The Scientific Debate on Climate Change: Part 4, 5, 6

Here is the follow up to Climate Change: The Scientific Debate:

4. Climate Change — Gore vs. Durkin

This video, the fourth in my Climate Change series, looks at urban myths spawned by two iconic films — An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Global Warming Swindle. Whatever you “believe” about climate change, there is no excuse for the kind of exaggerations, fallacies and fabrications we see in films like these. My aim is to cut through the junk science designed to evangelize this issue, and show what the actual scientific research shows us.

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(The video cuts short at the end, and the final sentence should read: “As I look at more of the urban myths they’ve spawned.”)
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5. Climate Change — isn’t it natural?

More urban myths about climate change are busted as I look at the Earth’s climate over the last 500 million years. What causes it to change? Since carbon dioxide was much higher in the past, why do climatologists say higher CO2 now poses a problem? And of course there’s the familiar myth that CO2 can’t influence temperatures because the climate was much colder in the past when carbon dioxide levels were much higher.

REFERENCES

“CO2-forced climate thresholds during the Phanerozoic” — D.L. Royer, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Dec 2006

“Celestial driver of Phanerozoic climate?” — N. Shaviv and J. Veizer, GSA Today, 2003

“Bathymetric and isotopic evidence for a short-lived late Ordovician glaciation in a greenhouse period” — Brenchley et al, Geology; April 1994

“Reconciling Late Ordovician (440 Ma) glaciation with very
high (14X) CO2 levels” — CROWLEY T. J. ; BAUM S. K., Journal of Geophysical Research 1995

“An atmospheric pCO2 threshold for glaciation in the Late Ordovician”
— M. T. Gibbs et. al, Geology; May 1997

“A weathering hypothesis for glaciation at high atmospheric
pCO2 during the Late Ordovician.” — L.R. Kump et al, Palaeoclimatology alaeogeography
Palaeoecology 1999

“Long-lived glaciation in the Late Ordovician? Isotopic and se-
quence-stratigraphic evidence from western Laurentia” — M. R. Saltzman,S. A. Young, Geology; February 2005

“Solar Activity Over the Last 1150 Years: Does it Correlate with Climate?” — I. Usoskin et.al, Proceedings of The 13th Cool Stars Workshop, 2004

If you have a problem with any of the research that has been done into climate change, please do not waste your time discussing it on YouTube. Write a paper and have it published in a respected, peer-reviewed journal. And no use complaining to me if you think you have found flaws in the work of a particular researcher, write to them and let them know. They will be absolutely delighted to hear from you.

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6. Climate Change — Those hacked e-mails

Now that the conspiracy theorists have blown off steam, it’s time for a more sober analysis of those e-mails and what they mean. I can’t go through all of them, there are far too many, and . So I’ve taken the two that seem to be getting conspiracy theorists most worked up — Phil Jones’s e-mail about “Mike’s Nature trick” and Kevin Trenberth’s e-mail about a “travesty.” I’m glad to see that skeptic websites that cover the science understand what these e-mails actually mean. As you’ll see, very few commentators who jumped on the conspiracy bandwagon even before reading the e-mails managed to get it right.

The Trenberth paper can be found at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products…

Coming soon: Parts 7, 8, 8a