Martin Hovland writes in with this statement. It seems that AGU Position Statement keeps costing them members.
He writes:
Although I have been a long-time member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), I hereby refuse to pay my membership fees. The main problem is the organization’s Position Statement on the purported “Human impacts on Climate” This statement includes the following statements: “During recent millennia of relatively stable climate, civilization became established and populations have grown rapidly. In the next 50 years, even the lower limit of impending climate change—an additional global mean warming of 1°C above the last decade—is far beyond the range of climate variability experienced during the past thousand years and poses global problems in planning for and adapting to it.
Warming greater than 2°C above 19th century levels is projected to be disruptive, reducing global agricultural productivity, causing widespread loss of biodiversity, and—if sustained over centuries—melting much of the Greenland ice sheet with ensuing rise in sea level of several meters. If this 2°C warming is to be avoided, then our net annual emissions of CO2 must be reduced by more than 50 percent within this century. With such projections, there are many sources of scientific uncertainty, but none are known that could make the impact of climate change inconsequential. Given the uncertainty in climate projections, there can be surprises that may cause more dramatic disruptions than anticipated from the most probable model projections.”
As an active communicator in geophysics, spanning subjects ranging from marine geology to climate science, and an expert reviewer for the IPCC Working Group 1 on the up-coming Assessment Report 5 (my comments have just been submitted to the organization), I can no longer bear to support the AGU.
Martin Hovland
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Sensor operator says:
February 10, 2012 at 9:24 am
Please don’t “imply” Sensor. That’s not data.
And quit complaining about “ad hom attacks against science”. That means you don’t know the definition of “ad hominem”, which is an attack against A PERSON, not a thing!
As for the rest of your arguments, you’ve been resoundly rebutted by several here, and the balance of power–through data, logic, or science, is NOT in your favor.
But stick around and learn something. Most of us were true believers in “The Cause” and unknowingly drinking propaganda from “The Team” until we started investigating and found that:
The climate null hypothesis has never been falsified!
And this is something you CANNOT use as “data” or “logic”:
You can’t use the EXCUSE of CO2 being the culprit just because you haven’t found the culprit. Besides, are you REALLY SURE temperatures are rising?
Are you??
http://c3headlines.typepad.com/.a/6a010536b58035970c0168e55964fe970c-pi
And no, scientists DON’T have to prove things to 100% (which never happens in science), they just have to quit screwing with the data (oh, is that an ad hom attack??) and open themselves up to inspection. But if you’re championing people like Michael Mann and Phil Jones, good luck with your argument. You’ll need it.
And regarding your reference to solar activity, read this:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/11/quantifying-the-solar-cycle-24-temperature-decline/
Then you continue with:
Science isn’t a “connect-the-dot” grade school activity, Sensor. You should know that.
But again, stick around and learn something. You might just become a climate realist someday.
Sensor operator,
You should really pay attention to the facts that Rocky Road, Lars, Myrrh and others are providing. Every claim made by those blaming “carbon” for polar bear drownings, global warming, droughts, hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, melting glaciers, less Arctic ice, etc., etc., have been either falsified, or there is no verifiable, empirical evidence verifying the claims. Doesn’t that tell you something?
And there is much that we don’t know [and even more that we don’t know that we don’t know]. To add to Lars’ link, only a few years ago millions of new undersea volcanoes were discovered:
Why are there so many more volcanoes undersea than on land? We don’t know. How much CO2 do they emit? We don’t know. What we do know is that within measurable error bands, ocean pH is not changing despite the apparently the vast and continuing volcanic CO2 infusion. Thus, the “ocean acidification” scare takes a major hit.
In fact, none of the alarmist predictions have survived scrutiny. Reasonable people would reassess their belief in CO2=CAGW if all of their conjectures and hypotheses were either falsified or could not be shown to exist. And that is what has happened. AGW is simply a conjecture; it has not been proven [although my own view is that a doubling of [beneficial] CO2 may warm the planet by ≈1°C, ±0.5°C]. I could be wrong, though. As I said, there is no proof that the added CO2 causes any warming. Yes, the planet has steadily warmed since the LIA, along the same trend line both before and after CO2 began to rise. AGW is a conjecture, not a testable, falsifiable hypothesis. And it lacks empirical supporting evidence.
So take a few deep breaths, try to relax, and consider the likely possibility that you have received misinformation. The reality, based on observations, appears to be that the rise in CO2 has been entirely beneficial. There is no identifiable global harm due to more CO2, therefore CO2 is ipso facto harmless, no? And the additional food production is entirely a good thing, no? Even if CO2 doubles [unlikely], it will still be a tiny, beneficial trace gas, essential for all life on earth. There is no evidence to the contrary. So follow the evidence, follow the money, and try to rethink your position regarding “carbon”. You’re made of it, you know.
Garrett, Goracle et al.:
I can’t believe people are still using the oil company canard – when for years oil companies (and other Fortune 500 types) have been falling over each other to demonstrate their warmist credentials. Here are some examples I’ve collected – mostly ads in major magazines and newspapers:
1. In the Economist, June 2, 2007 (the issue has a special section on business responses to global warming): a full-page ad by ExxonMobil titled, “We’re working to reduce emissions” with follow-up text along those lines.
2. In the Atlantic July/Aug 2009: a full-page ad by Shell titled, “Why an Oil Company President Supports Cap & Trade” Full page of text.
3. An ad in the Guardian (11/22/08, p. 29) by Shell, which starts off, “Tackling climate change and providing fuel for a growing population seems like an impossible problem, but at Shell we try to think creatively.”
4. In a column on Townhall (Dec 29, 2007) titled “The Five Worst CEOs of 2007” guess who tops the list? John Browne of BP: “Browne resigned this year partly because his global warming strategy failed miserably.”
From this I conclude that if anything, Statoil officials are likely to disapprove of Dr. Hovland’s public statements.
So the real question is, why do warmists keep bringing this argument to the table, when the assumptions underlying their innuendos are so clearly false? Obviously, in part it’s because it’s one of those plausible arguments that’s too good to discard even if it has no relation to what’s actually going on in the real world. As such it would seem to reflect the basic bad faith that warmists show again and again in their arguments and actions.
I regret very much that I let go my memberships in AGU (and AAAS) some years ago. I wish I had waited, so I could resign now to protest their asinine global-warming statements. At least IEEE has not yet committed to that ideology to the same degree, so I am still a member.