The Ongoing Climate Denialist Lies Repository [Archive]

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 04:22 AM

I see a need to create a repository of all the lies that are promulgated on the Internet. When they are all catalaogued together in one place, it should be simple to see just how poor the case against AGW is.

The only problem I see is trying to keep up with all the misrepresentations and poor science that are being produced.

Case 1. Jones lied about the Swedish temperature data being restricted from general release.

From Wattsupwiththat.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/05/swedes-call-out-jones-on-data-availability/

Climate scientist delivers false statement in parliament enquiry
It has come to our attention, that last Monday (March 1), Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/01/leaked-emails-climate-jones-chinese) (CRU), in a hearing (http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=5979) with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/science_technology.cfm) made a statement in regards to the alleged non-availability for disclosure of Swedish climate data.
Dr. Jones asserted that the weather services of several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland, had refused to allow their data to be released, to explain his reluctance to comply with Freedom of Information (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/freedomofinformation) requests.
This statement is false and misleading in regards to the Swedish data.
All Swedish climate data are available in the public domain. As is demonstrated in the attached correspondence between SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute), the UK Met Office and Dr. Jones (the last correspondence dated yesterday March 4), this has been clearly explained to Dr. Jones. What is also clear is that SMHI is reluctant to be connected to data that has undergone “processing” by the East Anglia research unit.
STOCKHOLM INITIATIVE
Göran Ahlgren, secretary general
Kungsgatan 82
12 27 Stockholm, Sweden

The SI is a Swedish 'climate change' denialist organisation.

The truth

http://maxandersson.blogspot.com/2010/03/climate-sceptics-are-wrong-about-phil.html

This press-release have gained considerable (http://climateaudit.org/2010/03/05/phil-jones-called-out-by-swedes-on-data-availability/) attention (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/05/swedes-call-out-jones-on-data-availability/) on climate denier (http://www.theclimatescam.se/2010/03/06/phil-jones-och-smhis-temperaturdata/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheClimateScamSE+%28The+Clima te+Scam+SE%29) blogs but contains many factual errors. To begin with swedish data is not in the public domain. SMHI have recently made some data available on the internet for non commercial use, but under the explicit condition that the recipient is not allowed to disclose the data.

The license agreement is very easy to find, and if you are able to read swedish the license agreement can be read here (http://data.smhi.se/met/climate/time_series/html/essential20.html). Paragraphs §3.2 and 4.1 are the relevant ones and here's a rough translation of §4.14.1 The Licensee does not own the right på disclose, send on, link to or in any other way spread the contents of the data and/or products that has been recieved in accordance with this agreement to a third part.This is not public domain.

.....

Another strange thing in the press-release is that the Stocholm Initiative is complaing about Phil Jones on March 1 not having read a letter from SMHI that wasn't even sent until three days later on March 4. I do believe that is a bit much to ask.

In that letter, which the SMHI sent after the hearings, they decided to make an exception and give the CRU permission to publish the data-set.

So in summary: The Stockholm Initiative accused Phil Jones of lying about the policy of SMHI, but the statement was actually true. And three days later the SMHI changed their minds for the better.

But the icing on this cake can be found in the transcript (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmsctech/uc387-i/uc38702.htm) of the hearing in the british parliament. It turns out the statement that the climate sceptis accused of being a lie was not even made by Phil Jones but by professor Edward Acton, Vice-Chancellor of the University of East Anglia. It is still true, of course.

Jones didn't say most of what was attributed to him. The SMHI changed their minds on the agreement after what Acton said publicly.

If anyone wants to add to this thread, please do. It would be nice to get good collection going in the one place.

Cosmic Roy

8th March 2010, 05:01 AM

This is a good idea, a_unique_person.

An informative and well-produced resource is the video series 'Climate Denial Crock of the Week', available from greenman3610's channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610) on YouTube.

blutoski

8th March 2010, 09:09 AM

To some extent, realclimate does this. They're the climatology equivalent of talkorigins from what I can tell.

But it has the same complaint from agw dissidents that talkorigins has with creationists: poisoning the well. The critics say that experts are too invested or have conflicts of interest, and so a site run by actual experts is unreliable.

I'm not sure that a new site run by amateurs would be able to provide accurate and complete information.

BobK

8th March 2010, 09:48 AM

bobdroege7

8th March 2010, 10:07 AM

Good idea AUP. But, what the heck is a climate denialist? I even looked in Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/denialist) hoping to gain some insight.

Whoever they are, why don't we just bury them in a blizzard of things caused by global warming. (http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm)

Here is the disclaimer from one of things caused by global warming.

Disclaimer: We accept no responsibility for accuracy and completeness for any information of press releases or blogs published on this site as they are submitted directly by different companies/individuals/third parties. We recommend to directly contact the poster through the contact information published on the news release NOT PressMediaWire.com. Please do not contact PressMediaWire.com. We will be unable to assist you with your inquiry. PressMediaWire.com disclaims any content contained in these releases.

Blogging something doesn't make it accurate, true, reliable, informative or prove anything.

ServiceSoon

8th March 2010, 10:10 AM

lomiller

8th March 2010, 10:10 AM

Good idea AUP. But, what the heck is a climate denialist?

It's a variation on denier, someone who practices a specific type of woo where no evidence is ever sufficient. Since they often make no positive claims of their they generally can’t be debunked in the same way typical woo is handled. They also have a propensity to style themselves as “the real skeptics” while claiming broad areas of science are “groupthink” or outright conspiracy.

Some of the classic examples are holocaust deniers who claim the holocaust never happened, AIDS deniers who claim AIDS isn’t caused by the HIV virus. Less obvious perhaps are the 9/11 truthers who keep insisting “we don’t have the real story of 9/11/” and moon landing hoaxers who remain “skeptical” man ever walked on the moon.

blutoski

8th March 2010, 01:04 PM

It's a variation on denier, someone who practices a specific type of woo where no evidence is ever sufficient. Since they often make no positive claims of their they generally can’t be debunked in the same way typical woo is handled. They also have a propensity to style themselves as “the real skeptics” while claiming broad areas of science are “groupthink” or outright conspiracy.

Some of the classic examples are holocaust deniers who claim the holocaust never happened, AIDS deniers who claim AIDS isn’t caused by the HIV virus. Less obvious perhaps are the 9/11 truthers who keep insisting “we don’t have the real story of 9/11/” and moon landing hoaxers who remain “skeptical” man ever walked on the moon.

It's also a term that's vulerable to goalpost-moving, as there is quite a range of claims in the AGW dissidence camp. Everthing from "there is no such thing as the greenhouse effect," to "I think the predictions for temperature increase by 2100 is a little bit to conservative," to "Al Gore is a lizard."

Generally, though, I think the suggestion is to use the experession 'AGW dissident' to tone down the rhetoric, and to make it clear that we are willing to hear what this dissident's dispute with the AGW model is.

TraneWreck

8th March 2010, 01:15 PM

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 01:38 PM

That might be because it's a word AGW proponents created to assassinate opposition's character.

Pure adhom. It's shameful and a disservice to members of the Jewish community.

The term is further called into question by the number of AGW proponents calling AGW skeptics "traitors" or calling for their imprisonment. It's pretty weird if you ask me.

Anyone engaging in a serious discussion should probably refrain from using the term. It's pretty clear people using it have nothing substantial to add to the discussion. They simply want to engage anti-AGW fanatics in adhom exchanges. It's completely counter productive. If this forum has digressed to that level I'll take the discussion eleswhere.

That being said this thread does have some potential. A repository of known misrepresentations or outright lies would be beneficial to those of us looking for answers.

blutoski

8th March 2010, 01:53 PM

Pure adhom. It's shameful and a disservice to members of the Jewish community.

Oh, please. Way to Godwin.

Skeptics weren't chaining themselves naked to laboratories asking their colleagues to stop using terms like HIV-deniers or evolution-deniers.

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 02:01 PM

This is the place I always go when I hear some new Denier argument. I've always found what I needed. They have a good log of past articles and everything is produced by working scientists who cite sources.

http://www.realclimate.org/

This might help your endeavor.

I checked out this site. The first article I read on the IOP statements was still full of this "denier"-"denialist" BS. I'm not going to write off the entire site because of it, but I'm skeptical of its intent.

I'd be equally skeptical of an anti-AGW site that refers to AGW proponents as "clansmen" or part of the "AGW Gustapo".

I'm sorry but anyone engaging in stuff like this has let themselves become clouded by the infighting and bickering. Not a reliable source.

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 02:21 PM

Oh, please. Way to Godwin.

Skeptics weren't chaining themselves naked to laboratories asking their colleagues to stop using terms like HIV-deniers or evolution-deniers.

No you just "Godwin'd". There's no good reason to use the term. I honestly don't believe the AGW skeptics "deny" AGW.

Play ignorant, see how far that gets you. It's being used as term of contempt. Don't try to play the Godwin card with me. The term "denier" has very specific connotations.

I didn't think anything of the term until very recently. I didn't really care until I started seeing exactly who uses it and how. It's subtle and I don't think everyone uses it in a derogatory manner, but that doesn't change the fact.

TraneWreck

8th March 2010, 02:31 PM

I honestly don't believe the AGW skeptics "deny" AGW.

"Man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

-Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 03:21 PM

I checked out this site. The first article I read on the IOP statements was still full of this "denier"-"denialist" BS. I'm not going to write off the entire site because of it, but I'm skeptical of its intent.

I'd be equally skeptical of an anti-AGW site that refers to AGW proponents as "clansmen" or part of the "AGW Gustapo".

I'm sorry but anyone engaging in stuff like this has let themselves become clouded by the infighting and bickering. Not a reliable source.

They deny there is Anthropogenic Global Warming. It's not that hard to understand, and it's no different to people who deny there is evolution, or aids is caused by a retro-virus. That there are people who deny the Holocaust is completely irrelevent to using the term 'deny'. That's just what they do. They deny something for which there is sufficient evidence to believe it is true.

I have a simple test for 'deniers'. Do they believe in arguments that are so bad that it is not possible to accept them. For example, the Gerlich & Tscuechner paper that denies the existence of the Greenhouse effect. There are several such papers that are continually refferred to, all of the them utter nonsense. If you are prepared to prefer to believe such nonsense, rather than the case for AGW, then you are a 'denier'.

blutoski

8th March 2010, 03:31 PM

No you just "Godwin'd".

?

There's no good reason to use the term.

Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade.

I honestly don't believe the AGW skeptics "deny" AGW.

That would explain the difference of opinion.

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 03:43 PM

"Man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

-Senator Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), Chair of the Senate Committee on the Environment

That would be my response to an alarmist. I don't know what the context of the above is, I'm just saying it isn't entirely untrue.

That's the problem with fanatics isn't it? They force us into taking an extreme stance. AGW isn't a "hoax". The effect of sustained emissions of CO2 have contributed the warming of the Earth in recents years.

The problem is threads like this create these chasms. "Denialist lies"? Is it really as simple as people making things up to suit their beliefs? Or is it perhaps that the science is inexact and open to interpretation? I'm not saying scientists don't lie, but it's much easier to be less critical or over emphasize certain things. There is a difference.

blutoski

8th March 2010, 04:15 PM

That would be my response to an alarmist. I don't know what the context of the above is, I'm just saying it isn't entirely untrue.

The context is that it's a US Senator proposing to round up and arrest AGW proponents, as he is convinced they are criminals perpetrating a hoax to defraud the US taxpayer for personal gain.

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 04:17 PM

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 04:22 PM

Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade.

Then you do that. Just don't expect to be taken seriously.
It's obvious your focus is on labeling things instead of discussing the scientific merit of certain studies and models. It's just as easy to stop, but it's obvious by your defense of it you take satisfaction in continuing the animosity. That's the usual tactic taken by people applying slurs to hide their inadequacies. Not you of course, but other people.

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 04:27 PM

The context is that it's a US Senator proposing to round up and arrest AGW proponents, as he is convinced they are criminals perpetrating a hoax to defraud the US taxpayer for personal gain.

Oh. Well like I say I don't agree with "labels", but clinical diagnosis like "bat **** crazy" might apply in certain circumstances. Like this.

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 04:35 PM

It's talking about the politics of the CRU matter. Politics is what it is, and it is unfortunate that science has been dragged down into the political gutter. They do many excellent articles on the science of AGW.

Well I still have it book marked. It's not a complete write off.

It is unfortunate the science has been dragged into the political gutter. This shouldn't be a partisan matter.

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 04:43 PM

Oh. Well like I say I don't agree with "labels", but clinical diagnosis like "bat **** crazy" might apply in certain circumstances. Like this.

A lot of people take him seriously. Marc Morano is his right hand man, or, more probably, the power behind the throne when it comes to global warming, and he is a hero for many of the denialists out there.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=marc+morano

inhofe himself http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/02/23/climategate-minority-report/

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 04:59 PM

They deny there is Anthropogenic Global Warming. It's not that hard to understand, and it's no different to people who deny there is evolution, or aids is caused by a retro-virus. That there are people who deny the Holocaust is completely irrelevent to using the term 'deny'. That's just what they do. They deny something for which there is sufficient evidence to believe it is true.

I have a simple test for 'deniers'. Do they believe in arguments that are so bad that it is not possible to accept them. For example, the Gerlich & Tscuechner paper that denies the existence of the Greenhouse effect. There are several such papers that are continually refferred to, all of the them utter nonsense. If you are prepared to prefer to believe such nonsense, rather than the case for AGW, then you are a 'denier'.

Why not avoid the term all together and avoid the appearance of impropriety? It's too easy to resort to the name calling. I'm a poopy head and you're a doofus. Neener neener. :p

I'd like to know who the liars are? I'd like to see proof of the lies. Lies, as in falsehoods, deliberately misleading statements despite knowledge to the contrary. The only one I've seen so far is the one Jones admitted to with the tree ring data.

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 05:07 PM

Why not avoid the term all together and avoid the appearance of impropriety? It's too easy to resort to the name calling. I'm a poopy head and you're a doofus. Neener neener. :p

I'd like to know who the liars are? I'd like to see proof of the lies. Lies, as in falsehoods, deliberately misleading statements despite knowledge to the contrary. The only one I've seen so far is the one Jones admitted to with the tree ring data.

The opening post has a falsehood.

Jones hasn't 'admitted' to anything to do with tree ring data. They published a paper on the problem with proxies in Nature weeks before they created that graph. They removed data that was at odds with the measured temperature.

Furcifer

8th March 2010, 05:29 PM

The opening post has a falsehood.

Jones hasn't 'admitted' to anything to do with tree ring data. They published a paper on the problem with proxies in Nature weeks before they created that graph. They removed data that was at odds with the measured temperature.

It was or wasn't cherry picking? What other data was discarded?

A.A. Alfie

8th March 2010, 06:54 PM

mhaze

8th March 2010, 07:08 PM

mhaze

8th March 2010, 07:11 PM

Oh. Well like I say I don't agree with "labels", but clinical diagnosis like "bat **** crazy" might apply in certain circumstances. Like this.Not if there was evidence of knowingly using fraudulent data to get 10M of government grant money. That's jail time.

I'm not saying there was, but there is such a possibility.

Omitting this part allows Warmers to present Inhofe's statements and positions as crazy. But this is disinformation, and therefore the content of this thread, to that extent at the minimum, is political posturing.

A.A. Alfie

8th March 2010, 07:13 PM

Only 10m?

ideogram

8th March 2010, 07:15 PM

What are you doing?

A.A. Alfie

8th March 2010, 07:17 PM

What are you doing?

ffs, who?

ideogram

8th March 2010, 07:19 PM

mhaze and Alfie, how are your recent posts relevant to this thread?

Safe-Keeper

8th March 2010, 07:24 PM

I see a need to create a repository of all the lies that are promulgated on the Internet. When they are all catalaogued together in one place, it should be simple to see just how poor the case against AGW is.It's been tried - several repositories listing and addressing AGW sceptic arguments exist already. Every single one of them is disregarded as being "in on it" or whatever.

Oh, and the most recent exchange in this thread looks like this to me:This user is on your Ignore List.

This user is on your Ignore List.

This user is on your Ignore List.

This user is on your Ignore List.

What are you doing?

This user is on your Ignore List.

mhaze and Alfie, how are your recent posts relevant to this thread?
Just a suggestion;).

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 07:33 PM

....this is just priceless...

The published a paper in Nature on the problems with proxies. Since the 1960's, the proxies were not tracking temperature as well as they had prior to that. That is the nature of bleeding edge science, dealing with the difficult. You may as well laugh at the phsyicists who can't sort out string theory yet.

