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From the Wall Street Journal (via Instapundit):
Coal's Doubters Block New Wave Of Power Plants
From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high.
If significant numbers of new coal plants don't get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation's electricity demand, which is expected to grow 1.8% this year. In a time of rising energy costs, officials also worry about the long-term consequences of their decisions, including higher prices or the potential for shortages.
As recently as May, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, which currently supplies about half the nation's electricity. One reason for the surge of interest in coal was concern over the higher price of natural gas, which has driven up electricity prices in many places. Coal appeared capable of softening the impact since the U.S. has deep coal reserves and prices are low.
But as plans for this fleet of new coal-powered plants move forward, an increasing number are being canceled or development slowed. Coal plants have come under fire because coal is a big source of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in a time when climate change has become a hot-button political issue.
Coal plants generate energy we desperately need so as to be free of price-gouging, terrorist-sponsoring nations. And plans for new coal plants are being discarded due to fears of so-called global warming. But proof of the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming is evaporating.
From Canadian Climatologist Timothy Ball:
Global Warming, as we think we know it, doesn't exist. And I am not the only one trying to make people open up their eyes and see the truth. But few listen, despite the fact that I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition. Few listen, even though I have a Ph.D, (Doctor of Science) from the University of London, England and was a climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg. For some reason (actually for many), the World is not listening. Here is why.
What would happen if tomorrow we were told that, after all, the Earth is flat? It would probably be the most important piece of news in the media and would generate a lot of debate. So why is it that when scientists who have studied the Global Warming phenomenon for years say that humans are not the cause nobody listens? Why does no one acknowledge that the Emperor has no clothes on?
Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification. For example, Environment Canada brags about spending $3.7 billion in the last five years dealing with climate change almost all on propaganda trying to defend an indefensible scientific position while at the same time closing weather stations and failing to meet legislated pollution targets.
From Investors.com:
Global Warming: A private firm's downgrade of its hurricane forecast raises an obvious question: If scientists can't get near-future projections in a limited area right, how can they predict the climate decades from now?
A reasonable response is: They can't. But the global warming climate of fear did not blow in on the soft breezes of reason, but by the storm winds of emotion.
Forecaster WSI Corp. said Tuesday that the season ending Nov. 30 will bring 14 named storms, six of which will grow into hurricanes, three of them major. WSI's initial forecast was for 15 named storms, eight hurricanes and four majors.
Why the change? "Because," said WSI forecaster Todd Crawford, "ocean temperatures have not yet rebounded from the significant drop in late spring."
From the Chicago Sun-Times:
Alarmist global warming claims melt under scientific scrutiny
...Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.
For example, Gore claims that Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and global warming is to blame. Yet the September 2006 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate reported, "Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame." [Update 8-2-07: see this comment.]
Gore claims the snowcap atop Africa's Mt. Kilimanjaro is shrinking and that global warming is to blame. Yet according to the November 23, 2003, issue of Nature magazine, "Although it's tempting to blame the ice loss on global warming, researchers think that deforestation of the mountain's foothills is the more likely culprit. Without the forests' humidity, previously moisture-laden winds blew dry. No longer replenished with water, the ice is evaporating in the strong equatorial sunshine."
...Gore claims global warming is causing an expansion of African deserts. However, the Sept. 16, 2002, issue of New Scientist reports, "Africa's deserts are in 'spectacular' retreat . . . making farming viable again in what were some of the most arid parts of Africa."
...Gore claims the Antarctic ice sheet is melting because of global warming. Yet the Jan. 14, 2002, issue of Nature magazine reported Antarctica as a whole has been dramatically cooling for decades. More recently, scientists reported in the September 2006 issue of the British journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Series A: Mathematical, Physical, and Engineering Sciences, that satellite measurements of the Antarctic ice sheet showed significant growth between 1992 and 2003. And the U.N. Climate Change panel reported in February 2007 that Antarctica is unlikely to lose any ice mass during the remainder of the century.
From Australian scientist David Evans:
I devoted six years to carbon accounting, building models for the Australian government to estimate carbon emissions from land use change and forestry. When I started that job in 1999 the evidence that carbon emissions caused global warming seemed pretty conclusive, but since then new evidence has weakened that case. I am now skeptical.
...There is now no observational evidence that global warming is caused by carbon emissions. You would think that in over 20 years of intense investigation we would have found something. For example, greenhouse warming due to carbon emissions should warm the upper atmosphere faster than the lower atmosphere - but until 2006 the data showed the opposite, and thus that the greenhouse effect was not occurring! In 2006 better data allowed that the effect might be occurring, except in the tropics.
