Physicists send letter to Senate — Cite 160 scientists protest regarding APS climate position

Since I’m not legally allowed to show the American Physical Society logo (they complained last time) this will have to do:

consensus

A GAGGLE IS NOT A CONSENSUS

You have recently received a letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), purporting to convey a “consensus” of the scientific community that immediate and drastic action is needed to avert a climatic catastrophe.

We do not seek to make the scientific arguments here (we did that in an earlier letter, sent a couple of months ago), but simply to note that the claim of consensus is fake, designed to stampede you into actions that will cripple our economy, and which you will regret for many years. There is no consensus, and even if there were, consensus is not the test of scientific validity. Theories that disagree with the facts are wrong, consensus or no.

We know of no evidence that any of the “leaders” of the scientific community who signed the letter to you ever asked their memberships for their opinions, before claiming to represent them on this important matter.

We also note that the American Physical Society (APS, and we are physicists) did not sign the letter, though the scientific issues at stake are fundamentally matters of applied physics. You can do physics without climatology, but you can’t do climatology without physics.

The APS is at this moment reviewing its stance on so-called global warming, having received a petition from its membership to do so. That petition was signed by 160 distinguished members and fellows of the Society, including one Nobelist and 12 members of the National Academies. Indeed a score of the signers are Members and Fellows of the AAAS, none of whom were consulted before the AAAS letter to you.

Professor Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara

Professor Fred Singer, University of Virginia

Professor Will Happer, Princeton University

Professor Larry Gould, University of Hartford

Dr. Roger Cohen, retired Manager, Strategic Planning, ExxonMobil

List of 160 signers of the APS petition available at http://tinyurl.com/lg266u

Regarding the National Policy Statement on Climate Change of the APS Council: An Open Letter to the Council of the American Physical Society

As physicists who are familiar with the science issues, and as current and past members of the American Physical Society, we the undersigned urge the Council to revise its current statement* on climate change as follows, so as to more accurately represent the current state of the science:

Greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, accompany human industrial and agricultural activity. While substantial concern has been expressed that emissions may cause significant climate change, measured or reconstructed temperature records indicate that 20th 21st century changes are neither exceptional nor persistent, and the historical and geological records show many periods warmer than today. In addition, there is an extensive scientific literature that examines beneficial effects of increased levels of carbon dioxide for both plants and animals.

Studies of a variety of natural processes, including ocean cycles and solar variability, indicate that they can account for variations in the Earth’s climate on the time scale of decades and centuries. Current climate models appear insufficiently reliable to properly account for natural and anthropogenic contributions to past climate change, much less project future climate.

The APS supports an objective scientific effort to understand the effects of all processes – natural and human –on the Earth’s climate and the biosphere’s response to climate change, and promotes technological options for meeting challenges of future climate changes, regardless of cause.

* The statement of the APS Council, adopted on November 18, 2007 is as follows:

“Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes.

The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.

Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.”

— APS News; January 2008 (Volume 17, Number 1)

SIGNATURES:

30 October 2009 162 Signatures

Harold M. Agnew President, General Atomics Corporation (1979 -1984) White House Science Councilor (1982 -1989) Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory (1970 -1979)

E.O. Lawrence Award 1966, Enrico Fermi Award 1978, Los Alamos Medal (with H.A. Bethe) 2001 Member National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering; Fellow APS, AAAS

Sol Aisenberg President, International Technology Group Formerly Staff Member, MIT; Lecturer, Harvard Medical School; Visiting Research Professor, Boston University

Ralph B. Alexander Former Associate Professor of Physics Wayne State University President, R.B. Alexander & Associates Technology and market analysis in environmentally friendly materials and coatings Author, Global Warming False Alarm (Canterbury)

Moorad Alexanian Professor of Physics and Physical Oceanography University of North Carolina -Wilmington Member Mexican Academy of Sciences, American Scientific Affiliation

Louis J. Allamandola Director, Astrochemistry Laboratory NASA Ames Research Center Fellow APS, AAAS Member ACS, American Astronomical Society, International Astronomical Union

James L. Allen Engineer/Scientist International Space Station Program The Boeing Company (retired)

Arthur G. Anderson Vice President and former Director of Research IBM (retired) Member National Academy of Engineering, Fellow APS, Fellow IEEE

Eva Andrei Professor of Physics Rutgers University Fellow APS

Robert H. Austin Professor of Physics Princeton University Fellow APS, AAAS; APS Council: 1991-1994, 2007-2010 Member National Academy of Sciences, American Association of Arts and Sciences

David A. Bahr Associate Professor and Chair Department of Physics Bemidji State University

Franco Battaglia Professor of Chemical Physics and Environmental Chemistry University of Modena, Italy Life Member APS

David J. Benard Aerospace Scientist (retired) Co-Inventor of the Chemical Oxygen-Iodine Laser

Lev I. Berger President California Institute of Electronics and Materials Science Author, Semiconductor Materials; and Material and Device Characterization Measurements (CRC Press)

Stuart B. Berger Research Fellow and Divisional Time-to-Market Manager Xerox Corporation (retired)

Ami E. Berkowitz Emeritus Professor of Physics University of California at San Diego Fellow APS

Barry L. Berman Columbian Professor and Chair Physics Department The George Washington University Fellow APS

Edwin X. Berry Atmospheric Physicist, Climate Physics, LLC Certified Consulting Meteorologist #180 Member American Meteorological Society

Frances M. Berting Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board and Committee (2000-present) Los Alamos County Council (2001-2008) Formerly Materials Scientist, Hanford (DOE), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Westinghouse, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Vladislav A. Bevc Associate Professor, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey (retired); Formerly Member of the Technical Staff, The Aerospace Corporation; Physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution (Stanford University) Senior Member IEEE

Clifford Bruce Bigham Atomic Energy of Canada, Ltd. (retired) Senior Member APS, Sustaining Member CAP

Arie Bodek George E. Pake Professor of Physics University of Rochester Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics (APS) 2004 Fellow APS

John W. Boring Professor Emeritus of Engineering Physics University of Virginia

Lowell S. Brown Emeritus Professor of Physics University of Washington Scientific Staff Member, Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow APS, AAAS

Daniel M. Bubb Associate Professor and Chair Department of Physics Rutgers University -Camden

Timothy D. Calvin President, Bearfoot Corporation (retired) Fabricated rubber products for the DOD, shoe and automobile industries Member ACS

