Green World Trust

[ian]

hey lucy,

if we find any other appropriate quotes from skeptical scientists would you add them to your list?
cheers, ian

[ian]

for example...

The so-called scientific basis of the climate problem is within my professional competence as a meteorologist. It is my professional opinion that there is no evidence at all for catastrophic global warming. It is likely that global temperatures will rise a little, much as IPCC predicts, but there is a growing body of evidence that the errant behavior of the Sun may cause some cooling in the foreseeable future.

Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, former Professor of Aeronautical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University and internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes

[Lucy Skywalker]

Done. I've split your posts as I think it's a new topic.

Notable quotes from scientists (and others if they arise appropriately) can be found here

[ian]

I argue: (1) that global warming (climate change, climate chaos, etc.) will not become humankind’s greatest threat until the sun has its next hiccup in a billion years or more (in the very unlikely scenario that we are still around), (2) that global warming is presently nowhere near being the planet’s most deadly environmental scourge, and (3) that government action and political will cannot measurably or significantly ameliorate global climate in the present world.

Denis G Rancourt is a professor of physics and an environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa. His scientific research has been concentrated in the areas of spectroscopic and diffraction measurement methods, magnetism, reactive environmental nanoparticles, aquatic sediments and nutrients, and boreal forest lakes.

[ian]

Like many others, I was personally sure that CO2 is the bad culprit in the story of global warming. But after carefully digging into the evidence, I realized that things are far more complicated than the story sold to us by many climate scientists or the stories regurgitated by the media.

Dr. Nir J. Shaviv is a Senior Lecturer at the Racah Institute of Physics of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. His research interests cover a wide range of topics in astrophysics, most are related to the application of fluid dynamics, radiation transfer or high energy physics to a wide range of objects.

The global warming impacts are so tiny today that they can't be measured although they might be measured in 100 years. Compared to the natural swings of hurricane activity and compared to the huge population increase and infrastructure build-up along the coast, any global warming effects are likely to be so tiny that they're lost in the noise.

Christopher Landsea received a doctoral degree atmospheric science Colorado State University. Formerly a research meteorologist with Hurricane Research Division of Atlantic Oceanographic & Meteorological Laboratory at NOAA, is now the Science and Operations Officer at the National Hurricane Center. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society.

You really cannot say for certain what is causing current climate change, data are inconclusive.

Petr Chylek is a researcher for Space and Remote Sensing Sciences at Los Alamos National LaboratoryLos Alamos National Laboratory
Prior to becoming a government researcher in 2001, Chylek was Professor of Physics and Atmospheric Science in the graduate program at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada where he continues as an Adjunct Professor. Chylek has published over 100 scientific papers in remote sensing, atmospheric radiation, climate change, cloud and aerosol physics, applied laser physics and ice core analysis. His work has been cited more than 3000 times. Chylek is best known for his work in remote sensing, water vapor, aerosols and their relation to climate change.

[ian]

I may be absolutely crap at the science, but this I can do

Nobody can know if the recent halt to global warming is temporary, permanent or the start of a new warming or cooling phase. But it is certain that anybody who proclaims that “Global warming is accelerating” is a liar, a fool, or both.

Richard S. Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant.

Global warming doesn't matter except to the extent that it will affect life -- ours and that of all living things on Earth. And contrary to the latest news, the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.

Daniel Botkin: Marine Biologist and President of the Center for the Study of the Environment and Professor Emeritus in the department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California

Reid Bryson (deceased) founded what is now the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He completed a B.A. in geology and a Ph.D. in meteorology. He became the first chairman of the Department of Meteorology at the University. He became the first director of the Institute for Environmental Studies in 1970. Bryson was made a Global Laureate by the United Nations Global Environment Program in 1990.

[Mike Davis]

ian:
Thank you for the input. I have seen some of these but have a speed problem surfing the internet. The waves at my house are small.

[ian]

hmmm...thanx mike but it seems like i'm not so good at this either I left off mr bryson's quote...

If you want to be an eminent scientist you have to have a lot of grad students and a lot of grants. You can’t get grants unless you say, Oh global warming, yes, yes, carbon dioxide.

