------------------------------------------------------- CONVENTION OF THE GOAN DIASPORA FROM GOA INTO THE WORLD Lisbon, Portugal June 15-17, 2007 Details at: http://www.goacom.org/casa-de-goa/noticias.html -------------------------------------------------------
--- Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >This indicates to any serious observer that they >need to be skeptical of the kinds of angry, insulting >and questionable assertions we see from evangelical >environmental fundamentalists like Santosh, who seem >to get very upset when their orthodoxy is challenged >by a growing number of scientists and observers with > The emotional issues revealed in the above post are of serious concern. I hope they are being properly addressed. But regarding the rest of the post a summary of refutations of the myths propagated by it and other similar deceptive ideological campaigns is given in the following article written by Prof. John Mitchell, Fellow of the British Royal Society and Chief Scientist at the Meteorological Office of the government of United Kingdom: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/myths/index.html Among the myths being dispelled is: "Myth 1 - Ice core records show that changes in temperature drive changes in carbon dioxide, and it is not carbon dioxide that is driving the current warming" (This old myth is the latest bogus information being circulated in this forum and by many ideological websites, magazines and talk shows). I forgot to mention in my earlier post that there is conclusive evidence in support of the notion that the post-industrial increase in CO2 levels is substantially due to human activity. This objective evidence is obtained by detailed measurements of carbon isotope ratios in atmospheric and oceanic CO2. One prominent research paper on it is the following: Quay, P.D., B. Tilbrook, C.S. Wong. Oceanic uptake of fossil fuel CO2: carbon-13 evidence. Science 256 (1992), 74-79 To substantiate my earlier assertion that the last decade has seen an unprecedented increase in global atmospheric, oceanic and ground temperatures, here are some links to actual data: http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Ch03.pdf http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Ch05.pdf http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_TS.pdf Please also see this graph: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/ar4/wg1report.html, on the UK Met Office website to note the sustained rapid increase in global temperature from 1997 through 2006, with 1998 and 2005 being years with the top two highest temperatures recorded. Here in addition is a quote from the technical summary of the latest global climate report: "2005 and 1998 were the warmest two years in the instrumental global surface air temperature record since 1850. Surface temperatures in 1998 were enhanced by the major 19971998 El Niño but no such strong anomaly was present in 2005. Eleven of the last 12 years (1995 to 2006) the exception being 1996 rank among the 12 warmest years on record since 1850." Regarding the other bogus talking point that is making the rounds in ideological campaigns such as the above, namely the paper by Christopher Essex, Ross McKitrick, and Bjarne Andresen, questioning the mathematical definition of a global temperature, other scientists in the specific area in question have shown why such mathematic semantics are inconsequential to actual observations. They have pointed out that whether an arithmetic mean or a geometric mean of temperatures should be used, and such other redefinitions, do nothing to detract from the actual warming that is observed by objective measurements of ground, oceanic and surface air temperatures. Here is what Rasmus Benestad, a climate physicist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute says about this paper: "The whole paper is irrelevant in the context of a climate change because it missed a very central point. CO2 affects all surface temperatures on Earth, and in order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, an ordinary arithmetic mean will enhance the common signal in all the measurements and suppress the internal variations which are spatially incoherent (e.g. not caused by CO2 or other external forcings)." Others such as Prof. Eli Rabett have recently demonstrated flaws in the arguments and calculations in that paper. Cheers, Santosh
