After Michael Duffy interviewed Prof Bob Carter on climate change on his ABC radio program Counterpoint, there was comment on at least one web-blog site.
John Quiggin wrote:
"It would be more accurate to describe Carter as a prominent research geologist with a personal interest in the issue of climate change, and a strongly-held view that Kyoto is a bad idea.
As regards the major issues, I see little evidence to suggest that Carter is any better informed than I am."
Some of my geologist mates have interpreted this as a slight on their profession and an inference that geologist know nothing more than economists about climate.
I received the following from a geologist:
"Astonishingly, some persons appear to believe that geologists have no part to play in the current public discussion on climate change.
Geologists, as scientists, operate in deep time. They study environmental phenomena on scales commensurate with the earth's dynamic and changing nature, over periods of hundreds to thousands to millions of years and more.
Geologists are therefore the persons to whom one should turn for accurate advice on whether current meteorological trends, if projected as climate trends, are in any way unusual when compared with Earth's past behaviour.
Using information from ice cores, deep sea cores, lake cores and other data, first year geology students the world over are taught:
1. That climate has always changed, and always will. Some of the climatic changes are due to slow trends, others due to sudden climate shifts whose origin is not yet understood.
2. That rates of 'climate'change during the 20th century, as manifest from surface meteorological records of temperature, are in now way unusual in either their magnitude or rate of temperature change.
3. That the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere in past times has not infrequently attained values of 1000 ppm or more (i.e. much more than a doubling of current levels), without any known adverse affects apart from the prolific growth of plant life, for which carbon dioxide is a powerful aerial fertilizer.
4. That over the last half million years the earth has experienced several glaciations and interglaciations. For the majority (>90%) of that time, Earth's average surface temperature has been substantially, and often much, colder than today.
5. That the current warm period, called the Holocene, has already lasted about 10,000 years, which is the average length of earlier warm periods, and that beyond question Earth's biggest near future environmental changes are going to be those associated with the onset of the next ice age.
6. Geologists freely admit, however, that it is not possible to predict exactly WHEN the next ice age will start, and also th at despite the magnificent climatic records that they have assembled, there are still many things about climate that are not understood.
It is strange that anyone would assert that geologists have nothing to contribute to the understanding of climate change."
There is a transcript of the interview with Prof Carter at the Counterpoint site.
Ender
I play the facts, not the man.
Louis - there is absolutely nothing in the Global Warming debate that is a political play. Only the Global Warming Skeptics can claim that one with their pathetic attempts to scuttle sound science in the name of Corporate profits.
You were soundly defeated on the ice bit as the scientists doing the real research know all about the effects you try to mention and have duly compensated for all these effects. Do you really think that these professional working scientists would make such an elementary mistake?
For all others mislead by this person's mistaken claims please read this conversation he had with people far better qualified than me and how his arguments were shown to be completely false
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/hissink3.html
Take the time to read all the comments as they are very illuminating.
Also as you have re-opened it have a look at these posts on William Kinninmonth' book launch (one is mine)
http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/science/astroturf2.html
http://stevegloor.typepad.com/sgloor/2005/05/climate_change_.html
Ender,
Ice core cracking is known to the scientific community - seems you have a lot more research to do.
Jaworowski presented a paper the the US Senate on this very problem with ice cores last year.
I'll leave it you to draw your own conclusions why these facts are ignored.
It is because anthropogenic global warming is fundamentally a political play. Always was, hence my serial scepticism of it.
Thanks all for the discussion - it made me really delve into the research.
Louis - you should do some more work on the ice core thing. If it is as you describe then it needs to be brought to the attention of the scientific community. Perhaps you could freeze some air with different concentrations of CO2 at different temperatures and pressures and then measure the concentration when it thaws.
Sorry Rog, I assumed that since it is better scholarship to reference the original source (when it is easily available) of a claim rather than a secondary source, you would want to do so. I'll try not to make such assumptions about you in the future.
However, since neither the original source, nor the Spencer piece, make note of the uncertainties, I'm far from impressed with either. Instead of giving a fair and balanced overview, both are simply trying to score rhetorical points.
And since you asked, I was impressed with Spencer's work on troposphere temperature trends, but after reading his "rebuttal" to Fu's paper, I lost all respect for him. His co-worker, Christy, isn't too bad though.
No Loius I asked it to be removed becuause I hit the enter key by mistake before I had finished it and then lost the edits so I had to start over.
The Geoscience Canada study is interesting and is a perfect example of the healthy debate about global warming that is going on in the scientific community. It is not as you portray the evil IPCC imposing its political view on the scientists.
There is doubt about GW however that doubt will only be resolved with more research and there is a place for both sides to publish scientific papers for consideration by the wider scientific community.
The urban heat island has been dealt with already to my satisfaction - here is the abstract of recent paper in Nature
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v432/n7015/abs/432290a_fs.html
"Climate: Large-scale warming is not urban
DAVID E. PARKER
Hadley Centre, Meteorological Office, Exeter EX1 3PB, UK
david.parker@metoffice.com
Controversy has persisted over the influence of urban warming on reported large-scale surface-air temperature trends. Urban heat islands occur mainly at night and are reduced in windy conditions. Here we show that, globally, temperatures over land have risen as much on windy nights as on calm nights, indicating that the observed overall warming is not a consequence of urban development."
Again because I do not have access to Nature I do not have the whole paper.
"A paper by Peterson (2003) is of interest because it has been out for a while and is more comprehensive. It agrees with Parker. The paper, "Assessment of urban versus rural in situ surface temperatures in the contiguous United States: No difference found" published in the Journal of Climate finds that the effects of the urban heat island may have been overstated and that "Contrary to generally accepted wisdom, no statistically significant impact of urbanization could be found in annual temperatures."
We have enough information already to act on reducing CO2 emissions.