[Lucy Skywalker]

Thanks Ian, more great quotes - why I think we now outdo Inhofe!!! - and I've given you credits on the page

[ian]

You are too kind Lucy, everyone deserves their 5 minutes of fame Happy to provide more if it suits you

best wishes and great to see you back

[ian]

The IPCC has become an inbred process. All the scientists I know are doing legitimate work and believe in what they are doing. ... Still, it's a narrow view.

Roger Pielke Sr. is currently a Senior Research Scientist in CIRES and a Senior Research Associate at the University of Colorado-Boulder in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He is also an Emeritus Professor of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University. Pielke has studied terrain-induced mesoscale systems, including the development of a three-dimensional mesoscale model of the sea breeze, for which he received the NOAA Distinguished Authorship Award for 1974. Dr. Pielke has worked for NOAA's Experimental Meteorology Lab and served as Colorado State Climatologist from 1999-2006.

One of the problems is that people look at really hot weather—it
started out in 1988 when the summer was really hot—and then use
that as a springboard to talk about global warming. You can’t really
judge climate by looking at two or three annual records one way or the
other. Climate is not something that you can actually see out the
window or you experience directly. It is something you experience
over generations.

Dr. Christopher Essex is a full Professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Ontario. He is the author of publications in academic journals such as the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, Pure and Applied Geophysics, Geophysical and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics, Nature, the Physical Review, Physica, The Journal of Physics, Proceedings of the Royal Society, and the Astrophysical Journal. He specializes in the underlying mathematics, physics and computation of complex dynamical processes such as climate. Dr. Essex was an NSERC visiting fellow at the Canadian Climate Centre and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow in Germany. He is currently a visiting professor at the Niels Bohr Institute's Ørsted Laboratory in Denmark.

[ian]

And lastly its a long but interesting quote...

If both water vapour and CO2 are an internal part of the system, and only the anthropogenic part of CO2 is considered external, the impact of the latter will be modified by water vapour. There is merit to the precautionary action of keeping the emissions as low as possible. In the end this approach [speculating we are headed for disaster] may be counterproductive. It is like the boy that cried wolf. If it happens too many times without proof, people will stop listening. I would rather have all the facts before rushing to any conclusions.


Dr. Jan Veizer is a “Distinguished University Professor” of Geology at the University of Ottawa (Emeritus since April 2004) where he held the NSERC/Noranda/CIAR Research Chair in Earth Systems. He recently retired also from the Chair of Sedimentary and Isotope Geology at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany. He has drawn on the principles of geology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and biology to paint a picture of the Earth as a dynamic, “living” entity.

[ian]

My gawd Lucy, I can't stop...you've created a monster

It is impossible to talk about a single temperature for something as complicated as the climate of Earth. A temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system. Furthermore, the climate is not governed by a single temperature. Rather, differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate.

Danish physicist Bjarne Andresen, professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, specialising in is statistical optimization, modeling, and finite-time thermodynamics.

I'm not a naysayer. I'm a scientist who believes in the scientific method and in what facts tell us. I have worked for 40 years to try to improve our environment and improve human life as well. I believe we can do this only from a basis in reality, and that is not what I see happening now. Instead, like fashions that took hold in the past and are eloquently analyzed in the classic 19th century book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds," the popular imagination today appears to have been captured by beliefs that have little scientific basis.

Daniel B. Botkin is president of the Center for the Study of the Environment and professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of numerous books. His latest is titled "Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-First Century"

[ian]

Lucy, please please please post this one

Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It's absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that's an awful lot of countryside.

James Lovelock originator of the Gaia theory, which describes Earth as a self-regulating planet, has a stark view of the future of humanity

[Lucy Skywalker]

I have now added just the last of these three, thanks - Lovelock. Daniel Botkin's "latest" book was 1990; your quote is not specific enough to climate and now for me to want to add it - but I already have a quote of his that is fine.

Were you aware that Lovelock, while uttering memorable words here, also believes in global warming, and in the notion that "it's too late" to do anything? The sort of diversion that JP would probably relish. So I've put a note in.