Skeptics of human-caused global warming meet in New York March 12, 2008
Posted by Gary Glynn in Fossil fuels, carbon emissions, global warming.Tags: Fred Singer, global warming skeptics, Heartland institute, oil industry front groups
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The Heartland Institute recently hosted the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, subtitled “Global Warming is Not A Crisis.” The intent of the conference was clearly aimed at debunking the “myth” of global warming.
With presentations like “Oceans, Not Carbon Dioxide, Are Driving Climate” by William Gray, and “Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate” by S. Fred Singer, the conference was cleverly designed to downplay the impacts that industrial emissions are having on our climate. Singer, a George Mason University professor who has long railed against “junk science” showing tobacco smoke causes lung cancer, and sun exposure causes melanoma, is now intent on proving humans are not responsible for climate change. “Most climate change is natural,” he contends. The human contribution is not significant. Therefore, climate change is unstoppable.” In other words, Don’t Worry. Be happy.
For more information on the sponsorship of this conference by large tobacco and oil companies, see http://www.prwatch.org/node/7072. A list of the sponsors of this conference (mostly industry front groups with innocuous sounding names) can be found at: http://www.heartland.org/NewYork08/sponsorships.cfm.
Global temperature rise constitutes serious threat to planet March 10, 2008
Posted by Gary Glynn in carbon emissions, global warming.Tags: carbon emissions, Geophysical Research Letters, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, global warming
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According to an article in today’s Washington Post, professor Andreas Schmittner of Oregon State is predicting that if carbon emissions continue to rise, by 2100 the earth’s average temperatures will be more than 7 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer than prior to industrialization. Most scientists agree that a temperature change of this magnitude will be catastrophic for humans. Schmittner said. “I was struck by the fact that the warming continues much longer even after emissions have declined.
In a separate study, Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institute found that the only way to keep the earth from further warming involves, “a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about.”
While half of human carbon emissions naturally dissipate within a century, a significant percentage of carbon emissions will last for thousands of years.
Caldeira and his co-author, University of Montreal researcher H. Damon Matthews, wrote “each unit of CO2 emissions must be viewed as leading to quantifiable and essentially permanent climate change on centennial timescales.”
- Caldeira and Matthews paper was published in Geophysical Research Letters – http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/ .
- Schmittner’s article appeared in Global Biogeochemical Cycles – http://www.agu.org/journals/gb/
