Global Warming: Rationality or Alarmism

Disaster stories sell and the media has published story after story breathlessly reporting the end of the earth as we know it as a result of human caused global warming. Much of the media's reporting wildly exaggerates claims by scientists.

Patrick Michaels is the AASC-designated State Climatologist at the University of Virginia, specializing in Ecological and Mesoscale Climatology. Patrick Michaels is a widely published author on the subject of global warming. His research has been published in major peer reviewed scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science.

Professor Michaels wrote a very informative white paper last year for the Cato Institute. It does a very good job of looking at some of the alarmist concerns that have been widely publicized. He compares and contrasts the various papers about global warming published in scientific journals. For example, he looks at two studies that reach opposite conclusions regarding the melting of Greenland's glaciers.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/html/pa576/pa576index.html

I am no global warming wild-eyed denier. The scientific consensus is that there has been some slight global warming and that it is likely that at least some of it is caused by human activity. And I accept that. But what I am arguing against is the alarmism both by some scientists and by the excitable media that have consistently printed alarmist stories that greatly exaggerate what scientists actually believe.

In his Cato Institute white paper Michaels points out a couple of unfortunate examples where papers were published in scientific journals with obvious methodological flaws that should have been caught by the peer review process. The authors of these papers inadvertently provide a testable hypothesis that can be easily disproved by a scientist knowledgeable in the field.

Responses to global warming must be rational. Many of the policies being proposed just don’t make sense.

What do you believe?

• Do you believe the climate computer models that are predicting doom by using a growth number for CO2 of 1.0% a year that is more than double of the documented rate of growth agreed to by the scientific consensus (about 0.43%)?

• Do you believe that we should agree to a Kyoto-type accord that will limit greenhouse gas emissions, and cost the world’s economies trillions of dollars, even though the scientific consensus is that 100% compliance would not result in a change that can be measured? If you do, please explain how that makes sense?

• Do you believe the scientific consensus that the ocean level may rise as much as 40 centimeters over the next 100 years (U.N number)? Do you believe, as the scientific consensus believes, that this ocean level is within the tolerances of the last 200 years? Or do you believe Al Gore’s contention that the oceans will rise 7 meters by 2050?

• Do you believe the scientific consensus that the impact of rising of CO2 in the atmosphere on temperature is not linear?

What is happening in the political arena, and in the general media, has very little connection to the scientific consensus.