Sure thing: www.climatekiwi.blogspot.com is linked to Be the Change

Thanks for asking about websites linking to BTC. I have written a post about "Be the Change" on my blog, with links back to BTC.

Lisia
My blog:
http://lilsview.blogspot.com/

Ah! Mr Skeptic, I've been wondering what kind you might be but this link suggests a classification. There is no such animal or human as an open minded skeptic. See "The myth of the open mind" on this page near the bottom:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_4.html

To those who are struggling to be open minded I'll make a few comments:

We all should have experience of the skeptical attitude and probably have all claimed to be skeptical of something, even if that only concerned Santa or the tooth fairy. It is an automatic response of disbelief when we are presented with some view that does not accord with our current world view, whatever that may be. Nothing wrong with that, unless we let our minds be governed by that reaction to stifle further enquiry.

The point is that we all model the world. We carry these models around in our heads and use them to filter all that we view and hear. We compare them to other models and decide whether we agree or not. These models are inherited from our parents, our teachers, our culture, the books we read or the tv we view and so on. We like to have out prejudices reinforced, in talk back programmes for instance, but occasionally we take a hand and make a change. We are apt to call our own model reality. If we make any changes we call that changing our mind. What has been discarded we might even call illusion. There are philosophers who call all our models illusion. There is a saying that calls the mind the slayer of the real! Our minds are our models of our worlds.

So how well researched is my own model? we should ask. How does that research compare with the research put into the evolution of climate models? What research do the climate change deniers put into their models?

So with respect to climate change I see these kinds of skeptics.

Most vociferous are the reactionaries. At best they represent our very real desire to believe it isn't happening. At worst it represents the input into junk science, innuendo, lying efforts to discredit everyone who says anthropogenic climate change is happening, distortion of data by those whose commercial interests are rather against the view that current climate change is anthropogenic. Although real scientists have discredited their claims they keep on repeating them as illustrated in a recent article in the New Zealand Herald. For instance the sun is the natural source of this heating, the short solar cycles have a big influence, water vapour as a greenhouse gas completely trivialises the effect of CO2 increase and so on http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/466/story.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10484420 . The oil, coal and transport industries put huge money into resisting all efforts to oppose emmission caps.

The net effect of reactionary skepticism is to prevent or slow down response to change. You can read it all for yourselves on any number of blogsites. The BBC recently published a number of articles on climate change skepticism http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm
and concluded with the view that the skeptics need a dose of skepticism, their views not contributing to any useful balance. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/7095968.stm Even reactionary skepticism has its varieties - the people who reckon God has everything in hand so things must be OK, for instance, and they have their opponents too.

An opposite skepticism comes from currently active climate change scientists whose research runs ahead of the content of the IPCC reports. In particular they believe the IPCC is overly cautious and its conclusions must be held in question and are dangerously conservative. They cite climate change models predicting summer loss of arctic ice by 2047 say or thereabouts when their current research and modelling suggests about 2013. For an example read the third item, "Rapid climate change" on this page:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_5.html

They point out that the IPCC has not taken adequate account of the accelerating melting of glaciers. The relevant scientific communities are at present half way through extensive research into the ice caps and polar climates but it will be a couple of years before we see comprehensive results in peer reviewed papers.

That brings me to another kind of skepticism, that which is built into the IPCC process and the general evaluation process of the world scientific community - the process of criticism and peer review. This employs the natural doubts scientists have about the claims of other scientists so published peer reviewed papers take longer to get to our attention and have survived a barrage of skepticism. The IPCC is restricted to considering papers that have been through this process.

Even so we see scientists deciding their own world view of the time has been invalidated by further research, this being another longer term control. Science is full of controversies but gradually the evidence mounts that settles them one way or another. The anthropogenic climate change model has taken a hundred years to reach the point of public interest. The tectonic plate model took many decades. The relativity model is still being argued and researched as is the quantum model, the big bang model and so on and so on in every field. For 164 examples (currently) of scientists and intellectuals changing or discarding their models (minds) see here:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_index.html
I guarantee you days of fascinated reading - most represents some kind of scientific scepticism and eventual capitulation to some new approach which is still being tested.

Then we only have to look at the way the rush to plant palm trees in swamps in Indonesia, or the expansion of ethanol production from corn for instance, is defeating the very idea that biofuels are a way to reduce the carbon footprint. The skepticism that would have been needed to prevent this was there but did not get heard until the gold rush was well under way.

So by all means let us be skeptical about proposed solutions and projections and let us be at least as skeptical about the skeptics. What can we do? I have been alert to notions of climate change since getting suspicious in 1956 - as a small kid I used to break ice in puddles on my way to the milking shed and in the evening put the frost cloths round the tree tomatoes in a place in northland. In 1956 I learned that frosts were unknown in that place. Someone has been misinformed I thought but I started listening out. Even so I have quite recently been misled for a time by articles on the net reporting against some of the data used in climate change scenarios. I have thought the arguments good only to discover subsequently through various published research that they were quite wrong or at best misleading.

I suggest people look up the science and keep looking. The balance is not served by those who simply react or concentrate on trying to discredit everyone. Consider the view, for instance, that only a few critics commented on the chapter in the IPCC report presenting the argument for anthropogenic climate change, therefore the other 300 odd reviewers must be against it???? I never bother to criticise, or even comment on what I already regard as true and well stated when I am asked to go over something written. Perhaps I should give praise more often.

The balance, that is a more inclusive world view, is best served by researching that which is missing from our own models. With the internet we can do it if we are also sufficiently sceptical of the junk we meet on the way.

Noel

Thanks for the link. I was interested to look at the blog.greens. One article well illustrated the lengths some people will go to to deny a climate change scientific consensus:
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/2008/01/03/russell-brown-on-climate-change-sceptics/

I was also glad to be reminded of the Aqua project to make aircraft fuel from algae skimmed from sewage treatment ponds. 10,000 gallons (fuel I take it) per acre was quoted. That is 238 barrels though that should not be compared with barrels of crude if you are thinking price.

Nevertheless I was also intrigued by the current news on switchgrass for ethanol where, using the whole plant in a farm trial, 320 barrels of ethanol per acre, on average, could be produced with a CO2 emmissions reduction of 94%.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7175397.stm

Wikipedia says: "Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) is a warm season grass and is one of the dominant species of the central North American tallgrass prairie. Switchgrass can be found in remnant prairies, along roadsides, pastures and as an ornamental plant in gardens. Other common names for this grass include tall panic grass, Wobsqua grass, lowland switchgrass, blackbent, tall prairiegrass, wild redtop and thatchgrass." It can withstand drought and high temperatures.

Noel