A.A. Alfie

8th March 2010, 07:38 PM

It's been tried - several repositories listing and addressing AGW sceptic arguments exist already. Every single one of them is disregarded as being "in on it" or whatever.

Oh, and the most recent exchange in this thread looks like this to me:Just a suggestion;).

Might as well just stick your fingers in your ear and loudly chant lalalalalalalala.

I think that falls in under the groupthink theory too: Under consensus somewhere. :)

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 07:39 PM

Ooh goodie!

Another reference list for groupthinkers.

While your at it AUP - presuming you want to be fair and unbiased - could you put together a list of alarmist predictions, lies, exaggerations etc so the truth might actually be seen.

Or are all 'warmers' able to wear virgin white?

The opening post seems to indicate it's the wattsists who are groupthinkers. They unquestioningly accept a denialists lie, when they evidence indicates exactly the opposite of what was claimed.

a_unique_person

8th March 2010, 07:42 PM

Ooh goodie!

Another reference list for groupthinkers.

While your at it AUP - presuming you want to be fair and unbiased - could you put together a list of alarmist predictions, lies, exaggerations etc so the truth might actually be seen.

Or are all 'warmers' able to wear virgin white?

For some reason, science for you comes down to personalities. I have listed a lie in the OP. It comes down to evidence.

ideogram

8th March 2010, 07:44 PM

Might as well just stick your fingers in your ear and loudly chant lalalalalalalala.

Well Alfie, when you make so many posts that don't say anything, are you really surprised when people put you on their ignore lists?

A.A. Alfie

8th March 2010, 07:45 PM

The opening post seems to indicate it's the wattsists who are groupthinkers. They unquestioningly accept a denialists lie, when they evidence indicates exactly the opposite of what was claimed.

"Unquestioningly", doubtful
"Evidence", maybe but we want only evidence.
So, will you provide a completely balanced view, remove all the false arguments from the debate for us to see the real truth. Or is this just another bit of warmer porn you're proposing?

Geckko

9th March 2010, 09:11 AM

The published a paper in Nature on the problems with proxies. Since the 1960's, the proxies were not tracking temperature as well as they had prior to that.

But I have yet to have anyone explain to me how the paper's authors know that the proxies did track temperatures in the past?

a_unique_person

9th March 2010, 12:40 PM

"Unquestioningly", doubtful
"Evidence", maybe but we want only evidence.
So, will you provide a completely balanced view, remove all the false arguments from the debate for us to see the real truth. Or is this just another bit of warmer porn you're proposing?

Just read the comments.

a_unique_person

9th March 2010, 12:44 PM

Another lie.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf

Around 1990, NOAA began weeding out more than three-quarters of the climate measuring stations around the world. They may have been working under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It can be shown that they systematically and purposefully, country by country, removed higher-latitude, higher-altitude and rural locations, all of which had a tendency to be cooler.

A lie. Nowhere in that paper do they actually demonstrate any evidence to support that claim. Forget the fact that the whole paper is wrong, climate stations are not 'weeded out', they stop reporting. There is no evidence that any manipulation was deliberately done to change the temperature record. The quote is a lie.

Reality Check

9th March 2010, 01:23 PM

But I have yet to have anyone explain to me how the paper's authors know that the proxies did track temperatures in the past?
Where we have instrumental data it can be used to verify proxy temperatures .
Where we do not have instrumental data then we have to rely on whether different proxies match, e.g. tree rings and ice cores.

But this is getting off topic.

A.A. Alfie

9th March 2010, 06:36 PM

PROFESSOR Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of Queensland University, is Australia’s most quoted reef expert.

In 1999, Hoegh-Guldberg warned that the Great Barrier Reef was under pressure from global warming, and much of it had turned white.
In fact, he later admitted the reef had made a “surprising” recovery.

In 2006, he warned high temperatures meant “between 30 and 40 per cent of coral on Queensland’s great Barrier Reef could die within a month”.
In fact, he later admitted this bleaching had “a minimal impact”.

In 2007, he warned that temperature changes of the kind caused by global warming were again bleaching the reef.
In fact, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network last week (Dec 1999) said there had been no big damage to the reef caused by climate change in the four years since its last report.

mhaze

10th March 2010, 11:57 AM

Only 10m?By no means, I only picked the number 10M as an example of something the average person would thing was serious fraud worthy of jail time.

Groupthink doesn't absolve climate scientists from examination as to whether fraudulent data was used to get federal grants. Groupthink may be existent, but it isn't an affirmative defense. Granted, someone might be blinded by bias to whether they could not see the fraud they were creating, participating in, or profiting from.

And all the money in the bank is mine.:D

mhaze

10th March 2010, 12:14 PM

Another lie.

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/surface_temp.pdf

A lie. Nowhere in that paper do they actually demonstrate any evidence to support that claim. Forget the fact that the whole paper is wrong, climate stations are not 'weeded out', they stop reporting. There is no evidence that any manipulation was deliberately done to change the temperature record. The quote is a lie.

well, now since Russia has complained about this very issue, and Jones/Wang had a pile of made up China data....

Gee, they sort of have a point, don't they?

But I'm sure that we could find at least one or two stations that just stopped reporting, instead of being "weeded out".

a_unique_person

10th March 2010, 12:30 PM

well, now since Russia has complained about this very issue, and Jones/Wang had a pile of made up China data....

Gee, they sort of have a point, don't they?

But I'm sure that we could find at least one or two stations that just stopped reporting, instead of being "weeded out".

"Russia" didn't, some assorted individuals did. They were also wrong. If you think stations have been deliberately dropped, just provide the evidence.

mhaze

10th March 2010, 02:25 PM

"Russia" didn't, some assorted individuals did. They were also wrong. If you think stations have been deliberately dropped, just provide the evidence.They were also wrong?

You seem to know a lot about who is wrong.

varwoche

10th March 2010, 03:18 PM

In fact, the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network last week (Dec 1999) said there had been no big damage to the reef caused by climate change in the four years since its last report. I think the concept of this thread is to document existing lies, not spawn new ones.

Global climate change seriously threatens the immediate future of coral reefs
...
The first major bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef was in 1998; since then there has been major bleaching in 2002 and 2006.
...
To avoid permanent damage to coral reefs and support people in the tropics, it is recommended that the world community tackles global climate change urgently through major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and the development of effective mechanisms to permanently sequester existing CO2
link (http://www.gcrmn.org/pdf/P1%20Status%202009%20Brochure%207th%20draft.pdf)

mhaze

10th March 2010, 03:36 PM

I see a need to create a repository of all the lies that are promulgated on the Internet.......

It's a big job.:clap:

What about the thriving UnderNet?

brantc

11th March 2010, 09:35 AM

mhaze

11th March 2010, 03:40 PM

"Worse, the onslaught seems to be working: some polls in the United States and abroad suggest that it is eroding public confidence in climate science at a time when the fundamental understanding of the climate system, although far from complete, is stronger than ever. Ecologist Paul Ehrlich at Stanford University in California says that his climate colleagues are at a loss about how to counter the attacks."

"Everyone is scared ********, but they don't know what to do," he says.

"Yes, scientists' reputations have taken a hit thanks to headlines about the leaked climate e-mails at the University of East Anglia (UEA), UK, and an acknowledged mistake about the retreat of Himalayan glaciers in a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But these wounds are not necessarily fatal."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7286/full/464141a.html

Tis but a scratch. It's just a flesh wound. 1:26 Monty Python.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4

Brant

I heard they want to call it a draw?

<begin warmer rant chant using warmer parlance>
"It's warming but it's not really warming now but it's really warming and although it's not warming now it's going to warm with a vengence when it starts warming and maybe it's warming now anyway and that's just the start just wait it's going to get really BADDD"
<end warmer rant>

Well, better said here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhnnFCC_-Sc

BadBoy

12th March 2010, 01:12 AM

I heard they want to call it a draw?

<begin warmer rant chant using warmer parlance>
"It's warming but it's not really warming now but it's really warming and although it's not warming now it's going to warm with a vengence when it starts warming and maybe it's warming now anyway and that's just the start just wait it's going to get really BADDD"
<end warmer rant>

Well, better said here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhnnFCC_-Sc
8,700 posts mhaze!, thats an awful lot of noise. Guess that the issue with the internet.

Maybe try to apply a filter to you own output. That way maybe we will only get to see the good stuff.

I think the OP is not a good idea on this forum because you wont get anywhere close to clean thread on this subject. I would think realclimate would do a better job.

a_unique_person

12th March 2010, 03:33 AM

mhaze

12th March 2010, 05:11 AM

8,700 posts mhaze!, thats an awful lot of noise. Guess that the issue with the internet.

Maybe try to apply a filter to you own output. That way maybe we will only get to see the good stuff.

I think the OP is not a good idea on this forum because you wont get anywhere close to clean thread on this subject. I would think realclimate would do a better job.

The small and forgettable movie that you are a director of is only in your mind.

tourmaline

12th March 2010, 05:26 AM

mhaze

12th March 2010, 08:32 AM

It seems like trying to argue against religion with rational thought (deniers vs warmers). No mater how much evidence you through in their face they cling to a liberal science consipacy -- like when medical doctors tell them that cigarets are bad for you and they say that is an elitist viewpiont.

That's essentially correct, and it's quite simple to determine which people who are sort of "pro AGW" are faith driven and which are more or less just leaning in that direction.

The very context of the language shows this. Let me explain.

Only a Believer could create and use a word such as "Denier" and they have. It implies someone that doesn't believe as they do. And each religious faith holds such attitudes regarding those outside of it's faith.

But in the real world, there are many, many religious or semi-religious faith driven systems, including the urban atheist radical environmentalists faith driven system of belief.

Skeptics would look at all of these relatively logically. But the word skeptic isn't the word of choice for Warmers, it is Denier.

He who denies the beliefs of the Warmer.

a_unique_person

15th March 2010, 09:32 PM

That's essentially correct, and it's quite simple to determine which people who are sort of "pro AGW" are faith driven and which are more or less just leaning in that direction.

The very context of the language shows this. Let me explain.

Only a Believer could create and use a word such as "Denier" and they have. It implies someone that doesn't believe as they do. And each religious faith holds such attitudes regarding those outside of it's faith.

But in the real world, there are many, many religious or semi-religious faith driven systems, including the urban atheist radical environmentalists faith driven system of belief.

Skeptics would look at all of these relatively logically. But the word skeptic isn't the word of choice for Warmers, it is Denier.

He who denies the beliefs of the Warmer.

Logically, if CO2 is a GHG and it's concentration in the atmosphere is increasing, then there will be AGW. Or do you deny that?

a_unique_person

15th March 2010, 09:56 PM

The latest lie doing the rounds.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7061162.ece

TWO government advertisements that use nursery rhymes to warn people of the dangers of climate change have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for exaggerating the potential harm.
The adverts, commissioned by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, used the rhymes to suggest that Britain faces an inevitable increase in storms, floods and heat waves unless greenhouse gas emissions are brought under control.
The ASA has ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and has told the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) that they should not be published again.
It has also referred a television commercial to the broadcast regulator, Ofcom, for potentially breaching a prohibition on political advertising.

If you read the judgement,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/13/scienceofclimatechange-climate-change

http://www.scribd.com/doc/28305363/Climate-Change-Adjudication

I see 1 Upheld objection to the ads, and 8 Not Upheld. Sounds like the got it mostly right. Very similar to the case on AIT, where the judgement also said that most of the complaints were wrong.

A.A. Alfie

15th March 2010, 10:27 PM

The latest lie doing the rounds.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7061162.ece

If you read the judgement,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/13/scienceofclimatechange-climate-change

http://www.scribd.com/doc/28305363/Climate-Change-Adjudication

I see 1 Upheld objection to the ads, and 8 Not Upheld. Sounds like the got it mostly right. Very similar to the case on AIT, where the judgement also said that most of the complaints were wrong.

If you read closely you will see the ads have been BANNED.
They must have been Oh so right.

But another great effort to find some silver lining in a cloud full of exaggeration.

Andrew Wiggin

15th March 2010, 10:37 PM

The latest lie doing the rounds.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7061162.ece

If you read the judgement,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/13/scienceofclimatechange-climate-change

http://www.scribd.com/doc/28305363/Climate-Change-Adjudication

I see 1 Upheld objection to the ads, and 8 Not Upheld. Sounds like the got it mostly right. Very similar to the case on AIT, where the judgement also said that most of the complaints were wrong.

Not only was only one of the nine objections upheld, it was upheld only on two out of the five ads. One ninth of two fifths... That's about a 93 percent win for science, falsely claimed as a 100 percent win for the anti-science crowd.

A

a_unique_person

15th March 2010, 10:43 PM

There are five ads. Two have to be modified from their present form. The ads are 90% correct, so only a small piece of content has to be changed. The change only relates to the extent that there will be more extreme weather events.

Action
Press ads (b) and (c) should not appear again in their current form.

Read the judgement, see how many complaints there are, and how many of the complaints are not upheld.

Assessment
2. & 3. Not upheld
.....
4. Not upheld
....
5. Not upheld
......
6. Not upheld
....

7. Not upheld
....

8. Not upheld
.....

9. Upheld

.....

10. Not upheld

Andrew Wiggin

15th March 2010, 10:45 PM

If you read closely you will see the ads have been BANNED.
They must have been Oh so right.

But another great effort to find some silver lining in a cloud full of exaggeration.
Any single sustained objection on any single ad would have been enough to say 'should not be shows again in its current form'. They had nine shots, at each of five ads.

If I let you shoot nine times at each of five targets, and you hit only two of the targets, with one bullet out of the nine you'd shot at it, are you a good marksman? You could have made nine holes in each of of the targets, for 45 hits, but you got two. Better brush up on your shooting, Tex. (See texas sharpshooter fallacy)

A

A.A. Alfie

15th March 2010, 11:18 PM

Er

BANNED

Andrew Wiggin

15th March 2010, 11:41 PM

Still showing three of the ads, including the one that generated the most controversy, in their original unedited forms, and two of the ads in slightly edited forms, only equals a ban in the more fevered imaginations. Of course, I should believe you, because not only did you write it in capital letters, they were bold capital letters. This sort of thing makes me think you didn't even bother to read the decision, and stuck to pre-digested opinions from your favorite pundits.

A

A.A. Alfie

15th March 2010, 11:47 PM

So now they were originally honest too?
Does the fact that they were banned in their previous format not count?
Does it matter that the exaggerations had to be removed?

Sure they are being shown now. It's just that the lies are gone.

But to the OP.
Where exactly have the "deniers lied" here?

a_unique_person

16th March 2010, 12:06 AM

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/26/new-paper-on-surface-temperature-records/

Recent revelations from the Climategate emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually did.
This has inspired climate researchers worldwide to take a hard look at the data proffered by comparing it to the original data and to other data sources. This report compiles some of the initial alarming findings. emails, originating from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia showed how all the data centers, most notably NOAA and NASA, conspired in the manipulation of global temperature records to suggest that temperatures in the 20th century rose faster than, in reality, they actually did.

Besides being alarmist, what do they claim. A conspiracy by whole government agencies, and the WMO. To do what? To alter the temperature record for the globe by deliberately removing readings from the temperature record. A big claim, but where in it do they actually back it up with evidence? Nowhere.

There are facts that also make a mockery of the claims.

* The bodies mentioned don't withhold the data, they rely on the source countries to give them the data.
* Removing the cold thermometers will give you a cooling effect, not a warming effect, since it is the colder areas that are warming more.

Andrew Wiggin

16th March 2010, 12:12 AM

I really don't think you've read the relevant decision here. You're shooting at the wrong barn, and drawing a bullseye around the holes doesn't make it good shooting. It was never a question of honesty. It was much more a question of things like how children would view the ads, what fraction of the audience would be children of an age where they were unable to process the information as anything but 'scary', if the unvarnished truth would be too scary for children, and the additional question of how to show worst-case scenarios. There's a whole continuum of how scary to make the message, and the word from above was that one aspect of the message here was slightly too scary for its target audience, so they were asked to show a message based on less than worst case in terms of violent weather and draught. I do note that the court specifically validated the use of fear-based messages to motivate people into prudent actions.

