I got a chuckle out of another bold claim of the 2007 Inhofe report:
Background: Only 52 Scientists Participated in UN IPCC Summary
Well, there you go. Our 400 beats their 52, so there's nothing more to say.
Let's move on to our next dissenting climate scientist, Dr. John Maunder, past president of the Commission for Climatology (World Meteorological Organization, United Nations).
Dr. Maunder makes two points in his response to the Senate committee.
It is not always true that the climate we have now (wherever we live) is the best one... some people (and animals and crops) may prefer it to be wetter, drier, colder, or warmer. Climatic variations and climatic changes from WHATEVER cause (i.e. human induced or natural) clearly create risks, but also provide real opportunities. [Punctuation and capitalization from the Senate report]
Well, I'll give my opinion on this part quickly, since it doesn't argue one way or the other on the causes of climate change. Clearly Dr. Maunder is correct in predicting that some regions of the globe will benefit from climate change. But the real issue, in my mind, is the possibility of disruption and upheaval as masses of people find it necessary to move because their regions become impossible to live in.
Second point:
Leading scientists, including some senior IPCC representatives, acknowledge that today's computer models cannot predict climate. Consistent with this, and despite computer projections of temperature rises, there has been no net global warming since 1998. [From a letter signed by Maunder and others.]
I've come across this "no net global warning since 1998" argument before, and it has proved to be an artifact of selecting a shorter segment of data from a larger chart, and claiming that it proves the opposite of what the chart says.
But Dr. Maunder has made stronger statements since 2007, and he is of the opinion that natural cycles (apart from human influence) are in charge. One of the things that bothers me about his way of speaking of this matter is the way he seems to separate human influences from "nature," as though humans (and their domestic animals) are not really part of nature.
In any case, climate scientists are well aware of the effects of sunspots and variations in the Earth's orbit and tilt relative to the sun, and include them in their calculations. As I have mentioned, we are currently in a part of the natural cycle in which we should be cooling. And yet, we are not cooling, we are warming. If your "natural" explanations predict cooling, you're missing something.
A website I recommend is Open Source Systems, Science, Solutions. The climate change deniers have some tricks up their sleeves, and OSS explains what is wrong with their arguments.
