[LINK] Scientists Jump off Sinking Climate Hot Air Balloon.

[TKoltai]

Inc. Some Aussies and a Kiwi.



Quote/ [From:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_i
d=c5e16731-3c64-481c-9a36-d702baea2a42]
Geophysicist Dr. Claude Allegre, a top geophysicist and French Socialist
who has
authored more than 100 scientific articles and written 11 books and
received numerous
scientific awards including the Goldschmidt Medal from the Geochemical
Society of the
United States, converted from climate alarmist to skeptic in 2006.
Allegre, who was one
of the first scientists to sound global warming fears 20 years ago, now
says the cause of
climate change is "unknown" and accused the "prophets of doom of global
warming" of
being motivated by money, noting that "the ecology of helpless
protesting has become a
very lucrative business for some people!" "Glaciers' chronicles or
historical archives
point to the fact that climate is a capricious phenomena. This fact is
confirmed by
mathematical meteorological theories. So, let us be cautious," Allegre
explained in a
September 21, 2006 article in the French newspaper L'EXPRESS. The
National Post in
Canada also profiled Allegre on March 2, 2007, noting "Allegre has the
highest
environmental credentials. The author of early environmental books, he
fought successful
battles to protect the ozone layer from CFCs and public health from lead
pollution."
Allegre now calls fears of a climate disaster "simplistic and obscuring
the true dangers"
mocks "the greenhouse-gas fanatics whose proclamations consist in
denouncing man's
role on the climate without doing anything about it except organizing
conferences and
preparing protocols that become dead letters." Allegre, a member of both
the French and
U.S. Academy of Sciences, had previously expressed concern about manmade
global
warming. "By burning fossil fuels, man enhanced the concentration of
carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere which has raised the global mean temperature by half a
degree in the last
century," Allegre wrote 20 years ago. In addition, Allegre was one of
1500 scientists who
signed a November 18, 1992 letter titled "World Scientists' Warning to
Humanity" in
which the scientists warned that global warming's "potential risks are
very great."
Geologist Bruno Wiskel of the University of Alberta recently reversed
his view of
man-made climate change and instead became a global warming skeptic.
Wiskel was
once such a big believer in man-made global warming that he set out to
build a "Kyoto
house" in honor of the UN sanctioned Kyoto Protocol which was signed in
1997. Wiskel
wanted to prove that the Kyoto Protocol's goals were achievable by
people making small
changes in their lives. But after further examining the science behind
Kyoto, Wiskel
reversed his scientific views completely and became such a strong
skeptic that he
recently wrote a book titled "The Emperor's New Climate: Debunking the
Myth of
Global Warming." A November 15, 2006 Edmonton Sun article explains
Wiskel's
conversion while building his "Kyoto house": "Instead, he said he
realized global
warming theory was full of holes and 'red flags,' and became convinced
that humans are
not responsible for rising temperatures." Wiskel now says "the truth has
to start
somewhere." Noting that the Earth has been warming for 18,000 years,
Wiskel told the
Canadian newspaper, "If this happened once and we were the cause of it,
that would be
cause for concern. But glaciers have been coming and going for billions
of years."
Wiskel also said that global warming has gone "from a science to a
religion" and noted
that research money is being funneled into promoting climate alarmism
instead of
funding areas he considers more worthy. "If you funnel money into things
that can't be
changed, the money is not going into the places that it is needed," he
said.
Astrophysicist Dr. Nir Shaviv, one of Israel's top young award winning
scientists,
recanted his belief that manmade emissions were driving climate change.
""Like many
others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story
of global warming.
But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things
are far more
complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the
stories regurgitated
by the media. In fact, there is much more than meets the eye," Shaviv
said in February 2,
2007 Canadian National Post article. According to Shaviv, the C02
temperature link is
only "incriminating circumstantial evidence." "Solar activity can
explain a large part of
the 20th-century global warming" and "it is unlikely that [the solar
climate link] does not
exist," Shaviv noted pointing to the impact cosmic- rays have on the
atmosphere.
According to the National Post, Shaviv believes that even a doubling of
CO2 in the
atmosphere by 2100 "will not dramatically increase the global
temperature." "Even if we
halved the CO2 output, and the CO2 increase by 2100 would be, say, a 50%
increase
relative to today instead of a doubled amount, the expected reduction in
the rise of global
temperature would be less than 0.5C. This is not significant," Shaviv
explained. Shaviv
also wrote on August 18, 2006 that a colleague of his believed that "CO2
should have a
large effect on climate" so "he set out to reconstruct the phanerozoic
temperature. He
wanted to find the CO2 signature in the data, but since there was none,
he slowly had to
change his views." Shaviv believes there will be more scientists
converting to man-made
global warming skepticism as they discover the dearth of evidence. "I
think this is
common to many of the scientists who think like us (that is, that CO2 is
a secondary
climate driver). Each one of us was working in his or her own niche.