A

A.A. Alfie

16th March 2010, 12:26 AM

Gee, scaring our kids with propaganda - sounds much better doesn't it?:rolleyes:

Andrew Wiggin

16th March 2010, 12:40 AM

Gee, scaring our kids with propaganda - sounds much better doesn't it?:rolleyes:

Propaganda, apparently, consists of teaching children facts not approved by Alfie. Ok, back on ignore you go for another week or three.

A

A.A. Alfie

16th March 2010, 01:27 AM

Not approved by Alfie? They were banned ffs!

Mikemcc

16th March 2010, 02:31 AM

Er

BANNEDIf that's the extent of your arguement, it's a pretty poor show! :D

Funnily enough I saw one of them on TV just last night! This non-story (and distortion stems from a Sunday Times story by Jonathan Leake. Not only doeshe consistantly slant his stories (as this one shows), but he has managed to get the ST banned from the embargoed story archives at EurekAlert and JAMA. For a supposed science correspondent this is pretty exceptional going.

I wonder which news group owns the most vociforous anti-AGW newspapers and TV stations, The Times Group, The Australian, Fox News? Oh right, all owned by News International, Rupert Murdoch!

A.A. Alfie

16th March 2010, 02:41 AM

Good try
Actually there were some other arguments in there which you clearly didn't view or ignore.

It's really interesting that this is a thread that is supposed to highlight the lies by the "deniers", yet some of you have managed (all on your own I might add) to show just the opposite: that the warmongers have told lies, scared children, used propaganda and exaggerated in these ads.

Having foolishly done same, you now want to deflect this attention by blaming the deniers and lying about them telling lies.

The spin, spin, spin, is hilarious. I am amazed you blokes aren't dizzy. Then again...

a_unique_person

16th March 2010, 03:51 AM

A.A. Alfie

16th March 2010, 04:04 AM

Read the judgement, point out the lie.

Assuming we are on the same page here, the lie has nothing to do with the judgement....the lie is yours.

Is this thread about denier lies?

The answer is "Yes". So, why would you put this item in the thread?

Presumably as evidence of snother "denier lie"?

So how can I show you something that isn't there?

There is no denier lie here, just evidence of more warm monger lies, propaganda and exaggerations. They were caught out and had to change their ads because of these untruths.

The lie is yours, in that there are no denier lies, try as you might to suggest there are.

Hilarious.
Spin, spin, spin.

Cayvmann

16th March 2010, 04:34 AM

It's been tried - several repositories listing and addressing AGW sceptic arguments exist already. Every single one of them is disregarded as being "in on it" or whatever.

Oh, and the most recent exchange in this thread looks like this to me:Just a suggestion;).

Done, and done. Thanks for the handy information.

I wonder why the term denialist worries them so. It's a pretty apt description, and no more offensive than AGW proponent. Or am I missing something?

a_unique_person

16th March 2010, 04:47 AM

The lie is in the Times Headline.

Ed Miliband's adverts banned for overstating climate change

There is no qualification, implying they were all banned. Two were given a slight reprimand.

Because, in a European context, there was a probability of greater than 90% for some events but a probability of greater than 50% for other events and because all statements about future climate conditions were based on modelled predictions, which the IPCC report itself stated still involved uncertainties in the magnitude and timing, as well as regional details, of predicted climate change, we concluded that the claim “Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heatwaves will become more frequent and intense” in ad (b) and the claim “extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense” in ad (c) should have been phrased more tentatively to reflect that.
However, we considered that the imagery of UK flooding in ad (b) and of a drought in ad (c) were not themselves (and particularly not in the context of a nursery rhyme "what if" presentations) exaggerated or misleading

As The Guardian said, "Mildly Rebuked". Nine out of ten objections rejected. Read up on the "Sharpshooter" again.

mhaze

16th March 2010, 05:04 AM

It would appear that the real story here is that Warmers intend and want to use scare style propaganda, and defend it's use, on this forum, elsewheres in court.

It's simply a question of how much propaganda and to what audiences they can get away with.

shadron

16th March 2010, 01:43 PM

This video has the mHaze official rating of "propaganda". He (and others, I see) have been exercising a lot of it lately, it appears.

cp-iB6jwjUc

Furcifer

16th March 2010, 08:55 PM

Done, and done. Thanks for the handy information.

I wonder why the term denialist worries them so. It's a pretty apt description, and no more offensive than AGW proponent. Or am I missing something?

It's an adhom. Actually denialist isn't, it's denier. If you want to refer to the behaviour as denialist, that's fine. The 'denier' term is reserved for the holocaust nutters. It's used by many as a pejorative. Try anti-AGW and pro-AGW it's more accurate. The AGW proponents are just as guilty of being denialists as anyone.

a_unique_person

16th March 2010, 10:28 PM

A.A. Alfie

16th March 2010, 10:35 PM

And the adherents are warm mongers? If that's not good it's up to you.:D

Kwalish Kid

17th March 2010, 05:33 AM

And the adherents are warm mongers? If that's not good it's up to you.:D
Except that there is an obvious asymmetry here. Those who actually believe in AGW tend not to want the Earth to become warmer, at least not so quickly.

Furcifer

17th March 2010, 08:14 AM

It's someone who denies the evidence of science. If that's not good, it's up to you.

Really? So what bit of science do the holocaust 'deniers' overlook?

This is the foolishness of believers, they don't see the whole picture. AGW is not a theory like gravity or even evolution, so please don't present it as one. It's incomplete and until it can be present as a cogent theory many will remain skeptical. You should too.

lomiller

17th March 2010, 10:15 AM

It's an adhom. Actually denialist isn't, it's denier. If you want to refer to the behaviour as denialist, that's fine. The 'denier' term is reserved for the holocaust nutters. It's used by many as a pejorative. Try anti-AGW and pro-AGW it's more accurate. The AGW proponents are just as guilty of being denialists as anyone.

Denier is a more general term for a specific type of pseudo-skepticism. Holocaust denial is one well know example, AIDS denial is another.

As a general rule deniers fancy themselves skeptics and present some very different challenges to their woo that tends to be different then what skeptics normally encounter. Rather then setting out to support some outlandish hypothesis with weak evidence deniers are characterized by their “skepticism” of some well established fact. To this end they raise their bar of acceptance so high it can never be met and attempt the cherry pick niggling factoids in an attempt to claim uncertainty.

Here is a good essay on the nature of denial in general, even though it doesn’t touch climate much you can see the general principles evident in the entire climate debate.

http://www.theness.com/skepticism-and-denial/

lomiller

17th March 2010, 10:23 AM

Really? So what bit of science do the holocaust 'deniers' overlook?

This is the foolishness of believers, they don't see the whole picture. AGW is not a theory like gravity or even evolution, so please don't present it as one. It's incomplete and until it can be present as a cogent theory many will remain skeptical. You should too.

The basics of global warming are deductive conclusions based on established physical laws, much the way E=MC^2 is derived from conservation of momentum. As such it isn’t inference at all so the term “theory” isn’t relevant.

There is inference involved in the quantification of the effect and this certainly does meet and exceed established scientific standards. Keep in mind that the fundamental characteristic of a denier is that you can never meet the standards of evidence for the thing they wish not to believe.

Furcifer

17th March 2010, 11:59 AM

Keep in mind that the fundamental characteristic of a denier is that you can never meet the standards of evidence for the thing they wish not to believe.

Ahh, the crux of the matter. The unwillingness to 'believe'. If that's the definition of 'denier' then call me one proud because I do not 'believe'.

That's the problem with AGW, it requires one to 'believe'.

There's no room for beliefs in science. It mucks up the place. The religion forum is that way ------>

a_unique_person

17th March 2010, 12:14 PM

lomiller

17th March 2010, 12:25 PM

That's the problem with AGW, it requires one to 'believe'.

It requires you to believe the published science. Any person who rejects this requirement can under no circumstances be considered a skeptic.

Your position is perfectly consistent with just about every piece of anti-science woo floating around the internet and could have come out of the mouth of any creationist or UFO nut trying to justify their dismissal of science. I really suggest you read the essay, it really is an excellent discussion of the topic.

Furcifer

17th March 2010, 12:26 PM

Here is a good essay on the nature of denial in general, even though it doesn’t touch climate much you can see the general principles evident in the entire climate debate.

http://www.theness.com/skepticism-and-denial/

This is a very good article. I'd urge you to read it again and consider what's been said by myself and others and really consider if the term 'denier' is appropriate. The author makes it very clear how easy it is to dismiss people as deniers and what to consider before doing so.

lomiller

17th March 2010, 12:51 PM

I'd urge you to read it again and consider what's been said by myself and others and really consider if the term 'denier' is appropriate.

Here is a rundown of the characteristics of deniers. All are strongly present in climate denial.

“Argument from Final Consequences” check

At the heart of all denial is a motivation to deny the specific claim or science, a motivation that has nothing to do with the truth. Often deniers give away their a priori bias against a claim by stating outright the logical fallacy known as the argument from final consequences. In other words, they state that the denied claim is not true because if it were adverse consequences would result.

“Selective use of Evidence” check

For any complex scientific idea or historical event there will be a large amount of relevant evidence to consider in any scientific assessment. With sufficient complexity, almost any desired conclusion can be supported if only a selective subset of the data is considered. Selective use of evidence allows for the presentation of pseudoscholarly articles and books which can seem very compelling.

“Argument by Definition” check

If something cannot be studied experimentally in a lab, by this narrow definition, then it isn’t science. It is only they, however, who have such a limited conception of science. Evolution deniers in this way have actually extended their denial to all historical sciences. We cannot know anything scientifically about the past, they argue, because no one was there to see it and because we can’t reproduce the past in a laboratory.

“Moving Goalposts” check

Of all the characteristics of deniers this is often the most telling. The strategy is simple, always demand more evidence than can currently be provided, whatever that is. If that evidence is available at a later date, then just change the demand to even more evidence (for those readers who are not football fans – they move back the goalpost out of range of the kick). This pattern clearly demonstrates that no amount of evidence will ever satisfy a true denier. A skeptic, on the other hand, should make a reasonable demand for evidence, fitting the nature of the claim, and then stick to that criteria.
Closely related to the moving goalpost, is the goalpost which is set from the beginning out of possible range – by making an unreasonable demand for evidence. When it is argued, therefore, that a given claim lacks a specific type of evidence, it is helpful to ask the question of whether or not it is reasonable to expect that type of evidence.

“Confusing Internal Debate over Details with Negation of the Whole” check

The deniers have no difficulty sifting through the copious amounts of published debate on their chosen topic and finding parts of the theory which have been altered or discarded, or which continue to be debated. They then deliberately confuse debate over such details as evidence that the entire theory is in jeopardy.

“Correlation is not Causation” check

Insufficiently skeptical believers will often commit the logical error of assuming that a correlation between variables equals a specific causal relationship between them (post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy). The problem with this logic is not that correlation does not sometimes result from causation, but it is the simplistic assumption of causation without independent evidence, or a thorough analysis of all possible patterns of causation. It is equally invalid to simplistically dismiss correlation.

“Emerging Skepticism” check

A universal element in the denial literature is the claim that scientists or historians are increasingly coming over to the denier’s point of view.

Piggy

17th March 2010, 12:52 PM

Read the judgement, point out the lie.

You know good and well that Alfie is a vehement defender of his right to post opinions without referring to evidence. He's quite vocal about that.

macdoc

17th March 2010, 01:46 PM

just for the "group think clowns"

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/03/why-we-bother/

BenBurch

17th March 2010, 04:08 PM

And all Deniers see themselves as brave guardians of the truth, standing noble and immovable against the deluded masses.

Its a form of condescending superiority that is never backed up by reality.

A.A. Alfie

17th March 2010, 04:25 PM

And all Deniers see themselves as brave guardians of the truth, standing noble and immovable against the deluded masses.

Its a form of condescending superiority that is never backed up by reality.

http://forums.randi.org/picture.php?albumid=329&pictureid=1976

Methinks he sees his reflection.:D

DogB

17th March 2010, 04:54 PM

Piggy

17th March 2010, 07:02 PM

Man it must be great to be so smart!

Care to back up that bit of smarminess with any of the requested reality?

It's amazing, time after time the claims of the AGW deniers are smacked down like tin ducks in a shooting gallery, and yet we get responses like this.

DogB

17th March 2010, 07:54 PM

Care to back up that bit of smarminess with any of the requested reality?

Back what up? My criticism of Ben’s half arsed psychological diagnosis of all AGW skeptics? Why in dog’s name would I need to?

It's amazing, time after time the claims of the AGW deniers are smacked down like tin ducks in a shooting gallery, and yet we get responses like this.

Let me get this straight, you are criticising my criticism of an insult. OK, whatever floats your boat.

BenBurch

17th March 2010, 09:03 PM

Care to back up that bit of smarminess with any of the requested reality?

It's amazing, time after time the claims of the AGW deniers are smacked down like tin ducks in a shooting gallery, and yet we get responses like this.

You know, I don't HAVE to be smart, I just have to act like a proper skeptic; when some joker (who has no relevant credentials most often) on the Internet tells me 90+% of all scientists on the planet are not only wrong, but are part of some Vast Conspiracy, I realize that the person telling me that is a Crank.

It's really that simple.

Tilting at windmills might make the Crank feel important, but it won't slay any giants, or find the lost Dulcinea.

Andrew Wiggin

17th March 2010, 09:23 PM

Ya'all just need a good reason to engage with the issue. I think I just found you one...

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100316.gif (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1822)

Yep, it's true. Carbon footprint and penis size are inversely related. Mr President man in a cartoon said so...

A

DogB

17th March 2010, 10:42 PM

You know, I don't HAVE to be smart...

Lucky that.

a_unique_person

18th March 2010, 04:04 AM

Lucky that.

It is, because no-one, not even the climate scientists, can be experts in all the disciplines needed to study the whole of AGW.

A.A. Alfie

18th March 2010, 04:07 AM

Gotcha. Too big for anyone to correctly decipher or comprehend.:D

a_unique_person

18th March 2010, 04:55 AM

Gotcha. Too big for anyone to correctly decipher or comprehend.:D

No.

BenBurch

18th March 2010, 05:12 AM

It is, because no-one, not even the climate scientists, can be experts in all the disciplines needed to study the whole of AGW.

"Don Quixote" is an expert in EVERYTHING. At least, he knows more than any of those stuffed-shirt scientists! Who needs to spend a lifetime studying a topic when two or three energy company sponsored blogs and an innate sense of truthiness can show you whats what!?

varwoche

18th March 2010, 02:14 PM

Ahh, the crux of the matter. The unwillingness to 'believe'. If that's the definition of 'denier' then call me one proud because I do not 'believe'.

That's the problem with AGW, it requires one to 'believe'.

There's no room for beliefs in science. It mucks up the place. The religion forum is that way ------>Another tactic used by gw pseudo-skeptics (the term I use instead of denier to avoid semantic quibbling) is to play infantile semantic games, such as latching onto a single word and interpreting it in a self-serving manner.

DogB

18th March 2010, 02:49 PM

"Don Quixote" is an expert in EVERYTHING. At least, he knows more than any of those stuffed-shirt scientists! Who needs to spend a lifetime studying a topic when two or three energy company sponsored blogs and an innate sense of truthiness can show you whats what!?

Ha. I'm not the one tilting at windmills mate!

Piggy

18th March 2010, 04:43 PM

Back what up? My criticism of Ben’s half arsed psychological diagnosis of all AGW skeptics? Why in dog’s name would I need to?

Let me get this straight, you are criticising my criticism of an insult. OK, whatever floats your boat.

My apologies.

I mistook your comment to be aimed at Ben rather than the deniers.

My mistake.

Sorry.

BenBurch

18th March 2010, 05:10 PM

My apologies.

I mistook your comment to be aimed at Ben rather than the deniers.

My mistake.

Sorry.

:seroflmao:

I guess he objected to some truth being injected here.

Too bad. It wasn't an insult, it was and is a good observation of the majority of those who promote an "alternative science."

Homeopaths, Chiropractors, Creation Scientists, Electric Universe Theorists - All believe that they are in a privileged position to see the truth and the rest of us are just deluded sheeple.

They look for real or imagined lacunae and when they come up with one it's always; "See! You don't know everything! Therefore science is WRONG!!!!"

Well, that is an obvious logical fallacy. Except in THEIR particular case, whatever that case is.

DogB

18th March 2010, 05:22 PM

My apologies.

I mistook your comment to be aimed at Ben rather than the deniers.

My mistake.

Sorry.

No mistake, you were right the first time.

DogB

18th March 2010, 05:25 PM

It wasn't an insult, it was and is a good observation of the majority of those who promote an "alternative science."