The only current "evidence" for blaming carbon emissions are scientific models (and the fact that there are few contradictory observations). Historically, science has not progressed by calculations and models, but by repeatable observations. Some theories held by science authorities have turned out to be spectacularly wrong: heavier-than-air flight is impossible, the sun orbits the earth, etc. For excellent reasons, we have much more confidence in observations by several independent parties than in models produced by a small set of related parties!
From England's Channel 4:
The Great Global Warming Swindle
Earth's 4.5 billion year history is one long story of climate change. This fact is pretty much accepted by those who think global warming is a natural process, and those who think it's caused by man.
In more recent history there has been: a mini ice age in the seventeenth century when the Thames froze so solidly that fairs could regularly be held on the ice; a Medieval Warm Period, even balmier than today; and sunnier still was the so-called Holocene Maximum, which was the warmest period in the last 10,000 years.
...For some people, the final nail in the coffin of human-produced greenhouse gas theories is the fact that carbon dioxide is produced in far larger quantities by many natural means: human emissions are miniscule in comparison. Volcanic emissions and carbon dioxide from animals, bacteria, decaying vegetation and the ocean outweigh our own production several times over.
...New evidence shows that that as the radiation coming from the sun varies (and sun-spot activity is one way of monitoring this) the earth seems to heat up or cool down. Solar activity very precisely matches the plot of temperature change over the last 100 years. It correlates well with the anomalous post-war temperature dip, when global carbon dioxide levels were rising.
...In fact, what is known of solar activity over the last several hundred years correlates very well with temperature. This is what some scientists are beginning to believe causes climate change.
The global warming campaign is wrong on the facts, and is doing great harm to our nation's energy supply, at a time when that energy supply is key to national security.
#1
#2Boris, a good deal of proof - or, to be more specific, disproof of global warming theories - is contained in the full text of the articles linked.
#3I don't know what proof--or disproof--you mean. I see opinion, but none of these sources are scientific in nature. Many are, in fact, quite wrong.
Does that mean you don't care to know where the world's leading scientific bodies stand on this issue?
#4On what basis do you say that the points made in the Chicago Sun-Times article, by David Evans, and by Channel 4, are not "scientific in nature?"
#5They are not scientific publications. More than that, they are deceptive and inaccurate. The Chicago Sun Times articles features a fabricated quotation:
The "Swindle" film is rife with false graphs and unsupported claims.
Any interest at all in what the scientific bodies have determined?
#6Boris, Boris, Boris:
Your disinformation campaign, while successful, is now failing. The time of the Gorebots is coming to an end.
Beware the wrath of the masses when they finally realise what Goreism has wrought upon their lives and for the future of their children.
You know, Gore and his compadres would be pathetic if what he has generated wasn't so serious. Here we have someone sitting on a hill in his power hungry mansion, driving around in limos and fast aircraft.
At the same his highness is preaching a conservaton of resources strategy which, if implimented, would have the effect of putting the average family back into grass huts with the wife spending eight hours a day washing by hand and cooking by the power of the sun.
#7hello, davod.
I don't recall mentioning Gore, why are you bringing him up?
Do you have any interest in where the world's leading scientific bodies stand on the issue?
Hello.
I am contacting conservative bloggers around the country since I am one as well. I hope this email is not an intrusion. I saw your site through Pajamas Media, since I am a fan of that site.
If you are open to doing a link exchange, I get some pretty decent traffic. I figure cross promotion is a win win for all involved. If and only if you feel my blog is of a high quality, I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you.
eric aka http://www.blacktygrrrr.wordpress.com
P.S. I am # 6 in the country for best political blog at the bloggers choice awards. http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/21020
#9Boris,
I was interested in your link questioning the following quote from the Chicago Sun-Times article:
"Glaciers are growing in the Himalayan Mountains, confounding global warming alarmists who recently claimed the glaciers were shrinking and that global warming was to blame."
I have been in correspondence with Mr. Taylor, the author of the article, who has been kind enough to check. He has confirmed with regrets that it was in error that this text was inadvertently cited as a quote rather than as a summary of the named article. In addition, he emails:
I am glad you pointed this out to me.
That being said, science does indeed contradict Al Gore's assertions that the Himalayas are rapid melting. As the National Geographic article cited in my article ("Some Glaciers Growing Due To Climate Change") states, "Some glaciers in Pakistan's Upper Indus River Basin appear to be growing, and a new study suggests that global warming is the cause." The article continues, "[T]he region's winter snowfall, which feeds the glaciers, has been increasing. And average summer temperatures, which melt snow and glaciers, have been dropping."
