IP: global warming? from Risks

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

By the way the book Radical Egalitarianism by the late Prof. Aaron Wildavsky of UCB is a great book looking at cause 
based behavior djf




Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 16:23:32 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Aaron M. Renn" <arenn () urbanophile com>
Subject: Re: Global War[m|n|p|r]ing?


You may be interested in knowing that Wentz and Schabel's corrections (of
satellite records showing a global cooling trend) required some corrections.
They did not take into account the east-west orbital drift of the
satellites, only orbital decay.  Also, they applied an average orbital decay
value to all satellites instead of making a precise adjustment for each
satellite when calculating their figures.  The satellite researchers at NASA
applied the corrected corrections to their data and still show a slight
downward temperature drift.  An overview of the results are available at:


  http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/notebook/essd13aug98_1.htm


This page also mentions the fact that weather balloon data corroborates the
satellite information, something the original posting omitted.


The global warming phenomenon is by no means universally accepted by
science, despite claims of "rampant evidence".  The use of ozone layer
results to discredit satellite cooling data is a logical fallacy which adds
no hard evidence to support the global warming theory.  A somewhat stronger
form of that paragraph's thesis might have read "global cooling and ozone
depletion data are both collected from satellites. The ozone depletion data
was wrong, therefore the global cooling data is wrong".  This is a false
analogy.  If valid, it would impinge on _any_ scientific research because
virtually all methods of data collection have had errors in the past.  Also,
use of the term "faith" implies that those who believe the satellite cooling
data are engaging in a religious instead of a scientific belief.  The use of
such loaded words is a well known propaganda technique.


The risk?  Logical fallacies or propaganda are often employed in debate,
even over scientific issues.  One should be careful to analyze all arguments
to discover them.


To learn more about logical fallacies, I suggest Stephen's Downes' guide to
logical fallacies at:


http://www.assiniboinec.mb.ca/user/downes/fallacy/index.htm


To learn more about techniques of propaganda, see Aaron Delwiche's
propaganda page at:


http://carmen.artsci.washington.edu/propaganda/contents.htm


Aaron M. Renn <arenn () urbanophile com>   http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/


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Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 08:27:06 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Scot E. Wilcoxon" <sewilco () fieldday mn org>
Subject: Re: Global War[m|n|p|r]ing?


In RISKS-19.91, PGN pointed out the study in *Nature* that reported the
realization that orbital decay caused global temperatures to be calculated
as being slightly cooler than actual temperatures.


The scientists operating the global temperature satellite experiment have
thanked the author of the *Nature* article for pointing out this geometry
problem.  They also pointed out that the *Nature* article gave an estimated
temperature based on an average of all eight satellites rather than being
calculated for each individual satellite, and there were two other effects
due to an east-west drift which could now be quantified.  The adjusted
global temperature change for 79-97 is now a cooling of 0.01 degrees C per
decade.


http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/notebook/essd13aug98_1.htm


Scot E. Wilcoxon        sewilco () fieldday mn org