Minor Thoughts from me to you

Survey: Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory

In 2004, history professor Naomi Oreskes performed a survey of research papers on climate change. Examining peer-reviewed papers published on the ISI Web of Science database from 1993 to 2003, she found a majority supported the "consensus view," defined as humans were having at least some effect on global climate change. Oreskes' work has been repeatedly cited, but as some of its data is now nearly 15 years old, its conclusions are becoming somewhat dated.

Medical researcher Dr. Klaus-Martin Schulte recently updated this research. Using the same database and search terms as Oreskes, he examined all papers published from 2004 to February 2007. The results have been submitted to the journal Energy and Environment, of which DailyTech has obtained a pre-publication copy. The figures are surprising.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

These changing viewpoints represent the advances in climate science over the past decade. While today we are even more certain the earth is warming, we are less certain about the root causes. More importantly, research has shown us that -- whatever the cause may be -- the amount of warming is unlikely to cause any great calamity for mankind or the planet itself.

The answer climate sensitivity, diminishing curves, CO2 doubling, historical empirical data and more. Warren Meyer explains the whole thing with just two charts.

Coyote Blog: Problems With Catastrophic Global Warming Shown in Two Charts

To get a sensitivity of 3.0ºC, one has to assume that global warming due solely to man's CO2 (nothing else) would have to be 1.5ºC to date (where the red line intersects the current concentration of 380ppm). But no one, not the IPCC or anyone else, believes measured past warming has been anywhere near this high. So to believe the catastrophic man-made global warming case, you have to accept a sensitivity three or more times higher than historical empirical data would support. Rather than fighting against climate consensus, which is how we are so often portrayed, skeptics in fact have history and empirical data on our side. For me, this second chart is the smoking gun of climate skepticism. We have a lot of other issues -- measurement biases, problems with historical reconstructions, role of the sun, etc -- but this chart highlights the central problem -- that catastrophic warming forecasts make no sense based on the last 100+ years of actual data.

It turns out that I don't read too much. In reading, I'm strengthening my brain and preparing it for old age. So say researchers in the July 31 edition of Neurology. Mental Abilities: Good Readers Better Able to Retain Brain Skills - New York Times

It is not surprising that when doctors examined people who had worked at a lead smelter for years, they found no lack of neurological problems associated with lead

But not every worker was affected equally, a new study says, especially when it came to those who were good readers. While those workers had the same sorts of motor skill losses as their colleagues, they had retained much more of their thinking skills.

People who are good readers, generally a sign of better education, have been found in earlier studies to have better health. The presumption has been that this is because they can take better care of themselves or afford better food, housing and medical care.

But writing in the July 31 issue of Neurology, researchers said that in this case some smelter employees were protected not as a direct result of their reading but an indirect one. The years of reading, the study said, may have helped their brains develop more of what doctors call cognitive reserve.

After all of the reading I've done, my cognitive reserve must be through the roof. Not that I plan to stop building my reserve anytime soon. After all, who knows how much I'll need later?

I'm ecstatic to see that not everyone believes that my iPod is destroying the planet.

Local scientist calls global warming theory 'hooey'

Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey.

The UW-Madison professor emeritus, who stands against the scientific consensus on this issue, is referred to as a global warming skeptic. But he is not skeptical that global warming exists, he is just doubtful that humans are the cause of it.

There is no question the earth has been warming. It is coming out of the "Little Ice Age," he said in an interview this week.

"However, there is no credible evidence that it is due to mankind and carbon dioxide. We've been coming out of a Little Ice Age for 300 years. We have not been making very much carbon dioxide for 300 years. It's been warming up for a long time," Bryson said.

The Little Ice Age was driven by volcanic activity. That settled down so it is getting warmer, he said.

Humans are polluting the air and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, but the effect is tiny, Bryson said.

"It's like there is an elephant charging in and you worry about the fact that there is a fly sitting on its head. It's just a total misplacement of emphasis," he said. "It really isn't science because there's no really good scientific evidence."

Just because almost all of the scientific community believes in man-made global warming proves absolutely nothing, Bryson said. "Consensus doesn't prove anything, in science or anywhere else, except in democracy, maybe."

The University of Pittsburgh, my alma mater, released an interesting report today. Apparently, smokers aren't just addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes. Smoking creates a link between the pleasurable environment a person is in and the cigarette that they are smoking.

The smoker puffing away in the corner might be hooked on more than just nicotine. A 15-year study by University of Pittsburgh researchers suggests that nicotine also enhances the pleasure smokers get from their surroundings when they smoke and creates a psychological link between that amplified satisfaction and cigarettes.

Without discounting nicotine as a powerful primary reinforcer, Donny said, the Pitt research proposes that nicotine also amplifies the satisfaction smokers get from their environment, from the smell of cigarette smoke to drinking in a favorite bar. This second action of nicotine is known as a reinforcement enhancing effect. Smokers associate the heightened enjoyment with cigarettes and continue smoking to recapture that sensation.

"If people were just after nicotine," Caggiula asked, "why don't they get addicted to it in other ways such as drinking it or shooting it into their arm? But people don't do those things-they smoke cigarettes. There has to be something else at work here other than just an easy way to get nicotine. We're not saying that focusing on the physical addiction to nicotine is worthless, but it's incomplete."

Interesting.

An obscure German scientists publishes some intriguing formulas in the 1950’s, then proceeds to shun the limelight. He writes three books, but only publishes them in German. Most physicists never hear of his work. Another scientist expands on the theories in the 1980's, but they languish in obscurity for another 20 years. It sounds like science fiction, but this is science history. The result could be a real hyperdrive and real anti-gravity -- if today's scientists can only manage to understand these arcane formulas.

The general consensus seems to be that Dröscher and Häuser’s theory is incomplete at best, and certainly extremely difficult to follow. And it has not passed any normal form of peer review, a fact that surprised the AIAA prize reviewers when they made their decision. It seemed to be quite developed and ready for such publication, Mikellides told New Scientist.

At the moment, the main reason for taking the proposal seriously must be Heim theory's uncannily successful prediction of particle masses. Maybe, just maybe, Heim theory really does have something to contribute to modern physics. As far as I understand it, Heim theory is ingenious, says Hans Theodor Auerbach, a theoretical physicist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who worked with Heim. I think that physics will take this direction in the future.

It may be a long while before we find out if he's right. In its present design, Dröscher and Häuser's experiment requires a magnetic coil several metres in diameter capable of sustaining an enormous current density. Most engineers say that this is not feasible with existing materials and technology, but Roger Lenard, a space propulsion researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico thinks it might just be possible. Sandia runs an X-ray generator known as the Z machine which could probably generate the necessary field intensities and gradients.