None of this is new, either. Rationalists have

been saying the same ever since the GW

panic began.



But it turns out, it misses the point. These are

all regional observations and trends. Nobody

knows what the temperature of the globe is,

or was, because nobody has ever bothered

to measure it.



It would be difficult to do, but possible. And

to hear some people tell it, important.

That's true up to a point, Harry, although this meta-study includes studies from around the world. But this does emphasize two other points.



1) It's entirely unclear why people assume that increased temperatures would be a bad thing over all. That has not been the historical experience.



2) Our best understanding of the overall temperature cycle, based mostly on ice cores, is of ice ages lasting millions of years, seperated by warmer periods lasting about 10,000 years, the most recent of which is now about 10,000 years old.

Ah, but we've missed the lesson of Bill Clinton and the Europeans; they don't really care if the US acts unilaterally, as long as we pay lip service to international institutions.

To really measure the global temp correctly would probably require sending a spacecraft far away, and measuring a very broad spectrum of photons coming from earth, and then continuing the measurements for years to come as under-damped portions of the globe die down. Tough, but do-able.

David -







You are right - the often unstated assumption is that (1) GW is bad - period, and (2) human activity causes a significant fraction of GW and therefore (3) Almost any extremism that could even potentially
slow or reverse GW is therefore indicated. All this in addition to the original assumption, which is that GW indeed exists.

Not to mention that the Kyoto treaty was designed to maximize economic damage to the US while minimizing economic damage to Europe (e.g., by picking 1990 as the base year).



Reason Magazine

Bush did the right thing rejecting Kyoto - - now more than ever it is clear that everyone else in the world is not always right and America is always wrong. And why is acting unilateral a bad thing?

Some satellites capable of measuring sea

surface temperature either have been or will

soon be launched.



If this works, I will be satisfied that enough

of the surface has been observed to make it

sensible to talk of a "global surface temperature."



Of course, it will take a few years, quite a few,

to determine whether there is any trend, and

I likely will be pretty dead by then.



By then, we may well be noticeably into the

coming Ice Age.



For the record, the parts of the globe for which

there is essentially no observational temperature

data include everything below 50 degrees S.,

everything above 70 N, all of Africa except the

coast, about a third of Amazonia, a biggish

area centered on western Mongolia-eastern

Tibet, and most of western Asia south of the

Oxus-Jaxartes.

Welcome, Mitzi, and make yourself to home. At this point, assume that pretty much anything I say critical of the President or lauding the international community is meant tongue in cheek.



Meanwhile, I'm looking for some proof that we're not always right and the rest of the world not always wrong.

Mr. Cohen;



This is news? I suppose the better data is interesting but that there was a warm period from 900 AD to 1300 AD has long been known. It is what enabled the Viking to flourish and colonize Greenland (which apparently was reasonably lush then). It was the Little Ice Age that doomed those colonies and ended the Vikings as a significant power.

Mr. Guy:



You're right, this should not be surprising. What's new is the collection of data from many different areas, proving that the warming was not a localized event. But also, because reports like these never get traction in the mainstream media, they should be noted whenever they come to our attention.

I'm not a fan of meta-analysis of any system

more complicated than a hatful of black and

white marbles.



Still, straws in the wind. Most AP stories about

climate change nowadays end with a pro

forma statement about doubt, about inconclusive

research.



I've been campaigning for AP to do this for

more than 15 years.



They've stopped calling dioxin the most deadly

substance known to man, another of my

campaigns.



I'm not taking credit, you understand, but

everybody's gotta push the Zeitgeist.

Roughly a year ago a meteorologist at Intellicast did a series of articles regarding the relative magnitudes of the natural and human components of climate change.



Beyond noting what should be obvious--the only thing constant about the climate is change--he noted a huge number of biases in the measurements. Prime among them was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why does 1990 sound familiar?



Anyway, he concludes that the human component is swamped to the point of invisibility by natural processes.



Other than Intellicast.com, I can't remember the URL--which is unfortunate, since the articles were fascinating.

This study is also important because it comes from Harvard. If the GW'ers have lost Harvard, they've lost everything.

As a former Harvard academic myself, I think you can hope to get better environmental science out of top institutions than middling ones. Most of the field is just logrolling, trying to keep federal funding coming and save their jobs. Environmental research did not exist 25 years ago - it was three people with no funding. Now it's a billion dollars a year and 10,000 academics. If that funding goes away, so do jobs and salaries.



At Harvard, at least, researchers are fairly secure professionally and care more about being right and discovering the truth than about reaching the right conclusions.

One interesting but misunderstood aspect of all this is that it's largely a function of the material humanists overestimating Man's impact on the Earth as they overestimate Man in all regards.

I notice that the IPCC spokesman dismisses proxy measurements of temperature as unreliable -- why, they don't even show the warming of the last 50 years.



(a) The IPCC famously claims that it is warmer today than it has been for 1,000 years. What is that claim based on, if not proxy measurements?



(b) None of the proxy measurements show warming in the last 50 years? Does this set off any warning bells?

Not so long ago, we were worried about the coming ice age. A book by that name, published in 1976, was reviewed favorably by several scientists.

The old "In Search Of", narrated by Leonard Nimoy, even managed to interview Stephen Schneider--currently the leading guru of warming--on the subject.

It took me years to stop looking nervously over my shoulder lest I be run over by a glacier.