William J. Camp Emeritus Director: Computation, Information, and Mathematics Sandia National Laboratories Co-founder, IUPAP Commission C-20, The Commission on Computational Physics Nova Award for Invention of the Cray XT3 Computer Architecture (Lockheed Martin Corporation) Fellow APS, Member IEEE Computer Society

Mark L. Campbell Professor, Department of Chemistry United States Naval Academy Life Member APS

Gregory H. Canavan Senior Fellow and Scientific Advisor, Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow APS

Jack G. Castle Senior Scientist Sandia National Laboratories (retired) Fellow and Life Member APS

Joseph F. Chiang Professor and Former Chairman Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry State University of New York, Oneonta Life Member APS

Roger W. Cohen Manager, Strategic Planning and Programs ExxonMobil Corporation (retired) Otto Schade Prize (Society for Information Display) 2006 Fellow APS

Barry D. Crane Project Director Institute for Defense Analyses Life Member APS

Steven R. Cranmer Astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Karen Harvey Prize (AAS) 2006 Associate Editor, Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics Member: American Astronomical Society, American Geophysical Union

J. F. Cuderman Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff Sandia National Laboratories (retired), Life Member APS

Jerry M. Cuttler President, Cuttler and Associates, Inc. Engineering, consulting, and licensing services for the nuclear power industry President, Canadian Nuclear Society 1995-1996 Fellow Canadian Nuclear Society, Member American Nuclear Society

James H. Degnan Principal Physicist Directed Energy Directorate Air Force Research Laboratory Fellow APS

Joseph G. Depp Founding President and CEO, Accuray Incorporated (retired) Stereotactic radiosurgery technology Founding President and CEO, PsiStar Incorporated Life Member APS

Riccardo DeSalvo Senior Scientist Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) California Institute of Technology Member ASME

James A. Deye Nuclear and Medical physicist Life Member APS

Eugene H. Dirk APS Division of Astrophysics, and Division of Computational Physics Topical Groups on Gravity, and Precision Measurement and Fundamental Constants

David H. Douglass Professor of Physics University of Rochester Fellow APS

Paul J. Drallos President and CEO, Plasma Dynamics Corporation (retired) Kinetic & fluid dynamic computer simulation services

Murray Dryer Emeritus Scientist Space Weather Prediction Center (retired), NWS National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Member American Astronomical Society, American Geophysical Union, AIAA

William T. Duffy Jr. Professor Emeritus of Physics Santa Clara University

David F. Edwards Physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (retired) Formerly Los Alamos National Laboratory; Professor of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Colorado State University; Lincoln Laboratory, MIT

Albert G. Engelhardt President and CEO, Enfitek, Inc. Environmental control and security systems Senior Life Member IEEE

James E. Enstrom Research Professor Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center University of California at Los Angeles Life Member APS

Jens G. Feder Professor of Physics of Geological Processes University of Oslo Fellow APS

Douglas E. Fields Associate Professor Department of Physics and Astronomy University of New Mexico

Michael M. Fitelson Chief Scientist, Micro-Systems Enablers Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems

Harold K. Forsen Senior Vice President, Bechtel Corporation (retired) Governing Board, National Research Council (1994-2003) Foreign Secretary, National Academy of Engineering (1995-2003) Arthur Holly Compton Award (ANS) 1972 Member National Academy of Engineering; Fellow APS, ANS, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Bruce L. Freeman Senior Experimental Physicist, Ktech Corporation Formerly Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M Coauthor Explosively Driven Pulsed Power (Springer);

Explosive Pulsed Power (Imperial College) Member IEEE Plasma Sciences, Directed Energy Professional Society

Peter D. Friedman Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Member American Geophysical Union, ASME, American Nuclear Society

Michael H. Frese Designer/Developer of Multiphysics

Simulation Codes and Applications Founder and Managing Member of NumerEx, LLC Member SIAM, IEEE Ian J. Fritz Research Physicist, Sandia National Laboratories (retired) R&D 100 Award 1991 Basic Energy Sciences Sustained Outstanding Achievement Award (DOE) 1993 Lockheed Martin NOVA Award 2001

Rodger L. Gamblin Managing Director Corona Color, LLC

John C. Garth Research Physicist Air Force Research Laboratory (retired) Member ANS, ASTM, American Association of Physicists in Medicine, Computational Medical Physics Working Group

G. Roger Gathers Senior Scientist, M. H. Chew and Associates Physicist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1967-1993) Author, Selected Topics in Shock Wave Physics and

Equation of State Modeling (World Scientific Publishing)

Gary J. Gerardi Professor, Department of Chemistry and Physics William Paterson University

Ivar Giaever Institute Professor, School of Engineering and School of Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Nobel Prize in Physics 1973 Member National Academy of Science, National Academy of Engineering; Fellow APS

George T. Gillies Research Professor, School of Engineering and Applied Science; and Research Professor, Department of Physics University of Virginia Clinical Professor, Department of Neurosurgery, Virginia Commonwealth University Fellow APS

Damon Giovanielli President, Sumner Associates scientific consultants Former Division Leader, Physics Division Los Alamos National Laboratory LANL staff member, program and line manager (1972-1993) Fellow AAAS

Albert Gold Associate Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences Harvard University (retired)

Ronald B. Goldfarb National Institute of Standards and Technology Life Member APS

Laurence I. Gould Professor of Physics University of Hartford Member Executive Board of the New England Section of the APS Chairman (2004), New England Section APS

Paul M. Grant EPRI Science Fellow (retired) IBM Research Staff Member Emeritus Senior Life Fellow APS

Howard D. Greyber University of Pennsylvania (retired) Formerly Princeton University, LLNL Theory Group, Northeastern University Member American Astronomical Society, Fellow Royal Astronomical Society

Ronald J. Gripshover Senior Research Physicist Naval Surface Weapons Center (retired)

Mike Gruntman Professor of Astronautics University of Southern California Author, Blazing the Trail. The Early History of Spacecraft and Rocketry (AIAA) Luigi G. Napolitano Book Award (International Academy of Astronautics) 2006 Member American Geophysical Union, Associate Fellow AIAA

George Hacken Senior Director, Safety-Critical Systems New York City Transit Authority Formerly Senior Member of the Technical Staff, GEC-Marconi Aerospace Chair, New York Chapter, IEEE Computer Society Member AMS, SIAM, ANS, AIAA, New York Academy of Sciences

