This^[1] article has some more details of the reaction to my my previous post by the scientific community, or rather, their reaction to the article I posted about. It also differs on when the research was published, claiming last week instead of late last year. Still, it appears that the research is being received relatively favorably. Hopefully the particle accelerator experiment will bear out the results Dr. Svensmark found.

[D]id anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.^[1]

Why is Antarctica’s ice mass growing, why is it colder there? Because the ice is brighter and more reflective than cloud cover. Cloud cover is, according to Dr. Henrik Svensmark, linked to cosmic radiation.^[2] Dr. Svensmark had trouble publishing his research, as do many scientists who doubt global warming is a product of man’s destruction of the environment. Still, it did eventually make it into a peer-reviewed journal, the Proceedings of the Royal Society, in late 2006 (the article does not say exactly when unfortunately).^[3]

This is yet more confirmation of the sun’s influence on our climate, as the change in solar activity is directly responsible for a change in the amount of cosmic radiation hitting the Earth. With more solar activity, less radiation is reaching us, therefore less clouds. And so Antarctica is cooling even while the Arctic is melting.

“[F]or three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars’ south pole have shrunk from the previous year’s size, suggesting a climate change in progress.”^[1] As best I recall, this did not make news roughly a year and a half ago. It is thus semi-remarkable that it was drawn to my attention now. But it does cast a somewhat more positive light on those scientists who are insisting that global warming is more significantly influenced by solar activity than by human activity. I would be interested to know what the temperature change is on Mars, and how well it correlates to our own temperature changes. I would also be curious to know if this warming trend has continued there in the time since this was published. I am not, however, so curious as to research it myself.

It must be really very comforting to be able to dismiss everyone who disagrees with you as uneducated. “Oh, he must be ignorant, or stupid, not to believe in global warming.” It is certainly far easier than actually questioning your assumptions. Today I read that the chief economist for Chrysler thinks that Europeans are being a little bit hysterical in their approach to global warming.^[1]

The article starts with a brief summery of where Mr. Jolissaint (the Chrysler employee in question) was speaking, and what he said. It concludes that summary with “Mr Jolissant’s remarks illustrate the yawning gap between mainstream opinion on climate change among the educated elites of Europe and America.”^[2] The implication here is clear: Mr. Jolissant, and the rest of the United States, is either not as smart or not as educated as those who believe in global warming.

The rest of the article, roughly half its length, is on an entirely unrelated set of topics. It is talking about the track record of economists from the General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler in economy. Apparently, if you failed to predict the extent of the rise in gas prices, or the slow down in the United States economy, you must be wrong when you say that Europeans are being hysterical. This sort of ad-hominem attack always makes a logically invalid argument, and if that is the support that Mr. Schifferes thinks best to offer as a refutation of Mr. Jolissant’s claims, we must consider that perhaps it is because Europeans are being “quasi-hysterical.”

A month ago or so, I wrote about a lengthy paper published in an unscholarly forum that challenged any number of aspects of global warming.^{[1] [2]} A few days later, I was informed that a rival, and equally unscholarly, forum challenged the assertions published in the first.^[3] While I found the refutation to be a less cogent argument, it is certainly possible that others were persuaded to dismiss Mr. Monckton’s claims.

Today’s news should be less dismissable. Professor David Derning, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis, has testified before congress to some of the flaws in the public understanding of global warming.^[4] Specifically, he affirms Mr. Monckton’s claim that scientists are actively trying to deceive us about the “Medieval Warm Period,” and about the media’s complicity. He provides at least some evidence of significant bias, with the media unwilling to print a story related to the topic unless humans can be shown to be a cause.

The Medieval Warm Period, if it is allowed to have existed, would make the modern temperature rise significantly less unique. In doing so, it would substantially undermine the idea that this warming is necessarily caused by human activity. We would have to consider the possibility that the current warming is caused by the same or similar phenomena as that one.

Mr. George Monbiot publishes an article^[1] in rival paper “The Guardian,” addressing some of Mr. Christopher Monckton’s claims.^[2] His refutation is much less referenced. He also falls into the fallacy of assuming that anything that comes from a peer reviewed journal is necessarily more authoritative than anything that does not. Considering some of the utter garbage claiming to refute Intelligent Design that I have seen coming from peer reviewed journals, my own perspective is to take both the news paper article and the journal article at face value, and give neither greater credence.