So skepticism of AGW is now an 'alternative science'?

Yikes, I guess the ‘science is settled’ then.

AlBell

18th March 2010, 06:12 PM

My apologies.

I mistook your comment to be aimed at Ben rather than the deniers.

My mistake.

Sorry.

No mistake, you were right the first time.
Thanks for confirming.

ps. Great sig.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell"

Of course warmists fully believe they are more intelligent, better educated, etc than any skeptic who observes the morass that culminates in IPCC reports and says, "Huh? You must be joking!".

DogB

18th March 2010, 07:12 PM

Thanks for confirming.

I thought I was being clear. Oh well.

ps. Great sig.

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. - Bertrand Russell"

The fact that the human race can occasionally produce a Russell gives me hope for us.

Of course warmists fully believe they are more intelligent, better educated, etc than any skeptic who observes the morass that culminates in IPCC reports and says, "Huh? You must be joking!".

Ah now see you done exactly what Ben did and tarred all 'warmists' with the same brush. There are several mainstream AGWers on JREF who are thoughtful and honest and as a result they are a joy to debate. The fact that they are less vocal than others is sad but perhaps predictable.

:)

a_unique_person

18th March 2010, 07:46 PM

So skepticism of AGW is now an 'alternative science'?

Yikes, I guess the ‘science is settled’ then.

No, but I have yet to see anything convincing come up that makes me think AGW is wrong. Invariably, the evidence is a lie, (see this topic), incompetence, a misrepresentation or hand waving.

DogB

18th March 2010, 08:00 PM

No, but I have yet to see anything convincing come up that makes me think AGW is wrong. Invariably, the evidence is a lie, (see this topic), incompetence, a misrepresentation or hand waving.

See now that's a sensible statement. I disagree with it, but a least it's playing the ball not the man.

Question for you AUP: I assume you agree with the statement that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’? If so, I assume you consider the AGW hypothesis to be the base position and that denial of such position requires the extraordinary evidence?

Piggy

18th March 2010, 08:04 PM

No mistake, you were right the first time.

In that case, my post stands as written.

And, I might add, your response makes very little sense.

Piggy

18th March 2010, 08:06 PM

Of course warmists fully believe they are more intelligent, better educated, etc than any skeptic who observes the morass that culminates in IPCC reports and says, "Huh? You must be joking!".

No, we're just better informed.

Plenty of people look at relativity and quantum mechanics and modern cosmology and say "Huh? You must be joking!" And yet....

BenBurch

18th March 2010, 08:07 PM

Piggy

18th March 2010, 08:11 PM

Question for you AUP: I assume you agree with the statement that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’? If so, I assume you consider the AGW hypothesis to be the base position and that denial of such position requires the extraordinary evidence?

But DogB, it's no longer an extraordinary claim.

Take my long-standing Science Daily challenge and you will see that.

So far, not one single AGW denier has passed the challenge.

I have a brother who's a denier, and when I laid down the challenge, that's when the emails stopped.

As of now, AGW is about as extraordinary as the theory of evolution by natural selection, or the claim that the Nazis set out to exterminate Jews.

Given that AGW is now accepted science, then, yes, a claim that the accepted science is wrong does require some evidence to support it.

You can't simply say "No no no!"

DogB

18th March 2010, 08:35 PM

Post deleted.*

*This post was an simple insult and added nothing to the debate. My apologies.

a_unique_person

18th March 2010, 08:42 PM

See now that's a sensible statement. I disagree with it, but a least it's playing the ball not the man.

Question for you AUP: I assume you agree with the statement that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’? If so, I assume you consider the AGW hypothesis to be the base position and that denial of such position requires the extraordinary evidence?

I'd be happy with ordinary evidence. To date, I haven't seen it. What I have seen for AGW is copious amounts of evidence. So, for me, the base position is now AGW is the only good case I have seen. I feel the same way about evolution, AIDS, vaccination, any other scientific debate you care to mention.

DogB

18th March 2010, 08:52 PM

But DogB, it's no longer an extraordinary claim.

That’s probably a reasonable position to take. I disagree however.

Take my long-standing Science Daily challenge and you will see that.

So far, not one single AGW denier has passed the challenge.

I have a brother who's a denier, and when I laid down the challenge, that's when the emails stopped.

Gee an ill defined challenge to disprove a theory where you get to be the judge – colour me spectacularly unimpressed.

As of now, AGW is about as extraordinary as the theory of evolution by natural selection, or the claim that the Nazis set out to exterminate Jews.

Wow, just wow. You really believe this?

Given that AGW is now accepted science, then, yes, a claim that the accepted science is wrong does require some evidence to support it.

I never said it doesn’t require some evidence. AGW is a good first cut hypothesis. Disproving it requires an alternative theory.

You can't simply say "No no no!"

Sure I can, just watch me.

DogB

18th March 2010, 08:54 PM

I'd be happy with ordinary evidence. To date, I haven't seen it. What I have seen for AGW is copious amounts of evidence. So, for me, the base position is now AGW is the only good case I have seen. I feel the same way about evolution, AIDS, vaccination, any other scientific debate you care to mention.

So you're firmly convinced that a natural fluctuation in the baseline is insufficient explanation?

Piggy

18th March 2010, 08:57 PM

Gee an ill defined challenge to disprove a theory where you get to be the judge – colour me spectacularly unimpressed.

Color you unable to pass a simple challenge to review the Science Daily climate page and find a single study that operates under any premise other than AGW.

If there were actually a scientific controversy, that would be a childishly simply challenge to pass because there would be a vigorous debate in the published science.

But there is no such debate currently, which is why neither you nor any other denier can point to evidence that there is.

All you have is a bunch of cranks throwing stones from the sidelines.

Go ahead -- prove me wrong.

Piggy

18th March 2010, 09:01 PM

Sure I can, just watch me.

Indeed I have.

Just as I have watched the 9/11 Truthers, the creationists, and the Holocaust deniers shout "No no no!"

And that's not an ad-hom. Y'all share the same methodology, which leads to the wrong conclusions for exactly the same reasons. I lump you together not in order to imply some sort of guilt by association, but rather because your methods are identical. It's called GIGO.

DogB

18th March 2010, 09:03 PM

Color you unable to pass a simple challenge to review the Science Daily climate page and find a single study that operates under any premise other than AGW.

If there were actually a scientific controversy, that would be a childishly simply challenge to pass because there would be a vigorous debate in the published science.

But there is no such debate currently, which is why neither you nor any other denier can point to evidence that there is.

All you have is a bunch of cranks throwing stones from the sidelines.

Go ahead -- prove me wrong.

I'll take the challenge if I can pick the judge.

Piggy

18th March 2010, 09:04 PM

I'll take the challenge if I can pick the judge.

Judge?

Just go find the article.

a_unique_person

18th March 2010, 09:05 PM

So you're firmly convinced that a natural fluctuation in the baseline is insufficient explanation?

There is the physical basis for the claim. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it's concentration in the atmosphere is increasing significantly. The long term trends as shown in the observations of ice, crops and permafrost indicate more is happening than just a fluctuation. There are also the 'fingerprints' such as the cooling of the stratosphere that can only happen if the forcing is from greenhouse gases. At a time when there should be cooling, due to a less energetic sun, it's doing the opposite, it's still warming.

You also have to consider the understanding of the climate system is sufficient to break down the changes into their component forcings to a degree that 'fluctuations' can be explained.

DogB

18th March 2010, 09:26 PM

Judge?

Just go find the article.

And if I do would you promise to never bring up this 'challenge' again?

DogB

18th March 2010, 11:20 PM

There is the physical basis for the claim. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it's concentration in the atmosphere is increasing significantly. The long term trends as shown in the observations of ice, crops and permafrost indicate more is happening than just a fluctuation. There are also the 'fingerprints' such as the cooling of the stratosphere that can only happen if the forcing is from greenhouse gases. At a time when there should be cooling, due to a less energetic sun, it's doing the opposite, it's still warming.

You also have to consider the understanding of the climate system is sufficient to break down the changes into their component forcings to a degree that 'fluctuations' can be explained.

Thanks AUP. As I said to Piggy, I accept your position is reasonable.

My position (if you’re interested) is that we understand that the climate fluctuates, that we’ve got evidence of fluctuations an order of magnitude larger and faster than the observed, and that we have only barely begun to understand the processes by which the climate changes – therefore the base position should be a natural fluctuation unless extraordinary evidence indicates otherwise. I remain, for now, unconvinced that the evidence meets that standard.

Piggy

19th March 2010, 04:16 PM

And if I do would you promise to never bring up this 'challenge' again?

If it's no longer a useful challenge, what would be the point?

It would make very little sense to continue to offer a challenge that's been successfully met.

Piggy

19th March 2010, 04:18 PM

My position (if you’re interested) is that we understand that the climate fluctuates, that we’ve got evidence of fluctuations an order of magnitude larger and faster than the observed, and that we have only barely begun to understand the processes by which the climate changes – therefore the base position should be a natural fluctuation unless extraordinary evidence indicates otherwise. I remain, for now, unconvinced that the evidence meets that standard.

And yet we now have sufficient evidence, after decades of study, to eliminate those natural fluctuations as culprits in the currently observed scenario.

Ample evidence has been provided to you of this fact on other threads, and yet you still make this long-debunked claim.

Malerin

19th March 2010, 04:37 PM

The physical basis is every bit as rock solid as gravity or evolution. In some ways it's even better, the GHG properties of CO2 can be explained using known particles, gravity can't. The higgs bosun has still not been observed.

If that was all there was to it, there wouldn't be the issue of 15 years of insignificant global warming (or eight years of global cooling). It would just be a straight slope that could be plotted with precision, right in line with CO2 PPM. Unfortunately, that's not quite what's happened.

Piggy

19th March 2010, 04:46 PM

TraneWreck

19th March 2010, 04:48 PM

BenBurch

19th March 2010, 05:00 PM

Malerin

19th March 2010, 05:07 PM

Why do you think that would be the case?

What on earth (pardon the pun) leads you to believe that a complex, noisy system like climate could behave that way?

The idea is nonsense.

And as has been pointed out endlessly on these threads, you only get a "cooling" trend if you cherry-pick your dates.

It's like hiking up Everest, and when you come to a down-slope on the way to the top, someone says, "Hey, we must have passed the crest... we're doing down now!"

Did you read what I was responding to?

Really? So what bit of science do the holocaust 'deniers' overlook?

This is the foolishness of believers, they don't see the whole picture. AGW is not a theory like gravity or even evolution, so please don't present it as one. It's incomplete and until it can be present as a cogent theory many will remain skeptical. You should too.

The physical basis is every bit as rock solid as gravity or evolution. In some ways it's even better, the GHG properties of CO2 can be explained using known particles, gravity can't. The higgs bosun has still not been observed.

AGW is a bit more than just "the GHG properties of CO2". Or do you think AGW is just the Greenhouse Effect, and of story?

a_unique_person

19th March 2010, 05:42 PM

If that was all there was to it, there wouldn't be the issue of 15 years of insignificant global warming (or eight years of global cooling). It would just be a straight slope that could be plotted with precision, right in line with CO2 PPM. Unfortunately, that's not quite what's happened.

AGW is in the simplest sense just a radiation balance problem, what's going in, what's going out. The physical basis of radiative forcings increasing is well understood, and they operate at that level. As Trenberth said, and was commonly misunderstood when he said it, it is hard to track the energy flows within that system, which is where surface temperature sits.

You aren't going to get a direct correlation between CO2 and surface temperature. But that energy is in the system. IIRC, it's mostly a question of how the oceans deal with it, which is complex. The oceans are currenltly expanding at the upper limit of projections, due to their warming, so I am guessing the energy is being absorbed their for the present.

As for 1995 being the year of interest, that was nothing more than a sneaky move by Lindzen. It has warmed since 1995, but not to a statisically significant extent. It is currently accepted that to get a meaningful trend, you need to look at about 30 years, since the ENSO and other cyclical events are so large that any shorter period of measurement is not going to be reliable since they are large compared to the longterm AGW signal. Since the 1995 is a cherry picked year, expect it to not be raised in a few years, since the current El Nino is raising temperatures again and there will be statistically significant warming.

There have also been numerous posts here of how to cherry pick a short period of time on the existing temperature record and claim no statistically significant warming, when we have the subsequent record on the same graph which clearly shows warming.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/01/uncertainty-noise-and-the-art-of-model-data-comparison/

Malerin

19th March 2010, 06:13 PM

AGW is in the simplest sense just a radiation balance problem, what's going in, what's going out. The physical basis of radiative forcings increasing is well understood, and they operate at that level. As Trenberth said, and was commonly misunderstood when he said it, it is hard to track the energy flows within that system, which is where surface temperature sits.

And to account for all the forcings and natural cycles and the role each plays in climate.

You aren't going to get a direct correlation between CO2 and surface temperature. But that energy is in the system. IIRC, it's mostly a question of how the oceans deal with it, which is complex. The oceans are currenltly expanding at the upper limit of projections, due to their warming, so I am guessing the energy is being absorbed their for the present.

Except the oceans have been cooling for most of the decade:

The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has significantly cooled since 2003. New research suggests global warming trends are not always steady in their effects on ocean temperatures.
...

The recent changes in ocean temperature run deep. A small amount of cooling was detected at the ocean's surface, consistent with global measurements of sea-surface temperature. The maximum amount of cooling was at a depth of about 1,300 feet, but substantial cooling was still observed at 2,500 feet, and the cooling appears to extend deeper.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/sep/HQ_06318_Ocean_Cooling.html

The article was written in 2006. Ocean surface temps have been cooling since 2001:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/to:2010/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/to:2010

As for 1995 being the year of interest, that was nothing more than a sneaky move by Lindzen.

I don't think it was sneaky so much as it was "How far can we push back statisically insignificant warming?" 15 years. OK. Seems kind of strange since we've been pouring CO2 into the air the entire time. Cooling since 2001 seems esp. strange.

It has warmed since 1995, but not to a statisically significant extent. It is currently accepted that to get a meaningful trend, you need to look at about 30 years, since the ENSO and other cyclical events are so large that any shorter period of measurement is not going to be reliable since they are large compared to the longterm AGW signal.

But you can't dare look back more than 30 years:

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:2010

Because the warming comes in at a paltry half a degree over 70 years. Hardly alarming.

Since the 1995 is a cherry picked year, expect it to not be raised in a few years, since the current El Nino is raising temperatures again and there will be statistically significant warming.

We'll see. If we don't see "statistically significant warming" in the next couple years (if the date of statistical insignificance stays at 1995, or even gets moved back), will you be skeptical at all about AGW?

There have also been numerous posts here of how to cherry pick a short period of time on the existing temperature record and claim no statistically significant warming, when we have the subsequent record on the same graph which clearly shows warming.

Sure, you can cherry pick. But warmers also are locked into a fairly narrow range of dates (which, coincidentally, happen to show the most warming). If, for example, we look at the last 100 years, we see less than a degree of warming. So we can't use that time frame.

Even picking a time frame of rapid CO2 increase bothers warmers:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1960/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1960/to:2010

This amounts to about half a degree of warming over 50 years. Hardly catastrophic. Fossil fuels will have run out (or be close to it) before we warm up more than 2 degrees.

TraneWreck

19th March 2010, 06:42 PM

Except the oceans have been cooling for most of the decade:

The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has significantly cooled since 2003. New research suggests global warming trends are not always steady in their effects on ocean temperatures.
...

The recent changes in ocean temperature run deep. A small amount of cooling was detected at the ocean's surface, consistent with global measurements of sea-surface temperature. The maximum amount of cooling was at a depth of about 1,300 feet, but substantial cooling was still observed at 2,500 feet, and the cooling appears to extend deeper.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/sep/HQ_06318_Ocean_Cooling.html

The article was written in 2006. Ocean surface temps have been cooling since 2001:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/to:2010/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/to:2010

Would you please read about this before posting BS from idiot websites?

"The news this week though is that all of that ‘cooling’ was actually due to combination of a faulty pressure reading on a subset of the floats and a switch between differently-biased observing systems (Update: slight change in wording to better reflect the paper). The pressure error meant that the temperatures were being associated with a point higher in the ocean column than they should have been, and this (given that the ocean cools with depth) introduced a spurious cooling trend when compared to earlier data. This error may be fixable in some cases, but for the time being the suspect data has simply been removed from the analysis. The new results don’t show any cooling at all."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/ocean-cooling-not/

At what point do you just give up this ridiculous stance?