David S. Hacker Senior Staff Research Engineer Amoco Corporation (retired) Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois, Chicago Circle (1965-1981) Fellow AIChE

Sultan Hameed Professor of Atmospheric Science School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences Stony Brook University, New York

William Happer Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics Princeton University Fellow APS, AAAS Member National Academy of Sciences

Howard C. Hayden Emeritus Professor of Physics University of Connecticut Editor, The Energy Advocate Author, A Primer on CO2 and Climate (Vales Lake)

Dennis B. Hayes Research Physicist Los Alamos, Sandia, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories President, Lockheed Martin Nevada Technologies, Inc. (retired) Fellow APS

Jack M. Hollander Professor Emeritus of Energy and Resources, University of California, Berkeley Vice-President Emeritus, The Ohio State University First Head, Energy and Environment Division, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Fellow APS, AAAS

David B. Holtkamp Scientific Staff Member, Physics Division Los Alamos National Laboratory

John C. Ingraham Scientific Staff Member, retired Los Alamos National Laboratory Member American Geophysical Union

Helen Jackson Research Physicist, Air Force Research Laboratory Wright Laboratory Member Materials Research Society, IEEE

H. Richard Johnson Co-Founder and Former CEO Watkins-Johnson Company (retired) Member National Academy of Engineering, Life Fellow IEEE

James R. Johnson 3M Company (retired) Member Carlton Society (3M Hall of Fame) Member National Academy of Engineering

O’Dean Judd LANL Fellow Los Alamos National Laboratory (retired) Technical Advisor and Consultant Fellow APS, IEEE, AAAS

Andrew Kaldor Distinguished Scientific Advisor Manager of Breakthrough Research ExxonMobil Corporation (retired) Fellow AAAS, Member ACS

Alexander E. Kaplan Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The Johns Hopkins University Max Born Award (Optical Society of America) 2005 Alexander von Humboldt Award (von Humboldt Foundation) 1996 Fellow OSA

Thomas J. Karr Director in the Advanced Concepts & Technology Division Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1984-1996) Editor, Applied Optics (1991-1994) Member OSA, AAAS; Senior Member IEEE

Jonathan Katz Professor of Physics Washington University

William E. Keller Leader, Low Temperature Physics Group 1971-1985 Los Alamos National Laboratory (retired) Fellow APS

John M. Kennel Autonetics Division, Boeing North American (retired) Formerly Electronics Division, Northrop Grumman Corporation Member AAAS, AIAA

Paul I. Kingsbury Manager, Physical Properties Research Department Corning Inc. (retired)

Robert S. Knox Professor of Physics Emeritus University of Rochester Member APS Council (1985-1988) Fellow APS

M. Kristiansen C.B.Thornton/P.W.Horn Professor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Texas Tech University Fellow APS, IEEE

Moyses Kuchnir Applied Scientist Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (retired) Life Member APS, Member IEEE, AAAS

Joseph A. Kunc Professor, Physics and Astronomy University of Southern California Fellow APS

Robert E. LeLevier Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (1951-1957) Physics Department, RAND Corp (1957-1971) R&D Associates (1971-1983) Eos Technologies, Inc. (1983-1993)

Paul L. La Celle Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering Former Chair, Department of Biophysics University of Rochester Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow, Max Planck Institute for Biophysics, Frankfort

Robert E. Levine Industrial and Defense Physics and Engineering (retired) Member ACM, IEEE

Harold W. Lewis Professor of Physics Emeritus University of California at Santa Barbara Chairman, Defense Science Board Panel on Nuclear Winter Chairman, APS Reactor Safety Study Fellow APS, AAAS

John D. Lindl James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics (APS) 2007 Fellow APS, AAAS

Xavier Llobet Research Associate Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Gabriel G. Lombardi Senior Scientist, Phase Coherence, Inc. National Research Council Associate (NIST, 1980-82) Life Member APS, Member OSA

Michael D. Lubin Colonel, United States Air Force (retired)

Alfred U. MacRae President, MacRae Technologies Member National Academy of Engineering, Fellow APS, IEEE

Phillip W. Mange Associate Superintendent, Space Science Division Scientific Consultant to the Director of Research, Naval Research Laboratory (retired)

John E. Mansfield Vice Chairman Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

Kristanka Marinova Department of Chemical Engineering Faculty of Chemistry Sofia University

Joseph Maserjian Senior Research Scientist, California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory (retired)

John H. McAdoo Aerospace Physicist Member IEEE, AAAS

Thomas A. McClelland Vice President, Commercial Products Frequency Electronics, Inc.

Harold Mirels Principal Scientist, The Aerospace Corporation (retired) Fellow APS, AIAA Member National Academy of Engineering

Jim Mitroy Lecturer in Physics, School of Engineering and Information Technology Charles Darwin University, Australia

Michael Monce Professor of Physics, Astronomy, and Geophysics Connecticut College Member AAPT, American Geophysical Union

Nasif Nahle Scientific Research Director Biology Cabinet, Mexico Member AAAS, New York Academy of Sciences

Rodney W. Nichols President and CEO, New York Academy of Sciences (1992-2001) Vice President and Executive Vice President, The Rockefeller University (1970-1990) Secretary of Defense Medal for Distinguished Meritorious Civilian Service (1970) Fellow AAAS, New York Academy of Sciences

Gordon C. Oehler Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies Working Group Chairman, Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. Corporate Vice President for Corporate Development, SAIC (1998-2004) National Intelligence Officer for Science, Technology and Proliferation (1989-1992)

William P. Oliver Professor of Physics Tufts University Life Member APS

Frank R. Paolini Adjunct Professor of Physics University of Connecticut at Stamford (retired) Senior Member APS, Member IEEE

Daniel N. Payton III Senior Scientist, SAIC (1992-present) Eos Technologies (1984-1992) Technical Director of Nuclear Technology Air Force Weapons Laboratory (1976-1984)

Erik M. Pell Xerox Corporation (retired) Author: From Dreams to Riches – The Story of Xerography (Carlson) Edward Goodrich Acheson Medal (Electrochemical Society) 1986 President, Electrochemical Society (1980-1981) Fellow APS, Honorary Member ECS, Senior Member IEEE

Thomas E. Phipps, Jr. Physicist (retired) Operations Evaluation Group, MIT US Naval Ordnance Laboratory Senior Member APS