While working
there, each one of us realized that things just don't add up to support
the AGW
(Anthropogenic Global Warming) picture. So many had to change their
views," he wrote.
Mathematician & engineer Dr. David Evans, who did carbon accounting for
the
Australian Government, recently detailed his conversion to a skeptic. "I
devoted six
years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian
government to estimate
carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that
job in 1999 the
evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty
conclusive, but
since then new evidence has weakened the case that carbon emissions are
the main cause.
I am now skeptical," Evans wrote in an April 30, 2007 blog. "But after
2000 the evidence
for carbon emissions gradually got weaker -- better temperature data for
the last century,
more detailed ice core data, then laboratory evidence that cosmic rays
precipitate low
clouds," Evans wrote. "As Lord Keynes famously said, 'When the facts
change, I change
my mind. What do you do, sir?'" he added. Evans noted how he benefited
from manmade
climate fears as a scientist. "And the political realm in turn fed money
back into the
scientific community. By the late 1990's, lots of jobs depended on the
idea that carbon
emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but
there were a lot
of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high
wage in a science job
that would not have existed if we didn't believe carbon emissions caused
global warming.
And so were lots of people around me; and there were international
conferences full of
such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big
budgets, and we
felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We
were working to
save the planet! But starting in about 2000, the last three of the four
pieces of evidence
outlined above fell away or reversed," Evans wrote. "The pre-2000 ice
core data was the
central evidence for believing that atmospheric carbon caused
temperature increases. The
new ice core data shows that past warmings were *not* initially caused
by rises in
atmospheric carbon, and says nothing about the strength of any
amplification. This piece
of evidence casts reasonable doubt that atmospheric carbon had any role
in past
warmings, while still allowing the possibility that it had a supporting
role," he added.
"Unfortunately politics and science have become even more entangled. The
science of
global warming has become a partisan political issue, so positions
become more
entrenched. Politicians and the public prefer simple and less-nuanced
messages. At the
moment the political climate strongly supports carbon emissions as the
cause of global
warming, to the point of sometimes rubbishing or silencing critics," he
concluded. (Evans
bio link )
Climate researcher Dr. Tad Murty, former Senior Research Scientist for
Fisheries
and Oceans in Canada, also reversed himself from believer in man-made
climate
change to a skeptic. "I stated with a firm belief about global warming,
until I started
working on it myself," Murty explained on August 17, 2006. "I switched
to the other
side in the early 1990's when Fisheries and Oceans Canada asked me to
prepare a
position paper and I started to look into the problem seriously," Murty
explained. Murty
was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging
withdrawal of
Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part,
"If, back in the
mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost
certainly
not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary."
Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former
lecturer at Durham University and host of a popular UK TV series on
wildlife,
recently converted into a skeptic after reviewing the science and now
calls global
warming fears "poppycock." According to a May 15, 2005 article in the UK
Sunday
Times, Bellamy said "global warming is largely a natural phenomenon. The
world is
wasting stupendous amounts of money on trying to fix something that
can't be fixed."
"The climate-change people have no proof for their claims. They have
computer models
which do not prove anything," Bellamy added. Bellamy's conversion on
global warming
did not come without a sacrifice as several environmental groups have
ended their
association with him because of his views on climate change. The
severing of relations
came despite Bellamy's long activism for green campaigns. The UK Times
reported
Bellamy "won respect from hardline environmentalists with his campaigns
to save
Britain's peat bogs and other endangered habitats. In Tasmania he was
arrested when he
tried to prevent loggers cutting down a rainforest."
Climate scientist Dr. Chris de Freitas of The University of Auckland,
N.Z., also
converted from a believer in man-made global warming to a skeptic. "At
first I accepted
that increases in human caused additions of carbon dioxide and methane
in the
atmosphere would trigger changes in water vapor etc. and lead to
dangerous 'global
warming,' But with time and with the results of research, I formed the
view that, although
it makes for a good story, it is unlikely that the man-made changes are
drivers of
significant climate variation." de Freitas wrote on August 17, 2006. "I
accept there may
be small changes. But I see the risk of anything serious to be minute,"
he added. "One
could reasonably argue that lack of evidence is not a good reason for
complacency. But I
believe the billions of dollars committed to GW research and lobbying
for GW and for
Kyoto treaties etc could be better spent on uncontroversial and very
real environmental
problems (such as air pollution, poor sanitation, provision of clean
water and improved
health services) that we know affect tens of millions of people," de
Freitas concluded. de
Freitas was one of the 60 scientists who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter
urging withdrawal
of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper which stated in part,
"Significant
[scientific] advances have been made since the [Kyoto] protocol was
created, many of
which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse
gases."
