Re: Contrarian Expert Asks: "Does Unstoppable Global Warming Occur Every 1500 Years?"

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dennis Allison <drallison () gmail com>
Date: August 21, 2009 6:57:35 PM EDT
To: "Wulf%20Losee" <qx49 () comcast net>
Cc: dave () farber net, ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Contrarian Expert Asks: "Does Unstoppable Global  
Warming  Occur Every 1500 Years?"

Just for the record, I was not making an ad hominem attack on Dr S.  
Frederick Singer (aka S. Fred Singer), just noting that his writings  
are thought by many to be works motivated less by a desire for  
scientific truth and understanding and more by his political beliefs,  
his political agenda, and monetary compensation.  His chosen role  
seems to be to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  IP readers should  
know that he is a controversial figure whose reliability and  
objectivity has been called into question.

Google him and you'll find a lot of information about him and his  
"contrarian" views, much of it suggesting that he is a "denier for  
hire".  All that goes to the weight of what he says and writes.   The  
wikipedia article about him, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer,  
provides a summary.  Had Losee Wulf spent a moment or two researching  
Singer, he might have shared my friend's opinion that Dr. Singer is a  
"seriously bad guy".  Singer comes across as a man with an ax to  
grind, an advocate for a particular set of beliefs rather than a  
careful evaluator of theories and evidence.

There are plenty of problems and open questions related to our current  
understanding of global warming.  My expert friend is, in fact, a  
contrarian on some issues.  The earth, as a system, is complex, non- 
liner, emergent,  and incompletely understood; much of what is  
observed is likely to be the result of a number of different things,  
not just one root cause.   There are limited amounts reliable data,  
historical and contemporary.  Much of what we "know" historically has  
to be inferred indirectly from other measurements by techniques which  
may be suspect. be noisy, or have biases.  Many of the driving  
mechanisms are not understood well.  There is a need for more funding  
and more researchers looking at the Earth and increasing our  
understanding.  There is also a need for a central open repository of  
information related to global warming is maintained and easily accessed.

None the less, the working hypothesis that it is human activity that  
is a root cause of the currently observed climate changes seems well  
supported by the evidence.


On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Wulf%20Losee <qx49 () comcast net> wrote:
Dave:
Hmmm. Seems like Allison is making an ad hominen attack on Dr Singer.  
Does Allison have any data to support his accusation Singer is "a  
seriously bad guy"? It seems like all global warming contrarians are  
being automatically labeled as kooks. Does Allison's global warming  
expert friend have *any* contrarians that he would consider to be non- 
kooks or not malicious? -- experts whom he thinks are just misguided  
in their interpretation of the data?

Put me in the doubter category. No doubt this will open me up to  
similar ad hominem attacks. Current climate models haven't been able  
predict the El-Nino cycle accurately; they've been wrong in their  
short-term predicitions of ocean surface temps; and, moreover, the  
current models can't account for the fact that the upper-atmosphere  
temps should be getting warmer, but aren't.

FYI: I'm just not convinced. I don't have an ax to grind. Against a  
background where the global temps have been fluctuating wildly for as  
far back as we look into the geological record, the evidence that  
we're in middle of a man-made epoch of global warming seems tenuous at  
best ...

best regards,
--Wuf



----- Original Message -----
From: "David Farber" <dave () farber net>
To: "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 7:03:21 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [IP] Re:   Contrarian Expert Asks: "Does Unstoppable Global  
Warming  Occur Every 1500 Years?"



Begin forwarded message:

From: Dennis Allison <drallison () gmail com>
Date: August 17, 2009 11:38:02 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Contrarian Expert Asks: "Does Unstoppable Global  
Warming  Occur Every 1500 Years?"

Dave,

For IP if  you wish ...

Just to set my mind at ease, you are passing the reference to the  
article about  S. Frederick Singer, PhD, along because it is so absurd  
and therefore amusing, and expecting the IP readership to know that.   
Unfortunately, that was not clear and some people who have not been  
following the field might thing his work is credible.  Singer is, in  
the words of a friend who knows the global warming field well, a  
"seriously bad guy".

Dennis Allison

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 7:13 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/08/contrarian-expert-asks-does-unstoppable-global-warming-occur-every-1500-years.html#more

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