Donald Rapp Chief Technologist, Mechanical and Chemical Systems, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (retired) Professor of Physics and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas (1973-1979) Author, “Assessing Climate Change” and “Ice Ages and Interglacials” (Springer-Verlag) Fellow APS

Ned S. Rasor Consulting Physicist Formerly President and CEO, Rasor Associates, Inc. Member IEEE, AIAA

Richard T. Rauch NASA Stennis Space Center Life Member APS, Associate Fellow AIAA

John E. Rhoads Professor of Physics Midwestern State University (retired) Member SPE

Harry I. Ringermacher Sr. Research Physicist General Electric Global Research Center AIP “History of Physics in Industry” Participant at GE Sir William Herschel Medal (American Academy of Thermology) Copper Black Award (American Mensa) 2003 and 2007

Stanley Robertson Emeritus Professor of Physics Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Berol Robinson Principal Scientific Officer UNESCO (retired) Member AAPT, AAAS, Association des Écologistes Pour le Nucléaire

Daniel J. Rogers Staff Scientist Applied Information Sciences Department Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Member OSA

Robert C. Rohr Reactor Physicist Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (retired) Former Adjunct Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Kelly R. Roos Professor of Physics Bradley University

Isaac C. Sanchez William J. Murray, Jr. Chair in Engineering and Associate Chair Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Texas at Austin

U.S. Department of Commerce Medals 1980, 1983 Edward U. Condon Award (NIST) 1983; SPE International Research Award 1996 Member National Academy of Engineering, Fellow APS

Raymond E. Sarwinski President, Cryogenic Designs, Inc. Life Member APS

Nicola Scafetta Research Scientist, Physics Department, Duke University Member American Geophysical Union

Mark D. Semon Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy Bates College Member American Academy of Forensic Scientists, American College of Forensic Examiners

Thomas P. Sheahen President/ CEO, Western Technology, Inc. (energy sciences consulting) Member AAAS; APS Congressional Science Fellowship (1977-78) Author, Introduction to High Temperature Superconductivity (Springer)

Arnold J. Sierk Technical Staff Member Theoretical Division Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow APS

Joseph Silverman Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering, Department of Materials Science and Engineering University of Maryland Fellow APS, ANS

S. Fred Singer Professor of Environmental Sciences Emeritus University of Virginia First Director of the National Weather Satellite Service Fellow APS, AAAS, American Geophysical Union

Frans W. Sluijter Professor, Department of Applied Physics Eindhoven University of Technology Former Chair, Plasma Physics Division, European Physics Society Former Vice President, International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Member Dutch Physical Society, Institute of Physics UK

John R. Smith Project Physicist, Experimental High Energy Physics Department of Physics University of California, Davis Life Member APS

Hermann Statz Raytheon Corporation (retired) Microwave Pioneer Award (IEEE) 2004 Fellow APS

Nick Steph Chair, Department of Physics Franklin College Member AAPT, ACS

Peter Stilbs Professor of Physical Chemistry Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden Life Member APS

Norman D. Stockwell Senior Project Engineer, TRW (retired) Former Member of the Technical Staff, The Aerospace Corporation Life Member APS, Member AAAS

Thomas F. Stratton Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory (retired) Fellow APS

William R. Stratton Scientific Staff Member Los Alamos National Laboratory (retired) Member AEC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safety Chair ANS Nuclear Reactor Accident Study Fellow ANS

Szymon Suckewer Professor of School of Engineering & Applied Sciences Director of Plasma Science & Technology Program Princeton University Fellow APS, OSA

Ronald M. Sundelin Associate Director, DOE Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (retired) Commonwealth Professor Emeritus of Physics, Virginia Tech Fellow APS

Andrei Szilagyi Formerly Chief Scientist, Aura Systems, Inc. Chief Technologist, Radiant Technology Corporation Chief Scientist, NanoMuscle Inc. Member MRS, Electrochemical Society, TMS – The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society

Willard L. Talbert Scientific Consultant (1993-present) Scientific Staff Member, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 1976-1993 (retired) Professor of Physics, Iowa State University (1961-1976) Fellow APS

Lu Ting Professor Emeritus of Mathematics Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University Lead Author, Vortex Dominated Flows (Applied Mathematical Sciences, Springer) Member SIAM, AIAA, AAM

Frank J. Tipler Professor of Mathematical Physics Tulane University Coauthor, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press)

Salvatore Torquato Professor of Chemistry and the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science, Materials Institute and Applied & Computational Mathematics Princeton University 2009 APS David Alder Lectureship Award in the Field of Material Physics Fellow APS

Rusty S. Towell Professor of Physics Abilene Christian University Member IEEE

Edward S. Troy Principal Engineer Aerospace Consulting Wireless, RF, microwave, analog/DSP, and GPS circuits and systems Member IEEE

William B. Walters Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland John Simon Guggenheim Fellow (1986) ACS Award in Nuclear Chemistry (2001) Alexander von Humboldt Senior Fellow, University of Mainz (2002) Life Member APS, Member ACS

Samuel A. Werner Curators’ Professor Emeritus The University of Missouri Guest Researcher, NIST Fellow APS, AAAS

Bruce J. West Adjunct Professor of Physics Duke University Fellow APS

Peter J. Wojtowicz Group Head, Senior Member Technical Staff (retired) RCA Labs, GE, Sarnoff Corporation Fellow APS

Ya-Hong Xie Professor of Materials Science and Engineering University of California at Los Angeles Senior Member IEEE, Member Materials Research Society

M. John Yoder Principal Physicist The MITRE Corporation Life Member APS

Claude Zeller Principal Fellow Pitney Bowles Inc. Member IEEE

Martin V. Zombeck Physicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (retired) Author, Handbook of Space Astronomy and Astrophysics (Cambridge University Press) Coauthor, High Resolution X-Ray Spectroscopy of Cosmic Plasmas (Cambridge University Press)

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Pamela Gray
November 2, 2009 9:38 pm

Why yes Joel. I note that it seems that it is mostly younger highly educated people who die in sweat lodges, kill themselves waiting for aliens riding on comets, and are packing their bags for a Y12 trip to Mayan ruins. Think I will ossify.