An even more recent and powerful article in the February 11 Hindustan Times reports, "Some experts have questioned the alarmists theory on global warming leading to shrinkage of Himalayan glaciers. VK Raina, a leading glaciologist ... is one among them." According to Raina, "Claims of global warming causing glacial melt in the Himalayas are based on wrong assumptions." Regarding research focused on approximately 50 glaciers in India's Western Himalayas, "Nearly 200 years data has shown that nothing abnormal has occurred in any of these glaciers," the Hindustan Times reports.
Similarly, the March 13, 2005 Insurance Digest (formerly linked at http://www.whyinsure.com/text1/news-number-537.html, but an extended quotation of which still exists under the March 14 entry at http://www.junkscience.com/mar05.html), further reports "There's good news for the geologists and the environmental scientists who have been craving to assuage their anxieties over shrinking of glaciers and drying up of snow- fed rivers. Heavy snow in the higher regions of Himachal Pradesh this year have rejuvenated them all. The snowfall has given a fresh lease of life to both perennial and seasonal glaciers in the region."
#10Vik,
First, global warming does not mean that all glaciers will melt. Here, briefly, is why. Let's say the average temp increase by 1 deg C. If a glacier is where that one degree makes it rise above freezing, it will begin to shrink. However, glaciers in colder regions--the interior of Antarctica, and very high altitudes for instance--will actually increase in size. Why? Because the temperature has not risen enough to melt them, but it has risen enough to allow more water vapor to be held in the air, which means more snowfall and a growing glacier. (This is simplified quite a bit, but I think you get the picture.)
So what are glaciers doing world wide? They are shrinking:
http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/mbb/mbb9/sum05.html
Taylor simply cherrypicks a small area where glaciers are growing. And it was a very sloppy mistake on his part to inject a term like "alarmists" into a supposedly quote. As well as the fact that he quoted himself.
That's why we should listen to scientists.
#11Boris,
First, global warming does not mean that all glaciers will melt.
Very good. However, you appear to be conceding that Al Gore was wrong to cite the Himalayan glaciers.
So what are glaciers doing world wide? They are shrinking:
This may be. But it does not indicate that C02 emissions are the cause. Per Canadian Climatologist Timothy Ball, as quoted in the article above:
Believe it or not, Global Warming is not due to human contribution of Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This in fact is the greatest deception in the history of science. We are wasting time, energy and trillions of dollars while creating unnecessary fear and consternation over an issue with no scientific justification.
That’s why we should listen to scientists.
The article contains, and links, quotes from many scientists.
#12Very good. However, you appear to be conceding that Al Gore was wrong to cite the Himalayan glaciers.
Read the Taylor criticism again. Most of the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting. There is only a small area in Pakistan that is growing. So Taylor was the one who was wrong to cite a small and unrepresentative portion of Himalayan and global glaciers. Taylor cherrypicked his research to give a false impression. I notice that no attempt has been made to correct the Sun-Times editorial even though the author knows it contains a bogus quote. That says quite a lot about Taylor and his attitude toward straightforward debate.
Dr. Ball gives no evidence for his claim. You seem to accept it on faith. Further, "the greatest deception in the history of science" is an extraordinary claim that should require etraordinary evidence. Ball provides none. As for Ball's honesty, he has been caught embellishing his credentials, so it becomes even harder to trust what he says.
There are always individual scientists who disagree--either because they are wrong or because they are pushing an agenda--but it is foolish to listen to one scientist when the vast majority believe CO2 is a problem. Have you looked up what the Royal Society in the UK says, for instance?
#13Boris,
You're a bit heavy on the ad hominem arguments today. The ad hominem argument is considered a logical fallacy, as well as an indication of a lack of facts to back up a point of view:
An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.
Dr. Ball gives no evidence for his claim.
That is not correct. Dr. Ball has published articles and radio interviews other than the single one I cited. A number of links to them are here. Links to two sites where he provides evidence against the theory of global warming are here and here.
Your argument that scientific bodies such as the Royal Society in the UK make statements in support of the global warming theory, is a reasonable argument. However, it is not dispositive. Per Mr. Ball in the link in the original article above:
Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970's global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact.
There are always individual scientists who disagree...
It is not correct to say that only a few individual scientists hold a view like that of Taylor, Ball, and the many scientists referenced or linked to in the article above.