Meteorologist Dr. Reid Bryson, the founding chairman of the Department
of
Meteorology at University of Wisconsin (now the Department of Oceanic
and
Atmospheric Sciences, was pivotal in promoting the coming ice age scare
of the 1970's
( See Time Magazine's 1974 article "Another Ice Age" citing Bryson: &
see Newsweek's
1975 article "The Cooling World" citing Bryson) has now converted into a
leading global
warming skeptic. In February 8, 2007 Bryson dismissed what he terms "sky
is falling"
man-made global warming fears. Bryson, was on the United Nations Global
500 Roll of
Honor and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the
most frequently
cited climatologist in the world. "Before there were enough people to
make any
difference at all, two million years ago, nobody was changing the
climate, yet the climate
was changing, okay?" Bryson told the May 2007 issue of Energy
Cooperative News. "All
this argument is the temperature going up or not, it's absurd. Of course
it's going up. It
has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution,
because we're
coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we're putting more carbon
dioxide into the
air," Bryson said. "You can go outside and spit and have the same effect
as doubling
carbon dioxide," he added. "We cannot say what part of that warming was
due to
mankind's addition of 'greenhouse gases' until we consider the other
possible factors,
such as aerosols. The aerosol content of the atmosphere was measured
during the past
century, but to my knowledge this data was never used. We can say that
the question of
anthropogenic modification of the climate is an important question --
too important to
ignore. However, it has now become a media free-for-all and a political
issue more than a
scientific problem," Bryson explained in 2005.
Global warming author and economist Hans H.J. Labohm started out as a
man-made
global warming believer but he later switched his view after conducting
climate research.
Labohm wrote on August 19, 2006, "I started as a anthropogenic global
warming
believer, then I read the [UN's IPCC] Summary for Policymakers and the
research of
prominent skeptics." "After that, I changed my mind," Labohn explained.
Labohn coauthored
the 2004 book "Man-Made Global Warming: Unraveling a Dogma," with
chemical engineer Dick Thoenes who was the former chairman of the Royal
Netherlands Chemical Society. Labohm was one of the 60 scientists who
wrote an April
6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian prime minister
Stephen Harper
which stated in part, "'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase
used repeatedly by
activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming
and humanity is the
cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all
the time due to
natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to
distinguish from this
natural 'noise.'"
Paleoclimatologist Tim Patterson, of Carlton University in Ottawa
converted from
believer in C02 driving the climate change to a skeptic. "I taught my
students that CO2
was the prime driver of climate change," Patterson wrote on April 30,
2007. Patterson
said his "conversion" happened following his research on "the nature of
paleocommercial
fish populations in the NE Pacific." "[My conversion from believer to
climate skeptic] came about approximately 5-6 years ago when results
began to come in
from a major NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada)
Strategic Project Grant where I was PI (principle investigator),"
Patterson explained.
"Over the course of about a year, I switched allegiances," he wrote. "As
the proxy results
began to come in, we were astounded to find that paleoclimatic and
paleoproductivity
records were full of cycles that corresponded to various sun-spot
cycles. About that time,
[geochemist] Jan Veizer and others began to publish reasonable
hypotheses as to how
solar signals could be amplified and control climate," Patterson noted.
Patterson says his
conversion "probably cost me a lot of grant money. However, as a
scientist I go where
the science takes me and not were activists want me to go." Patterson
now asserts that
more and more scientists are converting to climate skeptics. "When I go
to a scientific
meeting, there's lots of opinion out there, there's lots of discussion
(about climate
change). I was at the Geological Society of America meeting in
Philadelphia in the fall
and I would say that people with my opinion were probably in the
majority," Patterson
told the Winnipeg Sun on February 13, 2007. Patterson, who believes the
sun is
responsible for the recent warm up of the Earth, ridiculed the
environmentalists and the
media for not reporting the truth. "But if you listen to [Canadian
environmental activist
David] Suzuki and the media, it's like a tiger chasing its tail. They
try to outdo each other
and all the while proclaiming that the debate is over but it isn't --
come out to a scientific
meeting sometime," Patterson said. In a separate interview on April 26,
2007 with a
Canadian newspaper, Patterson explained that the scientific proof favors
skeptics. "I
think the proof in the pudding, based on what (media and governments)
are saying, (is)
we're about three quarters of the way (to disaster) with the doubling of
CO2 in the
atmosphere," he said. "The world should be heating up like crazy by now,
and it's not.
The temperatures match very closely with the solar cycles."
Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, chairman of the Central Laboratory
for the
United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological
Protection in
Warsaw, took a scientific journey from a believer of man-made climate
change in the
form of global cooling in the 1970's all the way to converting to a
skeptic of current
predictions of catastrophic man-made global warming. "At the beginning
of the 1970s I
believed in man-made climate cooling, and therefore I started a study on
the effects of
industrial pollution on the global atmosphere, using glaciers as a
history book on this
pollution," Dr. Jaworowski, wrote on August 17, 2006. "With the advent
of man-made
warming political correctness in the beginning of 1980s, I already had a
lot of experience
with polar and high altitude ice, and I have serious problems in
accepting the reliability of
ice core CO2 studies," Jaworowski added. Jaworowski, who has published
many papers
on climate with a focus on CO2 measurements in ice cores, also dismissed
the UN IPCC
summary and questioned what the actual level of C02 was in the
atmosphere in a March
16, 2007 report in EIR science entitled "CO2: The Greatest Scientific
Scandal of Our
Time." "We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory
of man-made global
warming-with its repercussions in science, and its important
consequences for politics
and the global economy-is based on ice core studies that provided a
false picture of the
atmospheric CO2 levels," Jaworowski wrote. "For the past three decades,
these wellknown
direct CO2 measurements, recently compiled and analyzed by Ernst-Georg
Beck
(Beck 2006a, Beck 2006b, Beck 2007), were completely ignored by
climatologists-and
not because they were wrong. Indeed, these measurements were made by
several Nobel
Prize winners, using the techniques that are standard textbook
procedures in chemistry,
biochemistry, botany, hygiene, medicine, nutrition, and ecology. The
only reason for
rejection was that these measurements did not fit the hypothesis of
anthropogenic
climatic warming. I regard this as perhaps the greatest scientific
scandal of our time,"
Jaworowski wrote. "The hypothesis, in vogue in the 1970s, stating that
emissions of
industrial dust will soon induce the new Ice Age, seem now to be a
conceited
anthropocentric exaggeration, bringing into discredit the science of
that time. The same
fate awaits the present," he added. Jaworowski believes that cosmic rays
and solar
activity are major drivers of the Earth's climate. Jaworowski was one of
the 60 scientists
who wrote an April 6, 2006 letter urging withdrawal of Kyoto to Canadian
prime minister
Stephen Harper which stated in part: "It may be many years yet before we
properly
understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant
advances have been
made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away
from a concern
about increasing greenhouse gases."
Paleoclimatologist Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor of the Department of
Earth Sciences
at University of Ottawa, reversed his views on man-made climate change
after further
examining the evidence. "I used to agree with these dramatic warnings of
climate
disaster. I taught my students that most of the increase in temperature
of the past century
was due to human contribution of C02. The association seemed so clear
and simple.
Increases of greenhouse gases were driving us towards a climate
catastrophe," Clark said
in a 2005 documentary "Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not
Being
Told About the Science of Climate Change." "However, a few years ago, I
decided to
look more closely at the science and it astonished me. In fact there is
no evidence of
humans being the cause. There is, however, overwhelming evidence of
natural causes
such as changes in the output of the sun. This has completely reversed
my views on the
Kyoto protocol," Clark explained. "Actually, many other leading climate
researchers also
have serious concerns about the science underlying the [Kyoto]
Protocol," he added.
Environmental geochemist Dr. Jan Veizer, professor emeritus of
University of
Ottawa, converted from believer to skeptic after conducting scientific
studies of climate
history. "I simply accepted the (global warming) theory as given,"
Veizer wrote on April
30, 2007 about predictions that increasing C02 in the atmosphere was
leading to a climate
catastrophe. "The final conversion came when I realized that the
solar/cosmic ray
connection gave far more consistent picture with climate, over many time
scales, than did
the CO2 scenario," Veizer wrote. "It was the results of my work on past
records, on
geological time scales, that led me to realize the discrepancies with
empirical
observations. Trying to understand the background issues of modeling led
to realization
of the assumptions and uncertainties involved," Veizer explained. "The
past record
strongly favors the solar/cosmic alternative as the principal climate
driver," he added.
Veizer acknowledgez the Earth has been warming and he believes in the
scientific value
of climate modeling. "The major point where I diverge from the IPCC
scenario is my
belief that it underestimates the role of natural variability by
proclaiming CO2 to be the
only reasonable source of additional energy in the planetary balance.
Such additional
energy is needed to drive the climate. The point is that most of the
temperature, in both
nature and models, arises from the greenhouse of water vapor (model
language 'positive
water vapor feedback',) Veizer wrote. "Thus to get more temperature,
more water vapor
is needed. This is achieved by speeding up the water cycle by inputting
more energy into
the system," he continued. "Note that it is not CO2 that is in the
models but its presumed
energy equivalent (model language 'prescribed CO2'). Yet, the models
(and climate)
would generate a more or less similar outcome regardless where this
additional energy is
coming from. This is why the solar/cosmic connection is so strongly
opposed, because it
can influence the global energy budget which, in turn, diminishes the
need for an energy
input from the CO2 greenhouse," he wrote.