Still, it may be that Mr. Monckton has overstated his claims and/or been misleading himself. I think the refutation insufficient, but then I am hardly objective.

I have read as far as page 20 of the PDF version^[1] I linked to in my previous post.^[2] I plan on finishing it. Unlike the snowball earth site^[3] that Mr. Vincas Ciziunas sent me to, it is accessible to a non-geologist like myself. Yet, it is packed with references to peer reviewed scientific papers, so that it serves as much as a survey of the supporting research as it does as a paper presenting an idea.

Those more accustomed to thinking in terms of the peer review process (I am aware of it, having worked with scientists at the National Institutes of Health, but it is not my world), will no doubt tell me that references are not sufficient. It is, after all, entirely possible to misrepresent a paper when citing it. These papers may not, in fact, offer the support that Mr. Monckton claims they do.

Yet it seems to me that anyone with a modicum of intelligence must realize that if you are going to present a controversial essay, attacking the scientific establishment, that you will get caught, and be publicly condemned if you falsify your references. It takes a great deal of arrogance to assume that your opponent is by definition stupid just because [s]he disagrees with you. That sort of assumption is, I must admit, often found in the writings of some on the other side, such as Mr. Richard Dawkins, but I think any truly open minded person must eschew such thoughts, and give us the benefit of the doubt.

There has always been something fishy to my mind about the idea of man causing Global Warming. This has often caused me to doubt the concept itself. Both doubts find more justification than I could have ever hoped for in a recent article^[1] in the Telegraph, a United Kingdom paper. Not only does he call the United Nations, a suspect body if ever there was one, he provides his sources and his math.^[2] That way the mathematically inclined can verify his conclusions.

To which (his conclusions) I can only say “wow.” Repeatedly. I sincerely wish the copyright notice on the Telegraph allowed the same unlimited reproduction with credit that TheFactIs does. I would so love to post, and thus preserve, this entire article.

“I think we Christians should exercise wise stewardship over God’s creation, but when stewardship becomes reverence we’ve crossed a dangerous line.”^[1] Wise words to consider.

1. Mr. Tony Perkins. “Warming to Bill Clinton’s View?” Washington Update 2006-06-22.

No one really disagrees with the conclusion: our climate is changing with time. The disagreement starts when you start speculating about causes of the change, extents of the change, and the impact of the change.

With that in mind, I introduce two articles I recently read on the topic. First, the more extreme one, coming from the United Kingdom of all places.^[1] It claims that global warming stopped in 1998, that from then until our current measurements in 2005, you see a statistical change of zero, despite the more extreme weather we have experienced. I have no clue how accurate his figures are. I have no doubt that scientists on both sides would, if asked, rush down paths of explanation that have mroe in common with dogmaticism than with science. In defense of this article though, it is not the first time I have read about the rise and fall of the temperatures being divorced from the rise and fall of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The second comes from this side of the Atlantic, MichNews, and does not challenge the idea of rising temperatures.^[2] In that sense, Mr. Avery is much more mainstream, but then he departs from scientific orthodoxy. He claims that the ice cores scientists have collected demonstrate a 1500-year warming cycle that operates within the 100,000 year ice age cycle. Moreover, he claims that this cycle happens independently of human influence.

In my own course work in grade school and highschool, I was presented with the idea that Greenland’s name comes to us as the remnaints of the biggest marketing scam ever. This article embrases a very different idea and claims as support archeological evidence. It claims that Greenland may in fact have been green, that is, it may have been habitable and hospitable before a climate change plunged it back into glacier. I find this theory more compelling myself.

Together, the look at the dissonance between the years of greatest warming and the years of greatest pollution and the evidence of the ice cores, we look at a picture in which the scare of global warming is just that: a scare. Very ready to blame Western Civilization for the world’s problems, claims that we are responsible for the destruction of the world’s climate quite easily prove a source for ready funding. And disagreement with this orthodoxy would then bring an end of funding, as well as social death as the intrepid scientist’s pears feel umbrage at being challenged, their livelihood threatened.

1. Mr. Bob Carter. “There IS a problem with global warming… it stopped in 1998″ The Daily Telegraph 2006-04-09. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/04/09/do0907.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/09/ixworld.html
2. Mr. Dennis T. Avery. “Ice Cores Show Sun, Not Humans, Controlling Earth’s Climate” MichNews.com 2006-03-26. http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_12240.shtml