Sandy
November 2, 2009 9:49 pm

Joel, it’s kids like you brought up in a multiple choice education system that have no idea about critical thinking. You’ve been taught to have faith in your teachers, not to understand them. Unfortunately by the faith you give is the faith you demand, you expect “trust me, I’m a physicist” to hold water.
I, too, read physics but my ideas stand on their own merit, not my robes.
You may have letters after your name calling you a ‘scientist’ but you talk like a priest.

savethesharks
November 2, 2009 9:50 pm

I guess a “weird persecution complex” would be absolutely FOREIGN to you Joel, given that you follow lock stop and barrel to the biddings the great AGW church.
But…take a minute and think outside your own very self-limiting box and look at what is really going on here.
Not sure if this approach has ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the science, but it is happening.
http://newsbusters.org/node/11019
And read this:
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=3522
The mother ****ing squelching continues.
No persecution complex at all. (I suppose you can call it that emotionally from your perspective).
But it is just plain fact.
Which leads me to another question to you, Joel.
What are you trying to prove?? What is your agenda?
You seem to get sidetracked on this alot and forget about talking about science. You end up defending your religion.
Throw the scientific method out the door, you might as well.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
[REPLY – Hmm. Offhand, I’d say Joel just disagrees with us skeptics. And, as he does so with considerably less venom than I find to be typical, that’s okay by me. He is somewhat embattled in this venue and I can respect someone who fights it out in what, in the main, must be considered “hostile territory” (despite the fact that we welcome both sides of the debate). The science is still in its infancy and there is a lot of room for error by any/all sides. ~ Evan]

savethesharks
November 2, 2009 10:03 pm

Joel Shore (2)” Some older people use that time to acquire further wisdom. Others don’t keep up with the times or current scientific understanding and tend to ossify in their beliefs.”
Uh huh…..”others don’t keep up with the CURRENT SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING”…..because they don’t see the need to, you see??
Why? Praytell?
The “current scientific orthodoxy er um I mean “understanding” “consensus” amounts to….a giant, stinking A1 pile of Cowspookey.
THAT’S why they don’t keep up with the times….becasue sometimes the TIMES are just plain WRONG.
Pamela may I join you in the glorious ossification…..ah sweet bliss of truth.
Better to be an assified (oh sorry) ossified person in the RIGHT than a naive, green, mislead barking up the wrong tree in the wrong **cking part of the forest, drunk on too much CO2 for your own good.
You choose. But think while you are doing it. What am I trying to prove?? What am I trying to save from the dumps. What am i trying to repair in this very failed argument of mine.
Meanwhile—real scientific experimentation does not get done becauase finite humans are locked in their egos.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

savethesharks
November 2, 2009 10:22 pm

There was nothing inordinately our of hand in my comments Evan I will beg to differ. Just the normal back and forth invectivive. If you read my post you will see that tone very clearly.
Truth is sharp like a knive and a sword and it can get prettty intense.
I respect Joel for his intellect and his skills I just think he is misinformed in a big way,
But anyways….on goes the blog
CHris
Norfolk, VA, USA

November 2, 2009 10:40 pm

Murray (16:21:11) :
Addressing CO2 to the benefit of our energy future is doing the right thing for the wrong reason, but is much better than doing nothing.

A deadly error. Carbon nutrient sequestration uses 40% more fossil fuel to pump the plant food underground. Plants grow more slowly, people and animals starve, fossil fuels get used up even faster.

Norm/Calgary
November 2, 2009 11:27 pm

Too little, too late — no use closing the barn door, all the horses have run away.
Besides, the science is settled, according to the great one.

Bruce Cunningham
November 3, 2009 2:26 am

Joel Shore (11:24:17) :
To this physicist, it was perhaps the most embarrassing paper ever to find
its way into any peer-reviewed physics journal. The basic flaw in the logic behind one of its major claims, that the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, can be illustrated by a simple problem that one could give to first-year physics students once you have introduced the subject of heat transfer via radiation.
Joel,
Perhaps you could set Lucia straight!
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/two-box-models-the-2nd-law-of-thermodynamics/
Me, I would vote for MBH98.

tom
November 3, 2009 2:46 am

Nasif Nahle Scientific Research Director Biology Cabinet, Mexico Member AAAS, New York Academy of Sciences
Good to see Dr Nahle’s signature on the petition, but wasn’t he banned from this site for repeatedly challenging Svalgaard’s solipsist [snip]

richardscourtney
November 3, 2009 3:17 am

Friends:
Several here seem to think the horrific effects of constraining CO2 emissions are only indicated by model studies. No, the effects are demonstrated by real world experience.
Reducing the emissions would reduce fossil fuel usage with resulting economic damage. This would be worse than the ‘oil crisis’ of the 1970s because the reduction would be greater, would be permanent, and energy use has increased since then. The economic disruption would be world-wide. Major effects would be in the developed world because it has the largest economies. Worst effects would be on the world’s poorest peoples: people near starvation are starved by it.
It is easy to forget that the use of fossil fuels has done more to benefit human kind than anything else since the invention of agriculture.
Most of us would not be here if it were not for the use of fossil fuels because all human activity is enabled by energy supply and limited by material science.
Energy supply enables the growing of crops, the making of tools and their use to mine for minerals, and to build, and to provide goods, and to provide services.
Material Science limits what can be done with the energy. A steel plough share is better than a wooden one. Ability to etch silica permits the making of acceptably reliable computers. And so on.
People die without energy and the ability to use it. They die because they lack food, or housing, or clothing to protect from the elements, or heating to survive cold, or cooling to survive heat, or medical provisions, or transport to move goods and services from where they are produced to where they are needed.
And people who lack energy are poor so they die from pollution, too.
For example, traffic pollution has been dramatically reduced by adoption of fossil fuels. On average each day in 1855 more than 50 tons of horse excrement was removed from only one street, Oxford Street in London. The mess, smell, insects and disease were awful everywhere. By 1900 every ceiling of every room in Britain had sticky paper hanging from it to catch the flies. Old buildings still have scrapers by their doors to remove some of the pollution from shoes before entering
Affluence reduces pollution. Rich people can afford sewers, toilets, clean drinking water and clean air. Poor people have more important things they must spend all they have to get. So, people with wealth can afford to reduce pollution but others cannot. Pollution in North America and Europe was greater in 1900 than in 2000 despite much larger populations in 2000. And the pollution now experienced every day by billions who do not have the wealth of Americans and Europeans includes cooking in a mud hut using wood and dung as fuel when they cannot afford a chimney.
The use of fossil fuels has provided that affluence for the developed world. The developing world needs the affluence provided by the development which is only possible at present by using fossil fuels.
We gained our wealth and our population by means of that use.
The energy supply increased immensely when the greater energy intensity in fossil fuels became available by use of the steam engine. Animal power, wind power and solar power were abandoned because the laws of physics do not allow them to provide as much energy as can be easily obtained from using fossil fuels.
The greater energy supply enabled more people to live and the human population exploded. Our population has now reached about 6.6 billion and it is still rising. All estimates are that the human population will peak at about 9 billion people near the middle of this century.
That additional more than 2 billion people in the next few decades needs additional energy supply to survive. The only methods to provide that additional energy supply at present are nuclear power and fossil fuels. And the use of nuclear power is limited because some activities are difficult to achieve by getting energy from the end of a wire.
If anybody doubts this then I tell them to ask a farmer what his production would be if he had to replace his tractor with a horse or a Sinclair C5.
So, holding the use of fossil fuels at its present level would kill at least 2 billion people, mostly children. And reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions, possibly billions.
That is not an opinion. It is not a prediction. It is not a projection. It is a certain and undeniable fact. Holding the use of fossil fuels at their present levels would kill billions of people, mostly children. Reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions or billions.
Improving energy efficiency will not solve that because it has been known since the nineteenth century that improved energy efficiency increases energy use: as many subsequent studies have confirmed (those who want to know why should Google Jevons Paradox).
But using fossil fuels emits CO2.
So, a deliberate significant reduction to CO2 emissions would pale into insignificance the combined activities of Ghengis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot.
And that is certain fact; not some model ‘projection’.
Richard

