From: session@seq.uncwil.edu (Zack C. Sessions)
Subject: Re: Media bias
Organization: Univ. of North Carolina @ Wilmington
Distribution: usa
Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1992 02:16:09 GMT

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.

>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.

>(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.

>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.

>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.
-- 
Zack Sessions
sessions@seq.uncwil.edu
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
"Good health is merely the slowest form of dying."
Xref: sparky alt.activism.d:2399 alt.rush-limbaugh:2906 talk.politics.misc:34879