Malerin

19th March 2010, 07:45 PM

Would you please read about this before posting BS from idiot websites?

"The news this week though is that all of that ‘cooling’ was actually due to combination of a faulty pressure reading on a subset of the floats and a switch between differently-biased observing systems (Update: slight change in wording to better reflect the paper). The pressure error meant that the temperatures were being associated with a point higher in the ocean column than they should have been, and this (given that the ocean cools with depth) introduced a spurious cooling trend when compared to earlier data. This error may be fixable in some cases, but for the time being the suspect data has simply been removed from the analysis. The new results don’t show any cooling at all."

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/ocean-cooling-not/

At what point do you just give up this ridiculous stance?

In other words: We didn't have accurate measurments! There hasn't been any cooling after all!

Is this bizzaro world? How do faulty instruments confirm a theory? Shouldn't one be suspicious of a theory supported by unreliable data? Perhaps the bolded part is why the science isn't settled yet?

TraneWreck

19th March 2010, 07:52 PM

In other words: We didn't have accurate measurments! There hasn't been any cooling after all!

Is this bizzaro world? How do faulty instruments confirm a theory? Shouldn't one be suspicious of a theory supported by unreliable data? Perhaps the bolded part is why the science isn't settled yet?

Am I using that data to "confirm" AGW? Or was I pointing out an error to reject a silly argument from the denier camp?

Obviously if the data is faulty, it can't be used for either side. Perhaps that's why the specific oceanic data used in that paper (that gave the deniers little boners) wasn't used to support AGW until it was corrected.

Edit: as for the "settled" issue, within the AGW community there is a massive amount of debate about how things are going. But it's all circumscribed in a fundamental understanding of man's impact on the climate.

When Galileo proved that the Earth wasn't the center of the solar system, there was still a great deal of debate about planetary orbits and other issues. Those specific debates didn't reject heliocentrism.

a_unique_person

19th March 2010, 07:53 PM

And to account for all the forcings and natural cycles and the role each plays in climate.

Cycles are cycles. They are like a wheel spinning, they go around and around, without actually going anywhere. A forcing actually moves the whole climate to another state, hotter or colder. The forcings are accounted for in the IPCC report. They aren't doing much at all at the moment. If anything the natural forcings indicate we should be getting cooler.

Except the oceans have been cooling for most of the decade:

The average temperature of the water near the top of the Earth's oceans has significantly cooled since 2003. New research suggests global warming trends are not always steady in their effects on ocean temperatures.
...

The recent changes in ocean temperature run deep. A small amount of cooling was detected at the ocean's surface, consistent with global measurements of sea-surface temperature. The maximum amount of cooling was at a depth of about 1,300 feet, but substantial cooling was still observed at 2,500 feet, and the cooling appears to extend deeper.
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/sep/HQ_06318_Ocean_Cooling.html

The article was written in 2006. Ocean surface temps have been cooling since 2001:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/to:2010/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2001/to:2010

The SST is not the energy content of the ocean. The error with measuring the deeper temperatures was corrected long ago.

I don't think it was sneaky so much as it was "How far can we push back statisically insignificant warming?" 15 years. OK. Seems kind of strange since we've been pouring CO2 into the air the entire time. Cooling since 2001 seems esp. strange.

It's not cooling, the phrase was 'statistically significant' warming, and it's only just outside the estimate of 95% confidence.

The oceans are gaining a lot of energy, they are expanding due to warming at the upper limit of the estimates.

But you can't dare look back more than 30 years:

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:2010

Because the warming comes in at a paltry half a degree over 70 years. Hardly alarming.

The analysis of the forcings and changes is explained in the IPCC report. It is not simple, but quite complex, as you would expect. The current warming only really started in the 1970's, IIRC. Before then particle pollution was a significant cooling forcing.

We'll see. If we don't see "statistically significant warming" in the next couple years (if the date of statistical insignificance stays at 1995, or even gets moved back), will you be skeptical at all about AGW?

Sure, you can cherry pick. But warmers also are locked into a fairly narrow range of dates (which, coincidentally, happen to show the most warming). If, for example, we look at the last 100 years, we see less than a degree of warming. So we can't use that time frame.

It's not coincidence. It's just how things have worked. It's like saying it's a coincidence when you turn your key, the engine starts in your car.

Even picking a time frame of rapid CO2 increase bothers warmers:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1960/to:2010/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1960/to:2010

This amounts to about half a degree of warming over 50 years. Hardly catastrophic. Fossil fuels will have run out (or be close to it) before we warm up more than 2 degrees.

No, some positive feedbacks are only just starting, such as albedo change and release of methane. The evidence of the effects is actually worse than predicted already.

Furcifer

19th March 2010, 08:12 PM

At what point do you just give up this ridiculous stance?

As soon as the measured amount of warming becomes statistically significant.

Piggy

19th March 2010, 08:33 PM

Did you read what I was responding to?

AGW is a bit more than just "the GHG properties of CO2". Or do you think AGW is just the Greenhouse Effect, and of story?

Oh, yes, I followed the thread.

I also saw you take AUP's point and pretend that it applied to a broader context than it obviously did.

But as a matter of fact, AGW does in fact boil down to greenhouse effect.

The facts on the ground are, of course, much more complex than that -- when we examine forcers, dampers, feedbacks, etc. -- but at the end of the day, it's one big greenhouse effect.

Piggy

19th March 2010, 08:35 PM

As soon as the measured amount of warming becomes statistically significant.

Then you're saying it was given up long ago?

Furcifer

19th March 2010, 09:07 PM

Another tactic used by gw pseudo-skeptics (the term I use instead of denier to avoid semantic quibbling) is to play infantile semantic games, such as latching onto a single word and interpreting it in a self-serving manner.

Yah, because I'm the one latched onto using the word :rolleyes:

Check out the Conspiracy forum for the same kind of name calling. It's just silly. I didn't really know how it was bantered around in such a condescending manner until recently. From someone you know and respect it's like water off a ducks back. From other people you know they are just using it because it's a last resort.
I could really care less, I'm just being upfront with how I will percieve you. In the end it really doesn't change the facts right?

Piggy

19th March 2010, 09:12 PM

Personally, I don't mind being called a warmist.

It's like being called a roundist, or a Holocaustist, or an evolutionist.

What's to object to?

Furcifer

19th March 2010, 09:38 PM

Then you're saying it was given up long ago?

Personally I gave it 15 years and I haven't seen squat. In terms of quantifiable negative consequences. I'm not saying we should stop doing what we are doing, but it's time to consider what's going on and what we can expect to happen. We are going to dig deeper for oil, we are going to burn coal and more people are going to get cheap gasoline powered vehicles. That's a fact. We need to mitigate the consequences of doing so.

So I'm a 'mitigationist' I suppose.

Furcifer

19th March 2010, 09:44 PM

Personally, I don't mind being called a warmist.

It's like being called a roundist, or a Holocaustist, or an evolutionist.

What's to object to?

I called Obama a socialist. It didn't pan out like I expected either ;)

lomiller

19th March 2010, 09:47 PM

Really? That's your argument?

In fact his argument is worse then that if you can believe it. 1995 is the farthest you can go back and have the warming trend fail to achieve statistical significance at the 95% confidence level. To him this translates into “no significant warming”. In fact to him this means there can never be a warming trend because you can always pick a time frame short enough that it fails to achieve statistical significance.

lomiller

19th March 2010, 09:54 PM

The article was written in 2006.

And corrected in 2007 (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCooling/)

lomiller

19th March 2010, 10:08 PM

I could really care less, I'm just being upfront with how I will percieve you. In the end it really doesn't change the facts right?

And we are simply letting you in on how you are perceived. The main difference is that you haven't gone beyond talking about perceptions.

Malerin

19th March 2010, 10:14 PM

Oh, yes, I followed the thread.

I also saw you take AUP's point and pretend that it applied to a broader context than it obviously did.

But as a matter of fact, AGW does in fact boil down to greenhouse effect.

Except greenhouses don't get warmer, then colder, then really warmer, then colder.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1970/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/to:2010/trend

Did the greenhouse effect cause the Medievel Warming Period or the Little Ice Age?

The facts on the ground are, of course, much more complex than that -- when we examine forcers, dampers, feedbacks, etc. -- but at the end of the day, it's one big greenhouse effect.

Unless we're in the midst of a natural warming cycle, or at the tail end of one, or at the start of another Little Ice Age, or CO2 alone is driving the temperature increase, or it's combination of GHG's and cyclical variations...

If you suppose we have accurate global temperature data from the last 100 years, that represents about 1% of the climate record from just the end of the last ice age to the present. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the data we have is hardly a sliver on climate graphs. How you go from that to "as rock solid as gravity or evolution" is a little strange. Where does this surety come from? And why insult people who are on the fence and don't want to jump to conclusions?

So I guess it's one big greenhouse effect unless the 2001-present cooling trend is the start of a long-term cooling trend. And then it's not one big greenhouse effect.

lomiller

19th March 2010, 10:57 PM

Did the greenhouse effect cause the Medievel Warming Period or the Little Ice Age?

There are some hypothesis to that effect, but if they were caused by the greenhouse effect the small and slow nature of those changes suggest a rather week greenhouse effect compared to today.

Unless we're in the midst of a natural warming cycle

We are in what should be a long slow cooling cycle.

Pixel42

20th March 2010, 01:06 AM

It's like hiking up Everest, and when you come to a down-slope on the way to the top, someone says, "Hey, we must have passed the crest... we're doing down now!"
Malerin's argument is more like standing on a beach watching the tide coming in for just long enough to see two waves arrive, and then questioning the physics of tides because the second wave only came a little bit further up the beach than the first.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 01:20 AM

And we are simply letting you in on how you are perceived. The main difference is that you haven't gone beyond talking about perceptions.

Could you explain this to me? You seem to talk about perceptions, then claim I haven't gone perceptions. "These aren't the droids you're looking for". Right? I'm on to you ;)

Moving on. How many tons of CO2 can we reduce by stopping the sale of beef and milk? If we do that and raise the price of gas to $5/gallon what will the temperature be in 10 years?

What if we close all the coal plants worldwide within the next 15 years and replace them with wind turbines of the same capacity, what will the temperature be in 25 years? What will the ocean level be relative to what it is today?

If the current level of CO2 worldwide was decreased by 30% over the next 10 years, how will that effect the midwestern US growing season? Africa? South Asia?

All I've ever seen fom the AGW proponents is this 'Look at me, listen to me' alarmist crap with zero answers to serious questions. Seriously, for me its been 15 years of "We have to do something" We're not doing anything? I thought we were. "You have to see this, look at this data, it proves it's getting warmer! See look!". Yes I see but what can we do? "What can we do? We have to do more!!" Um OK, how much more? "Lots, lots more!!" What will more do? "This is very complex, we can't know what to do, we just bitch about what's already done" Well I would like to know what we can do and what effect it will have. "I Duhno?" Well that would be more help than telling me about what might happen if I don't do something. "But I'm right, it's getting warmer" Yes, it is. What can we do? "There's going to be floods and tornadoes and famine..." Yes, horrible stuff, what can we do? "...malaria, snow in July, cats lying down with dogs" Fine it's getting warmer but what should we do? "You don't seem riled up enough, did I mention the flooding?" Yes, you did. "Floods are really, really bad you know?" Yes, we might have to build a wall or something. "No, millions will be homeless nomads wandering with no where to live" That's horrible isn't it, what can we do? "Gone" What's gone? "The glaciers, gone, melted, kaput, never to be seen again, total loss for humanity" I wouldn't consider that a total loss for humanity. "You just don't get it do you?" No, apparently not. What can we do that will have a measurable effect on this 'Global Warming'? "It's AGW, the A is important" Why? "Because it's your fault" My fault? "Yes, you, society, civilization, industry, the modern man" What about YOU? "Not me, I'm fighting the fight, keepin it real, pressing the issue, keeping it in your face" So that's the solution? "What? What's the solution to what?" Global warming, that's the solution to global warming, keepin it real, in your face yada yada. "No, what makes you think that?" Well I keep asking you to tell me what to do and what will happen and you've got nothing. "I've got nothing? lol, I've got reports, data, science! You've got nothing, you're in denial, Denier!" So what do the reports say? "It's getting warmer" Really? How much warmer? "A lot" How much is a lot? "0.2 degrees" That doesn't seem like a lot. "Well it is, it's unprecedented!" I don't think that's true. "Well there was one time, but that was different" It was different? How so? "Denier" What? "Denier, you're a denier, you deny AGW" I didn't. "Yes. you did, you deny the science, you deny the fact that AGW is real" I didn't, in fact I said it was getting warmer. "Yah, but you're trying to say it's because of the sun, it isn't" It isn't? "No, it isn't, because if it was it would be cooling, but it isn't cooling it's warming so it isn't the sun" It should be cooling? "Yes, it should be cooling, but it isn't" Oh that's bad, what should we do? "Do? What should we do? What do you want a pony too?" A pony? No I want to know what we should do, right now to solve this global warming. "AGW" Yes, that's what I meant, to solve AGW. What for the love of all that's holy should we do? "Build Nuclear Power Plants" Build Nuclear plants? But we are doing that. "We need to build more, lots more" How many? "Lots" Ok, so we build lots more, what will that do? "We don't know" What? You don't know? "We won't know until we know, and then it will be too late" It will be too late? "Yes, too late, missed the boat, gonzo" That sucks. "It sure does suck. It sucks bad buddy, very bad. You riled up yet?" Not really. "I must be doing this wrong. Did I mention the famine and..." and the malaria and the dead polar bears, yes you mentioned that several times. "Those are.." bad, very bad? "Yep" Are we done? "Do you believe?" Believe what? "Do you believe AGW is bad?" I don't really believe per se, but I want to do something to prevent it. "That won't work, you have to believe it's true in order to prevent it" I do? Why? "That's the way it works" Why can't I just reduce my carbon footprint? I don't even own a car, I ride a bike or take public transit. "Yah, but you don't believe, you're a Denier" That seems irrelevant to the issue of reducing CO2. "You just don't understand the science" Since when did science require you to believe? "Since it got climatized"

Halsu

20th March 2010, 01:58 AM

In fact his argument is worse then that if you can believe it. 1995 is the farthest you can go back and have the warming trend fail to achieve statistical significance at the 95% confidence level.

Yep - in other words, if you go back one more year, to 1994 and look at a 16 year period, the warming trend magically becomes a significant one again.

And anyway, the only thing the lack of significance tells us is that there's more than 1/20 chance of a similar trend to occur due to random variation. It does NOT mean the trend doesn't exist.

I wonder how many statistically significant 15 year blocks have there been in, say, the last 100 years? There's 85 blocks (1910-1925, 1911-1926, 1912-1927 and so on) - i guess that would be pretty easy to calculate. My guess is, most of the 15 year blocks would NOT be statistically significant. let alone the 10 year blocks.

In other news, NASA predicts a new 12 month running average temperature record is in the making as we speak:

http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/19/nasa-giss-james-hansen-global-warming-record-hottest-year/

So, it might very well be that we don't need to wait for long for the 1995-present trend to become a statistically significant one.

Here's an extract:

1) Contrary to popular belief, global warming has not stopped nor has the rate of warming even slowed down in the past decade (Figure 21).

http://climateprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/GISS2.gif

The paper predicts a new record 12-month global temperature record, and says the calendar year (2010) is likely to set the global surface temperature unless “El Nino conditions deteriorate rapidly by mid 2010 into La Nina conditions” [as happened in 2007]. NASA notes:

This new record temperature will be particularly meaningful because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance (http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant) is having its maximum cooling effect.

Halsu

20th March 2010, 02:22 AM

All I've ever seen fom the AGW proponents is this 'Look at me, listen to me' alarmist crap with zero answers to serious questions.

What would those questions be?

Yes I see but what can we do?

Drastically reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses.

So what do the reports say? "It's getting warmer" Really? How much warmer? "A lot" How much is a lot? "0.2 degrees" That doesn't seem like a lot.

Well, when it's 0.15-0.2 degrees Celsius per decade like now, it is indeed a lot.

"Build Nuclear Power Plants" Build Nuclear plants? But we are doing that. "We need to build more, lots more" How many? "Lots" Ok, so we build lots more, what will that do?

It will create more energy without creating more atmospheric greenhouse gasses.

"That won't work, you have to believe it's true in order to prevent it" I do? Why?

You don't.

