List cites a comment to a media article and there's also a blog comment
He has a profile page here: http://www.atheistnexus.org/profile/ChrisSchoneveld
And a long message/letter:
Arguments Condensed
- Climate's changed before
- It's uncertain
Quotes:
- "There has never been a UN-organized conference on climate change where skeptics were invited for the sake of balance to present their case"
- "As long as the causes of the many climate changes throughout the Earth's history are not well understood, one cannot unequivocally separate natural causes from possibly manmade ones."
- "Who are the geologists that the IPCC is relying on? Is the IPCC at all concerned about the frequency and recurrence of ice ages? Who are the astronomers that advise the IPCC on other cause of possible climate change (sun spots or earth’s elliptical orbit, tilt and wobble of its axis) so as to ascertain that we are not just experiencing a normal trend related to interglacial warming or variation in solar radiation?"
I find Schoenfeld's rhetorical questions rather unreasonable. IPCC authors are appointed by member countries based on academic standing. When IPCC drafts are open for review, many climate skeptics have submitted their comments - sometimes to the point of exhaustion - and all comments have to be considered.
ReplyDeletePoint 2 is a bald appeal to ignorance: as long as we don't know everything, does that mean we know nothing? No, it doesn't. The "fingerprint" papers address how we really do know humans are affecting the climate, for instance.
Point 3 is just rhetorical bluster. There are plenty of paleo and astro-climate contributions incorporated in the IPCC reports. The assessments went over all those areas: sunspots, glacial cycles and the lot. Besides, modern climatology already embraces Milancovitch theory, and it's a pretty poor climatologist who would suggest that those millenial scale cycles are of any use in accounting for decadal scale changes such as we've seen in the industrial era.
Sorry I misspelled Schoneveld.
ReplyDelete