From Canada Free Press:
[Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia] is one of hundreds of highly qualified non-governmental, non-industry, non-lobby group climate experts who contest the hypothesis that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing significant global climate change.
#14My point about Ball was not an ad hom since you had provided no arguments to contend with and appeared to accept his position by virtue of his authority. His authority and his trustworthiness were at issue (they still are at issue IMO), and it is perfectly legitimate to point to someone's ethical behavior in this case.
Temperatures declined from 1940 to 1980 and in the early 1970’s global cooling became the consensus. This proves that consensus is not a scientific fact.
What does "global cooling became the consensus" mean? Certainly the globe was cooling fom 1940 to 1970. Saying things like "consensus is no scientific fact" is a way of avoiding the issue without providing evidence. Notice that Ball does not even mention the hypothesized cause of the cooling--sulphate aerosols.
Anyway, there's a reason why you cannot find Ball talking about CO2 in the published scientific literatuire--his numbers are dead wrong. You cannot find confirmation of his numbers in a peer reviewed source--a textbook, a journal. The only place you find it is in the political literature and on the internet.
(If you really want to know why his numbers are wrong, the short answer is that he ignores obsevrations by dozens of scientists and, interestingly, military researchers. He simply treats the atmosphere as a simple slab--and if this were reality he would be right. However, the atmosphere is far more complex and he ignores things like lapse rate and pressure and the change in humidity as you go higher up in the atmosphere.)
In short, unless you are familiar with radiative transfer, how can you trust Ball's numbers and arguments? This isn't a simple subject that the layperson can comprehend without an advanced course in atmospheric science. Without this, we should trust the majority of scientists--and despite the CFP claims of "hundreds" of scientists you will find very few who dispute the consensus. And of those few who dispute it, you find that they do so in the popular press and do not publish in the scientific literature.
#15What does “global cooling became the consensus” mean?
It refers to the argument that a consensus of scientists supports global warming, and notes that there was a similar consensus in the 70's in support of global cooling. The argument that a consensus of scientists currently supports global warming, is one that you have put forward.
And of those few who dispute it, you find that they do so in the popular press and do not publish in the scientific literature.
I emailed one of the scientists quoted in the article, Australian scientist David Evans, inquiring about this. Here is his response:
There is very little observational evidence to either prove or disprove that global warming is due to carbon emissions. So there are very few scientific papers either -- either for or against.
There are lots of papers about model results, but those are essentially worthless because theoretical models can never prove anything. The global climate models are particular poor and imprecise at their current stage of development, and there are lots of papers about their predictions and shortcomings -- but they don't prove anything about global warming except that it is difficult to model and there is a lot we don't know yet.
Given that the carbon blamers (the people who say global warming is due to carbon emissions) are suggesting major poverty-inducing changes to human behavior, the onus is on them to prove their case. They have not done so. Given that $50 billion has been spent by governments on global warming over the last 15 years, the lack of *any* observational evidence that it is due to carbon emissions is rather startling. The old ice core data used to be very supportive of the idea that carbon caused global warming, but the modern ice core data (after 2000) shows that it is more likely that global warming causing carbon increases than the other way around.
Some who dispute that carbon causes global emissions put forward other theories, mainly solar. There are quite a few peer reviewed papers on various to other theories and observations, but they are irrelevant to the issue of whether carbon emissions cause global warming.
The case against carbon emissions as the cause of global warming is essentially that there is no observational evidence that it is due to carbon emissions. There is no case for writing a scientific paper that here is a lack of evidence for something -- what is the point? In this general way, Boris is correct -- but wrong in the larger sense, because he should also note that there are no papers on observational evidence that carbon emissions *do* cause global warming.
Atmospheric measurements can help distinguish between greenhouse and non-greenhouse warming. There are a heap of papers on this, and the current situation is that the temperate zone data does not rule out greenhouse warming, but tropical data does. But it's not terribly decisive.
See
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/Conf2007/D-Evans2007.pdf
[Continued in next comment]
#16[Continued from previous comment.]
And, from the paper linked by Evans, page 7:
Two Challenges for the Carbon Blamers
But first, two challenges for the carbon blamers.
I presented the story of weakening evidence to a friend of mine, Peter Duncan, who is on the Board of the CSIRO. Peter informally asked the CSIRO what evidence there was for blaming carbon. Here is the reply he got in April:
“The detail behind the current scientific consensus in being delivered for all to see in the IPCC process, which was been unfolding throughout this year and will be complete with all information in the public domain in some months time (by about November). CSIRO should not spend time reworking this information beforehand, as it is a waste of our time, and we are not at liberty to anticipate the IPCC publication timeline. So on the core science matters, those sceptical of the consensus [will] just have to wait until the consensus views are revealed.”
