In response to Al Gore’s assertion while promoting his crockumentary that there is a consensus amongst scientists on the issue of global warming, Richard Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT, responds emphatically: no, there isn’t:
According to Al Gore’s new film “An Inconvenient Truth,” we’re in for “a planetary emergency”: melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes, and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms–unless we change the way we live now.
Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore’s gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush’s obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that “the debate in the scientific community is over.”
That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this “debate” actually is in the first place.
The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists “don’t have any models that give them a high level of confidence” one way or the other and went on to claim–in his defense–that scientists “don’t know. . . . They just don’t know.”
So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the “consensus.” Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore’s preferred global-warming template–namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore’s movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming.
They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don’t know why.
Read the whole thing.
Hat tip: ST reader Ryan
Prior:
There are still people who claim the earth is flat, humans have never been to the moon and smoking does not cause cancer.
When it comes to science, I have found it best to rely on the 99% who agree. When it comes to the end of the planet, I would probably settle when 90% agree, to be safe.
Comment by Erich Riesenberg @ 7/3/2006 - 6:08 pm
Maybe the global warming controversy is about getting back to the Three Rs, that’s:
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.
Stop stuffing your face with food, maybe grow a backyard garden.
Stop your addiction to stuffing your senses with materialistic desires, gorging on pallets of Made in China plastic junk you need to need at Wal-mart. Try living in moderation.
Get a more reasonable car instead of a Cadillac Escalade with 22 inch rims and your idiot thug friends to go along in it.
Try to walk more.
Instead of living a convenient and decadent lifestyle, learn to reuse. Buy a used car, a used house, see if what you normally throw away has another use. Learn how things work and function, repair them yourself.
Recycle as part of living a moderate lifestyle. Appreciate better the trail of refuse you dribble behind you.
The many factories and cars spewing out pollution is because of your unprincipled lifestyle, your need for “stuff,” and your fat unwalkable bottom. The stores with crap piled floor to ceiling is because of you.
These are the things the global warming goon squad should be talking about.
Comment by OutragedRichard.com @ 7/3/2006 - 8:13 pm
Glaciers growing, and increased rainfall, may actually be harbingers of something far different from Global Warming. So much data is being ignored by the Algorists that the “debate” has become silly.
Yet another crisis manufactured by those who would destroy the world for a Socialist future.
Comment by benning @ 7/3/2006 - 8:55 pm
Lindzen gets the science wrong.
Comment by Tim Lambert @ 7/3/2006 - 10:29 pm
I walked from my SUV to the front door of my apartment. There’s my contribution.
Comment by Ryan @ 7/3/2006 - 11:44 pm
But there are plenty of debunks of Gore’s facts as well, something the left loves to ignore.
Which continues to support my belief that much of what we say we know is in dispute, and further discussion and research is needed.
Put away the alarmist, partisan and sensationalist rhetoric and let science and reason start to work this out.
Comment by Karl @ 7/4/2006 - 2:43 am
Karl: I think it was in the late 60’s we heard noise of similar factless based crap from most of these same types. The problem is, that then, we were entering another ice age.
SURVEY SAYS>>>>>>!
I just read/saw a few days back a video from Canada (I think-Toronto?) that highlighted most of the factfree goredass bullshit.
If these amoeba could ever agree to which fantasy they are most inclined to adhere to, they’d have a chance of survival……like being a leech who claims-NO SWEARS! I’m a vegetarian!
Comment by forest hunter @ 7/4/2006 - 7:28 am
I agree Hunter. I remember way back in the 70’s how all my Science Teachers were saying in 50,000 years we will be entering a new ice age. I thank God Almighty for global warming, between the 2 I would much rather have beaches over snow drifts. But I contribute to recycling, I throw away all aluminum to be recycled by Mother Earth in our land fills. And I drive my car out of my garage to get my mail at my roadside mail box that is 40 feet away, as my legs can’t carry my fat ass any more. Also I buy only plastic as I know it will add strength to the land fill for when we build our new houses on it. Just kidding - Lorica
Comment by Lorica @ 7/4/2006 - 8:18 pm