Why can't I just reduce my carbon footprint? I don't even own a car, I ride a bike or take public transit.

That's all nice, and that's also what i do too. Didn't make that choice because of AGW though, i've never had a car.

Personal choices do matter, but it's more important to find alternate ways to produce energy. There's not much that a regular individual can do about that.

"You just don't understand the science" Since when did science require you to believe? "Since it got climatized"

Understanding and believing are two separate things. You can believe the scientists without understanding the science - that's exactly what we do with the vast majority of scientific issues. It's the default way for any rational person. In general, the scientists do indeed know better.

If you don't believe the scientists in one specific issue, that's an exception to the rule. If you consider yourself a skeptic, you should have a strong chain of chain of evidence to challenge the mainstream scientific view. This contradictory chain of evidence should be stronger than the evidence put forward by the mainstream scientists. In order to assess the evidence by yourself, you also need a pretty good understanding of the science.

A.A. Alfie

20th March 2010, 03:16 AM

All I've ever seen fom the AGW proponents is this 'Look at me, listen to me' alarmist crap with zero answers to serious questions. Seriously, for me its been 15 years of "We have to do something" We're not doing anything? I thought we were. "You have to see this, look at this data, it proves it's getting warmer! See look!".

...big snip...

"Yah, but you don't believe, you're a Denier" That seems irrelevant to the issue of reducing CO2. "You just don't understand the science" Since when did science require you to believe? "Since it got climatized"

Nominated.
I wish I'd said all that. :D

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 03:30 AM

As soon as the measured amount of warming becomes statistically significant.

It has, if you cherry pick shorter time periods, you can find a nice juicy one.

A.A. Alfie

20th March 2010, 03:35 AM

I think what you mean is: "if you pick a time preiod that we like, you will find a nice juicy one".:)

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 04:19 AM

I think what you mean is: "if you pick a time preiod that we like, you will find a nice juicy one".:)

No.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 04:21 AM

What would those questions be?

The ones you glossed over then proceeded to ask about like they were never there.

I'm not worried about the science. I'm fairly confident CO2 and CH4 work to hold in heat. I want solutions.

I was where you are 15 years ago. Going off on how bad things were going to get. Then it dawned on me, there is no solution. It's going to take 100 years for it to have any real effect on the climate. When I say that I mean effect to where everyone on the planet is onboard.
That's at current rates. Back in the 90's I can recall claims of accelerated warming of 2 degrees per decade, by this time. Sea levels risen 1m by 2025. They've fallen off since then, but the threat remains.
So what do we do? Where is the money to do this coming from? How long will it take. You've got graphs, show me the ones where it goes down.
Got any?
I doubt it. I haven't seen any in 15 years. I kept my eye out, but nothing yet. Do they exist or not?
You need to admit there isn't much we can do until this thing runs its course or come up with a plan.
And just a heads up, there's about a billion people waiting to plug in hair dryers as they make coffee getting ready to drive into work in their new gasoline powered car so they can come home and make more babies.
Short of sterilizing them, shaving their heads and buying them all bicycles I'm not sure what you expect to do besides beat this dead old AGW horse.
You see us 'deniers' have actually accepted our fate. It is what it is. I doesn't mean spit if the ocean temperature has or hasn't gone up a degree. For at least the next 25 years we are going to continue to pump more and more CO2 into the air because that's where we are as a society. This is part of the price of civilization.

You need to make the best of this either way. Myself I see GW as a blessing. A 10 degree warming over the next 50 years means I don't have to move to Florida to retire. :)

Mikemcc

20th March 2010, 04:24 AM

New paper coming out from GISS:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0319.pdf

We conclude from these data that a new record global temperature, for the period with instrumental measurements, should be set within the next few months as the effects of the recent and current moderate El Nino continue. This new record temperature will be particularly meaningful because it occurs when the recent minimum of solar irradiance (http://www.pmodwrc.ch/pmod.php?topic=tsi/composite/SolarConstant) is having its maximum cooling effect.

The reality of continued global warming contrasts sharply with a frequently heard assertion that the world has been in a cooling trend for the past decade or at least "global warming stopped in 1998." Of course it is possible to find almost any trend for a limited period via judicious choice of start and end dates, but that is not a meaningful exercise. In a wiser assessment, Solomon et al. [2009] write "the trend in global surface temperature has been nearly flat since the late 1990s despite continuing increases in the forcing due to the sum of the wellmixed greenhouse gases." But is even that assertion correct?

Climate trends can be seen clearly if we take the 60-month (5-year) and 132-month (11-year) running means, as shown in Figure 21 for data through January 2010. The 5-year mean is sufficient to minimize El Nino variability, while the 11-year mean also minimizes the effect of solar variability. We conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 04:45 AM

It has, if you cherry pick shorter time periods, you can find a nice juicy one.

Ok, accuse me of moving the goal posts, but when I mean significant, I mean large enough to get the World motivated to do something significant.

0.2 over a decade isn't going to do squat. You need at least 10 times that to make people take notice. Maybe less, there are more people in hotter regions that might find a degree per decade alarming.

My thermometer doesn't even register that small of an increment.

As for the climate, it has remained pretty much the same over the last 15 years. When can I expect change?

Mikemcc

20th March 2010, 04:51 AM

The ones you glossed over then proceeded to ask about like they were never there.

I'm not worried about the science. I'm fairly confident CO2 and CH4 work to hold in heat. I want solutions.

I was where you are 15 years ago. Going off on how bad things were going to get. Then it dawned on me, there is no solution. It's going to take 100 years for it to have any real effect on the climate. When I say that I mean effect to where everyone on the planet is onboard.
That's at current rates. Back in the 90's I can recall claims of accelerated warming of 2 degrees per decade, by this time. Sea levels risen 1m by 2025. They've fallen off since then, but the threat remains.
So what do we do? Where is the money to do this coming from? How long will it take. You've got graphs, show me the ones where it goes down.
Got any?
I doubt it. I haven't seen any in 15 years. I kept my eye out, but nothing yet. Do they exist or not?
You need to admit there isn't much we can do until this thing runs its course or come up with a plan.
And just a heads up, there's about a billion people waiting to plug in hair dryers as they make coffee getting ready to drive into work in their new gasoline powered car so they can come home and make more babies.
Short of sterilizing them, shaving their heads and buying them all bicycles I'm not sure what you expect to do besides beat this dead old AGW horse.
You see us 'deniers' have actually accepted our fate. It is what it is. I doesn't mean spit if the ocean temperature has or hasn't gone up a degree. For at least the next 25 years we are going to continue to pump more and more CO2 into the air because that's where we are as a society. This is part of the price of civilization.

You need to make the best of this either way. Myself I see GW as a blessing. A 10 degree warming over the next 50 years means I don't have to move to Florida to retire. :)10 degrees of warming would mean no Florida to retire to...

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 04:51 AM

Ok, accuse me of moving the goal posts, but when I mean significant, I mean large enough to get the World motivated to do something significant.

0.2 over a decade isn't going to do squat. You need at least 10 times that to make people take notice. Maybe less, there are more people in hotter regions that might find a degree per decade alarming.

My thermometer doesn't even register that small of an increment.

As for the climate, it has remained pretty much the same over the last 15 years. When can I expect change?

It's changing where I am.

BenBurch

20th March 2010, 04:55 AM

10 degrees of warming would mean no Florida to retire to...

Yes.

A sea level rise measured in centimeters per year.

I am going to Key West soon. Some day it will be a reef.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 05:14 AM

Nominated.
I wish I'd said all that. :D

Well somebody had to. :)

I don't get the need to make people believe. No matter what you do or say they want to convert you.

Whatever is happening to the climate is going to have at least another 25 years to deal with increased CO2 emissions. There's 8 billion a year going into research that apparently is rock solid already. It might be time to do a reality check, run with the 0.2degree per decade increase and see what happens in 2020. Save the 71 billion for building nuclear plants and windmills or something.

How much do you want to bet if we all agreed and said we were done doing research for a decade the data would all of a sudden not be so conclusive. :rolleyes:

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 05:21 AM

10 degrees of warming would mean no Florida to retire to...

Please, don't give me any more incentive to buy a new Challenger. :)

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 05:23 AM

It's changing where I am.

Well, it is spring you know.

A.A. Alfie

20th March 2010, 05:47 AM

No.
You mean: "Yes".
NASA say that here (post 166):

Of course it is possible to find almost any trend for a limited period via judicious choice of start and end dates, but that is not a meaningful exercise.:)

10 degrees of warming would mean no Florida to retire to...

Why? Because the seas will rise? Just how much? A foot, two? They can't build walls in Florida?:):boggled:
And when is it going to have increased 10 degrees? Have you some evidence for that prediction?

It's changing where I am.

Climate is always changing - and you are noticing the weather.:rolleyes:

Well, it is spring you know.

Autumn actually but same diff'.:D

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 05:47 AM

Well, it's not spring, it's Autumn.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 05:50 AM

Oh, so it's cooling there? ;)

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 05:53 AM

Well somebody had to. :)

I don't get the need to make people believe. No matter what you do or say they want to convert you.

Whatever is happening to the climate is going to have at least another 25 years to deal with increased CO2 emissions.

That's the problem, it's the old "If I can't understand it, you can't prove it" problem.

The CO2 going up now is going to cause continued warming even if we don't change level at all from today. The inherent lag in making political changes of the scope required is now decades at least.

The irony is we will have to get used to an economy that runs without fossil fuels anyway.

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 05:55 AM

Oh, so it's cooling there? ;)

No, it's unusually warm.

A.A. Alfie

20th March 2010, 06:00 AM

The irony is we will have to get used to an economy that runs without fossil fuels anyway.

Gotcha. No reason to do anything then is there.

No, it's unusually warm.

Feels like any other Autumn to me.
And you are observing the weather - not climate: You really should know better.

DogB

20th March 2010, 06:06 AM

If it's no longer a useful challenge, what would be the point?

It would make very little sense to continue to offer a challenge that's been successfully met.

Answers like this, or rather non answers like this show why it's really not worth engaging in this little game with you. But in spite of this I'll invest the 15 seconds it takes to look up a paper.

Here ya go

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801175711.htm

I hereby now predict that Piggy will now add a previously unstated proviso to the 'challenge' which proves this paper doesn't count.

DogB

20th March 2010, 06:13 AM

No, it's unusually warm.

Really? Where are you. Which city?

Piggy

20th March 2010, 06:58 AM

I called Obama a socialist. It didn't pan out like I expected either ;)

Indeed. No one who thought he was a socialist has had that expectation fulfilled. He's pretty much as advertised -- a center-left pragmatist. Expectations of socialism have not been met.

Piggy

20th March 2010, 07:02 AM

Except greenhouses don't get warmer, then colder, then really warmer, then colder.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:2010/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1970/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1900/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2001/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2001/to:2010/trend

Yes, in fact, they do.

Try spending a week in a greenhouse.

But in any case, that has to be the silliest, most absurd point I've ever seen raised on this topic.

I mean, really... arguing about the greenhouse effect by attempting a literal comparison to actual greenhouses... the mind boggles.

The planet is not a test-tube. CO2 and greenhouse effect are not the only forcers, and there are also mitigators and other influences.

Any informed person expects the increase in global temperatures to look like a mountain slope, rather jagged with lots of ups and downs.

What you're saying here is getting more absurd as you go along.

Piggy

20th March 2010, 07:07 AM

Unless we're in the midst of a natural warming cycle, or at the tail end of one, or at the start of another Little Ice Age, or CO2 alone is driving the temperature increase, or it's combination of GHG's and cyclical variations...

If you suppose we have accurate global temperature data from the last 100 years, that represents about 1% of the climate record from just the end of the last ice age to the present. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the data we have is hardly a sliver on climate graphs. How you go from that to "as rock solid as gravity or evolution" is a little strange. Where does this surety come from? And why insult people who are on the fence and don't want to jump to conclusions?

So I guess it's one big greenhouse effect unless the 2001-present cooling trend is the start of a long-term cooling trend. And then it's not one big greenhouse effect.

You're mashing up my posts with someone else's here.

In any case, as I've said, in the decades of research that have been done, natural cycles and other non-human forcers have been rigorously studied. And the conclusion is that they cannot account for what we're actually seeing.

This conclusion is the result of many years of difficult and dedicated work by scientists across the globe, and it is backed by mountains of evidence, much of which you can see for yourself if you follow the links provided here and in other GW threads.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 07:07 AM

That's the problem, it's the old "If I can't understand it, you can't prove it" problem.

The CO2 going up now is going to cause continued warming even if we don't change level at all from today. The inherent lag in making political changes of the scope required is now decades at least.

The irony is we will have to get used to an economy that runs without fossil fuels anyway.

I can understand it. Among the many cycles this Earth has gone through this is yet another. There is evidence to suggest this has been caused by man, but there is also evidence to suggest we don't know enough. It's almost certain man made CO2 has contributed. We don't know enough to predict what will happen no matter what we do at this point. There will be consequences, but the effect on society cannot be determined with any precision.

I don't like the thought of killing off species of plants and animals in the process, but if happens as a result of our expanding civilization so be it. I'm not really in a position to mandate what a developing country does to progress. One of the key determining factors in this progression is a cheap source of energy. That almost certainly entails the continued use of fossil fuels. As I've said before, at least those following us will benefit from our technological advancements. They will benefit from our Gen IV reactors and EV's moving to a reduced CO2 emitting society much quicker than we did.

Piggy

20th March 2010, 07:11 AM

It's changing where I am.

It's changing where I am, too. Most significantly, habitat zones are moving northward.

lomiller

20th March 2010, 07:12 AM

Understanding and believing are two separate things. You can believe the scientists without understanding the science - that's exactly what we do with the vast majority of scientific issues. It's the default way for any rational person. In general, the scientists do indeed know better.

If you don't believe the scientists in one specific issue, that's an exception to the rule. If you consider yourself a skeptic, you should have a strong chain of chain of evidence to challenge the mainstream scientific view. This contradictory chain of evidence should be stronger than the evidence put forward by the mainstream scientists. In order to assess the evidence by yourself, you also need a pretty good understanding of the science.

Put another way, when you see people refusing to believe the published science on the basis that you don't know/don't understand it some very loud skeptic alarm bells should be going off.

lomiller

20th March 2010, 07:16 AM

TBack in the 90's I can recall claims of accelerated warming of 2 degrees per decade, by this time. Sea levels risen 1m by 2025.

bull. making stuff up doesn't make a weak argument any stronger.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 07:19 AM

Indeed. No one who thought he was a socialist has had that expectation fulfilled. He's pretty much as advertised -- a center-left pragmatist. Expectations of socialism have not been met.

You have no idea how long it took me to convince people it wasn't a bad word. In the end I just stopped because it really wasn't worth it to explain to every person that misinterpreted.

So even though I know he's a socialist, I don't advertise it. Well maybe once more after this health care deal goes down, but that's it. :)

lomiller

20th March 2010, 07:19 AM

0.2 over a decade isn't going to do squat. You need at least 10 times that to make people take notice.

0.2 deg per decade is comparable to what you see the end of a glaciation.

Piggy

20th March 2010, 07:21 AM

Answers like this, or rather non answers like this show why it's really not worth engaging in this little game with you. But in spite of this I'll invest the 15 seconds it takes to look up a paper.

Here ya go

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801175711.htm

I hereby now predict that Piggy will now add a previously unstated proviso to the 'challenge' which proves this paper doesn't count.

Non-answer?

You asked if I'd drop the challenge if it were sucessfully met. I responded that it would be pointless to continue it if someone does meet it.

Perhaps I need to connect more dots with you than I thought, so here goes: If anyone meets the challenge, then the challenge is dead.

Ok, on to the article:

In the mid-1970s, a climate shift cooled sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific Ocean and warmed the coast of western North America, bringing long-range changes to the northern hemisphere.

After this climate shift waned, an era of frequent El Ninos and rising global temperatures began.

Understanding the mechanisms driving such climate variability is difficult because unraveling causal connections that lead to chaotic climate behavior is complicated.

To simplify this, Tsonis et al. investigate the collective behavior of known climate cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the North Atlantic Oscillation, the El Nino/Southern Oscillation, and the North Pacific Oscillation.

By studying the last 100 years of these cycles' patterns, they find that the systems synchronized several times.

Further, in cases where the synchronous state was followed by an increase in the coupling strength among the cycles, the synchronous state was destroyed. Then. a new climate state emerged, associated with global temperature changes and El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability.

