the same graph that's in Chapter 6 (Paleoclimate) of the IPCC. That's probably the best way to understand it. In fact, there are a number of other similar supporting graphs in that chapter.

The book has the correct Y axis (as I recall); apparently the DVD doesn't. I kinda doubt that Al Gore did the video editing.

So while it's not "questionable" science, the movie may present it in a sloppy fashion. The conclusions don't change, however - CO2 and temperature are linked, according to the 12 peer-reviewed studies sourced for that graph.

McIntyre's (climateaudit.org) critical paper is specifically mentioned in the IPCC.

[Lazarus]

YouTube - Global Cooling: The Coming Ice Age

[eridanus]

Originally Posted by Lazarus

We'll discount the popular press. (Science Digest? You must be kidding.)

Let's move to the first scientific article, Damon and Kunen. That's a pro-AGW article. I'm not sure how that article, which wasn't a meta-study, is thought of as proving "consensus" of global cooling. I don't recall a UN task force on global cooling. Who else is in this "consensus"?


Next, Rasool and Schneider. The video left out an important part of the abstract (naturally).

"It is found that, although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does increase the surface temperature, the rate of temperature increase diminishes with increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. For aerosols, however, the net effect of increase in density is to reduce the surface temperature of Earth"

Aerosols tend to work against warming. CO2 tends to cause warming. They cancel each other, to some degree, but CO2 warms more than aerosols cool. Currently, we have a CO2 warming problem, not an aerosol cooling problem.

Third, Hansen. I'm not sure what that's about. Hansen's first paper in 1976 (Science) was about global warming from methane and nitrous oxide. He's always been an AGW proponent. (Did the video person even skim the 2000 article?)


So we now have 4? ice age scientists...versus 1000 AGW scientists. Take your bets!

[ERD50]

Originally Posted by eridanus

Well, I've now lost that page on Amazon, but it looked like the same graph that's in Chapter 6 (Paleoclimate) of the IPCC. That's probably the best way to understand it. In fact, there are a number of other similar supporting graphs in that chapter.

I downloaded the chapter 6 of the IPCC (ar4-wg1-chapter6.pdf), but it's not clear to me which graph you are referring to. Can you give me a ref #?

This is tough for those w/o the book - earlier I was keeping my critiques limited to the stuff that Gore has put out on his web site, to avoid that issue, but you can only go so far. It really is a shame the book is not available on-line. After all, he claims that he wants to get this message to everybody (that is willing to pay for his book).

Lazarus - the Global Cooling video is interesting from a social viewpoint, but I agree with eridanus that it may not be particularly relevant science. As I understand it, aerosols were to blame, and we collectively (pretty amazingly) cleaned up our act and fixed the problem.

I never read the michael crichton website before. I figured it was just extreme view on the other side. I just visited and found it... interesting. I'm not going to claim that everything he presents is good science, but in some ways I think he does a very, very good job of 'critical thinking'. Don't take it as 'gospel', but read it and use those thoughts to question the current state of affairs. I particularly like his view that it is really dangerous to be trying to predict the future 100 years out. Not that we should put our heads in the sand, but can we really trust our own predictions, and is *this* really the time to act?

-ERD50

[kcowan]

There are many environmental issues that need to be acted upon. Sequestering CO2 is just one of them. Higher in priority is replacing water supplies for numerour populations that rely on glacier runoff. This will be a problem no matter what we do about CO2.

And I believe it should also have a higher priority than saving the polar bears. If we can build oil pipelines, surely we can build water pipelines and desalinization plants.

[Wags]

Originally Posted by kcowan

There are many environmental issues that need to be acted upon. Sequestering CO2 is just one of them. Higher in priority is replacing water supplies for numerour populations that rely on glacier runoff. This will be a problem no matter what we do about CO2.

And I believe it should also have a higher priority than saving the polar bears. If we can build oil pipelines, surely we can build water pipelines and desalinization plants.

Water is a hot commodity and may well be a source of wars if the water supplies in the world dry up.

Just look at the recent war of words between Georgia and some of it's neighbor states. A recent article on tampabay.com

Opinion: Georgia, don't pin your water shortage on us


GOD BLESS

[FinanceDude]

Originally Posted by Wags

Water is a hot commodity and may well be a source of wars if the water supplies in the world dry up.