paulID
November 3, 2009 4:54 am

Murray (16:21:11) :
perhaps you should look at the thread just down from this one about what this has done to Oregon’s economy and tell me that it won’t bankrupt us.

Back2Bat
November 3, 2009 5:26 am

“Truth is sharp like a knive and a sword and it can get prettty intense.” CHris
Truth is a very sharp tool
but dull it just a wit
and by it you’ll be bit.

Back2Bat
November 3, 2009 7:06 am

richardscourtney (03:17:18) :
Brilliant, correct, and compassionate.
Thank you, sir.

cba
November 3, 2009 7:41 am

joel,
your understanding of economics is far less than your understanding of physics. Economics generally requires common sense to make sense. The assumption that all this revising of society to go for alternative energy sources and the like is going to be painless or of low pain is false. It’s going to be catastrophic. The simplest way to understand it is that alternative energy sources are alternatives because they are inferior and more costly. That cost reduces the resources available for other purposes – that means people are poorer, perhaps starving to death poorer. Investing in poor alternatives that cannot achieve competitive status on their own is what is called malinvestment – or simply – the squandering of scarce resources.
Government intervention is very problematic. Government produces nothing and consumes much. It is big enough to distort the economics so as to favor inferior and even defective choices.
Putting money into windfarms which not only cannot be built without subsidies, cannot even continue to operate without subsidies. Gov. controls by force and restriction. That energy production money could have been spent on efficient power creation such as nuclear power – which has been restricted beyond all reason and still offers economically feasible solutions were it actually possible to get permission to build one.

Pamela Gray
November 3, 2009 7:43 am

I agree entirely regarding the use of fossil fuels as an improved cleaner source of energy. Cities were disease ridden highly polluting entities prior to the advent of motor cars. There is room for improvement. For example, China needs to upgrade its use of scrubbers to reduce particulates. As their public becomes more affluent and able to affect public policy, they will come around. Power to the people only works if the people are powerful. Shear number does not count. Revolution can happen when just a few people have grown very powerful. Being angry does not count.

November 3, 2009 9:03 am

Joel Shore:
“…Lindzen can rely on the gullible to dutifully believe that basically every single scientific organization on the planet has been taken over by some small cadre of scientists that don’t represent their members!”
Prof Lindzen gives specific facts and examples showing what is happening to these organizations. Joel Shore’s response is to call everyone who disagrees with him ‘gullible’.
I was the CFO in a similar organization. I know how they work, and I have seen exactly what Lindzen describes. If Joel Shore doesn’t believe that one or two activists who know what they’re doing can hijack an organization, then labeling those who don’t agree with him as “gullible” is simply psychological projection on his part.
If the APS or any similar organization was truly interested in determining the views of its membership, it would be easy to design a secret ballot poll with all sides agreeing on the questions. The fact that the APS has never done that shows that their executive board has been hijacked by activists.
Prove me wrong, Joel. Convince the APS to set up an unbiased poll, as described above. You will find that you are wasting as much time as you waste here, trying to convert skeptical scientists into agenda-driven alarmists like yourself.

Joel Shore
November 3, 2009 10:04 am

richardscourtney says:

So, holding the use of fossil fuels at its present level would kill at least 2 billion people, mostly children. And reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions, possibly billions.
That is not an opinion. It is not a prediction. It is not a projection. It is a certain and undeniable fact. Holding the use of fossil fuels at their present levels would kill billions of people, mostly children. Reducing the use of fossil fuels would kill more millions or billions.

So, a deliberate significant reduction to CO2 emissions would pale into insignificance the combined activities of Ghengis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot.

So, remind me, who are the “alarmists” here? Are they the ones who have painstakingly studied the empirical data, used physical principles to build climate models, and delivered carefully-worded assessments of the science?
Or, are they the ones who ignore any sort of assessment or model, scientific or economic, and simply state that their grandiose predictions, in complete contradiction to any real assessments, are “certain and undeniable fact”?
Maybe to someone in the coal industry, reducing the use of fossil fuels (or sequestering CO2 from their use) seems like the end of the world. But, do you honestly believe that the only thing that separates are society from disaster and misery is the fortunate fact that we have the large enough amounts of fossil fuels (especially coal) that we do. If we did not, would not human ingenuity and the market system come up with other solutions for both energy sources and efficiency? And, if so, why do you feel that this won’t happen if we make the conscious choice not to use all the reserves that are there (at least not without sequestering the CO2 emissions)?
cba says:

The simplest way to understand it is that alternative energy sources are alternatives because they are inferior and more costly. That cost reduces the resources available for other purposes – that means people are poorer, perhaps starving to death poorer. Investing in poor alternatives that cannot achieve competitive status on their own is what is called malinvestment – or simply – the squandering of scarce resources.

