From the looks of it one James Taylor the senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News is being the PR shepherd of this latest attempt to confuse people. Over at Forbes.com Mr. Taylor has challenged all comers with a sneer. Yet thoughtful, polite if pointed posts to this blog are being lost in moderator limo.
Since my series of thoughtful questioning posts to the Forbes.com discussion forum - the one concerned with Heartland Institute’s James Taylor’s marketing of Roy Spencer’s latest study - have been languishing for an inordinate amount of hours, days in the Forbes/Taylor moderator limbo, I’ve decided to post them over here...
{For the the record, I have corrected typos and added a couple additional comments.} The following are my first two posts combined
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Forbes.com blog ~ 07/29/11
Your comment is awaiting moderation. (Forbes.com blog)
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citizenschallenge writes:
Please allow some comments regarding early comments by Mr. Taylor:
JamesTaylor-Heartland #1. “Sea level rise has been decelerating and has barely risen at all since 2006.”~ ~ ~
However there is this: http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
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Also, Real Climate has an informative article regarding flaws in the claim of decelerating sea levels.
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Considering JTs comments regarding Antarctic ice “extent” this article is enlightening indeed: “Sea Level Rise Less from Greenland, More from Antarctica, Than Expected During Last Interglacial” {ScienceDaily ~ July 29, 2011}
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JamesTaylor-Heartland #2a. “Arctic sea ice has indeed declined of late, due largely to changes in local wind patterns (unrelated to global warming) that have pushed sea ice into the Fram Strait, where it is sucked south into the North Atlantic Ocean. In the southern hemisphere...”~ ~ ~
James, on what basis do you claim wind patterns are free from global climate influence?
Aren’t these wind patterns influenced by the jet stream? Doesn’t the ENSO initiate cascading effect that are felt globally.
What about the ocean water being pushed around, that water has been documented to be warming, thus influenced by global warming.
Please spend some time viewing some of those incredible satellite based global weather time lapses. This isn’t like the cold war, where border could be defined.
I get scolded for calling it a global heat engine, but that’s basically what it is, what will it take for folks like you to get it?
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JamesTaylor-Heartland #2b. “... by contrast, Antarctic sea "ice extent" has been robust, setting numerous records during the past several years.”~ ~ ~
Why don’t I ever hear "skeptics" clearly explain the difference between ice “extent” and "volume" or "mass"?
When talking about Antarctic’s ice extent why not describe some of the observed dynamics that are causing the bottom of our globe to behave as it is?
Why not point out Antarctic ice mass is dropping (Velicogna 2009), why not mention the West Peninsula dynamics and potential continued increasing ice loss?
Why such a one dimensional presentation – check out this expose' of the spectrum of dynamic occurring in the Antarctic?
Or, with a bit more direct authority, there’s this interesting primer from the NSIDC.
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JamesTaylor-Heartland #3. “If carbon dioxide levels are higher than they have been in at least 650,000 years, this rebuts your premise that carbon dioxide levels drive global temperatures. For most of the past 10,000 years (since the last ice age epoch ended) temperatures were warmer than they are today. Moreover, in each of the other interglacial warm periods during the past 650,000 years, temperatures rose higher than today.”~ ~ ~
It is disingenuous to imply climatologists claim CO2 is THE driving factor in climate change.
JT knows full well that CO2 is one of several major driving factors, which work in concert with a few other major climate drivers, such as the sun’s insolation, Earth's orbital/rotational variations, volcanism, tectonic conditions and how that played out in CO2/rock chemistry.
What some folks so often try to strive to obscure is that these facts are known quantities and yes they are playing a known roll in today’s climate situation - however, today’s situation is unique! One where anthropogenic CO2 (and other GHGs) have been injected into the atmosphere in incomprehensible quantities above and beyond the background natural steady-state flux.
Yet here JT try's to conflate the planet’s conditions of 600,000 years ago with today’s conditions. This is simply inappropriate and disingenuous.
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JamesTaylor-Heartland #4. “Finally, and most importantly, even if your assertions had been accurate, they would not have proven that people are creating a global warming crisis. They would only have provided evidence that the planet is warming, which I agree it is.~ ~ ~
“Considering that the Little Ice Age, which lasted from roughly 1300 to 1900 AD, brought the coldest planetary temperatures during the past 10,000 years, it is a very good thing that temperatures are rising.
“Indeed, deserts are shrinking, forests are expanding, growing seasons are lengthening, soil moisture is improving, crop production is setting records, etc., etc.”
The fact that CO2 and other GHGs have known thermo enhancing qualities, and that society continues injecting -> unabated - better than two gigatons a month into our thin atmosphere is simple physics! Yet, folks offer acceptance with faint praise then sweep this knowledge under the carpet with another distraction, and go on as though nothing untoward was happening to our future.
Worst is folks can stand there with a straight face and claim nothing untoward has occurred to our weather trends over these past few decades. The selectivity, to say nothing of the quality of some of those selective "skeptical papers" is a tragedy that underscores how profoundly disconnected with the foundations of our Earthly existence the right wing, religious, free market, science battling mindset has become.
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