I see, the popular press and movies like Planet of the Apes are your official, authoritative, definitive sources of scientific information. I guess we have to conclude then there’s a “consensus of scientists” that apes can talk too, ottopilot? And there’s a “consensus of scientists” that in a couple of years an asteroid will destroy the earth? And there was a “consensus of scientists” back in 1938 that Martians were going to take over the planet?
I’m sure it was really fun to wrangle up all those cute jpegs, but in the time it took you to find them you could have looked up what real scientists were saying in the first World Climate Conference in 1979. That would have told you what real scientists were saying rather than, uh,
actors in movies.
Quote:
Keynote Address R. M. White
"In recent years we have come to appreciate that the activities of humanity can and do affect climate …. The potential consequences of increasing atmospheric CO2 resulting from fossil fuel combustion are already a major concern …. The implications of further projected increases [in carbon dioxide] are uncertain, but the weight of scientific evidence predicts a significant global surface temperature increase."
Review of the current research field by K. Hare
"Nevertheless the trends will ultimately affect the human economy, if they continue, or if they reverse and then endure. A cooling of 0.2 degree centigrade per decade would reduce world temperature by 1 degree if it continued for 50 years. This would be quite enough to have an impact on Northern Hemisphere agriculture. It might affect warm temperature agriculture beneficially, since many crops are grown above their optimum temperatures. There might also be associated changes of precipitation. On the other hand, if the trend reverses because of CO2 heating (see for example overview papers by Flohn, Mason, Munn and Machta, and Bolin), it will also create economic impacts. We conclude that temperature variability has much greater present impact that that due to long-term trends, but that such trends must be watched with the utmost care."
Overview of the field by B.J. Mason
"Section 5.2 Climatic effects of increasing CO2 …. Since it strongly absorbs the long-wave radiation emitted by the Earth's surface, higher concentrations of CO2 should produce higher temperatures in the troposphere by the so-called greenhouse effect but, because the CO2 in the stratosphere emits more infrared radiation to space than it absorbs, there should be a corresponding cooling of the stratosphere.
More sophisticated one-dimensional models, making some allowance for the vertical transport of heat by convection and for the radiative properties of water vapour and clouds, provide estimates for the globally averaged increase of surface temperature Ts, due to doubling of the CO2 concentration to 600 ppm, ranging from 1.0 to 3.0 deg K.
Overview of the field by H. Flohn
"Section 3.2. Initiation of a new ice age? …. At any rate, the transition from the present climate towards a large-scale glaciation -- which should hardly be expected before the radiation minimum 7000-13000 years in the future -- needs much more than 100 years before the ice expands beyond Baffin Island and the adjacent areas of the Canadian Archipelago. This is also suggested by the fact that the cooling of the Little Ice Age, extending over 300 years, was not sufficient to expand the Baffin ice sheet much beyond the high plateau …. Thus in a scenario of probable climatic evolution during the 21st century it is unnecessary to consider the evolution of a new ice-age. "
Special section: "Climate and the future"
"Climate will continue to vary and to change due to natural causes. The slow cooling trend in parts of the northern hemisphere during the last few decades is similar to others of natural origin in the past, and thus whether it will continue or not is unknown".
"[anthropogenic activities have] increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by about 15% during the last century and it is at present increasing by about 0.4% per year. It is likely that an increase will continue in the future .... it appears plausible that an increased amount of CO2 in the atmosphere can contribute to a gradual warming of the lower atmosphere, especially at high latitudes"
http://www.amazon.com/Proceedings-Wo...7106745&sr=8-1
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There you have it.
So, again, where is that elusive “consensus of scientists” who thought we were plunging into an ice age? Were they the ones vaporized by those Martians on a Frank Capra move set? Or were they the ones eaten by the velociraptor on Dinosaurs' Picnic In Central Park?
It seems more likely to me that there was a “consensus of editors” of Time and Newsweek who thought that they could make some money with a little disaster hype from distorted comments from a couple people.
And the usual “skeptics” took the bait -- hook, line, sinker, rod, all the way up to the Wal Mart spinning reel.
Maybe we should amend this outlook to “I don’t need any science, I have all the science I need in the movie theater, see I even have JPEGS to prove it” style of Skeptical Scientific Inquiry. The world must be really, really simple to you folks.