The reason that alternative energy sources are alternatives also revolves around the fact that fossil fuels are heavily subsidized, both directly and indirectly (e.g., because of externalities). Also, they have not yet achieved economies to scale. Furthermore, markets are imperfect and, in fact, there are things that people can do for negative cost that they don’t do, especially in regards to energy efficiency improvements. In fact, here is an excerpt from a 2002 article interviewing the CEO of BP, John Browne:

In 1998, Browne publicly committed BP to cutting its carbon-dioxide emissions by 10 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2010, which was a 40 percent cut from business as usual and a target far more ambitious than the Kyoto Protocol itself…
When Browne stood up at Stanford this past spring, he was there to report hard numbers: BP had not just met its target — to reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases by 10 percent below 1990 levels — it had exceeded it, done so eight years ahead of schedule and with no net economic cost. In fact, because of energy efficiency measures, the emissions reductions amounted to a net gain of $600 million. ”And we are not,” he told me later, ”an inefficient company.”
BP’s achievement complicates matters for Bush, who has pronounced the Kyoto Protocol ”fatally flawed” because regulating carbon-dioxide emissions ”does not make economic sense for America.”
That line of argument does not persuade Browne. ”If you say to people, ‘Do you want to develop the world and have a good living standard, or do you want a safer environment?’ people are terrified by the choice,” Browne said to me last spring. ”That is a failure of leadership.” Speaking of leadership, I asked, what did he think about Bush’s position on the issue — that caps on emissions would be too costly for American businesses? Browne paused, then answered, careful not to mention any names in particular: ”Well, it’s unfair to the world to say that none of this is possible when it is.”

Ron de Haan
November 3, 2009 10:23 am

How many letters have been send already?
Scientists have send letters to the UN, the IPCC, Congress, Senate, the President, Angela Merkel (who is a scientist herself), individual Senators and Members of Congress, you name it.
Recently. Joseph D’Aleo send a letter to John Kerry.
Joseph Published the response of this letter he received from John Kerry at icecap.us.
Reading the reply you find out that John Kerry has absolutely no interest in Joseph D’Aleo’s input or any other input for that matter. Kerry thinks he is smarter than a certified atmospheric scientist who says global warming is a total hoax.
John Kerry therefore is no longer a part of the solution.
He is part of the problem and the American Public has to deal with that.
All those in favor of the Climate Bill have to be voted out of office next time
and the American people must find a strategy to fight the current process.
Why?
Because people like Gore, Kerry and Obama are destroying America from within.
“When during the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the table at the United Nations saying, “We will bury you,” we did not take it seriously.
Instead, years later, we installed Mikhail Gorbachev in luxury quarters in San Francisco and gave him free reign to help mastermind America’s assimilation into the New World Order.
America would never lose a battle with a known enemy. But we now have enemies within and we let them take America on the long, slow path to suicide. They have conditioned us to forget our Constitution and accept assimilation into their New World Order”.
Their “new age religion” promoted by communists, environmentalists, incorporated into our laws and brainwashed into our people that is now destroying America from the inside, and the collaborators are everywhere, not only in America, but in Australia and Europe as well .
Like a vast ship, America is taking a long time to sink but each day it sinks a little further. The fearsome day awaits, when America, if not quickly recovered by Americans finding ways resisting this madness, will tilt its nose into the water to begin a rapid and final descent into oblivion … her many resources saved for whom?”
Vote them out, all of them
And TELL them you will vote them out.
Read more about letters, responses and the enemy from within here:
http://www.climatephysics.com/
And read about an aluminum production plant in the USA that is closed down because…it no longer has the electrical power to continue it’s production.
Thanks to the Sierra Club and other environmental pressure groups and the current law.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/berry-e1.1.1.html

Joel Shore
November 3, 2009 10:25 am

Link to the article on BP that I cited above: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/08/magazine/how-green-is-bp.html?pagewanted=5
Smokey: What Lindzen gives is an interpretation of events through his own biased lens. And, even if your proposed notion of how a scientific organization could be hijacked were correct, you then have to explain how this has happened simultaneously to almost every major scientific organization on the planet!
Most organizations are run as representative democracies. The whole point of the membership electing Board members and other officials is to have them make decisions rather than having the membership vote or be polled on every single decision. However, if a scientific organization’s board did something that the majority of members felt was wrong, then believe me, there would be an uproar a lot more serious than having a tiny fraction of members signing an open letter. (Nonetheless, APS was generous enough to this tiny fraction of members to offer to review their statement on climate change as these folks have suggested…although my own prediction is that these folks are unlikely to like the results of the review.)
That being said, there have been polls taken, such as the poll of AGU and AMS members who listed in their membership in American Men and Women of Science ( http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html ). Of course, they didn’t get results that you like so you have found excuses to ignore it.
Bruce Cunningham says:

Joel,
Perhaps you could set Lucia straight!
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/two-box-models-the-2nd-law-of-thermodynamics/

I don’t have the time to wade through that right now to see if Lucia is correct or not in her claim. However, her claim is not that the atmospheric greenhouse effect violates the 2nd Law but instead that, in a particular simplified model, one has to be careful to choose the constants such that the 2nd Law is not violated, which is a very different claim.

[REPLY – Hmm. Offhand, I’d say Joel just disagrees with us skeptics. And, as he does so with considerably less venom than I find to be typical, that’s okay by me. He is somewhat embattled in this venue and I can respect someone who fights it out in what, in the main, must be considered “hostile territory” (despite the fact that we welcome both sides of the debate). The science is still in its infancy and there is a lot of room for error by any/all sides. ~ Evan]

Thanks, Evan!

Back2Bat
November 3, 2009 10:42 am

“If we did not, would not human ingenuity and the market system come up with other solutions for both energy sources and efficiency?” Joel
You presume too much. The earth is chock full of serendipity but don’t assume any of it is superfluousness.
Poke a whole in the ground and you might get:
1. crystal clear water
2. useful brine.
3. natural gas
4. oil
5. sulfur
and probably some other things I have missed.
This planet is a statistical miracle with regard to useful ore deposits including heavy metals that should not even be in the crust.
Energy is a basic requirement; human ingenuity can only do so much.
Don’t throw away fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro-electric and then expect human ingenuity to compensate.