The authors show that this mechanism explains all global temperature tendency changes and El Nino variability in the 20th century.

This paper does not deal with the long-term warming trend.

Rather, it deals specifically with shifts in short-term temperature trends and how they change direction.

It's like citing a paper about what causes fluctuations in wind direction, and claiming that the authors are denying the existence of the tradewinds.

lomiller

20th March 2010, 07:33 AM

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 07:34 AM

bull. making stuff up doesn't make a weak argument any stronger.

Says you. Do you remember? Australia was supposed to be 125F in the shade and half the population with skin cancer due to a hole in the o-zone. or some such nonsense. I never kept my notes, but I'll try to find David Suzuki's lecture on YouTube from back then.

TraneWreck

20th March 2010, 07:40 AM

Says you. Do you remember? Australia was supposed to be 125F in the shade and half the population with skin cancer due to a hole in the o-zone. or some such nonsense. I never kept my notes, but I'll try to find David Suzuki's lecture on YouTube from back then.

THe world took significant steps to ameliorate the O-zone problem.

If we were still pumping chlorofluorocarbons into the air without regulation, that very well might be the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbons

Another characteristic of the very stupid is that they tend to view the mitigation of a problem as proof that there never was a problem. This is childish and given that so many humans fall prey to this limited thinking, very dangerous.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 08:53 AM

THe world took significant steps to ameliorate the O-zone problem.

If we were still pumping chlorofluorocarbons into the air without regulation, that very well might be the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbons

Another characteristic of the very stupid is that they tend to view the mitigation of a problem as proof that there never was a problem. This is childish and given that so many humans fall prey to this limited thinking, very dangerous.

This claim was still being made in 1995, not 1975.

Care to tell the class what CFC's were replaced with?

fyi- the easiest way to mitigate a problem, have it not exist in the first place. Wait, do I have the right thread? Yep, Global Warming, that sounds about right. :rolleyes:

(try to keep the adhoms to a minimum, mmmmkay? thanks)

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 08:59 AM

So what's the deal with the measured amount of radiated heat and the amount used in the models? Looking for the David Suzuki clip I stumbled on some Lord Stockton saying the models flat out misrepresent it. We already know from the Climategate emails the code is a farce, but is this part of or an addition to that?

lomiller

20th March 2010, 09:35 AM

lomiller

20th March 2010, 09:39 AM

We already know from the Climategate emails the code is a farce,

Umm no what the evidence says is the type of accusation you are making are completely unfounded and unsupportable. You readily believe any and every wild accusation that science is all a fraud and you wonder why we have a poor opinion of you?

lomiller

20th March 2010, 09:43 AM

Looking for the David Suzuki clip I stumbled on some Lord Stockton

No doubt you mean Monkton. he's kook journalist with no scientific credentials whatsoever. Suzuki isn't really much better, he's a media personality. he does have a science background but to my knowledge hasn't published anything in decades.

macdoc

20th March 2010, 10:01 AM

His role ( Suzuki's ) is making people aware of the issues..... The Nature of Things is not a light weight program.....he is akin to Sagan's and Attenborough's role in that.

http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/natureofthings/

30 years it has been running...Monckton on the other hand is a loon ....

with my apologies with Gavia...:garfield:

TraneWreck

20th March 2010, 10:03 AM

This claim was still being made in 1995, not 1975.

Care to tell the class what CFC's were replaced with?

fyi- the easiest way to mitigate a problem, have it not exist in the first place. Wait, do I have the right thread? Yep, Global Warming, that sounds about right. :rolleyes:

(try to keep the adhoms to a minimum, mmmmkay? thanks)

Since you haven't bothered to link the evidence you used for your claim, obviously I can't reply directly. Link the quote or abandon your assertion.

(try to keep the douchey sanctimony to minimum.)

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 10:10 AM

IOW you have no evidence whatsoever for your wild claims

What evidence do you require and of which claims? I'll tell you right now the 1/2 the population of Australia with skin cancer was a little overstated on my part. It was merely referenced as many more reported cases or a noted increase etc. The o-zone helps block harmful UV rays, so it stands to reason reports of cancer would increase. I don't think it's that uncommon for it to hit 125F in Australia. Maybe not the entire continent. As I mentioned, I never kept my notes from the Environmental Philosophy class (don't ask, I had to take a class from the arts department, there were girls, plenty of girls) And I can't find anything from David Suzuki on YouTube from 1997-8, to see if he gave any of the alarmist claims or not. He'd be a reliable source of what was being touted at that time.
Why? You don't honestly think the alarmists just came into the picture do you? They've been pretty much saying the same thing for years. There were other claims to, I believe Miami should have been a foot under water by the same time, and New Orleans was always the first to go. Then there was something about the ice in the Arctic retreating 200 KM North. Like I said, it's been a long time but I don't think the claims have changed much, they've just slowed down the warming a bit.

TraneWreck

20th March 2010, 10:12 AM

What evidence do you require and of which claims? I'll tell you right now the 1/2 the population of Australia with skin cancer was a little overstated on my part. It was merely referenced as many more reported cases or a noted increase etc. The o-zone helps block harmful UV rays...have changed much, they've just slowed down the warming a bit.

So no, you have no evidence, but it seems like a claim someone should have made, so you're sticking by it.

Can't see any problems there.

lomiller

20th March 2010, 10:19 AM

His role ( Suzuki's ) is making people aware of the issues..... The Nature of Things is not a light weight program.....he is akin to Sagan's and Attenborough's role in that.

Suzuki has a tendency to be more heavily weighted to opinion, and light on facts. The Nature of Things is essentially Op-Ed, not even close to Sagan's or Attenborough.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 10:25 AM

Umm no what the evidence says is the type of accusation you are making are completely unfounded and unsupportable. You readily believe any and every wild accusation that science is all a fraud and you wonder why we have a poor opinion of you?

Who said the science was a fraud? I said the code was. So are Jones and the rest. The science will out last the political BS of this climategate fiasco.

macdoc

20th March 2010, 10:33 AM

Well you got one part of your proclamation correct..:garfield:

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 10:34 AM

Suzuki has a tendency to be more heavily weighted to opinion, and light on facts. The Nature of Things is essentially Op-Ed, not even close to Sagan's or Attenborough.

That's funny. I don't think you know much about him. He's pretty heavy on facts. The problem is he's gotten a little too political over the years as he ages. He's a great activist and a real scientist. He's an AGW fanatic now. We lost him to that woo. But his heart sure is in the right place, you've got to respect him for that.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 10:42 AM

varwoche

20th March 2010, 11:25 AM

Monkton? I don't care about his credentials or his name, I care about the claim. When you cite fringe lunatic non-scientists like Monckton, I hope you won't complain much when you're not taken seriously.

I mean really. It's like Engineers for 911 Truth. Except worse, because at least an engineer is an engineer. Whereas the great Lord Monckton is a puffed up, know-nothing bag of conspiratorial hot air.

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 01:12 PM

you seem to be missing the point of the challenge. it's not to find an alternate proposal for current warming, we already know there are a few widely debunked papers that do that. The point is to find someone else who is acutely using one of these papers as the basis for further research.

Bad papers do get through the process and get published, they do not get picked up on by other scientists as the basis for further research.

If you

The Tsonis work has been widely misrepresented and misunderstood. I wrote to him and asked him if it had anything to do with AGW, and he said no. What he is talking about is shifts in he patterns of climate that are happening. Chaotic systems can have patterns in them. From time to time, those patterns will jump from one state to another.

From a later paper in the same stream of research.

http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/04/08/has-the-climate-recently-shifted/

If as suggested here, a dynamically driven climate shift has occurred, the duration of similar shifts during the 20th century suggests the new global mean temperature trend may persist for several decades. Of course, it is purely speculative to presume that the global mean temperature will remain near current levels for such an extended period of time. Moreover, we caution that the shifts described here are presumably superimposed upon a long term warming trend due to anthropogenic forcing. However, the nature of these past shifts in climate state suggests the possibility of near constant temperature lasting a decade or more into the future must at least be entertained.

Tsonis research is superimposed on AGW, it does not refute it.

a_unique_person

20th March 2010, 01:14 PM

Monkton? I don't care about his credentials or his name, I care about the claim. Do the IPCC models reflect the actual measured amount of radiation or not?

Is this data available or was it cooked as well?

He is wrong. If you look at one of the lies I have put here already, the 'selective removal thermometers to increase the apparent warming', Monckton was the reviewer. He is a first order conspiracy theorist.

Pixel42

20th March 2010, 01:54 PM

The Tsonis work has been widely misrepresented and misunderstood.
His co-author Swanson wrote a good piece for realclimate explaining their work:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/07/warminginterrupted-much-ado-about-natural-variability/

lomiller

20th March 2010, 02:01 PM

Who said the science was a fraud? I said the code was. So are Jones and the rest. The science will out last the political BS of this climategate fiasco.

So when random nuts on the internet accuse reputable scientists of fraud without any evidence you believe it without question, yet somehow you don’t think that is an ani-science attitude?

lomiller

20th March 2010, 02:04 PM

Do the IPCC models reflect the actual measured amount of radiation or not?

too which measurements are you referring to?

lomiller

20th March 2010, 02:12 PM

Tsonis research is superimposed on AGW, it does not refute it.

Yeah I was already aware of that I just wasn't sure if it was mentioned in the paper cited. I didn't know whether Tsonis felt his work didn't impact on greenhouse warming or not, but I knew from the responses to his work that it did not.

This doesn't mean there are no bad papers out there, even in legit journals, and as I pointed out the existence of these isn't what we are interested in. What we want to know is if there are other people advancing science based on contrarian papers.

Furcifer

20th March 2010, 05:22 PM

He is wrong. If you look at one of the lies I have put here already, the 'selective removal thermometers to increase the apparent warming', Monckton was the reviewer. He is a first order conspiracy theorist.

Thank you for your direct answer. Some people around here seem to have trouble differentiating questions from statements of fact.

Piggy

20th March 2010, 05:30 PM

Yeah I was already aware of that I just wasn't sure if it was mentioned in the paper cited. I didn't know whether Tsonis felt his work didn't impact on greenhouse warming or not, but I knew from the responses to his work that it did not.

This doesn't mean there are no bad papers out there, even in legit journals, and as I pointed out the existence of these isn't what we are interested in. What we want to know is if there are other people advancing science based on contrarian papers.

Exactly. Even Behe's paper on irreducible complexity got published, but no one's currently working under that paradigm because, of course, it fell apart under peer review.

Halsu

21st March 2010, 02:48 AM

The ones you glossed over then proceeded to ask about like they were never there.

I think i answered every question you had in your rant. The answers, though worded by me, are in line with the current scientific knowledge on those subjects, answered many times before.

I thought you had some serious questions that haven't been answered?

I'm not worried about the science. I'm fairly confident CO2 and CH4 work to hold in heat. I want solutions.

So, you actually agree with the mainstream science? Humans put up CO2 etc., and it's the main cause of the current warming trend?

If you do that, i don't see why you identify yourself as a denier?

I was where you are 15 years ago. Going off on how bad things were going to get.

Could you point out where exactly i've "gone off" in this manner?

Then it dawned on me, there is no solution. It's going to take 100 years for it to have any real effect on the climate. When I say that I mean effect to where everyone on the planet is onboard.

And what do you base this assumption on?

So what do we do? Where is the money to do this coming from? How long will it take. You've got graphs, show me the ones where it goes down.
Got any?

I doubt it. I haven't seen any in 15 years. I kept my eye out, but nothing yet. Do they exist or not?

You mean what course of action would turn the warming trend into a cooling one? In short-mid term, none. What we can do is to affect the rate of warming, to some extent.

What to do would be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as we can, with every reasonable measure possible.

The money to do that comes from us.

You need to admit there isn't much we can do until this thing runs its course or come up with a plan.

Well, there are plans already, but there's also people who try to stop those plans from becoming a reality.

And just a heads up, there's about a billion people waiting to plug in hair dryers as they make coffee getting ready to drive into work in their new gasoline powered car so they can come home and make more babies.
Short of sterilizing them, shaving their heads and buying them all bicycles I'm not sure what you expect to do besides beat this dead old AGW horse.

It's not an on-off situation: do this and that and AGW stops.

It's more like adjusting the volume knob on your ghetto blaster. A gradual shift from one scenario to the next.

You see us 'deniers' have actually accepted our fate. It is what it is.

If you know and accept the science, but don't want to take any action, you're not a denier. You are just a person who has evaluated the risks and come to a conclusion that the migitating action is not worth it.

We may disagree on the conclusion, but we both do it based on accepting the scientific evidence.

An example in similar vein: I know and accept the science linking tobacco smoke and cancer, yet i smoke. That doesn't make me a smoke-cancer denialist. Just a person who knowingly takes a stupid risk.

Most people who are called denialists are not like this, they really are in denial of the science.

I doesn't mean spit if the ocean temperature has or hasn't gone up a degree. For at least the next 25 years we are going to continue to pump more and more CO2 into the air because that's where we are as a society. This is part of the price of civilization.

As our civilization has successfully changed it's course of action before, it's not impossible to do it now.

You need to make the best of this either way. Myself I see GW as a blessing. A 10 degree warming over the next 50 years means I don't have to move to Florida to retire. :)

Hey, i live in Finland, it might be that warmer climate wouldn't hurt us much, maybe even the opposite in short term at least.

I wouldn't wanna risk it though ;-)

Halsu

21st March 2010, 03:02 AM

We don't know enough to predict what will happen no matter what we do at this point. There will be consequences, but the effect on society cannot be determined with any precision.

With precision? Nope, but the ballpark can and has been estimated reliably enough to take action.

Halsu

21st March 2010, 03:14 AM

Who said the science was a fraud? I said the code was. So are Jones and the rest. The science will out last the political BS of this climategate fiasco.

There's no evidence that either the code or Jones et al. are fradulent. Just wild accusations on the blogosphere.

Halsu

21st March 2010, 03:20 AM

That's funny. I don't think you know much about him. He's pretty heavy on facts. The problem is he's gotten a little too political over the years as he ages. He's a great activist and a real scientist. He's an AGW fanatic now. We lost him to that woo. But his heart sure is in the right place, you've got to respect him for that.

I'm a bit confused - you said earlier you have no problems with the climate science, yet now you say AGW is woo.

Which one is it?

varwoche

21st March 2010, 09:22 AM

I'm a bit confused - you said earlier you have no problems with the climate science, yet now you say AGW is woo.

Which one is it? Well, you've honed in another problem when it comes to conversing with GW pseudo-skeptics, namely the evasive practice of speaking out of alternating sides of the mouth as the situation warrants.

Furcifer

21st March 2010, 10:43 AM

I'm a bit confused - you said earlier you have no problems with the climate science, yet now you say AGW is woo.

Which one is it?

David's militant political activism. I understand passion, but when you start calling for arrests to get attention you lose me. Fear mongering is such a poor way to motivate people.

As a political agenda AGW is woo. Just the facts please.

Furcifer

21st March 2010, 11:19 AM

I think i answered every question you had in your rant. The answers, though worded by me, are in line with the current scientific knowledge on those subjects, answered many times before.

I thought you had some serious questions that haven't been answered?

So, you actually agree with the mainstream science? Humans put up CO2 etc., and it's the main cause of the current warming trend?

If you do that, i don't see why you identify yourself as a denier?

Could you point out where exactly i've "gone off" in this manner?

And what do you base this assumption on?

You mean what course of action would turn the warming trend into a cooling one? In short-mid term, none. What we can do is to affect the rate of warming, to some extent.

What to do would be to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as we can, with every reasonable measure possible.

The money to do that comes from us.

Well, there are plans already, but there's also people who try to stop those plans from becoming a reality.

It's not an on-off situation: do this and that and AGW stops.

It's more like adjusting the volume knob on your ghetto blaster. A gradual shift from one scenario to the next.

If you know and accept the science, but don't want to take any action, you're not a denier. You are just a person who has evaluated the risks and come to a conclusion that the migitating action is not worth it.

We may disagree on the conclusion, but we both do it based on accepting the scientific evidence.

An example in similar vein: I know and accept the science linking tobacco smoke and cancer, yet i smoke. That doesn't make me a smoke-cancer denialist. Just a person who knowingly takes a stupid risk.

Most people who are called denialists are not like this, they really are in denial of the science.

As our civilization has successfully changed it's course of action before, it's not impossible to do it now.

Hey, i live in Finland, it might be that warmer climate wouldn't hurt us much, maybe even the opposite in short term at least.

I wouldn't wanna risk it though ;-)

Sorry for the format in advance.

The specific questions of what to do and what effect it will have and how fast.

Yes, I agree man made CO2 causes an increase in global temperature. 0.2 degrees per decade might be right or it might be part of a combination of things or it might be a high side measure. If the science were as solid as some people claim we should be able to say 'We put x tonnes into the air and the temperature rose y degrees'. The ocean currents, sun spots, the Nino cycles, volcanic activity, contrails, cows etc. all have a forcing effect that is hard to pin down over any given period. Then you hear the people responsible for doing so aren't being as upfront with the data as they could be.

You didn't 'go off'. It was a figure of speach. Sorry to lump you in.

My assumption was based on watching China go through a boom and realising there's another 2 billion people just waiting in the wings to do the same. Maybe 100 years is a stretch, say 50 instead.

Sure there are plans. They involve a bunch of money changing hands on one side of the globe and a bunch of CO2 going into the air on the other. I don't think that will stop until it's very uncomfortable for the people on the other side of the World. I don't think we can spend enough money to have an effect.
It's not immpossible to stop, it's unrealistic. It hasn't run its course yet.

Yah, I smoke too.

Halsu

21st March 2010, 12:19 PM

David's militant political activism. I understand passion, but when you start calling for arrests to get attention you lose me. Fear mongering is such a poor way to motivate people.

As a political agenda AGW is woo. Just the facts please.

I haven't followed Suzuki at all (none of the TV stations here broadcast "Nature of Things"), so if your comment was about the way he has talked about AGW in public, i can't really say much about that. In that case hovewer, i assume your stance about AGW as climate science is still "not woo"?

When it comes to politics, there's woo in both sides of the fence. More so in the denial side of things it seems, but some also on the pro AGW side. That doesn't mean all AGW politics is woo though.

Furcifer

21st March 2010, 12:43 PM

I haven't followed Suzuki at all (none of the TV stations here broadcast "Nature of Things"), so if your comment was about the way he has talked about AGW in public, i can't really say much about that. In that case hovewer, i assume your stance about AGW as climate science is still "not woo"?

When it comes to politics, there's woo in both sides of the fence. More so in the denial side of things it seems, but some also on the pro AGW side. That doesn't mean all AGW politics is woo though.

Woo might not be the right word, it was more of a counter to the 'denier woo' I've heard.

You can check out Suzuki on YouTube. I watched the clip of him on the WWF in Australia. His claim about carbon sequestering and killing the biomass in the ground was interesting, something I'd like to investigate further.

The politics has to go. We need facts and answers not rhetoric. I understand as long as there is money involved big business and politicians will follow.

Halsu

21st March 2010, 12:53 PM

The specific questions of what to do and what effect it will have and how fast.

I personally haven't studied that side much, but IPCC:s reports should give you the best overview on the current state of scientific knowledge those subjects.

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/contents.html
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/contents.html

Yes, I agree man made CO2 causes an increase in global temperature. 0.2 degrees per decade might be right or it might be part of a combination of things or it might be a high side measure.

...or on the low side.

If the science were as solid as some people claim we should be able to say 'We put x tonnes into the air and the temperature rose y degrees'. The ocean currents, sun spots, the Nino cycles, volcanic activity, contrails, cows etc. all have a forcing effect that is hard to pin down over any given period.

It's pretty well known how much part have the other forcings have had on the warming, how much is caused by humans.

It's not a thing that can be said with absolute precision though, with absolute certainty at current point - but still accurately and reliably enough. And new knowledge is accumulated all the time, further improving both precision and reliability.

Then you hear the people responsible for doing so aren't being as upfront with the data as they could be.

Those accusations are for most part simply false, political woo.

You didn't 'go off'. It was a figure of speach. Sorry to lump you in.

NP.

My assumption was based on watching China go through a boom and realising there's another 2 billion people just waiting in the wings to do the same. Maybe 100 years is a stretch, say 50 instead.

The good thing is, as most of their infrastructure isn't built yet, there's a chance to build it energy efficient and low carbon emitting from ground up. It will probably cost us westeners some money to do so, but such is life.

I don't think we can spend enough money to have an effect.
It's not immpossible to stop, it's unrealistic. It hasn't run its course yet.

Here we tend to disagree.

bokonon

21st March 2010, 01:29 PM

Here is a good essay on the nature of denial in general, even though it doesn’t touch climate much you can see the general principles evident in the entire climate debate.

http://www.theness.com/skepticism-and-denial/
AGW believers will often dismiss skeptics with the argument that they are afraid of the truth of AGW, or that they have a misguided desire to protect the status quo. Such arguments are specious to the point of being silly, but more importantly AGW skeptics do not cite the implications of the reality of AGW as a reason for their skepticism.
You're right, I CAN see...

Oh, wait, not AGW. UFO. Never mind...

Piggy

21st March 2010, 06:57 PM

As a political agenda AGW is woo. Just the facts please.

What in the world is that supposed to mean?

Politics is the arena of "What should we do?"

There is no "Just the facts" in politics.

Politics requires that we take the facts at hand and use them to determine policy going forward, which requires imagination and innovation.

Right now, the best science is pretty darn conclusive about the problem.

There's a range of possible outcomes, and as time goes on, it's sure looking like the future does not hold the best possible scenario for us.

It is entirely appropriate that we consider most-likely scenarios and worst-possible scenarios, and balance them against the costs of potential mitigating strategies.

If we don't do that, we're not likely to muster up enough economic, political, industrial, and psychological motivation to force the kind of innovation that's necessary to solve the problem.

Your way is a surefire ticket to oblivion. It's a do-nothing, throw-up-your-hands kind of thinking which gets us nowhere.

Your kind never won a war, never built a nation, never created a new industry... in fact, never did anything at all.

You are an irrelevancy, the fodder of vanished nations, bankrupt businesses, obsolete cultures, and dead ideas.

CapelDodger

21st March 2010, 07:21 PM

... I believe ...

Ah, you believe. That explains a lot.

BenBurch

21st March 2010, 07:22 PM

Ah, you believe. That explains a lot.

CapelDodger! I was worried about you, not having seen you here in months!

CapelDodger

21st March 2010, 07:36 PM

Woo might not be the right word, it was more of a counter to the 'denier woo' I've heard.

Denier woo is woo. And that's a fact, believe it or not.

The politics has to go. We need facts and answers not rhetoric.

Answers to what questions? We're not short of facts. How do we determine the questions (let alone policies that answer them) without politics?

I understand as long as there is money involved big business and politicians will follow.

Follow what? When money's involved a lot of effort will be put into impeding change, not into following anything. In political terms this is referred to as "conservatism" (which is very different from conservation, but lets not complicate matters).

CapelDodger

21st March 2010, 07:51 PM

CapelDodger! I was worried about you, not having seen you here in months!

I got bored and distracted, new mountains to climb, yadda-yadda. Looking in I see that there's nowt so weird it can't be out-weirded on the JREF Science Forum, and nothing so trite somebody won't nail themselves to it in the belief they're being clever.

CapelDodger

21st March 2010, 08:11 PM

The good thing is, as most of their infrastructure isn't built yet, there's a chance to build it energy efficient and low carbon emitting from ground up. It will probably cost us westeners some money to do so, but such is life.

I rather doubt the West has any money to take any more. 'Technology transfer' to China is fast becoming a joke, and when the West's financial house of cards started tottering the first port-of-call was the East and the sovereign funds of the Persian Gulf region. Since then a lot of Western government paper has been issued to prop it up, but it has no real backing.

China (and India) will go their own way, while the West can only watch from the sidelines. Canada and Russia will forge the North, a new phaenomenon. Where that leaves Australia is anybody's guess :)

BenBurch

21st March 2010, 08:18 PM

I got bored and distracted, new mountains to climb, yadda-yadda. Looking in I see that there's nowt so weird it can't be out-weirded on the JREF Science Forum, and nothing so trite somebody won't nail themselves to it in the belief they're being clever.

Wish I were bored. Been working 50+ hour weeks.

Furcifer

21st March 2010, 10:07 PM

Ah, you believe. That explains a lot.

That 'I believe' was in lieu of 'if my memory serves me correctly'.

Did you realize that? :(

Furcifer

21st March 2010, 10:40 PM

Answers to what questions? We're not short of facts. How do we determine the questions (let alone policies that answer them) without politics?

Follow what? When money's involved a lot of effort will be put into impeding change, not into following anything. In political terms this is referred to as "conservatism" (which is very different from conservation, but lets not complicate matters).

Apparently AGW causes blindness. The questions I asked that no one seems to be able to answer, that's what questions.

There's billions of dollars in AGW, from carbon credits to research funding.

Who's impeding change exactly? The 'fossil fuel' industry? They wouldn't benefit from $6/gallon gas? How many of the nuclear plants in the US are already owned by the 'fossil fuel' industry? How many of the wind farms? What does Toyota care if their cars get 75 MPG?

Furcifer

21st March 2010, 11:16 PM

Your way is a surefire ticket to oblivion. It's a do-nothing, throw-up-your-hands kind of thinking which gets us nowhere.

Your kind never won a war, never built a nation, never created a new industry... in fact, never did anything at all.

I don't own a car, I take public transit or ride a bike and work at a cogen plant. I was recently asked to be involved in a project that uses biodegradable waste to collect methane, then burn the gas and biomatter to produce electrcity and heat to power greenhouses.

I don't think you could possibly be any more clueless.

This is exactly why I continue to remain skeptical. The AGW proponents are so blinded by their own self righteousness they don't have any idea what's actually going on. It's all about appearing superior by claiming they know everything and acting like martyrs as they single handedly save the World from itself.

Halsu

22nd March 2010, 12:37 AM

Apparently AGW causes blindness. The questions I asked that no one seems to be able to answer, that's what questions.

I thought i answered your questions, or gave you links to good resources to the ones i'm not that familiar with?

Did you even start to read the summaries of the IPCC "Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability" and "Mitigation of Climate Change" reports i linked to?

Who's impeding change exactly?

The political far-right, fuel industry and free market think tanks. This all is very well documented in the studies and reports:

The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a793291693

Challenging Knowledge: How Climate Science Became a Victim of the Cold War
http://search.lse.ac.uk/search/click.cgi?rank=22&collection=lse_external&componen t=0&docnum=328607&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.lse.ac.uk% 2FCPNSS%2Fprojects%2FCoreResearchProjects%2FContin gencyDissentInScience%2FDP%2FDP0801OreskesChalleng ingKnOnline.pdf&index_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.lse.ac .uk%2FCPNSS%2Fprojects%2FCoreResearchProjects%2FCo ntingencyDissentInScience%2FDP%2FDP0801OreskesChal lengingKnOnline.pdf

From Chicken Little to Dr. Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming, and the Social Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge
http://search.lse.ac.uk/search/click.cgi?rank=21&collection=lse_external&componen t=0&docnum=328604&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.lse.ac.uk% 2FCPNSS%2Fprojects%2FCoreResearchProjects%2FContin gencyDissentInScience%2FDP%2FDPOreskesetalChickenL ittleOnlinev2.pdf&index_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww2.lse. ac.uk%2FCPNSS%2Fprojects%2FCoreResearchProjects%2F ContingencyDissentInScience%2FDP%2FDPOreskesetalCh ickenLittleOnlinev2.pdf

Defeating Kyoto: The Conservative Movement’s Impact on U.S. Climate Change Policy
http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/McCrightDunlap2003.pdf

Experiences of modernity in the greenhouse: A cultural analysis of a physicist ‘‘trio’’ supporting the backlash against global warming
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/admin/publication_files/resource-2590-2008.05.pdf

****

These are not traditionally peer-reviewed, but still good suggested reading.

http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf
http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/plagiarism%20conspiracies%20felonies%20v1%200%201. pdf

A.A. Alfie

22nd March 2010, 12:45 AM

This is exactly why I continue to remain skeptical. The AGW proponents are so blinded by their own self righteousness they don't have any idea what's actually going on. It's all about appearing superior by claiming they know everything and acting like martyrs as they single handedly save the World from itself.

Especially the zealous ideologically motivated: Pretty much, yeah.:)

Here's a little something on their supposed consensus too.

http://american.com/archive/2010/march/when-to-doubt-a-scientific-consensus

Halsu

22nd March 2010, 01:18 AM

Especially the zealous ideologically motivated: Pretty much, yeah.:)

Here's a little something on their supposed consensus too.

http://american.com/archive/2010/march/when-to-doubt-a-scientific-consensus

I find it hilarious that you talk about being ideologically motivated, while linking to an article in the American Enterprise Institute journal. :id:

Meanwhile, back in planet earth, 97% of actively publishing climate scientists support the view that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures:

http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2009/survey97.png

http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf

A.A. Alfie

22nd March 2010, 01:30 AM

I find it hilarious that you talk about being ideologically motivated, while linking to an article in the American Enterprise Institute journal.

That would come under observation #2 and I find that, hilarious. Guess you didn't bother to read it huh?:D

Halsu

22nd March 2010, 01:56 AM

That would come under observation #2 and I find that, hilarious. Guess you didn't bother to read it huh?:D

So, are you saying that the American Enterprise Institute is not ideologically motivated?

"The Institute's community of scholars is committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity, and strengthening free enterprise."
http://www.aei.org/about

Since when has stating a fact become an ad hominem assault?

A.A. Alfie

22nd March 2010, 02:22 AM

Two things:
- your article is over 12 months old and the numbers are vastly different today. Can you please provide something more recent and accurate because it is stale, redundant and totally inaccurate (and suspect it was from the outset).
- On mine:
Then your belittling of the article because of its source wasn't an ad hom? :confused:

But did you read it?
I reckon no:
http://forums.randi.org/picture.php?albumid=434&pictureid=2702
and that's funny.

Halsu

22nd March 2010, 03:18 AM

Two things:
- your article is over 12 months old and the numbers are vastly different today.

No, they are not, as far as i know. There's no evidence suggesting that the scientists have changed their opinion. The public may have, but that's irrelevant.

If you have contrary, newer evidence, i'm all ears, but until then the findings on the article i linked to still stand.

Then your belittling of the article because of its source wasn't an ad hom? :confused:

I didn't belittle the source, just pointed out that your source is politically motivated, which is funny considering you accused your opponents of having a ideological agenda.

But did you read it?

I did read a bit of it, but it turned out to be obvious woo so i didn't waste my time going through the agony of reading it through.

A.A. Alfie

22nd March 2010, 03:47 AM

Did you even revue your own article. The graph has more than one set of numbers (six in fact). I can also tell you that sincxe Climategate there have been a lot of changes in the opinions of scientists as well as other groups of individuals. Have a quick look at a few submissions with the UK Government - that might reveal a few just for starters.
Get some current numbers.

And are you going to suggest that the AEI is not a politically based enterprise? :rolleyes:

a_unique_person

22nd March 2010, 03:49 AM

A.A. Alfie

22nd March 2010, 04:00 AM

Correct - you are bright. You might note however that I directed you to a source that may be of interest.
The fact remains that is is out of date in a number of levels and frankly, many bets are off since Climategate.

Moreover, item #7 and #12 of the article I linked to covers this claim of consensus.:D

You might like to check this post too.
http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5741299&postcount=715

Halsu

22nd March 2010, 04:09 AM

Did you even revue your own article. The graph has more than one set of numbers (six in fact).

Yes. And the one that's most important, frequently publishing climate scientists shows that 97% is in favor of the AGW.

At the same time, the study shows that the public opinion is in stark contrast to the scientific one. The campaign to mislead the public has been unfortunately successful, it seems.

ETA:
Have a quick look at a few submissions with the UK Government - that might reveal a few just for starters.

I guess the main thing you try to refer to is still the IOP submission. Here's what IOP has to say about that:

In a statement, the IOP says it regrets that its submission to the inquiry has become the focus of what it calls “extraordinary media hype” and that the evidence “has been interpreted by some individuals to imply that the IOP does not support the scientific evidence that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is contributing to global warming”. The Institute adds that it has long had a “clear” position on global warming, namely that “there is no doubt that climate change is happening, that it is linked to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, and that we should be taking action to address it now”.

...in case you wonder if i took the above from an "alarmist blog" or something... nope, that's from wattsupwiththat.com

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/13/iop-fires-back-over-criticism-of-their-submission-to-parliament/
:end of ETA

Get some current numbers.

You make the claim that that the results have changed. It's your job to find evidence supporting your claim.