Just look at the recent war of words between Georgia and some of it's neighbor states.

GOD BLESS

Living in the Midwest basically on a Great Lake, I hope our governors stay tough and refuse to sell water to Arizona and Nevada and other states. As it is, the Great Lakes are at 100 year lows for all intensive purposes.........

Someday, having 20% of the world's fresh water reserve may be a valuable commodity..........

[Cantuar]

Originally Posted by lets-retire

Just a quick observation. If you are going to demand the original research then you should adhere to the same standard. In this case it means not quoting Al Gore's work, but instead going to the actual peer reviewed research and quoting out of that. If all you have is the word of a politician then you really don't have much of a case.

In my case I went back to the source of the data in the coral discussion, as well as quoting an article from Science. Which means that I don't just have the word of a politician. In the allegation about "tenfold increase in undersea volcano activity" I googled on relevant keywords and did searches in the Science and Nature databases and couldn't find anything. Hence my request for original work, since I wasn't finding anything.

So where is the source of the stuff about this tenfold increase in undersea volcano activity? Reference to an article in a major science magazine will do if you can't find the original research.

Didn't you say Gore did a very poor job of providing a list of the published research? This is unacceptable in any book that is supposed to be providing facts.

It's certainly very unhelpful; however, some of the facts in his book are checkable from either original sources or scientific articles based on them. Which is how I found the information about ocean acidity and corals.

The reason bibliographies are provided is so anybody and check that the facts as they are presented are in fact accurate and to give proper credit to the people who did the research. Without the extensive biblo. it leads to one of two conclusions. 1) The facts are misconstrued/exaggerated or 2) the facts are made up.

This isn't the only popular-science book I've come across without extensive references to original work. I think it's a great mistake not to include such references, but I think you'd need a great deal more evidence than just the omission of a bibliography to conclude that the only possible reasons are that the author is lying about the facts. Which is what both your alternatives amount to.

Either way without a list of the published researched and citations supporting the "facts" used to write the book, the facts must be discounted and can not be believed. It is the same anywhere if you make a statement, but can not support it the your statement is just your opinion.

The facts should only be discounted if they're shown to be incorrect. You can't just decide, on the basis of nothing more than a lack of a bibliography, that every fact in the book is therefore wrong.

[Cantuar]

Originally Posted by eridanus

We can do this, lets-retire.

The counter-AGW source about underwater volcanoes seems to be Iceagenow.com, which, uh, isn't exactly scientific.

Land-based volcanoes release far, far, less CO2 into the atmosphere than human caused activities. If you want to verify this, check out the CO2 data before and after the 1991 Pinatubo explosion.

TRENDS: ATMOSPHERIC CARBON DIOXIDE

Well, there's a surprise...

[lets-retire]

Originally Posted by Cantuar

The facts should only be discounted if they're shown to be incorrect. You can't just decide, on the basis of nothing more than a lack of a bibliography, that every fact in the book is therefore wrong.

With the exception of generally accepted principles, such as the sky is blue, the person making an assertion of fact MUST prove the fact or it has to be discounted. A bibliography is the proof an author uses to verify their assertion. Without the bibliography there is no proof and as such the "facts" are not supported and should be discounted and/or not believed.

[Cantuar]

Originally Posted by Rustic23

Has anyone read Michael Chriten's 'Fear'. Needless to say he is not convinced the current global warming stats are as frighting as Al.

Yep, I've read it (you mean "State of Fear," right?). It seemed to me to basically be a parade of contrarian talking points. I've noticed in previous books of his that he doesn't seem to think much of scientists, so this one didn't surprise me all that much.

Why would it be significant that he isn't convinced that the current global warming statistics are all that frightening?

[Cantuar]

Originally Posted by lets-retire

With the exception of generally accepted principles, such as the sky is blue, the person making an assertion of fact MUST prove the fact or it has to be discounted.

Why? Either the fact is correct or it isn't. The lack of backup information doesn't alter the veracity of the fact. I've read a lot of books on the creationism-evolution battle which don't have massive bibliographies but which are still basically correct. The lack of a bibliography is bad, but it doesn't make things wrong. We can still check facts - hence my (so far unanswered) request for the basis of the assertion about a tenfold increase in underwater volcano activity.