Gail Combs
November 3, 2009 11:16 am

There is no more reason to believe that global warming mitigation efforts will “destroy our economy”, than to believe in the potential for catastrophic AGW…. We can only reduce our CO2 footprint by reducing the use of fossil fuel energy, and almost everything we can do toward that goal will have economic benefit. Economic models that say otherwise are developed without knowledge of the real world of energy on the part of the modellers, and the ones that I have reviewed are based on 2 totally invalid assumptions.” Murray
Say What???
Real economic wealth is based on producing things – Right?
To produce something you take raw materials plus labor (energy) plus labor (human ingenuity) plus a place to manufacture the product (land)and come up with a final usable product. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam smith defined wealth as “the annual produce of the land and labor”..Wealth creation is combining materials, labor, land, and technology so there is an excess for trade to others, that is “a profit” in excess of the cost of production.”
In the modern world in addition to “materials, labor, land, and technology” we have to add taxes and the cost of regulations before we calculate the “excess for trade to others, that is “a profit” in excess of the cost of production.”
Cap and Trade adds more regulations and more taxes to the cost of production and therefore reduces the net “profit” If the cost of production rises above the cost others are willing to pay in trade for the product it will not be produced. This can happen because the product is unwanted at any cost, a cost benefit analysis by the consumer causes the consumer to decide the product is not worth the trade OR some one has a LOWER cost of production and can sell BELOW your cost of production.
Here in the USA we have seen the results of the third option. China has a LOWER cost of production and can sell BELOW USA cost of production as a result US production jobs have fallen below that of 1970.
So tell me how the #$# the USA is supposed to compete when we are saddled with MORE taxes, MORE regulations, government minimum wage, and American education is so bad today’s US students are unable to compete in the work place against foreigners?
“ Surveys of corporations consistently find that businesses are focused outside the U.S. to recruit necessary talent…”.
“For 10 years, William Schmidt, a statistics professor at Michigan State University, has looked at how U.S. students stack up against students in other countries in math and science. “In fourth-grade, we start out pretty well, near the top of the distribution among countries; by eighth-grade, we’re around average, and by 12th-grade, we’re at the bottom of the heap, outperforming only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa.”
http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0804/0804textbooks.htm
So lets look at Energy:
Energy production from rivers got canned due to recent legislation that “protect our wild rivers” Ocean based Wind Turbines got NIMBYed by Ted Kennedy and the ultra wealthy who want to protect their views. Some poor farmer in CA who wanted to put in wind turbines found it took FIFTEEN YEARS to get through all the red tape before he was allowed to put the turbines up on his farm. “A significant cost in developing and building nuclear power plants is the numerous lawsuits which delay their construction. The US has not built a new nuclear fission power plant in over 30 years because of this.” Nuclear fusion is still in the research stages.
That leaves Solar panels so lets consider converting all USA electrical power (does not include transportation) to solar panel generated power:
Power usage was 3,920,613,000,000KWH/year or 257,793,731,500/kw for 2004 http://www.nationmaster.com/time.php?stat=ene_ele_pow_con_kwh&country=us
Solar energy comes in at a density of little more than 1 kW m^2 The solar panel conversion rate is 17.7% at best or 10% for a 24 hr period if we are very generous. Thats 2,577,937,315,000 m2 which is 2,577,937 sq kilometers The USA land accounts for 9,161,923 square kilometers so that means we need to cover more than one quarter of the surface of the USA with solar panels. Does that mean we cut down all the forests on government land and convert to solar panels??? Get rid of our farms and put in solar panels instead???
If you want alternate power get rid of the blasted regulations. I would love to put in some windmills and a two level double pond generating system and get off the blasted grid. However the county planning board and the EPA makes that almost impossible. After my last couple of go rounds with the local planning board I do not even want to bother asking and I certainly do not want to draw the “loving” attentions of the EPA.
As Back2Bat said
I realize that the world is in the grip of insane Keynesian economic theory. Here is a rule of thumb for you:
1. Government is force.
2. Good ideas do not have to be forced on others.
3. Bad ideas should not be forced on others
4. Liberty is necessary for the difference between good ideas and bad ideas to be revealed.”
But he forgot to mention the economics departments have been under the thumb of the central bankers here in the USA since 1910. So the economic theories are skewed. http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm

November 3, 2009 11:33 am

Joel Shore:
The guy who made up your survey, Robert Lichter, is on the board of the Dreyfus Foundation, which has given over $10 million in grants to study the climate. Does anyone honestly believe that with so much money available, the recipients will come back and say, “Hey, it turns out the climate is fine. Go spend your grant money elsewhere.”?
No. That goes against human nature. Instead, this is the kind of results the Dreyfus Foundation buys: click
So excuse me if I am highly skeptical of any claim of impartiality in that year-and-a-half old survey cited. Any organization with an unstated AGW agenda would come up with the vague polling questions that Lichter put together.
As I said above, if the APS or any similar organization was truly interested in determining the views of its membership, it would be easy to design a secret ballot poll with all sides agreeing on the questions. The fact that the APS has never done that shows that their executive board has been hijacked by activists.
Push-polling takes place constantly. It is simply propaganda, purchased by individuals and organizations with an unspoken agenda. It makes/creates sound bites. But the public never sees the results when the purchaser doesn’t get the answers they wanted. They simply re-word the questions and buy another poll.
In the case of AGW opinions, the only legitimate poll is one in which both sides of the issue agree on the specific wording of the poll questions.
If you have the results of a poll in which the AGW believers and the AGW skeptics have all agreed on the language of the poll questions, then post it. Otherwise, stop trying to spoon feed us your AGW propaganda. People here can tell what you’re up to.

Phil Clarke
November 3, 2009 11:45 am

The guy who made up your survey, Robert Lichter, is on the board of the Dreyfus Foundation
That’s a SmokeyFact … http://pubs.acs.org/cen/topstory/8017/8017notw5.html

November 3, 2009 12:21 pm

Phil Clarke,
Thanks for the correction. Lichter has left Dreyfus as executive director. Now he’s push polling.
That changes nothing about the point I made, though. If I’m wrong, show me a poll with the questions co-authored by scientific skeptics of CO2=AGW. I’ve looked, but found nothing.

Back2Bat
November 3, 2009 1:28 pm

Make “superfluousness” “superfluous”
Make “whole” “hole”
I must get my fingers exorcised. Dang spell checkers! I need a grammar checker too.