McCain has right take on environment

[scientists worldwide] 'are well above 95 percent confident that natural variability does not explain the warming we are seeing.' - Climate Scientest Drew Shindell at the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearings

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Friday, November 19, 2004

McCain has right take on environment STANLEY CROUCH SYNDICATED COLUMNIST

John McCain is one of those rare politicians who put the interest of the country first, even if it means being in opposition to their party. He is not one of those Republicans who believe that protecting the environment is bad for business and is, therefore, bad policy. In that respect, the Arizona senator is a man of the moment.

This was evident when he chaired a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C. McCain took testimony from highly respected scientists who appeared one after another with more bad news about global warming.

The culprits were called by their names. They were automobile exhaust and smokestack emissions. Both help create the infamous greenhouse effect, which, the most recent findings show, is making its impact felt in the polar regions where the glaciers and ice sheets are melting.

One of the most dramatic speakers was Drew Shindell, an expert on climate, who said that without changes in human behavior, we can look forward to the dry areas of the world becoming drier, while the northern regions suffer increasingly heavy rainfalls and sea levels rise due to those melting ice sheets and glaciers.

With contempt, McCain referred to a report from the George Marshall Institute that dismissed such findings as poppycock. Shindell, whom McCain referred to as 'one of the 50 most respected scientists in the world,' was asked if the Marshall Institute was caught up in its own hot air. Shindell said, essentially, that it was.

Other respected scientists who testified before the committee supported this. All of them made it clear that they are using the most accurate data and the best measuring tools available, as are the scientists outside the United States who are equally alarmed by what they are seeing.

The point was made that those who dismiss global warming should bring their research before an international body if they think the grim findings can be knocked down. That'll be the day.

The rest of this article is at:

No offense. I'd certainly take his publication record over mine, and he certainly seems perfectly serious and competent, but how did Shindell make McCain's 'top 50 scientists' list? I hadn't heard of him before just now.

As a matter of fact, who keeps it? This ain't the NCAA.

As politicians go I like McCain, but this turn of phrase bothers me quite a lot.

If you use the new search engine you will get lots of hits for Drew Shindell. He seems to be a mate of Mann. http://scholar.google.com/

But McCain is a politician fighting the cause of global warming. Just as you would expect your lawyer to put forward the best case for you, so McCain has to put forward the best case against AGW. If Shindell's name appears at 49 on a list of 100 scientists against global warming, then putting him in the top fifty is justified on moral grounds, even if it is not entirely ethically correct!

Cheers, Alastair.

What international body would that be?

He is among the top 50 scientists selected by a magazine.

NASA Climatologists Named in Scientific American Top 50 Scientists

For the first time NASA researchers have been awarded the Scientific American Top 50 Scientist Award. Climatologists Dr. Drew Shindell and Dr. Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), New York, received the award given by Scientific American magazine.

The Scientific American 50 is a prestigious annual list, published in the December edition, recognizing outstanding acts of leadership in science and technology from the past year. Shindell and Schmidt were named Research Leaders in the Environmental Studies for seeking clues in the global warming category.

The scientists were selected by the magazine's Board of Editors with the help of distinguished outside advisors. The list also recognizes research, business and policy leaders in various technological categories including Agriculture, Chemicals and Materials, Climate, Communications, Computing, Energy, Environment, and Medical Treatments.

Shindell is an atmospheric physicist who investigates climate change and atmospheric chemistry at GISS. He is also a lecturer in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He received a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in physics from State University of New York at Stony Brook. After several years of field research in the Arctic and Antarctic, he received the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Service Medal in 1994.

Shindell has authored more than 50 papers during the past decade. He has participated in numerous international assessments and public outreach activities, including consulting for the American Museum of Natural History.

Schmidt is a computer climate modeler who works on developing large-scale models of the atmosphere-ocean climate system. He has worked on understanding climate variability in the past, going back as far as 55 million years and forward to possible future climates.

Schmidt received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oxford University in England and his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from University College London. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University, Montreal until 1996. In 1996 he was awarded a Climate and Global Change Fellowship by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which marked the start of his work at GISS.

Schmidt has more than 30 papers in scientific literature. He is involved in public outreach, most recently at the College de France in Paris, and among high school students in New York, two of whom he mentored to the finals of the Intel International Science competition.

No, but he knows to ASK the experts, not the right-wing, pro-industry front

McCain graduated eighth from the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy. And you consider him a knowledgeable expert on 'global warming'? The last time he cracked a textbook was probably half a century ago!

WDA

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Don't you realise that illegal aliens are caused by climate change?

(Everyone is saying Americans are stupid. )

Can't you see that?

Cheers, Alastair.

Scientific American.

Scientific American is a journal printed by an international science body.

P.S. James. Jealousy will get you nowhere. You already have a prize anyway. The Boob prize for worlds most ignorant asshole. .

NASA

NASA is a well recognised leader in scientific inquiry of all types. They publish reams of scientific findings and even have programs to promote their new discoveries to the business community. Much of climate science research is under their geis as the provider of spaceborn instrumentation.

P.S. James. Jealousy will get you nowhere. You already have a prize anyway. The Boob prize for worlds most ignorant asshole. .

Yes, John McCain _is_ an honest man. Completely unfit.