The QBO

An advertisement for Al Gore’s bipartisan education campaign to train 1,000 people to give a version of his slide show on global warming contains the following quote: “Most scientists believe carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap the sun's heat in the atmosphere leading to stronger storms and rising sea levels that could swamp low-lying islands by 2100.”

Now, Michael Crichton makes the excellent point that science is not a democratic process. That is, even if Gore's claim that “Most scientists believe carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere leading to stronger storms and rising sea levels that could swamp low-lying islands by 2100” were to be true, that does not make it true.

However, I doubt that claim. I assert that only a minority of scientists believe the claim above. I think the advertisement writer has incorrectly quoted Gore. A probably correct claim that Gore might have made is that “Most scientists believe carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere.”

But I have to ask, “Why should scientists who are not climatologists even get a vote in this climate debate?” Scientists studying a multitude of topics (e.g., medicine, engineering, astronomy, physics, even biology) really don’t have any more specific knowledge of climate change than you or I do. It is really a small group of atmospheric scientists who have specialized in climatology who actually have enough knowledge to make educated guesses about storm intensity and sea level. In fact, atmospheric scientists who have specialized in other topics, such as meteorology, weather forecasting, El Nino, the quasi-biennial oscillation (the QBO), katabatic winds, etc. also don’t have much more detailed knowledge of climate change than you or I do.

Gore should be quoting only the climatologists who are actively trying to solve this puzzle of climate change. He also should be asking them, "Can mankind do anything to stop global warming if it is happening?" I have read that even following the Kyoto Protocol can only slow global warming by a few years in 2100. So I cannot prove it, but I suspect that the answer to my last question is, "Not much."