Well that speaks volumes, doesn’t it? More for what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say “oh the evidence is this, this, and this. Here are some links to the papers or discussions of the evidence.” Nope, nothing like that. Instead Peter was told that the evidence would be handed down by an authority in due course. That’s not science, that’s politics. So the first challenge is this: Show us your evidence. Make any evidence that supports the notion that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming public. Let’s all have a look.
Now just to be clear on what I mean by “evidence”, it must include the following information:
• Who made the observations?
• When were they made?
• What did they observe? In general terms, I don't have to see the raw data.
• How do the observations support the idea that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming?
Evidence that will not suffice includes:
• Evidence that global warming is occurring. That’s not the question, everyone knows it’s occurring.
• Observations that confirm predictions made by some model. So what? They don’t prove the model is correct or that the model will predict correctly in future. And if you find observations that disagree with your model, you adjust the model anyway (hey, I'm a modeller). If enough monkeys bang away on typewriters long enough then eventually one of them will type the complete works of Shakespeare—it’s the same with models.
• Something that amounts to “There are no other candidates, so it has to be the one I’m thinking of." Illogical. In an effectively infinite universe, you cannot rule out all the other possibilities.
• Experiments in glass jars in laboratories whose vital characteristics in any way depend on clouds, convection, feedbacks, interaction with oceans, and so on. The atmosphere is too big and complex to replicate those features in a glass jar.
• Someone else said so. Independent repeatable observations only please, otherwise it's not science.
Here’s the second challenge: Make the climate models public. Make a leading climate model, used to make predictions, fully public, with all the working computer code and all documentation, so that I can run it on my computer.
I want to inspect your model to see what assumptions were made. I want to see if solar effects such as cosmic rays were omitted. I want to run your model with different possible inputs, to see what the range of future temperatures it predicts. I’ll bet that that the model allows for possible scenarios where the carbon emissions cause only insignificant temperature rises.
I know a thing or two about making contentious models public. I argued with the AGO to make the source code of FullCAM public. The AGO baulked at that, but it did the next best thing and made the full specifications and documentation publicly available, and you can run FullCAM on your computer and put in whatever inputs you please. If the world is to go down the expensive and poverty-causing route of curbing carbon emissions, the reasons had better be all above board and open to public scrutiny. So show us your evidence and show us your models.
You commented that "And of those few who dispute it, you find that they do so in the popular press and do not publish in the scientific literature." This appears to indicate that you believe there are no published models that dispute man-made C02 as the cause of global warming. However, as Evans notes, there are such papers. A link to one example was provided by James Taylor, in response to an email I sent to him. The article is titled, "A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts," and was published in June, in the peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters.
#17The only ad hominem arguments I see are against "Goreists" and Al Gore. I really don't see much compelling evidence against carbon-caused global warming here or anywhere. And unless Al Gore is simply bored, or wants to hinder society's progress because he's jealous or simply an evil genius, then I can't think of a motive for his passionate calls for us to change our consumption habits.
I really don't get the hold up.
#18"..notes that there was a similar consensus in the 70’s in support of global cooling."
This is patently untrue. If the consensus were similar, you would see the NAS, AGU, AMS, EPA, NASA and all other scientific bodies warning about global cooling. This did not happen.
As for David Evans, he is a mathematician and an engineer. He is NOT a climate scientist.
He says "In this general way, Boris is correct—but wrong in the larger sense, because he should also note that there are no papers on observational evidence that carbon emissions *do* cause global warming."
Which is a way of downplaying the enormous scientific evidence. CO2 is known to cause warming. This is physics. The warming from more CO2 will cause more water vapor to be held in the atmosphere, increasing the temperature further. Evans is apparently unaware of the observational studies that give an increase of about 3oC for a doubling of CO2 (That's right smack in the middle of model estimates). See, for example, James Annan's discussion:
http://julesandjames.blogspot.com/2006/03/climate-sensitivity-is-3c.html
"Nope, nothing like that. Instead Peter was told that the evidence would be handed down by an authority in due course. That’s not science, that’s politics. So the first challenge is this: Show us your evidence. "
This statement is puzzling, for Evans surely knows that the IPCC had issued an earlier report (The so-called TAR, 2001). Furthermore, the IPCC is merely a summary of the published literature. All evidence was available for anyone to look at, but the summary and overview was not complete. Until the AR4 was complete earlier this year, the TAR could answer whatever questions Evans might have had, or he was free to seek out the papers himself.
