jay pettitt on 15/3/2008 at 20:02
Quote Posted by Benn Gunn
Balzaq
:tsktsk:
In my ongoing mission to tell people what to think I wonder if it would be useful here to explain what scientific consensus is and how it is relevant. Anthropogenic Global Warming Theory has several claims to represent a consensus of scientific opinion: The IPCC says so (it's their job to report current understanding of science relating to climate change), unprecedented universal (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change) statements from major scientific bodies and more traditionally the results of reviews of scientific literature - meta-studies that trawl through scientific journals referencing papers against a known position (for example - (
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=oreskes&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&fdate=//&tdate=//&resourcetype=HWCIT) this review of 928 papers undertaken for Science Magazine.)
If you were a cynic you may think at this point that the claim of a consensus position on anthropogenic climate change is a new occurrence scrabbled together as an attempt to silence criticism and that the science isn't really settled. You'd be wrong. The current consensus position of scientific understanding of AGW was identified at least as early as 1979.
You may recall from The Great Global Warming Swindle that Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer under Prime Minister Thatcher explain that the Thatcher government initiated the first major research climate change in order to build the case for Nuclear Power. As a point of fact Lawson is way off the mark. The recognisable modern theory of anthropogenic global warming resulting from increases in CO2 and greenhouse gasses due to industrial activity was introduced to mainstream science by a British engineer and physicist, Guy Callendar ((
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Stewart_Callendar)), in the 1930s and has steadily gained support since. You may also recall Nigel Calder claiming to have been among the first to give voice to the theory of warming resulting from CO2 in a television documentary he scripted in the 1970s and his claim that this was against the mainstream and considered heracy at the time. Not a bit of it. During the 1950 and 60s scientists from across disciplines started arriving at a single and inescapable conclusion of AGW. In 1965, after reports by the President's Science Advisory Committee and the National Academy of Science on the implications of anthropogenic global warming on the climate, President Lyndon B. Johnson made a Special Message to Congress highlighting the issue. ((
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/650208.asp))
In 1978 Congress commissioned the National Academy of Science to conduct and report on a comprehensive review of scientific literature of the previous decade relating to anthropogenic CO2 and climate. (
http://www.atmos.ucla.edu/~brianpm/download/charney_report.pdf) The Charney Report concluded:
Quote:
"If Carbon Dioxide continues to increase we find no reason to doubt that climate change will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible."
NAS accompanied the report with the following published statements (from the NAS archives):
Quote:
"A plethora of studies from diverse sources indicates
a consensus that climate changes will result from man's combustion of fossil fuels and changes in land use."
Quote:
"The close linkage between man's welfare and the climatic regime within which his society has evolved suggests that such climatic changes would have profound impacts on human society"
Ben Gunn on 16/3/2008 at 07:01
Quote Posted by jay pettitt
:tsktsk:
Is that your best ?
:tsktsk:
