Tuesday, September 20, 2011

List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

I recently stumbled on this Wikipedia page: List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming, which is far from complete, but would like to make others aware, and in case some are inclined to help contribute to the page. A couple helpful references:

Fifty IPCC Experts Expose Washington Post Global Warming Lies

More Than 1000 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

This article is an attempt to list notable scientists who have made statements in disagreement with one or more of the principal conclusions of the Third (or Fourth) Assessment Report of the IPCC. Inclusion is based on the following specific criteria:
  1. For the purposes of this list, qualification as a scientist is reached by publication of at least one peer-reviewed article in their lifetime in a broadly construed area of "natural sciences". The article need not have been written in recent years nor be in a field relevant to climate.
  2. Attributable statements of disagreement in any venue in the individual's own words (not merely inclusion on petitions, surveys, or lists).


Position: Accuracy of IPCC climate projections is questionable

Individuals in this section conclude that it is not possible to project global climate accurately enough to justify the ranges projected for temperature and sea-level rise over the next century. They may not conclude specifically that the current IPCC projections are either too high or too low, but that the projections are likely to be inaccurate due to inadequacies of current global climate modeling.
"First, the computer models are very good at solving the equations of fluid dynamics but very bad at describing the real world. The real world is full of things like clouds and vegetation and soil and dust which the models describe very poorly. Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer. Third, there are many other causes of climate change besides human activities, as we know from studying the past. Fourth, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is strongly coupled with other carbon reservoirs in the biosphere, vegetation and top-soil, which are as large or larger. It is misleading to consider only the atmosphere and ocean, as the climate models do, and ignore the other reservoirs. Fifth, the biological effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are beneficial, both to food crops and to natural vegetation. The biological effects are better known and probably more important than the climatic effects. Sixth, summing up the other five reasons, the climate of the earth is an immensely complicated system and nobody is close to understanding it."[8]
"We are quite confident (1) that global mean temperature is about 0.5 °C higher than it was a century ago; (2) that atmospheric levels of CO2 have risen over the past two centuries; and (3) that CO2is a greenhouse gas whose increase is likely to warm the earth (one of many, the most important being water vapor and clouds). But – and I cannot stress this enough – we are not in a position to confidently attribute past climate change to CO2 or to forecast what the climate will be in the future."[9]


"[T]here has been no question whatsoever that CO2 is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas – albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in CO2 should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed."[10][11]


"It is generally agreed that doubling CO2 alone will cause about 1 °C warming due to the fact that it acts as a ‘blanket.’ Model projections of greater warming absolutely depend on positive feedbacks from water vapor and clouds that will add to the ‘blanket’ – reducing the net cooling of the climate system. ... This, however, is not the case for the actual climate system where the sensitivity is about 0.5 °C for a doubling of CO2."[12]


"Motivated by the observed relation between cloudiness (above the trade wind boundary layer) and high humidity, cloud data for the eastern part of the western Pacific from the Japanese Geostationary Meteorological Satellite-5 (which provides high spatial and temporal resolution) have been analyzed, and it has been found that the area of cirrus cloud coverage normalized by a measure of the area of cumulus coverage decreases about 22% per degree Celsius increase in the surface temperature of the cloudy region. ... The calculations show that such a change in the Tropics could lead to a negative feedback in the global climate ... The response to a doubling of CO2, which in the absence of feedbacks is expected to be about 1.2°C, would be reduced to between 0.57° and 0.83°C (depending on y) due to the iris effect."[13]
  • Garth Paltridge, Visiting Fellow ANU and retired Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research and retired Director of the Institute of the Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre:
"There are good and straightforward scientific reasons to believe that the burning of fossil fuel and consequent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will lead to an increase in the average temperature of the world above that which would otherwise be the case. Whether the increase will be large enough to be noticeable is still an unanswered question."[14] "The bottom line is that virtually all climate research in Australia is funded from one source – namely, the government department which has the specific task of selling to the public the idea that something drastic and expensive has to be done."[15]
  • Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute:
"The blind adherence to the harebrained idea that climate models can generate 'realistic' simulations of climate is the principal reason why I remain a climate skeptic."[16]


"It is my professional opinion that there is no evidence at all for catastrophic global warming. It is likely that global temperatures will rise a little, much as IPCC predicts, but there is a growing body of evidence that the errant behavior of the Sun may cause some cooling in the foreseeable future."[17] "The political dichotomy about climate change is fueled by gross exaggerations and simplifications on both sides of the fence."[17]
"Models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are incoherent and invalid from a scientific point of view".[18] "It is not possible to exclude that the observed phenomena may have natural causes. It may be that man has little or nothing to do with it."[19]


"Not only do we need to improve the ‘mathematics’ of the models but it is also necessary to improve the measuring devices and their sensitivity. ... Cloud characteristics are very important in order to allow a comparison between model forecasts and experimental data. ... When a proton enters our atmosphere, it acts as a nucleus of condensation for water vapour and thus contributes to cloud formation. ... In the last half billion years, earth has lost, four times, its polar caps: no ice at the North Pole and none at the South Pole. And, four times, the polar caps were reconstituted. Man did not exist then, only the so-called cosmic rays, discovered by mankind in the early twentieth century. The last cosmic ice age started 50 million years ago when we entered into one of the galaxy arms."[19]
article continues at Wikipedia

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