From: john@anasazi.com (John R. Moore)
Subject: Re: Media bias
Reply-To: john@anasazi.com
Organization: Anasazi Inc, Phoenix AZ USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 21:40:35 GMT

Keywords: 

In article <1992Jul25.021609.11962@seq.uncwil.edu> session@seq.uncwil.edu (Zack C. Sessions) writes:
]john@anasazi.com (John R. Moore) writes:
]
]>Look, no one thinks the greenhouse effect is a hoax. Obviously this
]>gentleman was referring to the global warming hypothesis.
]
]But Pat claimed to be a "scientist". Any scientist would not refer to
]Global Warming as the Greenhouse Effect when he WAS clearly talking
]about Global Warming.
]
]>There is considerable dispute about whether that warming is anthropogenic
]>or whether it is part of a natural trend.
]
]Yes, there is dispute. As to whether it is "considerable" is open for
]debate. I could produce some numbers if you wish.
So could I. There is a lot of debate.
]
]>There was a scare, similar to the global warming scare, about a new
]>ice age coming.
]
]Yes, there most certainly was. So? Severe climatic changes sparked by
]global warming could be far reaching, in either direction. The problem
]is that the effects cannot yet be accurately predicted.
The ice age scare had nothing to do with global warming.
]
]>(4) average global temperature has NOT been rising over 100 years. If you
]>look at the temperature trend lines, and compare them to the CO2 concentrations,
]>the correlation is very poor. If you take what the models say about the last
]>100 years, they forecast far more warming than actually took place.
]
]If one beleives the University of Anglia and the UK Meteorology Office, average
]global temperatures HAVE been increasing. These figures have been published
]by not only National Geographic, but such notable peer-reviewed journals as
]the Scientific American and Science.

Yes, and if you look close, you will see two things: (1) Urban heat island
effect is responsible for a lot of the rise; (2) what is left occurred mostly
prior to 1940, which is to say when there was much less CO2 in the atmosphere.
]
]>Sorry, but this is simply not true. Climate prediction is much more difficult
]>than you imply. There are powerful feedback effects that are poorly understood,
]>so in general prediction is extremely suspect. Notice that the global warming
]>models, as they have been refined, have greatly reduced the amount of warming
]>that they predict. Climate prediction is subject to effects that are just
]>as hard to model as local weather is, and is subject to similar limits on
]>its predictability. Climate modellers hope that some day, they will be
]>able to make some reasonable predictions. Today, it is all very
]>experimental.
]
]How many times have you cursed the weatherman when you got rained on and
]didn't take your umbrella since they predicted sunshine? Long term predictions
]of climate changes are based on factors not even considered when predicting
]the weather. Ask a climatologist. I am not one. But I have read them. And
]they clearly state over and over how much more reliable climatology is
]than meteorology is.

Yes, they do say that. However, there is no reason to believe them. Furthermore,
it depends on whether you ask a historical climatologist or a modeller.
Climatologists can quite accurately predict the climate if nothing changes.
They cannot do a decent job of predicting the effects of new phenomena like
CO2 increases. Furthermore, there are powerful, poorly understood
nonlinear feedback effects that add chaos to the whole thing... it makes
their predictions very suspect. This is true of climate change in addition
to weather.

]>Don't forget that urban heat island effects have biased most of the
]>reporting stations in the northern hemisphere. When you subtract
]>out all the biases, you get perhaps a .5 degree C warming over the
]>last 100 years. Virtually all models predict quite a bit more. Furthermore,
]>as I said before, that warming did not correspond well to the CO2
]>concentrations.
]
]Heat islands most certainly exist. And they are part of the problem, as
]they themselves only exasperate global warming.

They have no significant effect on global warming. They simply result in
excess heat in urban areas, which are a microscopic portion of the earth's
surface. Their main effect is to distort temperature readings. Add to that
the fact that most reporting stations poorly represent global temperatures
because they are poorly distributed... most of the earth's surface is oceans,
but the records of temperatures there are very rough. Historical climatologists
have gotten ship's logs to help look for global warming signatures, but
haven't found much.


-- 
John Moore NJ7E, 7525 Clearwater Pkwy, Scottsdale, AZ 85253  (602-951-9326)
john@anasazi.com ncar!noao!asuvax!anasaz!john anasaz!john@asuvax.eas.asu.edu
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