His link appear to be ancient as the AR$ has been released, all his challenges have been met and there is at least one--although probably many more--climate model that you can download and run on your computer.
The Tsonis paper looks interesting, but it does not dispute anything about CO2. In fact the last sentence says that the climate shifts he sees are superimposed on an anthropogenic trend.
#19You argued that the carbon doubters were wrong because they hadn't been published in peer-reviewed journals:
"And of those few who dispute it, you find that they do so in the popular press and do not publish in the scientific literature."
Now it turns out those supporting your views also haven't been published in peer-reviewed journals. So that argument you had proposed, has been disposed of.
Your other principal argument was that only a few scientists disputed man-made CO2 as the cause of global warming, and that "we should trust the majority of scientists." However, this week we see a report stating that "Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory." So both of these arguments appear to be incorrect.
#20"Now it turns out those supporting your views also haven’t been published in peer-reviewed journals."
They have. To whom are you referring? James Annan? I linked to his blog because it is a good, less technical discussion of his research. He has published extensively.
The “Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory” story is more noise and nonsense. See below.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/1/12556/89102
http://scienceblogs.com/strangerfruit/2007/08/oreskes_responds_to_schulte.php
#21"They have."
I'm not saying they haven't been published at all. I'm saying that, per my post #15, quoting scientist David Evans, "Boris is correct—but wrong in the larger sense, because he should also note that there are no papers on observational evidence that carbon emissions *do* cause global warming."
The two links you provide on Schulte's article, “Less Than Half of all Published Scientists Endorse Global Warming Theory," appear to be inconclusive. The author of the first link admits that he hasn't even read the Schulte article:
I have not actually seen a copy of this new paper....
The second one quotes Oreskes, the author of a previous paper, correctly stating that the work by Schulte doesn't contradict her previous findings. But she offers no contradictions to Schulte's key findings, that less than half of papers published _since_ Oreskes' paper - that is, since 2004 - endorse a view consistent with those of the carbon blamers.
Today we have a new analysis by Avery and Singer, again backing up the view that man-made C02 is not responsible for global warming:
WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new analysis of peer-reviewed literature reveals that more than 500 scientists have published evidence refuting at least one element of current man-made global warming scares. More than 300 of the scientists found evidence that 1) a natural moderate 1,500-year climate cycle has produced more than a dozen global warmings similar to ours since the last Ice Age and/or that 2) our Modern Warming is linked strongly to variations in the sun's irradiance. "This data and the list of scientists make a mockery of recent claims that a scientific consensus blames humans as the primary cause of global temperature increases since 1850," said Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Dennis Avery.
Other researchers found evidence that 3) sea levels are failing to rise importantly; 4) that our storms and droughts are becoming fewer and milder with this warming as they did during previous global warmings; 5) that human deaths will be reduced with warming because cold kills twice as many people as heat; and 6) that corals, trees, birds, mammals, and butterflies are adapting well to the routine reality of changing climate.
Despite being published in such journals such as Science, Nature and Geophysical Review Letters, these scientists have gotten little media attention. "Not all of these researchers would describe themselves as global warming skeptics," said Avery, "but the evidence in their studies is there for all to see."
The names were compiled by Avery and climate physicist S. Fred Singer, the co-authors of the new book Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, mainly from the peer-reviewed studies cited in their book. The researchers' specialties include tree rings, sea levels, stalagmites, lichens, pollen, plankton, insects, public health, Chinese history and astrophysics.
"We have had a Greenhouse Theory with no evidence to support it-except a moderate warming turned into a scare by computer models whose results have never been verified with real-world events," said co-author Singer. "On the other hand, we have compelling evidence of a real-world climate cycle averaging 1470 years (plus or minus 500) running through the last million years of history. The climate cycle has above all been moderate, and the trees, bears, birds, and humans have quietly adapted.
You have argued that those who believe that man-made C02 doesn't cause global warming, have not published evidence to that effect in peer-reviewed journals. However, per Evans, those who argue that man-made C02 does cause global warming, also have not published evidence to support their view on man-made C02, in peer-reviewed journals.
You have also argued that a consensus of scientists supports the "carbon blamer" view. However, per the Schulte article, and the Avery/Singer article, it appears that there is no such consensus.
Instead of reading op-eds by think tanks and lone scientists who offer no proof, you might want to check out what the world's leading scientific bodies have to say about global warming and man made CO2.
Let us know what you find out.